#and apparently the dark web is so easy to access too…

[slut4thebroken]

Guys so my brother is getting into computer stuff and his main goal for a job rn is cyber security… so obviously he has to learn about all the bad stuff so he can learn how to prevent/get rid of the bad stuff… Yesterday he was telling me about how he finally went on the dark web and like— to put it simply, I will NEVER date someone who’s into computers… Do y’all know how fucking easy it is to stalk someone??? Like he put his ip address into a search and the location was literally within .1 mi of his house… Also there’s some other device you can get that basically fucks with the wifi you’re on and then all of your stuff automitcally connects to that device (without you even knowing) which give fulls access to your camera, key strokes, etc…….

[dilfbane]

Your Weeping(Your Need For His Touch)

Summary: When things go south on a mission, you have to confront more than just the sketchy town, cartoon villains, and one-bed hotel room you’re forced to share with Loki. You have to come to terms with not only the consequences of being captured, but also the God of Mischief’s feelings for you - Because for all that he might be an asshole, sometimes, he really does have a heart. Written for the Picture Is Worth A 1,000 Words 6k Follower Writing Challenge by @startrekkingaroundasgard 

Pairing: Loki/(Female)Reader

Warnings: Descriptions of injuries and medical treatment, as well as discussions of the inevitable mindset around sacrificing oneself for the mission that I feel like being part of the Avengers would entail. Also swearing, because at its core, this story started out as a bit of a crack! fic. 

Word Count: 7.8k. 

A/N: So apparently when I have mental breakdowns they result in me writing crack-fic that takes a 180 veer into angst and fluff for absolutely no reason. For the sake of the crack-fic, in this timeline Loki was forced to help the Avengers take down bad guys directly after the end of the first Avengers movie, so… Is that a confusing plot hole I didn’t know how to account for except by making this AU? Maybe. Did I do it anyway?…. Yeah. This really was meant to be a crack-fic about Loki and the reader confessing their feelings set in the bizarre world of meme culture, I didn’t realize there were going to be feels in it until it was three in the morning and all of a sudden this happened. That being said, your girl went there, so enjoy! 

“Oh, shit,” You say, as you take in the grimy hotel room. The walls all smeared in what looks like dried blood, the putrid smell of rotten eggs, a crack-screened television with a fine dusting of some suspiciously white powder. And, of course, “There’s one bed.” 

“Hmm?” Asks Loki, turning towards you, briefly, from unpacking. He had dumped his suitcase(Magically plucked out of a chaotic liminal space) unceremoniously on the bed’s scratching, pilling coverlet without so much as a second glance at the rest of the room. And why do you need a suitcase, anyways?? You wonder. It isn’t like we’re planning to be here that long. In fact, you hoped with every fiber of your being that you’d be here for as little time as possible, because this town might actually be the sketchiest place you’ve ever seen in your life; no small feat, for a bona-fide member of S.H.I.E.L.D. 

You’ve kicked alien ass on a mutated purple Mongolian death-worm three thousand feet over New York City. You’ve run reconnaissance to rescue debatably-magical items sequestered away in an ancient cave labyrinth plastered in paintings and untranslatable runes, gunfire and what could only be described as the baying of hellhounds in the near distance. You’ve fist-fought a gigantic hive-mind robot in a field of artificially sentient feral steel suits - You’ve even survived Tony’s parties. 

Yet none of those scenarios hold a candle to this fucking town. 

And Loki, the asshat, seems utterly, competently - no, maniacally - unfazed. 

“There’s one bed,” You repeat, into the air. 

“Ah,” Says Loki, straightening. 

“You don’t see that problem with that?!” 

“Should I?” He asks you, walking across the room in long, graceful strides to stand in front of you. He wears the same expression he always wears, amused and indifferent, but this time with the addition of a single, elegantly-arched eyebrow. You drop your head, refusing to meet his somewhat-curious gaze. It physically hurts, how attractive Loki is. Not for the first time, you curse whatever god decided that you and him would once again be mission partners - in this case, you belatedly realize, and choke back a thick laugh, said god is, unsurprisingly, Thor. 

If you survive this, you make a note to beat his head in with Mjolnir. As it is, you are here in this room with Loki, with perhaps twenty IPP agents and a reckless poisoner dogging your every move, and there’s a high chance that you won’t live long enough to navigate whatever the hell sleeping with your crush-who-has-murdered-men. Ok, so ‘murdered men’ isn’t entirely accurate. More like ‘caused the murder of men inadvertently through his schemes’. It doesn’t seem to make much of a difference, right now. 

And what about Loki? He is still staring you down, like you’re some wind up toy moments away from going off. Funny, that, you think. If ever there were a time to not have a mental breakdown, it would be here, with him. You’ve crossed a lot of moral lines in your life, but you will be damned if you let Loki Laufeysson see you cry. Loki is graceful. Composed. Sarcastic. Lithe. Rolls his eyes at almost every statement that comes out of somebody’s mouth. But he is, also, beautiful. Shockingly comforting, in his own nihilistic way. You don’t know what it says about you that you find comfort in statements like, Try not to die, you know that I hate funerals. Part of you - most of you - doesn’t want to. But it gives you strength, somehow, to shrug off the day and ground your flailing mind in evading Loki’s calculated manipulation. I won’t show you my weakness, you think to yourself. It’s not enough, but it’s a start. 

“No,” You tell him - too quickly, he’ll pick up on that - “You’re right, you shouldn’t. It’s fine. We have - a lot to deal with, is all.” 

Loki nods, seemingly accepting your answer, but his eyes are still narrowed, watching you like he’s calling your bluff. You talk right past that look - have to, to keep yourself sane, to not think about the one bed that looms large over this entire conversation. It doesn’t even look like a comfortable bed. 

“We have two days,” You say, to stop yourself thinking of it. And, also, to talk your way through your disarmingly disjointed thoughts. Loki nods. It would really help if you said something, you think. Swallow the thought, hot and thick, down your throat. What’s the point of a mission partner if you can’t even soundboard off them? “The Pink Cobra could strike anyone, anytime. The IPP is planning something in New York - “ 

“Isn’t everyone, these days, planning something in New York?” 

He sounds regretful, and for half a second you want to offer him the reassurance that his very presence offers you. But you are sure he doesn’t know what he does to you - with his words, with the sidelong glances that you’ve felt linger on your form far too long in the heat of a fight. If you didn’t know any better, you would say Loki worries about you. 

“We have to shut him down,” You say. Focus on the Pink Cobra, because honestly, that’s easier. “Find out where he manufactures. Not get poisoned,” You add, at the end. 

“Yes,” Loki says, tone dripping with sarcasm, “We should certainly try not to get ourselves killed. Failing that, I suppose, we can at least request that no one in H.Y.D.R.A gets autopsy access.” 

“Loki?” You ask. Rhetorically. “You’re not helping.” 

He smirks at you, then. He knows. 

“What do you propose that we do then?” He asks, taking a step towards you, getting so close that you can feel his hot breath. “About the Pink Cobra?” 

“Find him.” You say, fumbling, blush rising high on your cheeks. 

Tonight? 

One bed? 

You are screwed. 

                                                             ***

When you were a kid - think really little, Capri Sun pouches and still believing that true love wasn’t complicated - your father told you that every story needed a good supervillain. You aren’t sure if the Pink Cobra counts as a good supervillain, but he’s the least confusing one that you have to deal with - and, as far as villains go, a fine enough challenge to face. He’s like a madman out of some high fantasy novel, with dark eyes and a sable-sewn cloak and a penchant for poisoning. He is adept in all the arts of the woman’s murder; he has a keen grasp on the side-effects of arsenic and camphor and tansy and cyanide and strychnine. He’s been found to have dropped crystal phials filled with belladonna and ricin while fleeing a scene. If all else fails, he’s more than practiced with daggers. 

In other words, he’s the kind of villain that none of you, with your flying suits and telekinesis and super-strength, are anywhere near prepared to waylay. 

The plan, as far as team Avengers is concerned, is easy: 

You and Loki. This town, where the webs of his manufacturing production and the few glimpses of information that Thor has totally legally excavated out of his captured minions has led to. Two days until some undefined grand attack bears down on the city you live in. Two days to find the Pink Cobra and kill him. The more time passes with no headway, the more you think that this is an impossible task, but you know what Tony would say. We have our best minds on it. 

The thing is, you aren’t sure that that’s true. The minds that have been set to this task are you and the God of Lies. It’s hardly the best they could have come up with, considering your track records. Actually, you take that back - Loki was a good choice for this mission, because, not three hours after arriving in this hellhole of a city, he seems to have somehow developed the ability to read minds. More specifically, yours. And that could prove stunningly useful. 

The scene, as it stands: Loki, sprawled across the lumpy bed, three pairs of crisp white shirts, a plaid scarf, and a full set of Asgardian battle armor neatly hung in the mothball-infested closet, flicking through channels on the grain, cracked television with an apathetic expression and one arm thrown haphazardly over bent leg. Propped up in such a way that he could jump or spin or parry at a moment’s notice, yet perfectly, devastatingly languid, leafing through Nick Fury’s dossier on the Pink Cobra. He looks at you like a god, you think, and then remember. He is one. 

You, on the floor, because on top of all the other things this hotel doesn’t have, like two beds, there isn’t anything even resembling a desk, shifting through a glowing, holographed file archive from headquarters that barely runs on your severely outdated laptop. It’s a point of pride to you, keeping the laptop - not because it’s good, but because it’s survived five years of being an Avenger, which is something not even all the Avengers can claim to have done. You’re also fairly certain that Tony’s attempts to update the firmware had infested it with some sort of renegade virus. Elevated above your screen, the files are split into two groups, the sum total of everything that you know about both of the groups that are avidly trying to kill you. 

There’s the wealth of information containing the Pink Cobra’s poisoning sprees, but those aren’t the files that interest you, and you know that Loki’s not much interested in them either. That honor falls to the fanatics at the IPP, the Imminently Predictable Psyops organization, which you know even less about than you do about the Pink Cobra, chief among which the fact that they need a new name. Imminently Predictable Psyops?, Tony had said, when you’d finally apprehended one of their proxies. What do they think this is? Some type of ARG? 

What you’ve gleaned, from months worth of studying the network, is that they operate as a sort of cringe-oriented death cult intent on ‘reshaping the universe through meme agents’. They’d been on S.H.I.E.L.D’s radar for a long time - upwards of a year - before anyone at team base learned they existed - which, you can almost hear Loki saying, was a failure in the extreme. Currently, it was your job to obsessively worry over whether they were going to send ‘meme agents’ to bust through the door of your seedy hotel room and off you both. You hated - truly loathed - how casually Loki was taking it all. 

He’s acting like nothing was wrong with this situation, when, in fact, you’re ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure that this night will end up with one or both of you dead. It is, to say the least, disconcerting. 

Kill switch, the holograph files read. Cross-referential Neil Cicierega acoustic weaponry. Your mind sees the words, but doesn’t comprehend them, and you run a hand up to rub at your bleary eyes with annoyance. You risk a glance upwards; on the bed, Loki scans page after page after page with disinterested nonchalance, punctuating the flipping over of each document with a noncommittal hum; as if to say, I understand you. As it to say, This could be worse. You try to slip into that mindset. Certainly, things could be worse. 

Actually, though? Not really. 

Because, for all the world, the holo-file in front of you just said ‘Pepe The Frog Chaos Banking Laser Initiative’. 

“What the fuck does that even mean?!” 

“Sorry?” 

You whip your head around. Loki, raising an eyebrow. Damn that - perfect - eyebrow. 

“Sorry,” You echo back at him, rubbing your eyes again, perversely glad for the break, even if it is this awkward. “I … said that out loud, didn’t I?” 

“Marginally,” He tells you. “Yes.” 

“Sorry,” You - well, it’s not a whine, not exactly. You’re tired, and there’s no way you’re going to sleep tonight, so you feel like your tone’s justified. “I didn’t mean to do that. I think I’m just - this is. Completely nonsensical.” 

“Show me?” He asks, and you snort. He could totally just look up, but - 

“Do you have a P.h.d in memes?” You ask him, and, before he can answer, “Because unless you have a P.h.d in memes, I don’t think you’ll be able to help.” 

“You’d be surprised,” Loki says. Vaults over the bed with the speed and grace of a panther, filling the air with a cringing wheeze as the rusty springs bend underneath him, and landing in front of the holo-file, pushing you aside slightly to get a better view. When his fingers brush against your side, cool and firm, you flinch. 

“Tired,” You offer, when he shoots you a momentarily concerned look. “Just. Need to sleep, later, I think.” 

But Loki is already scanning the file, and when he looks up, not five seconds later, you want to hit somebody. Preferably, you think, him. 

“I would assume,” Loki says, “That they’re using time travel in order to obtain and store monetary value by way of a Pepe-the-frog inspired laser array.” 

“Oh,” You say. You blink once. Blink twice. Still have no idea what that means. “Right.” 

“Do you not know your memes, love?” He asks you, smirking. And oh, if you don’t feel things. 

“I don’t go on the internet, much,” You tell him. “Too busy, you know, trying not to get killed.”

 Loki shrugs. Sidles away from the file. The groan and squeak of those springs tells you he’s back on the bed, giving you some well-needed space, but you can’t bring yourself to look. 

“You can sleep,” He says, “If you want.” 

“Ha!” You yelp/choke/embarrassingly bleat out into the room’s stale silence. Underneath the rotten eggs, you catch a whiff of bong-water. “No.” 

“There’s a bed,” Loki says, cocking his head pointedly and patting the lumpy covers. 

“Yeah, that’s - kind of the problem.” 

“Why?” He asks you. 

“You - really?” 

“I was only asking,” Says Loki, re-focusing his attention on whichever Pink Cobra document’s next in the folder. “If you aren’t comfortable telling me - I merely thought, seeing as you were tired, you might take this opportunity to rest.” 

“Yeah,” You  tell him, “Of course, that’s - nice of you.” 

It comes out stilted. Patently off. If he notices, he doesn’t say. 

“Are you going to - um. Do you need help, with the rest? The ones I have seem kind of hopeless. I mean,” You say, when he doesn’t look up, “I don’t think that we have to worry about getting demolished by trans-dimensional Agarthian wormholes.” 

“Of course not,”” Loki says, scoffing and incredulous, gaze, you are sure, on his page. “If they wanted to kill us, they’d send someone with a gun.” 

In reality, it’s several someones. 

                                                             ***

“You jinxed it,” Is the first thing you tell him, when the men leave you. They’ve thrown you into a one-room warehouse, rickety shelves stacked with cartoonish tubs of green goop and mildewing boxes filled with grenades and machine guns and what appears, at second-glance, to be twelve-fingered latex gloves. You’re tied wrist to wrist, ankle to ankle, and your throat feels uncharacteristically parched. Fear, you tell yourself. Apprehension. “Can’t you just - use your seidr to magic us out of this?” 

If you could see him - which you can’t, because you’ve been tied back to back - you’d swear that Loki was glaring. 

“Do you - do you have a plan?” You ask, after a moment. 

“I’m working on it,” He says. 

“That’s all?” You say. “We were dragged out of our drug-dealer’s hotel room by a bunch of robed men with guns and the only thing you have to say is ‘I’m working on it?’” 

“I’d get it done faster,” Says Loki, “If you wouldn’t interrupt me.” 

“Ok,” You tell him, “No interrupting you. Got it. That’s - Alright.” 

Unfortunately, not interrupting him is easier said than done, because without the sound of your voice, you are left to your thoughts. 

The men had broken in nearly immediately after Loki’s glib, sardonic retort to your worries, shooting the glass out of the room’s already half-smashed-in window and kicking the door in simultaneously. A bit much, isn’t it?, Loki’d asked, and you had wanted to smack yourself on the forehead. Really not the time, you had hissed, but Loki hadn’t seemed to hear you. Do you do this with everyone they send you to assassinate?, he had asked, instead. The men had been dressed in long, billowing cloaks of bright red, embroidered with orange snakes framing a picture of Beaker from the muppets with early 2000’s emo hair. Chaotic meme agents, you had thought to yourself. So that’s what they’re supposed to look like. 

You hadn’t picked up, until now, on the snakes. 

“They’re working together,” You say, when you can’t stand the playback of Loki being disarmed after spinning and tossing his silver daggers at the men, of the men kneeing him in the balls and twisting your arms behind your back, holding a gun to your head to stop you from trying to fight. Waking up in the back of a van that smelled like microwaved fish. Being tossed like garbage onto the floor of the warehouse, painted in bruises and cuts from the small pieces of glass that had dug their way into your skin. “The IPP and the Pink Cobra.” 

“Obviously,” Loki says. Sharply. 

“Did Tony not -“ 

“Stark,” Loki practically growls, and, ok, you’re not losing it but that did make you jump in your skin, “Is an idiot. He wouldn’t know how to connect the dots if they were presented to him in a Buzzfeed Unsolved episode.” 

“That’s - You had that on Asgard?” You ask him, momentarily distracted. You wish that you could see Loki’s face, and are very glad that you can’t. 

“That isn’t the point,” Loki says. 

“I know,” You tell him. You’re scared that your voice is trembling. Scared that he can tell, even though he’s not facing you, how badly your fingers are shaking. Scared that he knows your worst, biggest secret - 

That, despite being an Avenger, you are anxious. That, despite him being Loki, despite him being here, and wonderfully, infuriatingly himself, he cannot help you, this time. 

You are going to die, covered in cuts and abrasions, on the floor of a meme network’s headquarters, at three a.m in the morning. They are going to come in with umbrellas that shoot poison darts or the ex-presidents Point Break masks and mow you down, and Loki has no fucking plan. You feel the ropes tighten where they’re knotted, itchy and fierce, and you have to fight to keep yourself from whining in terror and nerves. Whining isn’t what Loki needs right now. Whining’s not going to save you. 

What is going to save you, you try and remind yourself, is Loki. If you can shut up. If you can let him decipher what needs to be done. If he can figure out some way to do it before the blowtorch-wielding robed vigilantes or some disincarnate meme god comes back and draws their electronically-sharpened fingernails across your throat hard enough to split skin and sinew, send waves of blood down the front of your shirt like a river of sweet, thick red honey and toss your corpse in a ditch by a highway and - 

“Y/N?” It is foggy, barely-heard. Posh. “Y/N!” Louder, this time. There are fingers on your wrist, bent backwards to grip you. Squeezing, insistent and there. “Breathe.” 

Fuck, you think. You’d started to hyperventilate. To shake, with a full-body tremor that forecasts a great, unstoppable wave of sobbing panic. And Loki had noticed. “I need you to trust me,” He says. “Trust me to get us out of this. Can you do that for me, darling?” 

He has never called you darling before, but God how you’ve wanted him to. You feel like you’re being stabbed in the heart - because there is no way he means it, no way that this is anything other than a desperate and cruel attempt to get you to calm down. Something that belies how obvious you are. How needy you are. How pathetic. And yet - 

And yet, he doesn’t say it meanly. He speaks like he cares about you, and in the face of your impending death, you want to think Loki cares. You’d let him say anything, do anything to you, right now. More than that, though, more than any of that - as you think back to meeting him, to your blossoming late-night friendship and twitchy banter and the quiet moments you’ve shared with him in-between battles - 

“I trust you, Loki,” You tell him, and feel your breath quiet in you. Feel yourself growing still and calm with the certainty that Loki will do as he’s said. 

That you will survive this. 

That -

“Good,” Loki says. Not relieved, but determined. Leaving you no room to argue. 

“So what do we do?” You ask him. 

“Nothing,” Says Loki, and you can hear his wide grin. 

“Nothing?” You ask him, gawking.

 “Nothing,” Says Loki. He gives your hand a tight squeeze. 

And then the Pink Cobra walks in. 

                                                             ***

This will end badly, you think. It’s about the only thing that you can think, preoccupied as you are with - 

It might be easier not to - 

Fuck. 

The thing is - and you really do try not to move, not to groan, not to scream - the thing is, you thought that when Loki said he had a plan, that said plan wouldn’t involve you being collateral damage for a LARP-er who’d most likely broken out of an asylum. I wish that we could be back in that shitty one-bed hotel room, you think to yourself, and - alright, not the best timing, but it rips a laugh out of you, spiraling and unhinged, before you feel the Pink Cobra, resplendent in coral cloak and villainous swagger, slug you one in the jaw. It hurts worse than you’d thought it would - you’ve never really gotten injured on missions, you’re usually good at talking yourself out of things, which is why the Avengers keep you around. You can speak any language, as long as you’ve heard it once, and your customary daily awkwardness can shift into persuasion like flicking a light-switch on. 

Usually, though, you had an opportunity to speak, and weren’t rendered speechless by - 

Loki, if you’re being honest. How much you want to kiss him. How much of an asshole he is. Trust me, he’d asked you. Can you do that for me? The Pink Cobra’s grip is sharp and bruising on your side; he’s slipped his fingers up your shirt and is pressing the point on your side that threatens to make your knees buckle, making bile rise up in your throat, driving you wild with the aching need to flee. He has one hand clasped over your mouth, now that you’ve quieted, and you can feel something - pain, and a pill - pressed snugly into his palm. He will force it down you, you know, if Loki so much as sighs wrong. 

You’ll never trust him again. 

You wish that you knew what the time was. If you end up dying at 4:20, you’re going to throw fists with somebody in hell. 

You wish, also, for aspirin. Avengers training has left you woefully unprepared for the reality of getting punched in the face. You can already feel your jaw starting to swell, taste an egregious amount of blood. You’re pretty sure that the force of the blow knocked a tooth out. 

What strikes fear into you, though - a fear somehow deeper than the absolutely bone-chilling, blood-curdling knowledge of what the Pink Cobra might do to you - is the look you’d seen on Loki’s face in the seconds after he’d grabbed you, before it fell into practiced, amused apathy. He’d gone white, and his eyes had blown wide. His fingers had spasmed with anger. 

He’d looked as scared as you feel. 

And you have no idea why. 

It isn’t like you’re anyone special. Not any more than the rest of the team. Less so than most of them. You aren’t a god, like Loki and Thor are. You don’t have stealth-assassin training, like Bucky, or super-strength like Steve. You can’t seamlessly pilot mechanical suits over the New York skyline like Tony, or use a crossbow like Clint, or beat thirty people in single-hand combat like Nat, or change into a nitro-fueled rage machine like Bruce. 

You can’t do anything, much. 

Except, apparently, die.

You squeeze your eyes shut, not letting yourself look at him. You won’t let Loki’s disinterested face be the last thing that you see. It makes the Pink Cobra’s words all the worse, when he speaks. His voice is dark and sick and timbered, and you feel maggots crawling over your skin as he slots you closer to his body, tightening his already painful grip on you so that you can’t move even an inch away from his tensed, coiled muscles. 

“So,” He says, “You are superheroes? How long did it take me, to apprehend you? Ah - three and a half hours? Tell your boss-man, do better next time.” 

“I’ll pass it along,” Loki says. His voice sounds different. You can’t place why. Still won’t look. 

“You won’t,” The Pink Cobra says. You can feel his shoulders rise, then fall. Feel him smirk. You love Loki’s smirk - secretly delight in drawing it from him, sometimes - but the Pink Cobra’s only fills you with yet more terror. You’ve pursed your lips tightly shut against the intrusion of his hand, but when Loki speaks he forces your bruised, bleeding jaw open and shoves the pill into your mouth. The pain of your injury tears through you like white lightning and you thrash, trying to escape. A keening sound claws its way out of you, fevered and anguished, and you feel your hands, still bound up in ropes, trying in vain to push off and away. The man behind you sighs, and then aims a swift kick at the back of your knees, which sends you down before you can so much as yelp. Your knees hit the floor, and he’s holding you by your hair now, twisting it so hard that you’re almost sure he’ll scalp you. He’s pulled something - too big to be be a knife, some kind of shortsword?! - Out from beneath his cloak, and is pressing it up against the column of your throat. You feel the weight of the capsule between your teeth heavily now, and realize what it means in the split-second before the Pink Cobra bends and whispers, Your choice; stale and rancid into the shell of your ear. 

Next, he addresses Loki. 

“You’ll be wanting to know what our plan is,” He says. Our, you think. We were right. “Hmm? I know how you people are. Always wanting to know. Tell me this, Mischief Man. What will I get, if I tell you? What price are you willing to pay?” 

You know what this is. You know it like the ache in your heart when Loki brushes you off. Like the safety you feel in his arms. You open your eyes. Take in Loki’s face - he’s trying to hide, but you know, you know how he feels. You know what he’s going to choose. 

And you know that you can’t let him choose it. 

“You’ll let her go,” Loki asks, “If we let you leave here?” 

“The thing could be managed.” 

No, you think. No, Loki, don’t! Whatever the Pink Cobra’s going to do, whatever the IPP’s planning, knowing’s worth more than your life. 

“One thing I want to know,” Loki says. He’s twirling a knife of his own, a slim silver number he keeps on him at all times, and you feel the blade on your own throat start to dig in - not enough to draw blood, but enough for you to feel it. The threat of it. The promise of it, and the coldness of the gleaming metal. “You and the IPP? How does it fit?” 

“You want information from me?” The Pink Cobra asks. Lets his blade bite you, just barely, and the strength it takes for you not to scream is more strength then you’d known you possess. 

“Yes,” Says Loki. “It’s not like I’m asking for much.”

He meets your gaze. You meet his. You hope that he cannot read it. His eyes are so worried, so desperate, you nearly break down. 

“I suppose,” The Pink Cobra says, “That you’ve earned it. Getting here - getting this far - it must have been no easy task. Fine. There is no Imminently Predictable Psyops organization. They were a - what do you call it? Red herring? A scent of blood for the shark.” 

“You fabricated them,” Loki says. “Why would you fabricate them?” 

He is losing his composure, you can tell. You will never be ready for this. He will never be ready for this. You hope that he will forgive you, and you know that he never will, and you swallow the pill in your mouth. 

“Because it was fun,” The Pink Cobra says. 

And then your body knows pain. 

                                                             ***

“He didn’t think I would do it,” You say. Your mouth feels thick, clotted with blood and shock, and your body is one raw, gaping wound, but the giddy feeling of victory has begun to course through your veins. Pure, unfiltered adrenaline. You had waited for the moment of death to come, and it hadn’t. The pill is fake, your mind had screamed. But there’d been one thing left, that might work. You had breathed as slowly as you possibly could, forced every muscle of your scared, writhing body into single-minded limpness, rolled your eyes backwards into your head,  drew one last breath in, and fallen. Twitched, for a few seconds, like a rag-doll. Then made yourself still. 

Loki had slit the Pink Cobra ear to ear, beaten him within an inch of his life as he bled out, screaming like a man deranged. He’d left him a wet, bloody mess on the floor, and the blood had run down the not-quite-steady plane of it, pooling around you and mixing with the blood from your jaw, from the evening’s earlier glass cuts, from the deep, burning stab wound the Cobra had got on your arm. 

You breathe, and your body knows pain. 

You look at Loki, and your body knows pain. 

He is shaking. Visibly shaking. His hands are clenched into fists at his side, and he looks as pale as bleached bones. His eyes are shot red - he had sobbed, when you fell, and a howl had torn through his body. You don’t know what to do, what it means, what the hell even to say to him. His cheeks are tear-stained, his breaths ragged. 

You blink, and your body feels pain. 

“We won,” You croak out. “Loki, we won.” It hurts worse than anything you’ve ever felt in your life. “I think he broke one of my ribs.” 

You don’t mean to say that last part, but you do, and you are the one crying now, because it feels like he probably has, and you can barely even stay awake through this pain. It feels like the Hulk is pulling you limb from limb. Like all of those nightmares you’ve had where Loki decided to leave you - to go back to Asgard, and never speak to you again. 

Stupid, you think. He won’t, again. Not after this. 

Loki still hasn’t spoken. He’s looking at you, and his eyes are wild. Desperately, jaggedly roaming your body. His fists twitch with every new part of your body they land on. 

“That bad, huh - Oh, fuck.” 

And just like that, the tension leaves Loki’s body. The dam that had held him firmly in place is broken, and he’s running towards you with none of his usual grace. Dropping down by your side. He hoists you, and you hiss, and the tears won’t stop coming, so you bury your face in his shirt, nose pressed at the crisply ironed collar. Don’t care that it’s bleeding, because Loki’s here now. Holding you. Keeping you real. He’s got one hand stroking your hair and his touch feels right, nothing like the Pink Cobra’s, and he’s whispering: You brave, precious, idiot, how dare you, how dare you throw your life away like that?! 

“It worked,” You exhale - it’s the most you can manage. You would laugh, if it wouldn’t shred you to pieces. Loki cradles you fiercely, hands grasping at the sweat-and-blood soaked fabric of your shirt, running over you as if he doesn’t believe you’re alive. “It - hurts,” You get out. Barely. “Loki, it - I can’t -“ 

“Don’t,” He tells you. His voice has gone brittle, choked with thorns. “Don’t talk. Don’t - Don’t ever do that again. Do you hear me? You will never do that again.” 

If I need to, I will, you think. And you wonder if that’s why you’re here. Wonder if that’s why you’re strong. You wonder, and hurt, and believe. Feel the strength of him, clutching you like you’re the only thing in the world, taking in greedy lungfuls of your weeping, your need for his touch. 

You can’t talk, anymore. It hurts too badly. But you surge, upwards, up into where he’s holding the back of your head, pressing your forehead into the dark, warm space under his jaw that smells like smoke and peppermint. Loki is taller than you are - you fit right into the curve of his neck, and his long curls curtain you in a bubble of warmth and content. 

“Promise,” You say, but it comes out unintelligible, and Loki’s hands are running, so gently, over your skin. 

“What was your plan?” You ask him, forcing it out of your body. 

“Hush,” Loki says, “Later.” 

There might not be any later, you think. Not like this. 

                                                             ***

In the hotel room, an ocean of scattered pages and ceiling mold and blessed privacy, you balance, cross-legged, on the bed. The wind blows wet and cold from an earlier rain through the busted out window. You have managed this out of sheer stubborn-ness, because it is the most that Loki allowed you to do. You’d passed out, twice, on the journey back - he had magicked you there, though it had taken a considerable amount of effort that you weren’t sure you really deserved - and had immediately propped you up on the pillows and stooped to ruffle through his suitcase, emerging not long after with binding tape, cat-gut thread, and a needle so sharp you could feel it slicing your flesh. You had opened your mouth to protest, but Loki had silenced you with a glare that could fell Director Fury. So you had gone quiet, and caved, letting him kneel over you on the distinctly lumpy mattress and begin inspecting your wounds. It had taken a few tries and a Please to convince him to let you sit on your own, and it hurt much more than the manner in which he’d arranged you. You were starting to, slightly, regret it. 

“You don’t have to do this,” You say, pulling it from bleeding lips. He shushes you with a harsh, stern tut. “You’re not my mother,” You tell him. 

“You could have died,” Loki says. There’s a snarling undercurrent to it that you can’t even start dissecting. “What were you thinking?” He asks. It is easier, though still painful, for you to answer him - he had used nearly half of his Thor-limited magic reserve to perform a basic stasis spell on your injuries, but the spell wouldn’t last forever. You’ll need stitches, he’d said, choking it out like he was the hurt one when he’d seen the number the Cobra’s blade had done to your arm. 

“I’ve had worse,” You say, grinning weakly. 

“Are you lying to me?” He asks you, with the tone of someone who’s distinctly not in the mood for joking. 

“I thought,” You say. Steel yourself. “I thought you weren’t going to do what needed to be done. So I - Did it myself.” 

“What needed to be done.” Loki says, enunciating every word. 

“We couldn’t let him walk away,” You say, meeting his eyes. Emerald, clouded with fury. You don’t let yourself flinch from that anger. You don’t let yourself run from your choice. “You know what he would have done.” 

“I don’t,” Loki says. “I know nothing. I know - I know that you think that your life means so little I wouldn’t care if you were gone. That I could - Live, without you.” 

That’s… different. 

“And I know,” Loki continues, “That I told you to trust me, and I meant it.” 

“I do,” You say. There is no hesitation. “I trust you - Loki. Of course I trust you. It’s not - it wasn’t -“ 

“Stop talking,” He snaps. Gentles, when you jerk your head away, blink back a fresh wave of tears. “You need rest,” He says. “And - This is. This is going to hurt.” 

You nod. 

“Best get it over with, then.” 

“You should keep your eyes closed,” He says. 

“No! I want - I need to look.” You bring your eyes up to your arm, which he’s settled onto bed’s chewed, scratchy quilt without you realizing, but Loki tilts your head up with a barely-there graze of his fingers, achingly gentle to avoid aggravating your swollen jaw. He holds your gaze for a long time. Doesn’t look mad, anymore. 

“Are you sure?” He asks you. Like all of this could be over with, if you wanted. 

“How bad it could it be?” You ask back. 

The injury is horrendous. You’d thought - honest-to-God, you’d thought the pain was terrible, but you weren’t ready for what your arm has become. The line of the wound runs in a craggy jigsaw from just under your shoulder to the tip of your elbow. Small wonder you can’t move it, can barely think through it at all. 

“Y/N?” Loki asks, “Are you -“ 

“Fine,” You say. Blink, and your body knows pain. Try not to let how scared you are show, when you look back up at Loki. The Pink Cobra’s dead. You shouldn’t be scared, anymore. “It’s really bad, isn’t it?” 

Loki sighs. Long and low and sad. 

“Will I have to - “ 

“Bite,” Loki says, and shoves something - the sleeve of his shirt, crusted in blood which you realize, sickeningly, is yours - into your mouth. “It’ll help.” 

It doesn’t, but he holds your hand through it, hushing you through the pain with furrowed eyebrows, thread and needle flying deftly through skin, air, skin again. His fingers move precisely, deliberate,  quick, and when, on one stitch, you audibly whimper, he pauses to lean down and press a soft, utterly unexpected kiss to your hairline. You are unable to fully express how much it means to you, so you do the next best thing and kiss him yourself, pressing him back once he’s finished the last of his stitches and breathing all the the words you can’t say into him. You press every fear and gratitude and lingering nerve into the warmth of his lips, wending your fingers through his dark hair despite the pangs of agony still thrumming through every inch of your body. Your face hurts, but the kiss is all you’ve ever needed and more, and Loki is so, so gentle with you, pulling away with creased eyebrows and a look of genuine concern. 

