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makeste · 5 years ago

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BnHA Chapter 294: A Half-Assed Escape

Previously on BnHA: Mirio was all “SURPRISE I’M BACK THANKS TO OUR RESIDENT SEVEN-YEAR-OLD WHO RECENTLY EARNED HER BACHELOR’S OF BEING A TOTAL BADASS.” Kacchan was all, “you know what, Dabi’s been trending long enough, time to remind the fandom what a real G looks like,” and he blasted his little bleeding body back into the fray and was all “FROM HERE ON OUT CALL ME DYNAMIGHT!!” Mirio was all, “AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... oh, you’re serious,” and Kacchan was all “!!”, and so that’s the story of how my son got murdered twice in one day. Meanwhile in the Todoroki Drama Zone, Deku was all “STOP MURDERING MY FRIEND” and Dabi was all “THAT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS” and fandom had a whole big debate about Whether Or Not Dabi Trying To Murder Deku’s Friends And Mentors Is Any Of Deku’s Business, which went exactly how you think it went. Anyway, so then Deku yelled at Dabi, and Endeavor was all moved by his manly words and randomly went to go uppercut Machia in the chin. And, seeing as how the Momoserum finally chose that exact moment to kick in, Machia is now down for the count.

Today on BnHA: The Miriosquad handles the Nearly High End Noumus, freeing up Jeanist to jasphyxiate (okay that one doesn’t really work so well) the rest of the League. Compress is all “TIME FOR THIS MILD-MANNERED SIDE CHARACTER VILLAIN TO SHINE”, except that by “shine” what he actually means is “use his quirk to punch a literal hole right through his own ass to free himself.” The rest of the chapter is basically just a back and forth between him and Jeanist, with Jeanist trying to recapture him, and Compress repeatedly thwarting him by chopping more holes out of himself because HE’S FRESH OUT OF FUCKS, AND THE ONES AT THE STORE ARE ALL SOLD OUT, MOTHERFUCKERS. Anyway, so with Compress basically dying and all, Horikoshi is all “you know what that means”, and delivers a freshly-baked villain flashback revealing that Compress is a descendant of Harima Ouji, a.k.a. the Peerless Thief, a.k.a. some famous guy whom Gentle mentioned this one time for like two seconds back in the day. The chapter ends with Compress finally demasking himself and dumping Tomura back onto the ground, a.k.a. The Worst Possible Place For Tomura To Be. ( •﹏•)

WHY IS CRUST HERE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD

-- OH WAIT, SHIT. OH

AIZAWAAAA you’re alive and receiving medical help thank GOD. HOW MANY EYES DO YOU HAVE. AND MIRKO!! HOW MANY LIMBS DO YOU HAVE, OMG

so is this Aizawa dreaming about Crust’s final moments, then?? jesus. with All Due Respect to Crust’s memory, does Aizawa not already have enough misplaced guilt on his conscience as it is?? “nope, we’re gonna keep piling it on. that’s all he is now. three limbs, an indeterminate number of eyes, sexy hair, and Guilt” well shit

motherfucker y’all really out here placing an oxygen mask on Gran Torino’s corpse. fucking shounen characters. each one comes with a lifetime warranty

DAMN YOU HORIKOSHI WHY DO YOU KEEP SHOWING THESE CLOSE-UPS OF HAWKS’S UNCONSCIOUS FACE ALL WHUMPED OUT AND EXHAUSTED. HOW MUCH MORE OF THIS ARE WE GOING TO GET. ARE YOU PLANNING ON KILLING ME WITH THE UPCOMING CONVALESCENCE ARC, BECAUSE IF SO, AT LEAST HAVE THE DECENCY TO TELL ME AHEAD OF TIME SO I CAN MAKE A WILL

for a moment I considered going back and checking my previous recaps to count how many times I’ve already made a joke about Dabi’s fire incinerating Hawks’s wings but not touching so much as a hair on his five o’clock shadow, so that I could calculate whether or not I could possibly get away with making that same joke one more time. but then I realized I could just do it in this kind of roundabout way I’m doing right now instead. so there you have it

FFFFFFFMT LADY AND MIDNIGHT NOOOOO

PLEASE BE ALIVE. PLEASE RESPECT THE SIGN ON THE FRONT OF THE BUILDING. THE ONE THAT SAYS “NO LADY CHARACTERS ALLOWED TO DIE”, WITH THE FINE PRINT AT THE BOTTOM “AT LEAST NOT UNTIL HORIKOSHI GIVES US LIKE TWENTY-SIX MORE OF THEM FIRST IF THAT’S THE WAY HE WANTS TO PLAY IT.” IT’S A GOOD SIGN, PLEASE RESPECT ITS WISHES!!

so anyway though, Jeanist is giving a speech about how god knows how many people all worked together to bring Machia down. and now RHA is getting in on those fabric puns too, I see. “A SINGLE STRAND MAY BE THIN BUT TOGETHER THEY FORM A STRONG ROPE” oh so you think you guys are funny eh? I’m a frayed knot

MEANWHILE EXCUSE ME BUT WHY ARE YOU FUCKING CRYING BLOOD, HOLY SHIT

fffffff. so much for him taking over as the Number One once all this is over. so let’s just recap real quick, because Horikoshi has long since made it clear that one of his plot goals for this arc is to wipe out every single member of the Billboard Top Ten. so how we doin?

Endeavor - was just figuratively eviscerated in front of the entire nation by his homicidal zombiepunk son. also burnt half to death and possibly down a lung. will almost certainly be forced to retire after this one way or the other

Hawks - lying prettily in a medical tent. wings status: gone. hair status: still perfect

Jeanist - WELL I THOUGHT HE WAS FINE BUT APPARENTLY HE’S OUT HERE DYING, JESUS CHRIST

Edgeshot - MIA, last seen fighting Re-Destro. I really want him to have kicked RD’s ass because fuck that guy, but realistically they probably fought to a draw at best

Mirko - alive but in critical condition and missing something like 1.5 limbs

Crust - dead, currently haunting Aizawa’s traumatized dreams. now he’s gonna be triggered the rest of his life by people giving him the thumbs up, THANKS A LOT

Kamui Woods - was set on fire which is His Weakness. thoughts and prayers

Wash - last seen floating hospital patients to safety as Tomura’s wave of decay descended towards him. probably dead ffff

Old Man Samurai - haven’t seen this fucker in a hot minute, who even knows where he’s wandered off to

Ryuukyuu - currently being treated for her wounds, looked pretty bad off. but it’s hard to tell how hurt she is since most of the injuries were acquired in her transformed state. SHE BETTER GET WELL SOON

anyways, so yeah. so much for the top ten. guess that’s another reason Horikoshi brought Mirio back now, huh

so there’s a big panel of everyone fighting the Noumu while Machia lies there all “blurgh.” good riddance my dude. it took like twenty chapters and a hundred people to stop this guy so I really fucking hope he stays down. you’ve had your fun

anyway so Jeanist is sending another steel thread towards Dabi! and he’s all “just a bit more!!” fklklj this is gonna go real well isn’t it

meanwhile Mirio’s fighting a Nearly High End with all of these weird rock formations jutting out of its skin. go on and kick his ass then, Mirio

“each of these guys is probably just as strong as the Noumu from Kyuushuu” hold on I thought Ujiko or Tomura or someone said that wasn’t the case? not that Mirio would know I suppose. anyways let’s just hope he’s wrong cuz if not these kids are probably screwed

kLSDKFHLSKHGLKLK OH MY GODDDD

IIDA FUCKING TENYA YOU’RE A PEACH. THINKS THE NAME IS OUTRAGEOUS, CHECK. USES IT ANYWAY, CHECK. “JUST BECAUSE I DON’T UNDERSTAND DOESN’T MEAN I CAN’T BE SUPPORTIVE.” WHAT A CLASS ACT

AND KACCHAN IS RESPONDING WITH AS MUCH DIGNITY AS HE CAN MUSTER

WOW, SON. IT’S ALMOST AS THOUGH YOU HAVE A HOLE IN YOUR TORSO, OR SOMETHING!! although listen up, real talk, the fact that Kacchan of all people can’t muster the energy to yell at someone questioning his ability to kick ass is HIGHKEY troubling and we may be in need of an intervention here soon :/

now Jeanist is finally turning his attention to the League! was... was it not already on the League. omg

ACTUAL SCREAMING AHHHHHH FUCK FUCKLK LK AHHLKHKFFFF

hey so um. what the actual fucked up hell. my soul left my body. imagine if you saw the reflection of this panel on your bedroom window. you would never sleep again

OKAY RHA TRANSLATORS ARE YOU HAVING YOURSELF A LAUGH AGAIN

THIS CANNOT BE WHAT HE’S ACTUALLY SAYING RIGHT. BUT IT’S RIGHT IN THAT UNCANNY VALLEY OF NOT BEING QUITE SURE, THOUGH... (　ﾟдﾟ)

(ETA: just a next-day clarification here, apparently my sleep-deprived ADHD word-skipping brain completely skipped right over the “a” in that last panel, so what I read was, “and Shigaraki’s limp noodle.” so yeah, the moral of this story is always read the speech bubble carefully before you start making running jokes throughout the rest of your post, folks.)

oh wow he’s really freaking out lmao

to be fair though, I’d argue that Dabi has gotten pre-tty close at this point :’) thrilled for him, really I am

but anyway, well then figure something out you big dramatic robot-armed fiend. didn’t you just say you could touch your own ass? can you not just Compress yourself to break free?? does it not work on you? or would you be stuck afterwards lol

(ETA: I was picturing him compressing his entire body at once, not just chunks of it. ghhhlkh.)

holy shit Jeanist. are you stupidly trying to cut off their air, or are you going for more of a sleeper hold (jleeper hold??) thing instead. the latter would be way smarter and faster and probably safer as well just saying

but unless Spinner is just being super dramatic, it sure looks like he’s fucking strangling them djslkjlk. this will certainly cement his popularity among the villain stans. good thing you’re not running for office any time soon bud

anyway so I have no idea what these guys are trying to do now. what is this

do you even have till the count of 5 at this rate. I mean

OH MY GOODNESS

HE’S REALLY FUCKING DOING IT!! HE’S COMPRESSING HIS BUTT!! OMFG. TOMURA HIDE YOUR NOODLE!!!

WHAT THE FUCK

DID YOU COMPRESS A PIECE OF YOUR OWN ASS. FUCKING WHAT. PUT THIS MAN’S PICTURE IN THE DICTIONARY NEXT TO THE WORD “LOYALTY”, HOLY CRAP

HOLY SHIT COMPRESS

“HOLY SHIT DID THAT GUY JUST PUNCH A HOLE THROUGH HIS OWN ASS IN ORDER TO SAVE HIS VILLAIN PALS. FUCK IT, HE DESERVES TO ESCAPE”

jeez, talk about... A HALF-ASSED ESCAPE ATTEMPT :D :D :D hahaha. but real talk though, Horikoshi has clearly never tried to leap twelve feet straight up in the air multiple times in succession with only half his glutes though. everyone, I regret to inform you that this panel right here on the left may be slightly unrealistic

also where the hell is he going to go?? did you pack a jetpack away in one of those little marbles sir. and what about Dabi?? and Skeptic too, I guess, but we don’t really care about Skeptic

(ETA: at this point I had to stop reading for about two hours because I had to go out and take care of something; that’s also why this is being posted later than usual lol. anyways so where were we.)

oh my lord

the existence of a translator’s note here implies that the earlier line about Compress being able to reach Tomura’s junk was not, in fact, ad-libbed. hmm. hmmmmmmmm

anyway so now he’s grabbing Compress again because OF COURSE HE IS, so now we’re right back to square one! except now Tomura and Spinner are secured inside of little marbles, and presumably Compress is the only one who can release them

oh nevermind he’s just maiming himself again instead, SHEESH

Skeptic a man is dying please have some goddamn respect

so, uh. is he gonna die, though??

I really can’t tell wtf is going on here, this is the most confusing the art has been in a while. Horikoshi put all of his spoons into that creepyass close-up panel earlier, that bastard

OMG WHAT ARE YOU SERIOUS

DON’T FUCKING TELL ME THE “COMPRESS IS RELATED TO THIS THIEF GUY FROM OLDEN TIMES” THEORY IS ACTUALLY TRUE WHAAAAAAT. OH SHIT

so apparently Harima was a Robin Hood type guy who stole from... heroes?? wtf. are heroes the 1% in this scenario. y’all didn’t have any Fortune 500 CEOs to steal from?

THAT’S THE BLOOD THAT FLOWS THROUGH YOU, OH SHIT. and in a related oh shit, the fact that we are getting a Compress flashback now of all times doesn’t bode super well for him. ffff

MEANWHILE THE TODOROKIS ARE STILL TODOROKI-ING

listen here boy if you touch one freaking hair on Shouto’s candy cane head I swear to god --

WHAT DID I FUCKING SAY!!!

SHOUTO NOOOOOO. WTF YOU’RE LITERALLY THE ONE GUY WHOSE WEAKNESS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FIRE. DABI YOU SHIT, YOU BETTER WATCH YOURSELF!! I’M PRINTING OUT A COPY OF THAT COMPRESS PANEL!!! KEEP AN EYE OUT ON THAT BEDROOM WINDOW YOU PUNK!!!

SO NOW POOR SHOUTO IS UNCONSCIOUS AND FALLING!! SOMEONE SAVE HIM!! WHO CATCHES THE CATCHER

COMPRESS LITERALLY HOW ARE YOU STILL ALIVE RIGHT NOW, WHAT IS HAPPENING

PLEASE DON’T CALL TOMURA LEADER OF THE “PLF” YOU KNOW I CAN’T TAKE IT SERIOUSLY WHEN YOU DO THAT. ARE YOU DYING. ARE YOU JUST A FUCKING HEAD NOW WTF

(ETA: “masks are removable, makeste” you know what it’s been a long day okay lmao. or I suppose Compress is really the one who is lmao.)

GASPPPPPP

okay. okay. looooool okay then

WHY WERE YOU COVERING THIS SEXY MOP OF HAIR UNDER THAT HOOD YOU TOOL. IT WOULD HAVE LOOKED SO GOOD WITH THE TOP HAT. I’M SO MAD AT YOU RIGHT NOW

as if it wasn’t enough for him to demask himself, he also had to get all shirtless and then do this weird attempt at a sexypose too huh

hard to say exactly how much of his torso is currently missing, but safe to say that’s proooooooobably not good. :///// fuck

on the other hand, Kacchan also has a torso hole and he’s still flying around like he just drank a dozen red bulls, so

this man lost his ass and he’s still out here monologuing like it’s the last two minutes of The Prestige. one might say he is monologuing his ass off

so he let Spinner and Tomura free, but is Dabi still trapped in his marble?? wasn’t he all on fire and stuff?? hopefully he can still turn off his quirk in there because if not that’s a pretty fucked up way to die. somewhere out there Snatch’s ghost is all “YEAH I’LL SAY.” oh how the turntables

last but not least, sooooooo. Tomura. back on the ground. that’s. um. ...shiiiiiiiit

#bnha 294 #mr. compress #...and actually that's pretty much it lol #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #sorry this is up later than usual (and mostly unedited as well)#just one of those days

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cobalt-penguin · 5 years ago

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y’know what i’m still feeling annoyed and petty, plus i’m stuck inside and it’s storming out so why not type out a checklist of what everyone in TOW did to me.

since i am mean and manipulative, petty and pathetic, and so much more? why not bring up some old beef and give ya’ll something to eat.

Gansey: tried repeatedly to instigate drama -- if not actively break up -- my OC ships by encouraging -- through IC shenanigans -- cheating and lying. One of these happened while I was on vacation with my family and i still remember crying about it in a hotel bathroom because i thought one of my few ships in the RP was over and I hadn’t even been asked about it. This also included trying to get his OC Tomas to make IC/OOC (hey you can feign innocence when it’s in that dubiously OOC space, until its receptive in which case you can say it was IC the whole time!) at one of my ship partner’s OCs. Made repeated fat jokes at one of my fat characters (the same one they were clearly trying to get away from their partner...hmm...). Claimed I was always running to vague on my personal. Fair enough, I did, but they did the same thing. In poem form. Never answered my message about leaving the RP group because they felt ‘disrespected” by it. Repeatedly including untagged dubcon/noncon elements on the dashboard and triggering me. Lying to Ivy and me about having a full Overwatch party then trying to say “oh it just emptied you can join now”. hid this “FAR” idea from the rest of the RP community and then played coy when they got found out and asked about it by another anon (not me). Made fun of other RP groups in Tumblr tags then, when I asked them and their friends not to, was told “we’re a step above them.” Saying I was excluding them from things when I asked to play OW with them AND invited them to my horror RP group AND, only months beforehand, were inviting them to my Marvel RP??Trying to emotionally manipulate me through threatening to kill characters they had obviously grown tired of playing (probably because their major connections were to me and not their other friends) -- “haha i’m probably going to kill (my oc) idk but doesn’t that make you upset?? what will (your character) even do??” Engaging in nasty “”IC”” interactions with my character, basically telling me, through them, off, and being supported by the entire community in doing so. All of this really hurt me because I considered Gansey a friend and a major inspiration at one point in my life. Someone I non-jokingly looked up to and trusted. I feel like Gansey left TAR, our first RP group, because of how controlling, self-interested, petty, and mean-spirited the admins there were. That they were limiting other people’s creativity while building up their own narrative -- everyone else just there to be their audience. But you and Roman literally became Usa and Jen. Congrats. You lived long enough to become everything you’d rebelled against. And yes Gansey -- I saw all of your messages to everyone. Emotionally manipulating others -- telling them how terrible you are you don’t deserve their friendship, but would like to -- isn’t an apology. Its a tactic. Do better in the future. And despite me “blocking” you? There were a hundred ways to still reach out to me if that was what you really wanted. But let’s be real. It wasn’t. That was part of your gambit to. Goodbye.

Rosie: asked literally EVERYONE about what had happened with the ““TOW explosion”” except me. never even asked my side of the story. Rosie I don’t even get because the other admins treated her like shit -- making her do all the coding and technical components for the entire RP -- but she was still defending them to the end. Okay. And then to treat Shelly like utter SHIT even though Reyne was running her passive-aggressive mouth off about people who couldn't even defend themselves? Amazing. Yeah, she’s the bully. Your perspective was so twitested by your biases that you were ready to victim blame Shelly just because Reyne had to run at the sight of someone actually throwing their bulltshit back at them.

