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noneatnonedotcom · 4 years ago

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the art is by @exp1016 and it was so good that i decided to write a story for it. this was edited by @thatorigamiguy

Business and Pleasure

Jaune was somewhat disillusioned with being an adult. Not that he hated his life or anything, It was more that he had come to understand that ninety percent of life was bullshit to fill the time; the other ten percent was screaming in terror as you tried to stop the cock up cascade that had just started before it hit critical mass and destroyed a town.

Married life was not too dissimilar though the most significant change was that Jaune knew that Yang was there for him despite everything. It meant that there was a level of happiness that Jaune could never truly dip below. It also meant the high points of his life were significantly higher.

This is why it wasn’t too hard to focus on the paperwork in front of him. He and Yang both made money through the protection of the town as their resident Huntsmen, with their payment typically coming in the form of food and board with a little pay when the town had sold their harvest.

Jaune had since added in a few techniques for homesteading his dad had taught him as a boy, and as it turns out, he would have made a damn good farmer if his heart wasn’t set on being a Huntsman. Since most of the techniques to improve the harvest were by their nature passive, it means the town had a lot more time on its hands and a lot more food and money to go around. This, of course, was not without its drawbacks.

More food and money, meant more commerce to their town. More Commerce meant more people flocking to their town, settling down, and either becoming farmers or starting their own trade. More hard working people meant more output, and with more output came an economic growth. So then, what exactly was the drawback of having more people, more workers, and more commerce?

Well for starters, idle hands are the Devil's favorite playthings. With the townsfolk having to work less hours, that meant it was time for them to cut loose and have fun. And “fun,” often meant either having one to many down at the local tavern and acting like a drunk idiot, starting fights with people and causing property damage; or it meant that the local youth liked to go around causing trouble for others through either mild, but annoying pranks, or through going around and breaking things and acting like complete hooligans.

With less time spent on working hard to distract them, now they spent that time hardly working and acting like complete menaces around the town.

Then, there was of course, less pleasant folk that started coming around as if late. These were the undesirables, miscreants, thugs, and other would be thieves that came wandering into town thinking they could make an easy profit by robbing the people of their hard earned coin. Why bother to put in the work, when you can just take it off those who've already done it for you? So, the town had decided that they were in need of a Sheriff, and Jaune had all but been given the title through an all around unanimous agreement from the townsfolk.

Now, to say that Jaune was less than pleased with this sudden responsibility would be an understatement, but not for reasons you might think. Jaune was more than happy to take the role of Sheriff for the town, they needed one after all and Jaune found that he fit into the position quite well. No, what had really annoyed Jaune was that the townsfolk had also decided he was the best fit for the towns Headman position as well, something that was quite unexpected and one that Jaune found to be a pain in his side more than anything.

In other words, Jaune was basically handed two of the most powerful positions of a rapidly growing and expanding township, with all of the unfortunate responsibilities of both words to go along with it.

The only upside of Jaune's sudden shift to a leadership position was that he and Yang were moved into the Headsman house, which was more of a manor than a simple house compared to the rest of the townsfolk’s lodging. Jaune and Yang would later learn that the community had been started by the servants of a long-dead noble household that used to tend to the manor, and their descendants have been living within the town ever since.

So Jaune found himself spending less time in the field, and more of his time spent in the office filing paperwork and guiding his deputies around to do most of the legwork for him. Was it the most exciting thing in the world? No, but Jaune found that he enjoyed the work and was quite content knowing that he was providing for Yang and setting up a strong foundation for their family when they got around to making one.

Jaune's thoughts were interrupted when his secretary came walking into his office, and she instantly caught his eye. She was a knockout with long blonde hair, a shirt clearly too tight for her that he could only assume was combat certified with the force those poor buttons were under. A pencil skirt clung to her hips, and as she looked at him through her glasses, Jaune knew that today he was going to have quite a bit of fun at work. “Mr. Arc, I believe that is all for today,” she began, “maybe it’s time you took a break?”

Though her tone was light, she spoke with an air of confidence as she slowly approached his desk. The approach was slow, her hips swaying from side to side in a mesmerizing manner, while she had a light, almost mischievous smile on her face as she kept eye contact with him. She wasn’t merely approaching him, no, she was stalking towards him like a big cat eyeing up her prey, all feline grace and confidence. She knew what she was doing to him, and she was reveling in it. Jaune stood, smirking at the challenge, and walking around his desk. A lot of seduction was posturing, non-verbal communication and like most forms of communication, the more you did it with someone, the better you were at it. He and his secretary were no strangers to this dance, but he still loved every second of it. Just as much as he loved his wife. “Then do you have a suggestion as to what I could do instead,” he asked, letting his voice go lower. Something you would feel more than hear and she, for her part, tilted her head down and looked up at him with her eyes. Making her seem so small, so vulnerable, but the apparent lust in her eyes only served to enhance the image. “Well, I’ve got a few things in mind,” she said with a smile, her hands trailing absentmindedly across her body, making his eyes follow her curves, “there are three things, in particular, I’m going to have you do.” “Miss Xiao-long, what would my wife say if she heard you,” he gasped out in false shock. She only smirked at his question, before her hand came up to his chest, pushing him back lightly till he was leaning against the desk. She kept her hand on his chest, caressing his pecs in a soothing manner while she reveled in the feeling of hard, corded muscle hiding beneath his work shirt. “Mrs. Arc will never know sir, I promise,” she stated in a reassuring manner, before she leaned in and placed a slow sensual kiss on his lips. He felt the hand on his chest unbuttoning his shirt in a well practiced manner, exposing his bare skin for the world to see. Her eyes lit up at the sight of his toned body and defined muscles, before she started to lay down a trail of kisses starting from his chest and ending with her on her knees by the time she had made it to his abs.

“So why don’t you let me help you relieve all that pent up energy,” she said from her kneeling position, lilac eyes fogged over with lust as she began to slowly unbutton and unzip his pants, “it seems so wrong to keep something like you caged up.” “Something like me,” he asked with a raised eyebrow. “An apex predator, an animal,” she said with a lusty smile, before gasping in awe at the size of the now freed cock she held in her hands. Her mind was clouded over with lust as took in the sight of the member she held in her hand, her mind unable to formulate a proper response. “I look forward to being devoured,” she all but whispered out, unable to take her eyes off his member.

Jaune only smirked in response, before he wrapped her silk-like blonde hair around his hand, and forced her mouth down his shaft, groaning in pleasure as she took it all in.

By the ancestors, he loved his job.

Hours later, Jaune and Yang found themselves laying on the office floor, bodies covered in a sheen of sweat as they held their naked bodies in one another’s arms. Usually, the furniture tended to be obliterated in the process of their fun(and at one point, the whole office when they both activated their semblances), but this time was more about the seduction and worshiping each other than it was about the act. That wasn’t to say that they didn’t enjoy getting rough with one another still, but as they got older, they had started to develop more refined tastes into their lovemaking. That, and it was less money spent having to replace everything that was broken in their fun, and less embarrassing having to explain to the repairmen how everything had been broken in the first place. Jaune couldn’t stop the smile spreading on his face as he looked down upon the sleeping form of his wife, before he leaned down and planted a quick peck on the top of her forehead. He was slowly drifting asleep himself, until eyes shot open as he felt a small hand trail down his body towards his member once more. He slowly felt his eyes drifting back towards his wife, only to be greeted with her smirking visage as her hand was wrapped firmly around his member, slowly getting ready for another round. “I heard you were with that Xiao-long slut you call your secretary again.” Jaune tried to fake a denial, but Yang only chuckled in response, “I don’t mind, you’re a strong man, more than enough for the two of us. But I do need to remind that whore just who belongs to who.” Yang slowly arched a leg over him, letting him feel her smooth skin as she carefully positioned herself on top of his now hardened member, “So why don’t we teach that slut just who’s the Wife…”Jaune let out a pleasurable moan as she lowered herself onto his shaft, gritting her teeth as she took him in, inch by inch, before she fully sheathed herself against the base of his groin. She let out a sigh of pleasure, before leaning over to give him a faceful of her large, warm, breast, a sensual smile on her face as her lilac eyes once again fogged over with lust. “...And who’s the Mistress.” As Yang readied herself to keep going, she found her concentration ruined when Jaune, breaking character for a moment, lowered her down so that he could plant a loving kiss on her lip.

