#and when i left it happened to be playing in the warp pipe back out to the rest of the park and i almost cried lmfao | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ontheoddoccasioniwritestuff · 5 years ago

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The Sight of You (Spencer Reid x Reader)

Summary: Spencer’s disturbing dreams about his childhood bring him back to Las Vegas to face two of his childhood’s greatest enemies: his estranged father and his ex best friend.

AN: it’s a friends to enemies to lovers fic! Set in the episode “Memoriam” 4x07

Content Warnings: usual Criminal Minds stuff, mentions of child death, childhood trauma, descriptions of a dead body. Let me know if I missed anything!

Despite seeing Spencer around Pre-k, Y/N did not trot over to talk to him with their brightly coloured rucksack swinging vigorously and violently behind them. They walked faster instead once their parents had dropped them off. Spencer did his best to catch up to Y/N but lost them around the corner in the sea of students seeking their next class. He was meant to be one of them. Adjusting his glasses as they slipped down his nose, Spencer noted that he needed a new prescription before entering his own class and preparing to focus on a subject he was already well-versed in.

It was lunch time when Spencer finally found Y/N. They were sitting at the furthest end of the table in the canteen. But Y/N cowered away from him, his shoulders drawn up defensively.

“Are you OK, Y/N?” Spencer asked before getting to what was more significant to him: “Do you know when you will be free to play again?”

The next sentence out of Y/N’s mouth stung like a nettle. They stood up, their face contorted in their fit, and they pushed Spencer hard on the shoulders.

“Go away! I can’t look at you! You make me feel sick, you and your family!” They cried.

They went silent when Spencer was laughed at by those who heard what was said. Just grabbed their lunch and moved away, leaving Spencer spellbound in the middle of the canteen, heartbroken and with a new opening for a potential chess partner. Maybe that man they saw last week at the park would be kind enough to join him again.

But there was no replacement for Y/N, who now never said a word when they caught a glimpse of Spencer being bullied – only dithering about on the spot before fleeing the scene moments before a teacher would show up.

Spencer was hurt; that hurt warped into hatred when he was next out with his mother and father. They were at the shopping mall and had just bought Spencer his new glasses. Going down the escalator, he saw Y/N. They were smiling and skipping between their parents, a new pair of shoes shiny on their feet.

The second they spotted the Reids, Y/N ducked behind their parents. Spencer could still see their face: brow furrowed, eyes squinting, hands shaking now that nothing was holding them. Their parents didn’t seem to notice. They kept talking and walking even as Y/N stopped in time with the Reids stepping off the escalator.

Sudden footsteps running away was what dragged the public’s attention to a suddenly absent child.

“Y/N!” The parents called out as they chased after the four-year-old. They were quick past the Reids, not stopping to say ‘hello’.

Spencer kept his eyes trained after Y/N’s fleeing form, right until his mother’s face came into view. Diana looked saddened; she too was staring after the L/Ns. Turned to his father. William was composed but his eyes were turned down and watering.

For making his parents react like that to their mere presence, Spencer despised Y/N.

---> ---> ---> ---> --->

The burning hatred from adolescence staled once Spencer reached adulthood. The protective nature that spawned from it for his mother remained.

Which is why, when Diana Reid casually mentioned Y/N when asked about Riley Jenkins, Spencer froze up.

“You remember Y/N?” He said stiffly.

Diana didn’t notice her son’s change in tone, “Of course, you two were opposites but you got on so well. So sad what happened to them.”

The first guess was that she was referring Y/N’s repeated attempts at running away before Reid cut contact with neighbourhood gossip at age fourteen. He didn’t bother with a second attempt to understand what his mother meant.

“I don’t care about Y/N. I want to know if you remember Riley.”

“And I told you: Riley was a boy you made up.”

“No, Mom, he was a real boy who lived in our neighbourhood, and somebody killed him. And, I don't know, I think-- I think that dad might have had something to do with it.”

“He was real?”

“Yes. And...”

“He was on that little league team, too.”

---> ---> ---> ---> --->

The whole case was surreal - “case” being a very loose term.

When they got into his office, Spencer thought that perhaps things might simmer down a little. Unfortunately, as soon as his father spoke about their history of similarity in appearance, Spencer’s usual comfort of statistics and facts on the elderly and pets failed to conceal his abandonment issues.

William Reid was clearly affected by Spencer’s accusations, calling the idea of fitting the profile thus being Riley’s killer “absurd”. Furthermore, he was confrontational when asked for access to his files and demanded a warrant. Coupled with Lou Jenkins’ absolute certainty that William was not involved in Riley’s murder and Penelope asking him “you sure about this?” concerning invading the aforementioned files, Spencer was very close to snapping.

“I really wish people would stop asking me that.”

Then there was the envelope posted beneath his motel room door. Suspicious timing aside, there was a brand-new suspect basically handed over on a silver platter. One Gary Michaels whom Spencer couldn’t remember him but he couldn’t be sure that he didn’t know him. Uncertainty being the feeling he hated the most.

This man could fit the profile; his previous of exposing himself to a minor was a precursor to molestation. But that wasn’t what Spencer wanted to hear from the shady file slipped to direct his attention away from William.

Garcia reported back about his father’s drives, “No kiddie porn, no membership to illicit websites, no dubious emails, no chat room history.”

“What about his finances?”

Hotch joined the conversation, “We went back ten years. No questionable transactions that we can find.”

Spencer sighed while Emily decided to crack a joke: “Well, he did buy a ticket to see Celine Dion six months ago, but I think we can overlook that.”

“He’s smart. Is it possible he kept things under the table?” Spencer persisted.

“Well, of course,” Hotch answered, “But from what we can tell, Reid, he doesn’t fit the profile.”

“We can tell you other things about him, if you want to know.”

A peace offering on behalf of Emily. Clearly she had improved after her night out and subsequent hangover. Spencer gave the go-ahead and Emily listed her profile:

“He's a workaholic, he actually logs more hours than we do. He makes decent money, but he doesn't spend a lot of it. He has a modest house. He drives a hybrid. He doesn't travel much. He stays away from the casinos. Um, and according to his veterinary bills, he has a very sick cat.”

“He appears to spend most of his free time alone,” Hotch added, “He goes to the movies a lot, and he reads. And from his collection of first editions, it seems his favourite author is-”

Spencer interrupted his boss, “Isaac Asimov, I remember that one.” He pressed his lips together. They were right; William Reid did not fit the profile.

Garcia piped up once more, “He does have one other major interest. On his home computer, he's archived, like, a ka-jillion things on one common subject.”

“What?”

“You, kiddo. He's got, like, everything that's been published online. Every article you've been quoted in, pieces you've written for behavioural science journals, He even has a copy of your dissertation.”

“He's keeping tabs on you,” Rossi said, That's saying something.”

But Spencer smoothly dismissed this attempt to make excuses for his father, “Yeah, he googled me. That makes up for everything. I'm going to get some air.”

---> ---> ---> ---> --->

After getting said air, Spencer went to the local bar and began playing an computerised poker game. His paying attention was only to distract himself, clear his head with something he knew he could control. And thankfully, a chance interaction with a lady at the bar spawned the inspiration for a sporadic hypnosis session.

Doctor Jan Mohikian allowed them a session. Reminded of the limitations that a four-year old’s memory could provide, not including the bias he already had as a son and a profiler, Spencer lay on the couch. His feet hung over the end so that his head could be comfortable in a pillow. There was no time for self-consciousness with Rossi in the room observing. He closed his eyes and felt his hand be placed upon Doctor Mohikian’s body.

She spoke low and calmingly, “I want you to hold my wrist in your left hand. And if you should feel any fear, I want you to squeeze, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Go back to the night you were just telling me about. You're at home, in your room. You can't sleep because your parents are arguing.”

---> ---> ---> ---> --->

His eyes were closed still, but the couch shifted into a bed. His bed. A floor below, the faint shouting between his mother and father was heard. There was someone else there too. A child wailing, and it wasn’t him.

Suddenly his father was at his side, touching his arm, saying, “I know you’re awake. Daddy loves you; you know that?”

Spencer didn’t want to be there, and then it was the following morning.

Putting his glasses, the room fell into focus. His mother was there, she didn’t see him because she was too busy looking out the window. Her body language told him that this was not a meltdown, but what she saw was distressing. She’d been crying. As she walked away into the house, she hid her face as if she knew Spencer was watching and she wanted to hide her reaction from him.

Spencer ran to the window the second Diana had left the room.

His father was in the back garden and burning clothes. A bloody shirt, a tiny cardigan, landed on top of the pile already set alight.

“5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and wake.”

---> ---> ---> ---> --->

And Spencer was shocked out of the scene, back to the doctor’s couch and gripping her wrist with an iron grip. Rossi was by his side, bringing him back to peace with his voice.

---> ---> ---> ---> --->

Derek was clearly disturbed that Spencer was very set on his father being a paedophilic murderer as much as he had been that Spencer was taking something that was said after his mother’s fit seriously. He continued however to assist with Rossi in Spencer’s investigation.

As if everything else hadn’t been hard enough, the captain took some time to agree to holding William Reid in custody. Finally, he settled for twenty-four hours. William was as resistant to the questions as he had been upon the initial reunion. All he could say was that he didn’t hurt Riley. Spencer wore him down, getting him to drop the Gary Michaels bomb plus the threat that he “didn’t want to go down that road”.

Garcia’s search of Gary Michaels’ DNA on the databases brought to light that their suspect was dead. Buried across state lines, beat over the head with a pipe or bat, and the body was discovered in 2001.

“Maybe it wasn’t Riley’s blood on the clothes he was burning.” Derek was about to hang up when Garcia began to speak again, a new discovery ready for her team.

“Also, Todd found something in your father’s finances. There was a standing order for a therapist, specifically a child therapist from 1985 to 1995. I thought it was for Spencer, but William left when you were twelve, and these sessions continue irregularly after he left you!”

“Who was the patient?”

“One Y/N L/N. Local to North Vegas, born 1980 to Shelly and Finley L/N.”

Both Rossi and Derek looked away from the phone to Spencer and he knew. He knew he’d have to face another villain from the past – like a knight in one of Y/N’s stories.

“Still alive?”

“Yep, already pulling up an address. There’s a lot of short leases attached to this name. Lucky for you, they keep going back to live with their parents.”

Spencer wasn’t entirely sure that he could handle two bitter reunions in one day.

“We’ll send off the fingerprint while we visit Y/N. They could have been a potential victim of Michaels before he died. They might know something.”

---> ---> ---> ---> --->

It was a normal home in a normal neighbourhood. Spencer had never visited Y/N’s house. Their play-dates were always at the park.

“Hello, Mr L/N,” held up their badges, “I’m Agent Derek Morgan, this is Agent David Rossi and Doctor Spencer Reid. May we come in and ask you some questions?”

“Sure. My wife is uh out at work at the moment,” Finley opened the door wider and stepped aside for the trio to enter, “I’m the house husband as it were.”

Looking about the kitchen, Spencer spied several photos of an adult Y/N but very few of them as a toddler and even less as a teenager.

“You have a child, Mr L/N?” Rossi asked.

“All grown up now, Y/N,” Finley smiled with a nod. Then he squinted at Spencer, “You’re not related to William Reid by chance, are you?”

Masking his bitterness, Spencer said shortly, “He’s my father.”

Finley seemed in awe at the prospect, so Derek redirected the conversation back to the matter at hand, “What was Y/N like as a child?”

Nodding still, like a bobble head, Finley looked weary at the notion, “Troubled. They were very young when they withdrew into themselves. Used to run away from home a lot. I don’t know what happened, but Y/N never told us.” He then jumped to protect his child’s reputation at present, “They’re doing better now, went to therapy and they’re doing very well for themselves.”

“I’m glad to hear.” Rossi replied.

Finley continued his defence of Y/N, “They’re a published author, they write fantasy things for kids and young adults. We’re very proud of them.”

“Did Y/N know Riley Jenkins when they were a child?”

“Riley Jenkins, that’s Lou’s kid who died, right?” Finley sought confirmation and, when he had it, he spoke, “Not personally. I think they might have played at the park once or twice. Before he died, Y/N would play with anyone. But you… you know that.” And Finley gestured to Spencer, much to his disgust.

“Is Y/N in the area?” Spencer asked briskly.

“Well, they’re due for a visit in a few hours. They went on holiday.”

“They still live with you?”

“A month ago, they got a new flat in the city. But they’ve got their own room here, for whenever they need it.”

“May we see it?”

The wallpaper was barely visible beneath exam revision notes, posters of Fresh sheets on the bed and the clear space on the floor were the only tidy things about the place. It was a haven of organised clutter.

A chess set caught Spencer’s eye. It sat upon the windowsill, recently dusted. The pieces were not that of a classic set; each was painted prettily but with enough error to indicate it was a personal touch.

“You and Y/N were close then?” Derek was holding up a photo album. Upon inspection, the photograph the page was open on was of Spencer and Y/N dressed up for Halloween as Doctor Frankenstein and the Monster respectively – accurate to the book of course.

“Yeah, ‘were’,” Spencer turned back to the chess set. He didn’t bother to ask when his friends had figured out he knew Y/N.

Rossi decided to further test the waters, “You think that Y/N could have killed Riley?”

“Of course not. A four-year-old couldn’t kidnap, tie up, rape, and kill a boy their own age. No violent history that indicates they would ever do something like this. Do I think that Y/N knows something about what happened and my father is trying to keep them quiet? Yes.”

Rossi moved beside Spencer, picking up the knight. Except it wasn’t a knight. It was a wizard of some kind in purple robes.

“We’ll stay up here for a bit then go down once Y/N’s inside and settled,” He gestured with the knight to the window. Spencer blanched as he spied a cab at the end of the driveway. The trunk was open and someone was retrieving a suitcase from within.

Y/N appeared around the corner, waving off the cab and turning to the house. Mr L/N appeared on the drive and they met in the middle for a hug. Over Mr L/N’s shoulder, Spencer could see that Y/N had grown into their chubby childhood features. They looked genuinely happy.

He would have to go through with it, but he didn’t have to like it. And he couldn’t go hide in the bathroom like with his father.

The trio plodded down the stairs when the sound of the front door closing was replaced with a joyous gathering in the kitchen. It all changed when Y/N went to take off their jacket and caught sight of the three FBI agents standing in the doorway. Taking out his badge, Rossi led the way.

“Hello, Y/N, I’m Agent David Rossi, this is Agent Derek Morgan, and Doctor Spencer Reid. We’re looking into the death of Riley Jenkins, and we were hoping to ask you some questions.”

To the naked eye, very little changed about Y/N’s appearance. To the three profilers, there was a visceral reaction: Y/N’s right hand started trembling, the hard swallow, the dropping of their gaze from Spencer to the floor.

“OK,” They said, a great deal quieter than they had been with their father.

Rossi sat next to Y/N at the dinner table. Derek was beside Rossi; Spencer stayed standing. Mr L/N stayed in the kitchen, at Y/N’s request.

“Can you tell us what you remember about Riley?” Rossi began.

“Not very much, I don’t really remember much about school.”

“Oh, you don’t?” Spencer blurted, “Well, I do.”

Derek glanced back at him with a look that just screamed “shut the hell up”. It seemed to cut down Y/N’s resolve, their jaw quivering.

“Sorry, can you give me a moment?” They stood up quick, the chair legs scraping loudly against the floor as they walked just as fast to the kitchen. Through the open door, Rossi, Derek, and Spencer watched Y/N grab a glass from the open dishwasher. The water from the tap hit the bottom of the glass harsh, crashing out like a wave of the ocean hitting a cliff. Y/N didn’t seem to care. Their hand dripped water onto the surface as they chugged back some of the drink before returning to the table with a topped-up glass.

“Are you alright?” Rossi inquired, leaning closer to Y/N.

They answered wearily, “Fine, just feeling woozy.”

“You’re a writer?”

“Yeah, you’re a writer too. My mom reads your stuff before bed.”

“Bit of an odd nightcap,” Rossi said with a little chuckle.

Y/N shared that smile for the briefest of moments, replying “You’re telling me.”

From their pocket, they pulled out some painkillers, popping them back with a slug of water then speaking again. “I remember Riley was smaller than me. Still figuring out coordination, but he liked to play chase. I know he was killed; I didn’t find out how until I looked into it last year.”

“Why did you look into it?” Rossi gently probed.

Y/N rubbed two fingers back and forth across their head as they spoke, “I was back here, I felt sick so I went for a walk in the park, and I just remembered him tripping over while trying to tag me. No one ever told me what happened, just that he had to go away. I wanted to know what happened to him.”

“Are you sick often?” Derek asked suddenly, his voice soft to match Rossi. Spencer grimaced at the treatment Y/N was receiving but said nothing.

“Headaches and stomach aches mostly.”

“You get them whenever you come home?”

“I do. Figured I was allergic to something but never figured out what.”

That would have to be a very quick response, like a dog allergy. And coincidental, seeing as the symptoms didn’t start until they saw Spencer.

“Y/N?” called their father, “Can you come here a moment please?”

“May I?”

“Of course,” said Derek and Y/N was out of the room. Derek pivoted in his chair to include Spencer in his theory, “I think they know something, but they don’t know they know it. I think they repressed this memory like you did, Spencer. We should take him to the therapist, see if we can jog his memory.”

“You can’t be serious,” Spencer covered his face with his hands, dragging them down with irritation.

Derek was persistent though, “Spencer, like it or not, Y/N’s linked to this investigation. Put aside your differences for a moment, please.”

Spencer all but squawked, “Put aside my differences?”

“You have brought a lot of bias to this case. Let us at least pursue this lead.”

