#chasingtitans

[infernalapparatus]

【 PREVIOUSLY PLANNED ROLEPLAY 】 - @chasingtitans

DAMN , IT WAS GOOD TO BE ALIVE . It was only the second long rest that the party had, but Karlach was still riding that high of freedom. It was damn near unbelievable - that after ten Faerûn years of fighting and clawing and burning, she was finally free. She had a nasty little parasite squirming about in her brain - BUT GODS DAMN IT , SHE WAS FREE .

No leash held by some high and mighty bald bitch, no more brands. No more fighting devils and demons day in and day out. She was around people again. Real people. She and one of her newest companions - a Drow, named Keiko - had taken up first watch. KARLACH WAS STILL FAR TOO HOT TO TOUCH . The night seemed cold here, but she didn't feel a lick of it. She was far too toasty for that. It wasn't nearly as hot as Avernus had been - which was a good and a bad thing. Good, because she could put her bare toes in the grass and wriggle them around, and breathe in that fresh ocean air - but bad because of the chronic pain. Severe chronic pain. Felt like she could burn up any minute. But she stayed strong.

" You ever think that this was where you'd end up? " The tiefling suddenly chirps, making quiet conversation as she roasts another hog leg. GODS , DID SHE MISS EDIBLE FOOD . " I mean, without the little squiddy hitchhikers. Wouldn't include those bastards in on this. Guessing you've got beef in the gate, like everyone else does? " Small talk. How did one do that, again? It had been so damned long.

[wickedlehane]

MUSE VS MUN

tagged by: @chasingtitans tagging: [you cuties!!!]

[berylcluster]

"A cobweb table runner seems excessive." lee!

⊰ HALLOWEEN I MEME ft. KEIKO & LEE ⊱

➫ WITH a look shot her way, the table runner is set in dramatic fashion on the table, along with some fake plastic spiders and a carved pumpkin. “Maybe to the non-decorative mind, but it’s either that or fake spider web! I assume you and your boy would prefer fun and easy looks.” Lee smirks at her, in that sly, cowboyish way he does like he’s trying to hide it but the details are too engrained in his features to miss. He could even admit he didn’t look the type to enjoy the day; in fact, he grew up in a very strict household, his parents didn’t allow for Halloween anything. A little boy soldier never had the opportunity to enjoy trick of treating, costumes, or even the decorations.

But this time, it wasn’t just him alone, and he kept reminding himself on the way over so he wouldn’t turn tail and run the other way. He had Billy, Hiroshi, and of course, Keiko, who was “helping” him decorate her place for the season. Which he started doing himself, since he wanted to surprise the kid when Hiroshi got home. They had a few hours left and Lee was in director mode, “If you have any ideas on how to decorate, by all means but I think the runner looks great on the table. And I have it on pretty good authority that the fake spider web shit is a pain in the ass to clean up.” With a gentle bob of his head and hands placed on his hips, he looked from her to the table.

[helltechnicality]

@chasingtitans + starter call

"i do understand the idea of learning about a world that has left our time behind. i left the mortal realm in 1916 and coming back to so much change was quite disorientating. if i did not have charles to explain the references and minutia to the world i would have been quite lost." her case interests him greatly. a person who has only returned alive after many years to a world that had passed her by? how could he resist? "what is your last memory before you disappeared?"

[dieasone]

@chasingtitans

it wasn't like there was much to do. she'd heard that there was some ball. some military thing happening that night - and maybe curiosity had gotten the best of her. carmilla plan was just to scope it out, probably not even go in and then leave. but there's a familiar face at the opening, someone who she had seen months prior, in a completely different setting. what were in the chances that they would even be in the same place again, anyways?

carmilla doesn't know any of these people truthfully. a few she's seen around, but none that she actually cared about. getting too close meant the possibility of being found - and that was the last thing she needed right now. but there was something different about the woman she was following inside, something that she couldn't shake. (even if she wanted to)

she's casual, clearing her throat as she approaches her, as if they had known each other forever. carmilla disregards the people surrounding her, eyebrows raising. "may i speak to you in private? apologizes for interrupting." in truth, she didn't really care that much.