“I love you so much, you know that,” he said with a happy smile on his face. This caused Yang to break her own character, as she began blushing harder than a schoolgirl lusting over her crush, before she covered her face in embarrassment.

“JAUNE,” She screamed, “YOU JUST CAN’T DO THAT WITHOUT WARNING!” Jaune only laughed in response to his wife’s overreaction, before he thrusted up into her with a determined look on his face. Yang, clearly caught off guard, screamed his name in surprise, pleasure, and still a fair bit of embarrassment from the earlier unscripted affection. The older you got, the less magical the world became, and it started to become clear that not everything is as good as it can be. It becomes clear that life is full of ups and downs, and a never ending cycle of trying to balance responsibilities to keep yourself from crashing and burning too soon. but it was small moments like these that could only make Jaune think one thing:

‘I love being an adult…”

#rwby #Dragonslayer #Jaune Arc #yang xiao long #yang #jaune #rwby dragonslayer #art by exp1016 #editing by thatorigamiguy #[email protected] fics

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my-writings-and-musings · 5 years ago

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Can I request the hostage prompt with whirl,cygate and megatron with a human so

Ohoho I've been waiting to do this one... Hope everyone enjoys some silliness mixed with sweetness!

Part One: You're Here!

Part Two: Here!

Whirl

·You've always had a kind of strength Whirl recognized and admired, it's one of the reasons he fell for you in the first place, but even you aren't sure what exactly gives you the fuel to snap with enough force that it freezes your captor at their active communication station. Maybe you're just tired of being chained up, but their arrogant demeanor is more than likely what pushed you over the edge, specifically with that last taunt at Whirl that used "Cyclops" as the punchline for the millionth time. Swears are beautifully melded into an avalanche of fury that starts with you demanding this lazy idiot think of a better insult for your partner than something involving his looks, because "You think YOU'RE hot shit?! There's corpses in here with more charisma than you!"

·Fear doesn't even register as you keep on tearing apart your captor in every way you can. Nothing is off limits with all the taunting Whirl has been forced to endure on the other end of the communication line, and thus you bring out every below the belt insult you can think of. The bad bot's jaw is slack as you continue, looking to their dazed face and declaring "Not to mention you're dumb enough to go after MY mech, you think a loser like you is gonna stand a chance against WHIRL?! Just last week he tossed a combiner off a bridge because he called me "fleshy", what do you think he's gonna do to YOU?!"

· The communicator is still running when your kidnapper leaves it to try and intimidate you into silence, a move that makes you laugh in exasperated dismissal. "Oh, now you're gonna THREATEN me, really? Did I not make myself clear? You've pissed off the deadliest mech in the universe, and he's got the entirety of the Lost Light helping him search, your next few hours would be a lot better spent deciding how you want what's gonna be left of you interred!" Though you're not even knee height compared to your captor, he actually seems to flinch at your words, especially with you raging so close to his gobsmacked face. The rush of finally shutting him up spurs you to continue your roasting with increasingly petty and crude comments on your partner's significantly superior looks.

·In a stroke of fantastic fortune or misfortune depending on your perspective, a tactical explosion tears into the underground base just as you start to elaborate on Whirl's many other impressive skills. Bots rain in to overwhelm your kidnapper and his automated defenses in a coordinated ambush, one quickly ruined when your absolutely giddy paramour rushes forth without a care to take out the captor in a flying jump kick with a howling battle cry. Rather than eviscerate his now vulnerable enemy, Whirl leaves the crumpled kidnapper where he lies, heedless to the battle still raging all around as his optic sparkles as he beholds you. Like a damsel being swept off their feet you're plucked from your chains and pulled into his careful claws.

·All but gushing with euphoria, he explains that your brilliant distraction tactic gave them the ability to trace your location, and that he heard every word of your spark warming defense on his behalf. You can hear the unhindered adoration in his voice, but you also get a chance to see it as he practically dances through the combat with you held in one arm. By the time your kidnapper is the only one left, he looks lovingly into your eyes and primes his gun with a tender whisper. "Want me to kill this glitch just for you, babe?" The other bots quickly interfere to insist on taking him in for a proper trial, something you're quite alright with as you explain all you really want is to get some rest. Whirl insists on carrying you all the way to bed, whispering sweet nothing's and more or less being the most affectionate anyone has ever seen him.

·Afterwards you're told what it was like on the other end of the communication line. He'd been inconsolable at your kidnapping, and it had taken multiple bots to prevent him from tearing apart the ship as the messages came in. But the moment you'd started shouting? He'd been initially frozen like the rest of them, but had eventually leaned in beside the communicator to listen, his optic getting mistier at every passing curse word yelled on his behalf. Some described his demeanor as that of a lovestruck teen listening to their crush sing a love ballad, though they emphasize his emotional reaction to hearing you was undoubtedly genuine, as it was probably the first time he'd ever been defended so passionately by anyone. The endless doting on you he engages in afterwards leaves you little doubt this is true.

Cygate

·Having two loving partners has always been a blessing, which is probably why you're so easily driven to a blind rage in the face of your captor's endless attempts to mock both of them through the brief communications he sends to the crew, which are also made more unbearable by his ever increasing list of demands for your return. At his latest taunting of their "freakish" romance, you hit your boiling point. The communicator is still running when you lay into the callous bot for having the audacity to insult anyone's choices when he's set himself up in a literal evil lair. "There's body parts just thrown around like confetti in here, and you LIVE like this?! Do you think you get to decide who's weird in this scenario?! At least those two were decent enough to have each other as roommates, you couldn't convince anything living to shack up with your creepy ass!"

·At the total silence you somehow find the fury to keep going, but harder and faster this time, your self restraint little more than a memory as you dangle from the chains keeping you still. "Is it a jealousy thing?! Are you just that peeved off you're single? That you had to steal me to cut them down from three to two? Bad news dumbass; they're STILL beating you on the dating front!" It's not helping your situation, but tearing in to the jerk who's dragged you into a cave and spent so long bullying your partners feels too good for you to stop, especially with the stupid look of indignation and confusion twisting his expression. Not to mention he gives you plenty to rip into even as he tries in vain to make you shut up.

·"You think you scare me?! Do you even know who I'm dating?! Do you think they'll let you get away with this stunt?! One of them can destroy your stupid face with one punch, the other is Cyclonus, and you've gone and pissed them both off!" While it may be a little underwhelming to threaten the guy with what others will do to him, you're hardly in a mood to complain when his expression briefly gives way to one of horrified realization. Yet that hardly calms you down in any significant way. Did he drag you to some nowhere planet and chain you to a wall without even bothering to consider the consequences?! Your back is killing you and the bots have been enduring his incoherent demands for hours, and perhaps you could forgive that if not for all his haughty taunting, which drives you to once again begin raging.

·"Did you even have a plan?! Do you actually have any idea what you're up against, or did you just think you'd swipe a human and earn an easy paycheck? Because if you had even an inkling of what my mechs are capable of, you'd be headed for the nearest space bridge and warping as FAR away from here as physics allow!" While it's a new level of ridiculous, even for your crazy life, the absurdities of the nonexistent plan simply make you see red. It's one thing to be kidnapped by someone who at least has goals, but to be chained up in a cave by some idiot who doesn't have any plans beyond profit and bragging? That'd be enough to tick you off in itself, but the additional insults he's levied at your partners bring your tirade into molten levels of anger that seem absolutely bottomless.