“I wanted to,” You tell him, mustering all of your strength. “It didn’t hurt.” 

“Stop,” He tells you, voice cracking, “Stop lying.” 

“I’m not,” You say. “I wanted to, Loki, I did.” 

“And you wanted to -“ 

“No.” You are vehement about it, for a broken-ribbed, broken-jawed, freshly-stitched person coming off the high of his teeth and his tongue. “Not that, I swear, never that.”

 “Why did you do it, then?” Loki asks. He has steepled his fingers under his chin, and his narrowed eyes pierce through you to the soul. You couldn’t lie to this man, you think, if your life depended on it. 

You know that you have to tell him, this time. Really tell him. You don’t. 

“”Why didn’t you use your magic?”

“You know why,” He says, and you do. You’d remembered it as the white pill turned to white powder in your gums, as the Pink Cobra’s knife had carved its way into your flesh. Thor had put a set limit on it, as condition of Loki’s release - Proof, he had said, We can trust you. Loki had thought to save it for later, that you wouldn’t need him right then. He had thought you’d talk them out, to safety. 

You’d failed him. 

“You didn’t,” He tells you, voice raw. He goes to grip your chin, to force you to listen to him, but with a glance and ill-concealed wince at your purpled jaw he thinks better of it. “You think that you failed me? You let yourself be - be beaten and stabbed - just so people you’ve never met in your life wouldn’t die, and you call that a failure?” He runs a hand through his hair. Bites back a snarl. Drops your arm. “I need you to listen to me,” Loki says, “Very, very carefully. You’re going to tell me why now, love. And then we’re going to fix it.” 

You raise an eyebrow. Worse than he does, you’re aware. 

“Sleep,” He amends, with a pointed look at the bed underneath you, “And then we’re going to fix it.” 

“There’s only one bed,” You tell him, “And I feel like I just got run over by a truck.” 

Loki huffs, a puff of warm air that you feel, from how close he still is. A grin twitches at the edge of his lips. It sets off sparks inside you. 

“I thought -“ You say. Shake your head, and restart. “You would have let the Pink Cobra attack. You would have let him just walk away, and I couldn’t just - let that happen.” 

“Enlightening.” 

“No,” You tell him, “I mean it. I couldn’t - I’m not - I’m not worth more than anyone else. We’re the Avengers. It’s our job to save people, Loki.” 

He’s regarding you carefully, eyes still narrowed, all vestiges of softness gone from his face. When he opens his mouth, it’s to close it. Form thoughts. Discard them. Exhale. 

“My mother once told me,” He finally says, “That I would never know what it meant to be human until I found the person who made me want to bleed the world dry. Take all of its’ suffering, all of its’ cruelty, and leech it out of the very fabric of time, just to keep that person from anguish, from harm.” 

“I don’t -“ 

He holds a hand up. You still. 

“She never said they would infuriate me,” Loki says. “She never said they would make me laugh, or smile, or question my sanity on a regular basis. She never said that they’d try and get themselves killed, and that I’d have to watch, and that I would feel like my heart was being ripped from my body and torn to a bloody pulp; that I would make the sky rain blood and fire at the sight of it alone. But she was right about one thing - Many things, but also this. She told me that it wouldn’t matter. That I would - love you - anyway.” 

“You don’t,” You say, not daring to hope. It’s an automatic retort. 

“Foolish girl,” Loki chides, and you blink back fresh, stinging tears. How long have you wanted to hear Loki say that to you? How many sneaky looks have you stolen in the heat of your missions, just to see his smart mind and tricky magic at work? How many nights have you sat up together, sequestered from your insomnia in a bubble of hard-earned banter and peppermint tea, fighting the tight, coiling urge to push aside your steaming mugs and pull him into your needing? 

He could not - he can’t - feel the same. 

“Loki,” You say, stumbling over the words, “You can’t - This is - This is me we’re talking about.” 

“Is there anyone else here,” Loki asks you, “That I could be talking about?” He seems nonchalant, now, as if this - this cruel fucking joke, when you already feel you’re on fire - is merely a fact of his life. “We’re going to leave this excuse of a town, and get you - proper care. Fix it. Because I will not, on my honor, watch you suffer in pain. But first, you’re going to sleep.” 

“There’s only one bed,” You tell him, and feel your resolve as it shatters. You cling to the statement like it’s the last remnant of the girl you were and the woman that you’ll never be, “And the shower doesn’t work. And I’m covered in blood.” 

But when you look at Loki, his eyes twinkle, mischievous. 

“Will you stay with me?,” You ask him, biting your lip. 

“You astound me,” He tells you, and rolls his eyes, and it feels - it feels normal. Good. A tender heat unfurls in your heart like orchid petals in the sun, numbing the persistent ache in your ribcage. “To even think that I would do anything else.” 

Later, you will ask him why. Why do you love me?, you will ask, and Loki will hum, low in his throat, curled around you just like this first night; your back pressed into his chest, your legs tangled up hopelessly, his fingers tracing nonsense patterns onto your spine in the dawn-light’s syrupy gold. Because, he will tell you, trailing a line of soft kisses up the scar on your arm - an ugly thing, but it functions, mostly, and only ever seems to hurt on the days when he isn’t there - I was given no choice. 

But if you’d had one?”, You will ask, and spin around, propping yourself on your elbow. 

You tempt me, He’ll tell you, baring his sharp teeth. Shouldn’t you know better than that? 

You will lie there, next to each other, not needing a single word. Because you will know. Because he will have told you, a thousand times, a thousand ways, exactly how he feels about you. 

Tonight, though, isn’t that night. It takes a moment to get settled in his hold, and the rain spits and drums against what glass remains in your window, slicking the carpet with dark, greasy splotches. It figures, you think, that even the rain in this city has the smell and the texture of oil. You feel like a bag of bones, stretched too thin. But safe, in his arms, in a way that you’ve never felt, before now. Loki is with you, you realize. Wrapped around you like a traveler’s cloak, the comforting weight of a slim, balanced blade at your side in a fight. He is cool, around your afraid. Warm, where his clever fingers whine and needle their way through your skin to your heart. 

“I hate you,” You tell him, “You know that?” 

Loki laughs, a deep, rumbling purr. 

“Go to sleep.”

[fanficshiddles]

Loki’s Scream House, One Shot

Casey goes to Loki’s Scream House, not expecting to actually scream. But Loki likes to play and torture. 

Warnings: Rape/non-con, forced orgasms, douching, enema, pain, trapping, restraints, double penetration.

- Casey was so annoyed that her friends had all bailed on her. On Halloween, no less.

They said they’d heard rumours about Loki’s Scream house being far too scary, so had cancelled on her. Instead deciding to go to a party instead.

‘Bunch of chickens.’ Casey muttered as she made her way up the hill to where the Scream house sat. She would go to this haunted house and then turn up at the party, telling them all about her scary experience.

She snorted to herself at the thought. How scary could a haunted house be? Apparently this one was aptly named and would make her scream. But she doubted that.

As she got closer, she could indeed hear screaming from inside. But she was almost certain it was fake, she didn’t see any cars around. She doubted there was even anyone else inside. But since she had already bought a ticket, she wasn’t letting ten quid go to waste. She at least wanted to get her money’s worth with a laugh at how bad it was.

Upon reaching the door, she went to knock but the door slowly swung open. Revealing a tall man in an all-black suit. Matching his long black hair. His face was quite pale, but he had striking features. The smirk that crossed his face was slightly terrifying. But Casey smiled.

‘Welcome, to my Scream house.’ His smirk grew even larger as he put his arms out to the side and motioned for her to come in.

She stepped inside, looking around her. It was more like an abandoned house than a haunted one.

‘So… what’s the deal?’ Casey asked, stopping a few feet from Loki.

‘You know the deal. You bought a ticket for a tour around my Scream house. If you don’t scream, you get a refund. Well, I say tour. It’s more a walk around, I shall not be guiding you. Feel free to check out all the rooms. But do not, and I repeat, do NOT go into the basement. It is off limits.’ He said firmly.

Casey raised an eyebrow. ‘Okayyy…’

‘Enjoy!’ Loki bowed and then suddenly disappeared in a green haze and the door behind her slammed shut, making her jump slightly.

‘Must be on some sort of timer. It’s all just magic tricks.’ She said to herself.

Deciding to get this over with, she went down the corridor and into the first room she came across. It was a normal living room. But as she stepped inside, a web came down over her and a huge mechanical spider came flying out of the wall towards her, before then disappearing back inside. It did make her squeal, so she would give him that one. But it wasn’t a scream.

Fighting the web off, she looked around the room and wandered over to the fire place. There was a large cauldron on the fire, something was bubbling inside. She peeked in and saw some bones in there and a skull floated to the top. She rolled her eyes and moved on to another room.

She found all the rooms to be rather boring. She jumped once or twice, but it was nothing spectacular. Fake mechanical robots as witches and werewolves, vampires and ghouls.

Casey made her way to the last room, but it was just as dull. When she exited it, she was faced with the door that led down to the basement. But it was locked when she tried the handle.

Curiosity took over her though, so she had a quick search for the key. It was in the most obvious of places for hiding a key, on top of the door frame.

‘Typical.’ She huffed as she put it in the lock and turned.

She knew Loki had warned her not to go down there, but it’s like when you see a wet paint sign. You can’t help but touch it to see if it’s actually wet.

It was dark as she made her way down the steps, but once she reached the bottom automatic lights came on. There was another door just a few feet on front of her. There was no lock on it, so she was able to just push it open. But once she stepped inside, before she even had a chance to take in the room, the large door swung shut behind her.

She turned around and tried to open it again, but it was locked. She frantically looked around for a key but there wasn’t even a door handle.

‘What the fuck?’ She panicked, eyes wide. But then she noticed a small screen to the left of the door. She tried pushing on it, and to her relief it came to life.

But her heart sank when she read what it said.

Complete all tasks to unlock the door.

Power wash – not completed

Clean out – not completed

Rope walk – not completed

Stuffed – not completed

‘What the actual fuck?’ She gasped, eyes wide.

That’s when she turned around to see what she was dealing with.

There was a brick wall opposite her, but there was nothing else there. It just seemed like an empty room. But she heard a beeping noise before Loki’s voice filled the room.

‘Naught girl, disobeying my orders.’ But he sounded delighted at the fact. ‘Unfortunately for you, you’ve stumbled into my unfinished play room. You see, I built this for an ex to have some fun in. She enjoyed some challenges. But there were a few… teething issues that I have yet to fix. There is no escaping the room, unless you follow through the entire programme. You need to start by removing all your clothes and going over to the brick wall.’

‘What the hell? Get me out of here! You perv, I’m not doing that!’ Casey stared banging on the door.

‘You can tire yourself out as much as you wish, pet. But until you do as you’re told and complete each task, you will be stuck there. As much as I would like to come and let you out, I can’t. There is no other way. And I did warn you not to enter.’

Casey checked every nook and cranny for a way out, but there was nothing. She tried pressing more buttons on the screen but nothing worked.

Loki watched in amusement from his room, the camera directly at her. It would follow her every movement and she had no idea it was there.

He smirked when he saw she finally gave in. Two hours later. Knowing and accepting there was just one way out.

Casey whined in defeat. She started to remove her clothes, feeling extremely vulnerable. Even more so when she heard his voice again.

‘That’s a good girl. The sooner you get through the tasks, the sooner you will be out of here.’

‘You creep! You’re watching?’ She gasped, trying to hide her breasts.

Loki chuckled. ‘I am. How else am I supposed to make sure you’re safe?’

Casey gritted her teeth but carried on with removing her knickers. She shivered slightly as the floor was stone cold.

‘Now, get over to the wall so we can begin.’ Loki purred.

Casey closed her eyes and tried not to cry. She had to remain calm and composed to get through this. Then as soon as she was out, she was calling the police on his freaky ass for sure. She wasn’t going to let this sick freak get away with it.

She walked hesitantly over to the wall. As soon as she was within two feet of it, holes in the wall suddenly opened up and four mechanical arms came flying out. Before she could react, they grabbed her wrists and ankles, holding her just above the floor in a spread-eagle position. She cried out and tried to struggle, but the arms were too strong.

‘Beautiful. As I said before, I wouldn’t bother trying to fight it, pet. You will only tire yourself out.’

Casey whimpered as she heard another bit on the wall opening up. But she relaxed a tiny bit when she saw it was a shower head. She was super confused.

‘Ah, power wash. The first task for you to endure.’ Loki hummed.

He watched in absolute delight from the comfort of his room. A glass of wine at hand and some grapes. His belt was unbuckled and his zipper open, because he knew it wouldn’t be long before he would need easy access.

Casey’s moment of relaxation was over very quickly. There was a whirring noise and suddenly the shower head started spraying water. But the force was very strong, more than the average shower head.

It hit her stomach first. The water was warm though, which she was glad of. It soaked her entire body first, then focused in on her breasts. But that wasn’t the worst part.

The shower head moved down between her legs and aimed directly up against her cunt. She cried out as the pressure hit her so forcefully, she thought she was going to pass out. It moved in a little closer, making her howl as it then hit her clit. Which she was ashamed to realise was throbbing in pleasure.

Her head flew backwards as she tightened her hands into fists and cried out as she came hard. It wasn’t a nice orgasm though, it was a forced one. So quick, she hadn’t been able to fully enjoy it. To her horror, the shower head remained in place, aiming directly at her sensitive little clit. Forcing her into another painful orgasm.

‘Ooo, so delightful to watch, pet. I think you enjoyed that much more than you are willing to admit.’ He growled.

After twenty minutes, but felt like a life-time to Casey, the shower head stopped and she was lowered to the ground. Her legs were like jelly and she fell to her knees as the mechanical arms were retracted into the wall.

She crawled away from the wall, near the door. Panting and exhausted already. She heard a pinging noise and looked up at the screen by the door.

Complete all tasks to unlock the door.

Power wash – completed

Clean out – not completed

Rope walk – not completed

Stuffed – not completed

‘Well done for completing the first task. I wonder how you will fair with the second.’

Casey took a while to get her breath back. Then Loki coaxed her to go back to the wall for the second one. She dreaded to think what it was going to be.

Her body was still a bit weak, but she managed to get to her feet and walked over to the wall again. The same parts in the wall opened up and the same mechanical arms came out and restrained her in a spread-eagle position once more.

‘This is my favourite task, I must say.’ Loki’s sinful voice said across the speaker, making Casey bite her tongue to refrain from saying anything smart. Considering the position she was in, she knew it was best to keep quiet.

This time, instead of a shower head coming out of the wall, two lubricated tubes came out. What was contained within them Casey had no idea. But she knew she was about to find out pretty soon.

She started whining when the tubes moved down between her legs. One positioned at her pussy, the other at her anus. And they seemed to just hover there for a moment, as if dragging out her expected torture.

Loki smirked and started stroking his cock languidly. He flicked his wrist and moaned as the tubes thrust into both of Casey’s holes.

Casey bit down on her tongue hard to keep herself from screaming as she was violated in both holes. The lube made them slip in easier and the tubes weren’t too wide, but it was still uncomfortable. Especially the one in her anus, she had never put anything up there before.

But it got a lot worse for the poor girl.

Water started shooting into her, from both tubes.

‘Oh no… NO! PLEASE NO! STOP!’ She started crying out, but all she heard was Loki chuckling in return.

The enema in her ass felt so uncomfortable as she was filled with the warm water. It made her feel so heavy and bloated. The douching felt the same, very uncomfortable. The water kept pumping into her from both tubes until she felt like she was going to explode.

Suddenly the tubes popped out of her and she gasped as the water rushed out of her. Giving her such a strange feeling, a rather erotic feeling. But she pushed that thought out of her mind, she wasn’t going to give Loki the satisfaction.

But the tubes were replaced, not just twice but three times. Making sure she was thoroughly cleaned out.

‘Excellent, that’s you sparkling clean. Inside and out.’ Loki chuckled.

He wiped his own cum up with a tissue, he never did last long when watching a clean out.

Casey was once again released from the mechanical arms. She managed to stumble back over towards the door. Looking at the screen when it pinged.

Complete all tasks to unlock the door.

Power wash – completed

Clean out – completed

Rope walk – not completed

Stuffed – not completed

‘Oh god. What the hell is rope walk?’ She asked, looking around the room.

‘You will find out soon enough.’ Loki purred.

Casey just wanted this to be over with now. So she went back over to the wall, wanting it to hurry up. Expecting the same arms to appear, she was surprised when this time it was different.

One large hole opened up and a huge mechanical arm with one clamp came out. It reached straight for her and snapped around her middle, locking her in tightly with her arms trapped down at her sides. She squeaked and tried to kick out as it lifted her up in the air.

The floor then changed and there was a long treadmill appeared beneath her. Then a long rope was pulled from one side of the room to the other, going above the treadmill. But there were many knots along the rope.

‘What the…’ Casey trailed off when she was lowered down onto the rope. She cried out and tried going up on her tiptoes to avoid it. But the rope was just the right height, snugly fitting between her pussy lips and directly on her clit. She was on her tiptoes already and it was painful, so she knew if she let her feet go flat that would be the end of her.

‘I suggest you start walking, pet.’ Loki demanded.

‘Wh… what the hell? No way!’ She cried out, knowing those knots would be painful on her. Hell, even just the rope alone would be.

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you. You have to reach the other end to complete this task. If you don’t get moving, the treadmill will start. Making it so much more difficult for yourself.’

Loki was hard and throbbing once more. This task was always a delight to watch too, so much fun seeing his victims in pain.

Casey knew he wouldn’t be lying. So to try and get it over with, she started walking forward. But the drag of the rope on her clit burned and was so painful. When she reached the first knot, she struggled. It was quite a large knot and when she tried to pass it, it hit her clit and made her cry out in pain.

‘I can’t do it!’ She cried out, tears spilling down her cheeks.

‘You will be stuck forever on there if you don’t. The tasks don’t stop, another fault I need to fix.’

She soon learned how difficult it could get. The treadmill beneath her started to move very slowly in the opposite direction to where she was wanting to go, so she had no option but to walk. Not only making her tire quicker, but the movement was hurting.

To keep up and get past the knot, she had to walk even quicker on her tiptoes to beat the treadmill. She closed her eyes and took a big deep breath, then just went for it and forced herself to walk forward as quickly and forcefully as possible, getting over the knot with a scream.

Loki was jerking another one off rapidly as he watched her force herself across the rope. Crying and screaming in pain, especially when she came to another knot. But she was getting on far too easily, so to make it difficult and more of a challenge, he spun his finger around.

To Casey’s horror, the treadmill started to speed up a bit more. She couldn’t keep up, and was dragged backwards on the rope. The treadmill forced her back over a few knots, her screams of pain echoed around the room each time.

‘NO, YOU BASTARD!’ She howled loudly.

Loki laughed wickedly as he had another orgasm, making a mess of himself again.

It took three hours, three hours of absolute agony and torture before Casey managed to get across the other side of the rope. She was completely exhausted, broken. Her poor clit was battered and bruised. She was sure there were no nerve endings left.

She had never felt more relieved as she was in that moment when she was lifted from the rope and the treadmill. She collapsed in the middle of the room, unable to move. Her body so tired, she passed out from sheer exhaustion.

-

When she came to four hours later, she sobbed as she realised she was still in that room. It hadn’t been a nightmare.

But there was a tiny glimmer of hope when she looked at the screen.

Complete all tasks to unlock the door.

Power wash – completed

Clean out – completed

Rope walk – completed

Stuffed – not completed

One more to go. She dreaded to think what it was, but surely it wouldn’t be worse than what she had just endured. It couldn’t be.

‘Glad to see you are awake, pet. One more task to go.’

‘Ok… Let’s get it over with.’ She made her way over to the wall.

Again, mechanical arms came out. This time the floor opened up to reveal a large metal table that came up and she was laid upon. The mechanical arms were replaced by leather straps. But her feet were raised up and spread wide apart, her bum just over the edge of the table.

She closed her eyes and waited, while nothing happened. Part of her thought maybe the next machine was broken, whatever it would be. How Loki had made all of these tasks, she had no idea. He must be some evil genius or something.

Fear ran through her veins when she heard heavy footsteps walking towards her. She looked down, but her head was quickly forced back down when a large strap came up from the table and wrapped around her neck, holding her down.

She was trembling badly when Loki approached her between her legs. She was startled when she felt his cool hands stroke her thighs. She could just see Loki in her view, looming over her.

‘Well, well, well. Ready for the final task, are we?’ He grinned.

‘I… I thought you couldn’t get in?’ She whimpered.

Loki chuckled and leaned down, biting into her inner thigh that made her cry out. ���I am the god of lies, pet. And I can get in wherever I want to. Including your lovely body that has been prepared so nicely for me and my friend.’

That made her eyes widen. His friend? What?

She wasn’t left wondering for long. Another being walked over to her, but she was shocked and confused to see it was another Loki.

‘What… What the heck is going on?’

‘Shhh. Just enjoy the last ride. I know I certainly will.’ He said wickedly as he then prised her bum cheeks wide apart, revealing her puckered asshole to him. Without any warning or preparation, he rammed his cock into her, making her scream.

‘Ohh and look at that. You’ve screamed. Not for the first time either.’ He laughed as he started thrusting into her.

The second Loki walked up to her head, he stroked her cheek softly at first. Then he waved his hand over the table and had part of it disappear so her head was over the edge. He moved in and pinched her nose, forcing her mouth to open. He then forced his cock into her mouth and down her throat as far as he could, releasing her nose so she could breathe through that instead. She had no option but to do so.

The original Loki that was plundering her ass, had a large dildo form in his hand. It was a clone of his own cock. He winked at her, his hips still moving at a ruthless pace, and he pressed the dildo into her. Moving it in time with his own thrusting in her ass.

Casey was sobbing around the cock in her mouth, drooling everywhere. She couldn’t take it, feeling so full from being filled in every hole.

But what made her feel worse, was she was starting to enjoy it. Her body was starting to respond well to the violation, no matter how much she cried.

From the width of the dildo in her pussy, it was rubbing against her clit with each and every thrust. At least the nerves weren’t completely damaged, she thought. That was a plus. She just had to keep calm and ride this out, then she would be free.

Loki grunted and groaned above her, both of them did. And Casey moaned around his cock as she came, squeezing the dildo in her pussy. Loki could feel that too. He thrust into her once more, both of them did. Then he came, in every hole. Even the dildo came too, how that happened she had no idea.

But she started to feel really full again, like she had with the clean out task. But at least this time she felt fluttery and high, having came too. And at the relief of knowing it was finally over…

‘Ohhhhh now, pet. That was so much fun, I must say.’ Loki chuckled. The dildo and second Loki vanished right on front of her eyes.

Casey still had no idea how he did that. But she knew it must’ve been trickery of some sorts.

The ping from the screen made her turn her head to take a look.

Complete all tasks to unlock the door.

Power wash – completed

Clean out – completed

Rope walk – completed

Stuffed – completed

She almost cried in relief when the door swung open.

Loki stepped back and watched as she slid off the table when the restraints let her go. She was like a baby deer taking her first steps as she rushed towards the door, grabbing her clothes on the way. Loki’s cum was leaking down her thighs and she still had plenty dribbling down her chin.

Without looking back, she stumbled up the steps and down the corridor towards the front door. It was open and she was about there when it slammed shut and Loki smoothly slid into her view on front of her. Fully clothed in his suit, not looking ruffled up at all.

‘Well, did you enjoy my Scream house?’ He smirked, folding his arms over his chest.

‘No! It was disgusting!’ She snarled at him, using her clothes to shield herself as best she could. She hadn’t even put them on yet, she just wanted out of there.

Loki chuckled, his eyes were twinkling mischievously. ‘You screamed. So no refund.’

‘Stuff your refund!’ She snapped and pushed past him, hauling the door open.

‘Oh I know. But it means I win and get my reward for you screaming.’

She paused with a foot out the door. She looked over her shoulder, shaking slightly. ‘What?’

Loki raised his eyebrows as he put his hands behind his back, looking innocent. ‘Oh dear. Did you not read the small print before accepting the terms and conditions when you booked your ticket?’

The look on her face told him that answer.

‘I suggest you take a look, pet. Before you do anything stupid.’

Casey ran out of the house and down the hill to safety. Once she was sure she was far enough away from that mad man, she stopped and put on her clothes. She pulled her phone out and was about to dial for the police, when she decided for some reason to quickly check her email confirmation.

She almost puked when she read what she had actually agreed to.

If you don’t scream in my Scream house, you get a full refund. However, if you scream, you waive all rights to contacting the police for anything that goes on within my house. You also agree to return to me every Halloween. Or I reserve the rights to come after you for a breach of terms and conditions.

Happy spooking!

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Desperate Gal Pals of White Crest || Morgan & Cece

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @thebickedwitchoftherest & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Morgan and Cece hit a roadblock with their research on an exorcism, so they take a field trip.

CONTAINS: drug manipulation tw (magic poisoning), gun (not fired), 

“I know I literally can’t get tired, but if I see one more book handwave harm exorcisms away with ‘wooo dark magic’ and ‘oooh dangerous! Sacrifice!’ I am going keel over with exhaustion. You’ll have to call Regan for my autopsy and explain to my girlfriend that boredom and no helpful answers is the new hip cause of death.” Morgan flopped down the side of the couch, her head dangling over the edge. “Tell me you’ve got something to banish Puritain Carrie,” she groaned. “I need a win. Literally...any kind of win. A can of seltzer of a win.”

Cece was lying on her back on the ground, book in hand and avoiding reading it by listening to Morgan’s melodramatic self-eulogy. She at least knew how to spice up a story and make it more interesting. She made dying of boredom sound marginally interesting. The irony was not lost on Cece. “That’s a lot of pressure to put on me for the record. How am I supposed to talk at your funeral and make your death sound badass that way?” Cece eventually gave in, shutting the book and tossing it away from her in her own dramatic show of exacerbation. “Nothing. These books have lots about magic and yet a surprisingly lacking amount of ghosts. My coven really should have expanded their horizons a bit.” Cece stated, mostly to herself. She rolled over onto her stomach, finding Morgan’s eyes again and pushing herself up, “We need some new source material. There’s got to be somewhere around town with some decent exorcism knowledge, right?”

“You’ll have to make something up much cooler,” Morgan sighed. “Just don’t promise any of my fae friends to tell the truth about me and you’ll be good.” She looked over at the pile of books around them, new purchases on the diamond card Deirdre had gotten for her, and pulls from the Scribrary. She felt guilty about those the most, sneaking in and using Rio’s resources for something he was bound to hate. “We have to be looking in the wrong place. The wrong key-words, or the wrong sections in the library. You would think ‘most brutal harm exorcism’ would be a short dig, but…” She puffed air through her lips. “Apparently the powers that be think discretion is super ‘in.’ Tell me what you found. Let’s go over it again.”

“No worries there. I don’t like making promises to humans.” Cece laughed, thinking of any ideas she could to spice up Morgan’s imagined death and make it a bit more grandeur. She wondered how she could fit fireworks into the story. Maybe one of the daredevil car jumps through a flaming circle. No, this was all way too distracting when she was supposed to be focusing. She shook the thought away and reached for the notepad that she had used to take any notes that she found vaguely helpful. Emphasis on vague. “Nothing too useful. I found some old history on this former Scribe that studied exorcisms. John something. Sounded like a real bore. I got an autobiography by this Amanda Wallace chick who wrote about her haunted house and how she got rid of it. Not exactly sure how factual that one actually is. Basically, I have nothing but crap. You sure we can’t just call the ghostbusters in for this one?”

Morgan’s brow furrowed at the name Wallace. “Is that name from a comic book movie? It sounds familiar…” She turned herself right side up and crawled to Cece to read over her shoulder. She moved so fast, her focus was groggy, but the illustration on the page she was looking at definitely seemed familiar. “No, wait, that’s...fuck, that was in something I read. Not here but…” Morgan fumbled for her laptop and started digging through her browsing history. She looked sheepishly over at Cece, glad that she couldn’t blush. “...Don’t judge me, okay?” She mumbled. Buried under searches for pirated theory articles, halloween themed lingerie, and Buzzfeed quizzes for Which Character from Grey’s Anatomy Are You, was several rows of local blogs, niche social media groups, old news reports, and PDF access links. Morgan scrolled past them all to get to an access link to an article from the library. There was the same picture, Amanda Wallace and a few others. The caption read, Cromwell was mentored in his early years by the local Ghost Watchers Society. Pictured, left to right… The article was about a man named Ernie Cromwell. He was arrested, several times, for vandalism, arson, and public disturbance. He claimed he needed to in order to make the ghosts go away. He also escalated to a much more deadly life of crime after this, around  the period Roy ought to have been town. That’s why she’d been looking in the first place. “Hey, Cece?” She asked. “You wouldn’t happen to know if any of these people are alive, do you?”

“I hope you know that prefacing with that only makes me want to judge you that much more.” Cece perked up immediately, if she wasn’t interested in studying Morgan’s open tabs before, she was definitely interested now. Fortunately, it was so much better than what Cece had predicted. “Oh my god. This might be more embarrassing than if you just had like straight up porn in your search history. Which for the record, I’m in full support of.” Cece added in, finger gunning and winking in Morgan’s direction. “Please tell me you’re an Izzie too.” Cece tried focusing again once Morgan asked her a question about recognizing anyone. She scanned the page but shrugged after a long moment, “I wish I could be more useful. But most of my magic knowledge was before I got to town. I’ve been about as low key as I can manage since I’ve been to town.”

Morgan rolled her eyes. “I appreciate the sex positivity, and so does my girlfriend. And, you know, hopefully she appreciates the spider web themed set I ended up buying. And I’ve taken way too many and no matter what I do, I’m solid 50% Izzie or Meredith. My dark and twisty ways defy simple categories.” She wiggled her brow, mouth curling into a grin, and turned back to the picture. “I swear I’ve seen these faces somewhere. And the names. You don’t remember any from the paper or…” Morgan took out her phone, scrolling furiously. “Oh. Mother of Earth! Oh, this is so weird!” She showed Cece an event page on the UMWC social media page. Two people stood next to a handmade poster advertising GhostWatch Parties. Ostensibly, it was a horror film club. But the names of the two faculty shown were Amanda Wallace and Leigh Cromwell. There was no accounting for coincidence, but it seemed pretty likely that there was a connection to Ernie. “They’re meeting tonight. We have to go, right? Scope things out, set up a time to talk better and see what they can offer, or ask if they have any exorcist finding tips! We’re going, right?”

“Anything for you, as usual.” Cece might not be Deirdre’s biggest fan, but she still wished for a killer sex life for the two. “You know? I can see it, honestly. I support it. Among the characters you could get, I think those are two of the better ones.” Morgan seemed sure that the faces would be familiar, so Cece did her best to study them again, but just ended up shrugging. “You think I read the paper?” She asked the woman curiously. Not a moment later and Morgan was poking the screen and then changing pages to find a social media page. From the college. Cece gasped overdramatically, “Right under your nose this whole time? Also, do you think this horror movie club accepts members that don’t go to the college? Actually never mind that’s not important right now.” Cece jumped up and found her bag, moving towards the coat closet to slip her jacket on. “Well obviously we have to go. What other choice do we have? Plus I need to find out if this club is even worth my time. Which is obviously like a side objective. Priority is the ghost thing for sure. Let’s go!”

The GhostWatchers of White Crest met at Professor Wallace’s ivy covered town house near campus. The gathering was small; only three cars littered the street beyond the driveway. Morgan parked them at the end of the street, positioned to make a quick and easy getaway. The bue-white light of a television illuminated one of the back rooms, bright enough to illuminate parts of the yard as Morgan approached. She knocked on the door gently, but found it already open. Inside was exactly what you would expect from a liberal arts professor. Stacks of papers, catalogues for bamboo kitchenware, and books bursting with post-it’s in every room. Morgan wrinkled her nose at the normalcy of it all. At least she kept a few decorative skull paperweights in the great room and kept the foyer clean.

“How do you think we should play this?” She asked in a whisper, lingering in the front hall, one eye on the back den where the movie, The Innocents, was still going on. “Is it rude if we snoop around first? Should we split up?” Somewhere, she thought, there had to be a private library.

“Wow this place is boring.” Cece yawned as the two slid in through the open door and studied the office that they found themselves in. “You’d think that someone obsessed with exorcisms might have a bit more personality.” She pushed aside a self help book lying on the desk and took a glance at her desk calendar, “She has scheduled times for lunch.” As if that was the most boring thing on the planet.

Either this woman was the worst occultist she had ever seen, or all of her more interesting things were hidden away somewhere. “It’s totally rude, but technically speaking she’s the one that left the door open. She should be more careful about her belongings. So let’s snoop.” Cece wasted no time moving to dig through her other belongings. Given how nonchalant the rest of the room was, Cece wasn’t convinced they were going to find anything too bizarre or helpful just sitting out in the open.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you? They hired me because the fun department was empty,” Morgan teased. She watched her feet carefully as she tiptoed onto the plush carpet with her muddy leather oxfords. She hadn’t planned on playing hide and seek in some dusty mini-mansion when she’d left the house, so she was left cringing at every squeak the leather made on the floor and hoping against hope that everyone in the den was too engrossed in the movie to notice.

As luck would have it, the library was one room off from the den. Morgan pointed at it, giving Cece a look of, I don’t know if I got this. One foot, then the other. Could Cece get in there first.

In the den, someone yawned and got up, murmuring about refills. Morgan dropped to the floor, panic in her eyes. Was this the worst idea ever?