Reyne: Like Gansey, frequently indulged in cheating/cucking scnearios for fun -- again, including my own characters without asking or telling me. Don’t think Reyne ever apologized for this, IC or OOC. Dropped ships with me repeatedly -- leaving the group even -- without a word. Passive-aggressive to the max. Made a ship with Gansey just to play out her Teen Wolf OTP -- something that will never not be funny to me, when she called Gansey’s “character” Stiles. Smooth.

Frankii: Repeatedly dropped me and my characters from plots. Gave me one of the most hurtful comments of my RP community by essentially being like “maybe if your plots and characters weren’t so confusing than more people would want to RP with you.” Invited to join my horror RP group and never made a character. also told me this after Gansey wrote that enormous callout about me, that Roman piggybacked on while the getting was good: “also I'm not here to advocate on behalf of my friend but I really don't think Gansey was trying to be rude last night, they can come off a certain way when they're stressed.” COOL. The rest of Frankii’s message I really appreciated, at the time, but, surprise surprise, then despite us being “cool” they never spoke to me again.

Laura: I actually really liked Laura tbh but I guess she didn’t feel the same. Some of our interactions back in TAR were actually some of my favorites. I invited her to join my horror RP group and she never made a character. When I asked about this -- and if she needed any help making someone or wanted to leave -- she said she was working on it. Basically stonewalled me over time. Honestly though? Not a lot to say I actually think Laura is a good writer and pretty cool. Its just obvious who her friends were and I, stupidly, thought I was included in that.

Anna: Actually I really liked Anna too tbh but I guess I vastly overestimated our friendship? It happens. Dropped me from one of her plots -- after talking to me about including me in one of hers because she felt “obligated” basically, from being featured in my own -- without mentioning why or talking to me about it. Invited to join new RP -- refused (not mad about this, just making note of it). Refused to follow my new account when I lost my old one because “lol they’re such a furry”.

Roman: lmao where to even start. Roman was condescending and elitist literally from the beginning of TAR. barely acknowledged my existence until he had to.I started a plot with an open invitation to the entire RP group, with a deadline so I could start writing. Roman waits until its over and complains that they were left out. I include him anyway. Roman mocks the fact that I ask to tag or outright remove aphrodisiac dust -- because I don’t like seeing untagged dubcon/noncon on my dashboard, it upsets me a lot -- and then goes on a whole thread about it after I go to bed and can’t even defend myself. Apparently told his friends not to invite me to things because he doesn’t like me??? And then he has the nerve to be like communication is key and you can come talk anytime??? While having me on their public “friends” list with a description about me on his blog??? omfg...I literally can’t. To this day. Actually let this image speak for itself.

Everything Else: The repeated, childish treatment of strippers as immoral (””your character is stripping?? my character is so upset and is going to protect them!!”). The implication that characters who were stripping were also automatically sex workers. The continued references to my character, who owned this establishment, as being sleazy and manipulative. Also, honestly, what was with ya’ll adopting some random teenager into your OW groups? That was weird af. And then bringing some random person into TOW without asking anyone and trying to pull rank like “we’re the admin team and we can do whatever we want”. and shit-talking Meg and me in your “open forum” when all we wanted to do was get on with out lives. Like? Who cares? Ya’ll didn’t want me, at least, there anyway, clearly. You don’t get to exclude me then talk about how disrespectful and “wrong” the way I left was..........

Me: I didn’t do everything perfectly either. I know I could be passive-aggressive. I could be self-interested. I could make bitter comments. I dealt with feeling angry and upset by making memes -- which, I’m gonna be honest, I get why ya’ll were upset but I don’t regret either. I had spent so long in TAR/TOW with nobody interested in my characters and plots -- originally because I didn’t vid and played furries but, later, well.........see above -- that I did focus on my own narrative. I wasn’t invited to plots. I didn’t have sexy vampires and boy band werewolves. I played weird characters that didn’t fit the common niche of the cast of an angst and hookup filled supernatural YA novel. Maybe my plots were confusing but, honestly? It was because they were always going to be in the background. I wasn’t disinterested in anyone’s stories. I had just been left out of them for so long -- having to beg to even be a mention in a single mention -- that I had to make my own. I wasn’t there to just be an audience member to be aghast by Roman’s newest quirky boy or Gansey’s newest possessed twink. I was a writer. A member of the community. And, at the time? I thought a friend. Someone who deserved appreciation and respect.

I know who my true friends are now. We did, ironically, exactly what you did -- we have out own group, our own setting, our own community.

And I still live with the mean and manipulative things YALL said everyday. Even as an adult -- even with everything I’ve accomplished and am so proud of -- I’m still traumatized by being treated so poorly -- for years -- and not even realizing it. Something I’m still working on -- one of the many reasons I still have trust issues to this day. Congrats. That’s your legacy on me. aNYWAY

byeeeeeee

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 5 years ago

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Witches, Chapter 18: I hope you are enjoying these next few casefic-intensive chapters because once we are done with this orca case we are not ever spending this much time on investigations ever again. no, not even for the plot relevant ones. I am only half joking.

anyway, with the holidays over, time for regular updates again.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

Pearl wants to come with Phoenix and Athena to the aquarium to help investigate, rather than stay with Trucy (and Apollo) at the office. It only surprises Phoenix a little - Pearl seems like she’s taken a liking to Athena, and definitely to the aquarium critters.

And she and Trucy can’t possibly have more to talk about, can they? They were awake nearly the whole night talking, filling in the recent years that had passed without seeing each other. Every time he caught a bit of conversation, it was Trucy relaying the story of the cases when she stood as co-counsel to Apollo, of chasing down Tenma Taro and digging up Thalassa’s mitamah (with Apollo), of simply hanging out with Jinxie, with Vera, with Apollo. Apollo, Apollo, the ever-constant thread through the past year, and when he saw Pearl’s face she was concentrating intently, one hand closed around her own wrist. She’d figured something out, surely, made connection between the golden bangle on Apollo’s wrist and golden magic on Trucy’s that marks every Gramarye he’s ever met. But she said nothing, just waved at Phoenix when he told them he was going to bed.

And then two hours later he saw them again to tell them to turn down the music, because Trucy was introducing Pearl to the Gavinners’ backlog and had gradually been kicking the volume up to see what she could get away with without waking Phoenix.

Teenagers.

This afternoon, he’ll be saddled with Pearl and a different particular exuberant and loud teenager, and Athena is excitedly encouraging Pearl that of course it’ll be great and helpful to have her along, and Pearl says that she doesn’t really know what she can do, besides coaxing Rifle close, and won’t she just get in the way—?

“I’ve got an idea of what you can do!” Trucy scrambles away from one of her magic-prop shelves, something tucked away behind her back. “You need to check out the blood stains at the bottom of the orca pool to make sure that the murder really happened there, right? And maybe check for more blood to see if the murder could’ve happened somewhere else that doesn’t pin the blame on Ms Buckler! I have a solution” - she giggles and Apollo rolls his eyes - “for that!” She shoves a bottle of Luminol, and several pairs of the accompanying pink-tinted glasses, at Pearl. “Here you go! One forensics kit!”

Pearl gingerly accepts the bottle, holding it like it’s either fragile or dangerous. “And don’t forget the most important part of forensics!” Trucy’s snickering increases in volume. Apollo groans. “White powder!”

“Huh?” Athena asks, as Pearl accepts the fingerprinting powder and Apollo stifles unwilling laughter in his hand, the kind of laughter when a joke is funny but the listener is so annoyed with the joke that they don’t want to laugh. Phoenix has no idea why they are both acting like this over fingerprinting powder.

“White powder,” Trucy repeats, grinning devilishly. “Guaranteed pick-me-up for even the grumpiest detectives!”

Apollo groans. “Really, Trucy?”

Athena turns to Phoenix. “Er, Boss…?”

“Oh, fingerprinting powder,” he says. “Good idea, Trucy. Maybe that’ll help us figure out who was on scene.”

“Oh, that’s - ooh.” Athena nods, rubs the side of her neck, and looks strangely relieved. “Oh that’s what that is.”

“Great news, Apollo!” Trucy, grinning, leans toward him, and he gives her shoulder a shove to hold her back away. “You’re now not the only one who’s thought that Daddy and Ema do cocaine!”

“I never thought that!” Apollo yells. His voice ringing through the office drowns out the sound of the single Psyche-Lock that clicks into place.

“What?” Phoenix asks.

Trucy is still grinning and Apollo places his free hand over her face. His own face is turning red, red as his suit, red as the blessing marked on his skin that Phoenix sometimes Sees. “You just - you just told us to go get some white powder from the office and give it to her! And you didn’t say what it was and we couldn’t tell what it was—”

The lock shatters and a wheeze works its way up from Phoenix’s lungs. “You thought that I - I described it as ‘white powder’ because I didn’t expect either of you to know what fingerprinting powder looked like!”

“You could’ve told us what it was and what it looked like!”

Trucy wrenches herself free from her brother and tumbles over the back of the couch, laughing loudly like this is the funniest thing in the world. And okay yeah, Apollo’s mortified expression and color is pretty funny. “Yeah,” Phoenix says. “I guess I probably could’ve told you what it was.”

He’s not gonna regret that he didn’t tell either of them, though.

“Hey, Polly, where are you going?” Trucy calls. Phoenix takes the Luminol glasses from her.

Apollo throws his hands in the air, stalking off toward the back room. “I’m going to go hide in the kitchen and hope the door disappears so that no one can follow me! Mr Wright, let me know if there’s anything you need help with for the case.”

“Sure thing.” It’s nice of him to offer to help, even when he’s being reminded of all the shit that Phoenix has said to him and put him through. He’s a good kid.

“Wait, the - oh, yeah, you said we have a magic kitchen yesterday, didn’t you?” Athena frowns, watching Apollo leave. “How does that work?”

“Well,” Phoenix says, “the first part of it is that you stop actually questioning it.”

Magic works under certainty, after all.

Pearl wanders off almost immediately after they arrive at the aquarium, saying she wants to find Rifle and start “forensicking” everywhere she can. “Don’t use it all up before we get to the crime scene!” Phoenix warns, and she turns a very serious stare on him and assures him that under no circumstances will she run out of Luminol. He doesn’t question further, finds it pretty safe to assume that it will be magically regenerating because she thinks it should and needs it to. “Oh, and if you find Mr Rimes, give me a call and let me know where you are. I think we should probably question him again too.”

Athena watches her disappear through the blue gloom of the Aqua Tunnel. “I didn’t get the sense that she had a cell phone?”

“Yeah, she doesn’t.”

“So - you want her to borrow Mr Rimes’ phone or something?”

Fulbright at the orca pool, which is half-drained while Orla whistles sadly from far below, doesn’t let them wander around and trip up the police investigation. But he is amenable to answering some questions and takes all of Athena’s pointed, furious “Objections!” well in stride. She’s still pissed at him for arresting Sasha and Phoenix wonders, were Blackquill a normal prosecutor who was able to come investigate crime scenes himself, were he here now, how much would Athena be yelling at him? Her reaction to being told it was him on the case, yesterday, made Phoenix think she was afraid of him, but that wasn’t what she showed in court today. She acted more angry than afraid.

Maybe that’s just what she does with fear: turns it into anger.

Fulbright explains to them that Sasha confirmed earlier in questioning that she was in the orca pool room at that time, doing some cleaning, the last person to use a key card until the body was found. And the last time the victim was seen was with her, arguing with her. Athena flails about with a few more distinctly unlawyerly objections and then falls sadly quiet, lets Phoenix take over. Before he ushers them out, the detective gives them some prescription medication of Sasha’s to pass along to her. Phoenix accepts it while feeling that this is horribly intrusive of them, important as it probably is for Sasha to get these. Because, sure, they said to Fulbright that they intend to represent Sasha, but he still actually has no idea whether she wants them as her lawyers. His defense got her arrested, after all.

At the Pub O’ Danger, they find the laboratory that DePlume was loitering around unlocked, and meet the aquarium’s veterinarian, Dr Crab. There’s a certain kinship Phoenix feels with the man - he might be incredibly, uh, crabby, but he’s fallen asleep in his mess of a workspace and that is intensely relatable. He also has a penguin chick living in his hair, harassing him, like an antagonistic version of Blackquill and Taka. (As far as office environments go, better a fae ghost harassing him than a penguin, Phoenix will say.) Dr Crab wasn’t around on the day of the murder - he was over doing some business at the Supermarine Aquarium, which of course Athena knows a lot about, across the city - but the night prior he was the one who witnessed Sasha and Shipley arguing. He sends them off with that information and tells them if they find Rifle to send her back to the lab.

Not that Phoenix knows how to direct a penguin to do something, but the point is moot when they run into DePlume first, who’s furious at them for blowing up her testimony in court today. Perks of being the boss - Athena wants a fight, so she can handle the questioning, and Phoenix can duck out of the line of fire, DePlume’s ire. Her line of ire.

Among her other various conspiracies, they learn from her that Jack Shipley’s death came on the one-year anniversary of the orca trainer’s death, which now that they know Shipley wasn’t killed by the orca, can’t be a coincidence, can it? She also tells them that the orca song she heard, when she saw the body, is the old orca song from the show last year, which is not the song in the show Athena knows. It also can’t be the song Orla knows how to sing because Sasha said she knows exactly one song - the one Athena knows - and that still makes that orca a better musician than Phoenix.

There is a lot afoot at this aquarium, but how it all pieces together is anyone’s game.

On return to the orca pool, they find Pearl sitting on the edge, her feet dangling over the 65-foot drop, her sandals barely held on her toes, and her expression primly unconcerned with the prospect of falling. “The ghostly detective said that they’re done investigating here and we could look around if we wanted,” she says, springing quickly and precariously to her feet, balanced right on the edge, and Phoenix’s heart seizes up.

He’d also be a little more worried about her epithet for Fulbright if he hadn’t been sure to assess the detective himself yesterday, which he could do then because unlike in court in April, Blackquill wasn’t around spinning everything out of control. “Because of his white clothes?” Phoenix asks, and Pearl nods.

“He is bright, isn’t he,” she says. “But he’s also not very bright at all.”

Phoenix fails to swallow all his laughter and it emerges from his nose as a snort.

“With Fulbright gone we can do anything!” Athena says, with blatant disregard to the police officers still guarding the scene. Phoenix makes a slashing motion across his throat; they’re going to need help, someone operating the hoist, to get down into the orca pool. (The pool that he really, really wishes wasn’t so deep.)

They all clamber onto the ladder platform. It makes total sense that there’s a way to raise and lower people to the bottom - they have to clean the tank, after all - and Phoenix further wishes he had no idea of it because imagining the moving, before they actually even start moving, is making him sick. He squeezes his eyes shut and grips the railing for dear life. One of the girls pats him on the arm. The whole platform shudders and screeches when it halts. “Mr Nick! It’s time to start forensicking! Do we use the Luminol here?”

“Right.” Phoenix pries his eyes open and regrets it when he sees Pearl leaning half off of their little platform, over the side of the orca pool that doesn’t have any water - there’s a little divider put up in the center, and Orla floating and fweeting sadly on one side where the water is about fifteen feet deep. Pearl begins spraying the Luminol with gusto: over the floor on the drained side, over the props on the drained side, over the water side, over—

“Oops! I just got some on Orla…”

Oh, he’d thought that was on purpose. “Nothing’s happening,” Athena says, peering over the railing, and Phoenix wants to grab her by her jacket collar and pull her back, even though this fall is a survivable one. They might have proven Orla’s innocence, but the idea of Athena falling in the water with her still makes him incredibly nervous.

“We need these special glasses to see the chemical reaction,” Phoenix explains. “Here.” He offers a pair to each of them.

Pearl happily accepts, but Athena squints over them and turns them about in her hands. “That’s quite a fashion statement, huh? Doesn’t really go with…” She holds them up against her jacket and then slips them on.

They don’t go with anything, which is why no one but Ema uses them as a permanent wardrobe piece. But they do their job, showing a blue reaction over the skull rock, which must’ve been the point of impact, and on Orla herself, which is strange because while she was bleeding, it was under her hat, and she’s still wearing that hat. And if she was bleeding underwater, the blood should’ve just floated up through the water and not landed on her tail.

“I don’t think we can take a picture of this, exactly,” Athena says. “I usually just have Widget scan things or snap photos but - maybe if I put the glasses lens up to my phone camera—”

“You’re going to drop it in the water if you do that,” Phoenix says.

Athena shoves her phone back in her pocket and sounds indignantly teenager-ish as she says, “Fine, I won’t try that.”

What’s he talking about? She is a teenager.

“Can you just draw on your picture?” Pearl asks, lifting her glasses up and balancing them on top of her head. With her pink accessories, it almost does fit her fashion. “And mark the general areas that we saw the marks in?”

“Great idea, Pearly! Now let’s see here…” Athena taps Widget and projects one of its screens.

Phoenix inches cautiously past her to look down at Orla. The orca really does seem sad. There’s no energy to her whistles today, and while she’s probably unhappy in such a small amount of water, she’s got to be smart enough to have noticed her routine is very disrupted, and Sasha isn’t around. And now a bunch of strangers, really, are crowding down into her pool and spraying around some strange liquid and—

Wait - wait, is Orla sinking? She dips beneath the surface for several seconds at a time and then bobs back up, but her flippers and tail aren’t working to propel her, and she keeps going under for slightly longer each time— “Athena! Pearls! It looks like something’s wrong with Orla!”

“What?” They both shove their way in at the railing to either side of him, leaning out much further than they need to look down.

“Oh no,” Pearl says. “I got Luminol on her - is that why? What do we do, Mr Nick?”

“We’ve gotta go get Dr Crab!” Athena says. “Hey! Hi! Mr Police Officer Guy! Bring us back up please!”

“Where is he?” Pearl asks. “I’ll go, quick!”

“His office is by the Pub O’ Danger, where we met Ms DePlume yesterday!” Athena says. The hoist makes a long mechanical moan and jostles to life again. “But I’m a really fast runner, so when we get out of here, I’ll—”

Pearl vanishes.

“—go,” Athena finishes. Her mouth stays hanging open, and she blinks several times in rapid succession, her eyes narrowing further each time she reopens them. “Oh, yeah, she’s - wait, Boss, don’t faery rings make flowers or mushrooms or something?” She looks down at their feet. There are no flowers now, just as there were no flowers when Pearl vanished.