“Sorry,” Y/N interrupted Spencer’s retort, sitting back at the table, “He needed someone to get unhook the loft door. Mom usually does it.”

“That’s alright.” Rossi waved a hand dismissively. Once Y/N accepted that, he moved in with Derek’s suggestion, “You know, some people have strong physical reactions to memories, trauma. Maybe you’re not getting sick. You’re rejecting something.”

“Rejecting?” repeated Y/N. There was no doubt in their voice, more cautious curiosity.

Derek nodded, “A memory, repressing it, and your body has linked the physical responses to your home. We think it has something to do with this case, and we’d like to see if we can retrieve any memories you might have. Would you be alright to come with us?”

“Yeah,” said Y/N, though they didn’t sound too certain, “Yeah sure.”

The resigned, too tired look on their face, and Spencer felt a tug in his chest. A longing to see Y/N smile like they had when they first entered the house. He’d rather hate someone who was happy than someone who suffered the same as him.

Leaving the house, Spencer took a deep breath of fresh air.

“Spencer?”

He ignored Y/N’s voice for a moment, but he couldn’t disregard Y/N standing in front of him and speaking again, “Spencer, can we talk please?”

“I’m busy,” He said, already walking off as he pretended to call someone, “Hey Garcia.”

---> ---> ---> ---> --->

“Hold onto my hand, use it as an anchor, and squeeze when you feel fear.” Doctor Mohikian accepted Y/N’s hand on her wrist and their silence nod as they lay back on the same couch Spencer had been just hours before.

“I want you to think back to your childhood, back to when you were five. You’re at the park, your parents are on a bench watching nearby to keep you safe. What do you see?”

“Spencer Reid.”

Derek and Rossi glanced at Spencer, who did not react. They kept quiet so that Y/N could immerse themselves in the hypnosis.

“What’s he doing?” Doctor Mohikian continued.

“Teaching me chess.”

---> ---> ---> ---> --->

Sat on opposite sides of the table, Spencer and Y/N’s eyes were glued to the chess pieces that were neatly organised between them. Spencer was thinking strategy. He could not say the same for his companion Y/N. They reached a hand out and hovered over the pieces before finally selecting their last knight.

Their tongue clicked as Y/N trotted the piece on the spot.

“What’s this one again?”

“The knight,” Spencer recited, “It moves two spaces up, down, left or right, and another step perpendicular to the first direction.”

“Brave creatures riding into battle,” Y/N narrated before continuing their clip-clopping to its new position, “Pawns in the game of war.”

Spencer didn’t understand how they were coming up with this whilst playing. Well, actually, he did. Because Y/N was clearly not playing to win. They were playing for the best possible story.

“Where do you think this story will end?” Y/N asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re lying,” said Y/N, pushing back the sleeves of their white cardigan, “Come on, you can tell me, with your magic powers.”

“It’s not magic. It’s logic.”

“That’s magic to me,”

Narrowing his eyes, Spencer decided that he should give his friend the information they sought: “I see checkmate in fifteen moves.”

“See? Magic! The gift of sight!” crowed Y/N, clapping their hands together. The cardigan sleeves fell back in place as they did so. Spencer felt his cheeks heat up; he dropped his head so he could smile in privacy while Y/N began to decide their next move.

“How’s your mommy today?”

Shrugging, Spencer said, “Better than normal. But that means a bad day is around the corner.”

Y/N nodded solemnly. “Do you want another ice cream? I got more birthday money.”

“No thank you.” Spencer moved the piece but was immediately intercepted by Y/N, “You’re getting better.”

“Fank you.”

“You’ll have to wait longer to beat me though.” And he snatched Y/N’s knight away, just as planned and much to Y/N’s dismay.

A new voice from their left spoke, “Hey you’re pretty good.”

---> ---> ---> ---> --->

Y/N’s grip tightened on Doctor Mohikian’s wrist, “Someone’s with us.”

“Who do you see?” Doctor Mohikian asked patiently.

“A man. He’s asking us if he can watch us play, listen to the story.”

“Do you want him to stay?”

“No,” Y/N flinched, “But Spencer keeps talking to him. The man won’t go away.”

“It’s OK, it’s OK, you’re safe, Y/N.”

Y/N flinched again, this time letting out a whimper, “He’s on the floor.”

“Spencer is?”

“No, the man.”

“What’s he doing on the floor?”

“He’s,” Y/N began panting, their face tensing and body jerking, “I can’t get to him. There’s glass in the way and the ground is shaking.”

“Y/N.”

“I can’t look, I’ll be sick! Whenever I see them, sick.”

“OK, you’re going to wake up in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!”

Their eyes snapped open with the click of the fingers and Y/N leapt out of Doctor Mohikian’s couch. Their head aimed over the bin by the door and they retched. Nothing came up but their stomach continued to squeeze up

Spencer fidgeted in his seat, trying his best not to look at Y/N. The choice words of the session, three in particular, wrapped around his head.

“Floor”.

Y/N had seen Gary Michaels inside, somewhere that wasn’t the park.

“Glass”.

A window, Y/N was watching what Gary Michaels was doing.

“Sick”.

“Go away! I can’t look at you! You make me feel sick, you and your family!”

“Them”.

It wasn’t just Michaels in the room alone. They had been a witness to his murder.

Derek’s movement to help Y/N took Spencer out of his analysis. Sweaty, Y/N was led back to the couch, the bin between their legs, head lolling forward. Spencer tried to move beside them for questioning, but Y/N winced and began heaving again. He felt that ache in his chest again. He was causing this and nothing he could do would change that. Not until they both knew what happened to Riley and Y/N got help through it.

“What did you see, Y/N?” Derek asked as he replaced Spencer’s spot beside them.

With watering eyes, Y/N looked at Spencer, “The man we played with, he was on the floor. His head – thank you.” They accepted the water from Doctor Mohikian, gulping some back, “It was smashed in.”

The three agents left the room, Doctor Mohikian following after Y/N left to get some air.

“It’s logical to assume that Y/N tied that sickness, that repulsion because of what they thought they saw your mother be involved with, to you and your family,” Doctor Mohikian evaluated.

Interrupting again, Spencer stammered his way through his analysis, “That’s why they avoided me. They associated me with being ill. It’s probably also why they ran away so much; they had to get away from this horrible feeling they had associated with their home.”

Doctor Mohikian shook her head, “We won’t be able to use this in court, I told you when we started.”

Derek’s phone started to ring. As he answered, Spencer somehow managed to slip away for long enough to find Y/N. They were leaning against the ramp’s railing in front of the practice, their body lifting and slumping with each deep breath they took. Against his better judgement, he moved toward them.

“Y/N? Can I have your number?”

The breathing slowed again.

“I need it to call you with an update on the situation as soon as we get one.”

Without looking up, Y/N pulled out their phone and handed it over to Spencer. He punched his number in a new contact, using this time to gather the courage to maybe say something else. The hurt and pain went beyond him now. Y/N was suffering and had been much longer than he had.

“Thank you, Y/N,” Spencer said quietly, hoping that his didn’t add to the illness, “I hope you feel better soon.”

Their head still down, Y/N croaked, “You too, Spencer.”

“Spencer, get over here! We got a match on a print on Michaels’ body!”

---> ---> ---> ---> --->

“What makes you think Gary Michaels killed your boy?”

“He admitted it,” Lou Jenkins said, as monotonous as he had been for the last fifteen minutes of the interrogation.

Derek’s quickfire was on Jenkins instantly, “You beat a guy with a baseball bat, he's going to admit to a lot of things. How do you know he was the right guy?”

“I know. He approached another kid in the neighbourhood.”

“And how do you know that?

“I was told by a concerned party.”

“Who? Another parent?”

Jenkins leant back in his chair, “That's all I'm going to say on the subject.”

“Who was it?” Spencer suddenly spoke up.

Caught off guard at his interjection, Jenkins awkwardly parroted himself, “I told you that's all I'm going to say on the sub—"

Reid slammed his hands on the table, getting right up in Lou’s face, “Who was it?”

The door opened, Detective Hyde appeared, “Agent Reid?”

“Do not interfere with this interrogation, detective,” shouted Spencer, “This is not your case anymore!”

Once again, he was cut off. This time, by the arrival of his own mother, Diana, and her admission of guilt: “Spencer, it was me”.

---> ---> ---> ---> --->

Of all the things this case had brought him, Spencer least expected to be sitting in a room with his mother and father together for the first time in years. To have Diana explain to him how she was involved in a child’s murder was also up there with the unthinkable.

But he stayed quiet and listened to her confession.

The reveal that she had seen Gary Michaels playing chess with him and Y/N, that she and got a feeling that something was wrong before anything had even happened, opened the story. Lou Jenkins’ involvement was next on the menu. Two days after the chess game, he drove Diana to Michaels’ house, disclosed his history of child abuse, and demanded she leave while he went into the house.

Upon reaching the point where she entered the house, Diana struggled with her words. William reached over and took her hand.

She described seeing Lou with the bat, standing over the body, slipping in the pool of blood, finding Y/N standing in the window and their face, their little face as innocent as the white cardigan that covered their shoulders and absorbed the blood from Diana’s hands as she shook their shoulders.

“And the rest... It's all dark after that.”

William continued for her. Diana came home and brought Y/N with her. Eventually he came to understand what had happened and decided that nobody could ever know.

“You were burning her bloody clothes,” Spencer concluded.

His father nodded, “But the knowing, you can't burn that away. It changes everything.”

“You paid for Y/N to go to therapy.”

William didn’t seem surprised that Spencer knew this, going straight into explaining: “They went into a dissociative fugue state after seeing what Lou had done. When Diana brought them home, they were just stiff. I asked them for their home number, to call their parents, but they started screaming and throwing up. We had to take them to the police station.” He mopped his brow with a handkerchief, “They needed help, but their parents couldn’t afford it. And they didn’t know what had happened. I couldn’t drag another person into this, Spencer.”

“Is this why you left?”

“I tried to keep us together, Spencer. I swear to you, but the weight of that knowledge, it was too much.”

“You could have come back. Could have started over.”

“I didn't know how to take care of you anymore. When I lost that confidence, there was no going back. What's done is done.”

“At least now you know the truth,” Diana made an effort to smile at her son

Choking on his words and the overwhelming remorse he felt, Spencer refused to look at his parents any longer, “I was wrong about everything. I'm sorry.”

And William said something that Spencer had been waiting for, for a long time, “I am, too, Spencer.”

---> ---> ---> ---> --->

All of this was repeated when Spencer walked with Y/N through their old park the following day. Filling the final gaps in the memory would hopefully bring some respite to them both. Or at least maybe something to start the recovery process, easing Y/N’s sickness and Spencer’s pain.

“I’m sorry for my behaviour during this case,” Spencer sniffed, “When you said we made you sick, back when we were four, I thought you had seen my mom during one of her episodes and thought she was a freak, like everyone else.”

That stopped Y/N in their tracks, their hands coming up to cover their mouth, their eyes misty, “Oh Spencer, I’m sorry too, I’m so, so sorry I caused you so much pain.”

Spencer’s hands rushed up as if to create belated damage control, “It’s ok! I hurt you too. I made you sick.”

“That wasn’t your fault though.”

“It wasn’t yours either. We were kids.”

Almost pedantic, stropping, like a child again, Y/N moaned, “It’s all been such a waste. We could have been friends all this time!”

“We can be friends now,” Spencer pushed his hands down into his pockets to stop them flailing about anymore. His sentence was phrased more like a question.

One that Y/N gladly answered, “I would like really that.”

Sitting in the reply for a moment, Spencer followed up on his concerns, “How are you feeling? I mean, are you feeling sick again?”

“A bit, but I can handle it.”

Spencer could not see any changes in their behaviour from the day before. So obviously they were lying about that. But he didn’t protest. The lie meant Y/N wanted to stay with him, which was good - Spencer wanted that too.

They kept walking, only in silence for half a minute before Spencer broke it again, “I read your books last night.”

“Yeah?”

“‘The Siege of the Lost Faiths’ in Rogue’s Mask, that was our first game of chess.”

“It had by far the best narrative,” Y/N dragged their shoe a little on the grass before coming to a stop, “Do you still play?”

“All the time.”

They nodded over to where the old chess tables still stood, “Fancy a game before you go?”

Spencer grinned, “Just promise that this is the only setting where we’ll be on conflicting sides from now on.”

“Promise.”

Brushing the debris from the table, they both took their places opposite each other. From Y/N’s bag was revealed a box, spilling their painted chess pieces across the board. Remembering how they had stood in Y/N’s room, Spencer helped to set up the match. They took their seats opposite one another. Y/N was the green side, Spencer the purple.

Spencer moved first. After a second’s deliberation, Y/n moved their pawn.

“Isn’t there a story with this one?” Spencer said, an implicated teasing in his tone despite his shyness.

With an equally bashful eye roll, Y/N started their new story, “First begins the battle with the royals on both sides sending intrepid messengers to meet and pass along their deeds.”

Spencer took Y/N’s pawn. As he lifted their piece away, he spoke quietly, “One not as intrepid as the other.”

A gasp dropped from Y/N’s smile. He had never joined in the narrative telling before, always too taken up in the match to invest in whatever story they spun.

“He’s not a coward,” They said, still smiling, much to Spencer’s delight, “Prisoner’s dilemma, he just couldn’t trust the other with his life.”

“Did they know each other before this battle?”

“Yes,” Y/N moved a knight across, stealing Spencer’s pawn, “They were brothers who once shared a crib and now they share a grave.”

Throughout the game, Y/N continued the story with Spencer asking questions just to hear them talk more. The maturity of the stories had grown just as Y/N’s voice had. They knuckled their eyes a few times, but they didn’t complain about the headache.

“I know what endings you like,” Spencer moved his rook, “Checkmate in five.”

Y/N didn’t seem to mind that little dig, “This’ll have to be a short story instead then.”

Spencer’s next sentence got away from him, trailing off the closer he got to the end of it, “You could write an anthology series, if we see each other again and play more games.”

Where Spencer’s voice disappeared, Y/N’s returned with invigoration, “That’s not a half bad idea, Spencer.”

The checkmate never came. Y/N diverted the ending into a draw.

“A peace treaty has been forged by the survivors, because too many lives have been lost to justify this violence anymore. If only they realised sooner that no blood had to be shed for peace to rule the lands.” And they smiled at Spencer, clearly chuffed as they leaned back in their chair, “Bit of an upgrade from the horse noises, I’ll say.”

Spencer rotated the purple knight – the illusionist – between his thumb and forefinger, “I liked the horse noises.”

“You should have said during the match! I’d recreate them, for you.”

One by one, the pieces were placed back into their box until the last piece remained in Spencer’s palm: the knight or Soren the Illusionist, distractions and deceptions but he loved the tricks that delighted most of all. Just like Spencer with his magic tricks but a little to the left. The character was always one of Y/N’s favourites. Some solace away from the pain of thinking of who he was based on.

Y/N pushed Spencer’s hand away, closes his fist around it, “Keep him. He was made with you in mind anyway.”

The information sank in and Spencer’s nose wrinkled with the little smile on his face as he cupped the little Illusionist, “I’m Soren?”

Nodding, Y/N confirmed, “You’re Soren.”

“But what about your set though?”

“I can always make and paint another knight,” and Y/N tilted the piece upside down in Spencer’s hand, revealing the signature on the underside, “You and him are the originals, it’s only fair you stay together.”

In a moment of pure instinct and nostalgia, Spencer clicked his tongue as he twisted Soren in time with the noise. Y/N let out a burst of laughter that dragged the air out of Spencer’s chest.

“Hey, do you wanna get dinner tonight?” He said, running out of breath very quickly as a result.

It had a similar effect on Y/N, “I thought you – don’t you have to get back to Virginia?”

“I have time for dinner. For you.”

---> ---> ---> ---> --->

The bookstore was packed but the breath of the patrons was held as one. All eyes were watching the mini stage where a crouching figure lifted their head up slowly. A jump as the tension broke with the figure leaping up to their feet with a bang.

Y/N pushed up the brim of their cap. Snatching a deep green hoodie from the purple trunk – silver constellations painted on the sides – they swung it over their back before picking up the page where they had left off.

“Nasima looked up at Mason and said, ‘Well that was just unnecessary.’”

A burst of laughter shot through the pre-teens in the front row, spreading to the adolescents sitting further back who had grown up with the author’s other works, finally reaching the adults at the back where Spencer was fiddling with his cane. He adjusted the sleeve of his costume absentmindedly. He was just like everyone else in the room: captivated by how Y/N was so immersed in their reading.

They had just mimed kicking down a door, plus sound effects from their mouth. Swapping back and forth between the two conflicting characters arguing with one another, changing between the hoodie and the cap with every other line of dialogue and taking both off for the role of the narrator, it was certainly a workout.

An exaggerated breath was drawn into Y/N’s lungs, flopping over in a melodramatic state, which caused another laugh in the audience.

Spencer’s nose scrunched up as he grinned. He knew this was part of the scene; he’d seen Y/N rehearse this story in their sitting room. It was so much better to share this with an audience, for their reactions to fuel Y/N’s energy.

Y/N finished the short story A Battle of Bent Truths with a flourish, leaving the rest of the anthology for their audience to read in their own time. The kids were up on their feet first. Some of them were jumping up and down as they applauded with the rest of the shop. Y/N gave a big grin as they bowed, sweeping their cap off for extra drama.

There was a book signing and a photographer that followed, and Spencer waited patiently at the end of the queue, thankful that the store allowed him to bring a chair along with him. He was happy to entertain his godson and friends with a few tricks to pass the time.

“Another one please!” Henry jumped up and down when Spencer revealed his card.

