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llamagoddessofficial · 4 years ago

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Happy (late im sorry) birthday @aka-indulgence !!! I wrote you a special thing... with one of your special boyos whomst you managed to convert me into loving. I hope you had a fun day!!

Tw; caves, broken bones

You’d stopped screaming a while ago.

There were a lot of reasons- for one, the air in the cave was damp, thick, choking... screaming required you to take a deep inhale of the stale smog and your lungs were already starting to reject it. It was borderline unbearable and you were pretty certain that if you survived this, you’d be choking and coughing for a week at least.

... But that wasn’t the biggest reason. That wasn’t the most important reason you were keeping your mouth shut tight, as you laid on your back in complete darkness, eyes darting around as fast as they could and leg numb with agony.

By this point, screaming was a critical danger that would get you killed.

... The cave just behind the cliff was rumoured to be impossibly deep, to have once contained some kind of legendary terrifying monster that reacted violently to intruders and killed those who didn’t heed its immediate warnings to leave. Of course, there were no modern sightings of this mythical beast, and it definitely sounded less like fact and more like some urban legend designed to keep people away from a dangerous area. No one had ever mapped it... no one wanted to, even the most intrepid of local explorers. The stories (and a healthy serving of common sense) seemed to have prevailed long enough for that particular entrance to just be left alone.

...

So of course, your study group decided it’d be such a good place to spend a Friday night, armed with nothing but half-charged torches, rucksacks full of drinks, and borrowed walking shoes.

You could feel tears gathering at the corners of your eyes, gravity dragging them down the sides of your face as you stared upward into the total blackness. It was stupid to come down here, horror movie levels of stupid- but you just couldn’t say no to them. The study group was the closest thing you had to friends, and you let them lure you into coming along, you’d allowed yourself to be led by your terror of being left out.

... You had no idea how long you’d been lying on your back in total darkness with your immovable leg throbbing with pain, but it was getting clearer and clearer no one was coming back for you.

... So I guess you’ve been left out after all- left out in a cave to die.

...

A noise. You turned your head, quickly- a familiar blood red colour standing out against the black, closer than last time. Panic jolted through you once again and you grappled with your flashlight, turning it on and pointing it directly at the red; a harsh white circle of light appeared and illuminated a section of the cave. You saw bone and a wide maw of terrifying teeth for a split second before it retreated quickly from the glow in a flurry of movement, disappearing back into the nothingness, an aggravated snarl rippling through the cavern.

...

Your friends, if you could even call them that, seemed to have followed the philosophy of ‘don’t outrun the bear, just outrun the slowest person’. When the monster had attacked your group in the dark, everyone panicked and ran for the exit... and when you stumbled, falling down a steep shaft into what was most likely going to end up being your grave, you became the slowest person.

And the ‘bear’ focused on you.

... It was hanging around in the darkness surrounding you. You could hear it, scuttling, waiting, the terrifying sound bouncing off the walls and coming from every direction at once, you hated how your panic and the enclosed space worked perfectly together to fuck with your hearing. Your only hope was the flashlight you clutched in both quivering hands.

...

You turned to the left, and caught sight of the red again. An engorged, blood coloured orb, slowly moving closer to you like a stalking wolf- it paused when you raised the flashlight, ready to recoil, and you jammed your clammy thumb onto the on button.

...

Nothing.

...

“... N-no.” You said, tiny, voice cracking, shaking the device and mashing the useless button over and over. Suddenly, just like that, the darkness around you had swallowed you completely whole. “No, no, no...”

...

The monster made the same realisation you had. The flashlight was out of battery. The bloody red eye contracted a fraction... and then, upon realising your only line of defence was gone, advanced toward you.

...

You screamed as loud as you possibly could. You screamed with your whole chest, so hard it ricocheted across the walls and rang in your ears, you kicked your good leg against the ground in a desperate attempt to push yourself away but your heel just slipped on the floor. The sound didn’t deter it- and the eye got bigger and bigger, coming closer by the second, the true scale of the thing hunting you was dawning alongside the panic.

It’s gonna eat me.

The eye was the size of your fist. You could smell something, something warm, its breath, you were seized with unparalleled fear and you blindly swung the useless torch like a weapon. To your shock, it connected- landing squarely on what must’ve been a cheekbone. But it did about as much damage as a pillow would to a rhino and the flashlight shattered into pieces upon impact, with the monster not even so much as flinching.

It was definitely breath, you could feel it in your hair. It smelled like blood. Giant hands moved around your torso, under your arms, and picked you clean up off the ground- and the oh-so-familiar heavy ‘scuttling’ sound of him moving filled your ears.

S-someone help me!

You punched at his ribs, still ‘screaming' (it was hardly screaming anymore because it was punctured by cracks and thin breaths), the world was beginning to drown out. The sounds and smells and pain were all so overwhelming, the dark and red of his eye were already eating you before he’d even opened his mouth, all you could think about was how no matter how much you didn’t want to you were going to die.

...

Light. Light that wasn’t his eye. It was enough to distract from your shouting, pathetic attempt at making noise catching in your throat. Little glowing rocks- crystals, maybe, they dotted the floor and walls, creating a faint white that was just enough to see by but still filled the world around you with wriggling shadows.

... It was enough to, for the first time, properly see the creature that was taking you.

He was huge; a skeletal upper half, barrel-chested, shoulders twice the width of your own and a heavy sternum with ribs like prison bars. The size of his jaw and thickness of his teeth told you he wasn’t the kind of predator that wasted any time with theatrics; there was no serration, probably no venom, he wasn’t going to be using valuable time to suffocate victims. With a mouth like that he would get right to the point- crushing straight through bone like eggshell.

He was staring ahead. Concentrated.

... Your eyes darted past his skeletal body to the main thing you'd been afraid of seeing; his lower body was a centipede. Giant scar-mottled gleaming brown carapace, trailing off into the dark, massive hooked 'feet' working in perfect undulating tandem to move him effortlessly across the uneven cave floor. You had absolutely no idea how long he was, you couldn't even hazard a guess. No wonder you'd heard his scuttling all around you in the darkness, it wasn't your mind playing tricks on you, he'd literally been all around you- you never stood a chance, did you?

You'd wedged your arms between yourself and his massive ribcage, shaking hands pushing as hard as you could. Despite how obviously little it was counteracting his hold, it was your last way of feeling like you were fighting. Your face and neck ached, your chin was wobbling, your head pounded.. you were a melting ice statue ready to shatter at the slightest push.

You were running out of fight.

... He carried you up, over a lip, into a small alcove. A recessed section of rock, a cave within a cave- a slightly more concentrated cluster of those glowing stones revealed the interior was lined with furs, rags, chunks of sleeping bags, old and well-loved blankets. Some kind of nest.

I’m... am I hyperventilating? you thought, feeling disconnected and dizzy, mind retreating further and further away from your body as a final defence mechanism. Everything’s spinning.

...

Softness. At first, you thought you’d just gone completely numb... but when you concentrated a little more, you were surprised to find you were staring up at the glow-dotted stone ceiling.

...

... He’d... put you down. On his nest of blankets? He was hovering over you, breath still brushing your cheeks and forehead... that terrible eye shifted its gaze down your body, you felt like a dinner being surveyed.

... You couldn’t even bring yourself to try and wriggle away. What chance did you stand? Further and further into numbness... am I going into shock?

...

He reached toward your broken leg. You didn't even want to look at it; it hurt so badly. You squeezed your eyes shut, suppressing a sob.

...

Warmth.

A pleasant kind- like you'd just laid the broken limb beside a fire. Tingling faintly... magic? Healing magic? You couldn’t look, you didn’t have the stomach to see just how mangled the leg was, that’d just make it hurt even worse. But it was...

... Nice.

The warmth was like an eraser. It floated over the leg, fuzzy and comforting, and wherever it floated the pain just... ebbed away.

...

You opened your eyes again. When he stopped, there was no more pain in your leg. None at all. And he was just... sitting there. Staring at you.

...

“Y-you...” You croaked. The hole in the centre of his eyelight shrank a fraction. The magic felt like it was doing something to you; you could feel your shoulders slowly unwinding, chest relaxing enough for you to take breaths that actually filled your lungs, throbbing head settling down. “... You healed me?”

... Was clubbing him with a flashlight the wrong idea?

...

... He made a sound. Several sounds, actually... soft, throated, deep and staggered... chuffing, like a tiger. Such a gentle noise, for such a giant monster...

...

He seemed to make a decision. With one last little chuff and a nod to himself, his socket lidded... and he laid down next to you. One of his thick-as-your-head arms gently looped over your middle; you were vaguely aware of his centipede body gathering itself into the little alcove, some of it draping lazily over your lower legs.

... Keyword ‘vaguely’ aware. You were so tired, so tired and sick of being in pain, that you barely even wiggled in response to his strange cuddle-like gesture. He was... actually pretty warm... and he smelled like amber and campfires.

...

You were asleep before you could remember you needed to be scared of him touching you- that claws carding lovingly through your hair wasn’t supposed to feel nice.

#llama writes #centipede sans #HAPPY BIRTHDAYAAY #:DD #hope you enjoy owo #you made me like him so now im gonna make you read him #mWHAHAH

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oumaheroes · 4 years ago

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Earthbound: Arthur’s Story

Context:

Hundreds of years after the fall of Earth, mankind is slowly starting to return. Some people have a stronger urge to return than others, confused by fragments of memories from a life already lived.

Full fic can be found here.

---

Arthur is eight. He sits on the side of the playground, watching the children run about and play games together that he was never invited to play and which he doesn’t really want to, anyway. This is what he tells himself, at least, because really, he does want to play but whenever he’s asked to join in before, they’ve said no, so he’s stopped asking now. They’re fun to watch though, both the game itself and the people playing it. He can watch who cheats, who misses the kick, who pushes too hard on purpose and who kindly let’s things go.

He learns a lot, from watching.

Arthur has always watched. He watches his parents fight when they think he can’t hear or see them, he watches his mum graze her hand over Mr Benson’s arm as she passes him in the corridor of their building, watches his dad see and press his lips into a firm line but say nothing.

Arthur stands apart from other people, cut adrift on his own, and takes in what he sees, carries the information he finds in his mind like pebbles in a pocket and tucks them away for later. He feels that this keeps him safer, somehow, because he knows about things. Not that he knows what he will use any of what he’s learned for, or why he feels as though he needs to carry secrets that aren’t his in his heart, but he does, anyway.

Granddad tells him it’s ‘endearing’, that he watches, when he catches him doing so. Calls him patient, and a wise old soul with an island heart. Arthur doesn’t know what an island is, and Granddad tells him that it’s something Earth used to have, swathes of land rising out of the sea.

‘Is all land not an island, then?’ He asks, ‘Because the earth was mostly all sea, wasn’t it?’ At least, this is what he’s heard in school in lessons about the Fall; stale secrets as old and thin as air, a dying whisper across the ages from humanity long ago.

Granddad shakes his head and combs a calloused hand through Arthur’s hair. ‘No’, he says, ‘islands are smaller bits of land apart from the rest. They’re surrounded by the ocean, all on their own.’

He means it kindly but Arthur feels hurt anyway, because he doesn’t want to be on his own. He tries to make friends, tries to play with the other children and talk with them and share his collection of secrets but they never want to, telling him that he’s strange or haughty or boring.

Granddad notices his disappointment and crouches down to pull him in for a hug, pressing him into his chest. ‘No, it’s not a bad thing!’ he says, holding him tight. ‘Islands are strong, they stand up all on their own. The sea keeps on pushing and pushing, but an island pushes right back, no matter how hard it is.’

He pulls back, looks Arthur in the eye. ‘Don’t change for the sea of people, Arthur; you don’t need to be anyone but yourself. Sometimes it’s better to be an island, than to lose sense of who you are.’

Arthur nods, feeling better. Half of him hates that even Granddad sees him as that, alone and different, recognising his failure to fit in, but the other half of him takes pride in it, that he is who he is and if that’s different from everyone else, then maybe that’s okay. So, he carries on watching the children play games without him, carries on looking for secrets and listening for change, hoping all the while that, maybe, they’ll reach out and invite him in.

Arthur is eleven when his granddad dies. It wasn’t a surprise and he knew it was coming, but the blow hits him hard anyway and sweeps him off his feet. He feels hollow, like his insides have been carved out and not replaced with anything; a ringing deadened nothing that weighs him down and leaves him numb. It doesn’t seem real, because Granddad was here and now he’s not and Arthur is exactly the same but his world has collapsed. And that, that doesn’t seem possible because how can so much be the same when such a huge part is missing?

After the funeral, a sad sorry affair where adults drift aimlessly like ships unmoored, he hides himself away in his room where his heart hurts and he can hardly stop crying long enough to think. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do, now, because Granddad was the only person who really knows- knew- him. He curls in on himself, tight fists and thick throat, and reaches for an e-tab, loaded with stories Granddad thinks -thought- he’d like and even some straight from Granddad himself. They’re all old, old old old things about heroes and monsters, courage and loss, long journeys across wide wide seas, and from the tales of others Arthur forgets himself, briefly, and escapes for just a moment.

Using them to start, he begins to try his hand at his own.

Each night when he is supposed to be sleeping, Arthur huddles under his blankets and spins his own stories, weaving together all of the secrets he’s ever found to make somewhere real and alive; a large family with scores of people to talk to he sails ancient seas and explores the unknown, making friends wherever he goes. They speak to him as he sleeps in unknown familiar voices and it’s a place warm and happy where he can’t hear his parents scream at each other and someone will remember to wish him goodnight.

More and more Arthur hides himself away, feeding off tales of a different place entirely and a yearning in him grows so strong that he’s surprised no one can see it, read it like his soul is mapped on his skin.

Arthur is fifteen and his school have decided that it’s time for a school trip. It’s to the botanical gardens, this time, set up in the middle of the main city dome. It’s only recently been built because, as with all human colonies, the focus is on survival first, the basic needs for life: oxygen, water, heat, food. His colony isn’t new, but it also isn’t that old and things are just advancing enough that money can be spent on more frivolous things. The gardens are just plants: grasses and flowers and trees that aren’t good for anything other than looking pretty, he guesses, but it’s new and educational so his school bundles them all up into year groups and ferries them across town to study what’s there and write a journalistic report to justify the excursion.

Arthur has made a few friends now, people he can talk to about homework, sit on shuttles next to, and hang out with after school. The air between them is stale and flat but safe and predictable, and Arthur is thankful he has this, these people at least, who like him enough to tolerate his presence, a small fragile bridge connecting them together. They’re all corralled into dreary lines as they approach the gardens, Arthur’s group slinking at the rear, so it takes a while for Arthur to notice that they’ve properly arrived.

He hands over his ticket, watches it marked with a stamp, and turns his gaze to go through the doors and stops, dead. There, right at the start to welcome them in, is an assault of colour; flowers bursting from the ground in a cacophony of hues that capture the eye and dazzle him. It’s a vivacity that he’s never before dreamt was possible and he can’t look away, even as people jostle him to get past and he feels himself moving powerless along with the tide.

It’s odd, it’s strange because he’s seen flowers and things in e-books but he’s never seen any before in real life and he can’t seem to match them together in his head, the pictures in his mind and what is in front of him now. He’s overwhelmed with the experience, the sights, the smells- a heady thing that turns his mind to cotton, and he stumbles forward to touch them, fingers stroking velvety petals before his teacher pulls him sharply away.

‘Can you not see the signs?’ she hisses at him, ‘we need to stay off the grass; I told you all this in the shuttle. Don’t touch.’

Her voice comes at him through a fog and it is an effort to turn his head to look at her, nodding dumbly. ‘Sorry,’ he mutters, fingers tacky with pollen and time, ‘I just-‘

He just, what? He doesn’t have the words to describe this, what he’s feeling, even to himself; his emotions a curious storm of sensations: he feels home, he feels homesick, he feels calm and sad and happy and angry, for some reason because it’s so familiar and beautiful and achingly new that what he really wants to do, embarrassingly, is sit down on the grass and cry into the dirt.

Luckily, he has enough presence of mind and teenage pride to shake himself free of whatever is happening to him and manages to locate his friends, watching him awkwardly from the path. They greet him, unsure, but Arthur can’t bring himself to care, can’t bring himself to be ashamed for not hiding his strangeness, for letting his normalcy slip. He feels the bridges between them shake and weaken but his eyes dart about the trees, drinking in the depths of green and he struggles to stay afloat in today.

That night he dreams of the sea, the sea and the sky and an endless horizon that broadens outwards, endlessly, just for him and he feels the tug of the unknown call to him across a vast and forgotten ocean. Then, as the sea rocks him in his dreams it turns dark; pulling him down into its vast weight he drowns on sea foam and regret. Unfulfilled dreams and broken promises fill his boots and drag him down and it's all his fault, all of it, everything he ever did could have been so very different, all those people he hurt when he didn't mean to, all those terrible things he's said, all those-

He gasps awake.

His room is dark, starlight blocked by curtains, and unmoving, but still he feels rocked by non-existent currents and the room dips and sways when he moves his head to clutch at his knees.

The visit to the gardens, plainly, changes him; something morphs or grows within and he knows, deeply, that he doesn’t want to do anything else. He begins to select classes and at nineteen he specialises his studies in agriculture, in plants and trees and earth and grasses. He wants to grow them; learn how they work and how to use them for things. They have so many uses, in so many sectors, and Arthur can’t understand how other people don’t find them as fascinating as he does.

There’s a breakthrough, that year. Earth, the original home of humankind, becomes viable and opens its arms wide. They’re looking for people, for farmers and fishers and growers and makers to stabilise the colony and Arthur knows that that’s where he needs to be, that’s where he needs to go and he can’t wait, won’t wait, not for one moment longer. He applies, pouring hours over his application the days before he submits it because there is a wild hunger in him, a need that he knows deep in his bones won’t be extinguished any other way and he makes sure to press what he knows about plants into what he writes.

It’s a wait, a tense hard thing than wears at him, eroding him away but then, at last, confirmation; he’s in.

A two-year journey is all that’s between him and the sea of his dreams and the greenery of fields and trees. He tells his parents, separately. They divorced, last year, and Arthur is glad, so glad that they never had any children other than him, glad that there was no one else caught in that maelstrom of words and bitterness. It poisoned the house, poisoned the space between them all and filtered down to Arthur, trapped in the middle with nowhere to go.

But not anymore. He packs very little, stands to reminisce not for very long, before heading out of the door. He’s early, about five or so hours left before he can board, but once he’s said his goodbyes and gathered his things it’s as though he can’t stand to be there in that house, in that place, for one more second. The opaque material of his colony’s domes press down on him as he walks, murky and grey; he all at once feels as though he is sinking underwater and he stops on the way to the launch site, arms swinging and a pounding in his head. A deep breath, a catch in the throat, and he instead turns to veer back towards town, to the botanical gardens.

They’re familiar to him now, as known to him as his own hands, and he settles himself underneath a wide thick tree next to a bush of roses spilt red like blood and gets out an e-tab. His granddad’s voice emerges, soft and old like paper telling tales of the sea, and his words curl around Arthur’s chest to rock him back to himself and wish him good luck.

#APH England #APH #hws #HWS England #Hetalia Fanfiction #hetalia fic #My writing #arthur kirkland #one day i will finish the second part to Arthur's story by golly

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consumeconstantly · 5 years ago

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Small Buff Girl Sightings Ch. 2

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | ao3

It’s now the end of Damian’s first week in Paris, and everything is ready for him to transfer into Francois Dupont. He really thought he had dodged the pointless education bullet by coming to France, but of course his father wouldn’t let that slip. However, if he has to continue getting an education he doesn’t need, he will at least get something productive done during the hours of his experience; he will explore the so-called akuma class that he has read up about. One Caline Bustier’s class, the same class that the Ladyblogger is in. The same class that Marinette is in.