“Yeah,” Phoenix says. “Unless there’s a circle already made, but there isn’t so she should have—”

He accidentally glances to the bottom of the pool, now much further away, and regrets it as vertigo kicks in, but he has the answer now, too. “Oh,” he says. “There is. The whole pool is circular.”

“Ooh, that’s clever. She’s really clever.” Athena remains on the platform, while Phoenix stumbles back onto the solid aquarium floor, away from the maw of hell, the death pit, another horrible, horrible reminder that his fear of heights is very valid. “Hang in there, Orla!” she yells down. “We’ve got help on the way!”

The wait is agony. It’s not a long walk to the lab, and Pearl and Dr Crab will only be running back one way, Pearl has to already be there, but the vet has to make rounds of the aquarium, doesn’t he? What if he isn’t there? What if—

“What’s Orla’s condition?” The doors bang open and Dr Crab barrels in, Pearl hot on his heels behind him.

What if Phoenix is stressing himself out extra for no reason? That seems most likely!

“She seemed - really tired? And then she started sinking. Could she be unconscious?” Whales have to sleep, and Athena talked about that somewhere in the mess of everything she talked about this morning, and Phoenix followed none of it but what he can know is that this can’t be a normal orca nap. The species wouldn’t exist if they all drowned when they slept.

“Son of a bitch!” Crab skids to a halt as soon as he has an angle to see how little water is left in the orca pool. “Who did this?”

“You mean it’s not supposed to be drained?” Phoenix asks. “I thought it was for cleaning - or for the police investigation—”

“I sure as shit never authorized any pool draining!” Dr Crab snaps. “We’ve got another pool to put her in when we need cleaning! You, help me out here!”

“Us?” Phoenix echoes blankly.

“No, just all the other people hanging out in this room who I guess you can see and I can’t - yes, you three! The black fabric over there, looks like a pirate flag - that’s the orca stretcher! Go get it!”

Athena and Pearl race around the pool and begin flinging props aside to dig up the stretcher. “Now, you—” Dr Crab points at Phoenix. “The hoist controls over there, get to them!” Phoenix obediently hurries over to the control box on the wall. “Lower it down part way - we’ve got to hook the stretcher on it, drop it down and get Orla on it.”

“Won’t it be hard to get it under Orla?” Athena asks. She and Pearl are dragging the stretcher back as fast as they can, to where the winch has lowered the hooks down far enough that they would be able to attach something to it. Right, Sasha said that they can move props this way, too; the track the hooks are on leads all the way outside.

“It’s tricky, but we should be able to slide it in around her,” Dr Crab says. “It’s easier when the water level is up here and Sasha or Jack would just go in and hook it around her from the water—”

“I can do that!” Pearl says brightly, wrenching the stretcher out of Athena’s grasp. Athena, taken off-guard by the unexpected display of strength, stumbles and lands on the ground. Holding each of the stretcher poles in the middle in front of her, making a kind of canopy, Pearl runs around the edge of the pool until she stands above the side with Orla and the water, and jumps.

Athena shrieks; Dr Crab lets out a startled yell. But Pearl doesn’t fall. She floats, the stretcher puffed up like a parachute, the air itself cushioning her and easing her down, like a leaf drifting slowly down from a tree on a windless day.

It’s fortunate that Pearl never attended school like she once wanted to, with Trucy, to learn more human subjects. Having a basic understanding of physics would really cramp her style.

His curiosity overcoming his fear, Phoenix inches closer to the edge and peers down. Pearl lands gently on the water that turns to ice beneath her feet. She drops the stretcher in the water next to Orla and runs around her, ice appearing wherever she steps and disappearing as she raises her foot, and then the ice disappears from beneath her, sinking her into the water so that she can swim under Orla, grab the other side of the stretcher, and bring it back under her. “Lower the hooks!” she yells up, and Phoenix finally realizes again what they’re supposed to be doing and runs back over to the controls.

“That girl certainly isn’t normal,” Dr Crab mutters. His voice isn’t quite low enough for it to be said only to himself, but it is out of the range that Pearl, from the bottom of the pool, could hear. “Here, she’s got the stretcher attached. Raise it back up.”

Phoenix hits the last button to do that and approaches Dr Crab again. “You uh - why do you say that? About her—”

The question is not a good one in the slightest, but it’s something Phoenix heard a lot with Maya and Pearl and he learned to respond almost instinctively, heading off any questions about any little suspicious behaviors or appearances. Never was it something this blatant - but Dr Crab can’t know all that history behind Phoenix; all he knows is that he just asked an amazingly stupid question. “Hey, buddy?” he says and Phoenix braces himself. “You sure you’re a real lawyer? Or is this why you’ve fallen to defending orcas?”

Phoenix winces. He could’ve taken the general what are you, an idiot? question in stride, but that particular turn of phrase stings more than he expected.

The stretcher, Orla lying on it, rises up to the poolside. Pearl clings to one of the hooks that holds the stretcher, dangling in some well-meant attempt to give Orla as much room as possible. She stretches out a foot onto the floor but she’s still precariously balanced holding the stretcher, half of her body still over the far drop to the bottom of the pool. Athena rushes over and extends a hand to her to pull her to safety.

“All right, get back, all of you.” Dr Crab waves them off as Orla and her stretcher are lowered onto the floor. “Give me some space to figure out what’s wrong.” This time, his mumbling does seem like it’s only to himself. “Could she have eaten something? Gotta empty her stomach…”

Phoenix turns around and stares at the walls. He does not want to see or know how one gets the contents of an orca’s stomach back out. “Um, excuse me, Mr Doctor?” Pearl says quietly, and Phoenix hears the hesitant shuffle of her sandals across the floor. Dr Crab grunts an acknowledgement of her presence. “We were investigating the crime scene and I got some Luminol on Orla by mistake. Do you think that…?”

“What? Luminol? Nah, that stuff’s no problem. Just washes off. Orla’s condition’s got nothing to do with you, young lady.”

“O-oh.” She sounds the kind of relieved where there’s still a lot of fear left over, but one tiny little piece of it has been lessened. “And, um, I—”

“Oh that’s gross.” Athena pops up at Phoenix’s elbow, a thousand-yard stare turned on a blank stretch of wall. “I’m not really - urgh.”

“Don’t have the stomach to be an animal caretaker?” Phoenix asks, and she shudders. Apparently not.

“Listen, missy.” Dr Crab hasn’t chased Pearl off yet. “You don’t have to say anything else. Jack had a policy for aquarium staff, that he didn’t care who or what you were as long as you could do your job well and be safe doing it. And I’ll stand by that - you helped out, I don’t care about the rest, now the best way for you to keep helping is give me space to do my job.”

“O-of course.” There is the sound of Pearl shuffling back, and then she’s squeezed herself in between Athena and Phoenix. “Poor Orla. I hope she’ll be all right.”

“We’ll check with Dr Crab in a minute, once he’s not so busy.”

Can this be a coincidence? The owner dead on the anniversary of the trainer’s death; the orca sick once she’s found to be a framed innocent in the owner’s death. Does someone have it out for Orla? For the whole aquarium at large? What if it’s a ghost? The ghost of the dead trainer, out for revenge on the captain who didn’t protect her from the dangerous animal they worked with, and on the animal itself?

It seems a little absurd, but a ghost wouldn’t need a key card to get in the orca pool room. The biggest problem is that ghosts are very rarely actually real ghosts, but he’ll file that thought away in case they don’t come up with anything else. Blaming magic should be a last-ditch resort, because Blackquill will probably make a show of not believing in magic or fae even though he’s undeniably something more or less than human, and Edgeworth is already going to want to wring Phoenix’s neck for taking an orca to court. They haven’t actually spoken about this, but he has to know because he signs off on everything Blackquill does, and that he hasn’t offered Phoenix congratulations yet on regaining his badge seems - telling.

(He’ll sort it out with Edgeworth later. The case always comes first.)

“I’ve gotta go rustle up some crew members to refill the pool.” Dr Crab jolts Phoenix back to present, pressing matters. “And return to my rounds. You stay here until I get people sent over.”

“Is Orla gonna be all right?” Athena asks.

“She’ll be fine. She’s sleeping now - bit of time out of the water won’t kill her.”

“What was wrong?” Pearl asks. Now that they’re looking back at Orla, they can see a heap of mushy half-digested fish on the floor near her.

If Phoenix had any thoughts of being hungry left, after the traumatic heights experience of going down into the pool, they are long gone.

“That’s none of your damn business!” The return to hostility from Dr Crab makes Pearl jump. Brave man, to know what he’s snapping at and still do it. “I don’t need to share everything with you people!” He stalks off toward the doors.

“Wait,” Phoenix says. “If you’re going to get other staff - there’s got to be lots of people who work here, right? Sasha’s a suspect because she’s got the key card for this room and used it, but couldn’t she have let people in to help her clean?”

Dr Crab turns a withering stare on him. “We run a real skeleton crew during closing hours,” he says. “Me, Jack, Sasha, and Marlon, usually. Time frame for his death, you’re not really looking at anyone else.”

Which only gives them two other suspects. “But there’s so much aquarium!” Athena says. “How do you possibly clean it all and feed all the animals and still have time to sleep?”

“Most of the animal feeders are automated once the prep work’s done,” Dr Crab says, “I don’t sleep much because of this little shit” - he gestures at the penguin chick tucked half-asleep in his wild cloud of hair - “and the rest is none of your damn business either!”

“Sasha says the captain might’ve been a witch,” Athena calls after him. “Does that have something to do with how—”

The slam of the doors echoes loudly through the huge room.

“I bet that’s it,” Athena says, satisfied with herself.

“We should take a look around,” Phoenix says. “Before anyone else gets here.” Every new occurrence pushes this closer and closer to conspiracy in his mind. Dr Crab’s behavior is the tip of an iceberg in a long line of other icebergs. “And we should probably take a look at” - he presses his mouth closed over a reflexive gagging - “the contents of her stomach.”

“Oh, I’ll do that for you,” Pearl says brightly, but she slows as she approaches the fish remains, obviously not quite as cheery at the prospect as she pretends to be. She crouches down next to the pile and begins tentatively sniffing the air above it. Then she relaxes.

“Isn’t that awful?” Athena asks. “If you can smell dried blood and - whatever, isn’t a pile of fish guts just nasty?”

“It’s a very very strong smell,” Pearl says, “but it’s not as bad smelling as it looks.”

“I’ll take your word for it from over here,” Athena says.

“It’s probably subjective,” Phoenix says.

Pearl, still crouched, shuffles forward until her toes are nearly in the fish slush pile. For a moment she intently studies it and then her hand darts out, plunging her forefinger and thumb in and pulling back almost immediately with something colorful pinched between her fingers. “Here,” she says, dropping it in her other palm, and licking her fingers clean of partially-digested fish.

The wave of nausea that passes over Phoenix is more like a tsunami. “Pearls…” She freezes and stares at him. “Don’t tell me Maya’s been that bad of an influence on you, too.”

“Who else has she influenced?” Pearl asks, very carefully not acknowledging the accusation leveled against her. The answer is still obvious.

“Iris ate garbage can pizza crust,” Phoenix says.

“Oh.” Pearl ponders that for a second, rolling whatever-it-is that she’s found around in her palm. “She didn’t always?”

“No.” Phoenix, at age twenty, dumb as he was, would not have dated a girl who ate pizza crusts out of the garbage. He had standards, but of the sort where he was still convinced that women were mythic beings incapable of grossness. Phoenix at age thirty-four is pretty sure no matter who he dates, he himself is the garbage pizza crust person in the equation.

“Pearly, you know Iris?” Poor Athena. She’s so far out of the loop that she can’t even see it.

“Of course I do! She’s my sister!”

“Oh! Oh, she did say something about having a sister, I think.” And that could be one of two people, depending on what she said, and surely it was Pearl, because there are some things that Iris doesn’t mention the way Phoenix doesn’t mention those same things. Knowing that doesn’t stop the momentary flinch. Maybe nothing will. Maybe time, but this much time still hasn’t been enough. The mark around his neck doesn’t fade, nor does the red in Iris’ hair.

“So I guess it’s not that weird, Mr Wright knowing all of you,” Athena continues. “He just knows a family of you. That makes sense!”

“No,” Pearl says. “It’s still kind of weird.”

“So what did you find, Pearls?” Phoenix interrupts. He knows it’s weird. He doesn’t need Pearl divulging anything more on that front.

She extends her hand, showing a red-and-yellow capsule with some faint writing on it, 3 Zs. “Sleeping pill” is his first thought, based on that, but he wouldn’t put it past drug companies to have it actually be something entirely different. “Huh? Some medication?” Athena asks. “Was Orla sick before this too? We should ask Dr Crab what this is for.”

It seems sort of nice - naive? - that her first thought is that it’s medication Orla is meant to have, and not someone trying to drug her. With all that’s happening he can’t count it out. “We shouldn’t,” Phoenix says. “I think he’s hiding something about what’s going on with Orla, and if we show him this he might try and take it.”

What Phoenix can say about being threatened by the mob and tazed and threatened by a different gangster and such forth is that, eventually, he sort of learned the lesson to take care in who knows what he’s investigating.

“I wouldn’t let him!” Pearl closes her fist around the capsule and shakes her sleeves back.

“I know, but we still don’t want to go around starting fights.” There is no reason for them to try and explain how the aquarium’s veterinarian ended up smacked through two concrete walls if they don’t have to. “We can ask for Apollo’s help when we get back to the office.”

“Or I can just go now!”

Without waiting for a response - though Phoenix does call after her, “Yeah, sure thing!” - Pearl races around the pool to the far side where the pile of props has been scattered into more a field of props, and the marker to play volleyball with Orla is painted on the floor. It’s an yellow circle, with two orange footprints inside of it; Pearl bounds into the circle and vanishes, not all at once, but as her body passes into the line of the circle. It’s a sight he never really gets used to.

He hopes Pearl explains where the capsule was found so Apollo can take appropriate precautions, like finding gloves - Phoenix is pretty sure there’s got to be a box of rubber gloves that Ema dropped off at some point - or a plastic bag or not putting his hands anywhere near his face because they plucked it out of orca puke. He should have told her to be sure to mention that. She probably won’t mention that. Ah well. Apollo, and Trucy if she joins in, should be fine. Orca barf probably won’t kill them.

Probably.

“What’s taking her so long?” It’s not even been a minute, he’s pretty sure, and already Athena is antsy, hopping back and forth foot to foot, ready, now that there’s nothing more they can help Orla with, to head out and investigate the next place.

“She probably scared the hell out of Apollo and Trucy and has to calm them down before she can explain,” Phoenix says.

“Apollo probably screamed so loud and when she gets back she won’t be able to hear.” Athena giggles.

After another minute or two, Pearl reappears, rubbing the side of her head. “Did you scare them?” Phoenix calls over.

“Shh!” Athena hisses. “Orla’s sleeping!”

Pearl trots back over, her finger held to her lips, shushing him as well, but once she is less than a foot away she says, “Yes. They both shout very loudly.”

“Yeah.” Trucy’s a singer, among everything else she tries to do in her spare time, and Apollo is just loud, and they both probably have their mother’s lungs. Not that Thalassa has ever screamed at him, because he figures she’s probably like a banshee in that if she ever screams at him it’s the preface to his death. He’d probably deserve it if he got her to that point.

“The detective said he was going to the show stage when he left here,” Pearl says. “He wanted to speak with Mr Animal Feeder. We should go too.”

Several aquarium staff members arrive half a minute later. Phoenix is glad they missed seeing Pearl’s disappearance and reappearance. He can’t expect them to be as chill as Dr Crab.

Fulbright is nowhere to be seen when they reach the stage; Rimes is there with cleaning supplies, a bucket of fish, no penguin, and all the decor of the show set up all around. It isn’t like the mess of the pool room. These props are actually arranged. A cheery hand-painted “Swashbuckler Spectacular” sign lies propped up on some crates, and a skeleton wearing a pirate bandana sits on a raft moored to the side of the pool with a rope. Can’t have it go careening everywhere and get in the way of where the show action happens, he supposes.

“Can I start doing forensics here?” Pearl asks. “I want to use the fingerprint powder too!” She’s beaming again, seeming nothing more than a slightly-sheltered teenage girl with an eagerness to help any way she can.

(Which she is, in part, and not in whole.)

“Sure thing, Small Fry,” Rimes says. “You’ve got the run of the place!” Pearl takes that permission by, literally, sprinting off across the stage, to one of the furthest points near the pirate ship. “And how can I help you out, lawyer-man?”

When Phoenix asks, Rimes happily explains to them the mechanics of the show area, about how the hoist track lets them move props and Orla between the pool room, where they practice, and the show stage. He reluctantly trips up and admits to them the rumor that the captain was taking Sasha out of the new orca show; and then, more angry than reluctant, says that he still doesn’t trust the orca not to have been responsible for the captain’s death. “The other day, during practice,” he says, voice low, “I saw that orca take Sasha in her mouth and just squeeze her, around the chest, so bad she couldn’t even blow her whistle. And I shoulda - I shoulda jumped in there and helped get her out, but I didn’t.” He hangs his head sadly. “I’m a weak man. Can’t save anyone. Couldn’t help Sasha then, can’t help her now, couldn’t…”

“I can’t imagine anyone who would want to, or even could, tangle with an orca.” Phoenix wishes he had any real reassurance, anything more than what he always ends up thinking, that saving people is a tricky, terrible thing, and he himself always did everything he could and still telling himself that didn’t let him sleep every night. That’s not the answer anyone wants to hear.

“Yeah,” Rimes says. “No one normal, anyway.”

His hand dips toward his pocket, and Phoenix’s heart dips down into the deep caverns in his chest. It could be an innocuous statement and movement, but when Athena asks if he’s sure that Sasha and Orla weren’t practicing the lifesaver trick and Rimes’ attention turns to her, Phoenix flashes a Sighted glance over him. Rimes is normal, almost, borderline normal, but there’s a dark hollow spot on his chest - the shape of a mitamah, like Thalassa, but not the absence of a soul. Just a crack around the edges, loosened but not lost. And in his pocket, the one he reached for when he said he wasn’t strong enough, the energy that thrums there is the shape of a magatama, near to bursting with deep red, angry power.

It’s not that every time Phoenix meets someone involved with magic, he assumes they’re the culprit, because that would be hypocritical of him because he’s also very involved with magic, and - okay yeah he’s still usually a hypocrite. He makes that assumption often. Sure, it steers him wrong, but he steers himself wrong on cases where he doesn’t make that assumption, either, and there seems to be a correlation more often than not.