The library had to have something useful. If it was just filled with normal literature and more self help books, Cece was going to lose her mind. At least Morgan seemed pretty into the whole espionage thing, tiptoeing around the place and slipping through the door into the library as silently as a mouse. That swiftness and suave attitude seemed to dissipate when movement could be heard from farther in, someone getting up to get a refill. Morgan dropped immediately and Cece remained in the doorway, unsure what the best thing to do in this scenario was. Would the person asking even come this way? Cece crept back a few steps, peaking around to get just a moment’s glance of someone walking towards them. They would definitely see Morgan if something wasn’t done. Would these people be more interested in calling the cops or offing anyone in their way? Cece couldn’t be sure enough, so she figured her only option was to be a distraction of some sort. Back in the office, Cece found a paper weight on the desk and pushed it aside, sliding it off the desk with a loud crack against the floor. That ought to do some distracting.

Morgan heard the paperweight fall before she realized what Cece was doing. Her head whipped around, question marks sprouting all over her face. But whoever was heading her way turned the other direction to see the commotion, and Morgan was able to take her chance. Hopefully Cece wouldn’t be so far behind.

The library was the same as the rest of the house, expected to the point of comical. There were shelves of matching leatherbound British novels, another set of American ones, a whole row of paperbacks and theory that were almost certainly just for posturing, and… who lived like this? Who actually worked here? This was a magazine-style library. Which meant-- “Fuck.” Morgan covered her mouth and flinched. Too loud. Right.

She started peeking behind books, looking for hidden volumes, then the large desk centered at the back of the room. No one really had secret compartment doors, at least not here, the house was too small but-- Morgan kicked back the rug that covered the floor. Cut into the pale hardwood was a heavy door, older and darker, with a black handle that looked to be iron. She peeked her head out, searching for Cece to get her over here, quickly, before anyone realized how reckless they were being in a stranger’s house.

The door was well-oiled and rose silently at Morgan’s tug, and inside-- “Yes!” Beams of light from the other room flashed on. The shadows in the library vanished. It was time to hurry.

Cece ducked behind the desk to avoid whoever was coming towards her. She had successfully distracted the man from discovering Morgan but hadn’t quite thought through the fact that the man would now be coming towards the source of the noise that Cece had caused. Cece began rifling through her purse quickly, pulling a bin of powder free and cupping some into the palm of her hand. Once the footsteps finally became close enough, Cece popped up from behind the counter. “Hi there.”

The man jumped before settling on a confused expression, “Who are you?” He asked, more curious than angry. Probably unsure if Cece was supposed to be there in the first place. “Uh-” Cece began, trying for a long moment to think of an excuse for too long before finally giving up, “I can’t think of a good excuse” She shrugged before pulling her hand up and opening her palm, blowing and sending the powder directly into his face. He stumbled backwards and Cece jumped forward, grabbing onto his shirt and helping direct his fall into the chair by the desk. She patted him softly. Better to get some rest right there.

She slipped across the floor until she found Morgan and then crawled over to her, “For the record I didn’t sign up for this” Cece whispered at her, eyeing the new door that she had discovered. Before hearing more voices. “Welp, after you!”

Morgan’s muscles were already clenched with confusion and unspoken questions. “Sign up for what?” She hissed. “You said we should snoop! Nothing bad has happened, right? And look at all the spooky books down there!” She shined the flashlight on her phone down the ladder, showing tables full of messy, half open books, arcane circles etched on leather, and iron chimes dangling from the ceiling. “Oh, yes, this is the jackpot.”

“Is it now?” A voice called behind them.

Morgan barely suppressed a squeal as Amanda Wallace filled in the doorway. Her straw-white hair seemed to puff up out of sheer rage. “I don’t remember receiving your RSVP, Professor Beck,” she said stiffly. “May I ask what you are doing in my library, opening my trap door?” A smaller, slightly younger head popped up over Amanda’s shoulder and murmured that she’d see the students out. Leigh Cromwell, probably. Guess they weren’t too late for the party after all.

“Hey, Amanda--!” Morgan drew out the words longer, as if a few more syllables in Amanda would help smooth things over, or give her a better idea about what to do next.

“Don’t ‘hey’ me,” Amanda snapped, bristling with a bitter frown. Downstairs, now.” She pointed into the dimly lit trapdoor room, and her look did not suggest that she was entertaining counterarguments at the moment.

“Ummm” Cece considered what may or may not be considered to be bad in Morgan’s mind. And depending on that, whether or not she wanted to share that with Morgan. Putting a man to sleep was hardly that bad, right? She didn’t hurt the man. He would wake up and at worst his memory would be a bit foggy and maybe have some nausea. Nothing that would last more than a week. “Define bad.”

Morgan was right, this was a jackpot. The space was different from the rest of the house. It didn’t look like the end result of an HGTV makeover, for starters. It wasn’t basic or expected. This room was hidden away and it was used. This woman that the two were spying on definitely used this room.

Speaking of the woman they were spying on. Apparently they had been discovered. Cece awkwardly watched  the exchange. Apparently the two were super close work colleagues. “If there was no RSVP, does that mean she wasn’t supposed to bring a plus one?” Cece grinned slightly, completely ignored by the woman and instead following behind Morgan as the two were led away from the space they had just found.

Morgan backed down into the room, feeling, all of a sudden, that she should have told more people where she was going. Of course, she’d told Deirdre they had a lead, but if she were to drop a pin right now, would Deirdre know what to do with it? Remmy might, but the part where she had to explain what she was doing here might not lead to the best of conversations. But, fortunately, there weren’t any high tech keypads standing in their way of getting out. Just one seriously perturbed old woman.

Morgan made her way over to where the stacks of books were the largest and the shelves were packed to bursting. She looked for sigils, icons, anything recognizable. No one ever labeled ‘find harm here,’ but there were unavoidable markers if you knew how to look for them.

“I should report you to the police, for trespassing,” Amanda snapped. “And I could do much worse. But I would like to know first, Professor Beck, what you are doing in my trapdoor of all things. Do you have no respect for others?”

“On the contrary--” Morgan said carefully, flashing Cece big ‘what do we do?’ eyes, “I have the utmost respect for you and your interests.” She backed away until she could back no further. “The interests you keep a secret, especially. I think I might have something that’s of interest to your attention. A ghost something that is, let’s say, too good for mercy.” She reached out for one of the tomes, a leatherbound journal, by the look of it. Not as old as it was pretending to be, and bursting with pasted-in clips and notes.

“Not so fast.” She took out a little pearl handled pistol, gold and shiny, like something out of Agatha Christie. She cocked the safety with a slow, deliberate click. “That’s sensitive material, Professor. Access has to be earned. Tell me the truth, do what I say, and maybe we’ll see about it.”

The two hadn’t found themselves in an ideal situation, Cece was willing to admit that much. The woman that had discovered them hardly seemed especially dangerous. She was a college professor, taller than Cece was but that was hardly an impressive feat. The only thing she looked capable of seriously harming was a student’s grade point average. Still, the woman had enough to hide that she kept it hidden beneath the library, and she really didn’t like the intrusion by her colleague.

Morgan attempted to sweet talk her way out of it. Honestly, Morgan came across as such a pleasant person that Cece probably would have laughed it off if she had found the woman trespassing in her own home. Then again, maybe that didn’t count when Morgan had already previously lived with her. When Morgan reached for a book, hopefully one that Morgan deemed important, Amanda acted with an elevated decree of hostility. Looked like a bingo to Cece. The woman pulled out a small handgun, pointing it at Morgan but still eyeing Cece every now and again. She didn’t show much interest in Cece at all, which may have been more a mistake than anything else. “Your terms and conditions don’t sound all that appealing.” Cece called to her, straightening her back to give herself the appearance of being taller. She wasn’t sure that it worked. “Don’t get me wrong. You have the upper hand here. We’re totally up to no good. But don’t you have a door number three option?”

The woman finally looked Cece over. It had probably been the first time that she had offered her anymore than a passing glance, “I don’t even know who you are. This doesn’t concern you in the slightest.” She turned away from Cece again, but irritation seemed evident. Cece slowly dug into her purse again. She knew she had something else useful in there it was just a matter of rifling around until she found out. Once she did, she popped the lid off and dipped her fingers into it. “I just wanted to give you the option of rethinking your offer. Morgan and I have places to be. Let us go now and we can all enjoy the rest of our nights in peace.”

This time the woman finally turned the gun away from Morgan and towards Cece, at the same time that Cece rose up her hand and grabbed onto the woman’s wrist. “Have you ever heard of curare?” Cece asked the woman, a hint of curiosity in her voice. Though nothing apparent was happening, the woman hadn’t yet pulled the trigger and instead looked silently at Cece. “Some hunting tribes use it to paralyze prey. Normally, it doesn’t have a lot of effect on humans if ingested orally or through the skin.” By the woman’s expression, it was clear the effects had started to take effect now, “But with a bit of alchemy, it can be altered. All of a sudden, it just takes a tiny bit rubbed against the skin to get into the blood system. As Amanda began to fall back, Cece grabbed onto the gun, letting it slip from the woman’s hands as she crashed against the ground. “You should be able to talk still, it might just be a little mumbled. So try to speak up.”

Cece set the gun against the shelf and crossed her arms, “You got any questions for her?” she asked Morgan. Cece wasn’t sure this counted as life or death exactly, but the gun hadn’t been entirely promising. At this rate, Cece knew that she’d have to do something at the end to make sure that Amanda didn’t hold an unfriendly grudge against the two of them. Cece had gone this long, but now in the span of just a few weeks she would be whipping out the memory spell twice. Yikes. “Spare no details, something tells me that Amanda’s memory of the night might end up a bit fuzzy anyways.”

Morgan was scurrying for Cece and wishing zombies had super speed when it happened. She couldn’t let Cece get hurt and didn’t Cece know she was basically bullet-proof? Not one more friend, not one more life she cared about was going down because of-- and then Amanda’s face was going slack and she was sinking to the floor, and Cece was giving a pretty impressive speech of her own. “Holy shit,” Morgan whispered, suddenly feeling a little woozy with shock. Then, as it settled, “You...are so amazing, Cece!” She ran over and gave her a hug, ecstatic with relief. “Okay, so, one of your proteges was arrested for what sounded like some serious supernatural damage, and he said he had to get the ghosts. So I’m thinking you know a lot about exorcisms, maybe harm exorcisms, specifically?”

Amanda made some unintelligible noises that sounded aggravated enough to mean ‘yes’ to Morgan.

“Great! So, where would I find those? Is it here? Or--here? Or--” At the sound more throaty, aggravated groaning, Morgan knew she was right on the money. She hauled out everything from the self she could carry and started looking. “Woah, Nelly, some of these pages are torn from other volumes.” Morgan peered over the desk at Amanda on the floor. “Have you been defacing historical archives? That’s not very polite, you know. I wonder what would happen if I reported some of these original books as damaged and gave your name? That might be a bummer for research funding and future archive access, right?” Satisfied with her fun, she started flipping through, grateful that even though Amanda was a thief, she was at least an organized one. There was a handy table of contents and index between each hodge podge volume, and by some topics there was a reference number that seemed to correspond to a file, probably in the cabinet at the other end of the room.

Amanda made another slurry attempt at speech.

Morgan’s face crinkled. “French Revolution? Did you hear French Revolution?” She gave Cece a look to make sure she hadn’t misunderstood and started checking dates throughout her haul. Sure enough, there was a hefty volume with some emphasis on the 18th century and quite a few notes in French and English as she started flipping through. “Cece, come look at this,” she said. “I think this… I think I found something! What do these ingredients look like to you?”

If Cece had any worries that Morgan might think she had taken things too far, those fears were immediately quelled when Morgan launched into a hug. Cece hugged back, keeping her finger away from any of Morgan’s skin, “I don’t think this would work on zombies, but better not take the chance.” Considering the rest of the abilities that Morgan had now that she was undead, Cece wasn’t convinced it would have paralyzed her the way it had Amanda. If it did, the fast healing probably would have fixed her pretty quickly. But better to avoid the situation regardless. “But that was nothing. Didn’t want her messing up one of our pretty faces.”

Morgan was far better at searching and researching than Cece was. The extent of Cece’s reading had gone into her plans to get away from the coven. Since then, the books she had stolen and brought with her mostly stayed hidden in the floorboards of her closet. Something for a rainy day, if it ever came. For the most part, Cece scanned the shelves as Morgan actually talked to the woman and searched for something that was useful to her.

Cece hadn’t heard French Revolution at first, but hearing Morgan question it made Cece laugh and clap for Morgan’s better hearing skills, “You know I thought I heard bitch contusion but that makes way more sense.” Morgan flipped through a volume and called Cece over to look at something, but the symbols on the page weren’t like anything Cece had worked with before. “Yikes.” Cece started, trying to look for smaller details and anything that did look familiar, “I can pick out a few things. I see some containment symbols. Probably used to keep something trapped. But nothing that I’ve worked with before.”

“Me either,” Morgan admitted, “But that--” she pointed to the word, “Is definitely French for spirit, and some of these ingredients look like they’re obeying sympathetic principles for inflicting pain. I’m gonna need a dictionary or three to figure some of this out, and you know, an expert, but you saw the containment sigil too, right!” She snapped the book shut and held it close to her chest, her eyes shining with relief. “I think this is it, Cece. I think this is--” Morgan was lost for words and only smiled, glowing with gratitude for her friend. “This is the key to everything I’ve been looking for.”

“Well I know a guy if you need a French interpreter.” Cece stated nonchalantly, “Can’t promise he won’t be grumpy about it though.” Cece couldn’t keep an easy grasp on who in town knew who, but it seemed like a safe bet that Morgan and Kaden were acquainted. “Fuck yeah! Former roomies strike again!” Cece called out triumphantly, raising her hand for a high five. Once the two were done celebrating, Cece remembered that they had company. Cece spun around to their host for the night and clapped her hands together, “Amanda. You’ve just been so welcoming tonight, truly. We had a great time. We’re going to wrap up and then I promise it’ll be like we were never even here.” Cece scooted towards her and knelt down towards the woman. “Are we done here Morgan?”

Morgan joined Cece beside her colleague, still light on her feet with victory and beaming with pride in her friend. “We do make pretty good partners in crime if I say so myself,” she said. “And, you know, aside from, hmm---” She reached back over to the desk and took a couple more books. “These. Just for good measure. And fun. Trespassing is rude, Professor Wallace, but pulling guns on your colleagues is far worse.” She nodded at Cece to work her magic. They’d gotten what they came for and then some.

“This probably won’t hurt,” Cece began, pressing her fingers against Amanda’s temple, “Or if it does you won’t remember it. Which is basically the same thing.” Amanda’s eyes were frantic at first, darting back and forth almost definitely trying to will her body to move. But soon they settled, floating shut as Cece dove into her memories to pluck them free. She figured the last half hour or so would do the trick. The woman would be left with a lot of blurry portions on the night, undoubtedly waking up in this room to wonder how she had gotten here. But those were hardly Cece’s concerns. She made sure to go back far enough to when Amanda started suspecting someone was here. Once Cece was done, she left Amanda on the floor and stood up, “She should be waking up soon. She should be able to move shortly after. If you have what we need, we should get out of here.” Cece suggested, heading towards the exit of the room before snapping and swinging back towards her, “Actually, now is probably the best time to mention that there may be another person that conveniently fell asleep in the office. We may want to stop by on our way out and wipe him too. Just to be safe.”

Morgan stopped halfway on the stairs they came down in just to gape at Cece in awe. “Remind me to never underestimate you for the rest of your days. And maybe bring you up on my list of people to call next time I need help with the forces of darkness. You’re a dangerous lady, Cece Bishop…” She gave Cece a chivalrous hand out of the cellar, grinning in the evening light. “But, then again, so am I sometimes.”

[borkthemork]

Nightly Escapade (A Messy Drive Date Connverse Fic)

Fandom: Steven Universe

Rating: General

Words: 5,158

Pairings: Steven/Connie (Connverse)

Summary: Movies are perfect. What's not to like about them? They're stories told on the big screen, they could leave you shaking from the flood works or clammy from the explosions and ticking timers, and, most importantly, it's the best plan if two lovers ever wanted to go on a date. For Connie and Steven: planning a movie date was easy, there's nothing better than preparing a good ole' car of refreshments for a long drive, but executing it (without it going wrong) was another thing entirely.

Reblogs are appreciated!

He should've gotten them sooner.

One could retort that he only heard of the movie details today, but he felt guilty regardless when he eyed the lack of vacancy when he tried to apply his—newly gained—credit card to it. It was a one-in-a-million (or was it a billion? He'd have to ask Connie later) experience, and since his jam bud now had access to PG-13 movies just like he did, they thought it would be a great time to start something. An adventure. Or was it a date? A cool date adventure!

…

Dateventure!

Hahaha, he was a genius!

When she arrived at his house—naïve to the idea being dashed to shreds—he told her of the lack of tickets, feeling the crummy jumble of his heart with each shift in expression Connie had. She was looking forward to this film; she would rant and rave about Ghibli films like they were cinematic masterpieces, leaving him confused but intrigued. He never touched a Ghibli film before, so it was a beginning bout of interest that made him ask what was so special about them in the first place.

"You don't understand," she lamented when asking days prior, "Princess Mononoke was way ahead with its themes and dynamics regarding nature and humans. I would trade my own hands—not really since I need them—to see it on the big screen! To see it on any type of high-definition!"

Who knew Delmarva starved for this kind of content? Well, he should've recognized this when Ronaldo brigaded him with film advice but he never really took those consolations in a serious light. Even if he did, he still would've been short of time.

Now they’re here: Connie pacing in his room under the beating weather; fingers on her chin, her shoes clicking on the floorboards with hardened focus. "Well, we could see another movie since it's not that big of a deal."

Steven was fumbling with the wrinkles of his bedsheets, the screen of his laptop closed in a subtle defeat. The guilt fettering his torso. "I'm sorry, Connie. I know that you really wanted to see it."

"Hey, it's all right." She smiled at him. "Even if we can't see the movie, why not just go on the date, anyway?"

She stumbled with the word when it came down to it, shooting him an awkward glance. His stomach was bound in a knot; this was the first time they ever mentioned it out loud.

"Yeah!" He piped up, cheeks flushed in heat. "Nothing can stop us, we're jam buds after all!"

A petal-soft laugh. "Jam buds 'til the very end."

With that, they got started. The problem with planning—and the advantage of their duo—came down to the many ideas flung around the room like paper balls in the occurring scuffle for supplies. Steven would suggest something and then Connie would add to it—flinging it back to Steven and then back to her—until the ideas they've manifested became more like snowballs the size of boulders. So the tiny notion of a movie date transformed into a nightly car date, the dondai befitting blankets, a radio, a grocery bag of snacks, and other accoutrements such as the medkit bunched in the back. When asked about it, Connie remarked with a simple, albeit embarrassed, "better safe than sorry" as they listed off their roster.

"So, let's get this plan straightened out one more time," she announced in the car, Steven saddling up his seatbelt and fiddling with the ignition. "We're only following the routes near the coastline. I have some money we could use if we ever run out of gas cans. If we see an ice cream stand, we're definitely stopping for it. And—"

"We'll drive to Viewover Point so we can watch Unfamiliar Familiar at the drive-in," he concluded, churning out a carnie accent. "Now in 3-D with a limited purchase of Archimicarus and Lisa chibi plushies for only nine ninety-five!"

She laughed. "Correct! And we'll buy ten of them, five for you and five for me."

"What about fifteen?"

"Twenty?"

"Thirty!"

"Fifty!"

Both of them exploded into giggles, Connie playfully smacking with his shoulder. "Just drive!"

The engine growled to life. With the sun still perched in the sky, the two of them drove off with a rumbling trail of radio music and road-crunched gravel, not a single worry in mind; just two best friends against the long-winding asphalt lines.

-----

There’s a thing Steven had to learn the first time he began his traverse into the world of semi-adulthood: that driving had a few loopholes that society was okay with trespassing into. In one particular memory, he attempted and went with the minimum speed range in Ocean Town—following the procedures, being loyal to the rules for the sake of being a good Samaritan—only for a cop car to drive alongside his window to force himself to speed up, whose eyebrow quirked in irritation. Apparently, the road he occupied was one lane, and the townies (ranging from a mile long) behind him weren’t happy about it.

He tried to laugh it off, brush it off like it was sand peppering his shoulders, but Connie was with him when it happened. She never let him down for it. Ever.

And that’s what lead to them bolting past the Beach City safety limits, windows popped open—gushing them with the wind—as the two hollered over the Mike Krol ratatat’ing their space. Overall, he’d like to thank Beach Town for this valuable lesson. He’ll never forget it.

“What if I told you that the world was gonna end!” Connie held an unopened granola bar, singing into it as Steven did a clean turn, the tail of their car following the drift in consecutive ease; the windows displayed to the right reflecting sheens of the calm ocean, skies bearing unrestrained galaxies from light-years away.

She directed the granola towards him, who yelled out in glee, “and you had fifteen minutes to spend with me or your friends!?”

“I guess we don’t even need to use the phone!”

“I don’t need your answer, I’ll be spending it alone!”

Cue the dance break. Connie did a little jig in her seat as he rocked his head to the remainder of the rhythm, heart battling in his chest, hoping that his attentiveness could keep them alive at the presence of the cliff that loomed to the right of them. Their laughter was of pure delight, wild and untamed, the childlike initiative riling them like cinders.

At the introduction of the woods behind an impending crossroads, he made a left turn, cutting into the Delmarva wood.

“Wait, that’s the wrong way!” Connie said.

“What!” He tried to turn it around but it was too late. The car clipped from the road, leading them scrambling in a quaking mess, the vehicle gatling its way into the unknown, into the webs of branches and darkness.

Ears pounding with the tremors.

The violent shudders.

Dissonant heaves.

And groans.

It then stopped. A warmth enveloped them in a luster of pink, the car remaining still as the creaks of its metal came to a halt. He looked over to Connie, easing his heart when he saw that she looked fine. Disoriented, confused, but fine. The windows were crowded by brambles, of hardwood needles, trickles of murk peaking in between.

He groaned, rubbing his head. The dizziness settled down. "Strawberry, you okay?"

"Roger that, biscuit." She unclipped her belt, heaving out breaths as the two of them calmed their frazzled senses, inspecting the enclosed space around them with unease. They were settled in the belly of a mechanical beast, brittle with cracked glass and wretched frame, the outside covered in dimly lit brush. "That was a close call though. The air bags didn't even work."

"Either that or my bubble’s forcing it down." He considered the sturdy barrier. It wasn't a bubble, looked more of a compartment that twitched and receded when they moved too much in the limited spacing, glowing its familiar hues and glint. He needed to meddle with this later. "We should get out though."

A brief nod. "Agreed."

He didn't know how long it took. All he could focus on was the buzz in his ears and the careful work he did to keep the bubble (morphing and melding to his command) under control as they crept out by the backseats; courtesy of Connie, who didn’t hesitate to pierce one of his windows with the medkit when the doors didn’t budge.

In the final shimmy, the two of them plopped onto an unsteady incline of dirt—the bubble dissipating—keeping hold of one another until the pathway below them cleared to unrooted ground. Glancing through the canopy overhead, Steven thought of it as a giant colander; how the moon pouring into his sights a few moments ago was now trying its best to sneak past the floral arms, to catch him even while shrouded in cold.

"Okay," Steven felt Connie's hand wrap around his, easing up as she started to move, his eyes trying his best to follow her outlines. She pointed to a mess of lights opposite the car, meshed with the silhouettes of broken-limbed shrubbery. "We came from there. Let's try to get some cell service, that way we can get a tow truck to our location and the dondai."

"Oh, man." Steven looked back at his car, a wheeze in his throat. "Yeah, we definitely need a truck because the car's donedai!"

Nothing but an awkward chuckle. "Stay focused, Steven. Let's go."

The woods were thick with underbrush. Portions coddled them in aggravating clumps, having them push and shove their way through. A good thing about Steven, however, was that they ignored this with a snap of his bubble, hamster rolling their way out through the elongated tunnel they burrowed through the brier. He would minimize it when the arching leaves and branches were too stubborn to part, and sometimes the spikes protruded from them like machetes, ready to press and nip them into splinters.

"How far did we drive in?" Connie mumbled after a few minutes passed. Leaves nested themselves in her hair, the scuffs on her arms still muddied from their vehicular escape. In all honesty, it reminded him of earlier days, where they wandered the Delmarva wood with nothing big to solve, their imagination pulling their way to the next great exploit. "It looks like we’ve gotten way off the mark."

He winced. “Don’t worry, we’ll be okay.”

“Steven, are you sure?”

“I’m positive.” He told her. “I’m just pining for a way out, you know? We’ll be fine in no time.”

“Steven, we've been at it for five minutes.”

"If that’s the case we're in a sticky situation then," Steven said, letting out a high-strung chuckle. "If I just took the right turn, we woodn't be here."

She halted in her tracks—the boy tripping from the stop, saving himself before he slammed into the bubble. "Steven, tell me."

"Hm?" He looked over, scrambling straight. "Why d'you stop?"

"Something's on your mind," she said. "And we'll not take another step until you spill the beans."

"Well, the beans are back in the trunk."

"Steven!"

He jumped. "Okay, okay! Sorry, I won't joke about beans anymore."

"That's not what I'm talking about here." She rubbed the bridge of her nose, fatigue on her lips. "Something's bugging you; I don't want to make any assumptions so you need to be honest with me." Her countenance softened, Steven bristling at the slight squeeze of his hand. "Please."

He wasn't the kind to turn the other way, especially with the plaguing memory of separation that tailed him ever since he lied to her two years ago. A promise was a promise, a solid bond of trust he’d never wanted to break, and even if the anxiety toiled and fought against him, he couldn't help but be reassured that Connie would still be there regardless. She was his jam bud. His confidant when the times oozed by. One of the few people he could open up to in a clear fashion. What was he afraid of? Nothing, hopefully.

He released a sigh—ladened, heavy-like. "I don't know, I just feel like such a dunce sometimes."

She knitted her eyebrows. With a swift beckon of her hand they sat down, still enraptured in rose pink; words soft, gesturing him forward. "And?"

"We were having such an amazing time," he crossed his legs, not helping the lean for warmth as she pulled him towards her, the thump of her pulse meeting with his own, "and we had these plans, these amazing plans, but I was able to ruin it in a single minute because I didn't follow the route." A scoff. "A new world record. It makes me wonder why I deserve you sometimes if I could mess up something simple like a dateventure."

"Hey, now!" They held contact, her voice stern. A shudder overcame him, feeling the slivers of grit in the way she spoke. "That's not true. Trust me when I say this: you're the best thing that has ever happened to me and I'll not let your self-doubt believe anything else. You messed nothing up, I’m serious about that."

"But the tickets."

"They were out before we even checked on them."

"The dondai."

"We'll find a shop that'll fix it up."

"But what about Viewover Point?"

"From what I've heard the reviews weren't that good." She shrugged, fingers weaving through his chocolate curls, careful and diligent, each press to his scalp making his lids heavy. "And I wasn't gonna enjoy the movie anyway if you weren't there to have fun with me."

“So, you’re not mad.”

“I could get mad,” Connie murmured, “but what’s there to be mad about? We’ve been through worse stuff than this, way worse, nothing will make me full-on angry with you, period. You’re important to me, and I’d rather fix our messes than leave someone else to fix it for us.”

The dance of her fingertips made him hum, clouded, lifted elsewhere to a softer portion of his mind; he wondered if Connie always had this effect on people, to calm them with the rationality and pin-point affection that they needed? Or maybe it was just him who felt that way? Maybe he cared too much? Perhaps...it was enough.

He allowed himself to breathe—in and out—until the tension in his shoulders melted to nothing; heaviness still resided, but everything appeared more comprehensible now, less complicated than what he described in his brain. With it came an idea. A goal. Something to accomplish. He affixed her a look. "When we find some wifi, would you like to stargaze with me?"

She chuckled. "Why wouldn't I, you dork?"

"I just wanted to ask." He stood up from his place, inviting her with an outstretched hand. She reciprocated, comfort collecting in his palms. "Because if we’re going to make the most of it, we might as well enjoy each other’s company."

Her hand tightened on his, thumb brushing down on his knuckles. “An adventure then.”

Steven nodded, beaming of joy—heart rattling in his chest. “A dateventure.”

“Fine.” She snorted, motioning them forward, the light at the end growing to the size of a faint firefly. “A dateventure.”

Their trek was masked in the brilliance of pink, holding on to the other as the illumination in front of them grew to the size of golf balls—relieved that the bubble saved them from bumbling ceaselessly in the dark. With their advancement, they went faster. Each spike pierced the natural fetters, leaving Steven in a fit of elation when they pushed through, their barrier popping at the final trudge.

The floor was a mess of tickling thicket. He giggled at the brambles, dirt crawled up into the niches of his jacket. Connie was beside him, stretching her legs as she stood up, noticeable in the newly acquired light.

The environment returned to quiet solitude. Steven gave it a mindful gaze: in front of him were the dug-in trenches left from the remainders of the dondai's wheel tracks, each recess printed with its cross-cross and trailing-black smears; the moon brought itself past the covering of shaded evergreen like an angel, leaving them doused in glare; the road was discernible against the earth, cracked and marked with fading yellow lines, making him wonder how deep the direction would've gone if he kept course.

Connie ushered them to walk.

The trek emulated his reveries. Calls of the night sang to them in a cacophony of rustles, hoots, and night creature scuttles; Connie, in her rousing, stopped at certain points to name plants and animals that festered around them, easy to find when she raced off to examine a retreating mammal or lizard.

"That is an owl, of course." She noted the furry-cocoon from a faraway tree, who, if one faltered their blinking, shot them split-second glances with worn yellow specs. "Probably a great-horned owl; look at the tufts on its head!"

Steven squinted. Above the brow, the bird adorned furry wisps, reminiscent of a character from Connie's favorite series. "Wow! How did you know?"

"I had a book about Delmarva geography before. I sold it since I didn’t have much use for it when I finished, but I'm surprised it came in handy now."

He pointed over to the trees. "Then what are those?"

She rubbed her chin. "If I could recall, they’re sweet gum trees...or maybe black gum. I don't remember the difference between them," she admitted.

"That's cool, though." He told her, surveying the wildlife, a wonder pooling on his own. "How come we never do nature walks? It's so peaceful here." Even if the shadows lingered, he emitted of pleasure, the crave of curiosity like a boy first exposed to something new. This was one of the few times where he didn't feel like he was about to perish under some forsaken weight; the concept of having himself run around in terror or disgruntlement long over.

“We just never had the time to. With the two years you’ve been busy and my space camp involvement, the prospect of it never hit me,” she nudged him, a zephyr trailing past them. “But it wouldn’t be too late to start now.”

He grinned. “You see any hills, captain?”

A tilt of her head. Then a pointed finger to a far off ascent. “There!”

“Race you there!” Without hesitation, Steven broke off into a sprint.

Connie, in a fit of snickers, darted after him with an undignified yell.

Fast-smeared colors. Blur of the tenebrous. The rush of one’s ears, laughing in bounding race, lighting the sky with ardor. Fireworks—music—bursting with each spring and skip, Steven crying out in gaiety. Pain and guilt weren’t his master, for he took the reins of the woodlands and made them his own; satisfaction kindling his heart to the size of a bonfire.

When he stopped he took his time gulping down air, throat blazing with invisible fire. He couldn't stop his giggles, the feeling of euphoria that rushed over him like a hyper song; Connie enduring the same, their giddiness flowing to the remains of the land—down below, sprinkling the billowing leaves of their victory.

The ground became their beds, lounging them in verdant cushion as the sky opened up to glowing display. Stars. A cascade of twinkling fires that Steven tried to frame in his hands. Bringing them to his eyes, he examined each one with starry wonderment, Connie whispering to him now and then when he asked a question.

"What about that one?" He directed a finger to the corner of the night sky.

"That’s the Big Dipper."

"And that one?"

"Mmm," she fumbled, clicking her tongue. "Aquarius? It's hard to pinpoint from all the stars—they're so bright you'd think I'm mistaking Orion for something else."

"I don't think that's a problem." He commented, fingers lifting towards the speckles, connecting each one with imaginary twine. "It just means we'll have to work harder to solve the puzzle, and as long as we got each other it shouldn't be that hard."

She released a cool wisp of air from her lips. "You're so sappy, but the sap was definitely needed."

A frown. "What's wrong about being sappy?"

"There's nothing wrong with it," she told him, sincerity leaking through. "You're the sappiest guy I've ever met and...I can't help but adore how loving you are, it just fits you so well.”

"Who, me? I'm just being my wittle self," he cooed, her laugh accompanying it.

"See?" Her hand returned to his, brushed by the moonlit turf. He felt light, the world appearing to slow down with each breath he took, heart bumping like a wave-carried boat. "Who wouldn't love to have someone like you? If I never arrived at Beach City on the day we met, then we wouldn’t even be here. Just enjoying the view."

Joy rose from his chest. "Enjoying you."

"What was that?"

"That, that was a—!" He sputtered.

She burst into laughter, cheeks dark under the light. "Oh my lord!"

"I'm sorry! It just slipped!"

"Steven!"

"I meant that I enjoy your company," his voice was desperate, cracking like a misaligned symphony. He sat up in a panic. "Not like in a weird way, I'm sorry!"

"Steven, Steven!" He went taut; she didn't look mad or grossed out or judgemental. Instead, she was hugging him, keeping him still with each moment that passed—arms returning the gesture in a tight embrace. "It's okay. It's really sweet of you!"

Steven groaned. "But it sounded so weird, I didn't mean to gross you out."

"You didn't." Connie kept him close—fondness pulling on her lips, chuckle carried off into the cool Delmarva breeze. "You're just being yourself."

Steven considered it. Even through his panic he never restrained his smile and the rush of closeness that came with it, he kept put, taking in her proximity. "Did we call a tow truck yet?"

"Oh." They pulled away. Connie rummaged for her phone. "Nope, we still have to do that."

Steven placed himself back onto the ground as she started a conversation on the phone—shadows painting her in a soothing color, moon cradling her figure. Slow and winding, gifting them of a connection that pushed him down to rest. The natural, the dark and hushed, all of his surroundings gestured to a lullaby, massaging him of burdened weight. His eyes drew closed. Exhales lingering, languid in the crisp weather.

A click of the phone resounded. Then a rustle, settling down close to him with a small grunt. Crickets chirped their song, hoots traveling overhead. "I gave them our location. We'll just have to stay put."