He hopes it’s the same as it was in Gotham, or at least similar enough. He expects his reception to be a little different, since his last name has been changed to Grayson to avoid any unwanted attention. Maybe this means that his classmates won’t try to talk to him solely for the purpose of connecting to his family. That doesn’t mean that he wants to talk to any of them. Unless they’re all like Marinette; his brief interactions with her have been bearable, bordering on pleasant. He doubts her class will be similar, though, judging by the quick sweep that he does on all of the student’s social media accounts and the hours that he’s spent on the Ladyblog. From what he has gleaned, the social situation in the akuma class leaves much to be desired. Lila Rossi, who appeared on the Ladyblog multiple times two years ago in rather ridiculous interviews that have since been taken down, seems to be the crux of the class currently. The rest of the class, other than Marinette, who hasn’t appeared in most of the group pictures that her classmates take for the past two years, seem to have little common sense.

When he walks into the classroom, there is a huddle around Lila Rossi, who sits near the front of the classroom and looks astonishingly bored as her classmates talk to her. The members of the class don’t even look up at him when he comes in, instead looking at Lila with almost cult-like devotion, despite the awful shade of lipstick that did not look good on her-- seriously, who wore orange lipstick on a day to day basis? He spares them a moment of observation, decides that he’s not going to get along with his classmates at all, then takes a seat in the back. There is only one desk that has both seats empty-- or is at least currently unoccupied, judging by the lack of items on it. The desk in question is near the back of the classroom next to an exit. He prefers this to sitting in the front, at least.

Right before class starts, a girl drops into the seat next to him, the one that’s closer to the aisle instead of the exit, but the way that she pauses for a moment makes him think that she typically sits where he is, now.

“Damian?”

What luck. Marinette is his seat partner. One of the only people in Paris that he’s talked to that seems to be fairly tolerable. With the added bonus of her being fairly intelligent and able to hold her own. There isn’t much more that he could ask for in a seatmate.

He is confused as to how such a girl is still in this seemingly god-awful class, but small blessings. He’s not going to complain about having Marinette by his side.

“Oh, you must be the transfer from America.” She pulls out a binder from her bag, sends a quick glance sent to Lila, then settles into her chair. Lila sends Marinette a look that Damian can’t quite decipher, but it’s not unfriendly. “If you want to get acquainted with the school, you can ask Lila or Alya. Lila’s the one with orange lipstick and green eyes. Alya’s the one in plaid with glasses. They’re the class president and deputy this year.”

Damian takes a few more moments to observe the class dynamics, particularly how Lila and Alya interact with those around them. The former holds a blonde boy that Damian is fairly sure is Adrien Agreste, and while he seems accustomed to having Lila hang off his arm, he doesn’t exactly look comfortable either. Lila’s eyes unsettle Damian. They look eerily similar to his mother’s, though there is much less ill intent held within them. Alya looks spineless and clingy, clearly uneducated about topics that she brings up one after another. He can’t hear what they are saying clearly from this distance, but he is certain that the small blonde girl was asking Lila to tell the story of how she saved Jagged’s kitten one more time, even though that story’s years old because Lila’s just so humble and modest and amazing. Surprisingly, Lila turns down the girl’s request, and continues to barely interact with her classmates while she continues to hold onto Adrien’s arm.

Jagged as in Jagged Stone, Damian assumes, and though he’s no fan himself, factoids about the rock star’s life have been shoved down his throat by Tim and Dick for the past five years, so how the hell could he not know that a) the star’s manager was deathly allergic and b) the star said that Fang was the best pet that could ever be and he could never want for anything more.

“You can tour me around instead.” To be completely honest, he doesn’t need a tour around the school at all; Damian did do reconnaissance before starting this mission. He knows the school’s layout like the back of his hand after pouring over maps and information about Francois Dupont. However, he is particularly interested in the dynamics of the akuma class, and he might as well get insider information while he still can.

Marinette looks at Damian appraisingly. “I don’t know about that, Damian. Lila and Alya are fine at giving tours. You’d be in capable hands.”

“Hands capable of what?” Damian can’t imagine that Lila’s claws are good for anything except skewering people who tried to disprove her seemingly outlandish tales. He almost feels bad for Adrien, then thinks better of it; he doesn’t seem that uncomfortable with Lila, he just doesn’t seem to like her hand on his arm.

Marinette laughs, softly, focusing on the group. She moves her mouth so little that if anyone looks, it will appear as though he is talking to her without response. “Very funny. Seriously, if you want a tour, ask Lila or Alya. I’m really not the best person for the job.”

The teacher comes into the room, and the students slowly disperse back into their seats.

When lunch comes around, Marinette packs her stuff up and gets out of the classroom so quickly, he wonders if she’s not some sort of athlete.

“You’re Damian, the transfer from America!” Lila puts a manicured hand on his arm, and Damian almost thinks that he sees her lick his lips as his forearm flexes at the unexpected contact. He restrains himself from his initial thought to deck her, but barely.

He takes a deep breath and gets his disgust under control. He can control himself. Alfred and Dick have spent years ensuring that he knows what a normal reaction is to someone touching him. When his eyes aren’t seeing red anymore, he turns his attention back to the hand on his arm. Her nails are the same garish orange as her lips, and it’s the case of the chicken and the egg all over again. No matter which came first, though, the color looks bad on both. Jason will say that Damian can’t criticize the girl because of his own awful sense of color coordination, but there’s a reason why he doesn’t have any color in his wardrobe besides his Robin suit.

“Come, sit with us.” Orange’s voice is nauseatingly fake.

Damian doesn’t outright refuse, but he does shake off the girl’s hand. She feels too similar to Talia up close. Her eye shape is eerily similar. She must be manipulative and cunning to have such a hold on the class. But, he might as well see exactly what the akuma class is all about.

He is escorted into the cafeteria, pushed next to Adrien, then given a lunch tray that has foods that look decidedly less than nutritious and possibly stale. At Gotham Academy, the food was always prepared by the best, so this is unusual for him.

“My name is Adrien. It’s nice to meet you.” Damian thinks the blond boy is nice enough, but he sounds tired and worn out.

Moments later, Lila comes back from the bathroom and squeezes herself between Damian and Adrien, looping her arm through Adrien’s and then attempting to do the same with Damian. But his arms are so tightly at his side, that it’s impossible for her to wiggle her hand through. Damian is glad that he trained himself to eat with both hands, and quickly takes up a fork with his left. Her laugh is high and breathy, like she’s changed her voice to sound different.

He has to say that it feels disgusting, because it feels like she’s treating him as some sort of arm candy. For the first time in his life, he actually thinks about his gender and is very glad that he was born a boy. Had he been born a girl, there is no doubt that this kind of situation may have happened more often; Damian knows he’s attractive. His mother and father both have very good genes both look wise and talent wise.

Not even ten minutes go by, and Damian sees why Marinette high-tailed it out of the classroom so quickly. He wishes that he went with her instead, though he gets the feeling that he isn’t welcome to do so.

The stories that Lila weaves for her life as of late are more convincing than the ones that his classmates have told him of her heroic deeds in the past. Damian can almost believe that they’re true-- helping out with food drives, volunteering with the Red Cross occasionally-- but he doubts the validity of any statement that comes from her mouth after finding the cache of interviews from three years ago. She’s focusing more on friends, she says as she tries to catch his arm again. She leans closer, and Damian can smell the floral perfume on her so strongly that it makes him nauseous. His mother never wore perfume. Nobody from the League of Assassins did. Perfume is something that’s traceable. After he was introduced to Gotham City, all of the women he came into contact with rarely wore perfume and when they did, it certainly wasn’t this floral fruity-fresh fragrance that Lila was drenched in.

She leans on him, and Damian’s pretty sure by the curve of the girl’s smirk and the glint in her eyes that he’s supposed to find the slight touch of her cleavage on his arm attractive. This paltry attempt at seduction is laughable. Even as a nine year old, his mother had him training against attacks like these. He was taught never to give into lust, and after living in a family like the Waynes, girls and boys alike threw themselves at him. If he wants a relationship, physical or otherwise, he can have one. He certainly doesn’t want a relationship with this Lila Rossi. Still, he doesn’t see why she has so much control over the classroom and certainly doesn’t see why Marinette is so excluded from their class.

It’s the longest hour of his life, but Damian makes it through and nearly flees for the safety of the back seat in the classroom. Nearly, but not quite.

By the time Damian gets into the room, Marinette is already sitting at the desk again. She looks up, looks at Lila who has looped her arm with Adrien’s and is smiling at Damian like a cat who got the cream. Damian reads sadness and maybe a touch of concern when she looks at Adrien.

“Lunch was awful.”

“Was it.” It’s phrased like it should be a question, but it doesn’t sound like Marinette is curious.

“You could have told me.”

Her lips purse. She’s copying notes from the last class over again, making them neater and more organized. “That’s not my place.”

“You’re my seat partner.”

“So?”

“Somehow, you seem a lot more morally righteous when you’re out on the streets.”

“That’s different. Paris is Paris; class is class. There’s a time and place for everything.”

From the cacophony near the front rises Lila’s high pitched voice. Damian thinks that she’s modulated it in order to seem more innocent, more believable. “Oh, Adrien, I’m so happy that we’re going to have dinner together with your father tonight.”

Marinette’s eyes raise from her paper. They search for Adrien. Adrien, whose shoulders are hunched in a way that speaks of tiredness and defeat. Adrien, who has eye bags that even concealer cannot fix. Adrien, who looks down at his hands and refuses to meet Marinette’s eyes and their soft, sad questions.

Slowly, Marinette’s eyes lower. She blinks at her paper, then continues copying her notes.

At the very least, Damian is glad that he’s sitting back here with the only sane person in this class. It isn’t like Damian is here to make friends anyways. It might have been helpful, but he doesn’t need other people’s help. He can manage on his own.

Scratch that, he could not manage.

Damian now understands why Hawkmoth had not been captured even though it had been three years since his appearance. Magic is really annoying.

He reports back to the Justice League that yes, the reports were true and no, he did not think it was a good idea to send anyone in yet and yes, he would continue to work on reconnaissance and figuring out who Hawkmoth was.

Despite three more akuma attacks(of increasing intensity) and hours prowling the internet, clues about Hawkmoth’s identity are few and far between. Early on in his mission brief, he was encouraged to not make contact with the Paris superheroes unless the situation got really bad and not to go patrolling the rooftops as Robin at all. They didn’t want to destress the Parisian heroes who had, at first, asked them for help, and then pleaded with them to not send anybody. All of the lack of information and lack of action gave him undue stress, more so than when he was back in Gotham. At least back there, the high stress situations he encountered would promptly be worked off by fighting a villain, sparring his brothers, or patrolling. He can’t do any of that here.

The coffee he ordered finally arrives, and he downs it in one shot, surveying the streets in front of him. Parisians are weird. His classmates have one collective brain cell that resides with the orange monstrosity, Lila, and the people he meets on the streets are way too open and friendly for people who have been terrorized by a supervillain for three years. They should be more like the citizens of Gotham-- keeping their heads down, minding their own business. Instead, he’s been approached by countless people as he wandered around the city-- unsurprisingly, mostly from girls sent by a larger pack in attempts to get his number or ask him on a date-- and also by random people who want to cheer him up. What kind of person tries to cheer up random people on the streets? Apparently it’s something that many Parisians have taken to doing, in attempts to prevent more akumas. Damian doesn’t think it’s very successful on that part, and is more just an excuse for people who want to stick their noses where they don’t belong.

Marinette is the only Parisian who was better than decent at holding her own Damian��s seen so far; in the past week, he’s stopped three bag snatchers, two stalkers, and two random fights. It’s surprisingly lively for a city that is plagued by a villain who takes advantage of strong emotions. He asks one of the people he saves why this is so.

“Well, it’s been three years. For the first year, yes, we very much lived in fear. But Ladybug and Chat Noir always come to save the day, and they told us that holding in our emotions is even more unhealthy.” This, a man he saved from his stalker. “That talk came after they fought off a stream of very strong akumas that totalled the city, all because they had been repressing their emotions until the breaking point.”

That is useful information. It definitely explains why the city is the way it was, though with the number of tourists that Paris has, he’s surprised that this hasn’t become headlining news internationally. He finds a few threads on Twitter talking about it, but most people are convinced it’s some ongoing stunt for attention. Apparently there’s a movie out about Ladybug and Chat Noir? Damian knows that Mayor Bourgeois put an initial block on information about the akumas from getting out, but that shouldn’t have stopped the Justice League from getting their hands on information about the situation in Paris. However, the teams that have been looking into the situation since they found out have had very little luck finding anything other than conspiracy theories. If Damian hadn’t seen an akuma battle with his own eyes, he’d have thought he was sent on a wild goose chase.

Damian feels a cross of pity for the Parisian superheroes and a brief moment of anger at Hawkmoth. From what he’s gathered, the Ladybug and Chat Noir are largely on their own. In that first year, there were a few other heroes in the mix-- a fox, a bee, a dragon, and a snake-- but their appearances became sparse and after a mass akumatization, they never appeared again. Ladybug and Chat Noir definitely stepped up their game in that second year, with Ladybug taking the lead so strongly that Damian isn’t sure that he can call them a pair of superheroes.

Sure, the battles end more quickly with Chat Noir there, but there are plenty of occasions where he doesn’t show up at all and other fights where he stays out of the battle entirely. Oftentimes, in the second year, both heroes looked extraordinarily tired and peaky. Then, something had changed, and Ladybug no longer seemed to be bothered. That was when Chat Noir started staying out of more and more battles, and the few times that he showed up, he always ran off first. Their media appearances, which had been rather heavy in the first year, dwindled down to a few periodic and important announcements. Other than that, they never gave more interviews to smaller blogs, like the Ladyblog. He has to say that he’s not surprised; even though Alya has taken them down, Lila’s interviews were still riddled with lies and she had posted them. Ladybug must have felt that the blog's integrity decreased.

All of this meaningless information leads him nowhere. The Ladyblog and several other news sources have contemplated Hawkmoth’s identity and purpose, but they all seem far fetched. Motivations include everything from world destruction to believing that this is all just a ploy to get Ladybug and Chat Noir media attention. There’s not even any concrete conclusion on Hawkmoth’s gender, though the majority opinion holds that he is a man.

He sees Marinette from the coffee shop windows. It’s amazing that this girl seems to be everywhere all at once. She always ends up near the akuma attacks, but he never spots her during them, which is curious. There’s only so many reliable places to hide. Today, she’s facing down some adult while holding a child behind her. The lady looks furious, red-faced and spittle flying. In contrast, Marinette looks calm and cold, and addresses the woman cordially, though not with respect.

A crowd gathers, but as in all things that might be dangerous, they form at a distance, with phone cameras at the ready. Damian joins them and watches the situation unfold.

“He’s my child. I get to decide how to discipline him.” The lady is wearing an expensive looking suit that is a little over the top. Her hair is perfectly coiffed, and her handbag costs at least two thousand dollars.

“Even if he is your child, that doesn’t mean you can hurt him like this. Mademoiselle, I suggest that we go to the police station now.”

“I don’t have time for that. This brat already cost me an hour of my time to pick him up from school because he was misbehaving, and I have to get to the office now.” The lady hisses, draws closer, ready to push Marinette and grab her child. Marinette side steps, pulling the child behind her.

“You’re a mother. Make time for your child. We are going to the police station, Mademoiselle, or I will call the police here.”

“I am one of the head managers of Silverstein and Company’s Paris branch. You are just a teenager. You have no place arguing with me over parenting tactics.”

“I am only a teen,” Marinette conceded, “But even a child knows when something is wrong and should be stopped. And abusing your child, Mademoiselle, is very clearly wrong.”

Marinette brings out her phone-- she must have the station on speed dial. Now, the woman approaches Marinette with a heavy hand, ready to slap her. The kid is hiding behind Marinette and quivering, very much afraid of his mother. He’s holding Marinette’s hand so tightly that Damian can see her fingertips have begun to turn blue.

Damian figures this is as good a time as any to intervene, so he puts himself between Marinette and the lady. Marinette backs up a little more, bends down to the kid and pats his shoulder.

“It’ll be okay,” Marinette says to the kid soothingly. She seems like the type to babysit. Good with kids, creative enough to keep them out of trouble, but with enough of a backbone to make sure they grow up right.

The police show up in record time, and Damian wonders whether Marinette has Special Privileges that make officers show up more quickly. It would make sense, since she always seems to be getting people out of trouble. Too bad she seems too much on the side of the law to ever become a vigilante. The world could use more people like her, active in helping others.

The four of them are instructed to go the police precinct; the woman says that she’ll take her car, and looks expectantly at her child, thinking that he’ll come with her. Marinette pushes the boy even further out of the woman’s view and meets the lady with a glare.

“Do you mind if we ride with you in the back, Officer?”

The three of them pile into the back of the cruiser, and Damian feels like this is some sort of twisted irony. He’s sent many a villain to jail, but he himself has never been in the back of such a police car. In the back of a high security one, once, when he was on an infiltration mission, but the back of such a normal one? Never. It’s an interesting experience to say the least; there’s mesh between the officer and themselves, and no way to get out from the back themselves. It’s also decidedly hot in the back, with plastic seats and no air conditioning.

Marinette is cooing at the child now, who is gripping her hand only slightly less tightly. “Don’t worry, Renee, we’re going to make sure that you don’t get hit like that again.”

The kid’s eyes are glassy, then he’s all tears, and he’s crying into Marinette’s shirt. She just pats him on the back, slowly, and lets him cry it out. It’s very different from the approach that Batman, the Nightwing, Red Hood and Robin take with their victims. Most times, they just let the victims be ushered wherever the police need then to be, and then, they never see them again. Damian justifies this with the fact that fundamentally vigilantes and regular people are different. It makes sense that Marinette has a more human touch to her. She’s not wearing a bodysuit. It’s all Marinette, and that makes the whole situation more powerful.

It only takes a few more moments for the boy to cry himself to sleep.

“I want to file with Child Protection Services.” Her voice is soft, low. She speaks carefully so as not to wake the kid up.

“Yes, we should file with CPS, but if this is just a one time thing there’s not really much that we can do about this.” The officer sounds sad, like he’s dealt with situations like this before.

“As long as we have proof that this isn’t a one time thing, we can make sure that Renee doesn’t go back with her unless he wants to?” There’s a flash of steel determination in Marinette’s eyes, and it almost makes Damian uncomfortable. It’s the look Barbara gets when one of them get really badly injured.

“Yes, but that kind of proof is hard to get.”

“I see,” she says, like she really does see all of the situation and knows exactly what needs to happen next. She says it like she’s going to make Renee’s mother go to jail if it’s the last thing she does.

They arrive at the precinct, and Marinette carries the boy like its nothing. Damian offers to help, but he’s shaken off. Renee is already asleep in her arms, after all, and she doesn’t want to risk waking him up. She’s sure that he's tired, after all this. It’s a curious thing, how softly and lovingly she looks down at the boy, even though Damian suspects that Marinette has never met the boy in her life before this fiasco.

Their party arrives more quickly than the mother, so they take seats in a small office, Renee still on Marinette’s lap. She’s now scrolling through her phone, assessing whatever’s on her screen with a clinical eye. Damian pulls out his phone as well. To be honest, he’s not quite sure what he’s doing here. He only stepped in at the last second, though he doesn’t have any real complaints about being here. His father would say it’s an experience, and his siblings would joke that he finally ended up in the hands of the police.

When the lady arrives, she looks nothing like that woman he saw on the streets earlier. She looks every inch a professional. Her makeup has been touched up, and there is a smile plastered on her face that screams dealing with an unpleasant situation.

“I’m so sorry about that,” she says to Marinette like she’s an old friend. “You know how it is-- sometimes it’s really hard to keep a level head with all that goes on in the city. I was so scared for my little boy-- I heard there was an akuma attack near his school, and rushed out to get him, but he wanted to stay with his friends.”

Marinette has a polite smile fixed on her face as well. Her face doesn’t show the slightest bit of reaction to the lady.

“Kids, am I right?” The lady tries for a joke, tries to sway Marinette and the officer and Damian to her side. “So just let me pick up Renee here, and I’ll bring him back home.”

The lady reaches for Renee, and Damian stops her because Marinette has both her hands full with Renee, who has woken up with shuddering sobs.

“Officer, is it possible if Renee can wait outside of the room while we talk? Surely there’s somebody who can watch him out there.” Her voice is still kept soft and soothing. She looks at Renee and smiles, doesn’t bother looking at the rest of her surroundings. “Is that okay, Renee? Do you mind waiting outside for a little?”