Someone who’s made a deal that he can See is always bound up in some shit, he can say that much.

“Mr Nick! Mr Nick!” Pearl hurries back toward them, waving the container of fingerprinting powder. “I found some very strange fingerprints!” Rimes and Athena both turn from their debate - furious argument - over Orla to look at her. “Do you want to hear about - oh!” She gasps, her hand coming up quickly to cover her mouth, and still not in time to hide her large fangs that have slipped carelessly through her glamour. For as powerful as she is, that often happens when she’s very startled. Her eyes are wide, red pooling in the center of her dark irises, staring in shock and perhaps a bit of fear (though Phoenix really, really hopes it isn’t) at something behind them all. “Mr Nick, that’s - he’s—!”

Phoenix turns, and comes face-to-face with Simon Blackquill.

Pearl grabs Phoenix’s elbow, her claw-pointed fingers squeezing him through several layers of fabric, and she presses up close behind him. She isn’t quite keeping out of sight of Blackquill, so maybe it’s not an attempt to hide, but more a message - that she is literally and figuratively behind Phoenix, and if it’s trouble Blackquill wants to make, he will have to reckon with her.

Considering her, Blackquill’s eyes, irises and pupils both, flash straight silver. Blue is the color of humans’ Sight; red is unglamoured fae eyes. What the hell is that?

He’s still in handcuffs, still in black, a strange picture in the bright natural sunlight, jaring against the colorful backdrop of the aquarium and the blue sky. And he’s taller than Phoenix realized - across the courtroom, he figured they were more-or-less level, but now it’s clear that Blackquill has several inches over him, a looming shadow able to swallow all of them.

“Prosecutor Blackquill!” Phoenix’s voice squeaks on the first sound he makes; Blackquill doesn’t acknowledge it even with a condescending smirk. “What are you doing here?”

Translation: I didn’t know you were allowed out anywhere but the courthouse.

Blackquill answers like the words are dragged from him, reluctant, not wanting to bother with the defense attorneys, but knowing that he has to or he’ll get some more patronizing reprimands from Fulbright. “Just some business to attend to.”

“With us?” Athena pipes up. She, when Phoenix manages to sort of turn, despite Pearl’s grip on his arm, to look at her, doesn’t appear as concerned as Pearl. Just - confused, more than anything.

“No,” Blackquill answers curtly.

Were Phoenix in a gambling mood, both with his life and on what Blackquill is, he’d ask if the prosecution’s important matter is seeing the penguins, but he’s not in that mood.

“Prosecutor Blackquill very strenuously insisted on accompanying me, so I thought it would be a good chance for him to stretch his legs and get some fresh air!” Fulbright explains, seeming to miss the withering glare Blackquill turns on him as soon as he begins speaking. They don’t really seem to be on the same wavelength about anything.

(Also Phoenix is now more sure that he wouldn’t be gambling if he says the reason Blackquill is here is the penguins. He feels a bit bad for the man, honestly, that Rifle isn’t around, but he also doesn’t think Athena’s heart would be able to take it if Rifle, given the choice, preferred Prosecutor Blackquill to her.)

“Marlon Rimes.” Blackquill’s usage of names has always seemed twisted up backwards, as far as fae custom goes; epithets for all but vanquished foes, while Blackquill doesn’t hesitate to use names, but mostly turns relentlessly mocking nicknames on everyone who doesn’t have his respect. Everything about Blackquill is twisted up backwards. “You will be a witness to the prosecution at the trial tomorrow.”

“What? No!” Rimes flinches backwards. Phoenix steps to the side, Pearl moving with him, to give a clear passage of conversation between the two of them. He wants to be able to see both of their reactions to the other, if either of them notices anything about the other. “Why would I wanna testify against Sasha?”

Blackquill takes a step forward, chains clinking. Rimes stumbles back several paces, opening further distance between them. “Curious that you think what you ‘want’ factors at all into this conversation. Now, come with us.” Another step forward. The air gets colder. The pool water stills and seems to pale.

“Wait!” Rimes holds up his hands pleadingly. “If I go, who’s gonna feed the orca? She’s got a strict schedule, this afternoon and tomorrow morning, and all of the other day shift keepers are afraid to get near her now! I can’t just go—”

An ill-fated but valiant attempt at escape, but Phoenix doesn’t get to find out how Blackquill would go about responding with his usual, erm, finesse. Pearl instead is the one to push Rimes further into the prosecution’s grasp. “Um, maybe I can help?” she says. The pressure of her claws in Phoenix’s arm finally relents. “I can feed her and call in to the trial tomorrow again if I need to! I’m worried about Orla and want to make sure she’s all right and this way I can stay close to her.”

She hasn’t said much about it today, after her outburst when they left yesterday, but she’s still thinking about that, isn’t she. The reflections. She still wants to help Orla.

Rimes stumbles backwards another few steps. “Small Fry, you lost your head? You on somethin’? Even the other keepers who’re trained are afraid of her! You’re just a - a small fry, and that orca’s dangerous, y’know?”

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that!” Pearl smiles, with her lips pressed together, her teeth kept out of sight. “All my friends are dangerous!”

Rimes opens his mouth - closes it - opens it and juts his jaw out and shakes his head and decides that this, whatever this is, is something he is going to accept without further questioning. “Yeah,” he says, and then when Pearl realizes a possible issue with her video-phoning Orla in to the trial tomorrow - that she doesn’t have a video phone - he further relents to let her borrow his. “All right. Thanks a bunch, Small Fry, goin’ outta your way to help like this.” He sighs. “I still don’t wanna testify but I’ll at least see what the police have to say and what they want outta me.”

Pearl, clutching the video phone in both hands, returns to Phoenix’s side, pressing her shoulder into his arm. “And I’ll need to feed Rifle, too, right, Mr Animal Keeper? Is that her bucket of fish right - hey! That’s not yours!”

Every head swivels about looking for Rimes’ fish bucket. Taka goes still but for its head, twitching about to peer at them from different angles with its beady yellow eyes, a fish hanging from its beak. Apparently having decided on whatever it was pondering, it throws its head back and horks down the fish, whole.

Phoenix, as clueless about hawks as he is most animals, wonders if that’s just how hawks eat, or if that’s a fae thing, like the hound choking down a cardboard takeout container of Chinese leftovers in one gulp, or Maya biting into a carton of ice cream like a sandwich.

“Let us be off, then!” Fulbright says. “Thank you for your cooperation, Mr Rimes! You’re helping us further the cause of justice, as we will continue as we discuss strategy.”

“Ugh!” Athena’s disgust is very loud and very deliberately acted for Fulbright’s benefit, or the opposite of benefit. “C’mon, Mr Wright, Pearly! We’ve got our own strategy and investigation to do!”

Rimes skirts several feet around Blackquill, making a few strange hops and skips to get past him as quickly as possible. Fulbright follows, putting himself between Rimes and Blackquill, but Blackquill hasn’t moved at all, instead watching Taka rip apart a larger fish and swallow it in two separate pieces. He blinks his eyes closed and keeps them closed, and, if possible, appears even more exhausted than Phoenix already thought. “You’re wasting your time.”

“Anything we can do to help our client is never a waste of time,” Phoenix says. He’s not going to be baited into a fight, he’s not. There’ll be enough of that in court tomorrow.

“The police have turned every stone in the course of their investigation. What do you hope to find that they have not? Or perhaps you intend to make something that they have not found, instead?”

“Huh?” Athena doesn’t follow the implication. Phoenix only wishes he didn’t know exactly what Blackquill is getting at.

“I want the truth, Prosecutor Blackquill, and I believe the truth is that Sasha didn’t kill Jack Shipley.”

Blackquill snorts. “You ‘believe’. First the orca, now Sasha Buckler. You think you can save them both? That you do not damn one by acquitting the other? Admit you do this for your own benefit - for your reputation, a bombastic, sensational case to wash away the prior association with your name. For the money, because this aquarium surely would pay a pretty penny to not lose its main attraction and the only orca trainer it has left.”

“We’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do!” Athena yells. She has the fish bucket in one hand, and swats at Taka with the other, while the hawk attempts again and again to dive down into the bucket and steal another fish. With a clank she lets the bucket drop to the ground - Taka plunges in feet-first - and storms up toward Blackquill. Pearl reaches out a hand, about to grab Athena’s elbow and pull her back, and stops. “You know how not about the money Mr Wright is, huh?”

“Athena,” Phoenix says quietly. “Don’t. He’s just saying this to get a rise out of us.”

“I interned in a bunch of law offices in Europe” - like Blackquill’s supposed to know she studied and lived in Europe for the past seven years - “and most of them weren’t about the money either, but it’d still be pretty soonish that we’d have to talk about fees—”

“Athena,” Phoenix interrupts, more sternly, because he can see where this is going and it’s not going to make him look professional in the slightest.

“—but with Mr Wright that’s the last thing that ever comes up for our defense, and—”

Blackquill’s sharp laugh interrupts her this time, a sound close to his hawk’s shrieks. “Oh, this is rich,” he says, and in that moment there’s something close to amusement in his tone, but he isn’t smiling even after the laugh, and he drops back into a chilled monotone as he continues. “You certainly aren’t rich, but this is. Sacrificing your students’ livelihoods on the altar of your principles? Concern, is it, for every sad person to come through your door but those that stay closest to you.”

“That’s not true either!” Athena stomps forward and places herself right in front of Blackquill, between him and Phoenix, tilting her head back to stare him in the eyes. Such a stark contrast between them, her fiery hair and clothing the color of the sun and him, dark, drab, and utterly still even with this energetic and furious girl right in his face. “I can pay for rent and food and whatever else I want, for your information, thankyouverymuch, if you even said that not trying to get a one-up on Mr Wright but because you care, which you—”

She gives up, chokes herself off, not another breath to waste on a man who might as well be stone above her. At her sides, her hands curl into fists, and all of her frustration from the words she didn’t finish turns itself into a frustrated, wordless yell. Blackquill lifts his head and turns his face away, surveying the water.

“Prosecutor Blackquill, we should be off!” Fulbright calls. Taka squawks indignantly from its fish feast. “You’ll have plenty of time to argue with Mr Wright and Ms Cykes when you see them tomorrow!”

“Would that I didn’t,” Blackquill drawls. He steps back away from Athena first, but it’s clear this isn’t a retreat, isn’t letting her win, and without another word he puts his back to them. Taka rips a strip of meat off of one of the largest fish, leaving the rest, and flaps up to Blackquill’s shoulder.

“Gah!” Athena’s hands snap back open and she lifts them to her head, digging into her hair like she’s about to pull it out. “I’ve never been so insulted in my life! What an asshole!” Her hands smack back to her sides and she forces her face to relax, puts a strained smile on instead. “I think I need a second to splash off the anger. Be right back!”

She heads for the pool’s edge, stooping down and splashing some up against her face.

Pearl snaps into motion, one hand that was resting against the beads of her necklace yanking away, and were it really a necklace it would have broken apart - but the glamour comes apart instead, the four shining beads drifting in a loose formation in the air around her face, and the magatama following her fingertips as she raises her hand. She stops with her hand up to her face, the magatama hovering in front of one eye. The other squints shut and the magatama hums with faint green energy. “He’s very strange, isn’t he?” she asks no one in particular.

Athena, straightening back up, spots an empty bucket lying on its side and grabs it and scoops water into it from the pool.

“Wait,” Phoenix says. “The magatama - you’re using it like - can you not just see him as he is?” Humans who have the Sight don’t need a magatama to peer through. Fae certainly don’t - or shouldn’t. He hadn’t actually considered whether that would help him cut through Blackquill, but his still sits in his pocket, like always, so at the very least, Blackquill’s general aura isn’t a glamour. Not like Klavier.

“No,” Pearl says. “He’s very good at pretending. He doesn’t want anyone to see him for who he is.” She lowers her hand and the magatama lowers with it.

She’s as vague and directionless with her information as her oldest cousin, sometimes. “And?” Phoenix prompts. “What is he? Can you tell?” “Corpses don’t bleed, do they,” Pearl muses. She might not have heard him asking; she’s spaced out somewhere he can’t follow, puzzling out all that she’s seen and felt, all the little traces of magic that thread themselves around anyone who gets in close. “The heart no longer beats to push blood out.”

“Pearls?” Phoenix asks again.

Athena flings the water from the bucket at Blackquill’s back. His shoulders twitch and he flicks his head backwards, like he’s tossing his bangs from his eyes, and Athena shrieks as the water splashes back over her.

“He would throw himself off the gallows willingly,” Pearl says. “He forfeit his life and his soul with his plea, but his heart won’t stop bleeding and he can’t bring himself to cut it out, too. He needs it.”

“Are you being literal or metaphorical when you say mention his soul?” Phoenix asks. Mitamah always refers to the actual, physical - metaphysical? - bit that can be bought and sold and lost, and while they generally use soul in that same way, sometimes the fae get… poetic. Obfuscating. Unnecessarily obtuse, unwittingly frustrating, and sometimes wittingly frustrating, but that’s usually never Pearl. She tends to think she’s being clear when she isn’t, and then she fears she’s been too clear and someone will be angry with her for divulging their secrets, and then she’ll clam up, and Phoenix is left to decode this sort of thing.

His soul - Phoenix has wondered what he is for months. It would help him narrow it down if Pearl would answer. Does she mean he gave up his morals when he committed murder or lied about it - or was it his literal soul? “Pearls? Can you tell me?”

The floating orbs drift back into place, and together with the magatama take shape as a necklace once again. “He won’t let you save him,” Pearl says, very softly. “He can’t let you see.”

Can’t-cant, or doesn’t-want-to can’t? And if Pearl hasn’t answered him directly by now then she won’t, or can’t. Because sometimes Phoenix thinks this is just how they are, of a culture of secrets and caution, and though they don’t tell him to stop, their rambling indirect “answers” are their attempts to politely steer him away from his faux-pas, showing him how he’s supposed to talk instead. And sometimes he thinks that their inability to answer some certain questions is a complex web of magic in their blood and their realm, rules too complex to follow that they aren’t even aware of that leaves them speaking vaugeries. Is a changeling who doesn’t know what she is aware that she can’t lie, or does she not notice this way she instinctively is? Are there some obscure bargains and bylaws and treaties that trip Pearl and Mia in random places and they never notice because twisting their way around the truth is already as natural as breathing?

Athena’s boots squelch with every step she takes back to them. “Hey, what are we talking about?” she asks. “I wasn’t paying attention.” She balances herself on one foot, hopping every so often to keep upright, and peels off one boot, then switches feet to remove the other. “Pearly, you said something about fingerprints before that jerk showed up? Catch me up on that!”

That’s definitely not what they were talking about, but it’s something they need to know. Pearl explains the prints, made by Rimes’ right hand on the left side of the ladder, the thumb pointing down, like he was gripping it from above, leaning out over the pool. Odd, but Phoenix isn’t sure how to connect it to anything else, and though he always tells himself that the case comes first - Blackquill is still a case that Phoenix will have to deal with, eventually, and existentially, he seems like the most important problem.

#roddy fanfics #fic: the witches of los angeles

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hamitome--imagines · 6 years ago

Text

You, Me, and a Baby Makes Three

Thayne Jasperson x Reader

Modern rpf

Requested by @arosebloomsonbakerstreet

1-53: Guess who’s going to be a father?

Request: I have to make a request for a thayne x reader fic for the 'guess who's going to be a father?' prompt. Mostly since the thought of him finding out as a special announcement after a Hamilton performance sends my little fangirl heart into all states of squee! Bonus points if 'That Would Be Enough' is used in the announcement in some way. :D

A/N: So…I’m guessing this isn’t at all what was expected from this request. To be honest, this isn’t my initial plan for a plot. But I think this plot is fairly good. It fits with the request but in a different way. But since it goes in a unique direction, I hope this is still what you wanted from this request, even though it does stray from the request slightly. And I hope you all enjoy this imagine!

Word Count: 6,779

If someone had asked you at the start of all this, you wouldn’t say you loved Thayne. Sure, he was nice and you liked him. You found him attractive and nice and funny. But you didn’t love him. There just wasn’t that kind of connection. But sometimes alcohol makes you think that there is a connection.

The whole cast of Hamilton was going out for drinks. It was a typical night out, jokes and memories made. And alcohol was consumed. As the night came to an end, your friends were varying levels of sobriety. You were a little tipsy and had drove over to the bar anyway. You needed to call a cab. “Hey, Thayne?” The cast member in question turned to look at you. “You wanna split the cost of an Uber?” The two of you lived fairly close to each other and this method had been used before.

“Yeah, sure.” He agreed with a bright smile. The two of you were driven to your apartment, where you exited. Thayne would often walk to his house from your house.

“You sure you wanna walk home? You can crash here.” You offered. Thayne pondered it. He checked the time on his phone.

“It is kinda late. I’ll crash on your couch if you don’t mind.” He said.

“Sure, come on in.” So you opened the door a let Thayne in. Still a little tipsy, you rummaged for blankets and pillows. You found some and walked them over to the couch. Thayne was already sprawled out on the couch, laid on his back with one arm draped over his face. “Asleep already?” You asked.

“Nah.” He replied, but didn’t move. You sat on the coffee table near the couch, pile of bedding sat on the table next to you. You reached out and ran your fingers through his hair. It was golden and soft under your fingers. Thayne hummed softly, enjoying the feeling on your fingers and a smiled pulled at his lips. “If you keep doing that, I will fall asleep.” He commented. So you withdrew you hand.

“Let’s at least get you a pillow and a blanket before you fall asleep.” You said. He groaned but sat up and turned so he was facing you, you idly noted the lack of space between you two now. He rubbed his eyes that raked a hand through his hair haphazardly. The result was his hair being tousled and sticking up in crazy ways. You laughed at the sight. “What?” He asked with a smile of his own.

“Nothing.” You answered with a smile. “But let me fix your hair.” So you reached up once more and gently smoothed the stray hairs back down. You continued running your fingers through his hair after you finished. How had you never noticed how soft it was? A heavy silence settled. Part of your told you to give him the bedding and retreat to your room. But the tipsy part of you, felt a connection. (Later your rational brain would realize there wasn’t one.) Thayne was merely staring at you, studying you with. The expression he wore was one you had never received from him before. Want? Desire? You couldn’t place it. But it was a good expression.