[scatcrccio]

@chasingtitans sent: ❛  why won't you let me in? what are you so afraid of?  ❜

EMOTIONAL DEFAMATION—? It's the first thing she thinks about when the question is asked, though she realizes she can't say it out loud for fear that it might be misunderstood. Instead, she swallows nervously and shifts her weight from one leg to the other as arms suddenly cross together in front of her chest with a tightness she can't seem to help.

❝ Because I'm… ❞ hesitation sets in causing her to pause almost immediately. There's been a permanent wall built up around her for protection; for herself from others but also from others against herself. It wasn't exactly the easiest thing to explain out loud without getting into full detail and that's something she definitely doesn't want to do.

❝ Because I'm just going to end up hurting you in the end, like I do with everyone who gets too close. I don't mean to and that's never my intention but, that's just always what seems to happen. Trust me, I'm doing you a favor here. ❞ The instant she let anyone in, they were the first link in the chain she had the inclination to break. Call it instinct on a repetitive nature. She doesn't quite understand it herself in full, but patterns were hard to gash.

[adizzyingemporium]

"After I killed Mr. House and took over the New Vegas Strip," Six spoke haltingly, it sounded ridiculous and she had been well aware of that. No one with a lick of sense would believe a damn thing she said even though just about everyone out west had heard of the Courier. The idea of meeting a legend in the flesh was more laughable than anything.

"I had to stab a lot of backs to get it and a lot of people lost their lives. It would've been a waste to just walk away," yet she did at the end of the day. Although she had made sure the Strip could survive on its own before doing so. House had essentially grounded the families, none of them could have taken flight long enough to maintain the Strip's ascension into becoming to a real power.

The brief moment of contemplation made Six ponder just how much she had truly meant to this family. Just how much she had wormed her way into their daily life and why she would've done so in the past. She had always kept her squad at arm's length away since waking up, she felt that there was no real purpose in letting them grow close to a revenant of some sort. Now she knew that wasn't what she was in the slightest, that she had been something more and that she could figure it all out again.

"Of course, he deserves all that he can get. He is a good kid and...it's good to see him get to be a kid."

"After what?" Where Fen trailed off, Keiko chased after. Maybe she shouldn't - and maybe she would let it go, for now at least, if the answer didn't come easy - but it was hard to deny the gnawing hunger to know as much of what had happened as she could, after spending half a lifetime starved of it.

Still. Whatever she could or couldn't share, Fen was here now, and her praise twitched Keiko's lips up into the first hints of a bittersweet smile. Too much had changed to ever have the woman she knew before back in full, it seemed, but the pieces of her that hadn't been lost still shone through. "Thank you."

The mention of her son, especially, made it easy to soften further. "He really likes you, you know. Always excited to hear another story. I guess that trait runs in the family," she shared with a soft laugh, before her expression smoothed back over into something much more contemplative.

"You're right. It wasn't easy to get here, but every difficulty was worth it to see Hiro just... get to be a kid." The confession was more far open than she would be with most, especially after so long spent apart. But maybe there was a part of Keiko that was still fourteen, still frozen in time before everything went wrong and desperate to have someone to look up to. She'd never had a sister otherwise, after all. "Thank you - for giving him a little more of that."

[adizzyingemporium]

things your muse can be identified by

colors.

black, purple and green.

scents.

cigarette smoke, cherry, bitter almond and graveyard dirt.

fashion.

Her favorite materials are leather, lace, pvc latex, fishnets and chains. Tabitha can usually be seen in a lacey tank top with fishnets and a leather jacket layered over the top. Depending on the setting she can be seen sporting a mini skirt or leather pants with platform boots to make herself look taller. Her accessories are usually silver, with chains and crosses being her favorite markers.

objects.