A minor commotion arose by the photographer’s backdrop. There was a teenager was crying; she was clutching her copy of Untold Tales of Human Nature. Y/N was holding their shoulders, rubbing gently and speaking softly. Only half paying attention to his next trick, Spencer kept an eye on Y/N as they hugged the teenager, looking near tears themselves.

“Spencer?” J.J tapped him on the shoulder and Spencer realised that Henry was looking a little mad to have lost his godfather’s attention so easily.

“Sorry, Henry, can you pick another card please?”

When they reached the front of the queue, JJ went up first and took Henry and his pals up to see Y/N. They instantly recognised JJ and welcomed her with a tight hug. Henry was delighted to see his favourite babysitter and show them off to his school friends, boasting that they had read to him before today.

“They read me bits for bedtime, Mommy!”

“I know!” JJ tickled his cheek, “I read them to you too.”

“Who do you like better?”

“Mommy,”

Y/N gasped, dropping to their knees which made Spencer wince, “Henry, you wound me!”

Rossi approach next, knowing that once Spencer got to Y/N, they would not be left alone.

“You really know how to captivate an audience,” He kissed them on both cheeks, “Though don’t take offence if I don’t use the same tricks at my readings.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it! Thank you for coming.”

Y/N then caught Spencer’s eye and began meandering over to him with a smile they were desperately trying to stifle. Spencer rose from his chair, meeting Y/N in the middle.

“Hi, Spencer.”

With his free arm, Spencer flaunted his cloak, “Who is Spencer? I’m Soren the Illusionist!”

Giggles from his godson, his godson’s gang, his co-workers and friends, they almost caused Y/N to lose their composure. They held on just long enough to continue the banter.

“Oh, forgive me, you look so much like my boyfriend.”

“Hmmm, he must be very handsome,”

And Y/N burst into peals of laughter, waving their hands about, “OK, stop, stop, stop, I can’t.”

“Hey!” Spencer pretended to take offence, pouting as Y/N brought him into a hug.

“Don’t worry,” They kissed his cheek between giggles, “You are so very handsome.”

“To think you were once sick at the sight of me.”

#spencer reid #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid imagine #criminal minds #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds x reader #my writing #r: gender neutral #wc: 5k+

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thanksjro · 4 years ago

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More Than Meets the Eye #32 - Nobody’s Ever Actually Dead in Comic Books

Our band of merry guys-who-weren’t-on-the-Lost-Light-in-issue-#1 approach the shattered husk of the Lost Light, in a gruesome scene that is only slightly marred by the graphic design.

Font doesn’t really suggest danger, does it? Here, for comparison, is something I slapped together in fifteen minutes (including recreation of background) using a font I got off a free font site.

Now, one could say that my version is rather derivative, flat, and arguably cliche, but you know what else it is? Appropriate for the fucking mood of having found a destroyed, hemorrhaging ship after everyone you knew disappeared.

I’m available, IDW! Hit me up.

Theorizing that this is the ship that the Coffin Rodimus came from- remember that? It was a few issues ago- the gang flies in for a closer look. The ship blood is actually something called quantum foam, which allows for quantum space travel to happen. It’s not supposed to be outside of the quantum quills, but the ship’s pretty junked up, so it is.

Because the ship is so very full of holes, the gang can set down for repairs pretty easy. They land in Swerve’s, finding it in less-than-pristine condition. They also find evidence of Crosscut having gotten creative, as a poster for the play he was working on is hung up in the room. Considering he was still writing it when he disappeared, this might seem a bit odd. But then you remember that this is a ship from the future, and it stops being so odd.

Because this is a future ship, with evidence that Crosscut did some stuff, it stands to reason that, at some point, everyone is going to come back from being disappeared.

Just to die.

Which is a bummer, but one crisis at a time.

Megatron disembarks the Rod Pod, with Ravage following, and everyone is just a touch put off by the duo. Everyone but Nautica, who proceeds to commit a microaggression.

Nautica, that’s Soundwave’s father you’re petting like a common animal.

Ravage, angered by this over-familiarity, swats at her. Skids questions letting an active Decepticon roam around, but Megatron brushes off these concerns, saying that finding any still-living crew members is more important. With that, the search begins.

The gang splits up to look for clues, despite Riptide thinking this is a horrible idea. They’re on the clock for this one- the quantum foam is liable to explode if it touches anything, and there’s an awful lot of the stuff floating around right now.

Nightbeat and Nautica leave the rest of the group to their own work, seeing as Nautica has the most appropriate alt-mode for traversing the gaps in the ship.

Man, that’s pretty cool. Wish Nautica hadn’t been regulated to being “girl best friend” for her character arcs, I would have loved to see her do some neat stuff for her own development. Guess that’s what happens when you get introduced as main cast late, and have to compete with all the faves who had dozens of issues to be established and who also don’t have to deal with the whole “token girl character” thing.

The rest of the gang- Megatron, Ravage, Riptide, Skids, and Getaway- start looking in the area they’re already in. Seems a little lopsided, but whatever.

Ravage finds someone almost immediately, identifying Ultra Magnus through smell alone. Only, it isn’t just Ultra Magnus.

The Magnus armor lays not terribly far away, having had its hands cut off to prevent the recall signal from being activated before being gut-murdered.

Gut-murdered wiTH A FUSION CANNON, MEGATRON

Of course, Megatron was forced to destroy his fusion canon after it was decided he would be joining the Lost Light, but you can buy these things off the black market like it’s nothing. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Brainstorm had a few stashed in his lab.

As it currently stands, nobody can trust the guy who has a storied past of killing Autobots, on a future ship where the only folks who could stop him are dead. Megatron, at least, has the good sense to not argue this fact, and suggests that the boys lock both Ravage and himself up until they suss out exactly what happened.

Meanwhile, over with Nautica and Nightbeat, we run through all the weird shit that’s happened in the last day or so.

Nautica, you’ve been on this ship for months now. How did you miss the fact that the only couple within 800 miles got annihilated by way of Phase Sixer? I feel like that attack might have come up at some point.

Since they’re on the subject of spouses, Nightbeat asks Nautica if she’s married, or if she has friends. Though noting that such a direct line of questioning might get him slapped with someone else, Nautica reveals that she is single, though she does have a best friend. Nightbeat is also single, probably because he pulls shit like this.

While this conversation is going on, Nautica uses her Sonic Screwdriver wrench to open a door with the literal push of a button. Brainstorm tricked out her wrench so hard it turned into a magic wand, which is good, because they’re going to need all the help they can get now that space is literally warping around them thanks to the quantum foam.

Nautica kicks something on the elevator, and that something turns out to be Brainstorm’s mysterious briefcase. Too bad Swerve is gone, he was so invested in what it contained. Luckily, Nightbeat is just as interested.

Back over on the other side of the ship, it seems as though Megatron kept his word about not resisting, as both he and Ravage have been locked in a cabinet. Wonder how that’s going for them.

Oh, better than I expected.

Ravage is fucking pissed that Megatron joined the Autobots, thereby turning his back on everyone who supported his cause during the last four million years. Despite this grievous betrayal though, the Decepticons haven’t stopped moving. Turns out, Galvatron’s in charge now.

But only if Autobot Megatron isn’t some sort of ploy.

It’s at this point that we learn just why Ravage is here to begin with- to see if Megatron’s truly given up the Decepticons, and if he has, to murder him. But first he’d like to know why this is happening.

Megatron views himself as a monster, having perpetuated a war that ended the lives of billions, destroyed the Cybertronian way of life, ostracized his race from the rest of the universe, and killing just to have something to do. He doesn’t like feeling this way about himself, so he decided to walk away from that life by joining the other team.

Don’t think it’s quite that easy to do, but okay.

Ravage isn’t so sure that this change of heart is going to stick, still convinced that Megatron will snap back to his old self with just a bit more time. Problem is, Megatron may not have a ton of that resource left.

Didn’t they build that body in like an hour so you wouldn’t die? Yeah, no wonder it feels as ill-fitting as a twenty-dollar suit. Thing’s probably made out of pig iron and duct tape.

The lights come on before further self-reflection can be done, and the duo realize that they’ve had guests this whole time.

Someone put the kettle on.

Obviously some fucked up shit happened on this ship. Megatron isn’t so sure that it’s him who did these dirty deeds, however, as he reaches into Ratchet’s mouth and pulls out his brain. Which feels like something that doesn’t really absolve one of guilt, but okay.

Also, ew.

Back with Nautica and Nightbeat, things are getting weird.

Now, this sequence might seem confusing at first blush, but this is because the laws of reality are collapsing around them. Going by clues in the background, we can find the proper, linear progression of time, and thus is conversation. This is what is actually happening:

With the mystery of Brainstorm’s briefcase eluding us once again, we move on to see more graphic aftermaths of violence. Poor Tailgate has been nailed to the wall with a chunk of a metal beam that’s almost as big as he is. The mood lighting for this scene is gorgeous, but I’ve hit my limit for exposing y’all to gore for this issue, so you’ll just have to trust me on this one. Then they find something even more interesting.

Who’s ready for Under Cold Blue Stars… 2!

Back over on the opposite side of the ship, Riptide’s found something nasty. It’s a bunch of dead bodies!

Including, uh, Pipes.

Who already died a while ago.

Hm.

All the bodies in this room are in their alts, and it looks like they’ve all been shot and drilled into, for some reason. Skids brings up that he had a friend who could identify the placement of any robot’s brain module just by knowing what they turned into. Then he reaches into a corpse to see what the drill-hole’s all about. It makes him sick, though maybe not for the reason you might think. He gets on the phone with Nightbeat, who’s called to tell them that they’ve found Overlord.

Still locked in his weird body harness.

And decapitated.

Megatron is on the other line, calling because he’s figured out the same thing Skids has. Someone paid a visit to this ship. Someone nasty.

The gang regroups, and Nautica gets the basics on the DJD, because I guess nobody’s mentioned them even in passing in the last six months, either.

God, what do they even talk about on this ship? Certainly not their feelings.

The reason that one room was filled with alt-modes was because of Tarn’s addiction to transforming; t-cogs are easier to remove when they’ve been used recently.

We get a quick 4/5ths-page gore-fest, then it’s back to making it all about Megatron.

Maybe you should have thought about that before you FUCKING DEFECTED, YOU POOL NOODLE.

Nightbeat’s beginning to put two and two together. There’s an Overlord in the basement. That shouldn’t be, because Overlord got exploded by Chromedome when he mercy-killed Rewind. Something is off about the past of this ship.

Before he can establish his MTMTE everybody-lives-but-then-dies AU though, the quantum foam fucks with the ship. These sons of guns need to get the hell out of here, pronto.

Oh god, what now?

Ravage smells someone inside the Magnus armor, someone who isn’t a part of the usual nesting doll lineup. Megatron reaches into the Crackerjack box and pulls out one hell of a prize.

HE LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVES

Chromedome would be so thrilled, if he still existed.

#transformers #jro #MTMTE #slaughterhouse #issue 32 #maccadam #Hannzreads #incoming analysis #text post #long post #comic script writing

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dizzydennis · 4 years ago

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My ideas for Sonic Riders 4!

Title:

Sonic Riders: Drift Dimension

I have a lot of ideas for a potential Sonic Riders sequel and I hope you can enjoy what I have to say. I am very passionate about the Sonic series and would love to see the Babylon Rogues again. I wrote a lot, but any comments or feedback would be wonderful! Check it out under this cut!

Story:

I would like the story mode to continue to split between Team Sonic and the Babylon Rogues. For the sake of making this cohesive, I will write out the narrative linearly.

Set a few years after King Doc’s tournament, Wave has convinced Jet to allow her to continue to investigate Babylon Garden even more under the promise that it would improve their Extreme Gears. The 3 Babylon Rogues go deep within the ruins of Babylon Garden by using their gravity modules (from Zero Gravity.) Wave is still worried about the black hole that could occur, but her calculations assure her that it won’t be a problem. However, while in the heart of this floating island, the gravity modules float into the rocky ruins and activate a bright light as Babylon Garden powers up.

Tails pilots the Tornado with Sonic, Knuckles, and Amy in tow. He detected the massive energy surge that cause Babylon Garden to light up. It seems like the garden is warping reality around it, but with their courage, they enter into the void.

It seems that Babylon Garden has teleported to another world. With their airship being grounded due to the warp, the Babylon Rogues hop onto their Extreme Gears to explore. Before long, they encounter a massive airship that completely dwarfs their own. Upon being captured, they learn that Jet’s father, Kaze, is the leader of this group known as the Babylon Legion. The Rogues have been reunited with their ancestors and family. Naturally, they’re overjoyed! Especially Jet who has been longing for his father for years.

Shortly after, Sonic and his friends encounter the airship and are reunited with the Babylon Rogues. Their fun meeting soon turns dire as the Babylon Legion surround and arrest Knuckles.

Later, Jet inquires about why they apprehended Knuckles. Kaze explains that years ago when they crash landed on Sonic’s planet, they had encountered a terrible Echidna Clan who were power hungry to conquer others. When the Babylon Legion refused to give their advance technology to the Echidna Clan, they were seen as enemies. When there were murmurs that the Echidna Clan had awakened a god of destruction, the Babylon Legion tried to get reactivate Babylon Garden to allow them to leave the planet.

Instead, Babylon Garden was stricken deep into the planet and the Babylon Legion was warped to parts unknown. Jet was baffled by what he heard, but he trusted his father. Upon meeting with Sonic and the others, they discuss what happened and that there were plenty of holes in Kaze’s story. Jet, upset that others would accuse his father, argues with them. However, there was one point that Storm brings up that cannot be ignored. How were Jet, Wave, and Storm on Sonic’s planet if the Babylon Legion were teleported to this planet?

They learn that when they were younger, Kaze had volunteered the three for an experiment to see if they could return, but in doing so, the 3 Babylon Rogues were stranded on their own with no real memory of what had happened.

The Babylon Rogues have to choose between siding with Team Sonic or the Babylon Legion, but they soon find out that Kaze intends to use his technology to convert Babylon Garden into Mecha Babylon. Having learned from the Echidna Clan, power needs to be met with power. Therefore, Kaze wants to teleport back to Sonic’s planet with Mecha Babylon being the ultimate weapon; a fortified island with weapons and a metal shell.

All the heroes band together to stop Kaze from reaching the inner ruins of Babylon Garden to allow it to teleport back to Sonic’s planet. During the climax, Kaze activates the portal only for Sonic and Jet to work together to knock him off of it. Torn between going with Sonic or staying with Kaze and the Babylon Legion, Jet ultimately decides that he must go back with Sonic. He claims that “The Babylon Legion had their chance,” as Sonic grabs his hand and the two dive into the portal.

Cut back to Sonic’s planet, Babylon Garden continues to float around the planet, perfectly reflecting Angel Island. Here, Knuckles and Storm reflect that the Echidna Clan and the Babylon Legion were a lot more similar than they were different. Wave notes that it isn’t one’s lineage that defines who they are, but what they do to better that lineage for future generations. Jet and Sonic use that as a means to claim that they’re the fastest as they race across Babylon Garden. Kaze’s words echo through Jet’s mind as he overtakes Sonic and the two ride off into the distance.

Stages:

Tundra Peaks / Frigid Avalanche – A snowbound stage high in the mountains that mixes canyons, rocky hillsides, and snow. The former stage features nice, mountain villages while the latter stage takes place with massive avalanches falling around the player.

Future Mall / Shopping Calamity – A futuristic city that leads into a massive shopping mall. Players would weave in and out of stores while making their way to a large building outside. The latter stage would be at night where a certain band of robots might be trying to get away with a robbery and chase.

Tubular Coastline / Hurricane Seaboard – A gorgeous beach that runs along side an advance city. You can choose to ride along the sand or take to the waves to get some boosts by performing tricks on the water. Be careful of the storm coming in the latter stage that alters the stage in a crazy way!

Thrill Park / Cursed Midway – A theme park with roller coasters, log flumes, and plenty of other rides. Be warned though, the haunted house gets a bit intense at night and changes the entire park!

Neon Woodland / Forest Illumination – A forest hidden within a valley that glows with luminous mushrooms and vines that glow as they are touched. This place really comes alive late at night when a rave party is going on!

Babylon Garden / Mecha Babylon – While not a remake of the original Sonic Riders track, this version would start on the outside of Babylon Garden as you go deep within the floating island. The mechanized version of this stage is far more dangerous with lasers and robots about; players would fire themselves across the island via giant turrets. Mecha Babylon would be the final boss fight against Kaze.

Dimension Hops / Nostalgia Trip – This is a bonus track where you hop between dimensional pockets of Metal City, Aquatic Capital, and Dolphin Resort. It’s a celebration of the Sonic Riders series. Nostalgia Trip sends players through Green Hill Zone (of course it’s here), Final Rush, and Sunset Heights. This one celebrates the Sonic series. These two tracks would not share music.

SEGA Heroics / SEGA Darkness – Much like the other SEGA fan service stages in the series, this one instead separates the two stages between the heroes of SEGA’s rich history and the villains. Lots of fun to be had here!