The little boy nods, and he is swept up by some other person who works at the precinct, and then it is only the four of them in the room.

The lady looks frustrated, but she keeps her mouth shut as the officer goes through the proper procedures that they must follow, and that CPS is getting involved.

“But officer, there’s no need to get CPS involved. I take very good care of my darling Renee. He gets to go to all the classes he could ever want to and I love him very much. I’m so sorry that he got bruised. I’ll make sure that it never happens again.”

Marinette’s hands are carefully laid on her pants. Her fingers are splayed open and the entirety of each palm rests on her thighs. A gesture that makes her look relaxed, were it not for the slight tremble that Damian detects. She is holding her hands in that position so tightly that Damian has good reason to believe that she is withholding herself from hitting the woman.

“Madame DeVries.” Marinette’s voice is clipped. “CPS must be involved. I insist. It’s very clear to me that this is not the first time that you have hurt Renee, nor will it be the last.”

“How can you say that?” The lady wails. She is an okay actress, but not able to fool any of those present in the room. “I love my darling boy. I would never hit him. Never!”

“Regardless of whether this is the first time you hit him, there are more ways to hurt a person than just physical abuse. Renee’s fear of you makes it clear that you have induced some sort of psychological trauma on him.”

The lady’s face contorts into a sneer when she realizes that nobody in the room is on her side. “You have no evidence. You can’t accuse me like that. I’ll call a lawyer.”

“Go ahead and call a lawyer, Madame. I think that would be for the best. Don’t worry about the evidence. There’s plenty.” She turns to the officer. “Please call someone from CPS here. I don’t want Renee going home with her until the trial is over.”

“You can’t do that to me.” The lady is standing now, towering over Marinette and trying to intimidate her. “I have a reputation to uphold. You will not sue me for child abuse. You cannot.”

“Any parent who truly cares for their child would care more for their child’s well being rather than their own reputation. I wonder what that says about you, Madame. There is no reason why I can’t sue you and too many reasons that I should.”

She lowers herself to Marinette's ear, whispers in soft tones that she’s certain will not be caught by any recording devices. “You will not take me to court, or I’ll make sure that you are blacklisted wherever you want to work. You underestimate how much power I have.”

“Madame, please move away from me. I was only going to attempt to remove Renee from your custody, but please be assured that I will now pursue you for threatening a minor, abusing a child, and whatever other charges that I can come up with. I will refuse to settle. The trial will go public, and the reputation that you care so much about will be ruined, even if you win.”

Celia Devries’ face shifts to an almost cattish grin. It looks like she’s won. “Please, I understand that you’re distressed, but I haven’t threatened you at all.”

Marinette simply pulls her phone out again and plays back a recording of the exact threat that Celia just made to her.

She splutters. “I never agreed to be recorded! It’s illegal under French code.”

“Madame DeVries, when you come into the precinct, you agree to being recorded. This recording might be from my personal phone, but it is still within legal jurisdiction. In addition, the code is different for gathering evidence against a crime. Everything that is said and done in this office can be disclosed during trial, and there are cameras and voice recorders in here. Please, return to whatever you had to do, and you will be served your court orders soon enough.” Damian is impressed. Has Marinette done this before? She’s too prepared to know this just by spending a few minutes on her phone.

Celia pales, then storms out of the room, frightened that she’ll say something else that will incriminate herself.

“At least Hawkmoth has already filled his daily quota,” the officer jokes.

“There’s that much, at least,” Marinette smiles, but there’s something frigid behind it.

“You’re always getting caught up in something,” Damian says.

“I really am. Some day I’ll become a recluse.”

“And let the world’s horrors move without you?”

Marinette shrugs and all of the tension that was holding in her hands and shoulders dissipates.

“Since this is a child custody case, it will be the government against Mademoiselle DeVries. The two of you can come to testify, and if there’s any evidence that you have, you can go ahead and give it to me now. If you want to sue her for threatening a minor, you can do that as well; I’ll get you in contact with a lawyer.”

“I don’t have any evidence.” Right now, at least. When Damian goes home, he’ll do a little digging about the woman, see what he can find.

“I do. I was recording the whole encounter on the street, and I also have several eyewitnesses who have recorded as well. Let me send them to you.” Marinette fiddles with her phone. “And if it’s possible, I think it would be a good thing for Renee to talk to a psychiatrist. In the interim before he goes home, who will he be staying with?”

“He can choose to stay with his next of kin, or can stay in a temporary foster home.”

“Please email me the date that I should come in to testify, and give me the lawyer’s contact information as well. I’ll email him any additional evidence that I can get.”

“I’d like the email address of the lawyer as well.” Damian might only have a moral conscience because his family beat it into him, but Renee seems like a sweet kid. He’s willing to help.

They’re out of the precinct in another half hour, after Marinette pulls the person from CPS in so they can talk to Renee about what’s going to happen next. The kid takes it surprisingly well, saying that he doesn’t want his mom to get hurt, but that he’s excited to see his Nonna and Nonno again. Marinette tells him that he can contact her any time he wants to talk at her cell phone number, and if he ever wants him to visit, just call.

All the buzz of the world seems to die down when they get out of the precinct, and Damian asks whether she’s done this before.

“I haven’t done anything like this before, but I’ve certainly dreamed of it.” Her eyes look off to a distance. “Abusive parents are the worst.”

“Yours?” Damian can’t imagine this girl’s parents as being abusive, but he should have known better to believe that. Just because someone is stable and competent doesn’t mean that they have a good family-- just look at him and his brothers. They’re competent and stable on good days.

She gasps and looks shocked, verging on offended and embarrassed. “Of course not! My parents are both very sweet people. I love them so much-- I can’t believe I gave you that idea! No, I was talking about a friend’s parent. Anyways, thank you for stepping between me and that woman. You always seem to help me right when I need it.”

Damian doesn’t really think that Marinette needed his help much in any of the situations that he’s seen her. He doesn’t mind the false gratitudes, though it does irk him that he’s never actually helped her. Odd, considering that what little morality he had mostly pertained to life threatening situations, and Marinette’s issues were more in line with everyday annoyances. “And yet you refuse to help me out with Lila.”

Her face immediately sours. “Like I said; class is class. It’s different at Francois Dupont.”

“And why is that?”

“If you want help catching up or something, I don’t mind helping you outside of class, but you can’t tell anyone. It’s better for you if you’re not seen with me.” Her hand is tight on her purse.

At the risk of feeling like a whiny child, Damian asks again. “But why shouldn’t I be seen with you?”

Marinette sighs, heavily, then looks around at the people on the streets, almost like she’s looking for somebody. “Let’s just say that Lila and I have come to an agreement. The rest of the class isn’t the fondest of me, and if you’re seen talking with me, that will be bad for both of us. I don’t want any problems.”

“Tt. I see.” It seems as though he will also spend some time tonight looking into the history of his class.

#miraculous ladybug #daminette #maribat #mlbxdc #dc #sbgs #original content #adrien agreste #lila rossi #marinette dupain cheng #damian wayne

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needletail · 5 years ago

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Nintendogs vs Nintendogs + Cats: a review and comparison.

There’s no doubt that most people want a new Nintendogs game for the Nintendo Switch. But when I see these posts, very few of them are referencing the 3ds variant of the game, but rather the original ds version that everyone continues to know and love.

The addition of cats is Nintendogs + Cats’ most notable feature. It was, while cute and fun for a short period of time, notably worse than its predecessor. But why is that? The formula stayed roughly the same, but the charm didn’t quite hit.

Before we dive into this: these are my opinions on the games, and personal comparisons. Every person experiences things differently, and will likely have different opinions.

We can start with breaking down the original Nintendogs. The graphics have not aged well, but the charm and entertainment factor have. While replaying, I found that the general ambience and the music used endeared me further to the game, and I wanted to play more. The half hour timer on going for walks was frustrating (as was the stamina system), but it otherwise engaged me more to figure out where I wanted to go. The map feels surprisingly big with so much to do, and the side-scrolling walk screen keeps the mystery alive in what you’ll encounter. The competitions were fun and the voice recognition system may have been even better than the 3ds incarnation. The only thing that really suffered were the graphics - but this game is 15 years old and this was advanced for its time, so we can let that slide. The dogs can be a little strange to look at at times, but they’re expressive and distinct, which is what matters in a pet simulator.

The information you can take in is optional, but an exciting part of the game for those who are interested. Your dog’s profile is detailed but easy to understand, going as far as to tell you what it ate last. There’s something so charming about it being displayed as if it were a document you had in front of you - it brings another element of immersion into this sim.

[Image ID: a photograph of the informational sheet on Nintendogs. It includes the name, gender, breed, trainer, time together, coat, hunger, thirst, and things eaten. The trick list and contest results are also on this screen.]

From cars passing by to horns in the distance and dog barks from somewhere vaguely nearby, the sound design of Nintendogs is audibly aged, but still strong. The few tracks spread in the game are iconic, and stay in my head a lot longer than I’d like to admit.

The competitions are another huge highlight of the original nintendogs. The banter between the hosts, Ted and Archie, is something that continues to be remembered. Everyone’s seen the line “you make me feel like a man, Archie”, and the banter they keep up in each competition is less like a mindless tapping chore and just more entertainment. The settings are surprisingly realistic - less so on the obedience, but the ring set up for agility certainly is. The balance between realism and fun is another part of why Nintendogs appealed to all audiences.

Agility is my personal favourite event, and the same goes for a lot of people I’ve met. There’s a level of interactivity here that isn’t met by the successor (something we’ll touch on later). Guiding your dog over hurdles and through tunnels, and later having to balance speed with accuracy - it’s an event that keeps you, the player, engaged. It becomes a sort of fine art once you hit the Championship level, as your dog, by that point, is likely going to be very fast and have a mind of its own, often trying to predict which obstacles it’s going to go through.

[Image ID: an angled photograph of the starter agility training course. The dog is laying on the green, and the hurdles and tunnels are in view.]

Disc is in both versions, and is fun in its own way. I, personally, don’t tend to use the disc competition - in the original Nintendogs, the projectiles can be a little speedier than you intend them to be, and the dogs are a little too determined to hold onto their toys. But, with a well-trained dog, this event can be as fun as anything else. In the original, you didn’t have to contend with the other dogs - something that I’ve grown to appreciate over the years. But, like with the event that removed Agility, I’ll be looking at how the changes fared later.

Obedience is held on a stage, and is a fun event for people who take the time to train their dogs. Your dog can typically learn three or four tricks a day (depending on the dog), and between the tricks listed in the Obedience Guide Book and the unlisted tricks that your dog can learn, you can usually blow the competition out of the park. It definitely requires the most time and effort out of all of the events, and it can be frustrating if your dog suddenly stops listening - but the rewards are surprisingly good. It’s always fun to have a well-trained Nintendog, if only because showing them off when I was a child was my favourite thing to do.

Obviously, competitions are the main money-makers in these games. Tackle a solid few of them, and you’ll find yourself able to afford another dog or two. Though your room is limited to three dogs, there’s also a Hotel to keep some other dogs in. As time progresses and you gain more of a bond with your dog(s), you’ll unlock more breeds.

Something that went over my head when I was a child was the method to unlock Jack Russells, specifically. You need to find an incredibly rare book - something which I don’t ever recall doing, and still haven’t. I found this information via the wikia, so I’m not too sure how accurate is, but it is an interesting breed to lock behind a time and patience-based method.

[Image ID: an angled image of a German Shepherd laying on its side. In the corner is an idea bubble.]

Overall, Nintendogs is a solid and fun pet simulator, and it’s clear why so many people have such good memories. The dogs are filled with personality (even being expressive enough to show you when they’re angry vs happy), the competitions are engaging, and though the format will become stale after playing daily for a long time, it’s always a fun game to come back to after a period of time.

Which is why it’s unsurprisingly that it gained a sequel.

I remember being ecstatic when Nintendogs + Cats was shown in advertisements on television. When I got the 3ds, I also got a copy of Nintendogs + Cats. The Golden Retriever version, specifically, but I do own all three. For some reason? As people got bored with it, they usually gifted me them.

At first blush, it’s almost as charming as the original. The graphics style handles much better than the original, with slightly more realistic movements, and less cardboard-y models. I much prefer the Nintendogs + Cats models to the originals, for obvious reasons - though their movements can be a little repetitive and strange at times, and a lot less expressive than the originals. But that said, I much prefer the Kennel system of petting and exploring the dogs and their behaviours (limited as they are) before you adopt, and I enjoy sorting through colours or getting unique colours/patterns. The rare white variants used to be my obsession, as a child.

[Image ID: a german shepherd holding a present in Nintendogs + Cats. The model is significantly better than the original Nintendogs model.]

Immediately, though, there’s a lot less ambience in Nintendogs + Cats. I play with my volume up all the way, and it’s typically just my dogs and cat making noises. I miss the cars going by and the general background noise that the game can provide. It feels just a little too silent, and the music tracks are repetitive and unmemorable for the most part. Obviously sound design don’t make or break the game, so I won’t harp on this point for too long.

The gameplay is...fine? I’m not a fan of petting a shadow of my dog, but I understand they did that for 3D purposes (something which most people didn’t use, to the point that the 2DS was made. I play on a 2DS). The camera control is an incredibly nice feature to have, the showering minigame is a little more thorough. They didn’t really add anything to the care features, though. If anything, they took away a lot of experiences - reading the care books and instead guiding you through the tricks one by one instead of as you want, forcing you to learn a specific set of tricks before you can move on to the next ones. The game is far more hand-holdy, which can be frustrating at multiple points. But, hey. There’s cats! Let’s talk about the cats.

What’s their purpose? Not much. Which is fine, although they take up a slot in your three-pet designation. As cute as the cats are, they definitely got done dirty. There’s three selections to choose from (Standard, Oriental, and Long-hair), with multiple colours, but not much depth beyond that. Obviously, the cats were just a cute addition - I do like having my little cat wandering around the house with my two dogs, and I know from past experiences that once you bond with the cat, it’ll go out and get presents for you if you leave your ds on. Gaining affection with the cats is very slow-going and if you’re someone who likes your pet simulations to be more interactive, it might be wiser to stick with the dogs. I’m not complaining against the addition of cats - it just could’ve been done much smoother, with better mechanics enabled. Be it adding some breeds and a proper grooming minigame to maintain them, or the ability to train them but have them be much harder than the dogs. There were many ways to put cats into the game, and I just don’t think they hit as intended.

So, how did they do with the competitions? Well.

The short answer: they’re pretty bland, and a downgrade from the original. The long answer...

[Image ID: a white cocker spaniel chewing on a banana lure.]

In the competitions, there’s no more Ted/Archie banter. It’s just Ted. Doing his thing. I honestly do not read the text for this game, and instead tap quickly to progress to the events.

Replacing Agility comes Lure Coursing. I’m not sure about other countries, but that’s an incredibly niche section of dog sporting here, and it’s also notorious for being...very boring. And in the game, it lives up to that. Instead of guiding your dog through obstacles, you wind the cog of a lure and honk it to get the dog to follow it. Sometimes you honk it to get them over hurdles. I have to admit, I usually space out when I’m training my dogs with this - it’s an easy moneymaker once you’ve trained them up to Nintendogs Cup level, but it’s easily the most mind-numbing event. Anything would’ve been better. If they didn’t want to implement Agility, there are other dog sports that could’ve suited well; guiding your dog through the Flyball course and using its name to bring it back until it could do it on command (maybe even utilising a team of three, for reason as to why you can have up to three dogs), or sledding, using your dog to pull a lightweight sled (on wheels) through a course in a race against other dogs (or, again, even using your trio). There could have even been scenting sport in which you teach your dog how to scent and go off to find a mark, or herding. The point is: lure coursing is the most unengaging thing to put in a game.

The Disc competition barely changes, so I won’t say much. I don’t particularly enjoy having the other dogs in the ring to compete with as it becomes all too easy for them to interfere heavily with your own dog, but I understand why it was implemented and know that a lot of people enjoy it. I prefer the throwing speed and the control you can have over the disc, and will admit that overall, the Disc competition is generally improved.

But then you come to the Obedience Trial. AR Cards are mandatory. You don’t have a surface to put your AR Cards on, or lost them years ago? Then you can’t do it. I actually ordered AR Cards, having thrown out my old ones due to damages and general...lack of use. As of this post, I have been unable to play the Obedience Trial, so I can’t say much on whether the system has improved. I do know that AR Cards can work on a laptop screen or something similar, but the 3ds camera is pretty horrible and can glitch out, making it unreliable for screen-based AR cards. Unfortunately.

[Image ID: a white cocker spaniel standing on an AR Card.]

The walking system is fine. I love being able to go to different routes (as limited as they can be - but the original was no saint to repetitiveness once you knew the whole map), and I like having to go between grass patches, with a chance for a surprise present. I think the addition of the BARC stores are a cute touch, and the Miis walking their own dogs are cute, too. The interactions between your dog and theirs is based on your dog’s personality as well as theirs, which makes sense - but there’s basically three outcomes. More than the original, but meeting with other dogs tends to be to see if you can backtrack when you’re near the end of the walk by having them invite you to the cafe or park, or to get presents from Streetpass miis. I like the cone minigame to test your control over the dog and its leash, and as a rule, I just...like it. It’s relaxing. I don’t prefer it over the original, but I don’t prefer the original over it. They both have their benefits and downfalls. The biggest upside to + Cats’ system is that you can take your dog on as many walks as you want.

Interactivity isn’t really a thing, with + Cats. Whereas in the original you could legitimately piss off your dog and it would bark and snarl at you for a while before you regained its trust, this game doesn’t punish you for much. I poked and prodded at my dog for a while, and it didn’t really do much for me. This is a game where you sort of just have cute looking models that hold up surprisingly well for their time, and that’s it. There’s not much game to the game, as it were - and that’s from a game where the gameplay was limited as it was.

Adding multiple accessories to your pets is a very nice addition, albeit expected. Overall, though, the gameplay has been significantly dumbed down and while I understand that kids play it, my generation played Nintendogs as small children and we got by just fine. It’s a very intuitive game, and it’s almost insulting how little Nintendogs + Cats thinks of its audience.

Another nice addition to Nintendogs + Cats, though, is body type for your pets. There’s a few that your pet can be: underfed, skinny, optimal, plump, and overfed. I usually have optimal dogs, but apparently plump and overfed dogs run slower and as such they do poorer in competitions, which is a pretty neat feature to have in-game.

In the short of it, Nintendogs + Cats is fine, but Nintendogs (the original) is Good. I have a lot more nostalgia for Nintendogs which may cloud my opinion, but playing it in 2020 is still fun, and I’m especially happy to play the Agility competition.

For an interactive pet simulator with fun competitions and plenty to do, Nintendogs is the way to go. For a pretty enough game with simplistic gameplay, Nintendogs + Cats is the way to go.

Both games have their perks, but I certainly have a clear favourite. If a Switch edition of Nintendogs ever happened, I’d much prefer the original style with some of the quality of life changes made in the successor. In the end, it’s all up to what you’re looking for in a game - but as someone who’s looking for a fun time, I’m a sucker for the originals.

(Note: I have not played the knock-off Nintendogs for Switch, and would appreciate input on if it’s worth buying or not. Reviews are poor at best, as far as I can tell, though.)

#nintendogs #nintendogs + cats #video games #game review #eph reviews

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blissfulalchemist · 4 years ago

Text

A Chance for Faith Ch. 7 “Finding You”

Look at that a non-prompt chapter for you. This takes place after the “I’m Not A Savior” piece that can be read here below the cut or on

Ao3

I hope you enjoy! master list

Faith walked into the trailer, taking it’s dark green carpet and faux dark wood walls, leaving her shoes at the door. Her brothers sat around the singular table, a map to Hope County spread out on top, another hanging on the wall with red string criss crossing it. The latest in their weekly meetings, all to make sure none of them had or would lose control of their sanctioned land. These meetings had always bored Faith, more so since their sister died, as her brothers didn’t seem to listen to her or care what she had to say, the support she once had gone months ago. Besides the only faction of resistance were holed up in the jail, while the rest of the county feared stepping foot in the Hebane, none wanted to risk losing their minds.