·You're practically red in the eyes when the whole place quakes, and by the time you realize your captor is booking it he's already made it to the door, though his escape ends there when it opens to reveal the bots you've been wanting to see more than anything. A single strike from Cyclonus sends the kidnapper clear across the room, and he's followed by a battle ready Tailgate roaring out his fury as the security systems come on. The chaos of automatic turrets does nothing to distract you from the little blue bot pummeling your captor, and it only makes the arrival of a familiar purple mech that much more heroic as he snaps your chains and pulls you into his arms. The battle is little more than a formality before the barely conscious villain is cuffed and prepared for transport to trial, something your two partners are only willing to allow under the threat of personally hunting him down if he tries to escape justice. Before even leaving the cave you're smushed in the middle of a passionate hug.

·Tailgate alternates between ecstatic buzzing and relieved weeping at your rescue, while Cyclonus never loses a soft smile but keeps finding opportunities to hold and touch you as if he needs to be reassured you're here. It's heartwarming, but according to the rest of the crew it all started at your unplanned radio takeover. No bot had been prepared to hear their favorite human erupt in such unbridled rage, but those two had been shocked in the most wonderful meaning of the word, their expressions reflecting awe like no other until the ship had actually arrived at your location. Cyclonus had actually gone slack jawed while Tailgate had threatened to faint in his arms, but joy had painted their reactions more and more as time had gone on. The tiny powerhouse and the colossal mech out of time were still effusive in their praise every time you three were together, neither having ever known someone could truly love the two of them so completely.

Megatron

·Knowing that Megatron has a sizable target on his back and a lot to be criticized for doesn't make enduring your captor any easier, which is probably why you end up reaching a boiling point after a few hours of listening to the bot who's tied you up try to claim some kind of moral high ground. A tiny human being protective of a titanic gladiator may be illogical, but you can't seem to care when you finally hit your limit, the chains keeping you in place rattling from your sheer force of rage. Because seriously, so long as we're criticizing people for immoral actions, can you cut in about the time some raging jerk tied you up just to taunt another bot and get some cash on the side? Your simple but glaring barb immediately gets the attention of the much larger alien as they stare at you in shock.

·At his bafflement you become entirely unhinged. "Really? What, do you need me to spell out the irony of all this?! You're calling MY MECH a monster, but I don't see him running many evil lairs at the moment, do you?! Kind of rich, you claiming the high ground while I'm literally CHAINED TO THE WALL and our only present company is CORPSES, don't you think?!" The various and still unexplained dead bodies dotting the cave remain as the only audience you know of while the communicator is abandoned, your captor leaving it behind so he can approach and try to growl out some kind of intimidation. It has no effect beyond making you more furious than ever before. Had the chains not been holding you down, you'd have certainly tried to swing at his stupid face while you snapped.

·"Are you trying to scare me? You, a two bit kidnapper who holed himself up in a cave, and I'm supposed to be impressed?! I'm DATING Megatron! One look at a bot that terrifies the galaxy and I decided I wanted a piece of him!" You're almost proud as you declare your undying love for your gigantic partner, something that has earned you a lot of grief from others but has made you happier than you've ever been in your entire life. While you ordinarily don't attempt to argue on his behalf, per his request, it's impossible not to just grill a jerk who thinks he has the high ground to criticize literally anyone. Plus your open and passionate fondness for the former warlord seems to be scaring your captor more than the mech himself ever could, something that brings a devilish twinkle to your eye as you continue to threateningly gush over the bot you adore, if only to pay this jerk back for all the gloating he made said mech endure.

·You're absolutely effusive as you passionately and quite aggressively go on about what a gentlemech you're dating, with ample divertions to the many ways his incredible strength and size are used for much more protective and noble purposes, like holding you close or crushing bad guys. It isn't long before you're spinning a terrifying yarn about the time you were caught in a firefight and he tore a hunk of the wall clean off to shield you from the danger before proceeding to beat the attacking forces with the corpse of their leader. The kidnapper is actually backing away slowly, which turns to backing away quickly as you begin to describe Megatron's romantic poetry skills and how some of his greatest talents lie not on the battlefield but in the bedroom, by which point he's preparing his security systems to cover his escape.

·Perfect timing, from your perspective, makes the sudden explosion of every door a beautiful and inspiring sight. In what has to be the most well coordinated ambush of all time, your friends of the Lost Light storm the cave and annihilate the resistance so fast you only have to blink before a very restrained Megatron is cuffing your petrified kidnapper and tossing him to Magnus so he can be taken into custody. When he turns to you he's actually smiling, and there's a lot behind the expression. Relief, gratitude, exhaustion, and a million other emotions swarm in his optics as the chains keeping you bound crumble like dust in his grip, and you're lifted in his cupped hands like a priceless treasure. Though he's mostly quiet for some time after, you can hear how absolutely smitten he is with you every time he speaks, and the lovestruck look of pure affection never seems to leave his face, which you see often as he appears terrified to lose you.

·A couple of other bots feel compelled to tell you; he was on the warpath when he found you missing, and many had been taking bets on how little would be left of your kidnapper once the former Decepticon got his hands on him. Yet, as soon as he'd overheard you, something about his whole demeanor had changed in an instant. He hadn't just softened, he'd been visibly moved by the passion of your defense and the fire of your love for him. The very idea that he could be defended had been unthinkable in his mind. Yet you'd faced a much larger foe without fear because you'd been so angry on his behalf, what could he possibly have done to deserve such a thing? His gratitude is apparent every moment the two of you spend together, from his rather out of character cuddling to his impressive increase in poems written to describe his adoration of you. Though it isn't at all necessary, you do enjoy having been able to let him know how deeply you cherish him.

#transformers #maccadam #mtmte #more than meets the eye #lost light #idw #tf #my writing #my asks #anon #requests #whirl x reader #cygate x reader #cyclonus x reader #tailgate x reader #megatron x reader #human reader #self insert

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queen-scribbles · 4 years ago

Text

Acceptable Risk

Art trade fic for the extremely patient @theheroofoakvale, exploring if Shepard’s recruiting Thane had gone a little.... differently.

-----

The door opened with a quiet hiss, and Shepard’s entry was greeted with the raised barrels of several assault rifles. The mercenaries, however, paused before opening fire, despite being confronted by three heavily armed individuals pointing guns back at them.

The asari in the middle of the cluster--clad for business rather than combat--spun to face them, her eyes widening. “Shepard?!”

Shepard smirked, centered his pistol on her. “Nassana.”

There was a muffled clatter in the ceiling that had the mercenaries’ attention swiveling upward. Her posture shifted defensive. “You’re dead.”

“I got better,” he retorted, and shot her in the throat.

Her bodyguards zeroed back in on him and his team, torn between them and the threat above, and that was their undoing. A dark figure dropped from one of the ceiling vents, and Shepard used that moment of distraction to take out two of them. When the remaining mercs focused in on him, the dark figure punched one in the throat and shot the other center mass. The few that were left went down quickly.

Massani and Vakarian kept their guns up, leveled at the late arrival, a drell, as he stood in the middle of the carnage, eyes fixed in an unblinking, regretful stare at Nassana Dantius’ body.

“Sorry if I stole your kill,” Shepard said after letting the silence go as long as he could tolerate. His pistol hung at his side in a loose grip, ready if he needed it. He didn’t think he would.

“I was not here for her, though the galaxy is no less for her removal,” the drell said softly, finally looking up from the dead woman and blinking just before he met Shepard’s gaze. “I am here for you.”

Behind him, Massani muttered a quiet curse and Vakarian tightened his grip on his gun, but Shepard didn’t even flinch. “I did wonder. Dantius hardly seems worth the time for someone of your... reputation.”

“And yet you still came,” the drell said, clasping his hands behind him and looking in no rush to kill anyone.

“She used me.” He let the barest edge of a snarl color the words. “I can go along with a likely trap if it gives me an excuse for payback. Also,” he took half a step forward, “seemed the best way to meet you, Krios. We need to talk.”

Thane Krios did not look at all perturbed that his target knew who he was. His expression remained impassive as he studied Shepard’s face. “Do we? What about?”