"That should be no problem." He stretched out. "We're the masters of it, after all."

A snort. "You’re right."

Listening to the shuffle of grass, Steven added on. "We should plan another one after this."

"Another call?"

"No, I meant the thing we're doing right now."

“The dateventure?” She asked.

“Mhm.”

Hesitancy. "Uhm, I guess."

"Well," Steven flinched at the noticeable lilt in his voice. "If you don't want to do another one, then that's okay."

"No, no," she blurted. "I want to. I'm just thinking about something."

"What are you thinking about?" His gaze still prepped up at the sky, coursing by them in a crawl.

"Just a few questions...about us." The sigh from her left him restless. What about them? "We've always been close, really close. You've noticed it, right?"

A few moments came to mind: movie nights on the weekends, blanket nests sheltering them in watchful rest; boardwalk strides with cotton candy and snow cone mouths, carrying a blue-striped bear won over from a ring toss stand; close talks at sleepovers, imagining the hereafter, breathing in the possibilities they have—which was what they're doing right now as they speak.

"I've noticed."

"It always made me wonder." She started fumbling with her fingers. "Why haven't we started dating sooner?"

"I," a quick exhale, "didn't think it would be such a big deal."

Quiet. The question raised high above their heads, Steven squirming in his place. That was a good question, why didn't he ask her earlier? He never gave it much thought, for the idea seemed unnecessary—they were good enough as is. Nothing stopped their cuddling, nothing stopped their intimate affection when consequences encumbered them above, nothing stopped them when they had their first kiss. The only thing they’re presumably missing was a label. They didn’t need it. They would still be close even without the titles of 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend'. Or 'lovers'. Or even 'jam buds'. The question left was:

"Does it matter?"

"It does to me," she spoke under her breath. "We've always been close; I'm just curious about why it took so long on my end. Was I antsy? Afraid?"

"For me, I guess I was just waiting for you." The words stunned him. It was the only answer he had, the rest of him trying to pinpoint a more exact reason. "I felt comfortable with what I had, just being there by your side, so the only change between us is if you made it official...if you get what I mean."

"I get it." The flight in her reflection—pulling out from the dip in tone prior—brought him to relief. "Then I'm glad I asked." An idyllic hum. "Clarifications are everything, well, communication in general; I didn't want to worry about going on an assumption, or just toeing around it like last time."

"You're right," he said, pulling overgrown bits of grass under him. "I should've told you when you first kissed me."

The noise she made piqued of chagrin. "Oh man, you still remember that?"

Steven smiled overhead, hoping the stars humored them. Out of all the personal disasters they’ve done together, he didn’t mind that their affection lead to their foreheads banging together—it was his favorite memory. "In clear detail."

Connie groaned, hands wringing through her hair. "That was so embarrassing."

"I don't see it that way. I'm thankful for it." He snickered.

"Steven, noooo."

"It made me realize you were flirting with me before that!" Her hand pressed against his mouth, leaving him to struggle and teeter under her in muffled hysterics.

"Steven Quartz Universe, you need to stop talking right now!" She was in hysterics too, Steven trying his best to wrestle his way out. "Cease your lies!"

"Never!" He wheezed, face red as an apple. "You can't deny the fact that you were!"

"Shut your mouth!"

The struggle continued. He didn't know how long it went—seconds, minutes—but the next thing he could perceive was the taste of mint. Bubblegum. Pine needle. Face cradled in her hands. He couldn't conjure a word when she parted from him, mouths agape, keeping them bathed in lunar splendor on their glorious hillock.

A moment of breath. Then another. Each one keeping their eyes on the other, lips turned in candy-sweet beams.

"You didn't use Wikihow this time?"

She smirked down at him; a pepper-light kiss pressed to his forehead. "Steven, I'm already beginning to regret this."

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” He reassured her, happiness emanating from his smile.

Contentment. A solid form of trust he wanted to cherish for hours and hours on end. If all he could do was just ask for the day to become never-ending, tend to a cycle of rendezvous and silver lining with her by his side, then things would’ve been perfect, but he knew the future waited for them—to grow up, to adore each other without the pressure of failure, to seek comfort in times of rock bottom.

There was no going back, huh? The label was there, they just had to use it. Nothing would change even if he uttered it. "I love you, Connie."

But there was satisfaction in hearing it. "I love you too, Steven."

Then came the rotund buzz—vibrating between them with a shocking velocity—both of them clambering back to their regular positions as Connie, who dug her fingers into her pockets, conjured her phone to the edge of her ear. "Hello, who's this?"

Pinpricks of noise sputtered from the receiving end. She bit her lower lip, nodding sparingly throughout. "Okay, okay. Pearl, we're fine, but please bring the emergency medkit just in case."

"Wait, Pearl is on the other end?"

Connie nodded before returning to the call. "Garnet's right. We went through an accident but we have our location if you want to come pick us up."

“Can I say hi to them, Connie?” He tried to look over her shoulder.

"Yeah, sure!" She then rebounded back to the caller. "Steven wants to talk to you guys; yeah, we’re on a hill, and I have a moderate battery life so you could call us when you get here." She handed him the phone.

“Steven, are you there?” The high-strung inquiry left him sweating.

“Yes, it’s me, I’m fine!”

“Oh thank goodness, Garnet told us you two were in trouble a few minutes ago and we were worried sick.” Something gushed against the speaker, clipping of the audio for a second. “Amethyst is bringing us there as we speak so it won’t take long!”

"That’s great." He peered over to Connie. "We got out of the car with no bruises, and we're just on a hill waiting for help."

Pearl’s tone sharpened. “I know you two will keep together but stay where you are, make a smoke signal if you have to.” Staying put was enough as is. “We’re on our way!”

“All right, I love you guys!”

"I love you too, Steven, keep in touch. Use your powers if you find a scratch, we don't want an infection."

"Will do."

With that, the cell went dark. Steven placed it back to Connie’s palms as they reclined, allowing themselves to wade in the sea of green; the wind picking up now, billowing through their locks, as they busied themselves with the heavenly sights. Pondering on the situation at hand.

“Hey, Connie.”

“Yeah?”

“Why didn’t we just ask the gems to lift the car out instead of calling a towing service?”

“Oh.” Silence. “Oh my God, you’re right.”

He shot her a sheepish look. “Well, at least I got to spend time with you, I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”

Even with his limited view, he knew that she was flushed, Steven grunting at the half-hearted punch to his shoulder. “You’re showing your sap again, dork.”

"At a time like this, sap ain't that bad, especially if it means I get to do a sneak attack!"

Falling on her like a tilted stone, she shrieked as they resumed back into a fit of wrestling, hearts strung to the sound of their mirth. There’s nothing wrong with a little sap, he thought, for the night was still young. And the future was theirs.

[homespork-review]

HOMESPORK ACT 5 ACT 1: Mobius Double Plusungood, Part 2

BRIGHT: Nepeta wants to know what’s going on. Aradia finally stops dodging the question and tells Nepeta she’s dead, but doesn’t elaborate on how it happened. She asks Nepeta to keep it a secret, which Nepeta agrees to. Aradia’s also picked up some froglike traits from being merged with the sprite -- namely a tendency to ribbit.

In retrospect, it’s kind of funny that an active player can merge with a sprite. The role of a sprite seems to involve having detailed knowledge of how the Game works and what the player should do next, but only dispensing vague advice to the player. Prototyping a player would give them full access to that knowledge with no sprite vagueness to get in the way. The Game doesn’t seem too concerned about that, though.

CHEL: Now it’s time to get to know AG better. A doodle of her declaring her to be a HUGE BITCH fades into her standing in her room. Rather gothic, and also filthy-looking; it’s dark, with a red sky outside, and cobwebs and broken Magic 8 Balls lie around everywhere. There’s a FLARP poster and numerous pages of notes on the wall.

Your name is VRISKA SERKET.

You are a master of EXTREME ROLE PLAYING. You can't get enough of it, or really any game of high stakes and chance. You have persisted with the habit even in spite of your ACCIDENT. But then again, you don't have much choice.

Your lusus is VERY HUNGRY, ALL THE TIME. She can only be appeased by the FLESH OF YOUNG TROLLS. You cloud campaigns for teams of Flarpers, utilizing your abilities for ORCHESTRATING THE DEMISE OF THE IMPRESSSSSSSSIONA8LE. Your victories supply you with treasure, experience points, and SPIDER FOOD.

You are something of an APOCALYPSE BUFF, which is something you can be on Alternia. You are fascinated by end of the world scenarios, and enjoy constructing DOOMSDAY DEVICES for the hell of it. You are drawn to means of DARK PROGNOSTICATION and the advantages they offer, particularly in gaming scenarios. Your abilities in this department were hobbled with the loss of your VISION EIGHTFOLD, and you have since sought alternatives through various BLACK ORACLES. You consult with these ominous globes, but routinely destroy them in frustration over the PUZZLING GUARANTEED INACCURACY of their predictions. Breaking them has developed into a habit BORDERING ON FETISHISTIC, and with each you destroy, you add to an insurmountable stockpile of TERRIBLE LUCK. You have to stop. But addiction is a powerful thing.

FAILURE ARTIST: FINALLY we get a name for her and we don’t have to keep saying AG. I imagine the non-Homestucks are feeling like I did when I played Danganronpa 2 finally and saw the “fingers-in-his-ass” guy.

CHEL: She examines a drawing on the wall, of her FLARP character MARQUISE SPINNERET MINDFANG, who is just Vriska in a different coat and seaboots, with a hook instead of her robot hand. She is the scourge of land dwellers and sea dwellers alike, and worst nightmare to silly BOY-SKYLARKS everywhere. She has accumulated more treasure and gained more levels than any member of the PETTICOAT SEAGRIFT class ever. She gained all the levels. All of them.

En route to her computer, Vriska steps on a D4, and complains about how she’s had terrible luck since her mysterious accident. I’d just like it noted that this is a small but noticeable occurrence of Vriska’s tendency to blame others for her problems; if she cleaned her room some time, that wouldn’t happen. Still, she doesn’t worry about it too long, as she’s busy.

So many irons in the fire. Such a tangled web. It is a web full of flaming irons and mixed metaphors.

BRIGHT: Vriska equips her weapon of choice, a set of enchanted D8 dice called the FLUORITE OCTET.

...okay, I’m getting used to characters having semi-absurd weapons, but seriously, what? Let’s review everyone else’s chosen weapons: Hammer, knitting needles, sword, gun, sickles, lance, clawed gloves, walking cane. Sollux had some throwing stars but didn’t assign them to his specibus owing to his telekinesis being enough; we haven’t seen Aradia’s strifekind yet, but she also has telekinetic abilities, and hers are apparently enhanced by her being dead. So that’s a lot of genuine weapons, and some things which aren’t weapons but can readily be used that way in a pinch...and then Vriska has a set of enchanted dice.

It’s a good fit both for Homestuck’s absurdity and for Vriska’s obsession with luck. But it does stand out rather.

Anyway, rolling the dice will execute a wide range of highly unpredictable attacks. Very high rolls can be devastating to even the most powerful opponents. Apparently these work everywhere, not just in FLARP games. Also, while we see ghosts, psychic powers, and superpowered coding, I think this is the only reference to plain magic we have on Alternia.

Vriska steps away from the computer to avoid talking to GA, who she refers to as an unwelcome solicitor, but returns to it when someone else starts messaging her. Vriska calls him this guy; he has no icon -- and, oddly, no username -- and types in white, which means the reader (and Vriska) ends up highlighting the conversation a lot. 

Hello.

AG: Oh my god, why are you talking to me????????

This is the last time we'll ever talk.

AG: Still sticking with the white text I see. So smooth and stylish!

AG: I forgot how much I loved highlighting it to read all the 8oring things you have to say.

AG: It's like a fun game for super extra handicapped retarded people. Like opening a present! Find out what o8noxious thing the mystery tool typed.

AG: What is it!

A parting courtesy, I suppose.

All the ways I've exploited you were meant to bring about the events that will take place this evening.

Knowing this will provide context for the events in your near future, and will affect how you behave in response.

These events will be just as important as those preceding it.

I've gone to great lengths, you see. 

Well, this guy sounds ominous.

Also, using ‘handicapped’ and ‘retarded’ as insults is entirely in character for Vriska, who has no time for people who can’t operate on her level. Currently Vriska’s also being shown as an unlikeable character. We’ll see how that develops.

CHEL: Still, a lot of people really don’t like those words being used casually, and the fact that we need to show you how things develop should imply that they won’t develop in a way you’ll like. So…

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 39

White Text Guy, as the characters refer to him for a while to come yet, continues gloating about how successfully he’s exploited Vriska, who tells him she’ll log off and orders him not to use that nasty trick where you log me 8ack on out of petty douchey spite! WTG says he’ll be brief, though he’s not particularly brief in fact, tells her he no longer hold[s] her accountable for any wrongdoing, and says that if she accepts this, she may get her luck back. Vriska doesn’t believe him and continues to rant, and he points out that her unpleasant, simplistic temperament is what made her so easy to mess with.

If you turn a swarm of wasps on a crowd, the outcome is certain.

He leaves with these even more ominous words:

Though the magnitude of the ensuing destruction resulting directly from your actions will be neither possible or necessary for you to fathom, there nevertheless ought to be a silver lining.

The only question is whether you will live long enough to see it.

Vriska, enraged, lifts a Magic 8 Ball with the intention to smash it, but decides she can’t be bothered, and answers GA, hoping some camaraderie will cheer her up, even if it’s from a meddler. However, GA’s first question is “Is Your Lusus Dead Yet”. Not particularly cheering, is it?

Vriska, for the first time, expresses concern and sympathy for another person when GA says her own lusus is dead, though it may be undermined slightly by her own personal disappointment in never having got to meet said lusus. GA doesn’t seem very concerned, and says “Maybe You Still Can”. According to her, though, all their lusii are dying, as a “Preemptive Consequence” (if that’s a meaningful concept) of the upcoming Game. Karkat blames himself for activating the cursed code, but GA thinks it was inevitable. However, Karkat’s idea of a curse Is Inseparable From His Perception Of Events As Intrinsically Negative And As Tailored To His Personal Dissatisfaction, and so is Vriska’s poor luck. GA points out that if Vriska cleaned her floor she wouldn’t step on so many things. THANK YOU, GA, you made my point for me! Vriska is angry at GA “meddling” so, and demands to know why she does.

GA: Because Youre Dangerous

[...]

GA: Its Ok To Be Dangerous

GA: Lots Of People Are

GA: And Dangerous People Can Be Really Important

GA: Maybe Even The Most Important Sometimes

GA: But It Just Means Theres Got To Be Someone Around To Keep An Eye On Them

As Vriska gets angrier, it’s noted that she puts 8s in her typing in places where they don’t work as Bs or as “eight” sounds, and they become more numerous.

AG: Or you know, if you're so h8gh 8nd might8 an8 th8nk you're so gr8at, m8y88 you c8uld oh I d8n't kn8w........

AG: TRY AND ST8P ME FROM DO8NG B8D THINGS????????

GA: That Wouldnt Work

GA: If I Tried To Stop You You Would Regard Me As An Enemy

GA: Instead Of Merely As A Nuisance

BRIGHT: GA’s strategy appears to be trying to talk Vriska into being a better person, either by persuading her that it’s the right thing to do or by being so annoying that Vriska does the right thing to avoid being meddled with. She’s making an effort, I’ll give her that. And given that she doesn’t live anywhere near Vriska, there isn’t all that much she can do to rein her in.

CHEL: Vriska signs off, ranting about her “Lousy st8pid godd8mn supportive friend!” and heads down the enormous staircase to check on her lusus.

You wonder if any other kid on the planet has such a high maintenance lusus? You DOUBT it.

As a matter of fact, one does and Vriska knows that, but we’ll see them later. Not a continuity error, it’s just Vriska self-pitying.

From a window, we see a doomsday device hanging over a chasm by chains attached to the surrounding cliffs. Vriska built it for an especially powerful and influential member of the nautical aristocracy, with help from an as-yet-unnamed nearby friend. Vriska reaches the bottom of the stairwell, and we meet her lusus, which is…

… a spider about the size of a cathedral. For the sake of our arachnophobic readers, we’ll refrain from posting a picture. Suffice it to say she’s as terrifying as she sounds. Pan out to show the entire valley is filled with cobwebs, and Vriska’s hive is matched by a similar one on the other side of the valley.

Before we move on, I’d just like to chat a little about the astrological symbolisms used here. Vriska’s the Scorpio troll, and it puzzles a lot of people that she’s spider-themed instead of scorpion-themed. Both arachnids, but not the same thing. However, Scorpio does have multiple symbols, depending on the source of the interpretation of the constellation, including the spider and the phoenix. Observe! (I enjoy astrology. Sue me.) Also, a scorpion would be a lot harder to get the story symbolism out of; Vriska is at least attempting to be a master manipulator pulling on strings, i.e. webs. The astrological symbolism and alleged personality traits aren’t used for all of the trolls in general, either. The troll with the sign of Aquarius the Water-Bearer is seadwelling nobility and probably wouldn’t be happy to be represented astrologically by a servant, and Gamzee is basically the opposite of the ambitious and hardworking traits of the allegedly typical Capricorn. Basically the signs are mostly aesthetic and if Huss can work in some connected symbolism that’s a bonus. I don’t consider this a negative thing in particular, though it might annoy some astrology buffs.

Actually, I don’t know how intentional this was, but one fan actually analysed how the social expectations on Alternia are in fact the exact opposite of what would actually suit their astrological sign. It didn’t get finished but there’s some interesting information - read the posts in question here, beware spoilers!

BRIGHT: One amusing consequence of this can be turned into a game: Go to Tumblr, find an astrology post, and see how long it takes to figure out if it’s a Homestuck riff. Some of them even just say ‘Vriska’ for Scorpio.

It’s probably just because I mostly follow fandom-related blogs, but I’ve yet to see a Tumblr astrology post that wasn’t a more-or-less-subtle Homestuck joke.

CHEL: And the ones which aren’t make for great fanfic prompts!

BRIGHT: Vriska’s lusus is fine, as it happens. Vriska pretends to be happy about this, but she’s rather less convincing than Dave is about his own guardianship issues. 

FAILURE ARTIST: And we turn from Vriska to look in her neighbor and it’s….that creepy guy! Hurray!

Your name is EQUIUS ZAHHAK.

You love being STRONG.

You are so strong, you would surely be the class of the elite legion of RUFFIANNIHILATORS. And while such a calling would be quite honorable, you would prefer to join the ranks of the ARCHERADICATORS, perhaps the most noble echelon the imperial forces have to offer. Unfortunately, you SUCK AT ARCHERY. You have not successfully fired a SINGLE ARROW. Every time you try, you BREAK THE BOW. You are simply too strong. You have broken so many bows, it has developed into a habit BORDERING ON FETISHISTIC. You have to stop. But addiction is a powerful thing.

You have a great appreciation for THE FINE ARTS. You use your aristocratic connections to acquire PRICELESS MASTERPIECES, painted in the oldest and most respected Alternian tradition of NUDE MUSCLEBEAST PORTRAITS. These striking depictions of the EXQUISITE FAUNA native to Alternia remind you of the PUREST PHYSICAL IDEAL that must be sought by anyone who professes a LOVE OF STRENGTH. When those of lesser bloodlines turn up their uncultured noses at such stunning material, it MAKES YOU FURIOUS.

Practically everything MAKES YOU FURIOUS. You have so much rage, it can only be expressed through STAGGERING QUANTITIES OF PHYSICAL VIOLENCE. You build strong and sturdy robots, set them to kill mode, and BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF THEM in caged brawls. Sometimes you LOSE TEETH. But they usually grow back.

FAILURE ARTIST: Equius Zahhak’s first name is obviously a take on the Latin word for horses, but his last name is from a Persian demon who is also known as “he who has 10,000 horses”. 

So yes, that furry porn on his walls is high art to trolls. Though the prequel Hiveswap Friendsim, which has artist characters, doesn’t have MUSCLEBEAST PORTRAITS. Maybe Equius is actually weird.

CHEL: Actually, the Friendsim does have musclebeast art; if you squint at the beginning of Nikhee’s route, you can see depictions of white muscular chests flanking the arena, which don’t look like troll chests. Hiveswap proper is rated PG, so we’ll be spared it there, too.

FAILURE ARTIST: Equius is more even-tempered than his introduction suggests. He’s not completely violence-free (as we will see)  but he’s not in a constant ‘roid-rage. Heck, from what we’ve seen before of him he just gets peeved and snotty. 

Equius calls for his lusus Aurthour, who I guess could be called another self-insert. Aurthour is a centaur-type creature with cow udders and a mustache and looks like something out of Hussie’s early comics. Aurthour carries a glass of lusus milk on a platter, presumably from its own udders. Ummm. 

You cannot hope to beat Aurthour in a butler-off. He is simply the best there is.

Sweet, I guess.

CHEL: I wonder how Aurthour contorts around to reach his udder. Centaurs aren’t really known for flexibility.

FAILURE ARTIST: We find out why Aurthour has a shiner. It’s not because of domestic abuse but because when Equius “gently” pats Aurthour, Aurthour bruises. Yet this creature is the only lusus STRONG enough to raise Equius. 

Equius tries to drink the glass, but it shatters in his hand. Which begs the question of why Aurthour doesn’t use an alternative to glass. Well, I guess Equius going straight to the source would be too disturbing even for Hussie. A bigger problem is how Equius can do the fine detail work of building robots when he can’t hold a glass. 

Equius goes into a rage, which just means he stands around in Hero Mode while the lusus milk quickly evaporates. Wait, quickly evaporates? What is it made of?

CHEL: I assumed the heat of his rage boiled it.

FAILURE ARTIST: Equius tries to equiup equip a bow but fails due to his strength. Like the glass smashing, this is a normal occurrence. You’d think he’d give up but apparently breaking bows is like popping bubble wrap to him. Expensive bubble wrap. So he has the useless 1/2bowkind, a bowkind for when he’s ever that lucky, and the fistkind which he actually utilizes. Yes, in Homestuck, you can register your fists as lethal weapons. 

Equius talks with Nepeta and the narration summarizes like thus:

CT: D --> Yes AC: :33 < no CT: D --> Yes AC: :33 < no CT: D --> Yes AC: :33 < no CT: D --> Yes AC: :33 < no CT: D --> Yes AC: :33 < no CT: D --> Yes AC: :33 < no CT: D --> Yes AC: :33 < no

Equius is still worried about his good friend Nepeta, so he decides to relieve his stress by talking with another friend. And here comes a line fans take as meaning trolls don’t have friendship. 

It should be noted that in troll language, the word for friend is exactly the same as the word for enemy.

Though that line contradicts Equius considering Nepeta his friend only a few lines back. This worldbuilding sucks. 

CHEL: Well, he doesn’t treat her the way a human should treat a friend at this point.

FAILURE ARTIST: So Equius trolls this frienemy who turns out to be Gamzee.

centaursTesticle [CT] began trolling terminallyCapricious [TC]

CT: D --> Have I ever told you what a reprehensible disgrace you are

TC: hAhA, fUcK yEaH, oNlY eVeRy MoThErFuCkIn DaY bRo!  

Yeah, Equius, pretty much everyone tells Gamzee that every day. 

Equius says he wants get some things off his chest, which giving what we later learn about troll relationships might be adulterous. Gamzee tells him not to let his feelings be bottled up lIkE a FuCkIn AlL sHaKeD uP bOtTlE oF fAyGo and this metaphor makes Gamzee thristy. Equius berates Gamzee for drinking soda, which seems harsh but we later find out soda is booze for trolls. He’s also angry at Gamzee for doing sopor slime. Now, fans think Karkat didn’t like Gamzee doing sopor slime but we never actually see it. It’s just Equius who cares. This leads to an exchange I find interesting.

CT: D --> You will stop

TC: WhOaAaA, i WiLl?

TC: hOw Do YoU kNoW tHaT?

CT: D --> No, you don't understand

CT: D --> It's not a predi%ion, it's an order

CT: D --> I command you to stop

Gamzee is so passive he finds it hard to imagine making decisions that will change his future. Sad. And when Gamzee does get what Equius means:

TC: Oh, AlRiGhT bRoThEr.

TC: yOu MoThErFuCkIn GoT iT.

CT: D --> What

CT: D --> Are you serious

TC: yEaH.

TC: I mEaN, yOu GoT tO sHoW sOmE fAiTh In YoUr FrIeNdS, cAuSe ThEy'Re AlL tHe OnEs WhO'rE bEiNg To LoOk OuT fOr YoU.

TC: sO fUcK iF yOu SaY i'M nOt DoInG tHe ShIt RiGhT, tHeN wHaT tHe MoThErFuCk Do I kNoW!

CT: D --> No

CT: D --> This is una%eptable

CT: D --> Ok, let's start over

CT: D --> I apologize

CT: D --> I was completely out of of line, and I'm sorry

CT: D --> I have no right to talk to you like that, or tell you what you can't do

TC: aWw, No WoRrIeS!

Gamzee was ready to kick sopor slime except Equius backed down. Wondering about the timeline where Equius didn’t back down. 

Still, Equius begs Gamzee to behave like a superior. Gamzee asks what that means and Equius gives a very creepy answer.

CT: D --> 100k, it isn't that difficult

CT: D --> Try to be cognizant of your desires and needs

CT: D --> And attempt to regard those around you as simple vehicles meant to bring about your gratification

At least Equius is a hypocrite...most of the time.

Equius asks what Gamzee is doing and Gamzee relates his adventures in Sgrub. He bonked an imp on the head and scared another with a horn and eventually ended up sharing pie with them. Equius likes the tales of valor but is disappointed with the peaceful end. 

Equius asks Gamzee to roleplay and Gamzee says yes; there’s an uncomfortable sequence where Equius tries to get Gamzee to virtually dom him. Gamzee is terrible at being assertive, but Equius is still whipped into a state of contrition. Basically, Equius is getting off on this. 

CHEL: It should be noted that tricking a child into sexual behaviour is a form of abuse even when it’s done by a child of the same age. Not cool, Eq, and not funny, Hussie.

CALL CPA PLEASE: 11

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 40

SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER: 4

Though, while that is clearly the reading we’re meant to get from that, I have to say Equius never reads to me like he’s actually enjoying being ordered around. With Gamzee he’s just frustrated that he’s not behaving in a correct manner, and in later exchanges he seems knocked off-balance by the normal social order being upended. I know I’m just projecting, but it reads more like he has some issues with anxiety or OCD and is desperate for someone else to take control and tell him what they want him to do so he doesn’t have to worry. He sweats constantly during these exchanges, which is supposed to imply he’s aroused, but people sweat when they’re worried or afraid too.

FAILURE ARTIST: On a lighter front, Equius says he doesn’t live near the ocean, which considering his neighbor regularly goes on a pirate ship is an odd thing to say.

CHEL: How near is “near”? He might just mean not within walking distance so he can’t casually wander out to the sea like Gamzee does.

FAILURE ARTIST: Equius ends by wondering about the social order that puts someone like Gamzee above him but someone as graceful and poised as a certain mysterious she is of the lowest caste. Gamzee (and the readers) ask who she is and Equius brusquely says D -->I shouldn’t be talking about this D → You’re the enemy before signing off. 

CHEL: If one’s been paying attention, one can guess.

Next, Equius and Vriska are in cahoots. Cahoooooooots. Vriska declares her intention to meddle, and they have a brief exchange about sarcasm. It’s horribly inconsistent whether trolls have sarcasm or not, as I’ve pointed out before. Already gave a point for it, though.

Anyway, Vriska asks if Aradia’s present is finished. It is.

CT: D --> But I don't understand why you're intent on gratifying that worthless peasant

AG: 8ecause I promised I would and it's none of your damn 8usiness! Man.

Their plan is to let Aradia usurp Sollux as leader with her cute little ploy (recall her sending him to sleep and letting him swallow mind honey earlier), then both snatch power from her and become joint leaders. Each asks the other if they’re planning something sneaky and each insists they’re not. Equius can sense that Vriska is trying to read his mind, and when she won’t stop, he takes control of her cybernetic arm, which he built, and makes her slap herself in the face.

FAILURE ARTIST: So given that Vriska tried to read Equius’ mind, despite the dangers (both physically and mentally), it is unbelievable she refrained from reading Karkat’s due to delicacy. 

I think Hussie has said in his commentary that Vriska had a crush on Equius. The fandom prefers lesbian Vriska at this point and so has ignored that. YMMV on if there is evidence of a crush in the text but I find the idea amusing. 

CHEL: Equius goes to fetch the present for Aradia which he was supposed to give to Vriska.

You naturally will doublecross your accomplice, just as you assume she has plans to doublecross you. You assume she is assuming the same of you. Business as usual for blue bloods.

How the hell does this society get anything done?

You will deliver it to Aradia yourself to gain her favor, and then doublecross her and take your rightful position as team leader. How ironic that someone of your blood purity must work to win the favor of the lowest sort of peasant. Humiliating. Strangely titillating, even. But in the end, class order will be restored.

He takes the tarp off the present, and it is…

Why, Aradia. It appears the red glass of your eye has caught the pink and green glint of the moons in their perigees. The sweet poetry almost makes a man forget how the grime that once filled your veins made his stomach turn. It is a good omen for illicit lovers. Could you imagine the scandal if anyone found out?? No one must ever know.

But worry not. Your heart will pump no more of that despicable red sludge. You have been given a new heart. You can be taught the ways of the class you were always meant for. No one is beyond redemption.

Be grateful, dear Aradia. For the first time in your meaningless life you have met a man with true compassion.

Jesus fucking Christ. See what I meant when I said his interactions with girls were worse than his posters? No points because it’s supposed to be creepy, and with the teachings of his society it’s not entirely his fault, but wow.

FAILURE ARTIST: Well, his interaction with a girl is creepy. His relationship with Nepeta is more problematic than fans remember but that’s two-sided and not infatuation. As for Vriska, he’s cold and business-like with her. He collaborates with GA but that’s off-screen and was probably also business-like. Meanwhile, he has lustful interactions with most every male character. We’ve seen how he acts with Gamzee and we’ll see more later. Equius’ interactions with guys are another example of Hussie using male attraction to other males as a punchline.

CHEL: But yes, he’s built her a robot body. Unfortunately for everyone involved, while making out with it, he feels judged by one of his battlebots, gets angry, and punches it. It goes flying out the window and robosplodes above the valley, and its remains hit Vriska’s doomsday device, setting it off. It breaks before it can actually destroy the planet, but the chains holding it up snap, sending it swinging into the cliffside, causing another explosion. The cliff collapses, taking part of Equius’ hive with it, sending Aurthour plummeting into the chasm and crushing Vriska’s spider lusus under tons of rubble.

Cutting back to before that, we see Terezi battling imps on her treehouse’s rooftop, when Vriska messages her, declaring that playing the game together means breaking their truce. Terezi says that’s not what the truce was about; it was about STOPP1NG TH3 3NDL3SS CYCL3 OF R3V3NG3 and Vriska not using her powers maliciously anymore. Terezi’s next couple of comments are just calling Vriska a liar so I’ll just take Vriska’s, to further illustrate her behaviour.

AG: Man, you like to give me such a hard time a8out all that. I can't catch a 8reak! AG: Can't you see I'm trying to put all that 8ehind me and make amends with every8ody? AG: No, of course you can't see that. What am I saying! [...] AG: I'll prove it to you. I'm giving Aradia a present that will make her feel all 8etter finally. AG: Then I'll 8e in the clear. Phew! Totally redeemed. You'll see. I mean smell.

Vriska appears under the impression that large flashy gestures are the important part of an apology, not actual sincerity. Terezi points out Aradia doesn’t care about anything anymore and probably won’t care about this.

AG: Man, why can't you cut me some slack for once???????? AG: It's not like I even did anything that 8ad to you. AG: I lost seven eyes 8ut you only lost two! I would say you came out ahead in the 8argain. GC: 1 KNOW GC: 4ND 4CTU4LLY GC: 1 N3V3R R34LLY GOT TH3 CH4NC3 TO TH4NK YOU >:D

Vriska’s disbelief aside, Terezi really is serious here. Not surprising to the reader, her blindness is basically a superpower.

AG: Remem8er Team Scourge? How convenient all that must 8e to have forgotten! You were so nasty. AG: Oh man, if you crossed Terezi Pyrope you were fucked!!!!!!!! GC: Y34H 1F YOU W3R3 4 B4D GUY GC: W3 W3R3 SUPPOS3D TO B3 L1K3 4 V1G1L4NT3 DUO D1SP3NS1NG JUST1C3 GC: 4ND YOU COULD T4K3 TH3 B4D GUYS HOM3 4ND F33D TH3M TO YOUR STUP1D SP1D3R GC: BUT 1NST34D YOU JUST F3D H3R 3V3RYBODY! GC: 4ND L13D 4ND L13D 4ND L13D

Okay, this little exchange needs some more dissection. Terezi is supposed to be the “good cop” of Team Scourge, the by-the-book one on the side of the law. But we saw what Alternian law is like, and later on we’ll see demonstrations that things such as having a birth defect or, according to Hiveswap, owning fiction which so much as mentions the possibility of rebellion, are punishable by death. Not only is this not making Terezi look any better, if she’s as obsessed with the law as we saw, who would she deem not a “bad guy”, and why would Vriska have such a shortage of “bad guys” that she’d need to take anyone else? Hussie appears to have forgotten that the Alternian concept of justice is different from the Earth one.

FAILURE ARTIST: And what we would consider a “bad guy” wouldn’t be the same on Alternia. There’s tons of trolls murdering other trolls on Hiveswap Friendsim without any hint that’s illegal. It’s probably completely lawful for a highblood to kill a lowblood just because the lowblood annoyed them.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 29

BRIGHT: Maybe. I’d say what this shows us, and is intended to show us, is that Terezi’s sense of justice isn’t just based on Alternian law, but on her own moral code. The law made it perfectly acceptable for Vriska to feed lowbloods to her lusus regardless of whether they’d done anything, but Terezi didn’t think it was right, and for her that superseded the law. She’s the ‘good cop’ not because she always follows the book, but because she’s willing to ignore it.