Joseph was in the middle of questioning John about their supplies by the time Faith walked in. “Sister,” Joseph greeted Faith as she took her seat between John and Jacob, “Glad you could join us tonight.”

“Always my pleasure, Joseph,” Faith gave him a warm smile.

“Right, now let’s get started shall we?” Joseph sat facing the map on the wall letting Jacob take the stage.

Jacob grunted as he stood to make his presentation, “Now we need to start focusing efforts more on securing the valley because someone kept letting the Deputy slip through their fingers,” Jacob growled looking pointedly at John, narrowing his eyes in return.

“My people are taking back what’s been lost to us in recent weeks,” John argued.

“Brothers,” Joseph’s calm voice chastised.

Faith rolled her eyes, scoffing quietly, “I didn’t know you’ve been able to do that,” Jacob responded wearily.

“Yeah,” John leaned back in his chair flippantly, “well no one’s heard from the Deputy in almost a month now.” Faith quickly looked at John and his news, “Even I haven’t heard from him and he typically has a sarcastic remark now and then.”

Chance would never allow for that much time between his insults to John, “You’re sure none of resistance has heard from him?” She asked the worry starting to creep in the back of her mind.

“Of course I’m sure. I think they figured Jacob here got to him,” John smirked to his oldest brother.

“Is this true Jacob,” Joseph interjected.

Jacob rolled his eyes crossing his arms, “You think I would kill him and not tell you? I know you want him alive. And even if I did kill him on accident, Chance would have been used as an example at this point.”

“So he just,” Faith spoke up, “disappeared?” She looked between them all, nods from John and Jacob. She narrowed her eyes, “Well that doesn’t sound like Chance.”

“It’s not like any of us really knew him,” John said through clenched teeth, the anger from the thought that he would never get Mary’s ring back seeping into his words. That is if Chance was actually dead, which Faith doubted.

“I can try to find out if someone even saw him,” Faith offered, the three brothers looking at her doubtful, “Well he has to eat still and get supplies now n’ again.”

The three looked at each other, a quick silent conversation occurring between them all ending in a shrug, “That would be very helpful my dear if you would,” Joseph finally spoke, assigning her the job.

Faith gave a quick nod, settling herself back into her seat, “Thank you, Joseph.”

Faith didn’t speak during the rest of the meeting unless spoken to, her thoughts going over all the possibilities as to what could have happened to him. She hadn’t spoken to Chance for almost two months, which was just fine with her. He was the one that started the fight. They had been doing just fine even after she “nearly killed him”, she couldn’t understand why finding out that she figured out their past sooner than him would hurt more and prompt him to leave. She thought he would be happy about it.

“It was done selfishly,” Mary’s voice advised, “You hoped he would join you.”

She was probably right, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t hurt her also. She waited for him and he left her, then when things got hard, he just left….again. As much as she hurt….she still missed him too. Missed his stupid smile that lit up his green eyes, the laugh that had her heart fluttering, the way he held her as they say on the river banks, and the safety his lips conveyed as they would kiss in his cabin. She just missed him.

No one hearing from him, and for this long, it made it hard not to worry about him, more so given his past. If he left her hurting the way she thought he was, the temptation to fall on old habits was going to increase. The stress he’d had to endure, the fear, and the feeling of the weight of the world on your shoulders….she’d have gone back to her old habits long ago. Please let me find him dead via battle and not his own hand, she prayed as the meeting came to a close.

Faith dismissed her protection the next night, sending them off to places she knew he wouldn’t be, needing to be alone for where she was going to start her search. She changed into some jeans and a dark red shirt putting on the black leather jacket and purple converse Chance had given her the day she put their past together. Driving the inconspicuous sedan she made her way to Chance’s house, the way committed to her body’s memory. The two of them had started to meet twice a week, sometimes more if they could find the time, before she brought him into The Bliss and he spoke to the Father.

She missed those days where they would sit and talk, sometimes going to fish just behind the house at the river, or the few times she stayed the night and she thought he was going to kiss her but never did. How she had to take charge and kiss him first under that bridge, after that when she spent the night he was always attentive to her. Even after adding sex to their relationship it never felt like the only thing between them, they still enjoyed the other’s company talking, laughing, and contemplating the unanswered questions of life. It was those times that they spent together that brought her back to when they were kids and would explore in the woods by her house as their fathers talked about who knows what. All back when Rachel was still hopeful about some white knight saving her from her life with her parents. Back then she hoped that it would be Chance. Oh what a stupid girl she was.

Chance didn’t even know who she was for the longest time. Not that she could blame him, it was over ten years since they last saw each other. She didn’t even recognize him seeing him in that church as he put the cuffs on Joseph. It was only seeing the picture on the mantle that she figured out it was the boy that made the world a little brighter when he was near her. The boy who abandoned her when she needed him most.

The same boy who had come back to her.

To Rachel.

Faith killed the headlights as she pulled up to the darkened house. It looked to be abandoned as she got out of the car, rubbing warmth to her cold hands. Faith took a deep breath as she walked slowly up to the door, not bothering to knock as she pushed against it. There was no resistance as it swung open easily, her heart starting to race, That’s not a good sign. The floor creaked as she stepped inside, the smell of stale whiskey hitting her nose, just like some of the memories she worked to push back. The darkened room was lit by the small singular table lamp, a dark shirt muting the brightness of it. She closed the door behind her, walking to pull the cloth off illuminating the house, her feet kicking a few glass bottles, their rolling sound giving a small jump to her heart.

“Chance?” She called out looking for any sign of him, “Chance are you here?” Faith took in the living room her eyes having adjusted to the light. Bottles of various sizes and shapes littered the floor, a few boxes of pizza were stacked on the coffee and dining room tables, empty cans of soup on the kitchen counters. Faith looked over the cans, her nose wrinkling as some of them had a more potent smell than the others, he hadn’t cleaned in a long while or at least thought too. “Oh Chance,” Faith whispered, “What happened?” She looked to the stairs leading up to what was now Chance’s lab, a few bottles leading the way. Faith frowned following the trail, her footsteps echoing in the stairway.

The lab was less of a mess than the downstairs, her eyes sweeping the space stopping once they took in the twin sized bed against the wall. Faith’s eyes went wide seeing the mop of brown curly hair against the pillow, dark rings under closed eyes on a pale face. His red Misfits shirt, black jeans, and the lack of footwear stained with varying shades of brown, he’d been walking in the mud outside. Or falling was the better word as she took notice of the scrapes on his exposed arms, all in various stages of healing, as he held a near finished bottle. Another on the floor, half full, labeled as Smirnoff, while the one he held was Jack Daniels.

The one thing Faith couldn’t see any signs of was breathing, at least from where she stood. Eyes filling with tears, she rushed to his side, “Chance,” she shook him, her heart rapid in its pace, “Chance, can you hear me?” Desperate Faith recited prayers in her mind as she brought her ear to his chest, her panic making it hard to discern between his heartbeat and hers. “Wake up! Chance I need you to wake up! For me, please,” her cries having become desperate as she shook him more, starting to pound at his chest. Please don’t have gone like this. Not all alone, Faith thought as she went back to listening to his chest, finally able to focus on more than the worry building in her body. There was a sigh of relief finally making out his slow, but steady, heartbeat.

He was alive.

She just needed him to wake up now. The tears fell, without her permission, as she shook him harder, lightly hitting his face all while calling his name. There was no response and Faith started to wonder if he needed medical attention. Real medical attention, not just bringing him to Lance like she’d done in the past. It was a scary thought, bringing him to a doctor that belonged to people that wanted her dead, she’d be risking everything if it was serious there may not be much time to get a hold of Lance to take him. How could she do any less? Chance did as much for her months ago, the day she finally realized who he was, that he was the White Knight she dreamed about as a young Rachel. More than that, she loved him. She loved him and would risk her life for him because she did.

Faith was readying herself to start dragging Chance down the stairs when he finally let out a groan trying to swat her away. “Chance!” Faith grabbed his face looking into his green eyes as they opened slowly to her blue green ones. “Oh Chance,” she hugged him close to her crying into his shoulder, “I was so worried about you.”

Chance stiffened pulling away from her, his eyes searching her face, the recognition dawning on him. “Beautiful,” he slurred his hand reaching for her face, breath heavy with the scent of whiskey, “What are you doing here?”

Faith wiped her face clean, “I came looking for you, dummy,” she gave a half hearted chuckle, her frown returning quickly, “What happened Chance?”

Chance shook his head as he sat up, arms resting on his knees, “Nothin’,” he looked down at the bottle that he held, smiling he drank the rest of the bottle empty. “Jus’ having a little fun,” Chance’s words mumbled, strung together by the faintest sense of clarity.

Faith looked at him sympathetic and brow furrowing, “Chance...this is more than a little fun.” He shrugged, grabbing the bottle on the floor standing up, swaying before catching himself on the railing to the lower part of the cabin. Faith stood following him, “Chance please. This isn’t you,” Faith kept a step ahead of him as they went down the stairs.

Chance waved her off, “Are you kidding me? I never felt more like me in such a long time.” He took a drink of the vodka offering the bottle to Faith, when she didn’t reach for it he shrugged, rolling his eyes drinking more of it.

“Well everyone’s worried about you,” Faith explained, “You’ve been MIA for almost a month.”

Chance turned to her nostrils flaring, Faith taking a quick step back, “Don’t start taking that tone with me. Everyone can just fuck off!”

Faith glared at him, “Even the people that care about you?”

“Yes,” he took a long drink, “You know no one really cares about others. If they do they just want something from you.” He pointed the neck of the bottle at her, “A little life advice for you,” Chance stumbled making his way to the kitchen, his mood changing his smile over taking his features, “I’m starving. Are you hungry?”

Faith shook her head sadly, “Chance,” her voice soft putting a hand on his shoulder, “what happened?”

Chance pushed her hand off him, grumbling, “I came back that’s what happened.”

Faith ground her teeth hearing his piss poor answer, it’d be his last as she forced him to face her, “Chance! What. Happened,” she demanded.

His eyes darkened looking down at her, “You want to know what happened? I broke! There, you happy now with that answer?” Chance leaned down eyes level with hers, “I can’t do this shit anymore. I’m done being some symbol, savior, whatever the fuck they call me.” He shoved past her kicking some of the bottles on the floor out of his way, “They want me to be their everything and I never wanted it! They don’t even help! They just expect me to do everything! I got tired of it so I left!” Chance took another sip, wiping away at his mouth when he was done, “They want their home back so damn bad they can do it themselves.”

“So that’s it? Life got hard and you just gave up?” Faith followed him as he drank until there was nothing more than a quarter of the bottle left, “Just decided to go back to your old habits?”

He laughed, cold and empty as it echoed in the house. “That’s so fucking rich coming from you,” he sneered, “Little miss ex addict that followed a man who lured her into doing his bidding with a better high, promising you a chance to stay in your own little world where you ended up staying.”

Faith’s jaw clenched, blood starting to boil, grabbing the bottle from him throwing it against the wall, “I know that! But you got out of your own little world! You told yourself you wouldn’t go back to it! Sorry I want to make sure that at least one of us gets out and stays out!”

“Yeah well reality sucks and I don’t want any part of it,” his eyes strayed to the shattered glass, “So it really doesn’t seem fair that you get to stay happy while I don’t get that option. Did you ever think about that?” The subtle crack in his voice had Faith relaxing her body just the slightest, “That maybe, just maybe, I want to stay happy.”

“Chance,” she consoled softly.

“I can’t be happy in a place where I’m placed on a pedestal that I can never keep my balance on,” Chance’s tears started to escape silently, the anger leaving his voice. Faith touched him gently guiding him to the sofa to sit, “A place where my hands-,” he held them up, eyes getting a far away look, “Where my hands are stained red constantly, no amount of scrubbing letting the color go.” Faith stroked his hair, heart falling, “And still they expect me to keep going.” Chance had started to rock himself back and forth, body shaking, “I never even got the chance to stop and think about what I was doing. What I was signing up for.”

She wrapped her arms around him, “I know. I’m sorry,” she whispered in his hair as he continued.

“I didn’t want this, Faith. I never wanted this. God I never wanted this,” his rocking stopped, the shaking of his sobs taking over, “Why did I ever agree to this? Why would they make me their leader? Why would they make us leaders? I’m only 25 and you’re only 24.” Chance laughed bewildered, Faith wiping away at some of the tears, “We’re just kids Faith. I-. Fuck! I just want to go home. Be away from all of this.”

“Shhh,” Faith felt his arms wrap around her as she stroked his hair. “You’ll be home soon,” Faith kissed his head, unsure of what she was saying was of any comfort to him. She couldn’t promise him that, there might not even be a home he could go to when the end came, whatever end that may be.

“Faith…,” Chance cried into her chest.

“Yes Chance.”

“I’m scared. I’m so scared.” He’d admitted a lot to her in their time together but never that he was scared….never that he was scared. “I’m so scared about what will happen to me every time I step outside that door. How much of who I am will be taken from me each day.” He pulled away to get a better look at her face, “I don’t want to lose who I am,” his green eyes were ringed with red as he looked up to her face, “I’m so scared of losing me. I don’t feel like me,” Chance sobbed. Faith wiped away the tears from his eyes, “I just feel so scared and alone.” Faith inhaled sharply, “I just don’t want to feel like dying anymore.”

Faith pulled him in close to her, hugging him tightly as he cried. “You’re not alone. I’m here. I’ll always be here for you,” she repeated to him like a prayer kissing the top of his head, her own tears falling silently. They were so alike in many ways but never once did she ever think he would admit to such feelings to anyone. He was Chance, outgoing and happy despite the loss and sadness it entailed, not the Chance admitting that he silently begged for death. It was the last thing she’d ever want for him.

As his sobs subsided Faith got him standing and moving to his bed, where she undressed him taking in all the scars he was getting from being in this Holy War neither asked for. Faith looked at the clock as she laid him down, placing a trash can near his head should he need it, there was time before she had to be back to avoid raising suspicion. His eyes closed quickly, gently tucking him into the bed, leaving him for the main part of the house.

She picked up some of the bottles, stopping to clean up the shattered bottle from their fight, gathering the pizza slices that looked recent and safe to eat, placing them in the fridge, and finally throwing out the empty cans of soup. It wasn’t much, the house needing more to get it back to a decent state, but it was something to help him out for now.

Faith wasn’t sure what to do now that she’d found him. He was in a bad state and she doubted he would even remember this come tomorrow when he woke. The most she could do now was just check up on him every night, come up with some story to tell him when he confronted her about her being there again, and hope that she wouldn’t come one night to find him dead.

Faith went to the bathroom grabbing the pain pills and a glass of water placing it on his nightstand. She smoothed out his hair, her heart longing to curl up next to him. She started to contemplate what would happen if she stayed when his slurred voice asked, “Will you stay with me?”

Faith frowned, in the end it was too much of a risk for her to stay with him like this, she pushed the hair covering his eyes out of the way, “I wish I could but-.”

He nodded slowly, “You have your pedestal to keep balanced on.” Chance reached out to her bringing his face close to hers, “I think I love you, Faith,” he leaned in to kiss her, Faith stopping him.

Another thing he’d never admitted to her and oh how she wanted it to be true. She swallowed, “Tell me when you’re sober, Chance,” her voice a whisper to hide the break, “Maybe then I’ll believe you.” Faith tried to muster a smile, failing as Chance’s eyes closed.

He nodded lying back down, “I do mean it though,” Chance turned to his side, nestling into the blankets, “I think I’ve loved you since you were Rachel still.”

She swallowed the lump starting to form in her throat standing up, “Good night my White Knight. I’ll check on you tomorrow,” she promised as she shut the lights off. Taking one more look around the house she sighed, there were to be some tough decisions she’d have to make on his behalf. “Sometimes you have to for those that you love,” Mary’s voice chimed in once more as Faith started the drive back to her house, “And you love him, Faith.”

Chance woke to bright afternoon sun filtering in through the cracks of the dark curtains, at least he assumed it was afternoon, either way it pained his eyes. He rubbed them, groaning, head pounding. He looked at the clock on his nightstand slowly, confirming it was the afternoon. “Fuck,” he muttered as he sat up, “late start today Chance.” Out of the corner of his eye Chance saw the bottle of pain pills and a glass of water, “At least drunk me was nice this time.” Chance poured six pills in his hand swallowing them all at once with the water. Memories of the night before coming back to Chance hazily; Faith coming and finding him, the two of them yelling at the other, and then her….tucking him into bed? Chance shook the thoughts out of his head, they weren’t memories….just a dream. It had to be. No one was coming to look for him, especially Faith, she was the last person that wanted to see him.

Chance walked around the house searching for a bottle with any amount of liquor in it taking notice of the cleanliness of the house. I was really nice to myself last night, Chance thought as he went through his cupboards finding just enough liquor to get his headache under control. Chance sighed looking at the half glass of a mixed concoction of various liquors, “And I guess that’s why.” He drank the whole thing in one sitting before putting on his sunglasses, “Guess I better get some more.”

Chance had raided all the places closest to him for their alcohol so it was time to risk facing the residents again and go to the gas station close by. Chance put a hoodie on as he exited his truck, hoping to hide his face. The place looked empty but one could never be too sure in these times. The ding of the bell echoed as he opened the door, eyes trying to land on anything that looked like movement. There wasn’t anyone else Chance could see, not that he started to care much making a beeline for the liquor aisle. It was still stocked surprisingly, no one having come to claim back this business.

Chance grabbed an empty crate, fitting in three bottles of vodka, three of whisky, and two boxes of the strongest red wine. He lifted the crate, needing out of the building feeling his eyes heavy, the fluorescents stinging his eyes. Chance stopped hearing someone clear their throat behind the counter, Guess there was someone that reclaimed their business, “I need to see your ID,” the attendant said lazily, “and some payment would be nice.”

Chance looked up to him annoyed, “Seriously? You need to see my ID?”

The attendant shrugged, “Federal law still.”

“Who the fuck is going to arrest you with Eden’s Gate here? There’s no police department anymore.”

The attendant stared at him, hand outstretched for the card. Chance let out an exasperated breath setting the crate down rougher than he should have, reaching for his wallet. “I’m uh,” the attendant started pointing to their head, “I’m also going to need you to at least put your hood down sir.”

Chance rolled his eyes pushing the hood back, “There.” Chance grumbled to himself trying to pull out his ID with shaky hands. He growled when it fell to the floor, the chime of the bell filling the store with it’s sound, “Fuck,” he said under his breath as he bent down to pick it up.

Chance ignored the sound of footsteps nearing him as he stood back up finally pulling the ID out handing it to the attendant. The sudden change in position had Chance feeling like he was going to be sick, he needed to get back home. He rubbed the back of his neck, letting the air cool his neck as he exposed it, pushing his hair out of the way. There was an audible gasp behind him, freezing him in place. “Chance,” A woman’s voice asked in a single breath, “Is that really you?”

“Who wants to know,” he responded, annoyance propelling him as he turned around to face the voice. The woman he faced looked to be in her forties, with brown hair streaked with some grey, and eyes a jade green. Her clothes, with their stylized black cross printed on them, indicated she was just another peggie, Great. I’m gonna get gunned down in a fucking gas station. The longer Chance looked at her the more he couldn’t shake the feeling that he should know her somehow. She felt….familiar. Chance took off his sunglasses getting a better look at her.

Her eyes went wide, filling with tears as recognition and relief flooded her features, hand covering her mouth, “Oh Chance! It is you.” She reached out to hug him smiling, Chance pushing her back. Her face fell, offended, the smile turning to a frown, “Don’t you know who I am?” Chance shook his head leaning away from her. She gave him a small smile, a tear falling down her cheek, hand placed on her chest, “Chance it’s me. Your mother. I’m your mom, Chance.”

#a chance for faith #I know it's valentines day and it should be some fluff but I didn't want to wait on this #I'll get some fluff done later today #chance ruicknar oc #x: emo flower child #faith seed #faithxmaleoc #faithxoc #far cry 5 fanfiction

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picklesmin · 5 years ago

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Outside A Galaxy Of My Own

(How many misadventures can one have on one planet? How many days trekked, relationships forged? How many hopeful smiles and bitter tears? How many lives lost and altered forever? (My very first fic here and Pikmin fic in general, inspired by the great @pikfic!)