“I need your help on a mission. You can feel free to continue trying to kill me after we’re done.”

“Why?” Krios asked, still studying Shepard’s face.

“Why, what?”

“Why do you need me? Why should I help instead of killing you now?”

Shepard laughed darkly. “The fucking galaxy is at stake, I need the best of the best, even if they are out for my blood.” Another half step forward, Vakarian and Massani following this time until he waved them back. “As for the second question.... I know some things about you, Krios. I know you’re dying, and I know you have a son.” His pistol folded in on its clip as he crossed his arms and stared hard at the assassin. “And where he is. I imagine you’d hate for something to happen to him before you had a chance to mend fences.”

Three rapid blinks, a sharp breath, posture unchanged, but it was the most reaction Krios had shown in this conversation. “And would you make this... something happen if I say no, Shepard?”

His calm was impressive. Shepard wondered if it was an easier illusion to maintain with eyes that had neither pupils nor iris to betray strong emotion. “If I have to. I need the best, Krios, which is you. Don’t really care how I get your cooperation.”

Krios was silent for a long moment. “This threat must be grave indeed for you to employ such measures.”

He was nigh impossible to read, but the slight shift of his clasped hands was hint enough. “I’m hunting an enemy who’s abducting human colonies and has ties to the Reapers, I’d call that pretty damn grave. Like I said, you can resume trying to kill me if we survive. What’s it gonna be?”

Another heavy pause, though shorter. “You have left me only one viable option if I care about my son.”

Shepard arched a brow.

“I will assist. Consider this a pause in the contract on your life.”

“Good enough for me.” Shepard cast a smug glance at Dantius’ corpse, then turned to exit the room. “We’re done here, so you can either come with us or meet us at the ship.”

“I will meet you shortly. I have a few personal effects to gather,” Krios said.

“Alright. We’re on a clock, so don’t dilly dally,” Shepard replied, and motioned their departure to Vakarian and Massani.

“What’s to stop him from shooting you on our way down?” Vakarian muttered as they headed for the elevator. “He’s already planning to kill you and you threatened his kid.”

Massani beat Shepard to the answer. “Doesn’t know if there’s a dead man’s switch on that something happenin’ to his boy if Shepard bites it.” He chuckled darkly and smirked at Shepard. “What the hell’d you do to earn a death mark, anyway?”

Shepard shrugged, watching the blur of downward travel out the elevator’s glass-paned wall. “Hell if I know, Massani. Certainly pissed off enough people for there to be some options.”

The mercenary gave a rough laugh and slapped him on the shoulder. “Wear like a badge of fucking honor, kid. Means you got someone real riled up.”

---

Krios was, as promised, aboard the Normandy well within an hour. His personal effects he’d gone to collect were few enough to fit in a small shoulder satchel that he politely refused to let anyone inspect. (Lawson was not happy when Shepard told her to drop it, clearly suspicious of allowing an assassin on board without first vetting his gear.) He settled in life support at EDI’s suggestion, and ruffled no feathers with the rest of the crew, unless you counted Taylor’s mistrust of his career in general.

“What will be expected of me, Commander?” Krios asked, in that same modulated tone he’d used on Illium.

“No shipboard duties, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Shepard said. He leaned against the wall by the door and studied Krios. “You can do as you like here. When we have missions, I may want you to come watch my six, if your skillset seems a good fit.”

“I see.” He folded his hands, elbows braced against the small worktable at which he sat. There was a hesitation under the words that almost rang in the air.

“If there’s something else you wanna say, now’s the time,” Shepard prodded. He didn’t have time to be gentle prying out secrets or whatever.

“My son,” Krios said, words measured and careful. “You say you know where he is. Would you be willing to share that knowledge?”

Shepard mulled it over, weighing the value of his options. “In time,” he finally said. “We have a couple pressing assignments that are more important than family reunions. But if we hit a point with some free time I’ll let you know.”

Krios nodded, his expression unreadable as ever. “Very well, Shepard.”

“One thing I need to know from you,” Shepard began, pushing away from the wall, “is if whatever’s killing you will affect your abilities in a fight.”

“It shouldn’t, not yet.” He paused for the space of a few blinks. “I should have several months at least before the symptoms become noticeable even to myself. More than enough time to complete your mission, if it is as urgent as you make you sound.”

“Is that something you doubt, Krios?”

“Not at all.” Krios pushed to his feet and crossed the room to examine a rack of spare rifle parts. “Even someone of your reputation would have to be on a mission of urgency to blackmail an assassin sent to kill you into helping your cause. I simply mean this threat seems the type where a decisive outcome will be reached swiftly; whether in victory or destruction. Well within the time I have before functionality is... affected.”

“Good.” Shepard nodded. “Not sure when I’ll need you, but I want to be sure you’ll be worth it when the times comes.” He left the room, noting Krios’ undertone murmur as he did, and from the cadence wondered what the assassin was praying for.

---

Shepard first tested him on something that seemed of no consequence; a mercenary base on a backwater planet trafficking stolen eezo. Thane did his job, no more no less, all the while making note of how the man fought. The risks he thought worth taking, the sacrifices that were acceptable cost, the balance of recklessness and cunning. It was not a complete picture, not off one mission, and Thane wouldn’t act on what he’d gleaned even if it were.

Not with the blade the commander had hung over Kolyat. Not with the hope of learning where his son might be. Patience was the hallmark of an assassin, after all; knowing when to strike as well as how. And Thane had been an assassin a very long time. He could wait.

Especially as conversations with others aboard the ship painted a clearer and clearer picture of the mission’s scope. A trip through the Omega 4 relay was very likely to be suicidal just on its own. Destroying whatever these Collectors used as a base doubly so. When Shepard made ‘if we survive’ comments, he wasn’t joking. Thane could wait. He could help with the mission--it was a worthy goal after all, one he would have assisted in accomplishing without the threats--and then resume his contract.

After the mercenary base was eliminated, and easily, Shepard made use of Thane’s skills a few more times. Usually on missions with plentiful shadow coverage and good sight lines.

“How’re you holding up?” Garrus asked on one such mission, the two of them picking off targets from a bit of a distance while Shepard made viciously short work of the battlefield.

“I’ve had worse assignments.” Thane’s rifle kicked against his shoulder and the krogan he’d been targeting dropped. He fired another shot, just to be safe, and watched the body jerk then lay still, before searching out another target. “What of you?”

Garrus snorted, took down his own target. “I’m here because he’s my... friend” --there was a brief hesitation, as if the turian wasn’t completely sure that was the right word--”and I trust that whatever he’s doing is worth whatever it costs to accomplish.”

“You’ve fought alongside him before.”

“Against Sovereign, yeah.” Garrus’ mandible twitched as he focused on sighting in another shot. “This feels different.”

He didn’t elaborate, and it was only a few moments more for them the claim victory and press further on with their mission.

Thane watched Shepard, and wondered what had changed in the eyes of his friend.

---

It was after the derelict Reaper, after adding a geth to their mix, that Thane’s patience paid off. At least in part.

“Your kid’s on the Citadel,” Shepard informed him out of the blue. “Lucky for you, Vakarian has some unfinished business there as well, and the techs need some time to integrate the IFF to the Normandy’s systems. I can spare a side trip for personal issues while they get that squared away. Be ready to go in an hour.”

Thane didn’t protest. Didn’t question. He could ask for details on approach to the Citadel.

They set a cold knot in his gut when he learned them. “He’s here to kill someone,” Shepard said bluntly, and all Thane could think was Like father, like son. That was not a path he’d ever wanted for Kolyat. Shepard didn’t have a lot of details, just that Kolyat was there. Apparently even Cerberus’ resources had limits.

They spoke to a C-Sec officer, then to Mouse at his suggestion--Thane was surprised but pleased he was still alive--both conversations Shepard kept as short as possible. Clearly he was not in the mood to waste time. Thane wished that hadn’t involved the commander breaking Mouse’s nose, but couldn’t muster much sympathy when the same proved true of Kelham once they got his name and interrogated him.