You slowly leaned in, and Thayne seemed to automatically move in to do the same. You cautiously pressed your lips to his. Thayne leaned in closer. You still had a hand threaded in his hair and you used it to pull him even closer. You pulled back way too quick for your liking. “You know, it seems like such a hassle to get out blankets and pillows when my bed is large enough for both of us.” You commented, you hands were toying with the edges of a jacket Thayne had one. He smiled.

“By all means, lead the way.” He said with a smirk. You rolled your eyes but stood and grabbed his hand. You lead him to your room and right to the bed. It wasn’t long before your found yourself laid on your back with Thayne hovering over you. “You sure?” He asked. You grinned and nodded.

—

You were not drunk enough last night to warrant the headache you had today. You were also cold. To try and warm up, your curled up a bit more. Then you realized exactly why you were cold. You didn’t have any clothes on. Great. A one-night-stand. You silently prayed that whoever it was had left once you finished. But you couldn’t remember bringing any stranger back to your place. You shifted, pulling lightly on the covers. The resisted, meaning that someone was still here. You had your back to them. So you took a deep breath and mentally prepared yourself to see who you slept with and to ask them to leave. You sat up and turned and your brain seemed to stop working.

Thayne was laying there. He was fast sleep. The covers were draped across his stomach and his torso was bare. He obviously wasn’t wearing a shirt and you could guess what it was like under the covers as well. His hair was sticking up wildly, whether from sleep or wild sex, you weren’t sure. But you had to resist the urge to reach out and fix it. The softness of his hair was the first memory of last night to resurface. It was quickly followed by the kissing. Which lead to everything else.

You had sex with Thayne Jasperson. “Holy shit.” You said. And accidentally said it loud enough to wake up the aforementioned person. Thayne grumbled and shifted, clearly waking up. You hurried to grab the blankets and pull them up to cover your chest. Thayne opened his eyes and looked to you. His confusion was obvious. He stared at you for a minute before his eyes widened and he sat up quickly.

“Shit.” He said, being cautious about keeping the blankets firmly covering his lap. “We had sex last night.”

“Yep.” You said, equally awkwardly. Neither of you knew exactly what to say next. “Look, can you like, close your eyes for a minute? I’m going to grab clothes and go get dressed in the bathroom. While I do that, you can find your clothes from last night.”

“I mean, do I really have to close my eyes? After last night?” He asked.

“Well no, but don’t make this more awkward than it needs to be.” You pleaded.

“Fair enough, I probably would’ve closed my eyes anyway.” He said. He closed his eyes and covered them with his hands for good measures. You quickly grabbed some under garments and a tee shirt and sweatpants. You slipped out of the room and went to close the door. You paused when it was open just a sliver. “Ok, I’m out. You can get dressed.” Then shut the door.

As you got dressed you thought the night over. Why did you kiss him? You liked Thayne, but not romantically and not sexually either. At least you didn’t think so. But apparently part of you wanted him in a romantic or sexual way. He was a good friend. And you wanted him to remain that way. But that seemed unlikely now. You exited the bathroom and walked over to your bedroom door and knocked lightly. “Yeah, I’m dressed. Come on in.” He was sitting on the bed, fully clothed except for his socks which he was pulling on. “So…what now?” He asked. WIth his socks fully pulled on, he reached up and ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it to the right.

“What do you wanna do?” You asked. You wanted to forget this ever happened, but you didn’t want to offend Thayne either. You didn’t even know how he felt about this.

“Honestly? It wasn’t bad.” He commented with a smirk. It earned a tiny smile and amused eye roll from you. “But it isn’t worth fucking up our friendship. That is way more valuable to me.” He said with a small, sincere smile. You sighed in relief.

“I feel the same way. So…can we both pretend this never happened?”

“I can if you can.” He answered.

“Good. Then we tell no one and go about our lives like it never happened. What happened last night stays between the two of us.”

“Deal.” He said.

—

You and Thayne easily forgot about the whole situation. You fell back into routine and your friends were none the wiser. It was great. Until it wasn’t.

You tried to tell yourself not to freak out when your period was late. It wasn’t always on time, sometimes it was a day or two late. It happened. Then it was a week late. Now it was two weeks late. And you were so fucking worried. You left rehearsal rather quickly and went to a drug store to buy a test. Hell, you bought two just so you could be sure. After an agonizing two minute wait, the first test confirmed you were pregnant. That couldn’t be right. So you tried the other test. And after waiting another eternal two minutes, you had the same results.

You leaned back against the wall in the bathroom. Then you slid down until you were sitting on the floor. You were pregnant. And Thayne was the father. So much for forgetting it ever happened. The idea of an abortion popped into your head. But there was no way you could go through something like that and keep it from Thayne. He was your closest friend. And since he was your closest friend, he knew that you hadn’t slept with anyone else lately. At least not close enough for them to be the parent of the baby. Adoption was an option, but Thayne would have to agree to that too. And you’d be pregnant for nine months.

The show! You’d have to go on maternity leave and stop performing.

“Fuck.” You mumbled to no one in particular. This was a mess.

Thayne had a right to know. But for now, you wouldn’t tell anyone. There was no sign of you showing. The only reason you knew is because you missed your period. No one else should know that. You tossed the used tests and boxes in the plastic bag you received from the drug store and tossed them in the dumpster. If your friends came over, they didn’t need to see those in the trash.

At rehearsal the next day, you watched Thayne. Usually, you were amused by his antics and behaviors. Now you studied him and tried to see him as a dad. He was joking with Jazzy and Anthony. You knew he’d care for a kid. That was obvious. But could he raise one? Could you? Were the two of you remotely ready for the responsibility? You didn’t think so. But would Thayne be willing to give up his child? Would you?

You sighed. How were the two of you going to get through this? How were you going to tell Thayne? “You ok?” Thayne asked, walking over to you.

“Yeah.” You smiled but it didn’t reach your eyes. And Thayne, being your closest friend, noticed. He gave you a questioning stare. “I’m just thinking. That’s all.” Thayne sat down next to you.

“Need a second opinion or good listener?” He asked.

“Yeah. Are you going to point me in the right direction?” You teased with a smile.

Thayne gasped dramatically and put a hand in his chest in mock offense. “And here I was, trying to be nice and helpful.” You laughed at him. Typical Thayne. Typical concerned, friendly, funny, kind Thayne. He wasn’t a bad guy. There were worse people you could’ve slept with. After all, Thayne could be easy to love. But again, there was no connection between the two of you. Even though you kinda wished there was right now. “Seriously though.” Thayne said, pulling your attention back. “Do you need to vent or want advice?”

“No, I’m good.” You said.

“You sure? You seemed really lost in your head earlier.” He was so kind and so concerned.

“I’m ok, Thayne. I promise. But thank you.” You reached out and hugged him, and he reciprocated. He was so nice. And you were gonna end up testing the boundaries of that kindness when you told him you were pregnant. You just had to figure how when and how exactly you planned to do that.

—

Did you need to announce your pregnancy to someone if you weren’t dating or trying to have a child together? You didn’t really feel like you needed to, but you knew Thayne would like some cute announcement. But this wasn’t exactly the happy occasion that most pregnancies were. You and Thayne shouldn’t have slept together. You and Thayne weren’t trying to have a child. This whole things was a mess and an accident.

You were constantly lost in your thoughts and Thayne noticed. He was constantly asking if you were ok. And you were constantly telling him that you were. You constantly felt guilt at not telling him the truth. You were worried about this pregnancy. And Thayne needed to know about it.

Thayne found you after rehearsal one day. “Alright, you’re coming over tonight.” He announced.

“I am?”

“Yep. You’ve been moping around and lost in your thoughts for a couple weeks now. You don’t want to tell me about it, and that’s fine. You don’t have to. But I want you to come over and relax. Take your mind off of it for a night.” He instructed.

Absentmindedly, you placed your hand on your stomach. You couldn’t turn Thayne’s plans down. He would grow even more suspicious. “Alright, Thayne. Sounds like fun.” Thayne smiled brightly.

“We’ll head over to my place whenever you are ready to leave.” Thayne said happily. So you quickly packed up and followed Thayne outside. You rode the subway and were at Thayne’s house after a very short time. You immediately dropped onto Thayne’s couch. Thayne on the other hand ran to the kitchen. He emerged a few minutes later, carefully cradling and balancing a large amount of junk food and snacks in his arms. He dropped them on the coffee table in front of the couch. “Alright. Do we want beer, wine, or some mixed drinks?” He asked, starting to head back to the kitchen.

“Uhm…can we have water or soda?” You asked instead. Thayne stopped and turned to you. His expression was pure confusion. The two of you tended to at least have a few drinks when you got together. You never got drunk, but you always had something to drink. You needed to find an excuse quickly. “It’s just…last time we had drinks it didn’t end well.” You fumbled. It wasn’t the best excuse. However, you and Thayne avoided talking about that night. So you weren’t surprised when Thayne blushed and nodded before ducking back into the kitchen. He came back with some soda and water which he also deposited on the coffee table. “There we go.” He plopped down next to you. “Dumb Netflix movies?” You nodded.

So you and Thayne ate, talked, watched movies, made fun of dumb movies. At some point you wandered to Thayne’s room and retrieved a blanket. You sat back down and shared it with Thayne. When you yawned loudly, Thayne shifted so you were both lying on the couch sideways. He was behind you with an arm wrapped around your waist to keep you safely on the couch. This type of closeness wasn’t unusual for you two. However, you couldn’t help but think it was different now.

You both drifted off while you laid on the couch. At some point you both shifted. When Thayne woke up he was lying on his back on the couch You were more or less on top of him. He felt his cheeks heat and turn slightly pink, but he made no move to push you off. You were comfortable and sound asleep as well. He didn’t mind at all.

You had been so distant lately, stuck in your own mind. Thayne desperately wanted to know why. But you didn’t seem inclined to tell him, which was your right. He wouldn’t push you. However, you never kept anything significant secrets from him. It wasn’t that you told him everything, but you told him a lot of things. And anything that was this important, anything that kept you lost in thought, you shared with him. He would help you. So why not now?

Thayne absentmindedly toyed with the strands of your hair. His mind kept, unfortunately, drifting back to that night. You had been playing with his hair all night. He enjoyed it. He enjoyed it a lot. He had a crush on you for a while. But you clearly didn’t care about him that way, you were friends. So he never pushed it. But he felt damn guilty about that night. He felt like he took advantage of you. You were both drunk, or at least tipsy, so maybe both of you were to blame. But Thayne would continue to feel bad about it. And shortly after that night, you started to close off and keep something from him.

For now, he figured he better sleep. He didn’t want his thoughts to be swirling and churning like they so often ended up doing. Every time he thought to his feelings or that night, things got so confusing. So he decided to just close his eyes and sleep. He did, however, tighten his hold on you slightly, doing whatever he could to keep you close.

—

You watched from off-stage as Thayne climbed up on his literal soap box. You watched him perform with all his heart. He loved his job. You had decided that tonight you would tell him you were expecting. It’d be hard to keep it a secret much longer anyway. You performance ended, you took your final bows. Afterwards, back off-stage, you grabbed Thayne’s sleeve. “Hey, can we talk before once we’re out of costume?” You asked.

“Of course.” He said. Thayne changed quickly, and hurried to find you. Once he found you, you had already changed your clothes. You were pacing anxiously. “You ok?” Thayne asked as he walked in.

“Oh, sorta?” It sounded more like a question. “Can you shut the door behind you?” You asked.

“Sure.” Thayne replied and did just that. He went and sat on the couch in the room. “You seem really anxious, Y/N. You can tell me anything, and I know you know that. So what’s going on?” He asked.

You wanted to sit, but you had to be moving. You had too much energy to sit still. “I uh…I wanted to talk to you. I wanna start by saying that I’ve been meaning to talk to you for a while. I just, well I didn’t know how to bring this topic up.” You sighed and anxiously raked a hand through your hair. “You had every right to know what I’m about to tell you. I didn’t really mean to keep it from you, I just…”

Thayne stood up. “You just didn’t know how to tell me.” Thayne helpfully finished for you. You nodded. You were wringing your hands together now. Thayne stepped forward and held your hands in his, keeping you from wringing them. Instead you squeezed his hands. “Y/N, just tell me what’s going on. What have you been not telling me?” His voice was so kind and gentle. You mumbled out a response but Thayne couldn’t hear you. “What?” He asked.

You sighed. You fixed your eyes firmly on your shoes. “Thayne, I’m pregnant.” It was still soft, but Thayne definitely had to hear you. He took in a sharp breath. Then his grip on your hands went slack, your hands slipped out of his grip. You chanced a look up at him. He had taken a shocked step back from you and his expression was complete and utter shock. “I…I…I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. I guess, I’m sorry. For not telling you mostly. I didn’t know how and I’m sorry.” Thayne was staring at the ground now, looking like he was trying to understand what you had said to him. You on the other hand were waiting for him to say anything. He looked up at you. He looked confused, shocked, and, above all, hurt. “Fuck, I’m so fucking sorry.” You grabbed your things and hurried out of the room. Thayne didn’t even try to stop you.

—

You rushed out of the room. Thayne didn’t even know what he would stay to make you stay. He dropped back onto the couch. He knew that it was his child. You hadn’t slept with anyone else that he knew of. And with what you said, he deserved to know, it was pretty obvious what it meant.

Well, fuck. They fucked up. Thayne could handle being your friend. That was easy. But he couldn’t handle raising a kid with some strange sort of shared custody. He couldn’t possibly hope to be a father and have you be a mother but not be anything more. Then Thayne thought of something. Did you even want to keep the kid? It wasn’t up to Thayne, it was up to you what they did.

Why did they have sex? Why did you get into this mess? He wanted to raise that kid. But he wanted you to want that too. He wanted to raise the kid with you. Not alongside you. Not with shared custody or anything like that. He wanted to raise their kid with you. But what did you want?

Thayne sighed. The only way to handle this was to talk. A conversation that clearly neither of you were equipped for. Thayne only hoped he could convey exactly what he wanted. But he still had to figure out exactly what he wanted and how to explain it. He decided to walk to a nearby store and purchase chocolate. Then he got a cab and went to your house. He hesitantly knocked.

You opened the door. Your hair was wild and you eyes were red and wet. You had been crying. “Hey.” He said lamely. “Can I come in?” You hesitated. You wanted to slam the door in his face and lock him out until you calmed down. But damn, you needed to talk. You held the door open and let him in. You went to your couch and sat down, you wrapped yourself in a blanket and curled up. You tried to make yourself small and secure. Thayne reached into his bag and held out a chocolate bar with a smile.

You let out a small, surprised laugh. “Thanks. Always thoughtful.” You said with a smile.

“Of course.” He replied. He sat on the opposite side of the couch. He sat facing you, and sat with his legs criss-crossed like a child sits on the floor. “So…we gotta talk.”

“Yeah, I guess…” You toyed with the edge of the blanket. “Do you want an explanation for why I didn’t tell you or…”

Thayne dismissively waved a hand. “Nah. I understand why you waited to tell me. Why it was hard for you to tell me. But there is something I do want to know.” You stared at him, waiting for him to say exactly what that was. “What do you want to do about this?”

You blinked. You hadn’t actually expected this. You thought this would be screaming and fighting and defending your own points. But…Thayne was curious about your wants. “I…I don’t know, Thayne.”

“Ok…uhm…do you want to raise this child? Or…” He hesitated. “Do you want to put the kid up for adoption? Or…what other options are there?”

“Are we even ready to raise a child? Either of us?” You asked. Thayne hung his head. You assumed his was thinking, letting the truth of your statement sink in. However, he was dejected that this was a situation in which the two of you were separate. Neither of you were ready to raise a child, Thayne knew that. But what if you were a unified force?

“Maybe not.” Thayne agreed. “But…” Again he hesitated. “Look, if you don’t want to raise…our child, then I will.”

You stared at him with wide eyes. “You…You will?” You stuttered.

Thayne shrugged a smiled a little. “Yeah. It’s terrifying, sure. But that’s my kid. It was my actions that brought this kid into existence, so I’m partially responsible. And I’ve sorta always wanted to be a dad.” It was gonna break his heart to raise a child without you to help him, but it would have to be done.

“But…by that logic I’m also responsible too. I mean, obviously we’re both responsible. But all the duty shouldn’t fall on you.”

“I’m not saying that. I’m just will to accept that responsibility.” Thayne commented with a shrug.

“Thayne, I don’t want to get rid of this child.” You laid a hand on your stomach. “But I’m not sure I’m ready for one.”

“Me either, certainly not alone.” He said before he could stop himself. “What if we tried it together?”

“Like, shared custody?” You asked.

Thayne let out a frustrated noise and ran a hand through his hair. “Not…exactly. Something…more…” Thayne kept searching for the right way to phrase it. He didn’t want to come on too strong, but he wanted you to finally see his side of things. “Structured?” He ventured. You gave him a confused look, clearly not understanding him. “Fine, I’ll just say it then. A family.” He sighed. “You, me, and a baby makes three.” He shrugged.

“No.” You shook your head. Thayne tried not to let the way his heart shattered show. “Look, us working together might be the best solution. But we can’t be a family. I don’t want to be a family just because of this child. It will only make matters worse and end poorly in the future.”

“Oh.” Thayne squeaked out, realizing why you bluntly shot him down. “Y/N, I don’t want to…” He slowed. Well, time for the truth to come out. He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to have a family with you only because of this child. But that’s an unforeseen bonus.” He scooted closer to you. “I’ve uh, I’ve had a massive crush on you for a while. The night we slept together still bothers me. I mean, I sorta feel like I took advantage of you.”

“Thayne, we both consented to that. Albeit, we were slightly tipsy, but I think we were clear enough to know what we were getting into.”

“True, but I’ll still feel guilty.” He said with a small smile.

“Wait.” You stopped him from saying more. “You have a crush on me?”

Thayne’s smile grew. “Yeah. I know this is totally sudden. Have I really hid it that well?” He asked doubtfully. So you thought, really thought, about it.

“Wow.” You said in realization. “I’m dense.”

“Look, we got a few months here before our lives change forever. And I know that a few months isn’t enough time to know for sure whether we can make a relationship last. But it can give us a good idea of how well we work together. In the few months we have, can we maybe try dating, see how it goes? Maybe it will end horribly, then we can come up with a new plan. But, what if it ends wonderfully? Isn’t that worth trying? Give me a shot. Give us a shot at having a family.” He urged. His voice never changed from his soft and caring tone, except maybe sneaking a little pleading in there. He smirked. “That would be enough.” He sang.