Dusty, old books written in dead languages, skulls covered in moss, clove cigarettes and butterfly knives.

body language.

arched brows, half-smirks, fluttering eyelashes and swaying hips.

aesthetics.

abandoned shrines, swamp water, twisting vines, dug up graves, flickering candles and blood on the moon.

tagged: @rattlesnakeshine tagging: @idyllicserendipity , @chasingtitans , @mayfallapart , @mayormentats , @n3rdb0x , @sillymuses , @animcsus & @spceboyzc

For multi-muse blogs pick whoever you want to do this for the most!

[infernalapparatus]

no one's ever stood up for me like that before.

【 PROMPTS FROM FEELING SAFE AND EXPRESSING COMFORT 】 - @chasingtitans

KARLACH DIDN ' T CARE MUCH FOR RACIST ARSEHOLES . She had experienced her fair share of discrimination, spending her early life being treated like some lower class citizen. She didn't have her parents to defend her from an early age, since they had passed when she was just a wee tot. She has to spend her time fighting her way up, and she was damn lucky she grew up to be one helluva giant woman. People didn't want to pick on the bodyguard built like a Goliath.

She could handle the insults slung her way now, hearing them again damn near every day in the Hells from devils. Treated like she was lower than the soul soil littering the ground, than the deepest pits of brine and shite. She could handle those. BUT SHE DIDN ' T TAKE SLIGHTS AGAINST HER COMPANY .

All it took was an ignorant comment about Keiko being a Drow, followed by some infuriating slurs and a refusal to give any information for Karlach to burst. The Flaming Fist standing outside of the rubble of Waukeen's Rest had it coming. Karlach was all too happy to knock several of his teeth out, sending him careening to the ground, and watching him scamper away with a crumpled pride and a scorch mark on his face. IT WAS CATHARTIC . Keiko hadn't said anything at the time, so they just kept going - but Karlach wasn't expecting thanks.

Color her surprised, when that night at camp, these words were the first thing spoken to her as she lays beneath her tent, arms tucked under her head. she gazes up at the smaller woman standing over her, and offers a crooked grin at the Drow. SHE HAD A PRETTY GOOD IDEA OF WHAT SHE WAS REFERRING TO .

" Well... That's a damn shame, that. " The massive woman exhales, slipping her bulky arms out from beneath her head to push up on the ground, shifting into a seated position. " I wasn't, uh... Trying to fight your battle for you. Didn't want to overstep. I just - that punch was for both of us. Fuckin' hate the bastards. Flaming Fist are all corrupt anyway. And I've heard enough shite in my life about being a hellspawn that I just... Yeah. " Karlach breathes out, glancing down, before she grins a little wider and gazes back up, her eyes like boiling gold twinkling with delight. " BUT THE LOOK ON HIS FACE WAS PRICELESS , RIGHT ? "

[wickedlehane]

i diagnose you with hot

friend you have a weird rivalry with hot

you are always fighting to show you're better. always seeing who can run faster, talk louder, be stronger. you both whirl to face each other after every test, showing off the bright red numbers at the top of the page. when you beat them by a couple points, the "jokingly" smug look on your face makes them huff and turn away, give you a friendly punch to the shoulder that might leave a bruise. when you lose 90 to their 96, the bitter spark of jealousy in the pit of your stomach reminds you to study harder. you'll best them next time. sometimes this rivalry gets messy though, and for some reason you both tend to crush on the same person, hurting each other to compete for their affection. though you always end up forgetting the crushes, and making up. whats some random fling compared to your friendship anyway?

tagged by: @chasingtitans @daxamight @insufferablemonsters

tagging: [you!]

[redemptioninterlude]

oh. has she made a mess of it again? that's unfortunate, but maybe, she just needs to let it go as it goes! a hand to hers, a squeeze ; it's not personal. her memories are a sieve! they filter through! they piece and parse every death that she meets, every time her souls recycles through these motions. BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH. this place, and her. like this woman too, her anxious questions, how she wonders. what are you alice? well, she wants to know too!

fingers spider along themselves, over, under, through and through. a laugh that sparks with the thought of it, who is alice, before it all? "a girl with a book she didn't want to read and a kitten that she simply had to chase, and then there was a rabbit... JUST A GIRL. not blooming on adulthood, not special, not particularly anything. but i think after that day? i was never quite the same. does that... does that make sense to you?" head turning to look her way, with a blinking assuredness. all she really knows that she can tie back to it was a hazy maybe. was this. was that she, that they were here in the first place.