“We have some time, not a lot of it,” Shepard growled. “And we still need to find Sidonis when we’re done with your shit, Krios.” He turned to Captain Bailey. “What can you tell me about this Talid Kelham wants dead?”

The picture Bailey painted--up and coming turian politician, vocally anti-human and gaining support--made it obvious why Kelham would want Talid gone. He had to be very bad for business. He was also in a very vulnerable position currently; pressing flesh on a walk through the Wards with only one or two bodyguards along for protection.

Thane had to admit surprise when Shepard was alright with them splitting up to track Talid and (hopefully) find Kolyat.

“You can’t find him alone any more than I can,” Shepard commented with a sharp smile s he and Garrus headed for the catwalks. “Stay sharp, Krios.”

As if he would do otherwise. Still, he bowed his head and asked Amonkira for strength and guidance before he vanished into the shadows, hoping they weren’t too late to save his son from a very familiar dark path.

Are you really surprised? a voice inside him mocked as Thane picked his route along catwalks and ducts, through shadows and crowds. Even if he hates you, that’s the example you left.

He shook it off. He didn’t have the luxury of internal debate right now. He had to pick out his route on the fly, keep in touch with Shepard and Garrus, plot out several ways to handle the situation that all depended on Kolyat’s behavior. And he didn’t know his own son well enough to predict that, so his solutions were all loosely structured ideas at best. Some plan was better than none.

It was a close thing, despite their best efforts. Kolyat spooked, shot the bodyguards and dragged Talid into his apartment with a gun to his head.

Shepard was only a step behind once Kolyat broke cover and very quickly had a gun pointed at him.

Thane went very still, watching this standoff. He didn’t know Shepard well enough to know what the man would do, but he knew what C-Sec protocols would be, and he could hear their approach. Shepard had been very clear about the limited time they had for this side trip, the fastest resolution--which would also fulfill C-Sec’s mandate to keep Talid alive--would end with his son dead, and Shepard was not a patient man.

Kolyat’s anger blazed, even from across the room, and he was far from willing to cooperate, his pistol pressed to the back of Talid’s head.

The loud crack of a pistol shot nearly made Thane flinch, his chest squeezing in protest at the thought of his failure. Just this one thing, I wanted to fix just this.

But Shepard’s shot snapped Talid’s head back, not Kolyat’s. The turian collapsed in a spray of dark blood and Kolyat recoiled. In that moment of distraction, Thane surged forward and twisted the pistol out of Kolyat’s hands, unsure if the tremor was adrenaline or rage.

Shepard was talking to an incensed Bailey; “No one will miss a racist asshole, I did you a favor”, but Thane’s focus was all on his son.

“This was not the best way,” he said softly.

“What do you know?” Kolyat hissed back, struggling against Thane’s unrelenting grip.

“More than you might think.”

Kolyat yanked away as if the contact had burned him. Fury simmered in his eyes, and resentment, but he was alive. C-Sec would still have to take him in for what he’d been ready to do(attempted murder? That would likely be the charge), there would be consequences for what he tried to do, and Thane didn’t know if they even could “mend fences” as Shepard had put it. But he was alive. And hopefully could be deterred from a path Thane wouldn’t wish anyone to tread.

“Krios,” Shepard barked and Thane pulled himself out of his reverie watching C-Sec lead Kolyat away. But rather than Time to go, the commander nodded after the arresting officers. “Massani can help with tracking down Fade. You have until we’re done. I wouldn’t count on more than an hour or two.”

Thane blinked, thrown off kilter by the gesture, but recovered quickly. “Understood.” He’d taken three steps after the C-Sec officers before he stopped and turned. “...Thank you, Shepard.”

The man waved him off, already walking away with Garrus in his wake.

---

An hour and a half didn’t go very far working through a decade of distance, but it was a start.

“Why do you stay with him?” Kolyat asked when Thane’s comms crackled with a heads-up Shepard and the others were on their way back and he stood. “If... this” --a quick gesture, more a flick of the wrist than anything, between the two of them-- “is so important?”

For you. In more ways than one. “Shepard’s mission is... critical. And there is, unfortunately, a time limit on saving the galaxy.”

Kolyat snorted at his father’s dry humor. “Right.”

“I will keep in touch,” Thane promised. “Perhaps we can meet again once this is finished. If you would like.” If I survive.

“...We’ll see.” Kolyat was staring at the table rather than him, but Thane would take it.

He nodded and headed for the door. “Very well.”

“Does he have something on you?” Kolyat asked abruptly. “With the reputation Shepard’s made, he doesn’t seem the type honorable people would be following.”

“I have made no claims of honor,” Thane said quietly, hand on the door frame. “And with the stakes of mission, some sacrifices may prove necessary.”

“Sounds familiar,” Kolyat muttered.

Thane made no reply, and didn’t look back as he left the room with a cold weight in his chest.

---

It ha been the right call letting Krios reconnect with his son. He seemed more centered, more focused, for having dealt with his baggage. Probably that whole ‘something to live for’ schtick. Shepard only cared that Krios did his job and the mending bond made the kid an even more effective pressure point.

Not that Krios had ever protested. Ever balked. But everyone had their limit, and if he happened to find the assassin’s, it never hurt to have a brute force solution in your arsenal. Especially as they were very close to actually pursuing the Collectors through the Omega 4 relay.

“Just a few more tests,” Lawson assured him. They wanted it to work right, after all. It’d be a real short trip otherwise.

“So,” he asked Krios, “out of morbid curiosity, who wants me dead?” There were plenty of options, he wanted to know who wanted it badly enough to hire an assassin. And it wasn’t like he currently had anything better to do with his time.

Krios cocked his head, a flicker of what might have been amusement crossing his face. “I cannot tell you, Shepard.”

Shepard snorted and arched a brow. “Client confidentiality?”

“Client anonymity,” the drell corrected.

“You let some faceless coward point you at a target with my body count?”

“As you know, I am dying,” Krios said in that implacable tone of his. “Odds of survival were... far from troubling, as a factor.”

“And odds of success?” Shepard retorted.

This time there was definitely a small smile before Krios schooled his expression neutral. Not mocking or cocky, just... amused. “There is a first time for everything.” The faint amusement was gone when he locked eyes with Shepard. ��How will we handle this, commander? When we are finished our mission, assuming we both survive, and I resume my contract to kill you?”

“Feel like giving me a day’s lead?” Shepard grinned sardonically.

“I could be persuaded,” Krios said. He shifted in his chair. “Let us see how things progress, shall we?”

You’d never know to look at the man he’d been... convinced to help with this by threat of harm to his son. He seemed perfectly at home, posture easy. He didn’t talk to the crew much, Shepard knew from EDI, but it was hardly surprising an assassin was accustom to solitude.

As if summoned by his brief thought of her, a glowing sphere materialized on the AI kiosk. “Shepard, Miss Lawson wished you informed that the IFF installation is in its final stage. For the shakedown we will need complete access to the Normandy’s systems, so it is recommended you use the shuttle for whatever you plan to undertake next.”

“Got it,: Shepard tossed in vaguely the direction of the AI. “That’ll make things tight,” he muttered to himself. He had something in mind that would likely need the whole team. They’d fit in the shuttle, but it would be tight. Last thing he needed was Lawson and Jack killing each other before they even hit the Collector base.

Krios was eyeing him with curiosity. “Commander?”

“Gear up,” Shepard said, heading for the door. “Got a search and recover that might take all hands.”

The assassin nodded and pushed to his feet, heading for his locker. “Very well.”

---

Their mission went well. Things on the Normandy in their absence, not so much. Shepard left a fully-staffed state of the art warship an returned to a picked-clean husk manned only by his pilot and the now-unshackled AI.

The Collectors had bloodied his nose, cost him his crew. Again. He’d had it. “Ship’s not getting any more ready than it is. Joker, head for the Omega 4 relay.”

“Aye, aye,” came the determined, hungry reply.The pilot was probably even more eager than Shepard to punch back at the bug-eyed bastards.