You burst out laughing. You think Thayne’s smile at your laughter was the brightest smile you’d ever seen from him. “That’s better.” Thayne remarked about you laughing instead of moping. You smiled at Thayne and considered his offer. He always loved you. Did you always love him? You would’ve said no earlier. Thayne was trying not to fidget. “Look, Y/N, I don’t mean to pressure you. But I’d like to have some sort of answer.”

You smiled and leaned in and kissed him softly. It was much better than your tipsy kiss. Thayne practically melted into the kiss, and against you. His lips slipped into a smile even as you kissed. It caused a smile to pull at your lips as you pulled away. “Not that I didn’t really enjoy that, but should we slow things down?” Thayne asked.

“Thayne, we already spend time together in things that are practically dates. And we’ve also already slept together. I think kissing is just fine.” You reasoned.

“Well then, I’m not opposed to do it again.” He said with his bring smile. He captured your lips with his once more.

—

Thayne was overly ecstatic at the prospect of being a father. It wasn’t long before you started planning to announce to the cast that you were expecting. Thayne wanted it to be cute announcement. You pooled your paychecks and got a new place to live. Two bedrooms. Next you started looking into what furniture you needed for a child.

It wasn’t long before your relationship with Thayne became known among the cast. It was after a performance, the curtain fell and you gave Thayne a hug. That in itself wasn’t strange. But Thayne pulled back and kissed you soundly. You didn’t care you were at work with co-workers who were unaware of the development of your relationship. You melted into the embrace and returned the kiss willingly.

The two of you pulled apart as a low whistle sounded. You looked around Thayne and found a number of cast members (including Anthony who you suspected of whistling) staring at the two of you. There were a mix of surprised, suggestive, and questioning stares. “Uh, surprise?” You said. Luckily everyone was happy for the two of you. Shortly after was when the two of you moved into your new place together.

A few days later, Thayne found you sprawled out on the bed. “What’s wrong?” He asked. “We gotta get to work soon.”

“We need to tell the cast, Thayne.” You said, looking over at him but not sitting up on the bed.

“I know.” He said. He climbed on the bed and sat criss-cross right behind you. He re-situated both of you so your head was in his lap. “What brought this on today?” He asked, playing with your hair.

You gestured vaguely in the direction of your closet. “I have nothing to wear that doesn’t make it painfully obvious that I’m pregnant.” You complained. “I’m getting fat.”

“Oh shush.” Thayne chided lightly. “You’re beautiful.” He leaned down and pressed a light kiss to the tip of your nose. Then he got off the bed and went to the closet. The next thing you knew, a shirt landed on your face. You sat up and looked at the shirt that was tossed your way. It was one of Thayne’s. “I think that should hide the evidence.” He said. He walked forward and leaned on the bed, one hand on either side of you. He leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to your lips. He pulled away after a moment, but stayed leaning in close. “Should we tell them today?” He asked.

You sighed. “Probably. I can get away with wearing your shirt for a day. But if I started doing that indefinitely it might get a little suspicious.” You quickly shed your pajama top and tossed Thayne’s shirt on. It was large enough to hide your growing stomach. The two of your headed to work, idling still trying to come up with an announcement. You hadn’t figured out how you planned to tell the crew yet. Thayne still wanted to have a big announcement but neither of you came up with one that wasn’t cliche and that would work well with the crew. So it seemed like you’d be winging it.

You walked into the theatre with a few people making comments about you wearing Thayne’s shirt. You stopped by your dressing room, depositing your things. “Lin first?” You asked Thayne.

“Sounds like a good place to start.” So the two of you went to Lin’s dressing room. It was just your luck that Chris and Jonathan happened to be in the dressing room talking to Lin. You looked at Thayne, silently asking if you should ask them to leave. He just shrugged. After all, they’d know soon enough anyway.

“So, uh, I…or I guess we having something to say.” You awkwardly started. Damn it, why hadn’t you planned something? Jonathan, damn him, was already smirking. It seemed he had already figured it out. Chris was calculating, probably figuring it out but also seeing an issue with the fact that the two of you hadn’t been together for long. Lin was merely looking at you, waiting for you to say what you needed. “Uhm…so…” You trailed off.

Thayne wrapped his arms around your torso. “Y/N is trying to say she’s pregnant.” He said bluntly.

“Uh, yeah. That.” You said, shocked at Thayne’s bluntness. Then again, he was excited about this.

“And Thayne is…?” Chris asked. You nodded.

Jonathan’s smirk never faltered. Lin’s expression grew equally as confused as Chris’s. “Wait. You guys have only been together for a few weeks…” The question hung in the air.

“Yeah…” Thayne trailed off.

“How far along are you?” Chris asked.

“Uh…more than a few weeks.” You offered hesitantly.

Lin and Chris shared a look. They looked back to Jonathan who merely shrugged. “When the hell did this happen?” Lin asked. They weren’t mad, just confused.

“Drinks night. About two months ago.” You said with a deep blush. A quick glance at Thayne showed he was also sporting a light blush as well. The three men were silent for a moment before Lin let out a surprised chuckle. The other two men let out chuckles in response then they were laughing. The tension immediately left the room and you and Thayne chuckled too.

“Told you.” Jonathan said after the laughing subsided.

“Huh?” Thayne said.

“Oh, I tried to tell these two that there was something going on between you two long before we were told.”

“Well, it wasn’t like we were dating or—” Jonathan silenced you as he held up a hand.

“You two wouldn’t have slept together if there wasn’t something there.” He said with certainty. Thayne shrugged, which you felt due to his arms still being around him.

“Do the rest of the cast know yet?” Lin asked.

“Nope.” You said.

“You guys are the first.” Thayne added. “Who’s next?” So the two of you continued through the rest of the cast. Anthony and Jasmine congratulated the two of you. Daveed and Oak drilled you like Lin, Chris, and Jonathan had. Pippa and Renee asked all sorts of questions like if you knew the gender yet. Leslie also merely offered a heartfelt congratulations. That left the ensemble members. “Should we track them down one at a time or tell them all at once?”

At this point you were ready for this announcing thing to be over. “All at once, please?” You answered.

“Of course.” Thayne pressed a kiss to your forehead as he sensed your annoyance. “Almost done.” He commented. He detoured to the snack table to get both of you a much needed chocolate fix. You found the assembled ensemble members. “We need to talk to you guys.” Thayne announced loud enough for you to gain the attention of all the members. They turned and looked at you. Thayne gave you a glance as well. You sighed, not knowing how to tell them. Thayne read your mood well. He stood behind you with his hands on your shoulders. “Basically…guess who’s going to be a father?” He asked with a smile. You shot him a look over your shoulder. “And I suppose I should add, guess who’s going to be a mother? Guess who’s going to be parents?” He amended.

The entire ensemble was excited. You had a lot of them ask you questions but eventually you and Thayne had to pull away. You hid away in your dressing room. You collapsed on the couch in the dressing room. “That was exhausting.” You said. Thayne sat down beside you. He leaned over and laid his head in your lap. You absentmindedly toyed with his hair, pleased you could freely do so now without worrying about what would happen in response to the action.

“I hate to break it to you, Y/N, but as soon as that kid is born then things will be even more exhausting.” He commented.

You sighed, that was true. “What are we gonna do when this little one gets here?” You asked rhetorically.

“Love them.” Thayne answered anyway. “We will give them all the love we can. That’s what good parents do and that’s what makes a family.”

—

-Ten Years Later-

You stared at the reception hall. Ten years. Hamilton premiered ten years ago. It was a reunion of sorts. Tomorrow there would be news reporters and performances. Today, there was a gather of former cast members. Like a class reunion, but better. Cast members and their families were all getting together today. It was shaping up to be a fun night.

You walked inside. Instantly you were greeted by noise. Then, Lin walked up to you. He was so famous now. But to you, he was still a dork who wrote a Tony Award winning musical about Alexander Hamilton. He was also still your friend. You noticed his two boys running around as well, playing with the other kids present. Lin greeted you with a hug, pointed you toward the free food being offered, and invited you to mingle around with your old friends. And that’s what you did.

Main cast and ensemble members. Nearly everyone was here. Everyone was commenting how ten years ago seemed so long, yet it passed in the blink of an eye. And you couldn’t agree more. So much had happened to you in ten years. You scanned the crowd once more for blonde hair and a blinding smile. You sighed again as you failed to see it. You knew why Thayne wasn’t here. But…you had hoped.

Instead, you focused on talking to those who showed up. After all, you hadn’t seen some of these people in ten years. You were talking to Jonathon Groff, catching up with him. Then, suddenly, “Mommy!” You spun as you saw your little girl running toward you. Riley had her dad’s hair color and his bright smile. You crouched and gave her a hug. “Hi, Jonathon.” She greeted happily. Jonathan smiled and waved in response.

“Sorry we’re so late.” Thayne said, walking in behind her. He pulled you into a kiss, you couldn’t help but smile against his lips. He pulled back with a smile of his own. “Traffic is awful. But, we made it.”

“Things went ok?” You asked.

“Yep.” He said with a smile. “Ren got his booster shots and is ready for kindergarten.” Thayne said and looked to the little boy who was holding his hand. Your son. Almost a spitting image of his father. Lin greeted Thayne and your kids both. They exchanged idle chatter for a brief moment. “Hey uh Lin, there’s free food right?” You and Lin both rolled your eyes thinking back to Thayne constantly raiding the snack table at Hamilton. But Lin pointed out the table anyway. Thayne put a hand on each of your children’s shoulders. “Come on, if we hurry then your mom can’t limit how many cookies we get.” The three of them ran off before you could say anything. You just shook your head and watched them with a fond smile.

A daughter and a son. A husband too. A family. Things with Thayne weren’t immediately perfect, and you had your fights too, every couple does. But they were perfect enough for the two of you. So yes, if you had been asked in the beginning of everything if you loved Thayne; the answer would’ve been no. But if you were asked now, if you loved Thayne; yes wouldn’t be enough to properly explain just how much you loved him.

#hamilton #hamilton imagine #thayne jasperson #thayne jasperson imagine #thayne x reader #thayne jasperson x reader

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v01d-ch1ld · 6 years ago

Text

I am a Lion Born From Things You Cannot Be

I am a Lion Born from Things You Cannot Be

Name changes are based on whether or not people are in costume (with their mask on).

Breathe in and out slowly. That is the only thing Rebecca can do right now. She woke up tied hand and foot to a bed frame. The room is pitch and there are no windows. Nothing new, that’s how she was kept in that padded cell. She gave off the illusion of someone who was asleep, but she was actually thinking about how to get to her hair clip. It had a saw edge on it for this exact scenario.

She slowly moved her head to the side, making it look like she was trying to take some of the pressure off her neck and get comfier in her sleep, and once her fingertips were hidden by her hair she snapped the pin out of her hair. She let her head hang loosely from where she had suspended it and cracked open her left eye, which would have been hidden from any CCTV camera trained on her. Her hair hid the hand that was slowly sawing the ropes binding her hand to the wrought iron bed frame. When her hand was only bound by a few thin threads she stopped, making sure it looked like she was still tied. Then she readjusted her head and did the same with the other hairclip. Now that she only had a few strings holding her hands she could plot her escape.

Meanwhile, in the Batcave, there was a meeting of the minds and fists over what should be done about the girl upstairs who was still presumably unconscious. The conversation was too heated for anyone to be checking the security camera placed in there.

“I still say we take her to Arkham right now,” Bruce says in a no-nonsense tone.

“ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT!” Jason roared back at his used to be father.

“Yeah no, there’s no fucking way that’s happening, Bruce.” Surprisingly, Tim chimes in glaring at Bruce over his cup of coffee.

“I won’t let you touch her, not after last time.” Nightwing in an icy tone, enunciating every syllable.

“I agree with Father,” Damian said nonchalantly. His brothers turned on him within seconds.

“You little fucking brat- “Jason was cut off by Nightwing who sounded loudly.

“YOU SOULLESS UNGRATEFUL LITTLE SHIT!” He paused and caught himself bowing his head and taking a breath, Dick looked at Damian with a look of intense sorrow. “After all she has done for you, for us all, you would abandon her for things that were outside of her control? She loved us and cared for us and made sure that we were taking care of ourselves even when she didn’t know the truth. She didn’t pry and she always looked after you and Timmy especially. She is the only reason this family even resembles a family in the first damn place.” Dick sat down and placed his head in his hands. Tim placed a hand on his back, Dick loved her like a sister. They all had.

“Look, all I am saying is that we are ill-equipped to help her as none of us have the necessary training to act as her therapist.” Damian hurriedly states, not wanting to seem his usual soulless self. “I wouldn’t abandon her. Who else would I prank you guys and play with Titus with?” The snark reminded Dick of who he was talking to. Damian did care he just had issues with showing it, but that didn’t mean that Dick couldn’t dish some back out.

“Jon. You already do all those things with Jon.” Dick said matter-of-factly. Damian sneered.

“Only because my usual partner was presumed dead.” Damian glared.

“The kid has one thing right, Dickie, I’m irreplaceable.” Everyone whipped around to the elevator leading down into the Batcave. Bruce cussed, how the hell had she managed to get into the Batcave? The boys looked on in shock as she flashed a smile and sat down on the table. “Don’t look so surprised, I was a med student. I’m nothing if not observant. I just didn’t think that the secret elevator led to the Batcave until recently. By the way, you have got to hide that better.”

Rebecca sprawled all five feet ten inches of herself across the table, laying down in a pose on her stomach that reminded them of Selina. Grinning a sickeningly wide grin she turned to the boys, rope still tied tight around her wrists, with jagged edges where she cut them from the bedposts. “Whatcha talking about?” she purrs.

“We have to do something with you, babe, you need some serious help.” Jason drawled.

“Don’t I know it. Do you have any idea how much my head hurts right now? Fighting another personality for control of your body is a living hell. Makes me pity Dr. Fate.” Selina has had a definite influence on her speech. Little do they know that she is mimicking her old voice.

“Really? You are fighting for control right now?” Tim says in awe. She was very strong, she always had been, but it only now registered how strong. She would make a freakishly strong Green Lantern.

“Yep. Hurts like a bitch lemme tell you. Honestly, I don’t know how long I have before she takes my body back. When that happens, you should Taser me.” She rolled on her back and smiled at Tim, her eyes glowing softly.

“NO! We are NOT hurting you!” Jason and Dick said at the same time.

“Guys, she wants me to jump on top of you,” pointing at Jason, “and fuck you while I dig my fingers into your eye sockets and play with your eyeballs. And she wants me to stab you,” pointing at Dick, “and play with your entrails while I lick the sweat off your skin.” She said with a tone of absolute boredom, while she dangled herself halfway off the table. She put herself into a handstand and proceeded to front flip and land in a split. She’s become less and less able to sit still lately. “Oh, and you don’t want to know what she wants me to do to you Brucie.” She stuck out her tongue.

“I shot you in the leg. You need to be careful. Don’t hurt yourself,” Jason growls from his chair.

“Please, I shot you in the everywhere else plus, if I’m not already healed by now, I would be surprised. Also, can’t feel pain anymore. My nerve endings are fucking fried, dude.” She sat up with alarming quickness. “Hey! Do you have any cigarettes?”

“Yeah, baby doll, come here.” Jason dug his hand into his jacket and grabbed his pack and his lighter. Rebecca trilled with joy and ran over to grab the outstretched cigarette and waited for Jason to give her the light. Once she had it, she took a deep drag and her shoulders immediately sagged in relief. She really needed that. Jason lit one for himself much to Dick and Bruce’s chagrin.

“You need help. You have to go to Arkham. I can call for the top professionals to try and rehabilitate you, but you can’t stay here, Jester.” Ouch. That one hurt.

“Really Brucie, not even gonna use my real name anymore? Guess I was right to say that you don’t care about me anymore. But guess what? You’re the reason I’m in this mess.” She stood up straight and began to stalk forward. “You’re the reason we are all in this mess. The reason Jason died. You know that, right? Because I was there that night.” Jester was in his face now, eyes glowing a hue that put shivers down Jason’s spine, smiling that sickening Joker smile.

“Rebecca, what are you talking about?” Damian said in a careful tone. He knew the slightest provocation and she would lose it.

“The night that my father turned into the Joker, I was there.” Bruce paled. Uh oh. “We were in dire straits. My mother was pregnant with my little brother and she was sick. The hospital bills were racking up. Dad had recently quit his job because he got an offer to be a comedian at a nightclub, supposedly guaranteed pay. Unfortunately, my dad wasn’t as funny as he thought he was. I was coming home from boarding school. I had gotten in on scholarship. My mom was hospitalized earlier that night and they were doing everything they could to save her. I went to the hospital immediately. We didn’t have the money to pay but that didn’t matter. They both died. I was devastated. So was father, but he didn’t find out until after. We still had bills to pay though and he was approached by two mafia men earlier that week. He went on the job that night. The deal was he help them break in, they split the money three ways and he was never the Red Hood again.” She paused, tears welling up in her eyes. She took a long drag from her cigarette and closed her eyes. She continued.

“You were on your first case, busting the Red Hood robberies. You came in after them there was a fight, you, having mistaken the masterminds as goons and my dad as a real criminal, ended up above the acid vats. You fought, he tried to defend himself. He fell and you could have saved him, but you let him fall. You got the goons but left me, the little girl who followed her father in there, knowing what was about to happen, trying to get to him to talk him out of it. I watched him fall and I cried for hours. I ran out of there back to our house. I cried until I passed out in my parents’ bed thinking I had lost my whole family in one night. But then there was banging at the door. A man. I panicked. I went to go get my mother’s gun from the closet, but my father had taken it to the robbery. I grabbed my old softball bat and waited for what was inevitably my death. The Joker busted in, laughing hysterically with my mother’s gun. I almost passed out. This was my father. I swung blindly, heard a crack that was the gun flying out of his broken hand and I bolted for the window. I got out and spent that night, and many afterward on the street.” The tears were falling down her face in a silent stream. Her face showing an indescribable amount of hurt. The same hurt they all knew personally.

“Jester, you know it was not my fault. Your father committed a crime.” Bruce said in his Batman voice. It didn’t work. It only set her off. She lunged at him, fag between her teeth, and before he could put his hands up to defend himself her hands were around his neck with crushing force and they were knocked to the floor.