Playable Characters:

Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles Tails Prower, Knuckles the Echidna, Jet the Hawk, Wave the Swallow, Storm the Albatross, Amy Rose, Kaze the Hawk, Shadow the Hedgehog, Rouge the Bat, Cream the Rabbit, Blaze the Cat, Silver the Hedgehog, Vector the Crocodile, Dr. Eggman, NiGHTS, Kazuma Kiryu, Arle Nadja

Gameplay:

The gameplay would avoid the failings of Sonic Free Riders. Motion controls have been pushed since Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity and they’d be mostly dropped here. The game would implement the AIR system, but with the multiple routes with the gravity modules. Due to plot reasons, the gravity modules themselves can’t be used, so this mechanic would just be a movement of the Extreme Gears. Speed, Fly, and Power routes would still be available based on the characters and not the gears... and would hopefully be better balanced. The springs would be taken out as they were so painfully contextual in previous games. One thing from Sonic Free Riders would be certain items to change the course of the races including missiles, ink traps, and a few others. The grab mechanic to reach out to the left or right can be brought over too as it holds a lot of potential. Also, the vibrant visuals from Free Riders should be carried over! Moreover, the boost from the original game would be present. Lastly, the game would feel faster. Drifting, much like Team Sonic Racing would be emphasized more in this game.

Typical features would include the Story, Grand Prix, Battle Mode, Time Trials, Character Profiles, Gear Shop, Gear Gallery, Online Multiplayer, and Options. Let’s have alternate costumes for the characters too! Also, the Grand Prix mode would have character specific endings that would be simplistic, but still a treat and motivation to play through it with each character!

That’s basically it for my ideas. I know it’s just a pipe dream, but I would love for a Sonic Riders game to really get into the old stories and characterizations of the original two games, while adding some heart for the Babylon Rogues. It doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel, but rather just create a fun racing game that focuses on these amazing characters.

#Sonic the Hedgehog #Sonic Riders #Jet the Hawk #Babylon Rogues #Shadow the Hedgehog #SEGA

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lo-55 · 5 years ago

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Playing With Fire

While playing a perfectly innocent video game you get thrown into a dangerous world on the brink of incineration! At least you’re surrounded by a bunch of hot people. If nothing else you can shower them with copious, well earned affection.

You come awake with a start.

Everything is just a little off kilter. Like your eyes aren’t focused or you're wearing someone else's glasses. It takes you a few long minutes to realize that you’re staring down at a piece of paper.

It’s listed one through eight, with a check box next to each number.

At the top you see ‘Company Preference List’, and beneath that is your name scrawled in your own handwriting. But, when did you write it? And what was the list? You look up to find yourself in a library, surrounded by a bunch of other people all dressed in orange uniforms. You look down and find yourself in the same one. You recognize it as the Fire Force boiler suits.

You touch your cheek slowly. Then poke the corner of your eyes. You’re not wearing your VR visor. And you’re not holding handles either. Are you hallucinating? You were playing the game, in the middle of some side quest. Did the game reset? This looked like a scene from the start of the game. It followed the beginning of the series, but through the eyes of a random side character researching Haijima on their own. There was some kind of revenge plot and a lot of stuff about their big sister, but you hadn’t gotten to the full reveal of the tragic back story yet. They interacted with the main characters plenty, but mostly they spent their time in their own squad, the fourth.

You were halfway through the game, and now you were back at the start?

You look around for something to tell you what’s going on. You try to poke the menu button, but you’re not holding controllers. So all you really end up doing is poking the air between your hands with your thumbs. You’re starting to panic, when something shiny catches your attention.

When did you get that ring?

Plain silver on your forefinger. You poke it and gasp when the world shifts minutely.

A flicker of fire, a figure dark against the light. It warps in and out of your vision in a split second.

Right. Tragic back story.

The ring was from their (your?) older sister. Now disappeared a-la-infernal fire. You were like the reverse Shinra.

Wait.

Shinra.

Your head snapped around quickly from one person to the other. Most of them were boring background characters. No, no, no. Boring. Lame. Basically grey blobs.

Were you going crazy and you couldn’t even enjoy it?!

“Uh, hey? Are you okay?”

Your head snaps sideways to find bright red eyes peering at you in concern.

Red eyes. Black hair.

You stare hard at him until the corners of his mouth start to twitch and curl upwards.

“H-hey. Why are you staring at me?”

Abruptly you reach over and cup his cheeks. His face is hot beneath your hands. You can touch him. You can feel the heat of his skin. He’s blushing something fierce.

“You are… adorable,” you declare.

He turns bright red and squeaks at you until you finally let him go.

“What?!”

“Did I stutter?” you prop your chin in your hand and look him over. Yep. Definitely cute. You just wanna squeeze him. But, you should probably do other things first. Like figure out what exactly is going on.

Not that you can come outta the gate with ‘hey I was playing a video game and now I’m stuck in it, also I thought you weren’t real? What gives yo?’

Even you aren’t that impulsive.

Actually, in real live you’re not very impulsive at all. That was what made games so fun, especially open world ones where you could do basically whatever you wanted. IRL you were more withdrawn than anything, even when you wanted to be social.

Now… You could be whoever you wanted, right?

Did you even have to follow the plot? Could you put a preference for another company and go there? Or would you still end up in the forth? And what about your abilities? In the game you’d had a choice at the beginning between a second gen ability and two third gen powers. You’d ended up picking at random, since they all seemed cool and you hadn’t been very far into the anime yet at the time.

How would you even use those powers here, assuming that you could?

“Sorry, I was spacing out,” you finally said, “What were you saying?”

“Oh uh,” Shinra looked away, his grin still pulling at his face. “I was just asking if you were okay. You were looking at the form for so long, but whenever you talked about joining a company before you always said you would go to the fourth. Not that we talk a lot, so I wouldn’t know if you wanted to go to the fifth or the sixth or the seventh or-”

“Babe, you’re rambling,” you cut in, starting to smile yourself. Even though you’re beyond confused something about Shinra puts you at ease. Everything about him seems so… warm. And yeah, the smile could be off putting. If it wasn’t so damn adorable.

“O-oh!” aaaand he was blushing again.

You look down at the paper, your brows furrowing. What are you even supposed to say to this?

“I dunno,” you said at last, “I guess I was reconsidering. There’s a lot of companies, and a lot of options out there. I might end up going a totally different path if it’s not too late… What about you?”

“Me? Well I didn’t really have a particular preference, but I heard that they’re trying to send more people to the eighth this year. Since its such a new company, and so small.”

“Mmmm. That’s true. Maybe I’ll go there,” you muse. It would put you smack in the middle of all the action, and you could see the sweet Iris, and the too-hot-to-be-fair Maki. You could stay with adorable Shinra and the well meaning dumbass that was Arthur. Not to mention the two guys in charge. If you could get Obi to bench press you-

Nope! Bad! Focus on the task at hand. No thirsting over captains right now!

“I was thinking the same thing,” Shinra admitted, looking down at his own paper.

“Yeah? I guess such a small company would make it easy for you to stand out and come a hero, right?”

Shinra looked startled. You offered him a sweet smile and turned back to your paper and picked up your pen.

You marked your preferences.

Eighth, seventh, fourth, second, fifth, sixth, third, first.

“The eighth and the seventh?” Shinra asked, peaking over at your sheet.

You shot him a grin. “They both sound like fun to me. Hey, Shinra?”

“Yeah?”

Your grin grows wider. “Let’s both do our best, and save lots of people okay?”

Shinra’s smile is small, but true.

“Okay.”

You bump your fist to his to seal the deal.

It had taken you a couple of tries to find your dorm room.

Your body seemed like it knew what it was doing, even if your mind didn’t. You had to explain away your frazzled state to the woman in charge of your wing, a nun who’s name you couldn’t recall to save your life, as nerves. She had looked dubious, but hadn’t questioned you when she pointed you to your room.

Probably thinks I’m hung over, you thought as you stepped inside. If I didn’t know better I’d think I was drunk enough to hallucinate. But it’s all way too real. Just what happened? One second I was playing the game, and then my phone went off, and then it was all dark. After that I was in the library.

It was making your head hurt thinking about it.

You poked around the room. If you remembered right you’d had a roommate, but she’d already been assigned her company a week early. Her dad was some top brass in the military, so off to the second company she went,

You made sure the door was locked before you started riffling through your things.

Books, papers, clothes. Personal items.

You had a collection of antique keys for some reason, and a blanket shaped like a tortilla that was warmer than most space heaters. There was an old lighter with a hawk engraved on it in one drawer. When you touched it you got the sudden smell of pipe tobacco and a man laughing far in the back of your mind before it was gone. Just like when you touched the ring earlier.

Memories that weren’t yours. You had stepped into someone else's life.

When you looked in the mirror you found the face that your had designed for your character staring back at you. There was a thin ring of white in your eyes, cutting through their color and marking you as a pyrokinetic.

Shit. Each of those abilities had a different eye. Which one was the circle? There was a circle, a pointy cross, and teardrop because the designer was some edgelord. Which power does this mean I have? Wings? Magnet sand? Or the spear torch thingy?

You wished this could have been more like Fate/Grand Order. Then you would just have to keep track of your teams abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. Not your own.

Fuck.

You spend a long time in your room, packing up all of your belongings. None of them really belong to you. They belong to your character, and they’re only familiar in the sense that you’ve thrown them over your shoulder when you were looking for something specific before. Only now if you throw them they won’t puff back to where they were before eventually. You’ll actually have to put this stuff away.

Damn it, you’ve never liked packing.

Still, you carefully rolled your new found clothes into baggage burritos. They were pretty plain, all in all. Oh well. You could make adjustments later if you really wanted to. Was it a game mechanic you haven't unlocked? Full customization? You could pick gender and hair, and the eyes depended on your pyrokinesis. Maybe at some point you got to change clothes too.

You’d figure it out.

You hoped.

Your head was still reeling the with the idea of what was going on, but for now, with nothing else you really could do, you decided to go with it.

Once you had everything all packed up you left your room to do some exploring. You tried to keep track of where you were going in the big fire station/training academy, but before long you were hopelessly lost.

You stumbled upon a training room, where a familiar boy with a dorky pony tail was slashing a glowing blue sword through a training dummy. The poor dummy fell to the floor in pieces.

You watched him for a few minutes before he noticed you.

“Oh,” he said, “It’s you.”

Which was… pretty lame, if you’re being honest.

What, did you one pop his delusional bubble?

“Yep,” you popped your ‘p’, “It’s a-me.” Mario. “What did that guy ever do to you? Try to challenge the great Knight King Arthur on a troll bridge?” you meant it to be a joke, but Arthur actually lit up.

“Hardly! This was merely training. A Knight King must always be ready to defend his people!”

“Of course,” you nodded along, playing with him. “And soon you’ll be embarking on a great quest to your new company, right? Do you know which one?”

“I didn’t bother with those silly preference sheets. Let whichever company requires a knight most vie for my presence.”

You were honestly impressed Arthur even knew the word ‘vie’. Wasn’t he kind of a loon?

“Mhmm, mhmm, I see,” you nodded seriously. “Then in case, I might see you in my own company.”

You wanted to ask him to spar, if only to see Excalibur in action more, but you still weren’t sure what your power was or how to use it. So you ended up bowing out.

It took you another hour to find your way back to your room.

Whoops.

You don’t really sleep. You lay down and try to wake up, and hope that come morning you’ll be back in your living room with a vr stapped to your head and this whole thing will have been a (not so terrible) dream.

Keep Dreaming.

~ ~

#fire force x reader #shinra kusakabe #shinra kusakabe x reader #reader insert #isekai

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dragonrajafanfiction · 4 years ago

Text

Ghosts’ Journey (Part 2): The History of Chime Gen

Here it is... the whole thing. I wanted to cut it but there was no good place. I did my best with the translation. (FINGEL PLEASE SPEAK HUMAN) Because this is important information to the Chime/Ruri fandom the Content of his speech is nearly exactly as it is in the novel.

@rurifangirl By request

The plan was to wake up before him. You had learned from Z that Japanese men were conservative. You didn’t know each other. He was out of it. He might think you took advantage of him. That sort of thing happened in Black Swan.

But he was also human and humans needed touch. Z’s hug transformed you even more than Herzog’s laughter. You didn’t get any affectionate human touch as a child. You would give him that precious touch so his mind could heal. Or maybe you would give him that touch because you desperately needed it yourself. Maybe you gave it to Ruri because he could give it to you and not require anything in return as a doll-person.

These were the excuses you gave yourself until you fell asleep in his arms.

As soon as you opened your eyes and felt the sun coming through the small window, you realized that you failed your mission objective. Ruri was sitting up next to you while you lay on the pillow. He was looking out the window. His eyes were no longer empty, but they held no joy. They were still, without any spark.

Guilt makes you freeze momentarily. “If you wanna push me off the bed, you can.”

The words shocked him out of his reverie. He looked down at you with those dark eyes and you detected a strange hesitation. His eyes meet yours and shift away without any friction. “You can stay if you want,” he said in a soft melodic voice.

“Sorry. I meant to wake up before you. Are you… in any pain? Physically I mean. The rest is obvious.” You sit up and swing over the edge of the bed. Ugly black veins are pulsing up your feet. The dragon blood in your body was now showing up more permanently. You flexed your toes and tried to calm it.

“No.”

“Good.”

“I want to apologize to you. For making a promise I won’t be able to keep.” He said.

“And what promise was that?” In this light, Ruri Kazama was no star performer. He looked shockingly ordinary, able to blend in with the masses on the streets of Japan. You probably wouldn’t recognize him were it not for his long hair.

“All of them. It’s all a deception.”

“You’re going to have to be more specific.” You whisper, looking up at him seriously. On the one hand, it wouldn’t be the first time you were deceived by a man, but on the other hand, you personally understood the intense warping of the mind that came with being a child of Herzog.

“I made you believe that I was Ruri Kazama. That I had power and wealth. That I could lead the Devil Clan by defeating the King General.” He paused for a long time before whispering. “None of that was true.”

You shrug it off. “Okay. I’ll believe you. But you’ll have to understand that was not why I pursued you. And I’m sorry I gave you that impression. If anything, I have many more reasons to stick with you now.”

“The King General will kill you.” He said gravely.

“Not if Bondarev gets to me first.” You quip and smile but his sharp intense glare makes your smile falter a moment. You stare at each other unblinkingly for a moment. “Look. Don’t play this… ‘you need to stay away from me’ line.” You whisper, but your tone is kind. “I will be in danger no matter what. I should be dead by now. And every day I live is on borrowed time.”

You roll up your sleeves to show him the black veins beneath pale skin dotted with sparkling gold scales. “Can I at least have your company for the time I have left?”

Chime Gen gives a sad shake of his head. Maybe if he were in another state, he would have insisted and argued. But now he just gives up and hangs his head, his hair covering his face. When you reach out to brush it back, his hand catches yours and gently places it in your lap.

You bite the inside of your lip and fight your internal panic. He wasn’t feeling well. He had a humiliating and terrifying night. You’d seen him at his lowest. He was revealed to be nothing but a doll, a marionette whose strings had been cut. So of course your affection was painful.

“What do you want right now?” Your voice is flat and expressionless.

“Can you bring me that box?”

He points over to an ornate wooden box. It had a curved metal handle and a pot-like metal lid. It had a few small drawers and two hooks with which to carry a long narrow pipe. Ruri knew what to do when you brought it. He took the pipe from the box and then opened the drawer.

“Can you tell me about this?” You ask quietly.

“This is called a kiseru. It uses a special kind of tobacco. You won’t find it outside of Japan.” He pulls a wood box covered with hand written script on rice paper. The smell of the leaves reaches your nose. It was tobacco but it had a richer, almost meaty aroma.

“You just roll it in a ball between your fingers and put it into the pipe like this.” The pipe was narrow and very long but Chime was so practiced that he could roll the tobacco in one hand and hold the pipe in the other. He stuffed the pipe and you held out the open box of matches. He glances at you but you keep your face carefully neutral. He takes the box of matches from you and strikes one. He pauses for two seconds and lights the tobacco. There’s a small compartment in this box that he drops the spent match in.

You set the box at the end of the bed and then sit next to him. He inhales deep and breathes out a long smooth stream of white that swirls around his face like mist. It smelled different from Caesar’s cigars, not as sweet, but this was the smell on his clothing when you found Ruri Kazama in the rain, fleeing from the Hydra operatives.

“It… doesn’t bother you?”

You shake your head. “I like it.”

He hasn’t pushed you off the bed yet so you stay there and watch him smoke. His eyes and mind were far away, like he’d gone on a long journey. All you could do was wait for him to come back.

You weren’t at peace for long when you heard Caesar’s voice coming through the door. "Then, as the best journalist among us, this great task falls on your shoulders! Whether it's psyching him up or hanging him up and beating him, get the information about the King General out of his mouth." Caesar opened the door to your room and pushed Fingel inside, "We’ll go have breakfast first, and, hopefully, we'll hear good news from you when we return."

Apparently, all the boys were awake and in the hallway. Fingel stumbled in, locked eyes with you and then flailed. “Aaah! Sorry, I’m interrupting!”

“You’re not.” You say with a sly smile. “We just finished.”

Chime inhaled sharply and coughed.

You flinched. “Sorry. I… I say things like this. I’ll shut up now.” You turn back to Fingel and the others and beckon them in. Then you look around. “Sorry, there’s nowhere to sit!”

“I’ll get something, you sit right there.” Caesar’s eyes hold a sly little light.

Caesar returned with chairs and they all sat around the bed while Chime silently finished off his pipe. He looked incredibly peaceful and you calmed yourself inside that you’d done and said the right thing.

The silence lasted for nearly five minutes and you were impressed with the boys’ fortitude. True to character, Caesar broke first. He kicked Fingel and nodded sharply towards Ruri.

Fingel, looking a little nervous, cleared his throat, and prepared an opening statement: "You have the right to remain silent."

It took everything in you not to crack a smile, even though you were practiced. So you followed the joke up with a withering look of absolute disdain while you clenched your stomach and held your breath.

Chime gently exhaled a mouthful of smoke, and his face was submerged in it, shielding him like a veil: "I know what you want to ask, and I will tell you. But please don't rush to ask me. Let me take my time to figure it out, so that it will be more clear."