Unlike Joker--and probably the others--Shepard viewed getting the crew back as a secondary objective to taking out the Collectors. The threat they posed to humanity ended now.

Get us there was his order, and that didn’t change when they came out of the relay having to dodge starship wreckage, or when they were harried by drones, or even when a fucking occulus busted into the hold.

“Krios, Massani, with me!” he barked, rifle in hand, listening to the scrape and thud of wreckage and lasers ricocheting off the upgraded hull on the way to the bowels of the ship. By the time they had trashed the occulus, Joker had them past the debris field and the drones, and a new problem had arisen.

New, but familiar--the same Collector vessel that he had encountered numerous times before. But this time, the Normandy had sharper teeth. “Let ‘em have it!” he ordered, a command Joker follow with alacrity Darting, looping, dodging, the pilot had them dancing around the larger ship, deftly avoiding the beam that had been their destruction before.

The surge of satisfaction at destroying the vessel was short lived, as it erupted in a fireball more than large enough to knock the Normandy into a crazy, barely controlled descent that could more bluntly be called a crash.

“Everyone alive?” Shepard checked over comms. When that was affirmative, he followed with, “Assemble in the CIC.”

This was it. A quick rundown of schematics pulled from the vessel and what he expected to find inside, a victory whatever it takes reminder, and it was time to go.

---

Than prayed silently to Amonkira as they disembarked from the Normandy. Let our hands strike true, and victory be worth the cost. There would be a cost, of this he was sure. He was familiar enough with Shepard’s methods by now there was little room for doubt. If I am among that cost, please guide my son, that his steps may trace a better path.

He wondered, if he should fall, whether his client would hire someone else to complete the task of killing Shepard or if they would let it go. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He wanted to survive, to speak more with Kolyat before the end, but it would be what it was.

They split into groups, Shepard leading Thane and Zaeed, Garrus the rest of them, to serve as distractions while Tali crawled through the vents to let them pass. It was a good call; the Collectors swarmed thick enough any other plan would likely have been overwhelmed by the sheer number of them. They were not given the luxury of time for sighting in targets, so Thane stuck with his pistol--and occasionally biotics--firing, reloading, firing, with the odd interruption to scrounge more thermal clips because he’d run out.

Shepard’s back and forth with Garrus and Tali was just background noise, like the beating wings of their foes, as Thane gave his focus to the task at hand.

Tali stumbled out of the vent just as they finally reached the heavy doors barring the end of the hall. She beelined for the access panel, teetered as a couple shots ricocheted off her shields.

“Get it open!” Shepard barked as the three of them wheeled to give her cover fire. “Vakarian, where the hell are you?!”

“Almost there, a group of the bastards ambushed us!”

A Collector dove toward Tali and Thane shot it--rushed, imperfect, but the grazing shot knocked it off course long enough for him to try again. This time, it fell and did not rise again.

---

The sense of urgency, pounding Hurry, hurry, hurry through Shepard’s veins thrummed louder as the door beeped and started to hiss open. A muffled burst of gunfire reached his ears a handful of seconds before Vakarian and the others came into view, hauling ass down the passageway toward them.

“Massani, Krios! Through the door!” He rattled off a stream of cover fire, driving the Collectors to hang back for a second. Just a second. But it was enough time for the second fire team to reach the end of the passage and dart through the door.

Krios and Massani maintained some cover fire from the far side of the door, buying breathing room for the others as one by one they darted through the door. Lawson brought up the rear, her barrier shimmering out as the doors groaned on closing.

“They’re stuck!” Tali bit out, shoving one door with scraping, grinding protest along its track. Shepard and Lawson ducked through the narrowing gap just as a final shot slammed into Lawson’s shoulder and sent her stumbling.

“I’m fine,” she ground out, slapping medigel on the injury as the group of them shook off the adrenaline to register what the room held.

The walls were lined with dozens, hundreds, thousands, of the Collectors’ pods. The dingy yellow glow throughout the room spoke to them all being occupied.

Movement caught Shepard’s eye and he swung his rifle toward the potential threat. it was just one of the nearby pods; the dark-skinned, dark-haired woman inside stirred, pounding against the transparent canopy in a futile attempt to escape. Even as Tali and Krios rushed forward to try and free her, the pod hummed and the woman only had time for a single terrified scream before she simply... liquefied into a sludgy brown paste which drained away almost before his crew had time to recoil in horror.

“Commander! Over here!” Taylor fumbled with a nearby pod until a very disoriented figure tumbled out. “It’s the crew!”

That broke the horror that had frozen them, and the group surged forward to free their comrades before the same fate could befall them.

Chambers. Daniels. Donnelly. Gardner. All of them were here, as Shepard ran a mental roster, but Chakwas was the one to explain. Near as she could tell, the humans in the pods were being reduced to genetic material and ...piped elsewhere in the base through tubes, though she wasn’t sure where or why. That sounded like where they needed to go.

“We need to get them out of here,” Taylor said, hovering near a few of the engineers as they stumbled to their feet.

We don’t have time for this. “You wanna take them back, be my guest,” Shepard returned brusquely. “We need to destroy this base, but we can mange without you if it’s that important to you.”

“It is.” Taylor’s voice was firm as he tugged Chambers’ arm around his shoulders and herded the crew back toward the Normandy. “See you on the other side, Commander.”

---

Thane almost offered to accompany them; it was a lot of people for one man to safeguard. But Shepard was already snapping orders for the next stage of their infiltration. He’d be taking Garrus and Zaeed, sheltered from the overabundance of Seeker swarms by Jack, down the shortest route that followed the tubes. “The rest of you follow Lawson on the other route EDI indicated, draw some of the flying bastards off.”

Forward, then. Thane checked his reserve of thermal clips, made sure his pistol was undamaged, and fell in with the others as the door hissed open and they pressed on.

They hadn’t advanced far when the first Collectors appeared, drones and a small number of husks that were easy enough tot pick off. Their numbers only increased as time wore on, but that was the point wasn’t it? Draw them here, so Shepard could get through. Thane stood shoulder to shoulder with Tali as their squad advanced, shared his thermal clips when hers ran out first, lent what strength he could to the biotic barrier Samara had summoned to protect their backs.

“There’s a lot of them, Shepard!” Miranda hollered into comms when they were forced to take cover from a particularly large group, dotted with abominations and led by a scion.

“Good!” his reply crackled back underscored by gunfire. “Keep them the hell off us! We’re almost there!”

She hissed a quiet curse, then, “Yes, Commander!” Her fist flared blue and a pair of husks flew off the edge of the path. “Samara, push them back on three!”

The justicar nodded and the rest of them by unspoken agreement turned their focus to give the women cover fire.

“One!”

Strafing fire raked Grunt’s armor and he bellowed a laugh as he shot back. Thane admired his defiance.

“Two!”

The barrier Samar had been maintaining shrank inward in preparation. Amonkira, guide their strength.

“Three!”

The combined power of two gifted biotics exploded outward in a wash over overwhelming ozone-scented blue. Just as it slammed into the descending Collector horde, a heavy, white hot pain tore into Thane’s arm and side.

He was dimly aware of Miranda yelling for them to move, of a hand closing around his bicep to drag him with them, of his legs moving to keep up until the gave out and he was hauled over someone’s shoulder instead. There was rushing sound in his ears and it wasn’t until it was it was punctuated by gunfire and Miranda hollering at Shepard they were under heavy attack Thane realized it was Collector wings and not the lure of unconsciousness.

“Give us a minute, Lawson!”

“We don’t have a minute!”

Shepard’s curse was broken by static. “Vakarian, get that door open! Now!”

Time was fuzzy with the pain that swirled fresh at each jolted step of whoever (probably Grunt) was carrying him, but it still seemed an eternity before, muffled, he could hear someone calling an encouragement.

He slammed against something and the pain flared so white, for a moment he saw Irikah’s face. There was a dull murmur of voices, then a spike of numb shot through the pain and spread, blanketing, pushing back until he was aware again.