Chapter 1: Dew, Spark, and Cinder

The familiar screech of horrific and yet entrancing beasts was the first thing Olimar heard as he entered the cool air of the early dawn. Even from the damp ground he stood on Olimar could see the monsters in the distance. He stretched and was actually quite certain he heard something crack. He was way too old for this.

“Another day in the grime, huh Louie? ...Louie? Louie!” Glancing over his shoulder, he was barely surprised to see his underling still there behind the glass window of the ship, crumbs on his face. “Get out here!”

Sighing as the younger Hocotation apathetically trudged out, Olimar turned the dials on the Onion and summoned pikmin from the ship’s hull. Their little comrades slid down the legs, eager to help as always.

“Morning, everyone. Sleep well?” Olimar gave the pikmin and Louie a friendly smile. “We’ve still yet to explore a certain part of the woods that I have on my map.” Pressing a button, a small pixelated map appeared on one of the many screens adorning his suit. “But luckily it’s at least close by.”

Louie bobbed his head dully, clearly oh so excited. “So I take purples and smash the creeping chrysanthemum while you harvest? Lost almost twenty yesterday.”

“Right…” Olimar’s optimism faded for a moment, a more somber one overtaking, as it did for the pikmin. The snagret had leaped out of nowhere, leaving only masacre behind and tortured screams. Just more sounds to add to Olimar’s nightmares and eternal guilt.

“That sounds good Louie.” He tried for a teasing smile. “I thought I was the Captain here.” It wasn’t quite returned, leaving the Hocotation sighing and wondering why he even bothered.

The trek wasn’t long, and the group passed the corpse of a bulborb that they ran out of time to displace before sunset. Or rather, one Olimar had to all but physically drag Louie away from cooking—and subsequently becoming a meal himself.

Hammering the hostile plant beast was easy enough, and routine even by this point. Still, Olimar found himself standing by cautiously, always waiting to see if he needed to step in. He was never sure if his concerns over his younger charge were that of being a Captain, or even of being a father.

Whistling his group away before the corpse flattened them, Olimar began to order his pikmin to the pellet posies. And...he immediately stopped.

Half their usual size and appearing frail and almost hunched over, the flowers were a baffling sight and even Louie blinked in surprise.

“Are they sick?”

Olimar felt his fear spike. Was that possible? There were so many uncharted dangers on this planet, so was there one that could poison entire gardens? Botanical threats were so many, and he already knew pikmin could become sickly and hostile. Was this only the start of a catastrophic wipe out?

Before his thoughts could terrify him further, his pikmin were already trying to destroy the flower. With just a kick the stem snapped like a stale green bean, and Olimar was too grimly fascinated to stop them.

The first clue that something was definitely different about the offspring was how each pellet only produced a single sprout, despite the colors corresponding with their onion. Olimar was nervous to make his way over, and all the more nervous to pick what appeared to be only half formed leaves.

Three baby, legitimately baby pikmin popped out.

“Captain Olimar, I sense something off about these pikmin. Some sort of deficiency is causing their suboptimal height.”

It was difficult to really focus individually on pikmin when you always had a large group, but sure enough the baby leaves really did seem to be that...babies.

“Not only that, but their leaves appear damaged or maybe even underdeveloped. Do you think the state of them has anything to do with the state their posies were found in?”

The Hocotation cast another look over his shoulder to the slightly withered looking stems. Or...what remained of them at least. They did appear so weak he was surprised they could manage to hold themselves upright.

“Peculiar,” Olimar mused with a stunned blink. “I’ve never seen such a thing...but then again, those pellet posies were incredibly small. I thought perhaps they were merely buried deep but...maybe the flowers really were stunted.”

Olimar bent down to the baby pikmin’s level and he tentatively reached towards one of their stems. With the utmost gentleness he ran a hand along the smooth leaf. It didn’t appear rough or stiff as a dry leaf would be and invoked a pleasant chitter from the pikmin. It didn’t seem to be in any pain.

But what did this mean for the pikmin then? Were they unable to ever mature? Did they not even have the same abilities their brethren did? He knew the only way to be sure of such a thing was to test that theory, but the leafs may not be able to survive the results!

“My hypothesis is that they will be generally slower than leaf pikmin as well. And leafs are already so slow! What will you use them for, Captain Olimar?”

“I…” The man blinked, at a loss. “I don’t know, actually.” It was already clear these babies wouldn’t be able to hold their own in battle. Would he, for the first time, have pet pikmin?

“Well...it’s clear that I won’t be able to have you three in combat,” he told the baby leafs. “Unless…” Perhaps he could test something.

Olimar turned back to the colony of normal sized pikmin. At the very least they didn’t appear to be viewing their new siblings with contempt. They seemed, thankfully, as accepting with the children as any.

Language barriers were always so difficult, leading to so many frustrating situations, and, unfortunately...many deaths in the field. Tapping his cheeks enough times and gesturing seemed to clue a yellow pikmin on what it was supposed to do. Although the creature certainly seemed hesitant.

“It’s alright,” Olimar assured the pikmin. “I’ll be fine, I just want to test something.”

After a moment the pikmin pressed its cheek against the other’s glove, and Olimar hissed as a powerful shock had him withdraw quickly. His pikmin shrugged apologetically.

Olimar shook his hand for a moment and then he bent down to the newly harvested yellow leaf. The tiny pikmin pressed its head against their leader’s hand as well, but Olimar was concerned when he barely felt the slightest spark. It was as weak as a static shock from a mere bedsheet.

“Hmm, quite concerning. It would appear these tiny pikmin indeed are far less stronger than the others!” the ship buzzed. “I’m unsure of what use they may be, Captain Olimar!” The machine didn’t want to say the little things were useless, but Olimar knew it was thinking it.

“I’ll...figure something out.” The Hocotation looked over to where the tiny critters were attempting to climb a berry stem. The poor little things could barely manage with their stubby legs.

Olimar looked over to Louie, who seemed to be watching the miniature pikmin as well.

“They’re small. Too small, aren’t they?”

Olimar cast Louie a wayward grin. “Oh they’ll find their place.” Hopefully not in a monster's belly.

That evening secure in his ship Olimar pulled back from an email with a fond laugh as he shook his head. His family had been quite excited by the thought of him having permanent pikmin...at least for the time being. And oh, trust his children to come up with the cutest names! The baby pikmin had crept curiously over, tilting their heads at the glowing monitor.

“Well, you three, what do you think about having your own names? Hm?” They continued looking inquisitively at him. “Dew, Spark, and Cinder.” Saying each individual name, he pointed to the corresponding pikmin. Spark of course being the yellow, Cinder the red, and Dew the blue.

Olimar gestured over to where he saw his young cohort heating up a bisque. “Dewy, and Louie!” he exclaimed, snickering at the rhyme the pikmin didn’t understand and that Louie seemed to roll his eyes at.

“You’re naming them now?” Louie asked, a brow raising. “You said that’s a bad idea. Can’t get attached.” Not that Louie had the inclination to adore the little aliens as his Captain did. He respected them and led them as Olimar did, but it was harder for the younger man to feel strong bonds so easily.

“Not all of them,” Olimar said, smile falling. He didn’t seem sure of it himself. “Just, er, these three. My children named them actually. I believe we have our first pygmy pikmin, Louie! They’re a lot more underdeveloped than the others and don’t seem like they might grow. Even their leaves are only half formed. I was thinking in time, they can help out through the ship. Or stay close to our campsite. I’ll find...something.”

He did want to find use for them, not just because it was routine for Olimar by this point, but he didn’t know what emotional depth pikmin had, let alone these three. He didn’t want them to think that he thought they were less capable. Which...was sort of true.

“Like I said, they’ll find their place.”

Louie watched the pygmies climb into his boss’s lap. “Like in your lap?” He sounded far more cautious about the situation. This planet was hostile and unforgiving and he knew at any second their new little friends could go from Olimar’s arms to a Bulbear’s stomach. And he also knew the...emotional repercussions that could have on Olimar.

The captain’s eyes were captured by the wide ones gazing up at his, and piercing into his heart. He knew what Louie was thinking, and he was thinking the same thing. Naming the pygmies...it was a very dangerous idea, but his children came up with the idea. And he couldn't just not do it.

“They’ll stay in the ship.”

Louie watched as Cinder clambered her way over to him and shook his leg as she tried to hug it. “Okay,” he shrugged.

The wide array of space at their window, Olimar peered into the black canvas littered with stars. It had been an interesting day, one he was eager to record if his exhaust allowed it. And also, if he could find time between dashing back and forth from trying to keep the pygmies from getting into mischief. It seemed that them being as different as they were made them far less inclined to listen to him. It felt like when Oliver and Lily were toddlers!

“Good night, Louie.” The captain yawned, and also pat the interior of the ship as a silent good night. He couldn’t resist a grin over at his charge resting in the other bunk. “Don’t let the bed pikmin bite.”

“Nnn….bite back,” was the only half asleep mumble he received as Louie buried deeper under his blankets.

Dew, Spark and Cinder were still at Olimar’s feet and he gestured to the cargo where the leaf children could sleep. They scurried passed him into his bunk.

“There’s barely enough room for me, you know!” he told the leaf babies as he discarded his suit in favor of some furry pajamas. He didn’t seem to have any objection to the idea however.

As Olimar tiredly lay on the bed he pushed himself up as the pygmies settled on him. They merely sat there, their cute little stems bobbing around as they looked at him with adoring eyes. Olimar felt his heart threatening to melt on him.

“You really need to stop with that before you make me adore you,” he told them, but he knew it was too late for that. “You probably can't even understand me...can you?” The three leafs tilted their heads and Olimar chuckled. “Probably not…It’s very late. You should go to sleep now,” he told the young pikmin. They curled into him like kittens and Olimar sighed. He couldn’t deny it was nice to hold someone after so many nights cold and alone.

(Hope I didn’t do too badly, still getting the world down despite my endless researching haha. We started on a cute note...but it probably won’t stay cute for long ;)

Although each chapter is a story on its own many will still have linking elements, such as Dew, Spark, and Cinder. Longer ones will also be specified in parts in the chapter title.

There will be no romance, most likely (besides Olimar’s wife), and everything will be more platonic, especially considering Louie and Olimar and Charlie and Alph, as those take on more parental dynamics here! We’ll range from super cute to super sad and everything in between. Forgive me if the formatting is off, this is my very first attempt!)

#pikmin #pikmin3 #pikmin3deluxe #olimar #pikmin 2 #haaaah hope you’re kay being tagged pikfic #if not lemmie know I love your stories smmm

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arianakristine · 5 years ago

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A to Z

I decided to create a little challenge for myself to help my muse and my time constraints, so here is the first part in a drabble collection using an A-Z format with a random word generator.

They are not connected, some are AU, some are very AU, and I hope you enjoy!

Part 1: A to M

Alive

She never knew what a beautiful word it was before: alive. Alive. Alive. It was like a breath of cold air in a snowstorm, stingingly clean and relieving, shaking her to her core.

She pushes past Whale to see for herself, and those cobalt eyes meet hers from across the room.

She wonders how the word makes her struggle for air, but also makes her need it less.

He is alive.

Cracked ribs and sunken eyes, but alive. Scratchy voice and weak grip, but alive.

“Savior,” he accuses, but playfully.

She squeezes, and thinks she’ll accept the title for once.

Blame

She shouldn’t blame him.

Of course she shouldn’t; he didn’t ask for this, no more than she.

She dreams of dark and damp, leaves and dirt and rot climbing her throat until the pain is real and fresh and she is screaming the last of her fear into her pillow.

A worn bit of leather bites into her wrist, and she catches storm-filled eyes across the room in a corner too dark to make out any detail, wonders why she is buried with him.

She can only blame him for the feeling of being just as gone as he is.

Confession

The first confession is in a low breath, almost soundless.

She didn’t mean for him to hear it; his eyes are closed and his breaths had been even for several minutes.

Still, its echo weighs heavily on his tongue, demanding its own declaration to hers. But the penance for hearing it is his silence, he knows, and so he does not shift as she nestles against him, sleeps on.

He knows she finds love a scary thing, and cannot claim not to be frightened of its depths himself.

But now that he knows, he can wait, tend, let it grow.

Doctor

He never cared much for doctors. Healers or medics, they were called, back in the old world. He never had the means to hire one back then, and they were humans, anyhow. He wouldn’t have trusted them.

Here, he just had Whale for scale; he was not one to instill much faith in the profession.

But when the blond steps out from the operating room, hands clean and smug smile tugged across his face before a sharp nod of a yes, he could kiss him.

Emma is fragile like he’s never seen, but her eyes are bright.

His mind changes.

Estate

The estate is sprawling, majestic, cold.

Emma isn’t used to the narrow halls, the winding staircases, the rooms made of stone. It feels hollow, unnatural. The shadows get too thick at night.

She first sees him on the grounds, far from the echoes of the manor, an illusory image in the fog. He is a ghost to mock and mimic the gothic terrors she grew up with.

She knows him all at once, as if she always had and always will.

Their lips first meet where the trees meet the air, and she feels at home for the first time.

Fuel

It doesn’t take much to ignite.

The thing between them had always had a spark, waiting for its tinder. They had each desperately hung on to a piece, until he didn’t care anymore to keep his grip.

Lust, that she was used to. In those cases, the fuel burned out quickly and she could move on.

She didn’t expect the stores to only grow within her, until the flames were indistinguishable from her own fire.

She didn’t expect to want it to consume her.

Instead, it warmed and cast its light like a beacon, until it augmented rather than destroyed.

Graze

Her fingers graze his arm, just touch enough from the callous of her fingertips to catch his attention.

He looks up, finding the crest in the ocean of her eyes and the worry buried inside them, and doesn’t need the whispered words that utter from her parted lips.

He captures her wrist loosely, finds the storm that lies behind the concern.

“Just a scratch,” he barely jokes, a piece of trivia from half a memory.

The starburst of color under his covered chest bellies that, but he stumbles forward, persists.

If it means her safety, it is a mere scrape.

Hypnotize

The blood is vividly red as it spiderwebs outwards and across pale skin, hypnotizing.

She traces the path with her eyes and then her hands, calling upwards to the wound that never quite heals. The heart that pulsates and beats out more of the viscous pain stutters but does not falter, cannot quite meet the looming darkness it wishes to retreat to.

This game has been played before, will be played again, splayed to define the past in mere trickles of horror.

It’s all she can do to hold the pieces together, to right them so they may fight again.

Ignorance

Sometimes, he wishes for ignorance.

Prays to a foreign god that he could be wiped clean of the memory once again, to remove the ache in his brain and heart and soul.

He wonders if she wishes that, too. There is an effortlessness to ignorance, one they haven’t had since curses broke.

But in the early morning, the strands of gold fall across his skin and they drink in each other’s warmth, feeling that truth acutely but managing to heal each other from it through touch.

He supposes the price is worth the reward, finds that love trumps the pain.

Jump

She is at the edge, crumbling stone and crashing waves waiting for her with just a step.

He is at her back, and her fingers have flung back to catch his shirtfront in her grip.

She could jump. It wouldn’t be an effort. She could let go, and the past would be behind her.

She can’t loosen her hold, though, and instead falls back into him, waiting for him to catch her. He disappears into the mist just as quickly as she leaps into him, and she wakes gasping and drenched in her bed.

She knows then it was love.

Kid

“Kid.”

They are grinning at each other, mother and son, and the term of endearment slips from her as easily as any. They seem mirror images, matching eyes and grins, and his heart never felt so full.

It’s just a start, and he can only watch from the shadows of the in-between, but it is at least a start.

Maybe once the pieces fall back into place, when the curse is done and the evil defeated, he can find his own corner in which to fit with them.

But the beginnings of this beautiful relationship can only bring him peace.

License

The license lives in a manila envelope on a plain, unassuming shelf, tucked in between other important files and miscellany. It gathers dust, and is only yanked free on occasions it is called for, but there is no other indication of the piece of paper anywhere else.

Bodies fit together as one on a faded couch and loose, empty left hands hang from the backs of armrests. A house is filled with children’s voices and laughter, loneliness a distant memory.

The paper is forgotten, sits stale, even as the passion and the adoration never does.

Only they know it exists.

Map

He likes to map her out.

His hands and mouth will trace routes made over and over, finding new trails to discover, places of interest to linger on. Scars become stories, ones to press into some guidebook he builds in his mind.

She knows the difference from his touch and his patience, the seduction versus the exploration even when the two might meet from time to time.

He knows before her any time her body changes through the years, but she feels the worship of it before she can be self-conscious.

She hopes her maps make him feel the same.

#gremma #emma swan #graham humbert #gremma ff #ouat ff

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where-dreamers-go · 6 years ago

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“Part 1 - Charlotte” Riley Poole x Reader

(A/N: Welcome to Part One of a Requested Riley Poole x Reader. This will follow the Reader and her friends, Ben Gates and Riley Poole, throughout the movie.

@imacuteprincess asked: ‘Can you write a Riley Poole x reader from National Treasure where reader gets kidnapped by Ian and injured while protection her friends as they try to escape them.’

Word Count: 4,037)

Cold. Freezing. You couldn’t recall ever being such a shivering mess in a puffy coat. Despite being enclosed in a monster of a vehicle with others you still worried about your toes. Being North of the Arctic Circle did that.

You sat in the back of the vehicle with Riley and his laptop accompanied with various technology. The little hula girl on the laptop only reminded you of the warm climate you could had stayed in if it wasn’t for your best friend’s treasure-searching commitment.

Reaching over you flicked the bobbling item with your finger.

Riley gave you a side glance, an amused smirk on his lips.

Snow compacted and ice crushed underneath the reddish snow vehicle. No trouble proceeding across the hills.

“I was thinking about Henson and Peary, crossing this kind of terrain with nothing more than dog sleds and on foot.” Ben spoke from the driver’s seat, typical insider thoughts straight from his brain. “Can you imagine?”

“It’s extraordinary.” Ian answered from beside him, his white coat brighter than the laptop next to you.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Riley’s equipment sounded off in a tone almost too calm for the situation at hand.

Checking the screen, a grin lit up your face and your feet started tapping.

“We’re getting closer?” Ian inquired.

“Assuming Ben’s theory’s correct and my tracking model’s accurate,” Riley started, “we should be getting very close. But don’t go by me—I broke a shoelace this morning.”

Neither you nor the other two responded. Simply mirroring confusion.

Riley looked between the two men in the seats in front of him and added, “It’s…it’s a bad omen.”

“Shall we turn around and go home?” Ian asked with humor in his tone.

“Or we could pull over and just throw him out here,” Ben laughed.

Ian and Ben started chuckling lightly.

“Haha. Okay.” Riley said unamused.

You gave a disapproving look to the back of Ben’s head.

“Riley, you’re not missing that little windowless cubicle we found you in?” Ben asked.

“No, no. Absolutely not.” Riley grinned.

A long series of higher pitched beeps emitted from the laptop. The maps onscreen changed with a clear message:

TARGET REACHED

CHARLOTTE MAPPING

Smiling widely, you bumped Riley’s arm. Though lightly, you received an arm nudge in return.

“This is it,” you sung under your breath.

Ben immediately brought the vehicle to a stop. The slight rocking from the entire ride ending.

Once no longer moving, Ben opened the door and had a look out beyond in the landscape. Ian and the others in the second vehicle followed suit.

I hope it’s not too buried in heavy snow. You thought as you put on your glasses to protect from the light rays reflecting off of the snow.

“She’s out there,” Ben spoke to himself.

Once you were all out of the vehicle with a metal detector in hand. Gloved hands. A light bag of essentials on your back was just as important as the hood that covered your head and the glasses that protected your eyes.

All around you snow and ice covered landscape went as far as your eyes could see. Like sand dunes except it was much, much colder. The others jumped out of the second vehicle with their metal detectors as well.

Leaving the vehicles where they were, the group spread out across the snow in search of the ship. Her condition was in question as was what laid inside.

Though you were searching as well, you kept your eyes on your best friend Ben and your hearing trained on your metal detector and Riley Poole. They were dear to you and your closest friends. The other men weren’t exactly ones you liked watching movies with.