You swivel your head to look at him, immediately concerned. The simple humble request moved you more than any of Ruri Kazama’s quick-wittedness. His voice was speaking like a small tired soul out of a grave. His eyes were heavy with sadness.

"My current appearance surprises you guys, right? Actually, this is my actual appearance. Every time you see me, I have more or less put on makeup. Only some of the makeup is so good that you can't see it." Chime Gen thought for a long time before he spoke again, "I have the same face as my brother, but I am not as good-looking as my brother. It’s only after wearing makeup that I look like him.”

“When I was young, I always thought how nice it would be if I could be like my brother. He’s so perfect that people used to wonder how an insignificant person like me could be his brother. We both have been fatherless for as long as we can remember. No one can really prove that we are brothers. There were times when people said we didn't look alike, and I hid and cried. I was such a weak character as a child."

You squint, not understanding. How could Chime say Chisei was perfect if Chisei couldn’t see the truth if it was standing right in front of him? He still supported Tachibana after realizing that he was turning people into Deadpool and planning to awaken the Light king. You tried to help Chisei only because Chime asked you to. It was not Ruri Kazama who asked you to. It was Chime.

Chime turns to you, seeing the look in your eyes. “We both grew up in the mountains. There was only one middle school in that town and every girl in the school had a crush on my brother -- or, at least, that was what I always believed. He was the team leader in the kendo department and the team leader in the basketball club, and the girls loved to watch him sweat and practice his sword in the sunset. He was so focused, so intense, that even if there was a wall in front of him, he would break it down. So, even though he was so cold that he didn't even look at the girls, the girls kept sneaking glances at him, day after day after day. You may think that my bloodline is better than my brother's, so I'm stronger than him, but you're wrong. My brother's strength is not in bloodline, it's in his heart. He is the kind of man who will go forward once he has decided, and he will be able to achieve great things. For example, if he decides to be a friend of justice, he will be a friend of justice all his life.”

If it were anyone else saying those words, you would have a fiery response to that. His brutal murder of Chance was his decision and you couldn’t persuade him to stop. But who’s fault was that really? He only turned into that killer after Chance’s blood acted up. Before that, he was Chance’s protector. His Savior. He was going to let him go.

“I’m not going to ask you for your forgiveness.” Those words. Chisei had made his decision about Chance. But he was okay that you stayed upset with him about it. In your mind, you look at Chisei over the gap between you again and wonder if you should still hold out hope for him.

"My brother said he must work hard because we do not have parents. Only by hard work will we not be looked down upon.”

“He said he was going to take the entrance exam to Tokyo University and take me to Tokyo one day. I just hated that I was a useless brother, that I can't get into Tokyo University and that I can't help my brother. Everything my brother does is so that he and I can have dignity. I really wanted to be like my brother: a determined man, so that I could stand by his side and be considered his brother. But I was also a little jealous of my brother. Why is he the same as me, but he is so good and I am so weak, being called girly? But I never wanted to outshine my brother, I just wanted to be able to share a little bit of my brother's glory... just a little bit less than him.”

"Then Tachibana Masamune came to the mountain and he said that both my brother and I had excellent bloodlines, and he would take one of us to Tokyo to train, and the other would stay in the mountain. If the former was killed, the latter would be the replacement. He said we could never tell the outside world that there were two Gen Clan children, and that the Gen family did not need two heads. As a matter of course, my brother was taken away as the future head of the family and I was left behind. I was his shadow. I have been his faceless shadow all my life. So sometimes I hated him too.”

He glanced at you but you said nothing. Beneath his words, the viper Bondarev slid. You couldn’t know exactly where he was in this whole story. But he separated Chisei from Chime. Chisei said his brother was ‘probably dead’. Were those Tachibana’s words? So that Chisei wouldn’t visit him?

"It was then that I met the King General, and he appeared to me as a man wearing a Noh theater mask.”

“I grew up loving noh and kabuki and was curious about this man in a noh mask, but the King General didn't actually know how to perform noh, he just knew the human heart too well. He started by coaching my performance and got to know me gradually. He would always meet with me alone and asked me not to tell my brother or anyone else. I didn't tell my brother because everything in this world is my brother's. I wanted the King General to be my teacher alone, something truly mine. King would say he saw my potential. He said I am better than my brother.”

Your eyes slide to one side as you hear the song of the manipulation. With just Bondarev alone, you didn’t hear it though you suspected it. It wasn’t until you heard the play of both Bondarev and Herzog that the sound of it became clear that these boys were being double teamed. That said, you also realized that both of these boys were plagued with a strong sense of pride. While he readily admitted he didn’t want to outshine his brother, at the same time, Chime didn’t want to be too low. And when King General promised him greatness, he fell for it.

"It was like I was living in a fantasy during that time. Every night, King would wait for me in the mountains, and we would stroll along the mountain paths until the moon was in the middle of the sky. Under the stars, he explained to me the characters in the kabuki, and he gave me a strong drink which warmed my body. I was not tired even after walking with him all night in the mountains. Suddenly, one day I noticed a girl smiling at me shyly, with an expression I had never seen before. I was delighted at first, thinking I could learn that expression, but as I kept practicing that shy smile in the mirror, I realized why she was smiling at me like that; because I had become beautiful. My whole being looked like it was glowing.""

"That wine was mixed with evolutionary drugs?" Caesar asked.

“Yes, I am the only one in this world who swallowed that many evolutionary drugs without losing control of who I was. My own blood can restrain the evolutionary drugs' side-effects. My blood is more poisonous than evolutionary drugs." Chime said slyly.

"Sorry to interrupt you... Please continue." Caesar said.

Chime Gen nodded: "I can't remember the rest. Those memories are very vague, I only know that the Final Police Report said that the town's serial killings of female high school students were all caused by the same person. Because that person left, they closed the case."

"What does that mean?" Caesar did not understand.

"I killed a total of fourteen girls and turned their bodies into waxed human statues and placed them in the deepest basement of the school, where I sewed kabuki costumes for the dead and practiced imitating the women. This incident was considered by the Yakuza Hydra family to be a crime committed by a deadpool. So my brother was sent back to that town on a clean-up mission. That night I killed the fourteenth girl right before his eyes. He found me when I was in the basement preparing the corpse, dressed in women's clothing, singing."

Chime spoke softly, "I was stabbed through the heart by my brother. He threw my corpse into a deep well, locked the lid forever, and then buried the whole well. I think it was because I became the devil in his eyes and he was afraid that the devil might rise from the dead. Even if he had my body burned, he wouldn’t rest easy. He wanted to be able to see my bones, my body at the bottom.”

All of you shivered in unison, and the thing that was even more frightening than that atrocity was that Chime Gen talked about such bloody matters as if he were talking about another person, calm to the point of indifference.

"I know what you're thinking. You're wondering if I've gone crazy. Clearly, I killed so many people, but I talk about it as if those things have nothing to do with me. But I really don't think I killed those girls. During that time, I was having a nightmare, a nightmare in which I lived a happy life, in which my charm conquered every girl in the school. I finally wouldn't disgrace my brother. I asked them to go to the river to see the stars. They came shyly. I took their hands and they all accepted, and then I cut their throats with a knife. At their happiest moment. But their beautiful expressions weren’t preserved on their own. They were made into statues by me, so that I kept the most beautiful side of them. In the dream, I felt that there was nothing wrong with this. Until someone outside the dream was calling me, I suddenly realized that it was my brother who came back. My brother came home to see me. I suddenly turned around and came back to reality all of a sudden, but I didn't have time to hug my brother before I ran into his blade head-on.”

"When I woke up again, I was on a huge stage. There was a beam of light hitting me from above. I was wearing the clothes of The Great Maiden in the Clouds, with long hair and full makeup. I didn't have any wounds on my body, but the pain from being stabbed in the chest seemed to remain there. I was sitting on a gorgeous throne. And next to me stood various girls in Kabuki costumes, each one beautiful. It seemed like I had just taken a nap while my attendants waited for me to wake up. I suddenly couldn't tell reality from illusion. I felt like I was still in that basement full of corpses. I couldn't tell if the girls around me were living or dead. The girls and the members of the Devil Clan sitting on the stage applauded vigorously as if they had just watched a thrilling performance. The King announced to everyone that he had found the true successor to the Great Three Clans, and that was me, and that I would guide the Devil Clan into the future. Their faces ran with tears. I asked the King General what was real and what was not, and the King General simply said congratulations on the awakening of the Emperor."

"So you remember all these things, only you think some of them happened in a dream but some were reality?" Chu Zihang asked.

"Yes, the serial killing was like a dream to me. Everything in the dream was blurry. Only the faces of those girls and the moment I killed them were clear. In the dream, I seemed to become another person. Killing was not a terrible thing for me. It was a beauty. I would be ecstatic for the moment when the girl's dying smile had not completely faded, before despair and panic had appeared, and I would be excited to see the blood spilled." Chime Gen said, "But I look back on that state afterwards, especially when I think of all the dead bodies I had sung to in that damp basement, and I'm so scared and disgusted that I can't help vomiting every time."

"So you don't deny that you killed those girls?" Caesar said.

"I can't deny it, I remember every detail so clearly. If I didn't do it myself, who could have put those details into my head?" Chime Gen said, "It's as if there was an evil spirit hiding in my body. That evil spirit woke up and took control of me. The really gorgeous and charming part of me is that spirit. As for me, I'm just a mediocre person."

Lu Mingfei quietly shivered.

You sat still, not looking at anyone. Now your hair fell in front of you. Ruri was silent. You could see him watching you with a cold expression a moment before turning back to the window.

"Did he exchange anything with you?" Lu Mingfei asked cautiously, "I mean the evil spirit inside your body."

Chime Gen smiled indifferently, "I am not going to excuse myself. I am the evil spirit. The evil spirit is me. The evil spirit is another state of mine. It is one with me."

"That's why you hate King General so much, because it was the King General who drew out the evil spirit in your body. He went to the mountain to find you, in fact, to find the evil spirit in your body." Chu Zihang said.

"Yes, and I failed to resist his temptation. He was the one who created the unbreakable barrier between me and my brother, and, from that day on, my brother was no longer my brother, and the relationship between him and me was between a Devil Slayer and a Devil." Chime said, "The King General ruined my life and turned me into his 'Dragon King'. I wanted to get rid of his control, so I had to kill him. Otherwise, he could find me no matter where I fled. Even to the ends of the earth. Last night, I thought I had succeeded. I thought I had shaken him off. But I was wrong, he could not be shaken off, we two evil spirits were destined to go all the way."

You lift your head slightly. You said the same thing about Renata’s killer Bondarev. You understood this. It would all end in blood eventually. There was no other way.

"Do you believe that there are really evil spirits in this world that cannot be killed?" Caesar turned to Chu Zihang, "I mean King General."

"As I said before, although my reason tells me that there should be no such thing as ghosts in the world," Chu Zihang said slowly, "but what I have seen is beyond human understanding."

"He will come for me, and it is useless for me to hide anywhere. No one in this world can kill him, and neither can I." Chime said quietly, "He also took away the power he gave me."

"What does that mean?" Caesar asked.

"That banging sound. That's what he used to control me. He can use the sound of the clapper to put me into the state of the 'evil spirit'. In that state, I will have the power of the bloodline, my confidence and determination will skyrocket. Kazama Ruri is actually the name of that evil spirit. He can also use the sound of the clapper to make the evil spirit sleep, so that I can become a Chime Gen. With my current strength, I can't even hold the hilt of my sword. When he finds his way here, I have no choice but to sit and wait for death."

“Is this consistent with what you know?” Chu Zihang asked, addressing you.

“Yes. If I may… speak.” You look at Chime. “I know about the clapper sound. I was present with King General, when he was Dr. Herzog. I saw how he can turn access to dragon words on and off… although I was raised by him, I was not given the treatment that would put me under his control.”

“So you know?” Chime asked.

You nod slowly. “I know a lot.”

Chime turned his pipe upside down and tapped it into the ashtray.

"Lu Mingfei also reacted to that banging sound, but Lu Mingfei didn't seem to switch any state!" Caesar said.

You turn to Lu Mingfei in shock. “What?!”

“Given that lowlife face he’s putting right now, he’s definitely the real Lu Mingfei. Accept no substitutions.” Fingal nodded rapidly.

You continue to stare at Lu Mingfei for an uncomfortably long time until Mingfei just drives his eyes into the floor. Lu Mingfei is Z’s brother. Z was with you in Black Swan… then… that means...

Caesar pondered for a moment: "Initially, we thought that The White King was our enemy, but now it seems that the King will be no less terrifying than a Dragon God. This situation is tricky for both us and Hydra. It seems that we should join forces with your brother, and, as for the conflict between the Academy and Hydra, we can take our time to resolve it afterwards."

"You have to gain my brother's trust first. He doesn't trust you, much less me. Even if he has watched me attempt to assassinate the King General, he will have thought it was an internal fight in the Devil Clan. With the death of Tachibana Masamune, and with his position in mind, he is bound to make his own plans. Tachibana Masamune's plan was to destroy the White King and make the Hydra family independent again. To take control of the future of the Japan Branch. In this case, my brother will not cooperate with you." Chime Gen said, "He will find a way to kill the King General himself."

You’re silent through all of this talk. None of this is relevant to you after all. You’re still reeling from the revelation that Chime had killed women like you before under the influence of the King General. Although he might not even realize it was the clapper sound causing the killing sprees, he recognized the split personality state that sometimes people were put in when they heard the clapper. You recall the handsome and flirty Anton, who was changed to the Anton who was dead inside, what was changed to the Anton that was like a reptile.

The fact that Lu Mingfei was also susceptible to this sound shook you as well. Lu Mingfei’s sudden great headache on the roof during the Tokyo Tower mission: Was that also a result of the clapper? You didn’t hear any clapper that you could recall at that time. But still, while Lu Mingfei cringed and moaned in front of you, you tried to speak with him and your words were not reaching him. It was like he was turning into a doll, but didn’t go all the way.

"I'm not doubting your brother's fighting ability, but you’re clearly the smarter one. I don’t think that your brother is clever enough to face the King." Caesar said.

"Brother still holds the last card, he has Erii Uesugi in his hand."

"Erii is more powerful than you?" Lu Mingfei asked.

Chime Gen shook his head slowly: "I don't know what Erii Uesugi is, but I really don't have the certainty to say that Ruri Kazama can beat her. She seems to be extremely crippled in some ways, but her kind of catastrophic killing power is a power on the level of a Dragon King."

“Japan is really a place full of monsters." Caesar said with an exasperated sigh, "Get some rest, we still have to go to breakfast. Want us to bring you something?"

"After hearing all the things I've done, do you still see me as a friend?" Chime looked up and looked Caesar in the eyes.

"If you do another vicious act in front of me, I will stick my knife in your heart just like your brother; but until then, we should be considered allies, if not friends." Caesar walked out of the room without looking back and the others followed. "If the King will indeed find you here, we will keep you safe."

The door closed, and Chime was silent for a long, long time, sighing softly, "It would be foolish to make rash statements like who you will protect until you truly know the King's General but thank you." Chime looked at you. “What say you? MC?”

You stare after the closed door, eyes empty. “I understand what you mean now. When you said the King General will kill me, you meant to say, he will use you to do it. Right?” You look in his direction.

Chime Gen’s eyes were sad, so sad.

You close your eyes and nod in confirmation. “I understand.” You take a deep breath and turn to him, leaning in closer. “But I’m not giving up.” You whisper. “First, we have to survive. Then… after that, we can be together. But you promised me you would not give up your life. Keep that promise. Don’t seek death. Okay?”

You squeeze his hands tightly and he returns that squeeze with a firm grip of his own, a grip so tight it was painful. The pain in your hands distracted you from the pain in your heart. When your hands finally released, that throbbing ache in the bones of your hand was as good as a kiss.

You get up and walk quickly out of the room. Your things were no longer in the bath house so you had to head down the hall to the elevator. Much to your shock, Caesar was there waiting for you alone. You stop, hesitant. “Lose your appetite?”

“I wanted to make sure you were okay. That must have been very hard for you to hear.” He stood, one hand in his pocket. He looked almost too innocent and you wonder if he was eavesdropping.

You shrug. “It is what it is. Until the King General dies… Now if you excuse me, I have to pack.”

You step around him and he catches your arm. “What do you mean pack?” His blue eyes snap at you.

You look up at him in confusion. “I’m leaving. I can’t stay here. The …” You stop talking and sigh, massaging your forehead. Do you really have to spell it out for him? “Okay. Listen. The King General wants me dead just as much as Bondarev. He must know I love Ruri Kazama by now and if he comes here, he will not kill me. He will use Chime to do it, just because he’s that much of an asshole! He’s the type of person who would punish Chime for rebelling like this. He’s used Chime as a murder weapon before, and he’ll do it again!”

“You can’t go out there. Chisei or Hydra or Bondarev, if he’s still alive as you think he is, are still around and hunting you. How are you going to defend yourself on your own?!”

Caesar didn’t let you go but you jerked out of his grip. “I’ll have to find a way! But I can’t stay here and be a sitting duck for Herzog. You heard what he said! Herzog will find him no matter where he runs. And he’s the type of person who would do this!”

“No,” Caesar’s eyes were firm. “That Gen brother needs you. He would never hurt you.”

You laugh but there’s no joy in it. Your frustration and anger is building in your eyes. “What part of mind control don’t you understand! Do you think he would ever hurt the 14 girls he already hurt? Why am I different?”

“Because you’re already in his heart! That’s why he’s sending you away to protect you right?” Caesar hissed.