Tali knelt beside him, her omnitool just closing down as he became conscious of her presence. “Good, you’re still with us.”

“Thanks to you,” Thane rasped. He passed one hand gingerly over his injured side. The healing wound was large, like from a plasma- or other energy-based weapon rather than bullets. He could cope much better with bullets.

“You are welcome,” Tali said, pushing to her feet and offering him a hand up.

Thane accepted, but leaned against a wall once he’d gained his feet. It would take a few minutes for the medigel to truly do its work. He cast a surveying glance about as he waited. Mordin was limping heavily, Grunt, Garrus, and Zaeed all had significant battle damage to their armor....

And Miranda lay still, half-slumped against a wall, pistol resting in her limp grasp. Shepard knelt next to her, blood streaked in his stark white hair, but stood even as Thane’s gaze landed on them. “She’s gone,” he confirmed, as if there was any doubt. He half-turned, hand rising to his ear, expression flint-hard. “Got it, Joker.”

Garrus’ mandibles clicked. “The crew?”

“They made it back.” Shepard shoved a new clip into his rifle. “Taylor died getting them there.”

Thane grimaced. He should have gone along.

“It happens,” Shepard said, as if he’d caught the self-reproof without even looking. “According to EDI, this next room’s the core. Vakarian, Massani, you stick with me, the rest of you cover our asses.”

He didn’t wait for agreement or confirmation, just strode to the console for the necessary door and and punched in the command to open it. Garrus and Zaeed followed silently, the former briefly locking eyes with Tali before the three of them disappeared down the hallway.

---

The rest of them hastily arranged themselves in a defensive perimeter, gazes and weapons trained on the two doors that separated them from the Collector forces.

Thane said a rushed but heartfelt prayer to Kalahira for their fallen, working the fingers of his injured arm to test the medigel’s progress. It would do.

The sheer number of Collectors made the task a difficult one--more than once Thane feared running out of clips for his pistol until a brief pause between waves allowed them to scavenge and share from the fallen. This sort of sustained firefight was far from his normal milieu, but this close to the end he was still determined to do his best.

They held as battle chatter from Shepard’s squad broke through the static. They held even though Mordin fell and Legion fell and Jack nearly followed, snarling and spitting curses as she struggled back to her feet. They held until Shepard’s order came over comms, “Move if you don’t want to go up with this place!”

Then they ran, Samara and Jack shielding them from as much as they could, the rest picking off the bolder Collectors even as they ran. They reached the Normandy, adrenaline surging as they gave Shepard’s squad cover fire until they were aboard as well. Joker had them rocketing toward the relay before the doors had fully closed, and the whole ship seemed to hold its breath until they were safely through.

---

As the adrenaline wore off, all Shepard wanted to do was sleep. But he couldn’t. Not yet. There were things that needed to be settled first.

Krios was in the medbay, sitting serenely still as Dr. Chakwas more thoroughly treated the nasty, half-healed burns on his side and forearm. (In sharp contrast to Jack, who was glowering and cursing about both having to sit still to let her injuries heal and being around so many people.)

“Looks like we both survived,” Shepard said without preamble. Chakwas took the unspoken cue and moved off to see to Jack.

“Indeed.” Krios didn’t move, hands folded in his lap as he sat on the edge of a bed.

“You make up your mind about that head start?”

Krios chuckled. “I believe my recuperation will be a bit more than a day, Shepard. A good time for me to visit my son, I think, and a good head start for you as the contract resumes.” His lips twitched to a small smile. “Perhaps my client will reconsider in light of your actions.”

“Doubt it,” Shepard snorted. “I get the sense their beef with me is personal. Doesn’t lend itself to rational decision making. We’ll see, I guess.” Stranger things had happened, but he wouldn’t be holding his breath.”I’m not going anywhere near the Citadel, in case the Council gets any bright ideas about me or my ship, but we can drop you on Omega before we head off.”

Krios nodded solemnly. “A fair arrangement.”

A less intelligent person might have wondered--hoped--leaving him on Omega injured was as good as a death warrant, but Shepard had seen him fight. It would take more than a set of already-healing electrical burns to put Krios at a disadvantage against the thugs on Omega. (And if they did happen to prove too much for him, one thing less for Shepard to worry about.)

“We can have you there in an hour or so,” he said. “once the doc’s done with you go get your things together.”

Krios inclined his head. “I shall.”

---

It had been a while since he was last on Omega and Thane hadn’t missed it in the slightest. Fortunately he wouldn’t be here long. Passage elsewhere was easy enough to procure, and from there he could work his way to the Citadel. He could take some time to mend more fences with Kolyat before he resumed his hunt.

That was one thing about Shepard; he was never a hard man to find.

#queens fic #art trade #seb shepard #mass effect fic #hope you like it #hope i got seb right

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lakemojave · 5 years ago

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Supergiant Games: Same Bones, Different Skeletons

I just finished a retrospective of all 4 games by Supergiant on my twitch channel, and I have a few thoughts I wanna connect and questions I wanna explore. My love for these games is real strong and i could write a whole essay just gushing about them, but I wanna give some thought to what makes them so compelling: not just to me, but to damn near everyone I’ve talked to on their discord who feels the same. I myself rank Bastion among my favorite games ever, and Hades is climbing that list at a clip. And even though I could take or leave Transistor or Pyre, they keep pulling me back.

But I could talk a whole lot about each game’s appeal and waste a lot of time. I’ve gushed enough to my friends about how Bastion and Pyre’s rugged, apocalyptic atmospheres draw me in with their incredible vibrance to contrast. I could talk about how Ashley Barrett’s vocal tracks carry Transistor on their shoulders, or what makes Hades so much goddamn fun that the game doesn’t really need to be much else. But I realize that if the Supergiant library is so universally appealing to me, there must be some sort of connective tissue between them--some sort of fundamental similarity that makes them work. After thinking about it for more than five minutes, it turns out there are many; some are pretty obvious, and some less so. This brings me to the conclusion that the Supergiant library, with its four wildly distinct and different games, still follow a noticeable formula--one that is flexible enough to allow such completely different games.

Game Design

The Supergiant library are all essentially top down action rpgs, Transistor having the most elements of the genre. This is still a pretty weak connection, given how different they all play from each other. The only two that have much overlap in the most basic sense are Bastion and Hades, with the same general fast paced, real time combat. On closer examination, the two games have enough differences in the variety of mechanics at play, (Bastion with its multiple weapon slots and a shield, Hades with its sheer number of commands) that even they are hard to compare.

There are, however, several mechanics that the library loves to use. The first that comes to mind are the difficulty conditions: idols in Bastion, limiters in Transistor, titan stars in Pyre, and the pact of punishment--and arguably Chaos boons as well--in Hades. Their function is simple: increase your challenge for a little extra reward. Bastion and Pyre go the extra mile by fixing in world building elements to this mechanic; Bastion’s idols inform about the game’s pantheon, while Pyre informs about its, well, evil pantheon. The use of these conditions is indicative of Supergiant’s game design philosophy as a whole--you, the player, can make the game as hard or easy as it takes for you to have fun. The inclusion of infinite lives in Bastion or god mode or hell mode in Hades further builds on this point. This library is designed for all sorts of audiences, whether they want to be challenged by their games or simply immersed in the story.

Another repeating mechanic in these games are the use of challenge rooms, which started in Bastion as the training grounds and, to a lesser extent, Who Knows Where. In Transistor they are the sandbox test rooms, and in Pyre they are the beyonder crystal’s scribe trials. They appear in Hades a little more ambiguously; the infernal troves or Erebus rooms are not quite the same, but they serve a similar function. This function is a momentary break from the gameplay loop for a little extra reward, much like the previously discussed conditions. Transistor and Hades’ challenge rooms offer relatively negligible rewards; the sandbox rooms simply offer xp and unlock tracks for the jukebox, while the Erebus tiles offer double the reward for any normal tile. Bastion and Pyre go the extra mile by giving specific, long term rewards for their challenges. In Bastion’s training grounds, the Kid earns weapon specific abilities that are among the game’s most powerful; in Pyre’s scribe trials, exiles can earn character specific talismans that feed their specialization. For the most part, these rooms give the player a low stakes opportunity to practice, hone their preferred playstyle, and reward the effort, all while being completely optional.