“How could a ship wind up way out here?” Asked one of the men.

“Well, I’m no expert, but…it could be that the hydrothermic properties of this region produce hurricane-force ice storms that cause the ocean to freeze and then melt and then refreeze, resulting in a semisolid migrating land mass that would land a ship right around here.” Riley listed off information as casually as explaining why he loved pizza. Without another word he continued on.

Time passed and others were checking some equipment between the vehicles.

Ben, of course, lead the search. Ahead of everyone in distance, he scanned the ground.

Your eyes flicked up as you picked up on Ben’s change in movement. He had traded his metal detector for an ice pick.

Did he..?

Going to his knees, Ben broke through the snow with the ice pick and switched multiple times to dig with gloved hands. He cleared a section of snow. There was a determination and quickness to his movements.

Shifting the long metal detector over your shoulder, you trotted forward.

A metal glimmered in the sunlight.

“Hello beautiful.” Ben murmured.

Time and effort went by as everyone drove the pounds of snow aside. More than an hour in, the two vehicles and manual snow shovels were given much use. Little by little color was revealed from under the cold revealing the key Ben had been searching for most of his life thus far. The Charlotte.

All this hard labor, Ben definitely owed you one. Then again, no one saw you taking photos of the ship. Most of the men there had treasure on their minds as supposed to documentation. It would make a great set of framed gifts for Ben’s dad during the holidays.

A few signals and shouts were shared before the two vehicles moved away from the shipwreck.

“She’s beautiful.” You watched as the port side was displayed in the light.

Taking a breather, icy pricks of air going in, you leaned against your snow shovel.

As far as you could see Charlotte was in good shape for a ship over a hundred years old. Good enough shape for exploration and documenting anything of importance. You didn’t quite expect to find any treasure on the ship or at least much. That did not mean you weren’t hopeful in discovering something new.

Ben and Ian were likewise taking a break. Chitchatting about Ben’s family and their reputation.

Riley gave a pat to Ben’s back as he stood.

“Okay!” Ben called out. “Let’s go!”

Quickly leaving your shovel alongside a couple of others, you joined your friends as Ben took lead down into the ship.

“Let’s go find some treasure,” someone announced.

This was it.

You followed after Ben, Riley, Ian, and Shaw into the dark ship. Not exactly how you first imagined it to be. Finding the Charlotte that was. Years ago you had thought of a sunken ship in water or half crashed to pieces not over taken by years of frozen landscape.

Carefully the five of you worked your way down inside of the quiet ship with flashlights illuminating the way. It was not as cold inside as you had thought. A little stale due to lack of air current, but doable.

Flashlights at the ready, a blue atmosphere was given to a frost coated mess area. The chairs still standing around a table adored with frozen cutlery. White and a bit ominous.

Walking further in, Ben opened a wooden door to a level below.

Boots on stairs were quieted with the layers of snow. Excitement and wonder filled the space as everyone stepped down one at a time.

Seeing as there were many hammocks and unidentifiable items underneath frost, you were glad you couldn’t particularly smell anything. You had a strong feeling that the ship did not go down alone. Therefore you kept a respectful distance from anything you could not readily identify as you peeked around.

“OH! Oh-oh-Oh….God!” Riley exclaimed as he fell back scrambling away from one of the hammocks. One that held a frozen crew member, a really old and long gone one.

Riley finally stood back up, breathing labored.

“You handled that well.” Ben said after having calmly watched the ordeal. After a quick look over at you Ben wandered off.

Stepping up beside Riley, you gently tugged on the hood of his coat.

He was quick to look over at you.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” He answered, straightening his posture.

“Alright,” you smiled and gave a pat to his back. “It’s cold not scary. I promise.”

“Sure.”

“Alright! This is it,” Ben called as he walked up to a latched door. “A cargo-hold.”

All but yanking the door off its frame, Ben opened the door with cracks of broken ice falling off.

The group of you practically stormed in as a unit until your eyes rested on the contents of the room.

Frost and ice covered everything, not unlike the rest of the ship. However there were barrels, a cannon, rope, and other supplies taking up most of the cargo-hold’s space.

Finding anything treasure related seemed daunting yet entirely possible. If it was hidden well.

“You think it’s in the barrels?” Riley asked. His flashlight scoping out the area.

“Wouldn’t hurt to look,” you said.

Calmly, this time, you all went to different sections of the cargo-hold to search.

“Gunpowder,” Ian said as he had opened a small barrel. Its contents dark as night as he let it fall from his gloved hand.

You frowned at a frozen-looking barrel. Opening them shouldn’t be too difficult. You hoped. Then again, you didn’t like the risk of harming something inside.

Thump.

“More gunpowder,” you murmured. Holding the outside of the barrel you lightly sifted its contents around. “Hmm. Nothing here.”

You jumped at the sudden sound of Ian using an ice pick to open another barrel.

Even more gunpowder.

“I found something!” Ben called.

Placing the wrapped object on a snow-covered surface, Ben’s gloves were off. The five of you gathered around. Ian stood on Ben’s left, Riley was on Ben’s right, you stood next to Riley, and Shaw stood silently beside Ian’s shoulder.

“What is it?” Riley asked, looking to his friend

Ben loosened the pieces of what looked like leather and revealed a beautifully decorated box. The craftsmanship was precise and unique.

Smiles were shared before it was opened. Laying inside of the dark wooden box held an intricate item.

“Do you guys know what this is?” Ben asked, holding up a cream-colored pipe for examination.

“Is it a…billion-dollar pipe?” Riley asked in awe.

“A decorative pipe?” You suggested as Ben continued looking it over.

“It’s a meerschaum pipe.” Ian answered as Ben handed it over to him. “Ah, that is beautiful.”

“Look at the intricacy of the scrollwork on the stem.” Ben pointed.

“Is it a….million dollar pipe?” Riley asked as he leaned closer.

“No,” Ben turned to his friend, “it’s a clue.” Again, Ben had the pipe in his hands. “Let me see that.”

You had caught the immediate fall in enthusiasm in Ian’s expression.

Another clue is not such a bad thing, you thought.

Ben delicately twisted the stem of the pipe off from the rest of the piece.

“No, don’t break it,” Riley spoke in a hushed and concerned tone.

You looked your best friend over. Deep down, there was a sign telling you that Ben was three steps ahead. Why else would he had pulled it apart.

“We are one step closer to the treasure, gentlemen.” Ben announced.

“Ben, I thought you said that the treasure would be on the Charlotte.” Ian crossed his arms.

“No, ‘The secret lies with Charlotte.’ I said it could be here.” Ben’s face was focused on intention as he took out his knife.

You averted your eyes as soon as you saw Ben place the tip of a knife to his thumb.

He very much could had damaged his nerve ends on his thumb. You’d lecture him about that later even if that was his method of using blood as ink as it turned out.

Soft yellow light from Riley’s flashlight illuminated Ben’s actions as he rolled the blood-covered stem onto a page in a pocket journal.

“It’s Templar symbols.” Your best friend spoke, taking up a flashlight.

At that you snuck closer, passed Riley, and peeked around your friend’s arm.

“‘The legend writ. The stain effected. The key in Silence undetected. Fifty-five in iron pen. Mister Matlack can’t offend.’” He paused. “It’s a riddle.”

He grabbed his gloves.

“I need to think.”

Only then did Ben start moving.

Quietly, knowing him more than too well, you watched and listened.

“‘The legend writ. The stain effected.’ What legend? There’s the legend of the Templar treasure, and the stain effects the legend. How?”

You shook your head and leaned on the surface in front of you.

He paced the frosted flooring of the ship. His mind moving much faster than his feet.

“Wait.” Ben sat down on a small barrel.” “The legend and the key….Now there’s something. A map.”

Ah, yes, you thought, Ben the walking thesaurus and sphinx master.

“Maps have legends, maps have keys. It’s a map, an invisible map. So now…”

“Wait a minute,” Ian interrupted, pipe intact again and in his hand. “What do you mean, ‘invisible’ — ‘an invisible map’?”

Ian walked around to sit on a barrel near Ben, a cannon separating them. The pipe and the pocket journal in his grasp.

“‘The stain effected’ could refer to a dye or a reagent used to bring about a certain result. Combined with ‘The key in Silence undetected’, the implication is that the effect is to make what undetectable detectable. Unless…,” he looked up in thought. “‘The key in Silence’ could be…”

“Prison.” Shaw suggested.

Your face scrunched up. You peered over to your left.

What? How does that even relate to—

“Albuquerque.” Riley spoke up.

A pause in words took up the space. Glances passed around.

“See, I can do it too. Snorkel.”

Looking over at Riley, you shook your head in mild amusement. The reactions and words that fell out of his mouth in response to others still peeked your interest. No matter how random apparently.

“That’s where the map is. Like he said, ‘Fifty-five in iron pen.’ ‘Iron pen’ is a prison.” Shaw added, ignoring Riley all together.

Why is he so set on a prison?

“Or it could be, since the primary writing medium of the time was iron gall ink, the ‘pen’ is…just a pen.” Ben pulled a face. “But then why not say a pen? Why…why say ‘iron pen’?”

“‘Cos it’s a prison.” Shaw said under his breath.

These people, you thought in minor annoyance between listing the riddle over in your head again.

“Wait a minute.” Ben spoke up. “‘Iron pen’ — the ‘iron’ does not describe the ink in the pen, it describes what was penned. It was ‘iron’ — it was firm, it was mineral… No, no, no, that’s stupid.”

“Metaphorically?” You whispered.

“It was… It was firm, it was adamant, it was resolved.” He paused. “It was resolved. ‘Mister Matlack can’t offend.’ Timothy Matlack was the official scribe of the Continental Congress,” he stood up facing Ian. “Calligrapher, not writer. And to make sure he could not offend the map, it was put on the back of a resolution that he transcribed, a resolution that men signed.”

He took a breath.

“The Declaration of Independence.”

Your eyes widened, “…what?”

“Come on, there’s no invisible map on the back of the Declaration of Independence.” Riley said from beside you.

“That’s clever, really.” Ian stated. “A document of that importance would ensure the map’s survival.”

“Good security too,” you added offhand.

“And you said there were several Masons signed it, yeah?” Ian asked Ben.

“Yeah.” Ben nodded with a quirked lip.

He had that expression. That darn thinking look that usually meant you ended up doing something on borderlines of stupid or risky.

“Nine, for sure.” Ben added.

“We’ll have to arrange a way to examine it.” Ian spoke.

Ben slowly sat back down on a barrel. Hope in finding the treasure slipping away.

“This is one of the most important documents in history. They’re not just gonna let us waltz in there and run chemical tests on it.”

“Then what do you propose we do?”

“I don’t know.”

Ben’s voice permeated the cargo hold as you and Riley stood opposite of your friend.

“We could borrow it.”

“Steal it?” Ben turned to Ian, aghast. “I don’t think so.”

Your eyes shifted between both men. Something felt off. Extremely off.

“Ben…the treasure of the Knights Templar is the treasure of all treasures.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that. Really?” Ben said with a layer of sarcasm that you could not miss.

A bad feeling started creeping up on you and you knew with certainly that it was not due to the temperature of the Arctic Circle.

“Look, Ben…I understand your bitterness. I really do. You’ve spent your entire life searching for this treasure, only to have the respected historical community treat you and your family with mockery and contempt.”

Way to layer it on thick, as—

“You should be able to rub this treasure in their arrogant faces, and I want you to have the chance to do that.”

“How?”

“We all have our areas of expertise. You don’t think mine are limited to writing cheques, do you?” Ian spoke as if stepping around with delicate footing. “In another life… I arranged a number of operations of….questionable legality.”

“I’d take his word for it, if I were you.” Shaw added in as he walked to stand by Ian. His posture alone was enough to put you on edge. A wide stance.

It was threatening.

“So don’t worry. I’ll make all the arrangements.” Ian assured.

Is this seriously happening right now? You thought as Ben stood up.

“No.” Ben’s words held a finality and tinge of something else. He rose his head to look more firmly at Ian.

You and Riley were quiet still standing beside the surface where you had first had a glimpse at the pipe. Your skin prickled as the tension in the ship became overwhelmingly tense. Not even your layers of clothing could mask it. Something wasn’t right.

Slowly, surely, Ian stood up.

“I’d really need your help here.”

“Ian…I’m not gonna let you steal the Declaration of Independence.” Ben’s voice was louder, determined.

“Okay. From this point on all you’re going to be is a hindrance.”

Ian turned around and gave a nod.

Shaw whipped out a silver handgun out of nowhere and pointed directly at Ben. His flashlight giving him a clearer view.

“Wha—?” Your mouth opened for words that did not finish.

Disbelief in their intent was openly up for debate.

“Hey.” Riley piped up.

You didn’t move an inch. Watching carefully, you tried not to panic.

“What are you gonna do? Are you gonna shoot me, Shaw?” Ben asked. “Well, you can’t shoot me. There’s more to the riddle. Information you don’t have. I do. I’m the only one who can figure it out, and you know that.”

“He’s bluffing.” Shaw said.

Ian turned back around and took a step forward.

“We played poker together, Ian. You know I can’t bluff.” Ben reasoned.

You swallowed dryly.

“Tell me what I need to know, Ben, or I’ll shoot your friend.”

Slowly, Shaw changed his aim to Riley.

“Hey!” Riley moved to his right and grabbed onto a hanging rope.

“Quiet, Riley!” Ian spat. “Your job’s finished here.”

Your heart rate escalated more. A pounding in your ears made it tougher to hear any minute sound. Your eyes flickering around for an alternative route.

Ian wanted and needed Ben’s information, which terrifyingly enough might involve taking out you and Riley. To Ian you were both disposable.

Snap

Red and orange lights sparked to life. Ben had activated a flare and simultaneously gathered both Ian and Shaw’s attention along with being Shaw’s target again.

“Look where you’re standing.” Ben said, “all that gunpowder. You shoot me, I drop this, we all go up.

“Ben…” Riley grasped tighter onto the ropes.

You took a slow side step closer to Riley. If you needed to pull him behind something you would.

“What happens when the flare burns down?” Ian tilted his head. “Tell me what I need to know, Ben.” He stood unaffected, not scared in any way. In control.

“You need to know…” Ben started, body on idle, “if Shaw can catch.”

The flare was thrown from his hand towards the gunpowder at their feet.

Ian caught the flare before it could reach the floor.

“Nice try, though.” Ian straighten up with a smug look and pointing with the flare.

In the time it took you to breathe out Ian’s coat sleeve caught on fire.

“OH!”

Dropping the flare, Ian caused the gunpowder all over the floor to ignite in flames.

“BEN!” You shouted.

Heat radiated as the fire spread.

Your best friend dove behind stacks of barrels before Shaw started firing his gun.

BANG BANG

You and Riley fell back onto the flooring.

“Get out, Shaw!” Ian shouted.

The two men backed out through the open door. Ian took a last look at Ben before a burst of flames caused him to leap back. The door latched shut from the other side.

“Ben!” You looked around frantically for any broken area worthy of an escape route. The cargo-hold was being engulfed by flames with enough gunpowder to destroy it all.

“Riley, (Y/N), get over here!”

You helped push Riley to his feet before rushing over to Ben, avoiding fire at all costs.

“What is this?” Riley asked sliding over to an opening in the floor.

“Smuggler’s hold. Get in!” Ben urged.

“My favorite!” You said as Ben pushed you in right after Riley climbed down.

Once your boots greeted more snow Riley pulled you back so as Ben could close the small door and hastily take lead.

“Follow me.”

Snow crushed underneath boots as the three of you rushed in hunched positions while golden embers cascaded down from the flooring above. Further forward sunlight peeked through grates above, but still you three moved.

Ben had stepped aside from another opening and pushed you after Riley.

“Get down.” He ordered.

Dropping like a sack of potatoes into piles of snow, you covered your head. Eyes closed, your other senses were on high alert. You only hoped that the three of you would live to see another sunrise.

Rumble

KABOOM

BOOM

BANG

THUMP

The very ship around you shook and vibrated. Snow fell from all sides around you. Covering and layering.

In a manner of what felt like endless minutes wood and snow stopped falling.

Once the almost deafening explosions faded to their end, you popped your head out of the snow and ash. After a quick shake of your head, you hastily checked on your two friends.

Riley was in a slight fit of coughing and Ben was looking around the immediate area.

“You guys okay?” You asked.

“I’m fine.” Ben started standing up.

“I’ve alive too.” Riley brushed off blackened snow from his hat, grinning. Glad to be alive.

With mild groans you walked out of the debris and into the sunlight with your friends. Ian and the others were long gone.

Ben paused a moment and said, “There’s an Inuit village about nine miles East of here. It’s popular with bush pilots.”

“All right.” Riley panted. “Then what are we gonna do?”

Climbing over debris, you moved forward.

“Start making our way back home.” Ben answered.

“No, I meant Ian. He’s gonna steal the Declaration of Independence, Ben.” Riley urged.

“We stop him.”

“Ben,” you started, “are we not going to talk about our near-death experience? They left us in there! The Charlotte is gone.”

“Yeah…not sure how Ian will react if he ever sees us again,” Riley added trudging through snow.

“They pointed a gun at Riley and you.”

“I know. Let’s keep walking.” Ben stated as he lead the three of you out into the frozen landscape.