We also know she thought Vriska was on the same page as her. Note that Terezi makes two accusations here — the first is that Vriska killed people who don’t deserve it, and the second is that Vriska lied to Terezi about doing so.

CHEL: That may be what it’s intended to show us, but what we’ve already seen is that she worships the law; she draws and gleefully licks pictures of the head of the troll court, His Honorable Tyranny, and she shows no concern in her roleplay with hypothetically executing people for relatively trivial crimes. That makes this a bit… shaky, IMO.

BRIGHT: True. Terezi may have stopped killing since her FLARP days (or, at least, we get no indication that she’s still doing so), but it doesn’t seem to have shaken her belief in the Alternian legal system. Just her belief in Vriska, who even brings up a similar point.

AG: Well if you want to know what I think, you should start changing your tune. AG: Cause even though you got all these highfalutin morals and fancy reserv8tions, you know as well as me that a killer is a killer is a killer! AG: There 8n't no ch8nging your ways for good, and one d8y you're going to flail that silly l8ttle cane of yours and not find n8thin to 8ump into, and fall f8ce first into the shit ag8in. AG: And you're going to do something t8rri8le to some8ody and wish you could t8ke it 8ack 8ut you c8n't!!!!!!!! AG: And then you'll work hard to win 8ack their trust, and you'll try and try and tr8, and you'll see how hard it is! AG: You'll seeeeeeee!

Vriska’s making this all about her own feelings about Terezi abandoning her, but she’s not wrong.

Vriska hears the doomsday device exploding and the subsequent rockslide, and goes to  find out what it is. Terezi tells her not to get crushed.

The next page jumps back in time again -- this time, quite far back. Terezi’s eyes are normal, and she’s talking to Aradia about Tavros’s recovery. Aradia says he’s probably paralysed for life. Terezi brings up the possibility of getting him robo-prosthetics, but after the Vriska debacle Aradia is firmly against having anything to do with bluebloods.

CHEL: Terezi warns Aradia that revenge attempts will end badly and she wants to handle it. Aradia says Vriska isn’t able to control her, but Terezi says Vriska will find a way to harm her anyway. They lament how they were both distracted by the same person.

AA: wh0 was he anyway GC: PR3TTY SUR3 1T WAS VR1SKAS FR13ND AA: what was he d0ing there AA: watching us GC: WHO KNOWS GC: H3S NOT R34LLY H3R FR13ND THOUGH GC: YOU SHOULD S33 HOW H3 T4LKS 4BOUT H3R B3H1ND H3R B4CK GC: SH3 H4S NO 1D34 HOW B4D H3S PL4Y1NG H3R GC: BUT TH3N 1 DONT TH1NK H3 KNOWS HOW B4D SH3S PL4Y1NG H1M 31TH3R

This sounds like they mean Equius, but we’ll see. Aradia feels she’s letting Vriska win by doing nothing, but Terezi has a plan. She confirms that her friendship with Vriska is over.

Cut to Aradia’s house, and here I need to go into a bit more detail. This is her house:

Aradia’s a maroonblood, the lowest of the low on the hemospectrum, peasantry and cannon fodder and supposedly extremely numerous. Yet her house looks to be about the size of the entire block of flats I live in, and she lives in it alone, with no other buildings at all in sight. In the next page, we see inside her house, which looks exactly the same as all the others; she has piles of roleplaying books and posters and a computer, and nothing looks to be in disrepair.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 30

BRIGHT: Her house also looks a lot like Tavros’s, what with the windmill feature on top and the brown hangings rather than maroon, which threw me off at first.

CHEL: We’ll talk about this more later. For now, let’s stick with the most noticeable thing; Aradia is alive! Her skirt is untattered and her eyes have colour and pupils. Her lusus is alive too, napping beside her. It’s not quite clear what it is exactly; it has a sheep-like head, but its body is long and slim with much bigger hind legs than forelegs. Could be supposed to be dragon-like? I’ve also seen it interpreted as kangaroo-like. I don’t think we ever get a better view of it.

Anyway, Aradia knows Terezi’s advice is sound, but she can’t bear not to do something to Make her pay. She puts her hands up to her temples, and the image fades back and forth with one of wrapped troll corpses in Spidermom’s web…

It's a shame it had to come to this. You don't like summoning the spirits of the dead to settle scores.

But if she had to face her victims again, maybe she'd finally learn to feel remorse.

OOOOOOOOOO

This begs the question, how the fuck can the highbloods oppress people who not only hugely outnumber them but can shoot lasers from their eyes, control animals, and summon the dead at will? Well, there’s actually some explanation for that. The player trolls all appear to have unusual levels of power, for whatever their given powers are; most maroonbloods can’t do this. In Hiveswap a main character is a more typical maroonblood, who can just about bend spoons with his telekinesis and not much else (though we haven’t seen him speak with dead yet, and it’s possible he’s better at that). Not all trolls even have their caste’s powers, as far as I can tell, as we do see a yellow in Hiveswap Friendsim who’s not a psionic and some ceruleans who don’t seem to have mind-control powers as well. Head or eye injuries, which aren’t exactly rare in Alternia, can cause the loss of said powers. Also, the highest blood castes have powers of their own and other things to hold over the lowbloods’ heads. It’ll be a while till we get to that, but I’ll say now it is convincing, we do not have an Oppressed Mages scenario.

Anyway, Aradia does her thing…

As Vriska cowers on her floor, White Text Guy messages her again. Vriska replies angrily, ghosts looming over her shoulders.

Aren't you going to kill her?

AG: Who????????

Your friend.

The one who summoned the spirits.

AG: Will that make them go away?

Does it matter?

She brought them here to torment you. This obviously warrants revenge.

Vriska asks why WTG doesn’t kill Aradia instead, since he helped kill Tavros; he replies “All I did was stand somewhere for a few minutes. I just gave you an opportunity to do something you wanted to do anyway.” So, seems it wasn’t Equius they meant earlier. Vriska protests she never intended to kill her gaming companions, and blames him.

Again, I didn't talk you into anything, nor am I doing so now.

You were, and are, going to do this regardless.

I only ever place myself into positions of tangential involvement with events that will bring about my employer's entry into this universe.

I oversee the events as they take place, and ever so slightly nudge them into motion when necessary.

BRIGHT: Looks like Aradia and Terezi haven’t told her Tavros survived, which is eminently sensible. This conversation also highlights another Vriska trait: That she’s a very active person, but will try to shift responsibility as soon as she doesn’t like the consequences. That could be a result of her upbringing -- Vriska had to actively go and kill people for Spidermom, but she wasn’t responsible for the overall situation. (Although -- how much did she do to ameliorate it? By the time SGRUB starts, Spidermom’s far too big to fit into Vriska’s home. Vriska might have been able to get away with not feeding her at that point; there’s not much Spidermom can do if she can’t get to her.)

CHEL: The later addition to the canon, Pesterquest, claims that the lusii can psychically nag their charges and she could bother Vriska that way, but that directly contradicts Act 5, in which the trolls want to prototype their lusii so that they’ll be able to communicate properly with them for the first time, and also couldn’t Vriska just move further away?

BRIGHT: Inertia is very much a thing, and people do often just settle into a rut of ‘this is the way things are’ even when something could be changed, so it’s not improbable that it wouldn’t occur to Vriska to move — come to that, I don’t believe it occurs to anyone else either — but the fact that it doesn’t occur to her does say something about her character. 

CHEL: Also, why didn’t Vriska feed the spider on animals? The possibility is never so much as considered by her or anyone else, though it seems the most obvious thing to do. Sure, the spider might be picky, but as we said, it can’t leave the valley due to its size, or it’d be hunting for itself. If it’s left with the choice to eat cows or die, it’d presumably pick the former, especially since the lusii aren’t supposed to be sapient and thus wouldn’t have the capacity for spite. For assuming that Vriska did what she had to when such a screamingly obvious better option is never addressed, here we go with a new count, which will rise whenever Vriska’s horrible actions are excused.

ALL THE LUCK: 1

 Back to the scene, Scratch claims omniscience, which Vriska mocks.

AG: Sure you know a lot, 8ut I know for a FACT there's stuff you don't know.

That's true.

But the gaps in my knowledge exist by design.

They are the pillars of shadow on which my comprehensive vision is built.

Necessary pockets of void meant to effectuate outcomes I've foreseen and which will require my influence.

Each dark pocket, in time, will be filled.

[...]

I don't lie.

Deception is only necessary for those like you to achieve their objectives.

I play with my cards face up.

Isn't it funny how during our various matches, I can tell you what my moves will be in advance, and still win?

Vriska, angered by this, does in fact plan to kill Aradia; Not much point in living with all these moaning spooks just to spite some guy you don't give a shit about. She can’t control Aradia because Aradia’s own powers get in the way, but there are other people she can use.

How about this guy? Unfortunately, you can only control him about half the time.

Then again, that should be all the time you need.

Cut back to Aradia’s place, and she receives a message from Vriska, telling her her boyfriend is outside. 

BRIGHT: Vriska also lightheartedly tells Aradia she’s sorry, and that she’ll make it up to ‘him’ someday. Presumably ‘he’ is meant to be Tavros, except that Vriska seemed to think Tavros was dead in literally the last conversation she had. This is probably just a slip-up on Hussie’s part, but it’s possible to read this as Vriska referring to a different ‘he’ entirely, considering what’s about to happen.

CHEL: Aradia looks, and sees a figure hovering telekinetically over the fields....

Note what’s in his hand. You do not under any circumstances eat the mind honey… His eyes start flashing and Aradia looks afraid, but we suddenly cut to a view of Alternia, and then to a closeup of its green moon. The prompt instructs us to Be the white text guy, and we meet him in a very familiar-looking green mansion.

You try to be the white text guy, but fail to be the white text guy. No one can be the white text guy except for the white text guy.

The white text guy is known as Doc Scratch.

He is an officer of an indestructible demon known as Lord English. His job is to pave the way for the arrival of his master, who will be summoned upon the termination of the universe. He has worked at this task for many centuries, and will continue to do so until THE GREAT UNDOING.

Scratch is Alternia's FIRST GUARDIAN. Every planet destined for intelligent life has such an entity meant to protect it, and facilitate the planet's ultimate purpose. A first guardian is typically almost as old as the planet itself, and each has a unique, circuitous origin through the knots of paradox space. They can be born into a great diversity of forms, though they all share a common, especially potent genetic sequence. 

Remember Rose’s MEOW book, and how DD used it to create Becquerel? Yep.

The code grants them near omnipotence, and when merged with a host of great intelligence, near omniscience as well.

BRIGHT: Only near-omniscence, however. Scratch is surprised to find Terezi contacting him, but he’s able to work out that she got Sollux to help pretty fast:

Occasionally I discover there are things I have not always known.

It gives me the opportunity to make deductions, which are practically always flawless.

It's gratifying.

He also suggests she call him ‘Mr. Vanilla Milkshake’, and then hints that Aradia might not be straightforwardly dead by stating that Sollux and Terezi believe she is dead, and will soon believe she is not, both of which are true statements about their beliefs rather than reality.

Props to Hussie on this: I’m pretty sure every Homestuck fan wants to punch Scratch in the face. He’s just so obnoxious. 

Terezi, however, refuses to let Scratch keep derailing her for long. She wants Scratch to get involved in their feud again, and she has a good reason for him: She knows how Vriska’s been able to come so close to beating Scratch in their games lately. Before she can tell him, though, she needs to talk to Vriska again.

She starts by asking how Vriska feels about killing Aradia, after she promised not to. Vriska responds with dramatic insincerity about how she feels awful, and then says Terezi should be happy that Team Charge is out of the picture. 

AG: Uuuuuuuugh, what do you want from me????????

GC: 1M NOT SUR3

GC: 1 GU3SS 1M LOOK1NG FOR SOM3 R34SON TO CH4NG3 MY M1ND

GC: 1 DONT KNOW WH4T YOU C4N S4Y TH4TLL DO 1T

GC: 1 SORT4 HOP3 TH3R3S SOM3TH1NG THOUGH

In the end, there isn’t. Terezi tells Vriska she’ll be dead in a couple of minutes, and to ‘CONSULT W1TH YOUR L1TTL3 4DV4NT4G3’ if she doesn’t believe it, then leaves the conversation.

Vriska’s little advantage turns out to be a MAGIC CUE BALL, which is similar to a magic 8 ball except that it’s predictions are specific and accurate, and it lacks a portal through which the user can read said predictions. Fortunately that’s not an obstacle for Vriska: Her VISION EIGHTFOLD allows her to see through the opaque casing.

CHEL: Vision Eightfold is the vision from the one of Vriska’s eyes which has seven pupils, which she covered with an eyepatch with seven rubies on it when she was FLARPing. Also remember that Jade had a Magic Cue Ball but couldn’t read it? Yeah, it’s another one.

BRIGHT: One other thing: According to rumour, it used to belong to the man on the moon.

As Vriska asks the cueball whether she should be worried about Terezi’s threat (answer: YES), Terezi lets Scratch know where his missing property has gone. Vriska asks the cueball how it’s going to happen…

I WILL EXPLODE IN YOUR FACE.

Boom.

This section is one of my favourite Terezi moments. It really shows off Terezi’s ability to outthink and manoeuvre people. She’s never spoken to Scratch before, but she still plays him against Vriska easily.

CHEL: This is why Vriska has a plain eyepatch and a robot arm in her future appearances, but she’s otherwise fine. Bluebloods are tough, apparently.

BRIGHT: Back in the future, Spidermom has survived the rubble falling on her, but just barely. Vriska puts her out of her misery with her magic dice, which summon up a massive guillotine and decapitate the lusus, drenching Vriska in spider blood.

GORE GALORE: 11

The decapitation sets off another landslide, sending Equius’s house straight down on Vriska’s head, but before it can land, a portal opens underneath it and transports it into the Medium.

Vriska promptly jumps on Trollian to freak out about this, because her plan depended on her getting Aradia’s surprise present from Equius to pass along and then Aradia and Vriska entering the Medium together, and never mind that a house was about to fall on her -- in fact, when Aradia points out that Vriska was about to die, Vriska accuses her of planning this. Aradia placidly agrees.

CHEL: This is part of my evidence for thinking Vriska might not be neurotypical. Not the priorities most people would have. Also, meanwhile, note that the lusii have the same blood colour as their charges, while the non-lusus animals Nepeta killed were black and had red blood. I’m not sure whether that’s a species trait, or a side effect of the weird bond between them (doesn’t make a lot of biological sense, but then this is basically fantasy with a sci-fi coat of paint).

Vriska is enraged by things not going the way she planned; her grand gesture of apology, the robot body, will now be handed over by Equius and not her, ruining her chance to be friends again with Aradia. Again, she doesn’t seem to understand how apologies work.

AA: were we ever really friends

AG: Yeah!!!!!!!!

AG: I don't know. I felt like we were even if you didn't think so.

AG: I guess I'm not very good at acting like a friend. Or saying stuff like, hey friend! You're my friend! It doesn't really occur to me.

For some strange reason related to her prototyping with the frog statue, Aradia types out “ribbit” into the chatbox, and informs Vriska she’s not on the Blue team as she expected, enraging Vriska further. Vriska accuses her of taking revenge, which Aradia denies, saying Vriska was always going to be on the Red team, and that she doesn’t care about her death.

AG: You're so infuri8ing! Why c8n't you just h8 me? It would 8e a lot easier th8t way.

AG: Or at least feel 8othered or annoyed or S8METHING! God!!!!!!!!

AG: May8e I sh8uld just rip my he8rt out of my chest and pound it to a 8loody pulp here on my desk with my sup8r strong ro8ot arm.

AG: Pound pound pound pound pound pound pound pound!

AG: Look at that, more nasty 8lue 8lood all over me. Why not! Might as well op8n the floodg8s and p8nt my whole hive with this oh so envia8le cerulean SWILL.

AG: 8ecause clearly it's up to me to feel em8tions for the 8oth of us, you misera8le soulless witch!

AA: 0_0

AG: I h88888888 you!

AG: H8 h8 h8 h8 h8 h8 h8 haaaaaaaate!

AG: I only regret killing you cause it m8de you so 8ORING!!!!!!!!

AA: s0rry

Aradia assures her that the teams are meaningless, but being on the Red team will put Vriska in the position they need her in. Vriska’s confused and angry, and leaves the chat.

In Equius’ LAND OF CAVES AND SILENCE, he trolls Aradia again, telling her he will be the sole leader, which she doesn’t care about. He’s surprised she isn’t objecting, and says he needs a towel.

CT: D --> Never mind

CT: D --> I'm trying to stay professional about this

AA: ab0ut what

AA: what are y0u talking ab0ut

CT: D --> Forget it

CT: D --> It's just pleasant to consort with one of lesser breeding who clearly understands her place

He’s been established to suffer from hyperhydrosis, but he’s clearly also supposed to be getting off on this, which, since he’s thirteen, is icky to read.

CALL CPA PLEASE: 12

It only gets worse.

CT: D --> I 100k forward to seeing how well you serve me, server player

AA: uh

AA: thats n0t quite the meaning 0f the w0rd server

CT: D --> What do you mean

AA: as y0ur server i manipulate y0ur envir0nment t0 help y0u advance

CT: D --> I don't understand

CT: D --> Are you

CT: D --> Are you saying

CT: D --> That

CT: D --> You are in a position of control over me

AA: i supp0se s0

CT: D --> Oh

AA: what

CT: D --> Oh my God

He babbles about how he needs fresh air or another towel, getting so agitated he actually drops an F-bomb, which he immediately covers up with “Fiddlesticks”. He says he wants to break something, and Aradia offers to break something for him, as she’s developed an interest in breaking things recently. Next page, she flings an “abluti0n trap” through his wall. 

FAILURE ARTIST: The running gag of girls fucking up boy’s homes with bathroom appliances continues!

CHEL: He’s very happy, except about her commoner slang.

CT: D --> In fact, this is an order from your leader

CT: D --> Call things by their proper names

AA: what

AA: y0u want me t0 call it a bath tub

AA: that s0unds ridicul0us

As FA noted, this bit of worldbuilding ends up retconned out with all trolls calling things by strange rewordings later on.

Whatever it’s called, Equius asks her to throw it through the wall again. She asks if that’s an order, and he can’t decide.

CT: D --> You could cause quite a bother for me, with the power you wield

CT: D --> I can do nothing to stop you, peasant girl

CT: D --> It's so magnificently depraved

CALL CPA PLEASE: 13

Aradia ribbits again and he takes it for roleplaying, but commands her to continue to do as she pleases. He tells her he’s bringing the robot body, and muses on whether she should actually be co-leader again; in fact, he decides, she should be the actual leader, in secret, through him. She points out that’s what they’re doing anyway.

CT: D --> You take to authority well for one of your b100d

AA: i d0nt have bl00d

CT: D --> Not yet

CT: D --> But soon your heart will beat anew, and through it, fresh b100d and fresh passion

AA: 0_0

CALL CPA PLEASE: 14

Equius proceeds to STRONGJUMP right up to his first Gate, punching off an ogre’s head as he goes, and to STRONGFALL out into LOQAM, where Aradia waits. Equius hands over the robot and Aradia enters it; she seems happy, but Equius cautiously asks if she feels anything else.

EQUIUS: D --> Can you detect anything within you might describe as

EQUIUS: D --> Smoldering passion

[...]

ARADIABOT: 0h g0d

ARADIABOT: 0H MY G0D WHAT DID Y0U D0!

ARADIABOT: did y0u pr0gram this r0b0t t0 have feelings f0r y0u?

ARADIABOT: R0MANTIC FEELINGS???

EQUIUS: D --> Hrrrk

ARADIABOT: ANSWER ME BLUE BL00D SCUM

EQUIUS: D --> I

EQUIUS: D --> Yes

EQUIUS: D --> Uh

EQUIUS: D --> It's a chip in your heart

EQUIUS: D --> Is that not ok

Understandably, it is emphatically not.

GORE GALORE: 12

Now, this is undeniably a really, really, really creepy thing to do. I’m not sure how much blame can be applied to Equius here, though; he’s been raised in a society which would presumably tell him she would have to accept his advances no matter what, considering their caste difference. In a horrifying way, the chip might have been, in his mind, the nicer option. Still, as I said, creepy.

CALL CPA PLEASE: 15

BRIGHT: I think it’s telling that he asks if it’s not okay after Aradia freaks out, as though he honestly hadn’t considered that Aradia might have a problem with it. Specifically, up until that point, Equius seems to be interacting with Aradia more like she’s a prop than a person — it doesn’t seem to occur to him that she might not want what he wants, unless their wants conflict in a way that he finds titillating. Then she freaks out and he’s surprised. And that in turn speaks volumes about how lowbloods are viewed by highbloods in wider society.

Contrast Vriska, who absolutely realises that people down spectrum can have their own agendas and emotional reactions; she just does her own thing anyway. Vriska is actively malicious; Equius is, at least in this case, accidentally malicious. Note that he doesn’t make any effort to prevent her from removing the chip once he realises she’s distressed. (Not that he really gets a chance.)

Equius in particular also seems to have a problem about slotting people into roles in general -- he does it with Gamzee, too, although since Gamzee is higher-blooded than him, he has to at least face the fact that Gamzee doesn’t fit into his role. He comes across as very sheltered.

FAILURE ARTIST: Equius considers it such a good thing to be a highblood that he thinks he’s doing her the greatest favor by turning her into one. 

CHEL: This also brings up the question of where he got all that blue blood. I hope it’s synthetic. If not, he’s already said he doesn’t kill animals, so I’m not sure whether it’s creepier if he killed another troll for it or if he slowly drained it off from his own.

Aradia’s not contemplating that, too busy crushing the artificial heart and slapping the shit out of Equius for multiple pages, before, er…

Yes, she’s apparently making out with him as a reward for violating her mind, even after the chip was removed. 

BRIGHT: The first time I read Homestuck, I thought that was meant to imply that not all of the programming was gone.

FAILURE ARTIST: Hussie did confirm the programming was gone. He compared it to a failed roofying.

CHEL: This is a bit of a shock, but it makes somewhat more sense when we see more of troll culture, not long in the future. Still, right now it’s probably upsetting for a number of readers because that part of troll culture hasn’t been established, so…

CALL CPA PLEASE: 16

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 41

[not-a-princess-but-a-queen]

@chasingspacerabbits I started some web!Dirk!

"Oh not now," Dirk sighed and turned to see the new guy Riggins had brought smugly saluting him from a parked car.

A mixture of emotions ran through him before he settled on a cold determination and rage. Reaching deep inside himself he accessed the part of himself he rarely used, and reached out to the other man. He imagined thin spider silk threading his mind, allowing Dirk to twitch and control as he saw fit.

He saw the mans eyes widen in fear as he tried to move and couldn't. Dirk sighed as he felt the nurishment run through him. He rarely got such a complete meal when working his cases.

"Now, you're going to stay there. You're not going to make a sound. And to make sure you behave," Dirk hummed and a dozen or so tiny spiders flocked toward him. Some happily running over Dirk's feet, some going straight to the man and began to crawl over him.

Without a word, Dirk left, not even sparing a glance at the diner he'd just left. He didn't let Fredkin's web go until he boarded a plane.

...........

It took Dirk a few days to make it back to Hill Top Road. When he did, he was happy to see it rebuilt if empty. This was a far better condition then it'd been when he first stumbled upon it as a teenager.

Once he made himself comfortable, he sat against the basement wall, closed his eyes and let the information from the Mother flow through him.

By the time he emerged it was night, and he saw a familiar figure waiting outside the gate. As he always did, Dirk found it quite hard to concentrate on her, her features blurring together in his memory. But in the moment he knew Annabelle and smiled as he wrapped an arm around her in a brief hug.

"You've grown well little one," she hummed. "You have your instructions?"

Dirk nodded stuffing his hands back into his pants. "They want me inside the institute. The new Archivist seems... interesting?" He hummed. From what he learned the man seemed quite brash. Almost like Dirk himself. "How far along is he?"

Annabelle hummed and flicked out a cigarette. "He recently stopped the Unknowing. Oh also send your little friend away please."

Dirk's forehead wrinkled in confusion before he felt the night breeze cut through him and realized his jacket was gone. Beside him stood Mona, looking sheepish.

"Mona!?" He enthused " How long have you been there?"

"A while," she admitted. "I didn't want to leave you."

Dirk smiled but it slipped when he saw Annabelle glaring. He glared back, daring her to say something and eventually she shrugged stubbing out her cigarette. "I'll be in touch," she called leaving them alone in the dark street.

....

It was relatively easy to invade the institute as a researcher. His powers smoothed over anyone looking too closely and his natural personality did the rest. The work was mostly dull library work, but it helped him keep a watch on the Archivist who'd recently returned from a coma apparently. Also he was terrified of spiders, Dirk could feel even at his distance. He was trying to find a way to keep a tab on him that wouldn't be noticed when he literally slammed into someone who he swore hadn't been there. He flinched and swept back up, eyeing a tall and fairly broad man with curly hair and tired, dull eyes. "I'm so sorry! I didn't see you there."

The man smirked, a tight bitter thing, and shrugged. "No problem."

Dirk felt the need to keep this man close for a bit longer. "I'm Dirk! Would you like to get some food?" He gestured to the caffaterea behind him.

The man blinked, seemed surprised but slouched a bit, seeming to relax. "Nice to meet you, I'm Martin."

Dirk managed to keep his face blank of the surprise and let a new web begin to form around him as they walked into the caffateria

[tysonrunningfox]

Ripped: Part 18

Hey so uhhhhh...here

Ao3

Before the condos went in, the East side of Downtown Berk was five generations of tacky all stacked together in narrow, street-facing Victorian buildings. The factories and lodging houses were mostly converted into apartments during the first world war, when Berk’s harbor was necessary to the war effort and suddenly people could regularly afford more than nightly rent. Then prohibition took effect and internal bathrooms were hidden to act as stills, speakeasies like Gruff’s used to be were nestled inconspicuously into the mouths of alleys, adding to the city center’s labyrinth. The depression brought back the web of shantytowns that again depleted for the war effort.

The forties and fifties brought back growth, but it stayed inside for the most part, those valanced rectangular windows looking in on mid-century modifications returning fifty-year-old lofts back to the open floor plan they’d had as workhouse accommodations. Cars replaced buggies and the weekly markets became grocery stores. The sixties and seventies meant avocado green refrigerators and shag carpet, and people ran cable through tight nooks in the old brick walls or mounted satellite dishes to sloped roofs.

By the eighties, things started to slow down, between the commercial fishing lane closing due to pollution and the particle board monstrosities down south gradually becoming more affordable than the city. That’s when Hiccup’s dad started on the force, clearing out squatters and enforcing the rules as the government turned some of the less historical buildings into public housing. The nineties were quieter, the streets respecting Stoick Haddock’s vast influence enough to stay clean.

Then Berk University got ahead of the dot-com bubble and an influx of college students started filling up cheap housing. And then they had the money not to waste time winding fiberoptic cable through a hundred years of walls built with no concept of building code, so they started building from the ground up, rewriting a city that had always embraced edits.

Hiccup stares up at the condo façade from the sidewalk in front of it, eyes following crisp white trim against pastel panels. The balconies above him are covered in houseplants and bikes that are necessitating the city’s replacement of old cobblestone in favor of asphalt bike lanes. The windows are double paned and soulless, their locks visible from four stories down.

“Hiccup?” A voice startles him from his architectural roast: urban condo edition, and he whips around to see Ruffnut, dressed for an office and holding an envelope in one hand. He’d warn her against walking alone at dusk, but they’re far enough from Astrid’s apartment that it doesn’t matter.

That and it would be a really creepy thing to say, so he’s glad he stopped himself.

“Hey, Ruff,” he looks between her and the door to the complex, “do you live here? Or…”

“Right,” she snorts, “I pay my rent with the family gold.”

“Oh, I figured,” he gestures at a sign advertising new units, starting in the mid eight-hundreds, “paying that much for a cardboard shoebox must be so reasonable for you with your connections.”

“All my connections, sure, a bunch of Gruffnuts.” She smacks her leg with the envelope and lowers her voice, “apparently the copy of the deed with Tuffnut’s signature forged on it was illegally downloaded at this address a couple of weeks ago.”

Hiccup’s eyes twitch automatically to the Neighborhood Watch Force seal engraved on the main door above a phone number and the number for a main office suite in the building. It would make sense if Grisly was the one to send the deed to the twins, especially since it was the only thing connecting Tuffnut to Gruff’s murder. And if Tuffnut hadn’t been connected, he wouldn’t have been questioned, and he never would have recognized the dossier, which connects the entire case back to Astrid.

Yes, it’s another whole basket of leaps adding onto Hiccup’s probable bushel of leaps at this point, but the dark hole that settles in his stomach when Grisly says Astrid’s name is as solid as the flat poured, brand new sidewalk he’s standing on.

He just needs something, a scrap of evidence that’s probably obvious in unit 110 of this exact building.

“Oh,” he tries to sound distracted, bored even, “so you’re looking into that?”

“I guess not,” she sighs, “I was expecting one of Gruffnut’s sleazy friends’ house or something. Anyone affording this place surely has something better to do than rip off my brother.”

“Maybe it’s someone working here,” Hiccup shrugs, “I mean think about it, the Neighborhood Watch Force office is here and they probably have all sorts of access after partnering with the police.”

“Why are you here?” Ruffnut raises an eyebrow, not as easy to lead as Hiccup had originally hoped.

She’s Astrid’s friend though, she saw how uncharacteristically addled Astrid was when Eretson wanted her alone.

“Hear me out,” he pauses until she nods him along, “ok, so I think Grisly has something to do with all of this.”

“Grisly?” She frowns, “the silver fox at the precinct with the unfortunate twin kink?”

“Huh?”

“The guy in gray.” The shake of her head is pointedly disgusted in him for his lack of vision, “with the Russian accent.” She waits for him to catch up, “you think he killed Gruffnut?”

“Not in so many words,” Hiccup winces, “or maybe—it’s just a feeling, but after yesterday with Eretson—”

“What is up with the cops around here, by the way?” She grins like he’s not the wrong audience to admire Snotlout’s biceps with. “Anyway, whatever, get to your point.”

“I already did. I think Grisly has some kind of influence or part in what’s going on.” He bites his lip before continuing, hoping he found the right company to say this. It’s something he would have said to Heather, back when she cared about the discovery of it all, but he can’t say that even she would have really gone along with it. Investigating a very much inhabited building with a security force is different than a boarded-up basement no one would buy because of the grotesque murder committed in it a century ago. “And I’m trying to figure out how to check out his office.”

“So you hop right from a hunch to breaking and entering?” She folds the envelope and tucks it into her pocket.

“After yesterday, Eretson thinks Astrid has something to do with the murders, and that’s entirely my fault.”

“Did you bring a lock pick or black spray paint or pantyhose or are we just doing this?” Ruffnut rubs her hands together and looks at the doors.

“Pantyhose?” He snorts, “I was going for more of a modern leg-line—wait, we?” He looks at her surprised and she shrugs.

“You’re crazy, I like crazy, I’m in. And it’s for Astrid.” She takes a step forward, “plus, if your hunch is right, maybe we can figure out who printed out this deed. Is the door locked?”

“I haven’t checked,” Hiccup points at the hours listed on the glass, “it says it closes at six though, and I don’t like the ‘appointment only’ in the fine print.”

Just then a woman walks mostly past the inside of the doors then freezes, squinting out at them and cracking the door to peek her head out. She has an ID badge around her neck and reading glasses pushed up onto her graying hair.

“Are you the Bensons?”

“Bensons?” Ruffnut asks.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m waiting for a young couple who applied for a condo online, but I guess that’s not you. Sorry!”

“N—”

“Yes,” Ruffnut cuts Hiccup off, her tone surprisingly confident, “that’s us. I’m sorry, I’m not used to the new name yet! Traffic!”

“I heard about that accident on the interstate and assumed you must have been stuck in traffic,” the woman opens the door and gestures them inside, “this shouldn’t take too long though, all the paperwork looks good. I assume you just want to have a look at the place before signing everything.”

“Thank you for accommodating us,” Hiccup looks around as the woman locks up behind them. When Ruffnut catches his eye she shrugs, surprisingly calm through the change in plans.

“Oh, it’s no problem, my office is right over here,” she leads them down a sterile hallway that belongs in a bank or medical center, the walls lined with black and white pictures of the buildings torn down to build this monstrosity.

She opens the door of Unit 130, right next to a shadowed Unit 110 and Hiccup grabs Ruffnut’s elbow to stop her from entering the woman’s office.

“I noticed on the door that Unit 110 is supposed to house the neighborhood security office,” he asks, trying to sound more like a theoretical ‘Benson’, who is apparently buying a condo, than himself, “is it closed at six on a Friday? That doesn’t seem very responsible.” Mr. Benson, the condo buying adult, is very concerned with how responsible people are.

“Oh, Grimmel is in all the time, you’ll see when you move in,” the woman laughs like old ladies do when Snotlout helps them across the street, “he introduces himself to all of our new residents as Mr. Grisly and acts all tough, but don’t worry, he warms up quick and everything has been so much quieter around here since he started.”

“Quieter?” Hiccup follows the woman into her office and sits down next to Ruffnut in the chairs on the other side of her desk, “what do you mean by that?”

“Given that you checked for security, I’m sure you’ve heard all those stories about how this used to be a bad part of town,” she rolls her eyes, “that was ages ago, we’ve really cleaned it up around here. Most people in the building work nearby, it’s a real community of young urban professionals like yourselves.” She pushes a stack of papers towards them and starts flipping through, “when was the wedding again?”

“The wedding?” Hiccup squawks and looks at Ruffnut, who has produced a ring and slid it onto her left ring finger since he last looked at her.

“Oh, it was just two months ago,” she winds her fingers through Hiccup’s and he freezes. He was just lying to get in the building, he didn’t think he’d end up in someone’s office in front of real estate papers, much less holding Astrid’s best friend’s hand while she’s wearing a mysteriously obtained ring.

Is this binding if Mr. Benson has to sign anything?