it MEANT SOMETHING.

but. there's the statement. she has a son, and not only that, she KNEW HIM TOO? blue eyes blink - hi-ro-shi. her mouth warms around the sound of this name. it means something special and lovely, she thinks, but she doesn't quite full together her story within the scrambled fragments of what memory shreds itself within soul. "well~ if that's how it is..." she knows him. knows her. okay. "can you tell me if he's growing well?" there's a warmer smile, and a laugh, as if their surroundings weren't what they were. as if this was them, a cafe, a warm bench within the sun.

keiko, she trusts her. that look on her face where she really thinks about it. that's the burden of ADULTHOOD. all the things you remembered and held within you, she looks at her with her lips curving into an immediate smile all over again. "so you do? amazing! okay. where we go? it's to another dream of course - i'm taking you with me until we can find one you can wake up from. isn't that where you want to be?" face, closer pushed to hers, girlish adoration shining. "i'll get you home. to hiroshi. so you guys can have the best meal together."

a hand, in hers, as she pulls her along with her forwards, chased forwards. through the fire, through the mess, there were places to be and she could feel them tripping, reality SHIFTING, off and forwards, it's like a chill cutting at the spine, like fire in the lungs, alice wakes in tears, clutching at a palm, desperation slipping for a moment as she rolls, shaking the other woman, relief flooding through when she's still warm and alive. "up. up! we've arrived."

- @chasingtitans

Alice looks so young. She always has - nearly the same every time, in fact, and only on rare occasion even younger - but she sounds so much older than Keiko in this moment. Alice, Keiko is beginning to realize, always has been exactly what she claims this place to be: an existence outside of rationalization, rebelling against all the laws of time that Keiko has known to be true. She'd just never stuck around long enough for Keiko to have to fully face that fact head-on before.

Not until now.

"We always meet out of order, and you always forget. Why? For how long have you lived like this? Is it because of this - this place?" Keiko volleys her next set of questions back just as rapid-fire as Alice's explanation had first come. Gaze sliding away again, she takes in the patchwork scenery around them for a moment before returning her focus to the woman she simultaneously knows so much of and nothing about at all. "Who are you really, Alice? Who were you, before it all?"

Despite her own hesitation, Keiko doesn't miss it, the way Alice softens at the mention of her son. There's a familiar glimmer back in those eyes, then, of the woman who had actually known them both. So it's with the tension already draining back out of her shoulders that Keiko nods, then says: "Hiroshi. You knew him, too." Not nearly as well, but it's hard to hide the center of her universe from a figure who seemed to pop into it wherever - and whenever - she pleased.

(If she'd ever truly wanted to hide him from Alice to begin with.)

Will you trust me? At that question, Keiko can only chuckle humorlessly. "Do I have a choice?" Still, she closes her eyes and shakes her head - minutely, as if the motion is only meant for herself - before reopening them with a sigh and nodding instead.

She has to see the possibilities in the impossible one more time. If only for the loved ones she's left behind, the people she'd do near anything to get back to. "Yes. I will."

Still, it's easier said than done. Especially once Alice brands her a hero. Of all possible titles, that doesn't feel right. Keiko has spent her entire life fighting against every injustice hurled her way, every unfair opinion trying to hold her back harder than everyone else, but down here she just feels... Lost. Afraid. Trapped in a nightmare of her own making, curious of one as it might be if she only knew the way back out.

It doesn't matter how she feels, though. There's only one path forward here. The only possible way out now is through, and she has to take it.

With a steadying breath, Keiko steps forward and takes Alice's hand once more. "Where to first?"

[helltechnicality]

✏️ !!

Send in ✏️ and I’ll use this (improved) incorrect quote generator featuring both our muses!

Keiko: What’s sexting? Edwin: I'm not having this conversation with you.

-

Keiko, barging in: Syphilis! Edwin: Keiko: Edwin: Pardon?