It was a long walk to the village with bright light reflecting off of the snow. Yet it was only the beginning of a wild journey back home.

~~~~~

(That concludes Part One - The Charlotte. I hope you enjoyed it. I’m excited to continue with more parts to travel through the movie National Treasure. All the best!

If you love my writings and want to support me, I have a Ko-Fi where you can buy me a coffee. I would be eternally grateful. coffee

Best wishes and happy reading.)

PART 2

#Riley Poole #riley poole x reader #riley poole fanfiction #riley poole imagines #riley poole imagine #requested #where dreamers go #fanfic #national treasure #National treasure fanfiction #Riley Poole x Reader series #fanfiction #disney #disney imagine #disney imagines #disney fanfiction

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bookandcranny · 5 years ago

Text

Stone Heart Gambit

Part 1 - Chapter 1

Soso likes her town, but she’s starting to think she’s never going to find a single interesting thing about it. There’s a supermarket, a park, a few family-owned shops and eateries that haven’t yet succumbed to the pressure put on them by the encroaching chain franchises. Pretty standard small-town fair, not unlike the one she grew up in.

Therein lies the problem. She’d been so excited to leave home for the first time all those semesters ago that she hadn’t considered that change doesn’t always equal improvement, and putting a hundred miles of distance between her and her old problems didn’t guarantee her a perfect new life. She doesn’t particularly miss living with her parents, rather she finds herself feeling homesick for a place she doesn’t think she’s found yet. There’s a restlessness in her-- her mom claims she gets it from her dad, and vice versa. It’s plagued her in small ways all her life, in the way she finds new friendships but struggles to make them last, in the way she throws herself into new passions only to grow bored of them within weeks, in the way college had seemed so thrilling and full of promise when she was a bright-eyed freshman and now here she is, on indefinite academic leave, struggling to remember what it was she saw in the place that was worth a lifetime of student loans.

She only has so long to figure it out too. She wants to finish her degree, she does, but art requires inspiration and there’s only so much to photograph in a town whose main export is cow shit and stale gossip. If she changes her major again at this point her advisor is for real going to mount her head on a pike outside the bursar’s office, so she has to at least try.

It doesn’t help that she’s pretty much limited to the immediate vicinity surrounding her housing co-op until she either manages to get herself a car or the bus drivers union wins their latest standoff with city hall. Cars cost money though, which means getting a real fulltime job, which she expects will spell the end for any lingering chance of her going back to school anyway. The snake devours its tail, and Soso commutes by bike.

Soso’s handy; she’s confident she can fix anything given enough time, the right tools, and a couple reliable video tutorials. That, among other odd jobs, is her main preoccupation right now. It’s something, but she can’t picture herself changing tires and cleaning out gutters for elderly neighbors to support her Chinese takeout dependency forever. At the rate she’s going, her best customers are going to start dying off before she graduates.

On that morbid note, Soso decides she needs to get out of the house. She slings her bag over her back just in case she manages to run into something photo-worthy and grabs her bike. It’s a brisk autumn afternoon and the fresh air is just what she needs.

On the way out she runs into one of her housemates, Carmen the highly caffeinated, returning from campus looking frazzled. Soso isn’t particularly close with any of her housemates, frequently as they tend to come and go, but that doesn’t stop her from offering her sympathies.

“Any luck with the research?”

Carmen groans. “My paper is doomed. Remind me why I thought ‘modern impact of classical mythology’ was a good choice for my level 300 history course?”

“Uh, beats me.” In reality she thinks it sounds like a fun subject, but it doesn’t feel her place to say so given that while Carmen’s been slaving away at the school library, she’s spent the better of her day half-watching questionable documentaries on alien conspiracies.

“Ensfield is full of weird old superstitions and legends,” she goes on frustratedly. “The old bridge makes it on one of those ‘top 10 spooky locations’ lists like once a month. Complain about a cough to the wrong person and suddenly you get people telling you you’re hexed and you need to walk in a circle counter-clockwise under the new moon to get rid of it.”

She’s pretty sure that’s not a thing, but nods anyway, waiting for the point she hopes is coming.

“You’d think the library in a town like this would have better sources on mythology. But no, all I get is a shrug and the same three books everyone else in the class is using. If I want to bump up my GPA, I need something you can’t just find on Wikipedia.”

Another one of their housemates crawls out from the shrubbery by the porch. “Maybe you should try that other library.”

“Jesus!” Carmen jumps. “What are you doing down there?”

Phoebe brushes dirt off her knees. “I saw a black cat go into the gap.” She points at a thin crack in the woodwork. “Halloween is coming. Any cats, especially black ones, you see wandering around need to be brought to the shelter pronto. People do terrible things to them if they see them wandering around this time of year.”

Soso squints. “Looks too small to fit a cat.”

“I saw what I saw. Anyway, there’s supposed to be an old town library way past the woods, thataway.” She points. “Guy who works there is really weird I heard but almost no one goes there anymore so you’d have first pick.”

Carmen looks thoughtful. “I think I’ve heard of it. I kind of thought it was just something people made up.”

“Nah, it’s real. My brother’s fraternity brings freshman there to haze them. They tell them to go up and throw eggs at the place and then ditch ‘em in the woods.”

Soso blinks. “Why?”

She shrugs. “It’s just a thing they do. It sucks and it’s totally immature but no one ever accused those guys of being creative.”

“Whatever,” Carmen says. “I’m done with books for today. I’m gonna go inside and enjoy some nice brain-rotting TV.”

“Good call, honestly. If you get caught hanging around that place too much they’ll probably start egging us next.”

Carmen heads inside and Phoebe goes back to making little coaxing noises at the gap in the porch. Soso frowns to herself. Sometimes she feels like people in this town purposely go out of their way to ruin anything that could be the slightest bit different. It’s probably just a normal library that happened to be in a weird spot, run by a typical cranky old librarian. Even if it is nothing it probably has more to offer than spending the rest of her day throwing french-fries to birds and squirrels in the Burger Beast parking lot.

“Hey Phoebe,” she says. “Where did you say that library was?”

The trip is longer than she had anticipated. Her legs are strong but the sun’s getting low enough that she worries she’ll be riding home in the dark. A generous part of it she blames on Phoebe’s vague directions, scribbled into a patchwork paper map of hear-say more than anything else. Despite this she continues. She’s snapped a few pictures of the foliage in its brilliant reds and golds, so if all else is a bust at least she won’t have completely wasted her time. Worst case scenario, she returns home with a little extra muscle on her calves from all the pedaling.

Well, the real worst case scenario is probably more along the lines of her getting caught by an axe murderer and left to rot in the spooky woods, another ghost for the local repertoire. Even then, at least she won’t have to worry about the next family phone call if she’s dead.

Grim musings aside, she loops back and manages to find the correct path, a trampled dirt road half-hidden under the leaf litter, and at last make her way to the fabled “other library”. It’s one of those old brick buildings, surrounded by a low fence that struggles to hold its own against the climbing vines and insects nibbling at its posts. It’s early enough in the season that their collective buzz-chirp-hum still fills the air, though otherwise it is almost eerily quiet. It’s strangely peaceful, Soso thinks as she wades through wild patches of tall grass, as if she were returning to somewhere familiar.

The place is clearly abandoned, she decides, sunlight refracting off the firmly shuttered windows. It’s a cool discovery to be sure, but she ought to have known a mysterious library in the woods with an equally mysterious shut-in tending it was too much to expect from a town like Ensfield. That doesn’t stop her from exploring though. She likes it here, and she especially likes the gorgeous, ancient-looking gargoyle that sits in front of the steps leading up to the entrance, like one of those stone lions that stand guard outside of libraries of greater fame than this one.

The thing is magnificent, as well as truly hideous, its face twisted in a snarl so visceral and strikingly lifelike that it sends a genuine chill down her spine. The attention to detail, to carving out each individual wrinkle of flesh, is astounding. The stance the stone creature is frozen in comes off much more threatening than the regal intensity she might have expected, and it seems to her a counterintuitive choice of décor, but one the artist in her wholeheartedly approves of.

Propping her bike up against the stairs she crouches in the shadow of the gargoyle to get a better look. Organic shapes like vines encircle the beast, so lifelike that feels compelled to touch, as if they might fall away under her fingertips. Just as she reaches out however, the front doors of the library swing open and a stout, middle-aged man rushes out.

“Don’t- who- don’t touch that! It’s- it’s not-“ he stammers. “It’s an antique. Very breakable.”

The man is well-dressed, but his head of yellow hair is mussed to one side, like he’s just woken from a nap, enforced by the wrinkles he anxiously tries to smooth out of his vest. His eyes are a shocking shade of spring green.

“Sorry?” Soso offers, still recovering from the fright. She pulls her hand back guiltily and he seems to relax. How fragile could something made of stone be, she wonders, that he would work himself up into such a state over it. “Uh, is this the library?”

The man finishes straightening himself out before he responds. “That’s what you’re here for? Books?”

“What else?” she asks. His eyes remain narrow with scrutiny, so she adds, “Books on mythology. It’s for a school project. I heard… I am in the right place, right?”

There’s a copper plaque by the door that reads “North Ensfield Public Library”, but at this point she’d be as willing to accept that she wandered into a random person’s front yard, for how he looks at her. After another awkward pause, the man turns back towards the entrance and gestures for her to follow.

“Sorry about that. I don’t see many regular patrons anymore, not for a while now. Pardon the mess.” He speaks quickly, not leaving any room for interruption.

There isn’t much mess to pardon, not really. In fact, the shelves look well organized, if a bit dusty, and the space isn’t as cramped or cluttered as she had expected from the outside. A certain saying about books and covers comes to mind, but she doesn’t think her host would appreciate the joke. It’s no wonder he doesn’t see many people if he acts this way with everyone. Soso bumps into a table and nearly upsets what seems to be a pyramid assembled from various glasses, topped with an upside-down teapot.

“Do you live here?” she asks before she can curtail her curiosity.

“I’m a librarian,” he answers. “This is a library.”

“Right, but that doesn’t…” she fumbles.

“Do Canadians not live in Canada? Do Norwegians not live in Norway?”

“Vegetarians don’t live in vegetables,” she counters.

He considers that. “Well-played.”

Soso laughs despite herself and, to her surprise, things seem to go more smoothly after that. She continues speaking with the librarian and learns that his name is Surehouser, though if there’s a first name attached to that one, she doesn’t catch it. He’s certainly as eccentric as the rumors had led her to believe, but he seems harmless, and quite frankly more than a little lonesome. She doesn’t know how a person could be anything else, living like this.

He’s not friendly or unfriendly; his words have a measured quality to them, as if he’s afraid of saying too much. Soso gets the impression, as the sole carer for this seemingly ancient place, his occupation is more out of a sense of obligation than a passion for literature. He looks the part of the academic for sure, down to the silver that threads through his hair and the half-moon reading glasses folded in the front of his shirt, but his eyes track her as she browses like he doesn’t know what to do with someone who actually wants to check out a book.

“Do you have an idea of what you’re looking for?” he asks after she’s been at it for a while.

She doesn’t want to admit that not only is she not sure, since it’s not really her class she needs it for, but that whatever organizational system is in place here is totally incomprehensible to her. “Anything you have should be good.”

Which is how she ends up checking out way more than she meant to, sending up a tiny prayer that her comparatively tiny backpack can rise to the occasion. Surehouser gives her a look like he knows what’s going through her head as he leads her to the front desk. There’s no computer in sight, just a leatherbound book of names and dates and a thick rubber stamp.

“On my way out, would you mind if I took some pictures of that statue you have out front? For my project.” She adds that last part as an afterthought, then regrets it right away. She’s a notoriously terrible liar and the more she enforces the threads of this pointless story she’s weaving, the more awkward she feels.

He frowns and says, more to himself than to her, “I always thought that old thing was a bit gaudy myself. I’d have gotten rid of it ages ago if I could.”

Something about the way he says it strikes her as strange. Not knowing how to respond, she simply says, “I don’t know, I think it’s cool.”

He laughs. Or, she thinks that’s what it is. The sound is gentle but rusty at the edges. “I suppose you would. Feel free to do whatever you want, only do not touch it, and be careful.”

She walks down the stone steps, her haul unexpectedly light on her back, and pauses to look at the gargoyle once more. The light isn’t any good right now, but she’ll be back.

“See you later,” she tells it.

Sure enough, the next day she’s back. She hadn’t actually planned to be such a regular, but she’d been unable to keep the place from her mind, and it wasn’t as if she had anything better to do. Carmen had looked about to cry when Soso showed her the books she’d picked out. The ones she didn’t need for her paper, Soso decided to flip through herself and had found herself more invested than she’d counted on. The book on obscure pagan deities she’d selected, though dense and confusing in places, was particularly interesting. Before she knew it, she was finished, and thus had the perfect excuse to go back.

“This guy kinda looks like you, don’t you think?” She holds the page open so that the gargoyle could “see” it. Despite arriving at noon on a Wednesday, the library seems to be truly closed today and no amount of knocking had managed to change its mind. Since she’d already come all this way, she figured she might as well find some other way to entertain herself before heading home.

“The horns are all wrong, but the general look is there. He could be, like, your second cousin,” she tells the statue.

The statue doesn’t respond, obviously, but Soso likes talking to it regardless. She adjusts her position so she can keep reading while keeping the book within its line of sight. When it’s time to leave, she turns to it and says,

“Keep an eye on that guy who runs the place for me. He’s weird, and should really keep more regular hours, but he’s nice, and I think being alone out here is making him a little…” She makes a spiraling motion with her finger. “Guess I’m not one to talk though. I’m chatting with a hunk of rock.”

She doesn’t stop though. Maybe it’s the boredom, maybe it’s something just fundamentally Soso, but whatever the reason, she keeps coming back. Partially for the library, yes, and for the company of the strange librarian that dwells within, but primarily to have a quiet place to vent her frustrations and speak her mind, where often the only one around to judge is one who’s incapable of talking back.

Surehouser is an acquired taste, and they don’t have much in common, but he never turns Soso away on the days when her visits magically coincide with the hours of operation. He always seems to have snacks on hand and is content to let the young woman ramble on about whatever latest subject has caught her interest, which as much as she could ask of anyone really. He still speaks frustratingly little of himself, but she believes she’ll get it out of him eventually.

She’s moved from taking pictures around the library to breaking out her old sketchbook, sitting on the steps and muttering to the empty air as she tries to map the contours of the stone body before her. She’s always been visually minded, for whatever good it does her.

“My mom keeps calling and asking if I want to come home for the holidays,” she complains, holding her knees to her chest. “And I know that’s months away but if I say yes that means having to see my family in person while they interrogate me about my future. I’m not even sure I have a future.”

She paces around for a minute to work out some pins and needles and brushes back her hair where it’s been falling in her face. Feeling playful, she imagines she can feel the gargoyle’s gaze watching her.

“Oh this? Yeah, I did get a haircut, thank you for noticing. Just a couple inches off the bottom but I think it’s nice.”

She tosses her head. Nestled among her dark hair, a tip of pointed ear pokes out and she worries idly at the cartilage like she used to do when she was younger.

“You noticed that too, huh. I was born with this itty bity point to my ears. They used to stick out when I was a kid. I was kinda self-conscious about it, actually. I dreaded whenever we had a course in school about fairytales because the kids in my class would call me an elf. I started making my mom do my hair so that they were hidden and just, never grew out of the habit I guess.”

The gargoyle is without comment. She smiles.

“I knew you’d understand, dude. Us freaks have to stick together.”

The following week is a flurry of last-minute Halloween preparations. Soso herself hadn’t been planning to dress up, not having anywhere to be other than planted firmly on the couch in front of a horror B-movie marathon, but the other girls insist they decorate, as there’d been whispers in their neighborhood of pranks planned on those deemed not festive enough. According to Carmen, who had become the resident expert on local tradition since she aced her last history test, the custom of shunning those who didn’t partake was almost as firmly rooted as the decorating itself. It stemmed from a belief from ye olden days that the festivities helped to fend off ghosts and goblins and the meddling of the fae on the day when the border between their worlds was the thinnest.

“Wait, do ghosts come from the same place as fae, or do they just, like, carpool here?”

She snorts. “It depends who you ask, but a lot of people around here believe that anything that’s magical or ‘otherworldly’ in origin is technically ‘fae’. Ensfield has a whole history of convoluted fae-based superstitions. Did you know some people still leave out bowls of fresh milk for house spirits?”

“House spirits?”

“Like, brownies.”

Soso nods. “I love having milk with brownies.”

Phoebe pipes up from the kitchen. “I had a girlfriend in high school who left out offerings when she was doing her SATs.”

“Did it help?” Carmen asks. “I’ll try anything.”

Soso is no skeptic, but she’s more inclined to believe that leaving food out overnight will attract more mice than faerie blessings. The sentiment is nice, but it’s hard for her to take comfort in fairytales without remembering her childhood teasing. How much worse could it have been if it had been more than just a joke, if her ears and her daydreaming demeanor were enough to get her labeled as an outsider for life, rather than just for the span of third grade.

“Are you doing anything special for Halloween, Soso?” Carmen asks.

“You mean like leaving out bowls of milk?”

She laughs. “No, like going to a party. You can come with me to Katy’s if you want. It’ll be lowkey.”

Carmen has been making more of an effort to get to know her since she got her those books for her paper, but while Soso appreciates the thought, being a plus-one at a stranger’s party where everyone knows each other from the classes she’s still not attending doesn’t sound like her idea of a good time.

“No thanks. Someone’s gotta stay and hand out candy to the trick or treaters, right?”

“Good point. Did you pick up candy?”

“Not yet, but I’ll do it.”

“Just don’t put it off until the night of.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

That is exactly what happened. October 31st finds Soso standing in line with a back of candy under each arm. Their neighborhood isn’t exactly kid-heavy, but better safe than TP’d she figures. She’s nearing the register when a pair of college-age boys stumble in, looking conspicuously red around the whites of their eyes. She sighs inwardly as they wander around, talking just a bit too loud for comfort, and does her best to ignore them even as they get in line behind her. Looking out of the corner of her eye, she notices that there is nothing in their baskets except a two-liter bottle of off-brand soda, a box of marshmallow snackcakes, and about four cartons of eggs, each.

It almost doesn’t click for her until she remembers what Phoebe said about the frat bros and their hazing. That paired with it being a night notorious for pranks by idiot teens is enough to get her nervous. After making her purchase she lingers outside the store for a moment and watches as the boys climb into a car and drive away in the direction of the woods.

It might still be a coincidence, they might be heading to some other destination that just so happens to be in that direction as well, but the image of some stupid stoners invading her sanctuary makes her hackles raise all the same. She starts pedaling after them, following just far enough behind so as not to be spotted in the swiftly fading light.

#fantasy #writeblr #original fiction #my writing #project: stone heart gambit

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newmoonyue · 5 years ago

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Prompt #46- Mako Aladdin!AU (Angsty-ish)

46. Requester’s Choice! ( For @princeasimdiya12 )

This AU is based on Aladdin, Disney's 1992 film. Some text is actually an excerpt from the transcript! I do not own Aladdin, nor the text from the film. Enjoy!

Pairing: N/A

Word Count: 1.8K

Nobody ever saw his face. He was careful not to let anyone get that close, not even his friends. He always wore a tattered red cloak; it was almost like a calling card. If you saw a blur of red and the slender shadow of a man disappearing into the alley, you would know it was Mako.

Mako had lived on the streets all his life, first living in and out of dilapidated orphanages with his brother Bolin. Then roaming the streets, trying to survive on what they could steal. They had never known their parents. Maybe that lack of parental affection was what drove Mako to become a pickpocket, or maybe it was the desire to have something for himself, to call his own (even if it wasn't actually his).

"Mako!" Bolin called happily. Pabu, his fire ferret rested on his shoulder. Mako had just returned home from a day scavenging in the local market, his bag filled with stale bread and lopsided fruit. He had even managed to snatch a shiny gold bangle, and he knew it could be sold for a pretty penny.

"Yes Bolin?" He tossed his younger brother a stale loaf of bread, Bolin caught it and smiled, breaking off a chunk for his little pet.

"I saw her again, Princess Asami! She's gorgeous." Bolin looked star struck. He always had an affinity for the royalty of the kingdom, even if they could give a crap about the lowly people living in poverty.

"Yeah whatever. The Sato's don't care for us. If they did don't you think they'd try and use even a small part of their endless fortune to help build up this end of the city? Or maybe even just help feed the orphans?" Bolin looked down at the bread in his hand. Mako's shoulders slumped.

"I'm sorry Bolin." He walked over and sat down next to his brother, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. "I shouldn't take my frustration out on you, you just know how much I hate the royalty of this damn city." His brother nodded, but still seemed sad. Mako sighed.

"Tell me about her." Bolin's eyes gleamed with pure happiness.

"Oh my gosh! She's so pretty! Her perfect green eyes are so kind! And her dress just seemed to flow in the wind!" If it were possible, Mako knew that Bolin would have hearts in his eyes. He's only seen the princess from behind, so he took his brother's word for it. He smiled lightly.

"I'm gonna go sell this and see how much I can get for it." Bolin nodded. Mako pulled his hood up, ducking out of the rooftop shack they found for shelter. He grabbed the rope and swung down onto the next building over, being careful to tie the rope up so he could climb back up. The tall slender teenage boy peaked over the edges, taking care none of the royal guards were patrolling. Once he knew he was safe, he quickly climbed onto the ledge and hopped down into the alley, making sure nobody was around. He couldn't let anyone know who he was. He could see the black cloth that hung above the fence.* Once he swung down to the side door, he knocked three times, the sign that he was outside.

"Ah, Hello Mako!" The old man opened the door and let him inside. There were a few older men roaming around, browsing the many stolen treasures laid out. One man, a tall man with long hair glanced over at him and looked him up and down.