You shake your head and raise your arms only to drop them in frustration. “Caesar. … I told him not to send me away. But after hearing what he said, … this is my decision.”

“No.” Caesar dug his heels in. You could see that firm immovable light in his eyes. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.” He stepped around you easily. It was confrontational, blocking you. He was serious. He was between you and the elevator and your back is against the wall.

You look at him in disbelief. “You’re just going to let me sleep in the same place as the murder weapon?”

“Hey!” He hissed. He bangs his fist against the wall next to your face and there’s a crack visible in the plaster. He points down the hall toward Kazama’s room. “He is not a murder weapon. That is the man you love. He needs you to believe in him!”

Your eyes have gone distant and dull. You couldn’t believe those words had come out of your mouth. After everything that had happened to you. How could you ever say something like that? You feel like your world is spinning. The logic of survival dictated that you leave him and stay away from him. So you continue to protest. “Caesar… Herzog is counting on me to stay close to Ruri. He’s betting on it. He’ll set the stage. He’ll make it beautiful and when it’s at its most beautiful and we’re so close… Ruri will...”

Caesar takes a deep breath and shakes out his hand. “So we’ll think of a plan B.”

“What plan B? None of us can beat Ruri Kazama if he loses his mind to the clapper.” You whisper hoarsely. “I don’t care as much about dying as much as I do about breaking his heart. If the King General makes him kill me.” You look into his eyes, begging him to understand. “Caesar… it will destroy him. I don’t want to give King General that satisfaction. That’s what I really care about.”

Then you see in Caesar's eyes a black boiling rage like a ferocious thundercloud! A killing aura! “I want to see this bastard try. I don’t believe in Ghosts or evil spirits or any of that fake ass shit.” Caesar spat. “You know better than anyone else here. King General is just a man. A man behind a curtain of tricks. You already saw through his trap today. If you run off, you’ll just run into his back-up trap. It’s better to deal with the devil you know, go about our business as usual and set up a trap of our own.”

You finally relent. “Fine. What do you have in mind?”

“I’ll think of something.” Caesar rubs the back of his head. He glares at you when you laugh. “In the meantime, stay put.”

“God… okay…” You cover your eyes with your hand.

“You just need to stay calm! He knows you’re smart but guys like him have low opinions of women. Once he sees you falling all over you’re favorite guy like you did last night, he’ll think you’re just like all the rest of the so called ‘weaker sex’” He puts this in air quotes. “He’ll let down his guard.”

“Yeah…” You’re still uneasy, but you’ve started to calm down, rubbing your arm and looking away.

“Trust me… Trust me!” He gives you a firm pat on the shoulder. “Good hustle, MC. Go upstairs and get dressed and meet us for breakfast. Then I’ll have you serve your man!”

#dragon raja #Chime Gen #Yuan Zhinu #Ruri Kazama

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laur-rants · 4 years ago

Text

Fic Update: Blood Wolf

Chapter 4

Fandom: Dishonored Ship: Daud/The Outsider, but I’ll heavily focus on the Daud and his Whalers relationship

Rated: Mature to Explicit, Strong Violence and Gore Ahead!!

Synopsis: Daud-Centric Prequel to Wolfbann. Origin Story, pre-canon. Centers on how Daud turned, and his subsequent marking by the Outsider and his formulation of the Whalers. Notes: There probably won’t be nsfw content in this fic, but it WILL be… violent. I want to play with my own boundaries of written violence and also Daud’s start wasn’t nearly as clean as Corvo’s. Their contrast on dealing with the werewolf transformation is one of the things I want to really explore, and Daud gets very close to falling off the wagon.

CHAPTER TAGS: His hands do violence, but there is a different dream in his heart. Alternatively, Daud talks to the Outsider, saves a girl, frightens a medic. AO3 link

Previous :: First :: Next

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Midnight, ???

The Month of Songs -- 1820

Daud drew breath and it burned cold in his lungs. He checked himself; somehow, his clothes remained intact, untouched by… whatever had just happened to him. He lifted his gaze and when he inhaled again, it felt like gaseous seawater at the back of his throat.

Where there once stood the Fink Manor, the house was now splintered, cracked, and floating into a vast, sky blue expanse. Though he was still standing in the pantry, the shrine humming next to him, the other two walls and the roof were destroyed as if by a bomb. A whale breached next to the stone platform this all stood on; it's massive eye met his briefly before disappearing down again. Daud felt his heart lurch.

His hands flexed. He whirled back to the figure still watching him so adoringly.

"What kind of game is this?" Daud asked, his chest still fighting to find air, still unsure if he was breathing water or not. The atmosphere was thicker here than it ever was in the waking world; not even the Serkonan summer had settled so heavily in his chest. Daud met those black eyes and refused to flinch. "Who are you?"

The entity just frowned, and something about that disappointment hit him like a carriage. He immediately regretted saying anything at all, especially something so pitiable, and he bowed his head in apology. A cold hand lifted his chin, forcing him to look back up into those glassy eyes.

"Oh, Daud, you know who I am. Even if you never were the worshipping type…" A slender thumb ran over those wounds on his cheek and he shivered. "No, you're the gambling kind instead, aren't you? Betting with your life instead of coin. You've always been like this. Perhaps that's why I took such a liking to you in the first place."

"I don't understand," Daud said, his head feeling clouded under the touch of such an ancient being. "The Outsider is just a myth, a fantasy to keep children at home, to give nobles something to jerk off to, or to give the Abbey a scapegoat while they piss on the Strictures." He shrugged out of the Leviathan's hold, grabbing at the hand with his own. The Outsider watched the motion, his face full of glee at the contact.

"Oh? It's not that complicated with me, Daud. You had a bet, remember? And I so wanted you to keep it."

Daud frowned. He racked his brain, searching for the memory. As he did so, the Void around them warped, unbidden, and the Outsider smiled as a forgotten vision burst forth. Daud's eyes widened, looking up at two massive monsters fighting in a sewer. One was grey and malnourished, covered in boils and scars. And the other was a snarling mass of black fur, it's face glistening with dark blood that poured from fresh wounds that looked exactly like--

"What the fuck?" Daud's lip curled and he mirrored the black, wolflike creature of his memory. His tongue touched his teeth and found them sharp. The Outsider just grinned all the more.

"I needed to save your life, or I would lose you before your story even began. So, I gave you the gift of your power a little earlier than others who have had the misfortune of being attacked by such a void-touched creature. Yes; you were cursed the moment those claws broke your jaw and split your throat, but I knew your tale wasn't so easily finished." The Outsider gave him a once-over, the gaze was so hungry it made Daud squirm. "You do not know your own importance and it is so splendid to behold."

There was a reverence there that Daud didn't trust, but it stirred something in his soul. "I'm just an assassin," he managed, taking a step away from the god of the Void. The Outsider just watched, but made no move to follow.

"You will move the tides of the entire Isles, Daud."

"You sure about that," he sneered, his fists clenching. "I am cursed now, you said it yourself. Cursed. I am doomed to go mad, just like the beast before me."

The Outsider held out his left hand. The smile he held was deadly.

"Will you be worth my time, Daud?"

Daud's lip twitched, wanting to refuse, but in the end, curiosity won. He relented.

"Bet," he growled, then gave his hand over to the Outsider to shake. As soon as he did, the back of his hand burned, seared as if branded with an iron. He hissed, not breaking his grip even as he turned his palm to see the back of it. There, glowing bright and smoking with arcane magic, a Mark appeared, one of an intricate arrow-and circle design. He stared at it, transfixed, as a new sort of power flowed through him.

"My Mark," the Outsider said casually, running his hand over Daud's soothingly. "It will keep the beast of you at bay, give you the control you so desperately seek." He grinned, his eyes glittering maliciously. "But how long can you keep up that control? I wonder…"

The god pulled Daud closer, dragging him in like the riptide. The Outsider smirked against his ear and Daud felt the shiver all the way down his spine.

"Can you shape the world to your will, Daud?" He whispered, holding the statement between them like a secret. "Or will you be ruined by it?"

The Outsider pulled away, his smile far too knowing.

"Until we see each other again."

Then, as suddenly as he appeared, the Outsider was gone. His cold, suffocating presence fled from Daud and when he opened his eyes, he was no longer in the Void. Instead, he was in the very real Fink Manor, the weight of reality far heavier than the pressures of the deep. Daud swallowed, first retrieving the runes from the shrine before stepping back across the pantry threshold.

The house was in ruins. The rampage he had caused nearly razed the building; a pipe from the kitchen was spitting water, the pantry wall was burst and the dog and handler were lying dead at his feet. Down the hall, he could see evidence of his huge body crashing through doorways with little remorse and forethought. Blood splattered the walls and limbs settled in places far and away from their original owners.

It was the sight of a massacre, one of Daud's own making. He choked on the bile clawing up his throat.

This wasn't his handiwork. It couldn't be. Assassins were meant to be clean, quick, quiet. A good assassin left no trace of themselves behind; a great assassin could even clean and dispose of the body before someone found the scene of the crime. The City Watch was founded to try and protect the streets, but they could do nothing against men and women like him. The best of them were, in all ways, untraceable.

If anyone saw this house, they wouldn't see the work of a trained killer. They would see a contained storm, or perhaps a Tyvian fanged bear set loose on a dare.

They would see the work of a monster.

Daud silently stepped through the wreckage, spotting a woman -- a maid, by the clothing -- with her throat ripped open, the lines jagged and unclean from where her trachea was bitten into. A wolfhound, ripped in two; the other half, he could not find, no matter how hard he searched for it. It left him light-headed, slightly nauseous, considering he vaguely remembered Eustace's arm in his mouth, the blood in his jaws --

He retched dryly. He fought the sick that threatened to come up, not really wishing to repeat what happened on the roof earlier. Certainly, he didn't want to know or see what would come up if he succeeded in vomiting. With a monumental effort he kept it down, gasping for breath and running a shaking hand over his face.

The fingers of his left hand traced over the new scars on his cheek and the sensation sent an intense shiver down his face and neck, all through his arm. He jerked his hand back away from his face, hissing in discomfort. The Mark on his hand burned for a moment, reminding him of his newest annoyance. He flexed his hand; the Mark lit up, itching, begging to be used.

He pulled curiously at the power beckoning to him. His fingers immediately morphed into long, black claws; he yelped, shaking his hand out in surprise. The claws disappeared-- but the power remained. He frowned, trying again. He focused on one spot near the stairs; the Void grabbed him at his request, pulling him forward in a rush and leaving a trail of ash in his wake.

Daud's eyes went wide and his mouth hung open. He had traversed 10 meters in just a moment, the Void whispering in his ear as he did so. It was heady, thrilling; he grinned, feral, and tried the power again.

He landed in a nearby living room where he had ripped a couch in half and knocked a woman in fine jewelry into a wall, breaking her neck. He was about to jump through space again when he heard a squeak, a yelp; he froze, looking to the sound.

What he saw brought a vice around his heart. A child, a girl, trapped under some fallen wood and plaster from the ceiling above. She caught sight of Daud and when Daud caught sight of her, her eyes shone with tears, threatening to spill over.

"Sir…" she said weakly, her voice bubbling up, full of pain and fear. He rushed over, pulling his glove back over his left hand. She squirmed, choking in sobs. "Is it gone? Is-is...where did it go? That beast…"

Daud shushed her gently, trying not to let shock set into his features even as his limbs ran cold. Of course the child didn't recognize him as the monster she witnessed slaughtering her whole family. "Don't use too much energy now, I'll get you out of there." He gently moved some plaster and she squealed in pain; he shifted a joist to the side and clenched his jaw tight.

A large nail had impaled her tiny calf, the wound covered in blood, the color of it darkening her slacks. He looked at her carefully; she was staring at her leg and when she went to grab it, he caught her hand in his.

"Do not touch it," he told her quietly. "You'll make it worse. How long have you been injured?" She just gripped his hand tight and shook her head as her chest heaved with swallowed cries. Void, she couldn't be older than eight.

"I don't know… it just hurts," she wept, her hands bloodied, her face pale. "My mother, she-she…" the child gulped, fighting for air.

She was spiraling. Daud put a hand on her head, trying to ground her. "Hey, I'm here, okay? You aren't going to die. Did--" his mouth went dry, and he tried again. "Did the monster touch you?" As he asked the question, he dug through a pouch on his hip, his eyes darting down to look for a familiar lime-green vial.

"No, I got trapped and then the dogs came and then…" her face screwed up in agony, and Daud had a feeling not all of it was physical.

Did it have to be a child? He hated this, hated thinking he had let a kid see something so needlessly brutal. "It's going to be alright. I'm going to get you out of here. I'm not going to leave you to die on this nail."

Her eyes met his for the first time all night, searching for the truth. He didn't waver, opting instead to hold her little hand tighter. He swallowed, and when he saw the returning trust in her eyes, he pulled out a small dart and showed it to her.

"This is a sleep dart," he told her, holding it out for her to see. "It will put you to sleep for an hour or so. It will sting a little, but it will help lessen the pain, and it will help me get you off the nail without it hurting. Do you trust me with this?"

What other options did she have? He knew she had very few, and there was nothing she could do on her own. She would die of infection here.

She nodded, but grabbed his hand before he could administer the dose. "Wait," she said. "What is your name first?"

He blinked. "Daud."

She smiled. "Daud, like Dad." That settled very unpleasantly in his stomach, but he did not correct her. "I'm Emma, it's nice to meet you."

He nodded. "Likewise. Now, are you ready?"

She let go and nodded. He adjusted the dose in the dart and then stuck it in her arm. Her eyes drooped; in the next few seconds she was asleep, and completely unaware.

Daud moved as quickly as he could. He had some bandages on him, as well as a few rags for quick wound wrapping, but nothing sustainable. He got up, using the Void to rush through the house and find the bathroom. He looted it swiftly; the first aid kit would have to do for now. He transversed back to where she lay, still stuck to the nail. He breathed, then got to work.

Daud had a very strict policy on children when it came to assassination jobs, one that put him at odds sometimes with his colleagues in the business. Other assassins would happily off a whole family to prevent leaks or future loose ends. In a way, it was self-preserving more than anything; a dead child could not speak of what they witnessed. Sometimes, the hit was on the child itself; easy to poison an unwanted heir, for example.

But Daud… he wasn't in this line of work to slaughter kids. He left kids alive; he took parents away from the home if he had to, so that it looked like an accident. He had even dropped a child off at an orphanage, an unfortunate leftover from a hit he and Rulfio once conducted. Rulfio had argued with him about it, but they both decided it was better than ending up dead, abused, or in the Golden Cat.

Never kill the kids. Not if he could help it. Whenever he saw a child, he saw a young Daud, stolen from his home, made to kill and perform for coin until he finally roused the courage to off his own abuser.

Then Daud had run off to become a killer of bastards just like the one who abducted him.

He frowned as he tightened the tourniquet and eased Emma's leg off the nail. The wound spurted with blood and Daud quickly staunched the flow as much as he could, before quickly wrapping the leg with bandages soaked in disinfectant. Through it all, the girl slept, and Daud sighed. This would not be enough, he knew; he worked his jaw, the scent of the blood and rubbing alcohol strong in his nose. He packed back up, lifting the girl carefully before shifting her so she was cradled in his right arm. His left fist clenched and he ignored the claws itching their way free as he jumped through the Void once again. He traveled back up the stairs, back to Eustace's room; the whole time, Emma slept. He kept a bead on her heart, the beat of it steady in his ears.

The bedroom was even worse than the rest of the house. Eustace Fink's body was wretched apart, nearly unidentifiable. Daud neared the pile of human viscera, trying not to think of how he had lost control, bursting forth and slaughtering the man.

Never again, he thought to himself, but even as he held the girl tight, he did not know the long-term validity of those words.

He spotted his whaler blade and mask; he grabbed both, carefully sheathing the sword, then, after a moment of hesitation, he clipped the mask to his belt. He then pulled the audiograph from Fink's remains and carefully swept the room for anything else of value.

A safe with gold ingots and 500 coin. A few choice books, stashed away. Notes from his brother-- Daud paused at these, frowning down at the ledgers.

Eustace,

Jerome changed last week; he will be ready for challengers soon, so get those hound fighters excited for our next event! The first week of the month of Clans will be best. I will test this brute against the others; as a former assassin, I cannot believe how strong his killer instinct is! Brimsley was right; the stronger the person turned, the more likely they are to survive to put on a show! I don't expect the others to fare so well, but now we know that we at least have a sure-fire way to lure Dunwall assassins into a trap.

Be careful if you come down to the ampitheatre to see this dog, however. I can hear it in my mind… it taunts me, hates me, tries to overpower me. I always just shock it back into submission; it's so weak it can't carry out it's bigger threats. But Eustace… please. Your mind is not as strong as mine. Do not be swayed. These monsters of the Outsider are no longer human, like you or I, no matter what it says to you.

Here is the list of the next possible brutes I have selected, and also the date for the next Hound Pits fight. Don't forget the fliers, we need the noble's coin to keep this up!

The snarl that ripped through Daud was so strong and loud it shocked even him. The girl stirred but did not wake; he looked to the body of Eustace Fink and no longer regretted his fate.

They truly had found some giant monster, one like him perhaps, that had attacked someone and then that person had turned. And then the next person, and then the next until they trapped an assassin -- Spirits. He knew Jerome, had seen him in passing; he was from Potterstead, was raised into the profession, was cleaner than all of them. Surgical, even.

And he had been tortured into blindness, forced to fight dogs, and then Daud himself had…

Daud bit down on his cheek until he tasted blood. He scoured the room once more, then pulled out a bolt from his satchel on his belt. Carefully, he set the girl down in a chair, then readied his wristbow. Three incendiary bolts flew through the room, igniting expensive fabrics, flammable wallpaper, the remaining useless documents on the table. He watched the fire spread, pulling a cigarette out and lighting it. He pulled the drag, then threw it into the growing flames.