“Newlyweds,” the woman shakes her head affectionately and Hiccup nods, letting his eyes dart to the corners to check for security cameras. He doesn’t see any, but he didn’t see Grisly’s camera on the midnight tour either.   “Oh! I just remembered, there’s one blank your income information that’s not quite filled out.” She points a manicured finger at a blank line labeled ‘Title’ above a number for income that Hiccup definitely doesn’t make in a decade. Maybe pretending to be the responsible Mr. Benson has some merit. “We just need your title to double check with the company.”

“Oh that’s my honey-pants,” Ruffnut coos, “he’s so modest, he just got a promotion and doesn’t like to brag.”

“Well, it’s not bragging when you report that number for taxes,” the woman rolls her eyes and stands up, “while you finish these up, I’ll go get the keys to the place. They just got the new backsplash in and it looks amazing.”

“Sounds great!” Ruffnut says too enthusiastically and the office door shuts, leaving them in silence.

“What the hell was that?” Hiccup disentangles his hand from hers, “and where’d you get that ring?”

“It’s fake,” she looks at her hand, “or mostly fake, it’s for emergencies.”

“Right, most emergencies can be dealt with by pretending to be married, of course.” He deadpans, looking back at the door, “we should go, this isn’t working.”

“You’re giving up on our marriage after only two months? I didn’t take you for a quitter when I said those vows—”

“Ruff—”

“On a beach in Mexico and Snotlout and Eretson were both groomsmen and their rented formal speedos matched the color of the Caribbean.” She grins at him and he sighs, looking across the desk and trying to think.

There’s a key ring right in front of the woman’s chair, a tag on it clearly labelled ‘Benson’, and he takes it, tossing it up and down in his palm.

“While you happen to be describing my dream wedding, and we should talk centerpieces later, I have a better plan.” He lets the keyring dangle from his finger, “obviously, these aren’t in the condo. And even more obviously, she can’t see very well since she missed them on the desk right in front of her.”

“That’s not a plan, Sherlock Condo.”

“Funny,” Hiccup hides the keys in his pocket when he sees the woman coming back down the hallway, “just follow my lead, alright?”

“As long as it’s clear that I wear the pants in this relationship,” Ruffnut grabs a handful of his ass and squeezes just as the door opens. “We can’t wait to see the place, right honey-buns?”

“So excited!” His voice cracks and the woman looks suspiciously at Ruffnut’s arm.

“I was sure I left the keys up there, but I must have brought them down,” she starts sifting through the biggest drawer behind her desk and Hiccup makes his move, edging out of Ruffnut’s reach on the way.

“Here! I’ll help,” he purposefully fumbles the stack of papers they were just signing, sending loose leaf and a pile of knick-knacks all over the floor. “Oh no! I’m so sorry!”

“He’s a real klutz,” Ruffnut explains as Hiccup kneels down and starts spreading the mess, “outside of the bedroom, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m sure she does, babe, you’re not really being subtle about it,” his laugh barely forces through gritted teeth, “can you get down here and help me?”

“Oh, you two don’t have to do that,” the woman finally kneels down herself, squinting to try and make sense of the purposefully thorough mess. She reaches out to pick up a small sculpture obviously made by a child and her glasses fall off, onto the ground by Hiccup’s knees.

“Here, I’ll get those for you!” He announces, reaching at the same time as she does and barely beating her. Their hands tangle as she pulls the glasses back towards her face and he makes the move, fumbling with the snap holding the ID card onto her lanyard.

“That’s where I left those!” She finally puts the glasses on and Hiccup quickly shoves the ID behind his back, relaxing slightly when Ruffnut takes it. “I’ve been looking for my glasses all day and they were on top of my head the whole time.”

“I hate when I do that,” Hiccup shakes his head and stands up, trying not to flinch when Ruffnut grabs his ass again. This time she leaves more than claw marks behind though and he feels the access card in his back pocket.

“You’d lose your head if it wasn’t bolted on, dear,” she laughs, patting the back of his pants and he jumps.

“Let me go check the condo again,” the woman points at her glasses, “I might have better luck finding the keys, I’ll be right back.”

“Sounds great!” Hiccup nods.

“I’ll clean up his mess,” Ruffnut whispers on one side of her hand, like she’s telling a secret, “it’s what I’m best at. Men, right?” As soon as the door is shut again, Hiccup takes a big step away from her and she nods to herself, “that went well.”

“You kept grabbing my ass!” He whisper yells, cracking the door to check the hallway. It’s still empty and Ruffnut slips out behind him.

“We got the key, didn’t we?”

“I’m dating—well, we haven’t said the word, but I—Astrid, in case you didn’t remember.” He holds his breath as he presses the key card to the sensor next to the doorframe.

It turns green and he turns the doorknob slowly, half expecting a booby trap or Mr. Grisly sitting in the corner in a swivel chair that turns around right as he flicks on the light. His hand hovers over the switch for a second before he thinks better of it. The light would be too obvious from the hallway, anyway.

“I’m Astrid’s best friend,” Ruffnut scoffs, hurrying Hiccup into the office so they can get out of the hallway, “I’m quality control.”

“I’m sure Astrid can do that herself,” he lets his eyes adjust, glad to see the empty desk chair in the corner. When he’s sure he won’t instantly trip and announce himself, he creeps over to the computer, waking up the monitor and quickly dimming the screen as far as it’ll go.

“So she’s done her own inspection then?” Ruffnut crouches down next to him, wiggling eyebrows tinged blue by the generic background.

“Clues, Ruff,” he points at a filing cabinet, “we’re looking for clues.”

“I’m just fake married to you and you’re a nag,” she sneaks over to the cabinet and opens the top drawer. “It’s empty, there’s nothing here.”

“We’ve been here all of two minutes,” he frowns, scrolling through empty file after empty file. He checks the drive and no storage is taken up aside from operating system and installed programs.

“Who would keep their evidence in a room that Glasses the Idiot could access?” She scoffs, “hell, who doesn’t lock their computer?”

“Someone who’s not using it,” he sighs, “you’re right. It’s an office but he clearly doesn’t do anything here.”

“Guess some rich asshole upstairs illegally downloaded the deed to Gruff’s,” Ruffnut wipes her hands on her pants and points at the door. “Should we get out of here before Glasses comes back?”

“I wonder if there’s a way to get a residence list,” Hiccup glances at the empty printer on the desk and gets an idea. “Let me check the printer ink levels to see if he’s been using it.”

“Hiccup, there’s nothing here,” Ruffnut grabs the back of his collar and yanks, ignoring his sudden choking sound.

“At least let me shut the monitor off,” he fumbles for the button just as a voice pipes up in the hallway.

“Grimmel!” There’s just enough light for him to see Ruffnut’s nervous expression before he clicks it off.

“If you’ll excuse me Ms. Moore,” the accented voice is lighter than usual, more alive through the door than it was across an interrogation room, even over hours of gory discussion, “I’m in a bit of a hurry. I’ve got a rather time sensitive clean-up on my plate at the moment.”

“Just a second, if you have it, I’m just about to show two new residents—lovely young couple—their place and they were asking about your hours.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to catch them another time, Ms. Moore,” Grisly’s too bright voice draws her name out as the handle to the office half turns, and Hiccup doesn’t think, he just grabs Ruffnut’s arm and pulls her under the desk with him. It won’t do much if he sits down to check e-mail, but it’s better than nothing.

“The Bensons, I think they’re really going to like it here, they’re just in my office—Hello?” Glasses’s voice dulls slightly like she’s in the destroyed office next door.

The opening line of ‘I Shot the Sheriff’ pours out of Hiccup’s phone and he swears, yanking it out of his pocket and declining Snotlout’s call as quickly as he can.

“You have your ringtone on?” Ruffnut hisses, “do you know what year it is?”

“It’s Snotlout, he thinks it’s funny,” Hiccup shuts his phone off entirely and waits, wincing at the sound of his own breathing.

“Ms. Moore,” Grisly says as he opens the door, his accent crackling with some of its usual chill electrified, “I’m afraid we’ll have to continue this conversation another time.” He steps into the office and shuts the door across any further attempts at conversation. He mumbles something in Russian that Hiccup is confident calling an insult by tone alone and turns on the light.

In the dark, Hiccup didn’t notice the small sink against the opposite wall, but the sound of the faucet and Grisly’s creepily happy humming as he starts to wash his hands gives Ruffnut a chance to whisper.

“What are we going to do?”

“I’ll distract him, you make a run for it?” He offers and Ruffnut rolls her eyes, too comfortable hunched under the desk mid-trespass.

“If anyone’s distracting him, it should be me.”

The sink turns off but Grisly keeps humming, turning slightly so that if Hiccup peeks just barely around the tangle of computer cords, he can see that Grisly is holding something. Wiping something down maybe, from the scrap of cloth he throws away before he sets whatever it is in a drawer that he locks with a key from the ring on his belt.

Then Grisly wipes his hands with another wipe from a Clorox can, like a germophobic Bond villain in a lair far more grandiose than the security office at a poorly built condo development.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” he hisses, double checking his cuff under his pant leg in case he has to run. Not that it’ll help much, not with catching Grisly suspiciously pleased with himself as he turns the sink back on and starts scrubbing his hands again.

“Follow my lead,” Ruffnut stands up from under the desk, leaning back against the printer and pressing its power button so that it lurches to life with a screech and a series of clicks. Grisly turns around, a flash of shock humanizing his features for a brief second as he stares at her, too stunned to check under the desk. “Hey Sailor,” Ruff greets in a pointedly husky voice, one hip cocked.

“How did you get in here?” Grisly stomps across the room and grabs Ruffnut by the arm, which only makes her grin wider.

“Does that matter?” She twirls the end of her hair in her free hand, pointing at the door with her chin as she bites her lip.

Hiccup takes the chance, sliding out from under the desk as quietly as he can and slipping around the corner, staying low like he anticipates a velociraptor in pursuit.

“What are you doing in my office?” Grisly sounds as addled as Hiccup has ever heard him and he freezes, trying to figure out how to get Ruffnut out along with him.

But with Snotlout suspended, Hiccup doesn’t know how he’d get away with trespassing, so he leaves that problem to five seconds from now Hiccup, sneaking a cautious arm up to the doorknob.

“Are you asking what we’re doing now or what I intend for us to do?” Ruffnut laughs, “because right now we’re just standing here and you’re kind of yelling at me, which could be hot if your breath didn’t stink so much. Wait, I think I have gum!”

Grisly yells, inarticulate in his frustration, and Hiccup opens the door just enough to slip through, popping to his feet and cushioning the sound as it closes behind him. He makes for the back door to avoid Ms. Moore’s office, swearing under his breath at his phone when it takes what feels like forever to power back on. Every second that passes without more than yelling from Grisly’s office feels more tense and more miraculous and by the time he’s outside, it feels like his head is going to explode with it.

“Come on, come on,” he whispers at the phone, trying not to give into the guilt that’s prodding him to run back inside. He can’t help Ruffnut if he’s caught too.

The back door to the building opens again and he freezes, looking around for something to hide behind but seeing nothing but an empty alley. He waits Grisly’s enraged, split glacier face to emerge but instead, it’s Ruffnut.

“You’re ok!” He grabs her hand and yanks her down the alley next to him, not pausing until they’re out on the street among a few straggling commuters. “How’d you get out of there?”

“Irritated him, mostly,” she shrugs, obviously proud of herself, “I figured he wouldn’t think anyone was trespassing for information if he thought a crazy stalker—in this case me—was trespassing to make a move on him.”

“That’s—that’s actually kind of smart.” Hiccup realizes he’s talking way too loud and starts walking, head ducked down like he learned ages ago for exiting alleyways incognito, “I don’t know why it worked, but it did, and that’s what matters.”

“Are you going to get your phone?” Ruffnut asks and only then does Hiccup realize it’s vibrating.

“Shit, yeah,” he stops and frowns at the screen. Berk United Hospital. He doesn’t think he owes the hospital anything, Snotlout’s insurance is pretty good, so he usually keeps up on those bills. “Hello?”

“Hi, I’m calling from the Berk United Trauma Ward, can I speak to Hiccup Haddock please?”

“Y-yeah,” he stutters, tongue suddenly too big for his mouth, “you are, I mean I’m him. What’s going on?”

“You’re listed as Snotlout Jorgenson’s emergency contact,” the voice on the other end dips, somber like nurses get when the news isn’t good, “he’s just been brought in.”

“Is he ok?” Hiccup asks when the voice doesn’t automatically explain, dizzy as he leans back against the nearest wall.

“What’s wrong?” Ruffnut mouths and Hiccup shakes his head.

“Are you able to come to the hospital now?” The voice asks gently, “it’s urgent.”

“Yeah, I—on my way.”

Hiccup knows hospital calls. He knows how nurses sound when they’re underpaid and overworked, how they sound the first time they call about a bill and the fifth. He knows appointment calls and rescheduling calls, because over the years he’s had hundreds.

He’s only had one urgent call and he knows it better than the rest. He knows it like he knows blood on pavement and the way even his dad looked smaller on a gurney, surrounded by machines that were still clicking off to rest before their next, hopefully more successful, use.

Ruffnut must get him a ride because he doesn’t do anything, he barely feels himself walking and then he’s standing in front of the check-in desk at the emergency room, his own hands unrecognizably pale and waxy on the counter. The nurse looks up and her eyes widen, and Hiccup realizes he’s shaking like he’s the patient. That snaps him out of it enough, because he doesn’t want anyone focusing on him right now, not when it could matter.

Unless it doesn’t anymore.

Unless that was the last time Snotlout would ever call him and he declined it, because he was doing something stupid, because he wasn’t where he should have been. Again.  

Urgent calls don’t end well in his experience. Urgent calls end with his dad’s blood-stained wallet in a plastic basket, staring down at a beardless picture on a drivers’ license and wondering if he ever knew the man at all.

“Can I help you, sir?” The nurse behind the desk asks and he shrugs.

“I’m not really sure,” he swallows hard. He has to ask the yes or no question that’s wedged in his throat like it’s trying to shelter him from the answer by cutting off oxygen. One answer is the exact opposite of helping.

“Do you need to sit down?” She stands up, reaching out like she thinks she’s going to have to catch him and he exhales slowly.

“I just got a call about Snotlout Jorgenson?” He asks slowly, each word taking up its allotted measure of breath and leaving him with an empty chest that’s still not big enough for his pounding heart.

“I’ll look him up.” The keyboard clicks are deafening, each tap removing a barrier between Hiccup and the truth he doesn’t think he wants yet.

He thinks of the apartment and how empty it was before Snotlout moved in. That bedroom full of his dad’s things he didn’t want to look at, in case they belonged to a stranger. He remembers how it felt like the sound of his chewing echoed off of the empty walls, like he was living in a museum that regarded him as an impermanent exhibit, moving around hallways until he realized he didn’t belong.

“The Trauma Unit desk is on the second floor, the elevator is just down the hallway to your right.” The nurse’s face is urgent now, formal in that way doctors are when they have bad news they need to be inhumanly calm about.

“Yes or no?” Hiccup asks, hands shaking again as he stands away from the desk and runs his hand through his hair. “Do you know and just can’t tell me?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the words squeeze his heart in a vice that lets go too quickly when the sentence continues, “you’ll have to talk to someone at the desk upstairs.”

“Ok,” he walks towards the elevator before he keeps talking, because the urge to remind the nurse that his dad was on the first floor is overwhelming. His dad was on the first floor in a room near the back with a window looking out on where the cannery used to be before someone tore it down and built a motel. If they’re going to make an urgent call, they should do it right.

Hiccup follows the signs towards trauma, vaguely aware that his quest is a little ironic as his mind flicks again and again through what a day would be like without Snotlout. Another room full of things he can’t look at, this time because he knows too well who they’ll wish he was instead. He was with Snotlout when he got his driver’s license. He grew out that stupid moustache for it. He had the moustache in his academy graduation photo too, like polyester lint from his brand-new uniform stuck to his lip.

“Hiccup?”

Hearing his name makes him realize that he’s frozen again, ten feet back from the desk he’s been looking for, it’s helpful little sign reading ‘trauma’ like a lemonade stand banner advertising some neighborhood kid’s wares. The tile between his feet and the rubberized rug in front of the desk stretch and warp in his brain and he distracts himself, looking for whoever talked to him.

Astrid is handcuffed to a chair in the waiting room, her face pale and sallow and at odds with her determined expression. And he doesn’t have room to wonder why she’s here or why she’s cuffed, because the tiles between where he’s standing and her chair shrink, gravity shifting and pulling him towards her. He flops into the chair next to her, twice as heavy and half as graceful as usual as he throws his arms around her shoulders and buries his face in her neck.

“Hey,” she says like he’s a dog shaking in a thunderstorm, uncuffed hand rubbing his back, “did the doctor call you? I left my phone at my place so I couldn’t call—”

“Is he…yes or no?” He swallows hard and pulls back from the hug just enough to see her eyes, tensing at the sudden wave of trust that smacks him. She’ll tell him the truth, even if it’s hard, even if it doesn’t help, and for a second, he wishes he could let go of her rather than hear it, but he crossed that bridge a long time ago.

The second he handed her his Admiral Haddock book, he resigned himself to her most honest assessment, he just didn’t know it would matter so much.

“I don’t think it’s that simple,” she shakes her head, “he’s in surgery. I haven’t heard anything because Eretson cuffed me to this fucking chair.”

“He’s still in surgery,” Hiccup repeats to affirm it, waiting for her to say it’s a joke and trusting her too much for that at the same time. “It’s urgent but he’s still in surgery?”

“He was shot twice, Hiccup,” her voice is matter of fact but her hand on his arm is gentle, “his heart stopped on the way over, apparently—”

“So he is dead?” He shudders, “he’s an organ donor, he always said someone would be really lucky to get his organ someday—”

“Hey,” Astrid cups his chin, thumb pressed to his lips to shut him up, “he’s in surgery, that’s all I know.”

“That doesn’t help,” his laugh is fragile and he lets go of her to rub his hands over his face, elbows on his knees. “When they said it was urgent I expected an answer, that’s not an answer.”

“It’s not,” she agrees, yanking futilely at her handcuff a couple of times before stretching her other hand over to rest it on his back. “Not yet, anyway.”

[intothestarkerverse]

Time of Our Lives (Part Three)

Based on a prompt from @geekymarvel  

Peter is tasked with an important mission that requires him to go back in time.   Finding himself at a gala for Stark industries in the 1990’s, he comes face to face with a young and incorrigible Tony Stark who considers Peter’s attempts to deny his advances a challenge.  Now, dogged by a horny young CEO who won’t take no for an answer, Peter’s task has become much more difficult….

(STORY CONTAINS ENDGAME SPOILERS)

Read on AO3

“Get on your radio. I want S.H.I.E.L.D. I want the F.B.I. I want the N.S.A. I want everyone with a god damn badge and an acronym for a name here in ten minutes.” When there was no immediate response from Happy, Tony turned to take in the other man’s embarrassed expression, barely losing a step of his meaningful stride. “Tell me you have your radio.”

“I left it in the security office.”

“Of course you did.” Tony skidded to a stop in front of the elevator, reaching for his security badge for executive override and realizing with an angry growl that he didn’t have it. The kid did. “Fine, go back to the security office and call in the cavalry then.”

“I can’t let you go down there alone, Sir, it could be dangerous.”

“See, I thought I was the boss here. My name and not yours on the building, the paychecks…Happy Industries sounds like a brothel or a pizza parlor with an animatronic rat, you know? Is this a whore house or a pizza arcade, Happy? No. Then just do what I say or hit the unemployment line in the morning, I honestly don’t care which you choose.” He turned his back to thesecurity guard and began mashing the down arrow on the elevator again and again and again as if that would make it arrive faster. When it still hadn’t arrived after several seconds, he begrudgingly pushed his way through the door to the emergency stairwell somewhat placated that Happy was not behind him and had done as instructed and gone back to get the authorities. Tony honestly wasn’t worried about the kid hurting him. If Peter Parker wanted him dead, he would have killed him when they were alone in the Men’s Room. Nah, this kid was out for something other than blood...it was just a real damn shame it wasn’t sex.

By the time he reached the incinerator in the basement Tony was a little breathless. The door providing access to the inside of the incinerator for removal of ash and debris was open and there was the sound of movement echoing from within the large metal room. “All right, Kid, you’ve got at best fifteen minutes before this building is swarming with federal agents. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll run…” Tony’s words died on his lips as he stepped into the open doorway and several things became apparent at once.

That was not the kid in the incinerator.

It was, in fact, three individuals dressed in black who were collecting a myriad of items from the incinerator that Tony hadn’t recalled ordering destroyed. Two of them did not even look up from their work, but the third individual swung his considerably impressive firearm in Tony’s direction and let off several rounds of gunfire before Tony’s words had even stopped echoing in the room.

—

There were very few times in Peter Parker’s life when his proclivity for mathematics and the physical sciences was a hindrance. This was one of those few times. As he slowly climbed down the never-ending shaft of the incinerator on finger tips and toes, his brain was busy calculating the height of the shaft, how much time it would take him to fall down it, how much damage he would sustain from the fall, and any number of worse doomsday scenarios.

Truth was, he knew he had nothing to worry about. He had pretty good stamina and his muscles weren’t even beginning to sting yet. In the grand scheme of things, this should be a piece of cake…but Peter had a little bit of trouble with very confined spaces ever since Vulture dropped a building on him. It wasn’t a full-fledged phobia. He certainly tried to avoid very tight places if he could help it, though, and this incinerator shaft was about as tight as they came. If he was any larger, he probably wouldn’t have been able to fit inside it. As it was, there was little more than a couple of inches to either side of his shoulders and his knees and ass were scraping the other sides as he crawled down. It was also exceptionally dark and quiet. All he could hear was the steady rhythm of his own heartbeat and the sound of his somewhat frenzied breathing against the mask of his ironspider suit. He really missed Karen. Being without the AI didn’t make the suit useless, it was still every bit as intuitive as it had ever been…but Karen was a point of comfort that he could have used as he convinced himself that the tiny incinerator shaft was no big deal at all.

Spidey sense came first, as it was always want to do. The familiar tingling at the base of his skull that flared quickly enough to a full fledged stabbing pain. Peter had learned over the years to take his Spidey sense with a grain of salt. Sometimes it had a habit of alerting him to dangers that were rather mundane and not at all life threatening. His reaction to the warning was more dependent upon the circumstances. In a fight, he was much more likely to duck, expecting an oncoming projectile, than he was in the middle of Calculus. Sometimes, for the sake of secret identities, it was important to let the spitball Flash had lobbed at his head hit him between the eyes. Didn’t mean he had to like it, though.

This time, Peter paid attention to his biological warning system, slowing down and taking the last few yards of decent much more carefully than the first hundred or so. He didn’t jump out of the shaft as he might have done without the warning, instead angling himself to cling to the roof of the incinerator as he poured his body out of the hole and was finally able to take stock of the situation.

Three men.

All in black. They were loading a reinforced metal crate with objects from the incinerator. One of which, he saw with dismay, was the one he had been sent to recover. This complicated matters much more than he cared to admit. Were these people supposed to steal this stuff? Could he afford to stop them completely and take the machine, or should he just try to get the machine away from them and try to avoid affecting the time stream even more than he already had? Why hadn’t Tony or the stones known about this in the first place? What was he going to do?

It was Tony’s voice that pulled him out of the worried maelstrom of his own thoughts.

Oh no.

Oh God.

Peter saw the one with the gun turn towards the doorway and his head exploded with a thousand warnings.

He absolutely could not let Tony Stark die.

The world seemed to slow down, seconds taking minutes as they passed. Spider-Man aimed for the barrel of the gun, firing a quick burst of webbing and using all of his strength to pull the gun up so that as it fired, the rounds skittered above Tony’s head and out into the basement where he hoped they would do no harm.

He left the ceiling in a graceful leap, hands colliding with the shooter’s shoulders as he pushed him to the ground and delivered a forceful right hook to the man’s masked face. Peter was used to pulling his punches. He was far too strong to hit an average person with the full brunt of his power. Not if he didn’t want to knock someone’s head off, anyway. This time, perhaps, he didn’t hold back quite enough. The guy wasn’t dead. He’d never forgive himself if he killed an actual person, but he was adequately stunned…maybe even concussed.

One down.

Two to go.

—

Tony Stark’s life did not flash before his eyes. He was more than a little grateful for that, because truthfully he had done very little worth reliving at that juncture. His only thought, in fact, as he watched the sparks fly from the end of the gun as the bullets fired, was that he was going to die without ever taking that sweet piece of thieving ass to bed. And that was a shame.

Then the bullets were whizzing overhead and he was enraptured, watching that sweet piece of thieving ass saving his damn life. If he had thought the kid was attractive before, he was gone for the boy now. Watching him fight was the best possible kind of foreplay and Tony could even forgive his little stunt in the bathroom in favor of what he was seeing now.

Peter Parker was an artist. There was a grace and a fluidity to his movements that reminded Tony of a dancer or a gymnast as he sprang and flipped and flew around the incinerator. He was flexible. Oh, was he flexible. Watching the way his body could twist and bend had Tony lost in all kinds of lascivious thoughts, imagining all of the new, exciting sexual adventures he could have with a beautiful boy who could move like that.

He was also a smart ass. Every punch and kick, every time he fired that fluid from his wrists and jerked one of the men across the room, it was always accompanied by some sarcastic remark or witty banter that had Tony smiling despite himself. Dammit. He had been determined to be angry at the kid, angry enough to deny him sex and see him carted off to a S.H.I.E.L.D. prison, but he could already feel that resolve crumbling. Beautiful boys with bodies as skilled at movement as his and a tongue as sharp were so hard to come by. No, so very, very hard to find and so very, very easy to cum by.

As Peter sent one of the men flying into the other and both crumpled into piles of shredded and discarded paperwork, he came to light directly in front of Tony. “Mr. Stark, could you…I don’t know, maybe not stand there in the open like a sitting duck? I really can’t be responsible for you dying again and I can’t stop these guys and protect you too…”

Again? “Protect me?” Tony was offended to the depths of his soul. “I do not need to be protected, Peter.”

The eyes of the suit widened somewhat, obviously surprised to hear Tony use his real name. Then, with a sigh, the mask over his head melted away and he addressed Tony face to face. “You do actually. You really do. And you can’t die, so…I’m really, really sorry about this…”

Before Tony knew what was happening, the kid had fired two quick shots of webbing, binding first his ankles and then his arms to his sides. With a somewhat gentle kick, he tipped the man over and sent him rolling away from the entrance.

—

Peter really shouldn’t have been surprised that Tony had known who he was. Tony always knew who he was, it seemed. In the future, in the past. He was just never going to be able to maintain a secret identity with Tony Stark. The man was destined to always know Peter’s deepest and darkest secrets…except for the one he’d kept closely guarded for far too long. That secret he had never intended to allow to see the light of day, but one devilishly sexy younger version of his mentor was teasing him with so many possibilities that he feared his secret desires were not secret anymore. If he only had more time…He thought he saw something, a dark look in Tony’s eyes a moment before the man fell and rolled out of the doorway. Clearly, Peter was now not the only one who’d be having fantasies about tying Tony up with webbing and doing dirty, dirty things. He felt his cheeks blush a moment before his Spidey Sense flared again and he dived before a spray of gunfire erupted behind him.

“Okay, guys, seriously…enough is enough.” Peter bounced up again, annoyed to see that the third man was not as incapacitated as he had previously thought. “I’m not letting you leave with that stuff, and in case you missed what the man said before you so rudely tried to kill him…the cops are on the way.”

“Yes, they are.”

The voice had come from behind Peter, not in front of him, and slowly the boy turned to face a new arrival. This man was not dressed in black but in an expensive tuxedo. He’d been one of the guests, then. Probably the one who’d let these guys into the incinerator in the first place. It was not the man that had Peter frozen in fear, though, but what the man was holding.

Tony was still bound, and probably would be for another hour without Peter’s solvent to dissolve the webbing. Unfortunately, this meant he was not putting up much of a fight to the man who now had a gun pressed against his head. “You’re going to let us out of here, all of us, with the contraband…or Tony Stark is going to leave here in a body bag.”

Peter held up his hands, palms splayed, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “Hey, man, you don’t want to hurt him, do you? I mean, you’ve gone to this much trouble to steal his stuff…if he’s dead, how’s he goin’ to invent something new for you to steal?”

“How indeed.” The man’s gaze moved to the disguised men who were once again scrambling to fill the crate as quickly as they could. “Oh, just leave the rest. We don’t have time. We’ll have to be content with what we’ve got. Pack up the crate, we’re leaving.”

Peter watched as the men lifted the heavy crate and began carrying it out. He dropped his hands to his side as the man’s attention was on the crate for a split second, barely the blink of an eye, firing off a quick tracker that embedded in the seaming of the crate.

When the crate and the men were out of the incinerator, Peter was preparing to launch an offensive and keep that guy from putting a bullet in Tony’s brain. He needn’t have worried, though. Just as Peter was rushing forward for the attack, he felt a heavy object collide with him and send him to the ground with an indelicate grunt. Then, he heard the sound of the door slamming shut and felt his stomach sink.

Oh no.

He pushed himself up, locking gazes with Tony who had been summarily thrown into the room at him. “Oh shit.” Peter’s gaze moved from the man to the room around them as he heard machinery whirring to life. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

The incinerator was coming on.

They were going to burn the two of them alive.

Peter reached for Tony, the solvent that dissolved the webbing loosening the bonds on the other man's arms and legs.

“This whole keeping me safe thing…you’re really terrible at it, kid.”

“We don’t have time for your sarcasm.” Peter was searching the room, desperate for some way out. The chute was too small for the both of them…probably too small for Tony. His shoulders were much broader than Peter’s, an attribute that Peter had always found attractive. The chimney was likely too tall, too thin, and with too few purchases for webbing. Not to mention the fact that fire and hot air from the incinerator were going to go up that chimney faster than he could climb with a passenger. He couldn’t stop the flame, not without literally ripping the incinerator apart. That left him with only one option…

His mental calculations were interrupted by the feeling of an arm around his waist pulling him in close and then kissing him again. God, even the fire of the incinerator wasn’t going to be able compete with this heat. Peter whimpered but tried to push himself away. “If I’m going to die, I’m going to go out on my terms.” Tony’s voice rasped against his lips and Peter couldn’t help but laugh.

“Rain check. On the kissing, not the dying.” He succeeded in pushing himself away and flipped upward, watching dubiously as the fire began to spew from several pipes along the bottom of the room. Tony was backing towards the middle of the room, as far from the fire as he could get, as Peter anchored webbing a little into the shaft from which he’d entered and backed up to a far corner of the room, turning around to brace his arms, back, and legs against the ceiling.

Tony followed his gaze to the door. “You realize that’s sealed shut. It would take a hell of a lot of pressure to open it from the inside.”

“2 tons, give or take, depending on where I hit it. Already did the math. Should be easy.” Something in Tony’s eyes made Peter smirk. Had he just licked his lips like he was looking at a piece of chocolate cake…while he was looking at Peter? Oh this was bad, this was very, very bad…but all the more reason to live.

He used every ounce of strength he could muster, pushing off of the ceiling and hurtling towards the door. A moment before his feet struck it, he watched in abject horror as it swung open of it’s own accord and he had to try to slow himself down before he barreled right into young Happy Hogan. Blindly shooting a stream of webbing, it struck something overhead and he pulled himself sharply to the right, swinging in an arc and hitting the nearby broiler hard enough to leave what Peter would later swear was a vaguely human imprint. Groaning, he collapsed onto his back on the floor and watched from his new vantage point as Tony emerged from the incinerator looking none the worse for wear.

“Good job, Happy. You deserve a promotion. Personal security sound good to you? You can keep me safe, get a pay raise, show the kid how you save someone’s life the right way.” Tony crossed the basement, standing over Peter with his arms crossed over his chest. “The cops here yet, Happy?”

“Coming down any minute, Sir.”

Peter was up in a moment, ignoring the aches from his collision with the building’s heating system. “I’m begging you, Mr. Stark, please don’t tell S.H.I.E.L.D or the police what happened. They can’t know I’m here, no one else can know I’m here…or what they took or anything else. Please…Please, Mr. Stark…”

“I do love to see you beg, Beautiful, but why should I? You stole from me. You almost got me barbecued…and you’ve already done irreparable harm to the time stream, anyway.”

Peter stopped in mid sentence, his whole body completely rigid at Tony’s reprimand. Only his eyes moved as they widened considerably at the implications of the statement. “Wuh…How…What…I’m not…”

Tony stared back, his mouth twisted into a frown, brows raised. “Yeah, you did and you are. So, if you want me to keep you out of prison…you have a very small window of time in which to tell me why a future version of myself chose to send you back in time, what you needed in that incinerator, and why. Spill it, and don’t waste time on that adorable stutter.”

[twitchesandstitches]

Karkat’s New Life

Commission of an AU where Terezi is the heiress and gobbles up the wicked, and is romance-y with Karkat!

-----

The tale of the epic romance of the second coming of the Sufferer and the empress to overthrow the draconic tyrant who had doomed Alternia, was embellished in the tales.

Great loves, and stern rulership, began like this: ‘oh hey, something shiny!’

And so it began.

----

Karkat Vantas had been stoically quiet and doing his best not to panic throughout the entire trip from his hive, and internally he was freaking out.

Years, he had been waiting for this. Grimly expecting that sooner or later, the hemospectrum would come down on him, and that would be that. Even the whole time he had been on a wagon and then the submarine taking him to the bottom of the sea, he had bundled himself up in his sweater, daring the two guards to say something, or taunt him.

Let him show a bit of pre-culling spite; let him die with that, at least.

But they hadn’t said a word to him; not the huge and burly blueblood with a broken horn, not the absolutely massive and curvy purpleblood with horns like wavy step ladders. They didn’t seem particularly threatening. No taunts, no vicious little cuts where it wouldn’t show, just politely escorted him into a massive undersea palace that had apparently been built into the biggest dragon skull he’d ever seen.