“YoUfUCKiNgAsSHolE! YOU RUINED MY LIFE AND YOU SAY IT ISN’T YOUR FUCKING FAULT! YOU PIECE OF SHIT I SHOULD PUT YOU OUT OF YOUR MISERY, YOU SELFISH EVIL BASTARD!” Jester said while she banged his head into the floor over and over.

The boys immediately ran over to try and pull her off of their boss. Damian tried to get her fingers off of his father’s neck, but they were held fast like steel traps. The crushing force spoke of enhanced strength, one part of Bruce’s brain noted (explore the extent of this in order to detain her better in the future).

She then ripped the cigarette out of her teeth and held it over one of Bruce’s eyes, one arm and her legs enough to hold him to the floor. This prompted Dick to jump on top of her to try and wrestle her to the floor while Tim got one of his eskrima sticks and tried (and failed, he swore only Dick knew how to use the damn things no matter how hard he tried to learn) to turn on the Taser setting. Jason got in front of her face and began telling her to let go like she was a scared animal. That one, scarily enough, seemed to work and her grip relaxed. Once Jason was able to get her to calm down and took back (and subsequently finished) the cigarette, Bruce’s neck was dark purple, and he was spluttering for air. Served him right, he thought.

“Baby girl, come on you know that if you keep doing that, we’re gonna have to tie you up again.” His own slightly glowing Lazarus pit green eyes were peering into her for the parts that were still sane. She responded to him in kind with her brighter ones looking into his for permission to finish what she started. She tilts her head to the side like she was appraising him and in the next second, she is kissing him furiously.

Dick jumps thinking she had decided to bite him but then Jason groans and holds her to him tighter. I suppose this had been long coming, but to happen so suddenly. Then he remembered things about the Joker and how he always seemed horny after violence, seems the apple didn’t fall far from the deranged tree. Abruptly she stopped and Jason is left panting while they all look in in either shock or disgust. She then settles into his lap looking at them like the cat that ate the canary. Then Dick knew that she did it for two reasons. One, she wanted to and two, to piss Bruce off.

Bruce growled when he was finally done recovering, from the strangulation or the shock of what just happened no one knew. Storming over to where the current thorn in his side was gleefully waiting, he picked her up out of Jason’s lap despite him yelling and threw her over his shoulder and walked to the Batmobile with his sons on his tail. Dumping her in the passenger seat while she was still kicking and screaming, he jumped in and sped off.

Jason cursed. This is going to be a long night.

A/N: Holy shit this took forever but hey angst works right. @nxttime @dcdweeb @batfam-imagines @dcuniversefanatic

#damian wayne #bruce wayne #dick grayson #jason todd #jason x oc #tim drake #robin #red robin #nightwing #red hood #batman #joker #selina kyle #catwoman #oc #angst #batfam

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callie-the-snarky-geek-blog · 7 years ago

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RvB16 Episode 1 Review: The Shisno

(Old Blog Repost)

Season 15, to put it lightly, has had mixed reception. Some liked it, some didn’t. Some like parts of it, others like different parts. Regardless of where you stand, I think we can all agree that it wasn’t a perfect season. Personally I enjoyed it, but I was also a newcomer to RvB so… you know, I’m biased. Regardless, Joe did well enough to be given the reigns once again and it looks like he has some MASSIVE plans.

So finally, here we are with the sixteenth season. With only one episode, it’s still too early to determine if this season will be an improvement or a disappointment. But the first episode is supposed to draw us in. Did it succeed in doing so? Lets find out.

Overview

The introduction is… weird. We saw the medieval scene on Twitter.. well the first few seconds anyways. It being a medieval version of the famous ‘ever wonder hwy we’re here’ scene can’t be for no reason. I guess it MAY be a hint at the time travel aspect coming up, but for now it’s just baffling. What is even mroe baffling is the vortex and the voice following it. We now know that the voice belongs to a being named Muggins as he speaks of things being provoked by humble actions and briefly going over the end of S15. Some kind of prophecy has been triggered due to the time drill thing and even with it gone, it still fulfilled it’s purpose. Which leads us to…

Fighting over food! So first, Joe wasn’t kidding about this whole thing beginning as a quest for pizza. I need to rewatch that tease later to see what other hints are in it. But regardless, with the Blues and Reds defeated and Dylan offering to talk to the cops since they’re still wanted (and I imagine this leads to her and Jax’s final scene in S15), our guys have earned some R&R. It was honestly a nice welcome back to see them just bickering over something as ridiculous as where to go out to eat. It fits them so well and feels like a very nice welcome back after all the insanity last season. Things are slowly tingeing back to normal… at first.

Simmons notices that Donut is missing, so Grif sends Caboose to go find him. Honestly the fact that SOMEONE realized that Donut wasn’t there is a sign of improvement since it’s always kind of been a running joke that no one. Sure, sending Caboose probably wasn’t THE best idea, but it’s a sign of improvement! Then we get the… body horror scene… dear God that looked painful. It was still funny due to how oblivious to it Caboose was, but still… MAN. It wouldn’t have been as bad if it weren’t for Donut’s screams of pain. Man, Dan Godwin nailed it… and I imagine that had to HURT so kudos! So yeah… Donut vanishes to I assume the same place the time drill went since they use the same sound effect. I guess Donut will then ascent not Godhood since he is beyond the plain of space and time now. We’ll see~

So Cabosoe comes back empty handed and at first everyone considers going to find him… except Grif. He wants to get the Hell off the island before the cops get there. We’ll talk more about this in a little while but man do I have thoughts! So the Reds and Blues all agree on pizza with Sister tagging along. Carolina and the lieutenants meanwhile head for Chorus, Carolina to go check on Wash and the lieutenants to get back to what Jensen calls ‘interesting things’. So I assume that we’ll get some kind of B Story involving Chorus hijinks. Maybe if we’re lucky, a certain green mercenary will show up… I can dream!

This is where things get interesting as we then see two tiny balls of light. Muggins, who we already heard, and a female-voice done named Huggins. He is apparently a rookie as Muggins sends her to keep watch over the Reds and Blues and to both not lose them and to not be spotted. He meanwhile shoots across space and we get a REALLY cool intro sequence showing all the cast and the main crew members… though they forgot Geoff’s name for some reason (the Youtube version has it, so I assume it’s an error). Oops. They also don’t have Becca listed, though Sister isn’t technically a main character so I guess that’s why. Maybe in the future. But it’s really cool and the alien-esque soundtracks sounds so perfect.

Muggins arrives at what we can assume is the villains lair. IDK if this is an original set piece designed by RT Animation or if it’s an actual Halo map. Either way, it looks awesome. Dark, with a lot of red and black, but epic in scale. A proper villain lair. We get a glimpse of a green-armored soldier with a British accent golfing… weird. Anyways, Muggins reports to their leader who we only see partially. They have black armor and while they only say one word, it’s a… pretty damn intimidating voice. Muggins informs the leader that the ‘pizza quest’ has begun and therefore triggered the last part of the prophecy, ending the episode.

Review

While the episode is only nine minutes long, BOY HOWDY did it leave PLENTY to talk about. I guess we’ll start with Donut though. I have no idea what the Fuck just happened. It’s clear that the blast from the drill caused… whatever the Hell happened and we can assume form the earlier narration, that this was meant to happen. So this is definitely going to be important. Going off the promo material, where Donut’s in a kind of meditative pose, it seems like he’s going to become a God-like figure. My guess is that he now exists outside the realm of space and time, which is where I believe the drill now is. What will this do to Donut? I have no idea, but this is definitely going it be a lingering plot thread. And hey, Donut deserves the focus.

Something I also liked is how the Reds and Blues DID notice that he was missing. Look, they do not have a good track record of remembering either Donut or Doc. So the fact that Simmons relied it is a massive improvement. And I do like how after Caboose said that he was gone, Sarge and Tucker DID want to loo for him and not leave him behind. Grif convinces them not to, but still it is a HUGE sign of improvement compared to normal. And while they DID ultimately leave, I think it’s good that they at least recognized that Donut was gone and considered looking for him. It’s a good sign that they are growing.

Next lets talk about Carolina and Wash. So it looks like, at least for now, they won’t be in on the main plot. I assume that they’ll be given a B Plot revolving around Chorus, considering Jensen’s line about the going-ons there, but it’s too soon to tell. But yeah Carolina and Wash will likely be on the sidelines at least for now. Honestly… I an good with this! I love them both, don’t get me wrong. But lets face it, both have had a LOT of focus and attention ever since their respective introductions. Freelancer has been running the series for a long time now, and for good reason. But I really want to see the Reds and Blues on their own for once. S15 showed that, when they get their act together, they can operate and be formidable on their own with minimal Freelancer help. I want to see them have to deal with a massive situation without just having Wash or Carolina deal with it for them. I did like that Tucker plans to get Wash his own pizza though, just showing how much he cares for his teammate. You’ve grown up Tucker!

The biggest thing I want to talk about before we get to the villains though is Grif. Because his lines here are… interesting. It is clear that he wants to avoid any adventure, insanity, and dramatics as much as possible. When Jensen starts talking about Chorus, he says he wants to avoid the subject before trying to take it back. Then there’s the entire pizza quest thing. He doesn’t want to call it a quest. He doesn’t want to look for Donut because it would mean staying around and having to talk to cops. He calls out the others on how everything always has to be treated like a major production. He outright tells Sister that they’re not getting into anything crazy when she is clearly enthused about the idea. Now this could just be because he’s ‘hangry’ and also doesn’t want to chance getting arrested, but… IDK. To me, adding in the ‘new science’ line, it all paints a very clear picture: Grif wants things to go back to normal, just like he did last season… and it makes sense.

Some may say ‘wait, shouldn’t he be over this after last season?’. No. No he should not. Last season had Grif regret quitting because he didn’t like being alone and in the end, he DOES care about the others. And yes, he did willingly get into the thick of things when he joined back up. But here’s the thing, he did so because the others were in trouble and they needed him. But now that trouble is over. Now there is a chance for him to FINALLY go back to a level of normalcy with the others again. It’s why he’s trying so hard to avoid talking about serious matters or refusing Sister and Caboose’s replies about ‘adventures’ and ‘quests’. He never got over wanting to be done with that. We never had any kind of scene where he comes to terms with the insanity that is his life, only of him having regret abandoning the others. So it makes sense that this is still a thing with him like it was last year. The only difference is this time, instead of quitting, it seems like he’s going to try to actively attempt to keep them out of any insanity. Will this go anywhere? We’ll have to see. But since the promo art just has him facepalming, I think this may be his character arc for the season. And since Grif is my favorite character and I loved his development last season, I am all for it!

That leads us to our ‘villains’. And I say that lightly because while they ARE clearly the antagonists, I… can’t really tell if they’ve evil. Going off Mugigns’ narration and report to the leader, it sounds like they are trying to prevent some kind of horrible catastrophe that the Reds and Blues unknowingly started. As for WHAT they are… well they aren’t human, at least not fully. It’s way too soon and we still know way too little. But I am going to assume that they are aliens and some kind of high cosmic order. One that makes the head of it essentially a God. Heck the names Huggins and Muggins seem to be based off Huginn and Muginn, ravens who act as the eyes and ears to Odin in Norse mythology. Going off that… yeah, we’re going full Thor here apparently.

The leader we can assume is the equivalent of Odin, the king God in Norse mythology. IDK if we’ll get a Thor and Loki equivalent…. unless the green guy is meant to be one or the other. But yeah, this means that this guy is scary news. It’s too soon to say who he may be, though I saw one person speculate that it may be Donut. And with the time travel stuff, it IS possible. But again, too soon to say. Though if not I guess that Donut becoming a God will be the key to beating this guy. Either way, the goal is unclear other than that a prophecy has been provoked. Whether they’re going to try to stop it form coming to pass, or make sure it comes to pass is unclear. We also don’t know what the prophecy is other than that the time drill’s activation was the first sign and the pizza quest was the point of no return.

So here is my current theory. As I said, I don’t think that the ‘villains’ are actual villains. Or at least they aren’t evil psychos like Felix or a well-intentioned extremist gone mad like Temple. I think that this ‘prophecy’ is going to make them see the Reds and Blues as the villains. So they are going to attempt to wipe them out in order to prevent the prophecy from being fulfilled. It makes them the antagonists by default. How that will cause time travel to factor in unless an attempt to kill them goes horribly wrong IDK. Still, that’s my current stance. Will it get cleared up? Probably and it’ll lead to the true villain showing up. Bu it’s still WAAAAY too soon to say, but going off Muggins’ worry it doesn’t feel like he and Huggins at least aren’t antagonistic. But we’ll see as things unfold.

All of this of course leaves a LOT of questions. What is the prophecy exactly? What is the catastrophe? How does time travel equate into it? How does the medieval scene fit into it? Is this based on any of the alien stuff we’ve had in the past? Is it something completely different? How does Donut’s current situation equate into this? What kind of aliens/interdimensional beings are these guys? Who is the golfing guy? Who is that four armed guy that we saw in the trailer? Is he with these guys? Or is he a different antagonist? Is he an antagonist at all? How do the Reds and Blues end up caught up in it? Are we going to learn the definition of shisno? There’s a lot of questions man! And that’s okay, it’s the first episode, we’re supposed to be asking questions. Gotta give Joe this, he left us with plenty to think about.

So the way that things currently stand is the Reds and Blues are going for pizza (and I assume that the ship crashes since we see them in a forest area in the trailer), Carolina is heading for Chorus, and the villains are beginning their own plans. What’s going to happen next? I honestly have no clue. I assume that we’ll be following the Reds and Blues still next episode and maybe they’ll discover Huggins, but I honestly don’t know. Way to keep us hanging Joe.

Final Thoughts

This is how you do a premiere! The episode leaves a LOT of questions, but plenty of laughs in classic RvB fashion as well. It uses it’s time effectively and while it was only nine minutes long, it sure didn’t feel that short. The scenes all serve as a nice welcome back, opens up new possibilities, and sets up things for our heroes nicely. Sure the medieval scene is kind of out of place, but normally in animation a scene like that is there for a reason, so we’ll see later. But the machinima and original animation were solid, the acting was good as always, the humor and banter were on point, and we have plenty of mystery to look forward to down the road. It also sets up potential character development for Donut and Grif, which is very much appreciated. It was very well done and I am absolutely craving for more! Great episode!

#rvb #rvb16 #rvb reviews #old blog repost

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scarlet-soldier-in-an-impala · 8 years ago

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Weekly Reading List #16

Hey y'all… it’s time for my weekly reading list. Hope you enjoy these fics as much as I did. If you do, please let the writers know and leave feedback on their fics. You can catch up on my previous reading lists here.

About Dean's Dreams by @fanforfanatic **flangst** (Dean x Reader) Summary: Dean writes letters to the woman of his dreams. As in, the woman he’s with when he’s asleep. Rating: Brief smut Warnings: Mentions of canon events THIS WAS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!!! Although I kinda felt where you were going with this story, it was great. I enjoyed every second of it... I loved how you threaded your story through the canon events. Stunning work!

(Gif by @jessica-bones-winchester)

Kill Zone (Part 6) (Masterlist) series in progress by @thing-you-do-with-that-thing **smut** (AU!Dean x Reader) Preview: FBI agent Y/N Singer and her partner Castiel Novak find themselves working on a string of gruesome and cold blooded murders. The angle and precession of the kill shots leads them to enlist the help of an expert in the field - former Us military Captain and elite-sniper , Dean Winchester. However, when tables turn and evidence points fingers at the last person she expected, how does Y/N deal with it? Warnings: minor character death, mention of past character deaths, hinted ptsd, couch sex is complicated, oral sex (female and male receiving), unsafe sex (because I was to lazy to work in a condom - let’s asume she is on the pill but wear them always!) I love this series so much and I really like how the story went on, Dean's so beautifully written and it's so freaking thrilling ... though I've got a feeling, that something's fishy. Kari, you're not planning a major plot twist, do you???!!

Perfect (Part 12) (Masterlist, series complete) by @supernatural-jackles **smut** (Jensen x Reader) You and Jensen have been friends for as long as you both can remember. You have stuck together through thick and thin, good times and bad; everything. What happens when Jensen accidentally blurts out that he has a girlfriend when he doesn’t? How will your friendship be effected when he asks you to be his fake girlfriend? Warnings: Smut, Fluff, Angst Damn, the ending was perfect. This whole series was amazing. All the fluff and angst had me constantly on the edge. The relationship between the two was heartbreakingly beautiful and it was indeed 'perfect'. Thank you so much for this series!!!

(Gif by @electricmonk333)

Knight In Dark Flannel by @manawhaat **smut** (Dean x Claire) Summary: Dean can't shake the anxiety, the thoughts of how this all could habe been so much worse. Claire is in the same boat, and the two of them turn to each other for relief. Warnings: Spn s12 spoilers, slightly angsty feels, slight anxiety, smut of all kinds (Including unprotected. Don't follow my bad example, wrap it up kids.), virgin!Claire (mostly virgin), Sam hoarding stealing free food for Dean because they're fucking adorable little vulture babies. Ok, first I wanna say, you're a freaking wizard. Neither I'm a fan of Claire (and therefore I was not particular fond of s12e16) nor of virgin!fics... but thanks to @mrswhozeewhatsis I stumbled over this fic and her comment intrigued me so I gave it a try... and WOW... this was stunningly beautiful!!! Dean's feelings took my breath away and the chemistry between them was amazing. This was such a delicate and amazing fic, I loved it!!

Long, Lean And Lethal by @winchestersnco **smut** (Dean x Reader) Summary: The Reader finally takes things into her own hands when it comes to her feelings for Dean. Warnings: Consensual voyeurism, mutual masturbation, Reader being sneaky, Dean being cheeky. Good God... woman, are you trying to kill me?! This was incredibly hot and I really needed a minute after that to calm down.

How One Day Changed Everything by @atwistoffate **fluff** (AU!Dean x Reader) Summary: Dean has been your best friend since when you were four. But is he just that? (Best friends to lovers - College AU) Warnings: None, just fluffy fluff Oh gosh, this was so sweet and funny. Dean sneaking his way into the readers heart was freaking cute.

Mark Me Up @winchester-smut **smut** (Dean x Reader) Imagine Dean being turned on by the idea of being marked up and showed off… Warnings: Semi-Smut, Oral (Male Receiving) Reading how Dean is turned on by specific things, does things to me. I read this one in the waiting room at my doctor's office and I could barely hold it together. This was hot af... and I want this. All of it.