Then, he secured his belt, carefully lifted Emma back into his arms, and left the burning wreckage of the home he single-handedly destroyed.

------

It was another late night, one that Misha knew he would not be walking home from. It was well past midnight and even with the Watch prowling about, the Hatter's were likely to jump anyone unsuspecting, stealing money for months rent, or worse. So instead, he just sighed and closed the downstairs shutters, pulling the curtains in and locking the door. The one lamp still illuminated the front desk where his assistant had been sorting paperwork earlier; end of month books, on top of end of year numbers. His numbers had seen better days. Between the gangs clogging up the streets and his brothers getting caught up in hound fight gambling, he had lost more than he had recuperated.

He missed his brothers. He did not miss them asking him for more coin every week of every month, effectively bleeding him dry.

He had tried a few times to dissuade them, but all in vain. They were his brothers, two versus his one. They knew how to guilt him, especially with the death of their mother hanging over the practice like a cloud. So he had given them what they asked for, knowingly enabling them like a bar enables a drunkard, and hoped everything would be okay in the end.

It wasn't okay. His brothers were presumed dead and he had no money for a dying practice. All he could do was try to set the remaining things right. Hiring the assassin gave him a grim sort of satisfaction, some twisted sense of justice. After the deed was done, he'd file with the Watch, see if their bodies couldn't be recovered. The hardest part was between step one and step two; waiting for the completed assassination.

As he headed up the stairs to retire to his office for the night, he stopped at the calendar on the way up. He looked at the final week of Clans-- then put an X over the 28th day, the last day of the month. Four other angry Xs precede the 28th, all counting down from when he and Daud had come to their agreement. He frowned, flipping the calendar to Songs.

Daud had said that his job took time, but gave no frame of reference to ease Misha's worries. He sulked for a bit at the calendar on the wall before finally moving on, entering the office and lighting the desk lamp easily. He then -- as he had done so every night for the past four nights -- went over to the terrace and moved to unlock it, just in case Daud returned with news and wished to enter the way he had initially done.

He didn't expect the man to suddenly appear before him in a swirl of ash and smoke. He also didn't expect the small, pale body Daud was carrying in his arms, either.

And he certainly didn't expect Daud's face to be visible, his eyes burning, long scars cutting valleys into his otherwise young face.

Misha gaped. He fumbled with the latch, pushing the door open to give Daud more access. The assassin pulled in a ragged, tired breath.

"Daud--" Misha started, following the other man as he swiftly entered the office. "What happened? Is Fink--"

"Dead," Daud said, the roughness of his voice contrasting how gingerly he handled the body in his arms. "I need your expertise. Do you have a table?"

Misha glanced towards the small figure and nodded, pushing open the far door; it led to a small operating room, separate from the others and one that he used for special cases. He turned on the light over the table as Daud placed a small child -- Void, a child -- down onto it. She was asleep but her breath was shallow, sweat beading on her brow. Her leg was bandaged, but it was already bleeding through, the blood dark and angry.

Misha immediately let himself still, evaluating this new, sudden patient. His emotions detached, and his brow furrowed in focus. He quickly grabbed gloves and sharply demanded, "Tell me what happened."

Daud hesitated, then, "Nail. She impaled her leg on a nail. Got trapped in the home."

"And you just took her?"

"Everyone else was dead." He said it softly, as if full of remorse. Misha knew the time for questions was now past. Instead, he got to work. He unraveled the leg and pulled over a bowl, cleaning solution, and a syringe.

"I used a sleep dart on her," Daud explained. "I don't know how much longer the sedative will last."

Assassin sleep darts, he knew, were usually sodium pentothal, and at the dose Daud probably used, the girl would still be down for a while. Still, a local anaesthetic wouldn't be a bad idea.

"Here, be useful. My usual assistant isn't here so I will need your help cleaning this." Daud complied, then began the task of fetching anything that Misha asked of him. Sutures, clamps, saline solution, scalpel, magnifier, light. The girl whined in her sleep, and Daud, surprisingly, was there for her, holding her hand in a heavy glove. It wasn't long before her leg was properly cleaned and closed, the sutures staying as he carefully bandaged the leg back up.

"If all goes well and the wound stays clean, her leg will survive," Misha sighed, pushing tiredly away from the girl and removing bloodied gloves. Daud just nodded, watching the girl carefully as she slept. A whisper tickled at the back of Misha's head and he grimaced, scratching at his hair. The movement made Daud's head jerk to look at him, inhuman and unnatural.

It was now that Misha was actually able to get a good look at the face of his hired hitman. He had short black hair, styled back and out of the way, though now it was tousled and out of place. His eyes were a striking blue, but not in the way that left him feeling flustered. Instead, they were like ice, splintering into his chest and making him feel as if a wild predator was evaluating his continued existence. The scars on his face tugged as he frowned; the longest line cut from his right forehead all the way down over his throat,a and the second longest also sliced through his cheek alongside the first. The last two sat partially hidden under his chin, over his throat, and Daud's frown deepened as he caught the doctor staring.

Misha's face flushed. He was never one to hide his feelings well, and definitely not as easily as a hardened assassin.

"Daud..." he started, trying to cover the intrusion. The assassin suddenly stood up, his hand flat on the table, challenging and threatening Misha to continue speaking.

"Go on, say it," Daud said, dangerously soft. "Others already have. They didn't have to be a doctor or an assassin to know I shouldn't have survived -- this." He waves at his neck, as if disgusted by the scars.

Upsetting an assassin seemed to be a poor life decision. Misha chose his next words carefully.

"You need to clean up, and you seem invested in the child. Would you like to stay the night, to at least be there when she wakes up?"

Daud's face immediately closed off. Again, something itched at the back of Misha's head, and he tried to rub it away. A whisper, almost… indecision? Misha had not expected an emotion to come forth. When he questioned it mentally, it disappeared, so still he shrugged it off as imagaination. He watched Daud as he pulled his face out of the lamplight and back into shadow, his eyes still bright in the gloom. His fist clenched.

"No, no, I'd rather not. I've already done enough to ruin her life." He looked around the office and then, finding what he was looking for, went to fetch it.

Misha almost missed it; Daud's left hand twitched and then suddenly, in a rush of ash, he was across the room, and then back. Misha gaped as Daud scrawled words over the paper he had fetched, then handed the paper to Misha.

"Outsider's eyes," he breathed out, but the look on Daud's face silenced him.

"This address; when she's well, take her there. Tell them Daud sends his regards, and hopes Jason is well. Also--"

He pulled a purse from his satchel, setting it down. "That's for the girl." Then he pulled out a whole gold ingot and handed it to Misha. "And this is for you."

Misha gaped. He'd never seen so much gold -- he shook his head, holding his hands up. "What--! I can't accept this-- Don't tell me that you are paying me for--"

"Don't worry, I have another," Daud assured. "I made sure I'd be paid well for this too. Besides, I told you, 'half now--'" he pushed the ingot to Misha more insistently. "'half later.' Here's your half, later."

Misha gulped. He had a feeling that Daud was not going to take no for an answer. He acquiesced, gently taking the gold, and the assassin relaxed. He stood back, giving Misha some space.

"Don't spend it all in one place," he suggested, a dry attempt at humor. Misha managed a tired smile in return.

"Am I allowed to offer my appreciation, now?"

Daud said nothing. He looked away.

"May we be blessed to never meet again, Misha Romanov."

Misha, personally, did not see that as a blessing-- but perhaps, given Daud's line of work, it was for the best. He nodded, not wishing to argue with a man who could so easily murder him.

"Regardless… Thank you, Daud."

Those prickled whispers returned, just as Daud met his eyes. There was something mildly astonished in his gaze, and Misha tried not to push away the foreign white noise that invaded his mind. Instead, somewhere in there, he thought -- imagined, he reminded himself -- that he caught the faintest expression of " You're welcome."

As quickly as it built up, the emotion was gone-- and so was Daud. Misha blinked, putting a hand to his ringing ear. He looked to the open terrace and was suddenly filled with the urge to follow, to rush out to the balcony so he did, throwing the doors apart in his wake. He breathed the night air and there he was, on the opposite rooftop, eyes and scars burning, even in the dark. Daud looked back at Misha; their eyes met.

Daud's left hand raised, smoking and black. His fist clenched.

And in a flurry of ash and wind, he was gone.

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lady-of-all-cards · 5 years ago

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Ikemen Revolution: Headcanon - When the Red Army Officers Fall Ill

Fandom: Ikemen Revolution Characters: Lancelot Kingsley, Jonah Clemence, Edgar Bright, Kyle Ash, Zero Pairings: N/A Summary: One day, an officer falls ill with a terrible cold. Will they suffer through their work? Or hide away in their blankets until the sickness passes?

Notes: Did I depress you enough with the last two posts? Well here is a little fun happy times to forget that I did that, because I’m not that morbid or depressing (most of the time, anyway). So, I hope this cheers the blog up a little! And of course, I hope you enjoy ^-^

1. The King of Hearts - Lancelot Kingsley

Lancelot is commonly ill due to his constant use of magic leading to his overexertion.

Kyle is also in on this little tidbit, so dealing with a sick Lancelot isn’t too much for him to do, especially if it’s a common cold.

But being the kind and protective man he is, Lancelot wouldn’t tell anyone of his cold as to not worry them, because this man is a considerate teddy bear!

However, our dear Gentle Demon, Edgar Bright, is far too attentive to detail, and over their early morning meeting, picks up on Lancelot’s drousiness and general unawareness of the situation around him.

Of course, to cause chaos as he usually does, he brings it up in the conversation.

Jonah goes into panic mode, fussing over Lancelot and trying to get him to, at the very least, tell them his aliments so they can help.

Zero steps forward silently and places a crimson lolipop in front of Lancelot on the desk, stepped back sheepishly.

Lancelot takes the lolipop, but doesn’t eat it.

Yet. He’ll sneak it later when Mr.Overprotective-Mother-Jonah isn’t around

Kyle finally decides to pipe up, urging Lancelot to take even an hour’s rest before continuing with his duties.

Lancelot, of course, denies that he needs that, and tries to continue the meeting they were having before.

But it’s four against one.

Jonah would back down with a single command.

Edgar would back down, but he would continously tease him about it for days to come.

Kyle wasn’t backing down. As his personal doctor, his duty was to ensure the king was in good health at every possible moment.

Zero wouldn’t back down either. He’d much rather be ill himself that see Lancelot struggling with any sickness.

And so, Lancelot is forced to yeild. Jonah and Edgar split his paperwork, supposedly an hour’s worth of it.

Zero takes up Jonah’s and Edgar’s duties in training their units.

Kyle drags Lancelot back to his room and settles him down to sleep, giving him cold medicine and painkillers.

However, when he wakes, he realises a number of things:

1. He wasn’t woken after an hour, but was left to rest for three.

2. The entirety of his paperwork for the entire day had been done by Jonah and Edgar in the hours he slept.

Although ashamed about having to rely on his subordiantes so much, Lancelot was endeared by their kindness, and awarded them all with gifts of their favourite choosing.

2. The Queen of Hearts - Jonah Clemence

Much like Lancelot, Jonah will try to hide the fact that he’s ill, but his first mistake happens before he even wakes up…

He overslept… by an entire hour.

His sickness had hit and weakened him sometime during the night, when he opted for thinner night clothes, not expecting the chilling cold after such a comfortingly warm day.

Because of this poor judgement, Jonah’s body refused to wake up, and instead of his usual 6 AM start, he roused from his slumber at 7AM, much to his shock and distain.

It was just his luck there wasn’t a morning meeting that day due to Edgar being called away on business, and Kyle had his usual hangover, so Jonah had a moment to gather himself and actually make him presentable.

He did a good job of hiding it, but only because he stayed in his private quarters completing paperwork and eating sweet deserts that his footmen brought. There was absolutely no need whatsoever for him to leave his room.

Or so he though…

Night had passed over Cradle when he had been called to the King’s office. Edgar had gotten home slightly earlier than usual, and so the morning’s meeting had been called into place.

It seemingly wouldn’t have been a problem if the sun had been seeping through the windows, but in the glow of the Magic Crystals, Jonah’s ghostly features were illuminated fully.

At first, neither Lancelot or Edgar commented on it, opting to leave him be. It was just to late at night to be teasing…

But then… Jonah’s speech began to warp.

His sickness had progressed into a headache, and he began not thinking straight, no longer possessing the ability to rationally organise and explain his points.

However, knowing the proud Queen of Hearts would never forgive himself for ruining a meeting in such a manner, Lancelot brought the meeting to an end early, ordering his Jack and Queen straight to bed.

The next morning after a much needed sleep, Jonah woke up to painkillers and cold medicine on the bedside, with notes from his fellow officers:

Lancelot: “I noticed you were feeling off yesterday. You are given leave for as long as you need to recover. Get well soon :)”

Edgar: “Don’t push yourself, Queen. I don’t was to tease you if you’re not up to being teased.”

Kyle: “Kinda annoyed you didn’t come to me straight away. Take 10ml of medicine in the bottle three times a day and one before bed, and the painkillers once a day when you feel is necissary. And please, for the love of god, please rest.”

Zero: “Edgar told me you were sick. Don’t worry about your duties, me and him had split them while you get better, so just relax. And… here’s a lolipop. A treat from me for when you feel better!”

Although embarrassed at being caught and annoyed at some of the comments, Jonah smiled and decided that maybe it was time to take a day off to recover.

3. The Jack of Hearts - Edgar Bright

The Jack of Hearts never gets sick. EVER.

Or so it seemed, because like most things in life, Edgar Bright was an expert in the art of both faking a sickness to get a day off, and in the art of pretending not to be sick, even though he felt like literal death inside.

It was the latter that ailed him.

For the entire day, he managed to allude detection. He cleared his mind before meetings, and switched training his soliders with one of Zero’s patrols.

Everything was fine and dandy, golden, good to go!

Until that evening, his dear student had challenged him to a duel…

See, Zero found it strange that Edgar skipped on training the new recruits that day because, although he was tough and the sessions always ended in a high workload for their doctor, it was a necessary part to strengthening their resolve.

Plus… Edgar loved playfully torturing and teasing the men of the Red Army, and did it at every chance he got.

So why not this time…?

To any onlooker (and there were quite a few), it appeared to be an even match between two high-skilled soldiers, ending in Zero disarming Edgar.

But there was no teasing.

There was no indication Edgar was truly Edgar.

But during the little sparring match, Zero found it noticably easy to defeat his teacher.

Assuming he would get teased by it to fuel Edgar’s entertainment, Zero played along with it, hoping he’d snap back to his old self real quick.

But the teasing never came…

And so Zero went to the only man who he knew could solve this problem: one Master Kyle Ash.

So, Kyle and Zero innocently dined with Edgar at dinner that night. End of story.

Or so Edgar thought.

He thought he had been in the clear that night as he walked to feed the Creek Family one last meal, but the Creeks were all sat around a small handkerchief, bearing medicine for Edgar, with a small card folded ontop.

“Get well soon, papa - the Creeks.”

It was Zero’s handwriting, he’d recognise it anywhere, but the sentiment still forced a goofy smile to his face as he reached over to pet each duck in to.

Being sick wasn’t so bad, he thought…

4. The Seven of Hearts - Kyle Ash

The first thought Kyle had when he woke up that morning was that he had a hangover.

A totally reasonable conclusion to make, unless he was just so used to waking up with hangovers that it had become normal for him to assume that’s what his ailment was.

And everyone else assumed that also upon seeing him that morning at the breakfast table and during the morning meeting.

However, there was one who’d know the Hungover Doctor too long to be fooled by the effects of a hangover.

Lancelot had slipped Edgar a note during the meeting, and using the cover up of delievering a letter, let the Jack fulfill the true duty he intended.

Kyle never suspected a thing, too busy with his hangover and with his work to bother too much with his cold.

But when he had returned to his personal quarters than night to do some extra studying, he found a small collection of medicines and medicinal herbs, with a small note folded into a card.

“Do you even realise it yourself, Kyle? You’re sick, and I’m not just refering to your hangovers. Take 10ml of this medicine three times a day and one before bed, and you have leave to rest and recover. Try not to get intoxicated while you do so, it would help your recovery - Lancelot.”

He hadn’t noticed until then, but he was feeling drousy, he was sniffling every now and then, a cough stratched at his throat too.

And yet he smiled, knowing the Lance he knew was still kicking about, there to stand by the people of Cradle whenever, wherever.

5. The Ace of Heart - Zero

Much like most of the boys in the RA, he’d try to hide it and continue with his usual business

His exclusion from the crimson bloodline meant that no one really paid too close attention to him, or noticed there was anything wrong.

Thinking he got away from it all, Zero doesn’t let something as simple as a cold hold him back.

However, in the blistering Cradle heat that came around the next, he began to falter.

He developed a fever when he was out training his men, and it quickly grew worse and worse with time, as he failed to attend to it.

His men finally picked up on his daze, and after their schedual came to an end, ran off to get Kyle.

In the infirmary was both Kyle and Edgar, and upon hearing the Ace was unwell, they both rushed to his room to check the damage.

Kyle was, of course, muttering curses about it, annoyed he let it go that far.

On arriving, however, they find Zero passed out over his desk, and after a quick check-up from Kyle, Edgar carries him to the infirmary for treatment.

The next morning, when Zero wakes up in the infirmary feeling a lot better than he did yesterday, he cursed his inefficientness, and tries to leave to get back to work.