-

Keiko: Hey! Wanna hear a joke? Edwin: Sure. Keiko: Your life! Edwin: Actually, my life isn’t a joke, jokes have meaning. Keiko: Edwin, no.

[perfectionreached]

it's not like she forgot how she was perceived in high school. mostly, she was that same girl. she just knew how to hide it better. taissa was always going to be someone who was polarizing. who had her own way of doing things and that way was always correct. it may have isolated her from making friends (it was easier to say that the other kids sucked than to admit it was her) but she didn't know any other way to exist. her interactions with keiko previously had showed that, as all she remembers is how they would try to one up each other.

when the other woman brings up her wife, taissa freezes for a small second, ready to launch into a tough conversation before releasing a sigh of relief when she realizes that everything was fine. she hadn't been out when they had attended school together but she's sure everyone knew - there was only so much sneaking around her and van could do before it seemed obvious. "you'll have to meet her, i'm sure you two would get along." besides, in the same vein, taissa was always side eying the interactions that keiko had with natalie. it was none of her business, but it was something she kept in mind.

she nods, glancing at hiroshi with a smile. "you're right we are still young. if it happens it happens. i'd like to get to a place where everything feels stable enough that it can even happen." taissa wouldn't be opposed to a white picket fence type of life, if anything it's what she prefers. something perfect. seamless. "but you and shauna seem to be enjoying it so who knows, maybe i'll be next."

@chasingtitans

Callie. It's a cute name for a cute girl, but Keiko simply files that information away for later - especially in the face of Taissa's surprise. "No, I haven't. We haven’t been back for long, and I’m... not always in town," she answers, carefully dodging around the heart of why that is. This sudden reunion has been surprisingly pleasant so far, more so than Keiko would have expected, but she still doesn't know Taissa like that. Hasn't quite forgotten the barbs she used to hurl Natalie's way, especially, back in high school. What she did to Allie for not being good enough. Time very well may have reshaped Taissa since then, but Keiko has had more than enough unwanted judges pass through her life already; she doesn't need to willingly open herself up to another one.

The mention of work right after does draw a chuckle out of her, though. Maybe Taissa would understand, after all. Before Keiko can ponder on it for too long, however, the words my wife have her expression softening. "Your wife? That’s lovely." Keiko has been with women before, here and there, but it had never quite clicked before now that marriage could be an option on the table. In her defense, it still isn't, not exactly - not here nor in Japan, anyway, and she hasn't stayed anywhere else long enough for it to be a true consideration.

(Or with anyone else. There had only been one, and the fragile string left connecting their hearts after that damn crash already took away so much had been severed before things truly had a chance to begin. Too many ghosts haunt Natalie. Haunt Keiko now too, maybe, but the reasons why don't matter any more; as long as she has Hiroshi to put first, she can't go back.)

Regardless, it's another thought best left for later. Now certainly isn't the time to grill Taissa on the intricacies of homosexuality - not that Keiko particularly wants to do that with her of all people, anyway.

"But yes, I do know," she redirects instead. "Mm. We’re still young enough, there’s plenty of time for it all. Children aren't going anywhere, especially once you actually have one," Keiko adds with another chuckle, fingers gently prodding at Hiroshi's stomach until he giggles. Redirecting her attention to Taissa once he's settled back down, her expression smooths over with sincerity when she adds: "As long as you want whatever you're pursuing, that's all that matters in the end."

[scatcrccio]

Which member of a doomed spaceship crew are you?

ENGINEER

If anyone's the living embodiment of the ship, it's you. If anyone feels her death keenly, knows without a doubt when something vital has been poisoned, it's you. Your mind is meticulous; there is no room for panic here. You know what to do.

tagged by: @chasingtitans

[warchosen]

independent sideblog for xena of amphipolis from xena: warrior princess. crossover & oc friendly. loved by aviva ( 25+, she/any ).

blogroll: @chasingtitans ( keiko miura, main blog )

temporarily private while my main blog is on hiatus.

[perfectionreached]

MUSE VS MUN

tagged by @chasingtitans tagging: anyone who wants to do this!