‘Would you please come with us?’ they had been so polite when they had come to his door. That was not how a culling went; no drones, no mayhem, just a very polite, if quiet trip.

Karkat looked around, trying not to annoy the two giant guards beside him. He fidgeted and restained the urge to flee, fearing that this would mean instant death. He glanced aside at his lusus, and saw him still lounging in the submarine, clicking contentedly.

“Useless little grump flick,” Karkat grumbled.

“Keep goin’, little one,” the purpleblood rumbled, with just a hint of chucklevoodoos there. It was difficult to see her face past those humongous rumblespheres, but she wasn’t painted like a mirthful cultist; she wore red paint, emphasizing her eyes so that she looked a bit like a dragon.

Red, Karkat noticed, was something of a theme in this palace. It sprang up in unexpected color palettes, typically around whorls carved into bony pillars that…

That…

Looked just like his own sign. He paled. Where they going to kill him and use his blood to paint up the place?

Come to think of it. Deep beneath the sea? A dragon’s skull? And that symbol, that many whispered the mad heiress was so enamored of?

Oh no. He was in the lair of the Heretic Heiress.

They brought him into a huge, resplendent chamber that was mostly filled with random beds, small piles of what looked like obscure tabletop RPG handbooks to him, mountains of dice, and a beanbag chair. Sitting upon it was a sea dweller, and recognizing her, Karkat’s stomach did a funny twist. “Your Draconic Benevolence,” said the blueblood gravely. “Your guest is here.”

The beanbag turned around with some effort. Facing them now was a startlingly short troll girl, perhaps half a sweep older than Karkat but not much more. Her angled horns were the longest he’d ever seen, the facial fins of her caste sticking out like quills, and her wide mouth was a massive of grotesque fangs. Short as she was, though, she was thick; a sports bra in royal colors stood out against rumblespheres bigger than Karkat’s head, her waist was broad and her plump belly ripened by many rich meals, and from the sheer wideness of her hips, her backside was clearly massive. That all she wore was a sports bra, a swimsuit bottom and a skirt tied over her wide hips was a royal affectation.

Terezi Peixes. The heretic heiress conquering Alternia, and presumptive conqueror of the empire if she lived long enough. The most terrifying troll in existence.

She stood up and moved over to him, not so much walking as using a mobile swagger. “Maenad, Zahhak! You can go. I think we’ll do fine.” She grinned widely, putting a webbed hand on his shoulder and playfully pushing him into the bean bag. The guards left, to do guard-y things.

She sat down next to him, inexplicably smug. Her hip brushed against his body and he instinctively blushed.

She turned, facing him, and her claws patted his arm in a friendly way. He looked into her eyes, and realized two things. She couldn’t have been an inch taller than him, and he was short; fuchsia girls took a long time to hit the leviathan size of the empress, it seemed. And two, her eyes with red. The membrane that should have protected her eyes had sealed over them, clouded by some terrible injury. She was blind.

“Name’s Terezi,” she said nonchalantly. “And you, my loyal subject-” she chuckled. “Smell cute.”

He gaped.

“Also, you are Karkat Vantas.”

He wouldn’t be him without a contrarian impulse. “You can’t prove that!”

She tugged at a tag in his sweater. “It’s got Karkat on this tag here.”

“Lies and vaudeville! It’s a gremlin, hiding false names on innocent clothing to lure me to a culling.”

The Heiress laughed at that. “A culling!? You think this is a culling? Oh man, what did those meatheads tell you this was ,huh?”

“They… didn’t say much?”

“Guppy, I outlawed culling when I took over!”

“...Huh?”

She grinned and patted her belly mysteriously. “Anyone who tried to keep up those bad old ways, uh, got what was coming to ‘em.” She leaned in. “I just wanna talk.”

She reached into her very ample cleavage and pulled out a little pendant, and she showed it to him. Dangling from it, carved of fine coral, was the sign of the Shackles. His own sign, a perfect mirror to the one on his shirt.

Her claws touched hiss shirt, his chest. She was so cold, that it was electrifying, and she was so close to him…

She pulled back, and smelled embarrassed. “Your blood is something of an interest of mine.” She grinned. “Wanted to have a chat with someone who knew how bad things can really get up there. An expert opinion.”

Karkat glanced again at her pendant. Don’t stare at her cleavage, DON’T. “That’s all?”

“Yeah. But maybe, you know. If you wanted to know about what that blood means…?” she left the unspoken invitation dangle. “And I’ll keep you hidden from the empress’ goons. The ones still loyal.” She held a hand out. “I swear.”

Uncertainly, wondering why she bothered asking, he shook her hand. “Okay.”

She sniffed him. “Been a long time,” she said carefully. “Since I had anyone in here full time except me.” Her hand lingered on him, not quite squeezing, but close…

A voice coughed. Both of them jumped.

Standing in the back was a… a… Karkat didn’t know what it was. An alien? Smaller than a troll, dark skinned but just as curvy, with features like a woofbeast that felt oddly out of place on the hominid frame. She bowed, her body crackled with green flame and cybernetic implants. A similar alien, much smaller and with odd avian traits, waved mildly. “Sup, ya empress. Me and Jade rounded up that guy who was trying to sell out your guest here to the loyalists.”

“Thanks, Dave, Jade,” the Heiress said. She aimed her face with odd intensity at the chained troll between them; a massive purpleblood, his face streaked in paint. How had two aliens managed to contain THAT?

The two aliens left. Karkat cleared his throat, and the Heiress interrupted. “Couple of friends I met when I was doing some space travels a while back. Nice planet. Conquered by the empress and those guys got experimented on; hoping to free their planet once I get my war on.” She smirked. “Would just love for you to see there. It has a pleasing symmetry.”

Karkat frowned as she stood up, wondering what that meant.

Slowly the Heiress approached the prisoner, and he began to wail. “No, no no, get away from me, get away you freak!”

She tugged on his chains, forcing him head to his knees, head down so that his eyes were level with hers. “You serve a corrupt authority, and your sentence is execution. How shall you plead?”

“I am a loyal servant, you sick traitor!” he snarled. “I’ll not allow any of the Sufferer’s blood to burn the empire-”

She put a finger to his mouth. The touch was soft, but he flinched in sudden, overwhelming terror. “It deserves to burn,” the Heiress said evenly. “Understand that you will make me stronger, and with your aid, I will fix this empire, and save everyone. You will, in some way, redeem our blood.”

“No, no no!” He strained against his, roaring and trying to bust his way free as she leaned forward, her mouth wide, wider than trollishly possible-

What happened next, as she swallowed him whole in a single gulp, was too quick to accurately parse, and Karkat needed a long time to let it register. But this was the technical process.

The Heiress’ mouth opened wide, wider, impossibly wide, seemingly bigger than she was, and a massive tongue curled around the prisoner. With impossible strength that could break a ship in half with one finger, she grabbed his face and pushed his head into her mouth. Incredibly flexible and strong throat muscles gripped on him, and she swallowed.

His horns, big as they were, slipped down without a problem. His head, bigger than her torso, descended as smoothly as a marble down a cliffside, briefly visible through her skin. She slurped up his hair like noodles, tilted his head up as her gulp took in his massive shoulders, those body-breaking biceps.

Down her throat it all went, and into her belly.

His muscular torso, his strong-fat gut, his huge hips. She could have sat in his lap, he was that much bigger than her.

Her belly ballooned as she swallowed him down, several tons and nearly eighteen feet of subjugglator beef slipping down into her digestion sac. She rose up on it as his legs and feet vanished into her body, and it became clear why her belly was exposed; easy access as she flopped onto it, rising upwards and jiggling faintly.

But, to Karkat, it looked like one moment he was there; the next, the Heiress rested on a water matter of a gut, a masculine body still faintly visible in her belly.

She made a small burp. “Whoof. Hope the chucklevoodoo boost doesn’t screw with my psionics any,” she muttered to herself. There was a small noise as Karkat stood up, more baffled than afraid, and she turned to stare at his direction. “Oh. Oh shit, you weren’t supposed to see that yet! I mean…”

Karkat thought to run… and stopped.

He gulped. “Is that… painful? You need help?”

She froze up… and smiled. “Little company would be nice. I’m gonna eat the entire empire if that’s what it takes to stop it. But a little company is nice.”

He walked up and sat beside her. Her mammoth belly felt as big as a room from his old hive, and he cautiously touched it. She giggled and her belly sloshed. “Hee. Tickles.”

“Yeah. I can do that.”

She smirked at him, with a hint of something genuine and lonely there. “Call me Terezi, Mr Vantas.”

“...Hey, if there’s no formality here, call me Karkat?”

“...Nah. I’mma call you something stupid instead.”

“PLEASE DON’T.”

She stuck her tongue out.

And that, as they say, is the beginning of a beautiful romance.

They stuck more fancy sweet stuff in the epic poems, though.

[cleverbroadwayurl]

She Used to Be Mine (Jeremy Heere x Reader Pt 19)

Song: She Used to Be Mine from Waitress 

Need to Catch Up? tumblr has now officially takes things out of the tags that have lists. The link to every part and my masterlist is in my description for easy access! 

A/N: Oh my god I finally posted! I went on vacation and had so many exams the weeks before, and I had so much other work, so I’m sorry that this is so delayed! I should be back to regularly posting soon after next weekend (I have another event coming up)! 

Taglist: @retrogarden @be-more-heidi-hansen @catatonic-kuragin @scarsonthecuffsofyourjeans @bluhimaweirdo @stargirl-murphy 

Trigger Warnings: Mentions of an abusive boyfriend, mentions of character death, mentions of abuse, mentions of injuries, mentions of math, sad Jeremy, IF I MISSED ANYTHING LET ME KNOW

He watches you walk away, off into the distance before realizing how creepy that probably is. Jeremy grabs his keys from his pocket, phone still situated where it had been before. He walks carefully back to his car, hoping, wishing, that this is the last date you’ll ever be on with your boyfriend.

Jeremy jammed his key into the lock, exhaustion seeping into his regular routine, the typical for Thursday afternoons after an hour and a half math recitation. His brain is a mess of grey matter, he can feel the dullness inside of his eyes, paler than usual skin, even though his day consisted mostly of sitting, he still felt the tiredness through his legs. His backpack weighed down on his shoulders more than it normally did as he opened the door and threw his keys back into his jean pocket. He opened the door to his and Michael’s dorm, his eyes scanning over the posters that had been hung there when the two had moved in, the two carpooling in Michael’s PT Cruiser while their parents drove themselves and the boy’s stuff in their separate cars.

He throws his backpack onto the left side of the room, trash only slightly littering his side—he didn’t have time to clean up before his Calculus I exam that day. Darkness enveloped him as you continued to step through his side of the large dorm room, Michael’s side untouched from this morning. His brain had instead been skimming over the extremely long related rates and optimization problems. As much as they logically made sense, the calculation of them always weighed him down, each answer ending up being some fraction or decimal he didn’t particularly appreciate. His brain went over the process once again, constantly refreshing and double checking his answer, worried that he’d made a minor error and messed the entire thing up. He toes off his shoes, leaving them askew for the moment—he’d clean them up and put them away later. His brain was too tired for any real coherent interaction for a while.

His eyes scan the room, stopping for a second on the TV and switch against the wall that perfectly split the room into 2. Of course, a gaming console was how the two thought it would be best to divide the room. Jeremy had been right at Red Robin all those months ago: the bean bags wouldn’t fit in here. As Jeremy turns to sit onto his bed, eyes scanning the white walls that consume him, his eyes fall onto the postcards, the posters, the notes that had been sent to him. Of course, almost monthly, Christine would send him a friendship letter, an update about how magical college was and all the friends she was making. She’d updated him a few times, telling him that she decided to go to counselling because the stress was too much sometimes, and he had never been prouder of her. His eyes continue circling around the room, taking note of the blue sweater that hung near his bed in case he got cold in the middle of the night or right before getting out of bed.

Jeremy swings his feet around and lays down on the bed, a little bummed that Michael isn’t there so he can vent to him about his answer that was a fraction his professor said it wouldn’t be a fraction but it was. So, laying down and taking in the glow in the dark stars that he’d transported from home and stuck onto his ceiling at school would have to do. Another 15 minutes or so pass, and Jeremy is still going over each pencil mark, each moment of erasing over and over again. It isn’t until he gets the same answer 4 or 5 times in his mind that he gives it a rest, deciding that it would be healthier to focus on something else for a little bit. The exam is over, 2 out of 4 done. With no other classes for the rest of the day, Jeremy also takes a second before deciding that homework could wait until his brain was more coherent that it currently was. That, and the only class he had the next day was calculus yet again. The only logical thing his brain can come up with is to watch something on Netflix while curled up under the covers until Michael gets back from his classes.

As Jeremy gets up and grabs his laptop, his phone vibrates. There’s a text from one of his newer friends on it, asking him how he thought the exam went. He supposed that the text was a good thing. He has friends—he was making friends, too. It wasn’t hard to once he’d kind of broken out of his shell and got more comfortable with himself. And that was of course after Jeremy realized that most of his peers felt the same things he did ever so often. Of course, he left out the part about the weird super computer that tried to take over the school; he assumed that wasn’t a universal experience.

But Jeremy ignored the text for the minute. His brain wasn’t ready to comprehend everything in a healthy way yet. He knew that he was going to obsess over that one problem up until the minute that the grade would be entered into Blackboard, which could be hours, days, even sometimes weeks. He sets his laptop onto his bed before crawling back into it, fingers gliding over the mousepad, searching for the one app and closing a certain web browser. He finds it easily, and the app launches. Two fingers glide over the mousepad once again, scrolling down and eyes skimming for something mindless, something that could easily take his mind off of the events of the day but not too mentally challenging. His eyes hit “Keep Watching” and he stops, looking into the subheading.

Finally, he feels okay enough to reply to the text.

Jeremy: I don’t even know, I got a fraction for the related rates thing. Didn’t she say that we were going to get a nicely worked out problem?

He sends the text before locking his phone and putting it on “Do Not Disturb” so that he couldn’t be distracted by the outside world for a little bit. His eyes go back to the Keep Watching subheading and the content in it when he freezes. Right there, in plain print, easy text, is the piece of media you and Jeremy had watched together all those months ago.

Fuck, he remembers that night instantly, his mind rewinding to you with that bright orange cup, head against his chest, eyes fluttered shut, calmness finally flowing in and out of you. It was the most relaxed he’d ever seen you. He knew that it probably wasn’t a wonderful slumber, given your entire situation that affected your entire life to the point that you couldn’t even keep it together, strong as you were. He can remember the way his stars glowed, the way his sweater draped around you and somewhat onto him. He can remember the way you’d shifted right before he’d fallen asleep, almost snuggling into him more than before, hands calmly gripping his body, reaching out for him like he was the only thing in the world that mattered to you.

With a shake of his head, Jeremy is brought back. It’s 3:43 on a Thursday, months after the event, you’re probably hundreds of miles away. His heart hurts inside of his chest, bad enough that he feels like with to sharp of an exhale, it would come tumbling from his lips. He has no idea what happened with you. He has no idea if you’re okay, no idea if you’d managed to get free, managed to get rid of the stupid, what his British Literature professor called, Separate Sphere ideology, the Angel of the Household falling into freedom. His brain replays the moments in the gazebo, the leaves clapping with gusto as the breeze passes through, the way you smiled at him, moments where he was able to actually help you instead of just guessing and praying that things were okay. The way you told him that you got lost in time when talking to him. The way your lips curled into a smile, the genuine laugh, the looks of desperation almost peering into freedom. They were things he couldn’t forget, things that stuck on his mind for hours at a time.

At least this was only a basic remembering, no sensory details completely throwing him for a loop, causing his stomach to work in tandem with his mind. Seeing you in social media posts made the memories worse, they stung with each second they passed through his mind as his limbs would tingle, hands shaking and gripping, waiting for the memories to pass. As much as he wanted to admit that he was okay with not knowing about you, letting you go, he wasn’t. Deep down, it was apparent to everyone. He would lie awake, toss and turn, dream about the good, the bad, and what he assumed happened to you. Of course, it was always the worst in his nightmares, something he didn’t wish to dwell on while the sun was up, and the best in his daydreams. You hadn’t posted about your boyfriend recently, but you didn’t really before either, especially after you’d started even talking to him, even less since the incident—which is what he called that one night in passing with others. The only people who really knew the details about the incident were his dad, Michael’s moms, and Michael himself. Everything was under lock and key—both you and the issues you had—he was really the only one who knew exactly how you were feeling, the things you had been, or maybe still were, going through. He can remember Michael’s surprise when he first told him about you, about your situation, about your strength, about your new life, how much you’d changed. From happy to struggling to understand what was reality and what was something that was gaslit and given to you on a counterfeit silver platter.

And you’d gone silent lately. You were almost completely off the grid, to him at least. It was painful, every breath sitting inside of him, heavier than any gravitational pull in the universe. His heart, his mind, couldn’t help but fill in the blanks. Had you died? Had you done something too rebellious and ended up worse than the last time he saw you? Did you need help to live? Did you need help to even survive?

He can remember the way your hand brushed against his, the way your breath evened in hugs, that very first night, the way his hands glided across your back and helped you clean up. He can remember how your hand felt in his, your head against him, soft calmness seeping from you and into him. He can remember you leaning against him and his entire body lit aflame as he helped you up and down the stairs of the gazebo, the way your smile felt against his lips—clumsy kisses that had managed to turn into something absolutely beautiful and worth craving nearly daily. He can remember that smile that was etched into your shining face as the sunlight created an aura around you, leaves fluttering in the background. Jeremy remembers your hand slipping from his, a final farewell, or something similar leaving your lips. He remembers watching you walk away—why didn’t he watch longer?

Jeremy reaches his hand out, shaking as he tries to move the cursor away from the piece of media. He stops. Sharply, quickly, he shuts his laptop and casts it aside. Rolling over, the tears that had been forming in his eyes now spill down his cheeks. He can feel his legs contracting, toes curling so hard that his muscles begin to hurt, hands gripping the blanket. You were okay. You had to be okay.

Right?

[dramaplustautology]

Where Belief Goes to Die

Summary: A Thorn spy decided to torch the research they did on the Espina Rosa's newest inmate, setting Theano's plans back significantly. Under the guise of a researcher backed by Akanthus, he goes to meet the Champion of Ravenloss.

Chapter 1/???

AO3 Link

The Rose were planning on sending three researchers to the Espina Rosa to examine a peculiar prisoner versed in forbidden magic.  

One of those researchers had been a hidden Thorn, quietly recording what Jaania had her nose in, and sending it to Theano. The very last package he would ever send to his Commander was a pile of ash.

Theano theorized from the researcher’s letters steadily declining legibility that some epiphany had gripped him. Those forbidden passages had whispered nonsense into his ears, and he torched himself, the other two researchers, and all of their discoveries.

“I would rather rend the flesh from my own bones than watch Theano or Jaania destroy all life on Lore.”  

Scowling at the scorched ramblings of a dead man, Theano roughly flipped through the bundle of papers that had survived the blaze. The cracked and blackened pages no longer held anything of value. They were merely proof of time wasted.

The incident had set his plans back significantly and taught Theano that if he needed to have something done, he had to do it himself.

“Commander,” One of his men spoke in a hushed voice. “They’re opening the gates.”

Framed in white brick, glowing a ghostly blue from the runes that gave the fortress its name, the huge doors slowly swung inwards.

Inside was complete darkness, only pierced by the blue flames deeper into the prison. Shadows danced behind them, like ghosts lurking in wait. The two disguised Thorns beside Theano rooted themselves to the ground, if not backing away at the imposing sight.

“What are you? Children?” He grumbled, stepping into the pitch-black hall.

His shoes clacked against the floor, nearly drowning out the grating voice of an idiot yelling like their mother had forgotten them at the market.

“You must be the desk-rats,” They greeted Theano quite politely. “Private, get the lights before our guests wet themselves.”

“Yes, sir.”

When the lights came on, Theano was displeased to see that he had to tilt his chin up to look at the brick wall of a man. He imagined his brain held the same thinking capacity of one too. They grinned at Theano, the corner of their lip twitching at his nonplussed reaction.

“Normally, stick-people aren’t allowed to play doctor on our inmates. If you did, I’d need more janitors than soldiers. Especially with the newest beast they wrangled. Broke three of who I thought were my best,” The man’s tone dropped to a dark level. “But if General Akanthus himself gave the order, I suppose I have to welcome you to the Espina Rosa. I am Sofist. Head Officer and Jailer.”

Looking past Sofist, Theano found a Rose soldier in spectacles that resembled his own fake pair.

“Does he know how to read?” Theano asked, and the soldier’s jaw dropped open. In the corner of his eye, Theano noticed Sofist face turning purple. His fists were tight by his sides, saying what the useless hole in his head couldn’t. “No, then?” The Thorn’s Commander motioned for his minion to pass him their documents. They nervously scurried to him, making sure Theano was in between them and the terrifying minotaur.

“These are—” The soldier began.

“Our identification, approval from General Akanthus, and the procedures he wants you to follow to make our work go as smoothly as possible,” Theano shoved the paperwork into the soldier’s arms. He didn’t care for groveling, even when he was wearing a standard Rose uniform. If he was found out, this would be on Akanthus for not doing a proper job of providing them cover. “The General will hear of any incompetence handling these instructions. Make sure the cow doesn’t eat it.”

Grabbing the soldier’s shoulder, Theano moved him out of the way and walked ahead.

“Clarence, Rand.” Theano called the other two researchers by their fake names.

Sennidy kept his head down, and Tariche pressed his tongue against his cheek looking at Sofist fuming, sticking close behind their commander.

“Wait! Please wait! No!” They heard the Rose soldier’s begging coming from behind them, increasing in desperation the further they went. It was apparent that the soldier was talking to Sofist anyways.

Somehow, none of the guards milling about decided to stop them from going where they pleased. In fact, they seemed to flinch away at the strict aura surrounding the Thorns. By the time they were well into the barracks, finding themselves in the canteen where the soldiers had their meals, Theano noticed how most of them were severely injured.

Broken limbs swathed in casting, ugly gashes and cuts, dark bruises and burns, and defeated faces. Theano was surrounded by weakness and to top it off, Sennidy had decided to break down.

“Sir?” He squeaked, sweat already beading on his brow. “Wouldn’t it be wiser to ah be more polite since we’re staying here for the long term. If we get found out, er I mean, if we’re too rude to the wardens --”

“—Then there are numerous ways to silence a snitch,” Theano turned, grabbing Sennidy by his collar next to a table a soldier was having lunch at. They continued chewing on their bread, having flashbacks to their family suppers. “See this?” He flashed a small key at Sennidy. “Opens any cell in the prison. Only Jaania, Akanthus, and that cow has one. And now, so do I.”

Sennidy swallowed, and Theano noticed that his brown hair became matted so fast when he was nervous. With his knees shaking so hard, Theano found him to resemble a skittish horse. Easy to put down if his magical and scientific expertise ran out.

“I don’t know what might be hiding in those cells, and I don’t care. But you should.”

Sennidy nodded rapidly at him, and after he dropped the shuddering coward, he glanced at Tariche.

“What about you?”

Tariche spat into the sitting soldier’s food.

“Nope.” He said, ruffling the soldier’s hair. Their nerve shattered and they scurried off to find a corner, just in time for Sofist’s assistant to track the trio down.

His arms were sagging, having run all over the fortress to find them after he respectfully wrangled his superior.

“You can’t just—”

“Try again,” Theano glared at him, waiting for him to be useful.

“I…Let me introduce myself, I’m Brad—”

“Try again.”

Behind his still lips, Theano noticed the private clenching his teeth.

“If you would follow me.”

After they had dropped their personal affects and other supplies in their provided rooms, Brad skipped the touring and lead them straight to their objective.

The Espina Rosa had three floors. Beasts were held captive in the first, petty criminals in the second, and the third was not to be spoken of. That would be difficult considering the trail of carnage leading to its door.

“Watch your step.” Brad said, crossing a small fissure on the floor. The soldiers he included in the small detail escorting the researchers cringed at Tariche picking up a fifth tooth from one of the many cracks in the walls.

From the ceiling to the floor, the cracks fractured and crossed over each other like a huge web. The damage was fresh, judging from the whimpering coming from the cells. Theano figured they had been witnesses to the Rose’s incompetence in handling a single body.

“The inmate you are about to meet was going to be placed in a cell on the second floor,” Brad explained, reaching the door to the prison’s worst. “After we finally got him under control, Sofist wanted to have him buried instead. Placing him on the third floor was a compromise we came to with High Command. If he causes any more trouble though…”

Theano barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes. Of course Jaania would compromise, but no matter. The creature they had chained up in the bowels of the prison would serve his plans well.

“The third floor itself is extremely dangerous, and should only be accessed when you are accompanied by the elite patrol.”

“Why?” Theano asked. “To give me an extra three seconds to escape while they get eaten alive?”

“S-sir.” Sennidy whispered, noticing their guards’ carefully contained hatred.

“Well,“ Brad ignored the insult and checked his magic agenda. “Going from the provided documentation, two of you are going to meet the prisoner and the remaining will accompany me to sort prior research.”

“I’ll go with you,” Tariche volunteered, to Sennidy’s dismay. “What happened to the last people that talked to him?”

“You’ll see.” A guard stated darkly.

“Right, I wish you the best of luck.” Brad nodded at Theano with zero sincerity, heading off with Tariche.

With them gone, Theano tapped his shoe impatiently.

“Go on, then. You can waste anyone else’s time but mine.” He tilted his head at the door.

Eerily silent, the soldiers had the sigils on the door’s lock rotate, clicking and vibrating until the gate lifted from the ground. The stone arch let out a gust of wind that swirled at their feet, cooler and sweeter smelling than the beach that surrounded the fortress.

Whispers, softer than a touch of a feather, hissed and abruptly fell to nothing.

Unfazed in the slightest, Theano descending into the purple corridors behind the group of soldiers. They were much larger than the first and second floors’, the shapes of its walls expanding and contracting as they traversed the maze. It felt more like they were delving into the innards of a leviathan than the bottom of a building.

But even here, the new cracks were showing, pulsing with unseen energy whenever the visitors looked away.

��His cell was supposed to be the closest to the entrance” A soldier muttered, looking up the flight of steps they had come to. “Stairs this time?”

“What do you mean, this time?” Sennidy demanded, his question going unanswered.

The head of the pack waved at the bottom of the stairwell.

“Go ahead,” He cast a not so subtle glance at his fellows. “Monsters are more prone to wandering the ground. We won’t let them climb up. Good luck with your examination, and do mind the other cells.”

The barely hidden threat made the Commander of the Thorn roll his eyes.

Disregarding the soldiers, and Sennidy’s whimpering, Theano took the steps. They grew in height, shrank, twisted into odd angles, and it felt like they looped certain spirals several times but he didn’t care. Sennidy was already wheezing and the soldiers below were becoming suspicious, watching Theano fair better than most seasoned guards, and he didn’t care. Monsters snarled and roared as he passed their cells, and he couldn’t even muster brief curiosity.

This phenomena and ghostly wonder didn’t mean anything to him. They were just annoyances screaming for attention they didn’t deserve.

At the end of the passage, where the bruised metallic bars of a small jail cell fought to stand straight, the prisoner there would prove to be the same.

He sat on the ground, against the back wall. As opposed to the faint light illuminating the rest of the floor, this corner was completely dark. The lone lights came from the blue glimmer of a magic-restricting collar, and the ever so faint glow of the prisoner’s red eyes.

Checking his burnt papers, Theano read the inmate’s name aloud.

“Vaal?”

It bounced off the walls, echoing in a way that made it sound like a crowd was saying his name. Vaal waited until the voices finished calling to him before he deigned to look up at his visitors.

There was a change in pressure in the corridor, pressed down by the intense loathing behind those red eyes. Sennidy felt his knees being crushed under his own weight, and Theano briefly wondered if he had pronounced the name wrong. Not that it mattered.

“Are you awake?” Theano batted the bars of the cell with his papers. “Get up before I make a request for a cattle prod.”

Infuriatingly, the prisoner kept quiet. Theano could see him staring and made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. Sennidy was mouthing frantic warnings at him but it went right over Theano’s head.

“I am—” Theano glanced at the papers again. “—Kenin, and on behalf of the Rose, I will be questioning you in order to evaluate how much of a danger you pose. You will give me answers if you have any sense of self-preservation.”

Slamming his fist against the wall, Vaal made room shudder. Sennidy just about collapsed.

“Threats? You’re threatening me? Faked hospitality didn’t work so they resort to sending me rats,” Vaal laughed. “Did you see what I did to this pit? To those ants in armor? To the whelps that used to wear the same garb you do?”

Narrowing his eyes, Theano moved closer to the bars.

“I’m asking questions. Not you.”

Incensed, Vaal rose to his feet. In the dimmest light, his shadow cut an intimidating height. He was easily a head above Theano, which irked him the same way that bull did.

“You should already know my might, my wisdom, and how many splinters I could break you into.” Vaal slowly came up to the bars separating him from his prey, the ripped chain links dangling from his collar clinking as he moved. “I am the Champion of Ravenloss, and I have suffered no defeat.”

Standing at just a safe enough distance from the bars, Theano’s composure remained unchanged; stagnant in the face of death. He saw the damage, and he wasn’t a drooling idiot like everyone in this tedious nightmare was.

Rather, he was exasperated over how no one knew where their place was. Vaal should know now that he was trapped, there was nothing else to do but give up and make Theano’s life easier.

“We are interested in the so-called forbidden magic you claim to be a master of, along with chaosweaving, a champion of some backend slum, and oh what else?” He turned to Sennidy.

“G-godhood.” Sennidy stammered, inching his way backwards.

“Really?” Theano sneered, the briefest speck of amusement instantly stamped out by Sennidy’s sniveling. “Get over here, I can barely hear you.”

“Yes, sir.” Sennidy reluctantly came to his side, and Vaal paused in his rambling.

He was right on the threshold now, and Theano could see his scarred and rugged face. The gruff man wasn’t just a sudden anomaly; he had seen his share of battles and, if he was to be believed, an endless string of victories.

Scanning the metal bars, Theano choked back a snort. Oh yes, he did believe this washed up piece of driftwood.

Sennidy did the same, more to make sure that there was no chance of being minced with Vaal’s bare hands. He squinted at the corner of the row of bars, seeing something strange but was too afraid to get any closer.

“Anyways, if you cooperate with us, the Rose will be lenient with you,” Theano continued. “Know that you are already in a precarious situation. Any further disobedience will result in your neutralization.”

For a moment, Vaal kept quiet, leaning against the bars with his arm braced across his forehead. He looked Theano directly in the eye, and saw nothing. No emotion. No fear.

“I’ve met someone with gold eyes before,” Vaal mused, nodding deliberately. “What do you actually want?”

“Don’t interrupt me.” Theano tsked, skimming through the newer documents to see where he should attempt to start. “There will be preliminary questions,” Theano talked over him. “And if you would settle down, blood samples will be collected as, hm, unobtrusively as possible.”

The sharpened shank jabbed right at his heart at an almost inhuman speed. Theano managed to knock it out of the way with the vambrace hidden under his sleeve, but not before it slashed open the thin material protecting his chest.

Swinging wide, the crudely made weapon, a loose cell bar carved to a point, hooked into Sennity. Catching on the space between his ribs, right under his arm, the shank made blood spurt as Vaal gaped at Theano.

They were sharing a mutually astonished stare as Sennidy screamed and struggled to escape. Theano still had his arm up, temporarily frozen over how he narrowly avoided getting maimed, and Vaal, finding that there was more going on than he had realized, curled his lips into a grin.

The prisoner yanked on Sennidy and his shrieking collapsed into a hoarse cough when he slammed against metal, and an arm reached between the bars crushed his throat in a choke hold.

Theano watched Sennidy’s shoes scrape on the uneven ground, beginning to slip as blood flowed into a small pool under his heels.

Vaal squeezed harder, and Theano could swear he could hear the skin on Sennidy’s neck stretching and snapping at its breaking point. His eyes were bulging and gradually, his futile scratching at Vaal’s arm was getting weaker.

“What did you say your name was again?” Vaal asked casually.

This was nothing to panic over. Theano couldn’t understand why his throat had gone dry.

“Kenin.”

“No, no. You aren’t in league with my last visitors. They popped like over-ripened berries,” Vaal began to tip Sennidy’s head at an odd angle. “Your real name.”

How dare he? How dare this worthless vagrant try to bully him into submission. No, there was still salvaging this.

Straightening his posture, Theano readjusted his coat, lifted his chin, and said “Wor—"

Turning Sennidy’s head ninety-degrees, Vaal dropped his limp and lifeless body to slump on the ground. Theano’s lie dropped into silence, his shoulders slumping as the potential problems this would cause him started to pile.

“Look at you,” Vaal laughed. It was a deep and sonorous sound that invaded every crevice of the corridor. “Did I kill your colleague or did I dump your science project in the loo?”

“What have you done?” Theano frantically checked over his shoulder and anywhere a rose soldier could be hiding. “Do you have any idea how much work I have to –” His hand flew to his forehead, gripping his hair as he glowered disdainfully at the corpse.

He had to get rid of it. The weakling that turned himself into a candle had burned the preliminary research on Vaal for a reason. If any of the Espina Rosa’s overseers knew that Vaal had done this, Theano would lose any chance of perfecting his research.

Thinking quickly, he knelt to grab the dead body. It refused to budge, Vaal having pulled its arm into his cell. With the hand trapped firmly under Vaal’s boot, the corpse was going nowhere.

Chest heaving, and struggling not to snarl out of frustration, Theano quashed his fury for the time being. Feeling Vaal’s gaze bearing down on him, he rose to his feet, standing near chest to chest with the brute.

“You aren’t a part of this Rose,” Vaal stroked his chin, jumping to such a conclusion all too fast. Unfortunately, it was partly correct. “Stealing from them? Ah, would be a shame if you had to scurry along without getting what you needed—” He slid his hand through the bars again, gripping Theano by the collar. “—from me.”

“You want a deal?” Theano ground out.

“I only strike deals with someone that has a name.”

Biting down hard to keep himself from gnashing his teeth, the Thorn’s commander decided to concede.  