Rhythm Of The Beat (Part 3) (Part 2) (Part 1) by @ilostmyshoe-79 **smut** (Dean x Sam) Summary: Sam and Dean get trapped in a vault after being turned into women by an ancient Egyptian god. Because of course they did. There’s only one way to get free. Because of course there is. Warning: Wincest, gender swapping, smut This was freakingly hot and the gender swap was beautifully written. You write the gender swap so good, I'm a big fan of Trading Spaces as well and I was very excited for this one. Your Wincest feels are heartbreakingly beautiful, great work, as usual.

Research by @wheresthekillswitch **smut** (Sam x Reader) Gif inspired Fic (s12e18), Sam's POV Warnings: So much unprotected sex. Language. A little bit of angsty longing. Wow. Just wow. This was such an amazing read. I loved that side of Sam and it left me kinda sad. He deserves to be happy and I can see him there, with the reader.

Doin' It Like Sam Winchester by @mysaintsasinner **smut** (Sam x Reader) Warnings: Smut, of course, Dom!Sam if you squint, oral (female receiving), fingering, dirty talk, Sam saying ‘gotta get you ready for me’ because I swear to Chuck that would be the hottest thing ever to hear in RL. Possible angst at the end but it doesnt last long. Sam being Sam. Well, this is what I call a lucky mistake... like very lucky. I guess I'm not the only one, who wants to be woken up like this from Sam. Beautifully written, love it!

Sexy Bastard by @dancing-the-hellfire-rumba **fluff** (Sam x Reader) Warnings: fluff–ish, a smudge of angst if you squint Damn, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been so restrained. Gosh, all the sexual tension would've killed me. I loved seeing Sam being such a tease.

#dean x reader #sam x reader #jensen x reader #weekly reading list #dean winchester x reader #sam winchester x reader #spn smut #spn fluff #spn fanfic #jensen ackles x reader #au!dean x reader #weekly reading list 16

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johannesviii · 8 years ago

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The Slow Empire

Some highlights of the last EDA I’ve read (The Slow Empire).

I took these screens while reading, along with my reactions. As usual, this is full of spoilers.

What the hell was that.

Is the author trying to make a point about stories in the age of Internet? Maybe. It certainly looks like it at some point. Is he aiming for dream-logic? If so, he’s failing. Is he just being verbose for the sake of it? I don’t know. Maybe. One thing for sure: what passes for the plot is entirely based on a pun.

What makes it worse is that none of the regulars are written consistently (especially Anji), but hey, look, there’s an excuse for that in the plot! Except it doesn’t make sense even when the characters mention it. So yeah.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a couple of great ideas there! And a few lovely scenes too! But without any solid plot or characters to back them up, they’re just isolated nuggets of brilliance in an aimless, verbose desert. 2,5/10

Okay I’m gonna stop you right there, that font would be okay in a comic but as a block of text, it’s hurting my brain.

On the other hand, I want to frame this sentence.

Or this entire summary, for that matter.

If we ever need more reasons to be scared of Seven, here’s one.

Yes but we’re 15 pages in already, so I hope not.

Nice.

On the list of stuff I need to draw at some point: the Stellarium.

Little moments like this, with companions just goofing around in the TARDIS, are really something I appreciate in these books.

Eh eh eh

You don’t say.

Going from the previous screen to this one took six pages. I have a bad feeling about this book now. As Eight would put it, “this is very bad indeed.”

Okay, I get it now: the author is a troll. Because here’s what happened to that other character: he used several pages just to say he fell asleep.

Eight is in full-on euphemism mode today.

Oh Eight.

GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE ALL OF YOU

Jamon we’re already at one quarter of the story and nothing much has happened yet, don’t make it worse please

What the hell are you doing

On the scale of Ridiculous Escape Attempts I give it a solid 7/10

I concur.

In a way, the author’s a genius; he’s paid to write ten lines where one would be enough. That’s very much like what I used to do at the faculty when I had to write ten pages on a topic I didn’t care about.

I concur².

Interesting.

That’s also interesting.

Great atmosphere here!

Congratulations: you’ve ruined it!

This is all very nice but why do I get the feeling that this plot thread won’t go anywhere either?

Eight, stop talking like Six.

Also is the book about storytelling? Is that why half of it is narrated by Jamon?

Best scene so far.

I’m curious now. What story is Eight going to tell? He was certainly good at telling stories in The Scarlet Empress. Which was also about storytelling. And also much better.

Probably Jamon, because we need to up the word count

Well doesn’t that sound familiar Let Eight tell a story now, please.

NeverMIND

Oh my god

That could be a lot of things in this series.

I kinda like this character, though.

Relatable.

I was starting to wonder when Eight would get hurt.

I snorted

SAME, ANJI. SAME.

Hmmmm no. Nu-uh. Nope.

AQZSDFGHJK

DOCTOR YOU HAVE A HOLE IN YOUR CHEST COULD YOU PLEASE FOCUS

EIGHT THAT WAS ALMOST A PARODY OF YOURSELF

That’s all nice and good but meanwhile we’re still searching for the plot

“Yet again”

ARE YOU TELLING ME SOMETHING IMPORTANT MIGHT HAPPEN AT LAST

What

Oh. Okay. They’re all in a different kind of narrative structure. I get it.

Yeah, yeah I got it. You can stop now.

This actually goes on for 15 pdf pages.

Don’t believe me? Anji’s out of it and it’s still going on for the other two.

Thank you Doctor for making it stop.

Well since you asked, you’ve been acting as if you were written by a guy who doesn’t know how to write you but is still trying to pretend it’s a plot point

I have no words

Wait a fucking second, is this entire thing just a convoluted way of saying Internet is destroying fiction?

INCLUDING ME

THERE'S ONLY THIRTY PAGES LEFT THOUGH, I'M SURE YOU COULD STILL PAD IT A BIT MORE

And here we have the author admitting the whole story had no point until now. Amazing.

Yeah, I agree, this is all a bit embarrassing, really. And I haven't even screened most of Anji's ooc moments.

...what passes for a plot is based on a terrible pun. My god.

Oh, so the transfer machines have a huge fault, then. Is that all?

Yeah, yeah I got it.

This is kinda reminiscent of The Unquiet Dead.

I love how Eight keeps throwing his companions away from dangerous situations. He did that with Fitz in Coldheart too.

Yeah let's not do that ever again actually

I'd say "pretty anticlimactic" but that would imply there were any kind of expectations

YOU DON'T SAY, JAMON

Hey there’s notes from the author, too. I haven't read them while reading the story. Let's see.

Fitz no

Oh my god.

Are you... are you advertising your other books now

I don't know if I admire you or hate you for admitting this. I really don't know.

This might be the first time I've read a terrible book which actually convinces me its author is somebody interesting and funny, because at least it was bad in an interesting way. Maybe his other books are better. We'll see.

#The Slow Empire #eighth doctor adventures #Eighth Doctor #Fitz Kreiner #Anji Kapoor #EDAs #An EDA liveblog full of useless comments #doctor who #long post #gif #caps lock #body horror tw

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hqtbells-blog · 8 years ago

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plot bunnies masterlist. ✍🐰

Hey guys! So one of my goals for 2017 was to make my year in Scandalous as enriching and inclusive as possible. Come August, I will have been a member of this group for four years - that’s insane. I’ve never been part of a role play group for that long and it’s all due to the fellow writers that surround me here. It’s been so much fun playing Troian here and getting the chance to interact and write and plot with as many of you as possible. Sometimes I wonder how I haven’t run out of muse for her just yet since with other characters, I lasted only months feeling creative on them but I know that the biggest reason is all her connections. From gif chats to paras to chatzies to text threads - I love all of it and I’m so thankful you guys seem to care about my fictional queen. As much as I love real life Troian and hope that I’m playing at least all of her best qualities as true to life as possible, I also feel like I’ve made her my own completely with her own backstory and her own history that’s mine entirely. I’m probably never going to actually meet Troian (but hey, just standing next to her and hearing her voice in my ear was enough), so my characterization of her comes from interviews and articles and just..me, I guess. So thank you for indulging me in playing her because she’s honestly my true escape.

And that goes for Ian and now Lili as well! I took on Ian after several portrayals of him so I was lucky enough to get plots and connections instantly, but Ian’s friendships and the ship of Ian x Lucy has been so much fun to play as well. I’m not quite as educated on him as I am with Troian, or even Keegan for that matter, but I still love that adult man child so much so I’m happy you guys are always willing to interact with me on him as well. As for Lili, well - there’s literally not even a Wikipedia page dedicated to her yet. I’m going with scraps here so Lili’s also going to be a character I basically create from scratch. I can’t wait.

I rambled enough, and the whole point of this post is that I want plots. I need plots. On all of my characters. I want to write with as many of you as I can and I want my previous connections to thrive and new connections to grow. I know how nerve wracking it can be approaching players for plots and there’s always that “uhh..I really wanna write with you but I don’t know what to do..” since most of it is based on chemistry, yeah? You can’t just jump into a ship plot or a fwb plot or any sort of relationship plot without seeing if your chemistry meshes together first. So these ideas are more based on settings, and if any of them interest you, please message me and we’ll get more into detail! Like I said, this can be with Troian, Ian, or Lili. I don’t want to do repeat plots so please don’t ask me to do the same plot on more than one character, because we’ll both just get bored. We want variety, right? We want it all. So take a look over, see if any catch your eye and I can’t wait to write with you!

001. My character and yours decide to spend the night in a “supposedly haunted” house. It can actually be haunted, it can just be aesthetically creepy, but they’re spending a whole night in there with nothing but flashlights, their cellphones, a sleeping bag, snacks and maybe a video recorder.

002. My character or your character comes onto the scene to see m/y getting arrested or pulled over. Is it all a big misunderstanding? Is alcohol involved? Are charges pressed? The severity of it is up for negotiation! (Please keep in mind your character’s criminal history, the affects it would have on their life e.g. children, partner, work, and how any charges would impact their reputation.)

003. My character and yours are handcuffed to each other..and one of them has lost the key. Please note I did this plot on Ian with him and Lucy, and it took a more humorous route. It doesn’t have to be funny! Our characters can be pissed about having to spend the day together - it’s even better if your character is involved with another person or has to be on set that day. They have to spend a whole day together, a span of at least seven hours but the key eventually has to be found.

004. Somebody’s won the lottery - it’s the character of your choosing! The prize amount can range from one hundred dollars to five hundred. Our characters decide to have a Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Adventure with these winnings and cross items off their bucket list together. Keep in mind they have to stay in one state and obviously items checked off can’t be too big - no traveling to Europe or finding your long lost mother.

005. OPEN PROMPT - Troian will write a letter to her future self and your character can read it and respond to it. Note: We can also make this a plot! The letter can be left on her kitchen table, tucked into a book at the book store, etc.

(With open prompts, the post will obviously be locked so only your character can reply to it!)

006. M/Y character just got the crushing news that they didn’t make the dream audition they’ve been working so hard for - screw ‘em! They don’t know how good they could’ve had it. Alcohol (or something else if your character is a recovering addict) is the obvious cure and now the goal for tonight is to cheer you up and find you a new project.

007. This one will be pretty basic - think of something your character has always wanted to cross off their bucket list and ask my character to join you. They don’t have to be close, the whole point is that they do this together.

008. It’s late at night and m/y character is sitting down on the curb, looking sad and alone. They’re approached and pretty soon, they’re spilling their guts about their hopes and wants. They’re obviously in a pretty vulnerable spot, so maybe alcohol is involved. Maybe they’ve just been rejected. Maybe they’re having a bad night. This plot idea is pretty basic too - I just want our characters to have a deep chat. R E S E R V E D for; Lili + Keegan. @supitskeegs

009. OPEN PROMPT - It’s a game of truth or dare with Ian. No question is off limits, no dare too risky. (Please do not attempt to murder my adult baby tho.) R E S E R V E D for; Ian + Zendaya. @iaamz

010. OPEN PROMPT - Lili will write about her biggest regret, and your character will read it and be able to reply.

011. Last night is a blur - neither my character or yours remember it. It started out with a few tequila shots and then..just blackness. What’s even scarier is that our characters wake up in the same bed together the next morning. Note: Only with Lili will this plot extend to the possibility of our characters having slept together.

012. M/Y character can’t sleep. Tossing and turning, turning and tossing, and even counting sheep just won’t suffice tonight. Giving up the fight, they roll over and grab their phone. With eyes closed, they point to a contact in their address book and decide to text/call/FaceTime them to see if they’re up. Somebody’s got to lull you to sleep. R E S E R V E D for; Troian + Zoe. @hyfzoe

013. M/Y character has just gotten stood up. They worked really hard on looking nice too, even if they were a little reluctant about the date. Do our characters come across each other on the night out? Does someone call for a getaway car? Oh no - they can’t stop crying and now it’s up to the knight (or lady knight!) in shining armor to save the day! R E S E R V E D for; Lili + Grant. @theflashgrant

014. AU PROMPT - Zombie apocalypse! What do our characters do when the unthinkable happens? How do they fight off the zombies? Where do they hide? Note: This will probably be just a one shot but it could go into multiple threads if the story gets interesting!

015. AU PROMPT - Y/M character is homeless and has been that way for a while. Limited to stealing from the grocery store, sympathetic dollars from passersby, and soup kitchens, the other character comes across them one cold night. They’re trying to stay warm near and y/m takes pity on them and invites them back home.

016. AU PROMPT - Y/M character is the king/queen of their kingdom and the opposite is the new handmaiden/stable boy/whatever other title we can think of. How do our characters get along? Is it a forbidden friendship? Are they plotting something evil? Do our characters fall in love and plan to run away together?

017. OPEN PROMPT - Troian writes about the most unforgettable moment of her life and your character will be able to read it and reply.

018. AU PROMPT - The world is ending in exactly one week. How do our characters prepare for it? How do those last seven days go for us, together and apart?

019. Y/M character comes across the opposite getting very publicly reprimanded/insulted/jeered at/harassed and it’s unclear whether they deserve it (though if it’s sexual harassment - you know they don’t.). Regardless, they’re embarrassed. Tears are streaming down their face, cheeks are turning red, and now a whole crowd has gathered. What do you do to stop it? R E S E R V E D for; Troian + Grant. @theflashgrant

020. OPEN PROMPT - Ian writes about who he would most like to switch bodies with for a day and your character will be able to read and reply to it. Note: This can also be a Freaky Friday AU prompt for any character!

021. OPEN PROMPT - Lili writes about the bravest thing she’s ever done and your character will be able to read and reply to it.

022. Y/M character is getting hit on by a very intoxicated individual and they’re not impressed. Or maybe they’re amused. Or maybe they’re ready to grab that drink off the nearest table and throw it in this person’s face. Do you step in and try to get them out of it? Do you pretend to be their significant other? Do you distract them by adding yourself into the equation? What follows after is up to us! R E S E R V E D for; Troian + Keegan. @supitskeegs

023. OPEN PROMPT - Troian writes about the scariest moment of her life and the person who helped her though it. Your character is able to read and respond. Note: Depending on which moment I choose, I might also extend this open to the character she mentions if they are playable.

024. OPEN PROMPT - Ian writes about his biggest fear and your character is able to read and reply. R E S E R V E D for; Ian + JoAnna. @joannagrcia

025. Our characters go on a trip together. They don’t have to be close. They can be total strangers with each other, or they can be the best of friends. The point is that they’re spending a maximum of five days together in somewhere other the state/country they reside. How the trip comes about, where they go, what happens on it is entirely up to us and can be discussed! R E S E R V E D for; Troian + Nina. @nina--dobrev

026. Y/M character comes across the other writing/reading fan fiction. How embarrassing! Or not, if the character genuinely enjoys it. Our characters can talk about the fanfiction, can act it out (bonus points if they film it and share it with fans), or they can just be mortified and beg and plead to do anything so that the other person won’t tell their guilty little pleasure..

027. AU PROMPT - Ten years have passed for our characters and this is the first time they are seeing each other. What’s the relationship like? What happened in the past that they went years without contact? What’s been going on in their lives? Note: This plot works better for already tight-knit connections but we can make up histories! It is alternate universe, after all. :)

028. OPEN PROMPT - Lili writes about her biggest flaws and her biggest weaknesses. Your character is able to read and reply.

029. OPEN PROMPT - Troian writes about a huge event in her life that changed her world forever. Your character is able to read and reply.

030. Y/M character has just received a gift from the other, and it’s very unexpected. It’s something they’ve been wanting for a while! Why did the character do this? What’s the gift? The only thing that has to be certain about this plot is that it’s positive. No negative gifts. No prank gifts. Just a simple, fluffy plot about the kindness of a character.

031. AU PROMPT - Our characters get thrown into a fictional universe for a day and have to live in that world. Where are they? Do they get thrown into a plot? How the heck do they get out?!

032. Y/M character is baby-sitting and oh shit, they’re baby sitting an actual demon spawn. They call the other character for help! Just how messy of a situation are they in? (I’d very much like to do this plot because Lord knows I have personal stories to back this up..) R E S E R V E D for; Troian + Sophie. @sophieteex

033. The weather is crazy outside. It’s practically hurricaneing/tornadoeing/snowing/earthquaking/whatever weather condition you can think of. The only thing that can’t be changed is that our characters are stuck together until it’s over.

034. OPEN PROMPT - Ian writes about his favorite book. Your character is able to read and reply.

035. Everything is going wrong today for y/m character. And now the opposite is dragged into it. Are they able to turn the day around? Why is the day going so bad? Did somebody break a mirror? Cheer up squad to the rescue. R E S E R V E D for; Ian + Grant. @theflashgrant

036. OPEN PROMPT - Lili writes about a time she was generous/somebody was generous towards her. Your character is able to read and reply.

037. OPEN PROMPT - Troian writes about the one thing she’d like to change about herself. Your character is able to read and reply.

So there you go! Plenty of options and I tried to make none of them require admin approval so that we have free reign to plot to our heart’s content. The AU prompts will be strictly chatzies since they have nothing to do with the present verse, and the open prompts will be more chat threads on the dash. I had so much fun compiling these together and if I’m lucky enough to get volunteers, I’ll be making a part two. Thanks for looking over and I hope some interest you!

#plot masterlist #i will most likely be reblogging this post at least for the next three? maybe two days so that it's not missed on the dash #again this is open for ALL of my characters #<33 #{ you know what they say about hope. it breeds eternal queueing. }

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