But it’s King’s orders.

Zero isn’t leaving until he’s all better! The care behind the order made Zero smile as he secretly snacked on a lolipop...

#ikemen revolution #lancelot kingsley #jonah clemence #edgar bright #kyle ash #zero #sickness

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yourcoffindoor · 5 years ago

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Bulletproof Heart Pt. 1

Pairing: Gerard Way x Reader

Prompt: Request from Anon- “ could you write one where the reader is a rock singer and they and mcr are on warped tour together, and they both lowkey like each other but think they’re both out of each other’s league, and find out that they’re both secretly into nerdy stuff + maybe getting together? thank you so much xxx”

AN: This is a multi-part series--I couldn’t help myself! Also, I based this fic around something Gerard said in a Rolling Stone interview:

Hope its ok Anon! enjoy!

You had dreamed of this moment since you first picked up a guitar. Back then it felt like an impossible fantasy, being on stage with your band, playing in front of a crowd of screaming fans; which is why it felt so surreal when your manager Tim told you that your band, The Violent Delights, had booked Warped Tour.

"June 18th," he told you with a satisfied grin, "you're in for the long haul, kids."

Your band-mates let out a collective shriek of joy, while you planted a grateful kiss on Tim's cheek.

"You're an OK manager, you know that?"

"Yeah, yeah," he said, dramatically wiping his cheek where your lips had been. "Now you guys better get practicing. This is a good opportunity to really get your name out there. Plus you got some real popular acts to compete with."

Your interest was peaked. "Oh yeah? Like who?"

"Off the top of my head? Fall Out Boy, Dropkick Murphys, and I think a band called My Chemical Romance."

"Oh shit, My Chem?" your bassist, Gavin, piped up excitedly. "That's the band I'm always trying to get Y/N to listen to."

"I'll have to finally borrow their last album," you replied, "gotta scope out the competition after all." Gavin rolled his eyes while you laughed.

Your manager got serious. "It's three months on the road, and its gonna take a lot of energy and hard work. Quite frankly, it ain't glamorous."

"Tim, when have we ever been glamorous? I wouldn't care if it were a 12 month tour," you declared, "I wouldn't miss this opportunity for the world." Liz, your drummer, nodded in agreement beside you.

"You might be singing a different tune when you haven't had a shower in three days."

"As long as I'm singing it in front of an audience, we'll be fine."

* * *

Back at your apartment you marked June 18th on your calendar with a star, feeling invigorated with excitement all over again. This was it, you thought, the next level for our band. You were determined to give it your very best, outperforming every other band there.

After all, you had worked so hard to get to this point. Starting in friend's basements and tiny cafes, the band had slowly built up a sizable following of loyal fans. You were no longer the opening act, drawing sell out crowds more often than not. You made a promise to yourself that the band wasn't going to lose this momentum. There would be no distractions for you on this tour, just hard work and the thrill of performing. That meant no parties, and absolutely no boys. You weren't ready for another relationship, you told yourself, especially since the last one ended in disaster.

Yes, this was the moment the band had been waiting for. You let the warm excitement that this knowledge brought envelope you, and you lay your head down on your pillow, falling asleep to fantasies of what lay ahead.

* * *

Its a long road from Maryland to Ohio. Columbus was the first stop of the tour, which meant your band had 6 and a half hours to go over the set-list, make adjustments discuss their hopes and fears for the three month experience. Gavin gave you a few CDs to listen too, including My Chemical Romance's Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. You had heard their first album ages ago and enjoyed it, but there was something incandescent to the music you were hearing now. It stirred a whirlwind of heavy emotion, and you were enthralled from beginning to end. You made a mental note to see them perform at Warped as soon as possible.

When your bus arrived at its destination, you felt the unwelcome buzz of nerves building in your stomach. This was real, you thought, this was happening. You were used to performing at this point, but it was the amount of people you'd be performing for that was nerve-wracking. Not to mention the fellow artists who may be watching and judging your sound. You breathed deep and tried to push past the nervous thoughts that hummed incessantly around your head like insects.

Your band-mates were buzzing about with excitement, but you needed to distract yourself. Fresh air always helped settle you, so you grabbed your shoes and decided to go for a walk around the venue.

It looked almost like a circus with all the trailers and tents that had quickly populated the surrounding area. Merch stands and catering tents were being organizes as dozens upon dozens of vans and trailers pulled in. There were already a few fans camped outside of the chain-link fence that surrounded the area, eagerly awaiting a glimpse of their favorite artists.

You kept wandering, and you saw that a band was being interviewed in the media tent. There were five of them, each holding a microphone; but one member, a dark haired boy, was doing most of the talking. He was cute, you thought, and your stomach did little flips watching him respond to the questions that were being asked.

You watched a little bit longer from a distance, until you felt a tap on your shoulder. You turned to see Gavin and Liz, who had been doing a bit of exploring as well.

"Hey, there you are! I was talking to a few people by the catering tent. They said some bands are having a party on their buses later tonight, we should check it out." Gavin informed you excitedly.

You hesitated. No parties. "I dunno, I want us to be in good condition to perform tomorrow."

Liz chimed in. "All work and no play, Y/N. C'mon, it'll be a great chance to make some connections with other bands."

"If you don't come with us," Gavin pronounced dramatically, "we'll be far too devastated to perform tomorrow." His hand went to his forehead, as though he was about to faint.

"Somehow I doubt that."

"Pretty please?" Liz stuck her lower lip out pathetically.

"With sugar on top?" Gavin added.

You glanced at the black haired boy in the distance. Maybe he'd be there, a small voice in your head piped up.

"Ugh Fine! But I'll only stay for a little bit."

Satisfied, the pair stopped harassing you, and left you to continue wandering, promising to meet up with them later.

* * *

People spilled out from open trailers as music blared from an unknown source in the background. Some were already far gone, stumbling from place to place, or lying on the ground blacked out.

You followed Gavin inside one of the trailers. You watched as he interacted with the strangers inside with ease, a trait you envied. He managed to find you both drinks, and you grabbed the mystery beverage, sculling it in hopes that it would numb your nervousness. You may have been a great performer onstage, but offstage it was easy for your social anxiety to take the wheel.

Gavin began to walk away, ignoring your whispered pleas not to leave you. Fuck. It always felt awkward to not know anyone at a party. You clutched your red cup like a life jacket keeping you afloat in a sea of drunken strangers.

A man approached you out of nowhere, the smell of alcohol emanating from every pore on his body.

"You look lonely." He leered at you expectantly.

"Then it seems like you need glasses. I'm just fine on my own."

He laughed. "Ooo! I like you. You've got spunk. Name's Brent, guitarist from Midnite Heist."

"Can't say I've heard of you guys."

Brent was either oblivious to your indifference, or just chose to ignore it. "So how'd you end up at this party?"

"I'm in a band on the tour too. Lead singer actually."

"No way! That's awesome, we need more talented eye candy on this tour."

You screamed internally while he droned on, tuning him out as you continued to sip from your fast emptying cup.

You scanned the room, watching people laugh and dance. Your stomach suddenly flipped again as you noticed the black haired boy from this afternoon, solemn faced and quiet, silently nursing a diet coke in his hands. He was clearly not having a good time. The guitarist who had been talking you up soon saw you looking at the sullen figure and turned his attention towards him, his eyes lighting up with recognition.

"Gerard fucking Way!" he bellowed, carelessly sloshing his drink as he waved him over, causing a stream of alcohol to fall to the floor below.

Gerard seemed to hesitate before walking over. "It's been awhile man," he said softly. His eyes, a warm hazel, flicked to you repeatedly as he spoke. "you here for the whole tour this time?"

Brent laughed, his sobriety dangling by a thread. "Yeah, but still not up on the main stage, unlike you big-shots." he said, punching Gerard in the arm. Gerard offered a crooked smirk in return, his patience already wearing thin. Brent nudged you in the arm. "This is Y/N, her band is new to Warped. I told her I'd show her the ropes." He grinned at you. Ugh.

Gerard seemed to sense your discomfort. "Welcome, nice to see a new face around."

Brent interrupted before you could respond. "How come you're wasting time with a coke? I would've expected you to be the first one wasted here."

Gerard's jaw clenched, and you cringed internally at the sheer awkwardness of the encounter. "I'm sober now," he informed Brent, "I don't touch that shit anymore."

Brent laughed dismissively. "Dude, you? Do you even remember the last Warped tour? I'll give it 2 days before you're lying face down in the bushes again." he laughed as if he had just said something hilarious.

You were livid, and Gerard was on edge. You decided to step in when you noticed his knuckles turn white from clenching his coke can.

You moved slightly, ready to get between them. "Hey you know what? I'd really love a coke right now too. Mind showing me where they are?" you looked pleadingly at Gerard. He took the hint.

"Follow me."

You gave a curt wave to Brent, who looked on in confusion before continuing his drinking binge.

You stepped outside, and the sounds from the party behind you became a faint, thumping buzz in the background. You were both silent for a moment before you decided to break the ice.

"So that guy was a dick."

Gerard's scowl turned into a thin, lopsided smirk. Your heart melted a bit. "Yeah. I just realized some of these people are only tolerable when I'm drunk."

Stop. Move away. You don't need a distraction like this. You tried to scold yourself but words kept escaping from your lips, prolonging the encounter.

"This is my first time doing Warped Tour, but I'm assuming these parties are pretty much never-ending?"

Gerard pulled out a cigarette and lit it. "Oh yeah, its every night for some of these bands. You're in for an interesting experience." You looked at him for a moment, perhaps for a bit too long. You had never seen anyone look so beautiful while surrounded by clouds of smoke.

"Yoohoooo! Y/N!" you heard the hollering of a clearly tipsy Gavin call from the doorway of the next trailer. "Where'd you go? The night is young! Get back here!"

You sighed. "That's my cue. Well actually that's my bassist, but he'll never let me live it down if I don't go back in there."

Gerard turned his head to the side and exhaled. "Catch you around. Next time you need rescuing from a douche-bag just light the bat signal."

You gave him a soft smile, forcing yourself to turn away and walk back to the trailer. As you did, you whispered aloud to yourself as a reminder:

"No distractions. No boys."

#gerard way x reader #gerard way fanfic #my chemical romance fanfiction #fanfic

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mariofallenstar · 5 years ago

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Super Mario Bros.: Fallen Star AU (Part 4)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

What did Luigi feel in the face of his approaching execution?

A lot of jumbled-up things, most of them seemingly incompatible with each other.

See, Luigi had no intention of saving himself by giving up Peach’s location to Bowser.

After being captured for what seemed to be the final time, he looked over the course of his heroing career and saw nothing but failure.

He hadn’t been able to save the Mushroom Kingdom or Mario.

He’d rescued many Toads from Bowser’s tyranny, but there were so many more left behind.

And even the ones who had been saved were now living in exile.

Luigi, in some twisted way, saw himself dying to save Peach and Stella as a redemption,

A redemption it never occurred to him he didn’t need.

His silence was the one thing he still had left to him.

If he could keep his silence, his niece and her mother would be safe.

Well, he wanted to think like that,

But when he thought of his family, not just Stella and Peach but Daisy and his own children,

He nearly broke.

He didn’t want to leave them. He wanted to stay with them.

Each time he tried to reconcile himself to his “sacrifice,” their faces appeared in his head, and he railed against the deep unfairness of it all.

Little did he know,

His niece had no intention of letting her uncle die.

Stella emerged from the warp pipe hidden in an empty mine where Bowser’s forces wouldn’t think to look.

This was the first time she had set foot in the Mushroom Kingdom since she was sixteen, and the first time she had ever done so alone.

She was in awe as she traversed the country she still thought of as her birthright.

“This rock is mine. This tree is mine. That horizon is mine.”

Of course, that’s not how royalty or property works, and to some extent, Stella knew this,

But she was also young and mentally overwhelmed.

She looked over the terrain the way a farmer would survey the untamed patch of wilderness they had just purchased,

Seeing both what was there and what would be underneath once every obstacle was cleared away. A sort of greedy double-vision.

But, of course, Stella had a job to do.

Luigi’s execution was in six days. She had to make her way to the site of the old castle and interrupt it somehow.

She didn’t really have a plan,

And the Mushroom Kingdom had become an unwelcoming place.

Everything about the country had changed, even its name.

It was called “New Bowser Kingdom” now.

Much of the old cities had become industrialized, and new towns had sprung up surrounding ember-spewing weapon factories.

The sky was choked with pollution, and the air filled with the metallic clang of hammers.

Toads had been reduced to second-class citizens who toiled in dangerous and thankless jobs.

And, while many were still secretly loyal to Princess Peach and dreamt of the day when she would return,

Others were consumed by bitterness, thinking that Peach had abandoned them.

Many of them had lost their last shred of hope in the wake of Luigi’s upcoming execution.

Stella was deeply saddened as she moved through these sad, soot-filled cities.

These were her people. They needed her.

But she had no idea how to help them.

For the first time, she understood something of the full weight of what her mother and uncle were up against.

Now, naturally, a human girl in the isolationist New Bowser Kingdom was bound to attract attention,

And if anyone discovered she was Princess Peach’s daughter, that could jeopardize her rescue mission.

But, Stella had a cover story.

She told any Toad to whom she showed her face that she was a reporter from the Metro Kingdom.

She had come to see if living conditions in New Bowser Kingdom were truly as inhumane as the rumors claimed.

When people heard she was a reporter, they became eager to talk to her.

They all seemed to have something they wanted her to say to the outside world.

Some felt it was important to communicate how bad living conditions really were.

They told Stella of overly long hours, low pay, strict rationing in winter, merciless fatigue in summer, how a coworker had fallen into a smelting vat and the smell had lingered for weeks.

Others had loved ones who had already escaped or that they had simply lost track of.

They urged Stella to send out inquiries and give names.

“It’s me, Todd. I’m still alive. I miss you.

“Publish that for me, will you? Maybe she’ll see it.”

Still others had messages they wished to convey to Princess Peach.

“Long live the princess!”

“This kingdom is still yours, Princess! It will always be yours!”

“We’re fighting for you, Princess Peach! We know you’ll come back one day!”

It was this last group that hit Stella the hardest.

She found her eyes welling up with tears as she heard those earnest words, pledges of loyalty to her mother.

The Toads were taken aback by her tears.

“It’s just very moving how much you care for your princess,” she managed to choke out.

The Toads came to see her as a living bottle, carrying all their messages. They wanted to protect their messages,

And so they tried to protect her.

Stella found people willing to hide her in their homes, people willing to share their food.

Still, there were a few close calls.

Stella found herself unable to stand back and watch as an overworked Toad was disciplined by a Hammer Bro. for passing out in the street,

So she jumped in and fought the Hammer Bro. off.

She knew it was probably a mistake, but the testimonies of the Toads had left her so riled up, she felt she would explode if she didn’t do something.

She’d had to retreat before reinforcements appeared by crawling into the sewer.

It was there, sloshing through who-knows-what in the dark,

That she discovered her uncle had not been the only one fighting for the kingdom’s freedom.

As previously stated, Luigi had been very hush-hush about his rescue work in New Bowser Kingdom. There were many aspects that he had never told Stella about.

That included his allies.

Stella found herself confronted with a cluster of very dirty, very fierce looking Toads.

They were the remains of the Toad Brigade.

No longer an exploration team, they now served as the major resistance organization in New Bowser Kingdom.

In the intervening years, Captain Toad had changed from a wide-eyed idealist into someone much more jaded and cynical.

Stella, overjoyed at having found a real resistance, confided in him her real goal of rescuing Luigi.

Captain Toad told her she was out of her mind.

Luigi was already dead. They couldn’t count on Mario, and they can’t count on Luigi.

They had a hard enough time keeping their numbers up as it is. Risking the entire Toad Brigade to rescue Luigi was a foolish gamble.

They had already seen so many brave souls fall.

He didn’t even want to mention what had happened to Toadette.

Before Stella even had time to ask, “Who’s Toadette?” Captain Toad had already turned away.

“Forget him. Head home. Nobody asked you to meddle in our business.”

The Toad Brigade had been tracking Stella, but they didn’t know who she was, and they were not impressed by what they saw as her feeble efforts to be a hero.

Stella had no choice but to play her final card.

She opened the backpack she had been carrying and pulled out a hat.

It was a plumber’s hat, much like her father’s and uncle’s. It was in pink with an “S” above the brim.

She put it on and told Captain Toad to look at her.

He did.

He huffed.

“That stupid cosplay isn’t going to change my mind.”

“It’s not cosplay,” said Stella.

“Look in my eyes.

“Don’t you know who I am?”

Captain Toad looked.

He blinked.

He couldn’t look away.

Stella’s eyes looked exactly like Peach’s.

And that determined expression underneath that hat...

“Princess Peach...the hero you called Mario...

“They’re not strangers to me, either.

“I already lost my dad. I don’t want to lose my uncle.

“I know you think we failed you, but I promise it will change.”

In spite of himself, Captain Toad was in tears.

“Has it really been that long?

“Is she really a mother now?”

“Please, help me!” said Stella.

But, Captain Toad shook his head.

“Go home. Go back to your mother.

“Do you think we want to lose you, too?”

But, Stella was tired of being protected, tired of being told it was enough just to live.

She had never felt more strongly that she had so much more to offer than her continued survival.

“If you don’t come with me to save Zio, I’m going alone.”

Looking at her blazing blue eyes, Captain Toad saw Mario.

He knew she was serious.

He agreed to help her.

The Toad Brigade bowed to their princess.

Luigi’s execution was in two days.

#super mario bros #fallen star au #luigi #princess peach #mario #captain toad #toadette #stella #oc #bowse #angst #character death #fan fic #au

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