“Theano.”

Dipping his chin, Vaal considered the name and Theano himself, dropping the man’s collar and spreading his hand over his chest. Feeling the skin under the gash he made in Theano’s armor, he discovered that he hadn’t drawn blood.

“That name…” Vaal said, the corner of his mouth twitching.

Raising his brow at Vaal’s sudden thoughtfulness, Theano grimaced as the chains on the man’s collar clattered against each other from a chuckle bubbling in his throat.

“I had an ex with that name.” He shoved Theano hard, almost sending him sprawling to the ground.

There was no time to put the prisoner back in his place. Theano didn’t know whether or not the soldiers at the base of the stairs heard the idiot screaming. He took Sennidy by the ankles, and Vaal stepped off of his hand, watching Theano drag the corpse away.

“Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow,” Vaal saluted, sitting back on his steel framed bed. “I’ll be waiting, Theano.”

This time, it was his name echoing through the corridor. Theano would have never believed that he could hate the sound of his own name so much.

[darkmindsthinktwistedthoughts]

Market in Details

This was a marvellous little prompt from @naiyabladesinger who wondered what it would be like to see our smooth operating warlord as an information broker in a modern au setting. It was fun to write. Hope you all enjoy - Aerion x

Warnings: Smooth operating darker Shingen. Shady dealings.

Masterlist

---

Market in Details

The room he was shown to was a balance of opulent period style and functionality. To the average person on the street, it looked like a comfortable reception room for an old house. To him, it looked like a very good magic trick.

He had been looking for months to find the root of the issues he had been put up against. All those loose ends cut just as he was about to close his hand around them, slipping through his fingers like water. It had started as an intriguing little game. Now it was just flat out frustrating.

When you deal in information the last thing you wanted was someone to beat you to the kill. It was common enough if you swam in ordinary circles, but he was not a small fish he was a shark. People went to him when they needed information to make things happen. It cut both ways, his information gained them their desired outcome and he gained wealth and protection.

Ever since he was a child watching his father working he was struck by a rather obvious thing. Information was everywhere and all of it was valuable. He became very good at reading people. Facial expressions, body language, tone and inflection in their voices. By the time he took over the family business, he had his own network of intel gathers positioned exactly where he needed them to be. Primed and set within his web to gather some of the biggest most lucrative bits of information he knew to be available.

---

“I have a question about some of this information.” Kaito said from the other desk in the office. He had been one of his father’s best men and he had kept him on so as to help with the filing systems.

“And what would that be?” His pen scratched across the papers in front of him as he answered.

“You aren’t stopping where your father did. You are gathering everything, and I mean everything right down to how often they change their socks at times.” Kaito sounded a little worried.

“There is no such thing as pointless information. Sometimes even the smallest and apparently insignificant detail can be the key to unlocking your desires.” His reply was cold but still, he did not stop. The paperwork was a shambles, the disorganisation of the information they had was a nightmare.

“Yes I understand but. Some of our clients will use this to bribe, blackmail and extort. And that would only be the beginning in some instances.” Kaito was a kind and honest man. It made him wonder how he even became connected with his family. His concern was justified and a voice inside him agreed with Kaito completely. But is was not that voice that ruled him at that time.

“And that would be for them to decide. I am merely providing a service. What the client chooses to do with the information acquired is on them not me.” The arrogance in his own voice even in a memory stung.

---

That whole conversation had been so long ago it was like it had happened with a completely different person. He had been young and ambitious. After seeing his father pushed out of work he had vowed to make it so it wouldn’t happen again. How much of himself had he ignored that day? How much had that small seed of darkness, the anger, and fear, taken from him as it grew before he found a way to keep it in check?

He was not the man he was when he was younger. He was established now. The work he did was sought after and highly valued. It gained him what he desired and although he could never relax he could revert to something close to what he really was. Behind the mask he had worn, all that armour he created for himself he was still that curious little boy. He was happy to watch people and talk to them. He missed the human connection. He saw it, but he hadn’t felt it since he took over the company.

It seemed silly to say he longed for a simpler time where he followed the same path his father had taken. He might have found a nice girl and settled down and been happy with a family of his own by now. But he remembered when his father had lost most of what he had set up. The look of pain on his face as he told staff they were being paid off. It had angered him and he held on to that making a promise that it would not happen again and he would regain everything his father had lost that day.

When he was younger that kept him going it gave him focus but now he was older he seemed to have matured. Kaito had said before he left for his retirement that he was happy to see the boy he remembered once more. It had touched him because he knew what the old man had meant. He was no longer feeding off a dark energy within like before. He had grown past it. He couldn’t deny that it was still there but he was less focused on that and had turned his mind to maintaining the business without pushing it further. He was content.

That was what he thought up until a few months ago when it happened.

---

It was a quiet day nothing out of the ordinary. He had a meeting with the subordinate of a new client who was interested in acquiring his services but requested a meeting beforehand. He was not aware of anyone seeking out another company once deciding to meet with him. He found it interesting that they would send a lackey to negotiate terms and conditions. Not a lot of people locally traded like he did, and his was the biggest network. However, his natural curiosity won out and he agreed to the meeting at a small hotel that rented conference rooms.

“You are an information broker?” The slender man sitting at the pine table in the room enquired. The man was smartly dressed in a new business suit that looked to be right off the rack, a few sheets of paper in front of him. Smiling he took a seat opposite.

“I always preferred the term information specialist.” He noticed the man shift his gaze with a predictable question, ‘what makes you different?’. “You see while others provide information gathered from standard sources, those publicly accessible databases of stored snippets of interesting information that benefits everything from stocking your local shop with the correct items to increase turnover, to predicting where the flop of a hand will fall during those discussions around a table with your shareholders. I don’t just stop there. While it is arduous and time-consuming to just trawl through data it is also something that any broker can do.” Smiling he kept his own body language as open as he dared mirroring the client’s employee. It was the easiest and fastest way to gain someone’s trust. He was a master at the sales pitch, and this was his prime time slot.

“When you say you don’t stop there? Exactly what do you mean?” There was a hint of suspicion in the man's voice. It was clear he was uncomfortable but trying to hold his nerve and see the task through to the end for his employer.

If He hadn’t already investigated the man’s employer he might have been a lot less forthcoming with his reply. After all his protection could only help him as long as he didn’t create a direct confession that could be submitted as evidence.

“That is easy. Do you know the biggest and best source of information out there is not something correlated on a compiling system given access to by anyone with a set of eyes and a basic level of understanding? It is people. The information is all in the people.” He paused for a bit of dramatic effect allowing the words to sink in. “I specialise in that. Do you want to know what Mr. X was up to last night? I can tell you what he had for his dinner, what time he went to the toilet and who he made a phone call too. Do you want to know who has access to a computer system? I can tell you their choice of outfit that day, who forgot to brush their hair and who takes sugar in their tea. You want to know where a stockpile of armour and weapons is and who you have to contact to negotiate a deal? I can tell you his asking price, who else he is trading with and what type of movie he prefers all before I have finished my morning coffee. I can get you information not found on any database. I can provide you with photographs, transcripts, recordings... you only have to name it. Information is knowledge and that is power.” Yes, he knew the value in even the smallest insignificant detail when it came to deals and transactions. He saw it clearly when he was a child and built on it.

“At what price?” The man opposite grabbed a glass of water from beside him in an attempt to hide how uncomfortable he was.

“Oh, that is the golden phrase. What is the price? You are of course completely right you see everything and I do mean everything has a price. The only question is do you have the ability to pay it?” The smile on his face was fearless, predatory he could see the man in front of him move. It was not a task he had signed up for to be in a room with a dealer like him that was all too clear. The conversation should have won him the contract. It should have... but what happened next was not something he had predicted at all.

“Thank you for your time Mr. Takeda. My Employer shall be in touch after we have compared your quote with the other firm.” The slender man shuffled the papers back into a briefcase he took from beside his chair.

“Other firm?” His voice hid his shock beautifully. It had been a long time since someone had made him feel like the air had been removed from his lungs. Flashes of his father sprouting up rather unhelpfully in his mind.

“Yes. Being a shrewd businessman yourself I’m sure you can appreciate that from a business point of view it makes sense to consult more than one specialist and ensure the necessary work be carried out at the best price.” The man before him smiled blissfully unaware of what his words had triggered in his mind.

“Naturally. Thank you for your time, I'll see myself out.” Standing from the table he moved to the door and lobby beyond. To anyone else looking they would see a nonchalant man smiling after a successful meeting. The truth was Shingen Takeda was not a happy man.

---

Arriving back at his own office he received word that the client had taken the opportunity of employing the other firm. Other firm? It had been years since he had been passed over in preference of another company. It had maybe made him a little too complacent but now he wanted something. He wanted details. Who were they? What did they do? Where did they come from? After a few short emails and phone calls, he cast his net into the city and waited for the information to flow in.

---

Nothing. Complete radio silence on anything involving the other firm. The only thing that happened was he lost more clients. Whilst he still remained the largest information broker in the city he was becoming annoyed at fighting shadows. It was not something he was happy doing. He liked to see the faces of the ones he was at war with. Knowing your enemy was one strategy he had used in the past thanks to his reading of Sun Tzu, and it had served him well. But it appeared his opponent had employed a lesson from the same book, all warfare is based on deception.

He was coming up with shadows and whispers on the wind. Nothing concrete, nothing helpful. It was frustrating and made his blood boil. Nothing was distracting him now. The women he usually turned too in times like this were not able to distract his mind. Their touches nothing more than meaningless gestures. There was no thrill, no excitement. The food he ate tasted bland, even his beloved sweets were sour. Everything was wrong.

It occurred to him one morning as he was getting dressed that what he felt wasn’t exactly anger. It was not as tangible as that. Somewhere between the frustration and the agitated raw emotions stemming from that day when he lost his first client in years, he had begun to enjoy it.

No one had challenged him like this before. That was why his usual entertainments hadn’t captivated his interest, this battle was already doing it. He was lost to it. His beloved pursuit of information and knowledge had gripped him in a way nothing else had. He wanted to know who it was behind the smoke and shadows. But now he also wanted to see who was pulling his own strings too.

---

So that was how he came to be at this property. It was in the oldest part of the city where the buildings were still ornately built in carved stone. The rooms were large but full of character and history. The blend between the modern and the old was subtle and comforting. It was so easy to go too far with it and leave a place feeling lacking in some way. Yes, this was definitely a reception room of someone who understood more than basic levels of things. Shingen smiled to himself as he took a seat and waited for the secretary that had greeted him at the door to return.

He unfolded the note he had received at his office. “A little bird told me you are looking for me.” On the back of the note was an address. It crossed his mind it was a trap but after arranging a few things that would be triggered in the event of anything happening to him he decided to try his luck. There was nothing before this and if this was the one he was looking for, the boss of the other firm. Well, he might not be given another opportunity to meet them.

It was peaceful but he could feel the tension build in his body. He had been a fool to not notice but he had been feeling like this since day one. Time had done nothing but elevate his interest and arousal with this whole affair. He was caught somewhere in a flux of emotions, the frustrated anger turning towards something he was more familiar with when laying in bed.

The door behind opened and he was just about to turn and give a pleasant if not entirely friendly greeting to the one who had been a major thorn in his side and distraction for the last few months. However, his voice caught in his throat, mouth suddenly as dry as a desert. All he could do was watch as they entered the room and sat on a sofa in front of him, crossing their legs and flashing a smile that he swore should have been labelled as a weapon of mass destruction.

“Mr. Takeda I presume? My name is _____. I believe you have been looking for me.” Her eyes were bright and intelligent. Her voice was like a drug. Every little movement had him completely captivated.

“All of my life.” He had no idea how but he managed to locate his voice for that little phrase.

She laughed and it resonated in the room like a celestial choir. This was the owner of the other firm? He allowed her to continue her conversation as he listened secretly thanking whoever it was that allowed him to be with her like this. The puppet master was his mistress. She plucked his strings like a harp, and he found he was more than happy to dance to her tune.

---

[pip-personalispolitical]

𝖙𝖍𝖊  𝖑𝖆𝖘𝖙  𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖌𝖆𝖗𝖞𝖊𝖓

The last female characters in the show have essentially been reduced to three houses; Stark, Baratheon, Targaryen. These houses hold considerable power by themselves, coupled with their remaining matriarchs (because let’s face it, Jon isn’t running anything other than away from his feelings) they’re a pretty formidable bunch.

Disregarding the pitting of powerful women against each other in a totalitarian struggle for the throne in the vein of oh so trendy, female power, this week’s episode was rife with misguided notions of women, power and madness. Patriarchal tropes clung to the once fierce and pragmatic women, altogether terrifying and brilliant, and reduced them to poor plot twists and insanity.

It was predictable, and awful, highly entertaining and I hated it. I hated it because this has a massive audience that has huge influence on Western society, it should be commented on, especially when the fanbase is so intelligent and loyal and when it’s such a huge part of our soecity (Sorry, it is.) 

𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔱𝔩𝔢 𝔡𝔬𝔳𝔢

I’m gonna get right into it. Full fledged, partially feminist but mostly just pissed off review of this episode and continuing storyline for The Mother of Dragons. 

Sansa and Ayra are the only two female leads left unscathed by bouts of madness. They remain in the show, they are quiet and astute, or emotionally void and impossibly silent. Above all else the crucial performance of their femininity is intact, they are well-mannered and unobtrusive and that is seemingly why they are still there. Some of their power steams from utilizing the tropes of femininity to ensure they have stability and respect and maintain the little power they have.

Sansa is not only playing the Game of Thrones but the tiresome Game of Patriarchy. Seemingly internalising her struggles and extending gratitude to traumatic abuse as a means of betterment seems, at the least, in poor taste and at most, horrifically ignorant and damaging. The implications are that because of what a man did to her, she is a better person for it. I think she is better, and not “still a little bird”, only because of what the show keeps telling us is that she’s smart now, not showing us. You might even go so far as to say that Sansa is only granted trust and smarts because she learnt it from a male peer.

Sansa Stark has swallowed internalised misogyny down with her favoured lemon cakes; yes, she has learnt how to manipulate those around her and use her strengths to gain favour, all whilst being very pretty and very quiet. Except when it allows heror her family more access to power. You all know what I’m talking about - snitches get stitches, little dove. All the while claiming The Dragon Queen is an untrustworthy threat (Jon asked you to keep how many secrets? One? The same one your Father kept for...how many years? Oh. Yeah. In the words of Sandor Cleagane, fuck off.)

Thus, leading me - a rabid feminist and Targaryen loyalist - to believe that unless you play by the rules in Westeros, whatever you want is unattainable and you are unworthy and frankly, too damn emotional. The only way for these characters to survive is to shut up and play along.

And let’s keep in mind that all of these characters are white, the people of colour on the show can be the sweetest, most benevolent characters in the universe and they still get decapitated. Characters who aren’t “nice” or “good” and are people of colour are portrayed as savages, emotionless killing robots that are above all dispensable and grateful to their white saviour. Someone who spoke about this more eloquently and in depth is Raine (SP – my apologise I can only guess at it based on phonetics), who wrote into the Pod-Cast: A Cast of Kings (S8E5, 7 minutes in.)  

Dany simply doesn’t play by these rules.

Being a Targaryen at heart, I wondered what it was that Dany was doing so differently to be considered such a threat, or a borderline mad queen, chasing after the impossible affections of the inhabitants of Westeros. Dany plays by Targaryen rules, she plays with fire and blood. Their trump card of entitlement (a hereditary bloodline that has mostly held male monarchs) that condemns her as power-hungry but serves male claimants as entitled.

Her overt assertions and unfiltered desire to reclaim this birth right, as many before her have, is suddenly chased by the idea of being deserving, a prerequisite that eludes the patriarchal figures in her family. This leads me to think it’s not what she’s asking for that is so unconceivable, but howshe’s asking for it that is so outrageous. Apparently, even Khaleesi can face issues of likeability[i].

𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔱𝔬𝔰𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔞 𝔠𝔬𝔦𝔫

These rejections of arguably patriarchal rules and the strong emotions of a woman are tediously wrapped up with notions of madness and hysteria, and prove disappointing for one of the most well written female characters in fantasy.

While we have to take into account the budget and time of the show, it feels breathless. The otherwise thoughtful and complex plotlines have been twisted to deliver shocking twists with little substance.

Dany’s previous actions in the show haven’t led to the web of whispers surrounding her, there is no reason for people to expect her to act like a mad queen up until this very last moment. To deny these people were doing so and lying to her face about it would be further gaslighting, so Tryion, in my book, did the right thing. Dany’s decisions have constantly been ridiculed, along with her sanity and emotional state.

In a defence of her actions, she has fought endlessly, scraped her way to the throne, sacrificed her time, her armies and her children to find herself left alone at the last moment? (Who can relate?) Her powerful allies have fallen, and those that claimed they would serve her do very little of what she asks. Seriously. Jon, you just couldn’t shut the fuck up for a second?! Starks and their honour, SMH. It is maddening.

Aside from it making no narrative sense (she has always avoided bloodshed and taken warnings about the mad king, her father, to heart) it just sucks seeing two of the best women reduced to Motherless tropes. Because Seven Hells, what is a woman if she is not reproducing? Insane!

As if the coin had been tossed and landed face down - Dany loses it within a split second. Hats off to Emilia Clarke because she sold it and the storm of emotions that ran across her face in milliseconds. This black and white contrast seems unfitting for a character that has faced each loss, personal and political, with tenacity, she has learnt from each of these losses. D&D have taken a survivor that has been gaslit, abused, groomed and baited and “made her mad with ambition.”

Additionally, it lends to the idea that women’s emotions are incomprehensible and irrational. We are told that in expressing anger we are inhibiting the ability to be heard - hello tone policing. This bout of madness is signalling her downfall, her failure to comply with a more docile femininity. Any woman with too much power will not be able to handle it and if she can she is mad and must be stopped. Period.

They failed to give her the credit she so deserved as she tried (and arguably failed) to grasp the politics of war. Worst of all, the scene played out so poorly that the audience had to be told this was her moment of “choosing violence,” like Cersei. The only way this was credible was thanks to Emilia’s performance and explanation in behind the scenes footage.

She explains how hurt Dany is, how angry and alone she is, and these feelings have culminated at a time she has gotten exactly what she wanted, and realised it’s not what she thought it would be. With liminal time, Dany grieves. Her grief is sorrow turned anger, anger turned dragon fire, dragon fire turned ash. It looks different to any other characters on the show and she has allowed it to kill her. And when you put it like that, it’s fucking traumatic.

It’s not like it’s nothing that pushes her over the edge, but in diagnosing Dany with madness, her agency is stripped from her. Dismissing her actions by saying it’s in her blood is implying it’s inevitable despite the great character growth and progress she has made. While the books clearly hint at this, the show does not...well, not successfully. It’s feasible and I’m not at all against the idea of her going mad, but the connotations of it seem reductive.

Daenerys could have been the most beautiful mad queen we’ve seen since Maleficent, reigning her vengeance on us with fire and blood, but D&D wrote off her brilliance with 30 minutes of relentless slaughter. Her power has always been something to fear, she plays the game she need not play to gain favour and credibility as a leader, and when playing by their rules fails her and she doesn’t feel like playing anymore (as it’s gotten her nowhere – does this remind you of anything? Patriarchy? Internalising misogyny?) she’s crazy.

The most irritating aspect of this all is that it has been written to further the narrative of do-gooder MoodiBoi of Westeros, Jon Snow. To add insult to injury, her sacrifices are motive for madness while Jon’s make him a martyr; an unwilling hero bound by the same strain of honour that has gotten both him and his uncle killed. Like, I’m bored?

𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔴𝔬𝔩𝔣 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔡𝔯𝔞𝔤𝔬𝔫

It’s undeniable, Ayra is a badass. She killed the fucking Night King. But for some reason, Daenerys isn’t granted the same nuance she is. Ayra is unforgiving and gritty, she is cloaked in darkness and weaponry and this darkness is welcomed. While Dany’s darkness is terrifying - perhaps simply due to the scale of devastation she is capable of - whereas Ayra’s is welcomed and accepted. Maybe it’s just too easy for Dany to sit the throne with dragons and is considered unfair? Like, I dunno, any white-het-cis man trying to attain a position of power and control.

Perhaps it is because Ayra’s power is overtly masculine, her power is demonstrated solely in her physical skills and capabilities, whereas Dany’s overt power is dragon fire, and flows, sometimes in reverse, between decision making, politics, emotions, bloodlines and betrayals. This is a character arc, it isn’t a clean narrative and that is why it’s so compelling. (Sidenote: let’s not disregard the ability to raise, bond with and fly fatherfucking dragons.)

Ayra undergoes numerous inescapable traumas, all early in life, but so does our darling Dany. The only difference is Dany strays from physical demonstrations of power. Her focus is not individualised, it’s pinpointed to political hotspots.

No, not all female characters have to express their power and emotions in the same way, nor should all female characters be powerful, but in a show with dragons, is it so far-fetched to have more than one successful female ruler?

𝔄𝔷𝔬𝔯-𝔞𝔥𝔟𝔶𝔢 

It seems as though the show has room for only one type of ‘empowered’ woman: the power hungry one. Whether she uses cunning, childless violence or fire and blood, they all seek power. Enough to hold what they consider their claim, two of them have already paid with their lives for their loud and unrelenting anger, the third is most likely going to sit the throne, quietly, thankful for the years of gaslighting and abuse. Looking at you, Sansa Snarky.

The only praise I can sing is that this is actually a testament to her power and great restraint, it has taken 8 seasons of abuse, disbelief, dehumanising, control and betrayal for her to reach this point and use this force that she could have used moons ago. Which, judging by everyone’s shitty ideas and plans, she should have done anyway.

While Daenerys Stormborn isn’t perfect (er, hello white saviour/messiah complex) she is compelling and pivotal in the series. This woman isn’t inherently good or bad. The character is made of grey, shifting uncertainties and wavering moral, struck by tragedy and bloodlines - she is simply made of magic - Dany is, after all, the Mother of Dragons, and she deserved better.  

𝔯𝔢𝔣𝔢𝔯𝔢𝔫𝔠𝔢𝔰

1] Likeability: I define Likeability as a set of performances that are highly gendered, and ensure the maintenance of the feminine by condemning behaviours exerted by non-males; typically being loud, having a sexuality (lol seriously) opinionated, successful and ambitious. I believe likeability sits on the axis of heteronormativity and femininity; or rather within the heterosexual matrix. They rely on each other for their respective maintenance. The highly feminine woman is more respected and well liked. It is a social currency women have to pay in order to attain certain things, such as respect or power. 

2] https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/its-time-embrace-feminisms-anger

3] https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/09/how-pop-culture-tells-women-to-shut-up/502187/

4] A Cast of Kings: Available on all streaming sites. S8EP5 Review. 

[dotsondotson1-blog]

Type MMO Plays Pretty Well On Console.

JBL's Legend CP100 is actually an engaging reason to update your auto stereo system along with Android Auto and also Apple CarPlay for certainly not a lot of amount of money. Exercises in vogue maintains Queneau's daily tale as well as the majority of the literary metaphors as well as narration gadgets he makes use of in the source component, while this freely adjusts the rest of the designs, which are apparently much also complicated and also reliant on the reputations from the French language to become consistently deciphered. Morgan and Cocks have been performing this given that 2004, as well as currently millions of readers check their blogging site to chortle at their most up-to-date barbed messages, which satirize clothing and also their users in equivalent action. While rightwing, the blog site is anti-establishment in the broadest sense, so can easily pursue the Tories too. 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The Tudor home type is actually based loosely on early British building customs popular in the course of that nation's Tudor age coming from 1485-1603.

[lost-in-transition]

short story: deathclocked

CN: This is something new for the blog, a piece of actual fiction. I was inspired. I am not actually a blonde ex-Polish trans hitwoman.

*

I strike at his throat with knuckled fist. I move the arm up to block, programming the motion before even it has a chance to happen. I'll also step aside and put my knee between his legs. Then either head butt him or bring my elbow down in his face. I don't know yet. As a child, I never ever fought. The thought of striking back was worse. It would have made me like them, and even then I knew I feared that. Better to run away, or else to let them. They wanted me to strike back, I know that now. If I had, they would have known I was like them, and we would have been friends. And I would have been something worse than being the nothing that I was. In a sense, they were so persistent because they were concerned for me, and perhaps scared as well - my existence as an oddity raised the potential things could have been different for them, too. We all fear the thought we might not be who and what we need to be, and it drives hatred of the strange all too often.

Ironic then that now I fight so effortlessly. It does not feel like aggression. It feels like stretching out. It feels like singing out loud. I miss that very much, but as time went by, it became less and less comfortable to hear myself, especially resonating in skull. Practicing martial arts, any kind, feels freeing. I feel present and moving and unbound by everything else. I decide my movement beforehand and execute it. If I am struck, I will be hurt, and accepting that makes it something I am not afraid of. In the training ring I don't feel or express anger, and my training mates accept that. When I fight for real, like now, they don't expect me to strike. In some ways, that is the point. It is because they don't expect it that I feel at peace being the one initiating. And ending it.

The man in front of me, I think of him as Boss Man, he wears sports gear slick enough for clubbing and laid back enough no-one will think he is gay or anything. God forbid. Sweatpants showing boxers. Tattoos, expensive wrist watch. He didn't have to queue to get into this club, which already sets him apart from 999 of 1000 people anywhere. There are several ways in which each of us stand out so. He and I share some, including, for me in recent years at least, spending significant time in the company of organized criminals. Boss Man is a criminal organizer, and I can only imagine this is why he passed the doorman directly whereas I stood in line. This place started as a gay club and in many ways still is, men give each other blow jobs among the smoky labyrinths that are the chill out area, the beat of a DJ I don't recognize but do like there in the background like a storm. Boss Man is the type of the leather bear doorman no more than I am in my skimpy sundress, but either he has the money or the fear capital from being a known gang leader that he gets in anyway. Even so, he still passes through the coat check, which means he has no weapon tonight and no body armour. Otherwise typically he does, and this is why I planned to take him down in here tonight. I too am unarmed, but as I now set out to demonstrate, this need not mean much.

I got close enough in the otherwise empty passage, so that first strike goes fine. He staggers, but he's been boxing; now he goes back and into something like stance. He'll strike next. Or will he? He backs up and stares at me. I followed him in here, when he was going to snort or inject I assume, or make a phone call. But when I did, he leered at me, smiling as I approached. Maybe he had not expected to, but he was fine with it, up until the point where I struck. There's enough of a code that he saw my following him as safe. It's what a girl would do if she was aware of his status and wanted him to share something of his - drugs, kisses, cock, recognition in some circles, though I don't know exactly which one. This city has several separate gang environments and they are not all hanging out. "My" criminals are part of other networks than his are. More to the point, "my" criminals live in little circles of salt surrounding a few people who also post on TOR-accessible truly anonymous forums.

Boss Man is an awful person. I know this because I read some of the police reports on things that happened with some girls who spent some time with him. None went to trial, and a few years back they stopped coming because none of them would risk filing one. This isn't why I'm here seeking him out. I'm not a vigilante, I just checked that before I decided to pursue the contract on him. Back in the old days, there were brokers who could connect clients and contract killers anonymously, for a cut. Apparently. They still exist, now they too are on the dark net. It works like a betting service, using crypto currencies and everything. Someone puts out a contract on a mark by anonymously depositing the prize with the broker. The broker verifies the money is legit and makes a bet on when the mark will die. Whoever comes closest wins the money, also anonymously. In theory someone could "kill steal" if they witness a contract killing, but the system works well enough. I was spending a lot of time on the dark web.

This also means that in principle a mark can know there's a contract on them. But in reality, most people where some shadowy figure want them dead will be just like Boss Man, a career criminal who is not all that computer savvy but rather very invested in his offline social network. I have no idea who wants him dead, I just looked into him enough to see if it was at all possible, and also on whether he has any redeeming traits that would make me feel guilty for it. I've cashed in contracts on people who were not gangsters too, some domestic abusers mostly. Still no idea on the client. Boss Man is just always paranoid, when on the streets he has a gun. His driver keeps that for him now I guess. If I guess closest for when he's dead, that's about 40K worth of bitcoins. The call was out for six months already. So either there aren't so many assassins around who'd take it, or some did and failed for whatever reason. I've tried and given up with several marks, sometimes others got them later. No idea on which other, either. I don't think I know any other contract killers, but then again, would I even know?

The thought strikes me that I should make a smartwatch app that bets on my time of death should my pulse stop, in case I find anyone contracting me. That way at least my death can be my own kill. But honestly, if my actual identity ended up there, something already is wrong. No one should know who I am. Heh. They'd have to use my deadname, since the road to a legal name change in my country of citizenship is... long. How fucking appropriate. Ha ha. Like cancer, fun for the whole family. I literally would have to sue my parents, which means I'd have to meet them again. It's been seven years now. They're still around in Krakow, I know, and my little brother hasn't moved out yet. He and I still talk every now and then. I wonder how he's going to make it.

Boss Man isn't going to shout, is he? Not that it makes all that much difference in this loud environment. No. He needs to do this himself or he'll lose face. He stares at me incredulously, already pretty coked up I guess, and leaps at me, all 95 kilo of muscle and bone and Axe bodyspray. I'm in the motion, I sidestep and rotate. Detachedly, I wonder again what precisely is wrong with me. I don't think I'm a sociopath. Is that even possible for me? If I were then surely I wouldn't have all these social anxieties, or feelings of inadequacy, and I wouldn't end up crying over youtube clips where little ugly fruits find other little ugly fruit friends. I do have empathy, for all that everyone tried to grind it out of me, growing up. I couldn't cry for years and years, it took me doubling the recommended dosage to get there finally. Now, it's not so much a matter on if something will make me cry, but when. I used to simply be unable. Now I cannot decide the "if", but I can delay it if I have to. There has to be something that I'm processing here though, it can't be just for the money. Maybe I'm processing my feelings of being an outsider by ensuring I must always be, that there is (yet another?) thing in my life that no-one ever will understand? Some sort of reaction formation? Or am I an adrenaline junkie?

"What the... fucking bitch! Fucking cunt!" he exclaims, slamming against the wall. I swing my fist at the back of Boss Man's head but he's already turned back and lifted a meaty arm for blocking. He has a tattoo of an eagle. He's in stance now. No more surprises.

He stares at me. With a sickening dread my guts recognize that look before my brain does. I shiver. He blinks. "What the fuck? You're a fucking man in a dress? A fucking tranny faggot?" Boss Man laughs. "That's why you fight like that. No fucking real girl could land a hit like that on me! Fuck! I can see it now, look at you, full of makeup and shit. But you've got balls, right? Show me you've got balls, man!" He takes fighting stance again, like he's challenging me. He smiles like a maniac. I'm staggering. It's like I'm split in two pictures like with those old 3D images, floating in different directions, none of them me. I can't sense my body, but it's like I see it from the outside. Tall, flat-chested. Tuck isn't perfect, is it? And I'm blonde, so plenty of electrolysis left before any kind of smoothness. Would any cis woman do contract killings like this? He's implying that, isn't he? That only someone incurably steeped in toxic masculinity would be a... a... hitman.

This is so dangerous, I know it. It feels like those times after meeting that support group when I couldn't stop idly thinking as the train approached the platform that it would be so easy to solve everything by just stepping in front. One part of me is deep in, one is detached. Neither really cares how this goes, right now. Am I angry with him? No way to tell. The important thing is, how dangerous to my beliefs about my identity are these implications? And are those just beliefs? He clocked me in a dark club corridor without me even speaking, so that horrible voice I have isn't it. What's wrong with me? I feel like I'm already dead. A waterlogged corpse having rotted, the bones move through soft flesh-mud. I freeze.

Boss man knocks me over and I feel a sharp pain as I hit the floor. Only luck it was not head first. Then again, if that damn head with it's fucking brow ridge and big nose cracked like a melon, then it would be over. He's on top of me. "What the fuck is this about, you little faggot? Huh? Did you really think you could fool me, you fucking ugly little cocksucker bitch?" I know it's over. I won't have to worry again on whether I'm actually just a sad, misandrist failure of a man, someone who still ticks off all the boxes of male stereotype and socialization. It'll be like with the train. Eventually it will all be over. Pain for a while. But only one outcome. It will be over.

He puts his hand on my left breast and there's another look of surprise on his face. Then his mouth is at the side of my neck. I feel rough, raspy stubble and smell the sour musk of his sweat and breath. He bites my neck hard and grunts. I feel his cock quickly growing hard against my thigh. Another rough hand moves up my thigh. He has to make sure now. The smell, I can't let it go. I remember my old training clothes. Four years ago? Before HRT. I used to smell like this. There is sausage on his breath, and beer. The stubble. When my hands had eczemas because I didn't moisturize, and they itched, I would scratch them against the stubble of the cheek of the body that I was in. The skin would eventually blister and bleed and get sticky, and it would hurt more and longer.

That's not me anymore.

That's who he is. I'm different. I always was. That never was me. That surface was no-one. I'm the will to motion. I'm the choice I made. I am me.

Boss Man isn't holding my hands in place because he's too busy groping at my tuck. So I press them against the veins at the side of the neck, holding and twisting as if I was opening a jar of pickles. I hear his neck snap, and slowly he goes limp on top of me. My head is spinning and for a moment I forget who I am, where I am, what I am. There is only the naked tube lights of the ceiling high above and the graffiti on the concrete walls. My back hurts.

I turn to get him off me. I squeeze his neck again to be sure, check the pupils. I kick Boss Man in the side of the head, first gingerly, carefully. Then again, harder. Again. A dozen times, with the hard toes of my pumps. I take out the phone, choose the camera settings to ensure there is a time stamp watermark as well as a GPS watermark. Then I remember. I have to remove the little coloured sticker they put over the camera lenses on your phone in this club. Check. Filter settings. Check. I upload an image of Boss Man's vacant gaze as he lies there to the server, through the TOR client app. It's done.

I hurry down to the bathroom, one floor down. I shy away from the mirror image because I can already guess what it would show, and I go in to hide in a stall. I lock the door carefully. Then I let the tears come.