"What can I help you with?" Mako held out the gold bangle.

"Ah what a gorgeous piece, whoever lost it must miss it dearly." Mako nodded, he didn't want to speak, especially with the strange man looming nearby.

"This I'm sure is worth a lot, but I can only give you 10 gold pieces for it. Mako nodded, glad he received anything. The old man dropped the gold in his hand.

"Pleasure doing business with you!" He dropped the coins into the pouch tied to his hip, each making a satisfying clink. He nodded again, ducked into the dark alley to return home.

Mako made it a few yards before he realized that there was footsteps echoing behind him. He turned quickly and saw the same tall man behind him. He clutched the money bag tightly.

"Who are you? What do you want!" Mako said sternly. The tall man slowly advanced forward, as soon as he was close enough he noticed it was Tarrlok, the Sato's trusted advisor.

"Hello street rat." I scowled at him as he smirked at me.

"What do you want Tarrlok?"

"Oh you know just your ass in jail, but as of now I'm going to put that behind us, because I have a little deal to make with you." Mako didn't trust Tarrlok at all. This man was known for manipulating the poor folks to do his dirty work.

"What kind of deal?" Tarrlok's smirk widened, as if he knew he had a poor little rat in a corner.

"I've been doing some research, and I'd like to explore the Cave of Wonders." The older man's voice was like velvet, but Mako could tell he was as slippery as a snake.

"And why are you telling me this?" Tarrlok raised his brow.

"Well of course, I being the trusted advisor of King Sato I must remain here to aid him, you will be going with a few of my trusted guards to the Cave of Wonders to collect this prized object, return it to me and I will pay you a handsome fee!" Mako's eyes widened. It couldn't be this easy, there had to be a catch.

"No, no catch." Mako's eyes widened. A chill ran down his spine. "I can also easily persuade the king to allow a fund to be distributed to the orphanage if that pleases you." Mako rolled his eyes, as if he had to persuade the king to do anything. Tarrlok seemed to make all the laws and rules, the bumbling king just signed the papers. Nobody had even seen the king outside of the palace since Princess Asami was born and the Queen died.

"I swear on my life that I will uphold our end of the deal, as long as you uphold yours. You must bring me back treasure without disturbing it, and I will make you and your little brother as rich as kings." Mako's eyes widened. Bolin! What would he tell his brother? Should he just leave, and not say a word?

"Deal?"

"Deal."

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"Are we there yet?" Mako asked the burly guard holding the map.

"A few more yards. It should be just over this hi-" The guard stopped as they reached the top of the hill. Below was the cave, it seemed as if a giant tiger was frozen in time, it's mouth suspended open. It's eyes glowed an eerie white color, a yellow glow coming from inside its mouth.

"It's nothing like I've ever seen before." Mako said sliding down the hill, and standing back from the glowing entrance.

"Stay on task street rat. Here's the treasure. Make sure you get it. Don't! And I repeat don't, rub it." Mako grabbed the parchment and saw a beautiful golden lamp. He turned and stood in front of the mouth. As he got closer, the mouth sprung alive, shocking the three men.

"Who disturbs my slumber?" Mako stumbled back.

"It is I, Mako." The cave eyed the young man for a moment.

"Proceed. Touch nothing but the lamp." The mouth of the cave opened wide.

"Remember boy, the lamp!" Mako nodded, beginning to descend the long winding staircase. Once he reached the bottom he entered a room filled floor to ceiling with glittering gold and gemstones. He followed the path taking care not to step on or touch anything. As he advanced through the cave he felt as if something was following him. He quickly turned and saw a beautiful magic carpet peaking out from behind a pile of gold.

"A magic carpet! C'mon. I'm not gonna hurt you." The carpet slowly crept out.

"Wow, you're amazing! Do you think you can help me?" Mako reached for the parchment and showed it to the carpet. It flew up and danced around in the air.

"I take it, you know where it is?" The carpet flew forward as Mako followed. The pair reached a long tunnel. There seemed to be a bright light. Mako, excited that he was almost finished with his mission, found a long cavern with a tall pillar with a beam shining down from above.

"That must be the lamp!" Mako hurried forward, taking a walk up the steep staircase. While Mako climbed the staircase to the lamp, the curious carpet noticed a monkey statue with a glittering, giant ruby. Entranced in it's beauty the carpet wrapped around the jewel just as Mako grabbed the lamp. The ground around the two began to rumble.

"You have touched the forbidden treasure." Mako looked around in a panic. He began to rush down the stairs, but halfway down they disappeared, turning the once steep stairway into a slide. Mako's eyes widened as he noticed the water that was once surrounding the pillar turned into boiling hot lava.

"Carpet!" The blue carpet rushed towards him, catching him midair before he landed in the lava.

"Oh carpet what did you do!" As the ceiling began to crumble Mako and the carpet dodged and weaved through the Cave of Wonders until they reached an opening. Just as they were finally about to be free, a giant boulder the size of an elephant fell from the opening. Mako drove for the wall, but the carpet wasn't so lucky.

"Help me!" Mako yelled to the guards. They both began to laugh at Mako's misfortune.

"Give us the lamp!"

"Please! I can't hold on much longer! I'm gonna fall!" All the while Mako was struggling to pull himself up, carpet was being surrounded by lava. It tugged and pulled until finally it was free!

"Just pass the lamp and we'll grab your hand!" Mako reluctantly reached into his cloak and passed the two guards the lamp.

"Hahaha! I finally have the lamp!" The two guards began to fade away as Tarrlok appeared.

"You tricked me!"

"Yes! And I'm going to give you your reward now! Death!" Mako's mind flashed to Bolin. He had to survive for him. Just as Tarrlok went to push Mako from the wall, carpet soared out and knocked Tarrlok to the group, scooping up Mako and the lamp that had been discarded on the ground.

"Now, let's go home buddy!" Mako said, cheering at his victory.

This took me so much longer than I hoped! I'm so sorry to @princeasimdiya12 for the wait! Please let me know what you think! Thank you all for reading!

~Grace

*- Fence is used to refer to the dealings in stolen goods

#atla #tlok #the legends of korra #avatar the last airbender #avatar #aladdin au #caveofwonders #one-shots #drabbleau #mako #bolin #makoau #makoaladdinau #princess asami #mako oneshot #masterlist

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jeanvaljean24601 · 5 years ago

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Watch Dogs: Legion Hands-On — A World Worth Exploring

Watch Dogs: Legion follows the series’ established hack-heavy formula, but the new recruitment system adds a refreshing layer of intrigue underneath your run of the mill missions. All of which still have the fun of outsmarting enemies or finding the right angle to solve a puzzle, download a key/file, or wreak havoc from afar. But the most appealing part of Watch Dogs: Legion is finding and recruiting new people. From potential new weapons to lovable characters with fascinating backgrounds and recruitment missions, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by expanding DedSec.

Watch Dogs Legion’s Degrees of Dystopian.Set in near-future London, the bombings DedSec was framed for have led to an authoritarian state in which Albion - a private military corporation - has taken over policing while an intelligence community, led by Signal Intelligence Response Service (SIRS), spies on London’s citizens. In an attempt to clear DedSec, you’re tasked with finding out who is responsible for the London bombings. Villains include Nigel Cass, CEO of Albion, and Mary Kelly, leader of an organized crime syndicate in London. x96 tv box

In keeping with the series norms, Watch Dogs: Legion operates in the extremes of tech-gone-too-far and corporations-up-to-no-good. It’s what I expect, but as an exaggeration of where society could head, some storylines are more believable and intriguing than others. An Albion security guard making a janky deal to get medicine felt like a natural extension of the current ways governments fail their people, but an evil CEO shooting someone with a room full of high-powered witnesses felt more cartoonishly evil than cleverly dystopian.

Making every character playable is a narrative risk, but it’s one Watch Dogs: Legion seems to pull off based on what I’ve played so far. Those who felt Marcus Holloway’s cutscene persona didn’t match his mid-mission murders may have a hard time buying into the idea of convincing anyone on the street to join what’s publicly viewed as a terrorist organization — favors aside.

The script differences highlight each character as a unique individual rather than a generic stand-in. From the reserved yet no-nonsense attitude of the old lady I added to my team to my recently recruited Albion guard frantically chatting while she drives through London as if to say “Oh my god; I can’t believe I’m actually doing this.”

And at the end of the day, there’s nothing wrong with things being a bit video game-y if the ends justify the means, and in Watch Dogs: Legion they seem to do just that. Playing as anyone goes as narratively smoothly as it can, given the gameplay, and the experience of recruiting randos makes for a joyous open-world experience. android tv box

While there are plenty of new elements to Watch Dogs: Legion, such as ridable cargo drones, the fundamentals are still present. Take over cameras to redirect power, download data, or interact with nearby objects to create distractions or explosions. Distract enemies by sending something to their phones. Or go straight into combat, which leans even more heavily on player choice with enemies only using melee attacks against you until you pull out your gun and decide it’s time for a firefight. This is particularly convenient for those looking to stealth and hack their way through encounters.

My demo dropped me to the midpoint of the game where missions were a routine to-do list of heading from location to location, hacking drones to scope out the area, and then hacking cameras to download access keys or cause mayhem. At this point in the game the ability to cloak enemy bodies was available, allowing for a more aggressive playstyle, with stealth easier to pull off without alerting foes. London’s various buildings, tourist spots, and construction sites made for a fun playground to strategize my way through each gig.

The loop may be familiar, but that doesn’t make it any less fun. As usual, I found that causing destruction without getting my hands dirty was far more amusing than doing stealth takedowns of less than intelligent A.I who have dull walking patterns and are easily lured or distracted. Seeing how many enemies I can kill by stringing hacks to set off carefully timed explosions before I even step foot in a building never ceased to satisfy. If I was spotted, I found it easier to lean on whatever guns I had available than to bother regaining my cover or fighting hand to hand.

Fast travel still exists and some characters even have their own vehicles (often equipped with useful tech), but otherwise there’s good old-fashioned carjacking. A clever, futuristic touch is the option to steal a self-driving car (just look for the icon on the windshield). No driver or passenger punching required!

Driving still feels arcade-y at heart but some vehicles control better than others. The narrower and more roundabout-filled London streets make for a slower, more challenging drive than speeding down San Francisco. Of course, there isn’t much of an immediate penalty for running over lampposts or even pedestrians.

However, upon closer examination you’ll notice that running over someone makes them like you less. Good luck recruiting the person you just hospitalized (still possible! But an awkward icebreaker once they recover). Albion may come after you if they see you commit a crime, but losing them isn’t too difficult as long as you put enough distance between the two of you. Some nice touches include the fact that they can follow you into buildings — your safe house is inaccessible when you’re under pursuit — and if you’re cornered, an electrical device can latch onto your car, rendering it undrivable.

Making Your Team is a Dream.By far, Watch Dogs: Legion’s biggest and most impressive differentiator is the ability to play as anyone. Though getting complete intel on a person (down to their schedule) requires you to upgrade the DeepProfiler by using Tech Points you find hidden in the world. Getting to know them will tip you off to what they’re looking for and unlock their recruitment missions to turn an initial No into a Yes. x96 tv box

The borough uprising system lets you take on missions to empower a borough and give them a more positive outlook on DedSec. Some recruitments will be mandatory as part of the campaign, such as an Albion guard, but you mostly have free reign. If you just want to get the best of the best, DedSec will mark a few people of interest on your map who have been predetermined as good recruits, such as a Drone Expert and Bee Keeper. But you’re also free to recruit whoever is roaming around London.

The first person who caught my eye was an adorable old lady who was looking for some Darts competition. To recruit her, the first step was to go to the pub and play her in Darts, which is one of the most appealing mini-game side quests I’ve ever had the option to do. Hell yes, I want to play this old lady in Darts to get her to join DeadSec! Winning led to her recruitment mission of investigating how her job replaced the 300 workers who were laid off.

I could see this recruitment loop getting stale over time but, during my brief session, I adored every moment of it because I was doing it for my new recruit and my reward was having her there for the rest of my adventure - despite the fact that the mission itself was nothing special.

Unfortunately, she was arrested shortly after being recruited. Despite previous plans for mandatory permadeath, no one dies in Watch Dogs: Legion unless you opt-in to play with permadeath on. Instead, they just get arrested or hospitalized and locked by a timer. You can go to the police station and potentially get them out early but the easier solution is to just switch to a different operative. Having certain operatives on your team such as Albion guards, police officers, or EMTs will decrease your time in jail or the hospital.

A Dynamic and Diverse Group.Each character has their own loadouts, perks, professions, personalities, and backgrounds. Weapons and tools are shared across your team and can be swapped, but there are some gadgets and guns that are locked to certain types of recruits.

Uniform Access allows for certain characters to enter restricted areas more easily. So walking into a construction site as a construction worker means I can more freely walk through the area and it takes longer for enemies to detect my presence. However, they can still realize I don’t belong there so it’s not an instant win.

My assassin had a slew of powerful guns at her disposal but the graffiti artist had a paintball gun and would spray folks in the face after executing a takedown. Even across folks from the same background there’s some level of variation. android tv box

For instance, one construction worker will have a different set of tools than another.There were some rough edges in the build I played. When characters are defeated the animation looks a bit goofy, and there are some questionable drivers. But some of these may be cleared up by launch. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Watch Dogs: Legion and grew attached to the different characters, their arsenals, and their sparkling personalities. The lack of a primary main character doesn’t detract from the story. Instead, it incentivizes exploring and immersing myself in a world I otherwise may have ignored in favor of mainlining the story.

Watch Dogs: Legion’s gameplay follows the established formula of hacking devices to accomplish your task at hand with the option to go in guns blazing - though it’s the less enticing route when you have plenty of gadgets at hand and drones overhead.

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my-creepypasta-story · 5 years ago

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Found a Missing Tape

“Okay, okay! Are you ready for the big adventure Fred?” he looked at his friend with excitement, his body jittered with joy, as he was like bouncing off the walls.

“Yes! Now can we need to hurry up Ben, I don’t want it to be too late” his friend rolled his eyes as he got a cam recorder in his hand.

Both guys were excited to film their first YouTube video. It was 2009 and Youtube only started to become popular They packed their rucksaks with food, extra batteries , torches, lights that’s attached to the recorder and tripods to take epic pictures. Even tho it was middle of Winter in January, they were still rearing to go. For a while they had their own Facebook page to take abandoned photos of builds, the eerie lifeless of buildings, gave it a creepy surprise. Like it was from a zombie movie. Both guys were best friends since highschool and they do everything together. Fred was tall and skinny, at least 6.2ft, his hair was brown but curly and he hardly brushed it, everyone called him ‘bush’ but since leaving school he like his own name, he had a skater style along with Ben. Ben was Chinese but he spoke English fluently and could only say a few Chinese words to pick up women, even tho it never worked. Ben was 5.8ft, an average looking guy, but love to wear black, even tho had the skater heart. Brown hair, brown eyes, with a tan too match, compared to Fred, he was a pastey white boy. They were still best friends without a doubt.

“Okay I’m all set” as they got into Ben’s car, stopped by the gas station before they hit to their destination. “Heyy Fred, Do you think it’s still abandoned? I’ve heard stories about that place man? I don’t think we should go?”

Fred ran back and jumped into the car, shouting out through the window “dude! It’s going to be awesome! We are going to take wicked sick videos and pictures. And anyways, our friends been there before you know, that big party they had but we were sick. It should be okay”. Ben just nodded as he finishing up the tank and paying it on his card. They drove into the distance, early hours in the morning.

Hours went by, soon as they came across the building, they parked up and hiked to the place where they were going to film. Fred and Ben were infront of the camera “heyy guys! It’s me Fred and Ben! Coming to you, to this abaoned location. Now this place is so old and so creepy, we had to see it! It’s an asylum but was going turn into a hotel. But now abandoned! Ain’t that cool!”

Ben smiled and using hand gestures “dude it’s going to be fucking cool! So I looked into the buildings history! We are in Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia. This place was said to be haunted! Cool right! Apparently they tested on their own patients and did lobotomies, where the doctors used an ice pick and went through your brain, from your eye. Dude that’s creepy”

Fred interrupted “and and and, local people are still saying, the patients who died here along with doctors and nurses, are still here. Spooookkyy!”

Bed interrupted “so we are here! Going inside and look around! Ain’t that cool dude?”

“So cool” replied Fred, with extreme anticipation.

Ben was holding the camera will Fred was looking around, both followed into the dark rooms and the light lead them the way. Each find of a wheelchair, an operation table was well documented. The paint was peeling off and the green mould was growing in the corners of some of the rooms. Each of them had this sadness that they couldn’t wait to be here. Fred insisted Ben to hold the camera while Ben was doing the entertaining and giving out more history stories.

“So, this room I bet is where they did the lobotomies...” then suddenly they both got interrupted by a sound near by. They both went quiet and tip toed to the noise.

11 years later.

“Omg I cannot believe you found this place” Bailey flirtatiously teasing her boyfriend John, their friend Ivan couldn’t wait to leave. Bailey a typical girl with died red hair, black shorts with a grey tank top and John wearing his jeans with a graphic tee that had on ‘Rick and Morty’. Ivan was wearing something similar to John since they were friends. All three in college and a few YouTubers visited the asylum too; then all went to this Building in Virginia because they all went to college near by. They all got bored during summer break and before they head back home, they wanted to do some exploring. Searching on the web, Bailey wanted to go to an Asylum to cross off her bucket list.

After a few minutes of guessing on google maps, they finally found it. All derelict and no one around, the only sounds are the birds cheeping in the distance. It felt peaceful, they tried to go inside the asylum. The doors were falling off and the black mould growing up the walls in the hallway. As they approached a dead end since the building was falling apart, they decided to head home. As they were walking, Bailey shouted “wait a minute guys, I think I see a cam recorder” John grabbed Ivan and they both followed Bailey. The room was an old office and nothing haven’t been touched for decades. The papers were still there along with documation of the patients that stayed. John grabbed them and Ivan followed, he went into the filing cabinets and took as much information as they could. Bailey put the cam recorder in her bag and all of them headed to the car.

Driving back to the college, she said “most of this tape is fried and slightly damp. Do you think Paris can take a look for us?”

Ivan replied as he was driving on the highway “I don’t see why not. What do you think is in there?”

Bailey handed over the cam recorder to John “whatever is inside, it’s been there along time. Strange that something like this is in there”

They all headed to Paris, who was the head at the media department. For a teacher, she had piercings on her lips and ears, tattoos all over her body. For a 42 year old, she looked 10 years younger. “Wow I haven’t seen something like this in 11 years! Back then, this was state of the art! Still working just the tape is a bit damp. Maybe tomorrow it will be finished. Where did you guys find it?”

Bailey shrugged and was nervous to talk “we found it at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum”

“You fucking what! That place is bad news! How did you even go there?” Screamed Paris as she folded her arms looking at John and Ivan. They both shrugged and looked down with disappointment.

“Do you know what... fine I will do it. Only because I’m curious myself” Paris held the cam recorder and took out the tape which was slightly damaged. The three of them walked out and closed the door behind them.

3am the next morning

*Ring, ring ring* “ugh... hey babe, can you get that” muttered John as he woke up Bailey. She muttered, picked up the phone from the bed night stand “yeahh, this is John’s phone. What the fuck do you want at this... yeahh. Wait now?! .... Do I have... okay... yes we getting dressed.... fine I will get Ivan too.... yes we will be there.... okay, bye” she poked John till he got up. She put on a black dress with her blue sparkley converse on. “John get up” as she took the covers off him “we need to get up now. Get ivan, he needs to come too”

John still in his pjs, he went next door to his dorm and got Ivan. Ivan was in his sweat pants and no top on, luckily he worked out and had a six pack to show off. All half asleep expect for Bailey, she was anxious and her nerves were running high. They both got into Paris’s office and she had beer cans all over her desk; including empty beer cans in the trash that was piling over ready to burst at any moment. Her room was dark and musky, the blinds drawn as you can see the sunrise appearing through at any moment. She got spair chairs from another class room and the three of them sat down, huddled over the computer. “Okay this is fucking creepy and I’ve already called the cops, they are coming in the morning. But you need to see this” as she opened up another beer can, Ivan felt uncomfortable as her breath stank of stale beer. She pressed play as she saw two guys in the video.

Fred and Ben were having a blast, recording everything they could find, even the old theatre. Suddenly they both screamed as the door flew open and a bird flew past them. The guys were laughing their heads off. A few more minutes in, they saw something in the hallway, they ran after it “omg do you think someone else is here” Fred panting to Ben.

“Well whatever it is, it’s fucking cool” then they both stopped. A gastly apparition was following them back, they started to scream. Ben dropped the camera and Paris, John, Ivan and Bailey saw a black face starring into the camera with red eyes. Then black. Suddenly the cam recorder was switched on, Ivan, Paris, John and Bailey all held each other close tight, as they saw something carrying the camera. The background noise was heavy breathing, walking around the asylum as if nothing happened.

Paris pressed stop “that was was fucking freaky”

John was built well and had a deep voice, but it cracked “what the fuck”.

“What was even is that?” Bailey looked over at Ivan as he was in a fetal position, rocking back and forth.

“It doesn’t stop there. 4 years ago when the building was going to change into a hotel like everyone had been promised for fucking years. The builders found the mummified remains of the boys in the basement. It was all over the news, apparently they were missing for years!”

“Omg I remember that... but how did they die?” John asked as he was biting his fingers.

“No one knows, but maybe this video will help” as Paris brought up the screen again with the black face starring at them on the computer screen.

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