Akin to these breaks in the game loop are designated resting areas/hub worlds. The Bastion, the Sandbox, the Blackwagon, and the House of Hades each offer a moment to interact with characters and lore, goof around with the environment, buy permanent upgrades, or just take a break. Transistor utilizes this function the least of the library, since it never once requires the player to enter the space. Pyre utilizes it the most since it has the most breaks in both frequency and number. In a way, this decision is both a game design and storytelling choice. Between all four games, perhaps excluding Transistor, this is where the majority of story beats take place. It is where the player can read up on some fresh lore or meet the ever growing cast of characters, and eventually grow to cherish them (as I often do playing this library). Without little breaks like these, the climactic or world/story shaking events that take place out in the actual playable space have no impact or narrative weight. The fact that all these sort of interactions are completely voluntary also rewards the player in the storytelling sense; by choosing to engage with the figures of the story rather than having that choice decided for them, the player feels as though they themselves have agency in the story unfolding.

Style

Perhaps the most distinct part of the Supergiant library, (and perhaps what I personally love most about it) is its aesthetics. There are few games that look, feel, and sound the way these games do. Yet, the four of them hardly resemble each other. Bastion is a rugged, frontier-esque sci fi apocalypse, Transistor is a sleek, cyberpunk apocalypse, Pyre is a high fantasy purgatory space, and Hades is simply stylized Greek mythology. It is a shock to remember, then, that these four games are all designed by the same artistic team.

I confess I don’t know much about art, so I don’t have anything too profound to say about Jen Zee’s art style, besides that I like it a lot. It is also worth noting that despite her spearheading art and character design for the whole library, each game still looks visually distinct, and not just in their overall aesthetics. Take the character design of the library, for instance. Bastion’s human figures tend to be short, stocky, with exaggerated facial features. Their colors are highly saturated, with a soft, almost blurry quality that gives a level of warmth to the fatalistic atmosphere. Transistor’s characters, barring Red, tend to be based around palettes centered around a single color, such as the Camerata red and the spectrum of the function character profiles. Pyre is the first of the library to use talking portraits, which contrast robed figures with stark color palettes and simple designs with unrobed figures with much noisier details. Hades is easily the most distinct of all four, using simple colors and thick outlines on all its characters. The most consistent feature of all their designs, as usual, is how wildly different they are. For Hades, Zee makes sure that characters only look alike in any way if they have some relation to each other, such as the Furies, Achilles and Patroclus, or Zagreus and his parents. On the whole, the versatility and variety in the character design is impeccable.

What I most enjoy about these games is Darren Korb’s soundtracks, which continue to vary wildly. From the closet-recorded Bastion soundtrack to the whole two and a half Hades score, Korb’s scoring keeps improving and changing in the 10 years Supergiant has operated. His music, which adds and changes motifs as each game progresses, contributes to the atmosphere just as much as the visuals do. Whenever he teams up with Ashley Barret to add vocal tracks to certain parts of the game, they always manage to place them at critical narrative or emotional beats, turning them into the games’ most memorable moments. The team goes one step further every game by incorporating a musician or source of music into each game, giving the music just as much character as the one performing it. It also sneaks its way into the aforementioned hub worlds by providing the player a means to play their favorite tracks whenever they want (except in Hades, where they have to pay in game for that privilege). In essence, Korb makes sure to give each game a distinct feel through its music, but familiar enough to connect the library in the player’s mind.

Just as Supergiant gets so much mileage from Korb and Zee alike, they also manage time and time again to make use of Logan Cunningham’s top notch voice over work. Originally the sole voice actor at Supergiant Games, Cunningham continued on from famously narrating Bastion as Rucks to remaining a ubiquitous voice throughout the library. His role as the Transistor in the game proper drives the emotional core of that game, and his role as the Voice/Archjustice proves to be a solidly effective, yet distant antagonist. In Hades, his roles are somewhat overshadowed by Korb’s performance as Zagreus, (which I’m still blown away he still had time to do) but his performance as Lord Hades is still excellent. Supergiant also uses Cunningham in Hades to sort of satirize how often he narrates for them by casting him as the narrating Old Man, then allowing Zagreus to break the fourth wall and acknowledge him. It is as if the team at Supergiant knows how much they use the same stylistic team, then mocking that same choice.

To other studios: learn from Supergiant

I’m running out of things to say and my ball of yarn that connects all these newspapers and polaroids on my wall is running thin. I would talk more about Supergiant really knows how to end a game and frequently does so in similar ways, or that their library is a masterclass in character-driven stories, but this little essay is long enough.

Instead, I wanna talk about how Supergiant does something right which so many AAA developers and publishers don’t seem to understand. To contrast with the Supergiant library, consider Assassin’s Creed, another franchise I have spent an embarrassing amount of time playing. This franchise releases a game almost every year, and in my experience, when a company does this, you tend to get the same pig with a different paint. From the original Assassin’s Creed to their most recent release, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, the differences seem to be night and day. Combat and free running are far more complex than they once were, rpg elements to story and gameplay have been introduced, composers, writers, voice actors, and cast members have changed with each release, and the sheer size of the game has become staggering. Yet, in the 13 years and 11 main releases in the game’s history, (plus spinoffs) any change has not only felt incremental over time, but fundamentally insignificant to the skeleton of the game. Assassin’s Creed 1 and 2 play and feel differently, but the differences are subtle. The bones are different, but every year they assemble to form a vaguely Assassin’s Creed shaped thing. People who play games tend to hate this and frequently berate companies for this practice; Bethesda and GameFreak receive the same criticism that their games are so formulaic that their new releases might as well be carbon copies of the ones before it.

Yet, Supergiant Games, with its four games over ten years, has used essentially the same team and building blocks to make games that can hardly be considered interchangeable. Whether its the passion of this humble little indie studio or the sheer talent of this team, Supergiant takes the same pile of bones and assembles them in a different shape each time with care and attention. They are proof that a formula doesn’t need to be tweaked or altered or given a different coat of paint in order to be accepted; instead the formula needs versatility, the means to produce a fresh result each time. It also works best when we adore the result every time.

#thank you for coming to my ted talk #got shit to say #bastion #transistor #pyre #hades #hades game #supergiant games #supergiant tag

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wu-sisyphus-gang · 4 years ago

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Motion Sickness 35

Jaune’s life goes bad in this one.

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We marched in Leonardo's empty stronghold, Qrow in front and with legs that were only getting stronger. And Oscar was in the back. We rolled up on Haven in force and fully expected things to go sideways. I hadn’t allowed my friends to go in thinking anything but. Anything else would only get somebody killed.

Not this time. Not my friends. Never again.

We pushed our way in through a set of double doors into a large atrium. It was huge and in Mistrali style. It had plants and art lining the walls all of which ran up to a set of double stairs around a single central statue.

“Why hello.” Lionheart greeted from the top of the stairs. He wasn’t waiting for us in his office like last time. Alarm bells went off in my head. My instincts screamed at me. Ruby walked beside me and her careful patience held me in check. Her own instincts had always been more on point than mine where non-Grimm were concerned. “Thank you for coming. There seems to be more of you than last time.”

“Yeah well you know what they say, the more the merrier,” Qrow inclined his head. “So what’s going on with the council.”

Lionheart appeared to be armed, for all that he was alone in a vast empty room. I suppose we were too.

A portal, same black and red swirling mass that I'd seen Yang and Weiss emerge from, opened beside Leonardo. Out started to step people. People I recognized.

"Raven…" Qrow murmured. "Jaune and Oz were right. It's a set up."

I witnessed the enemy line up. I started with the Scorpion, his eyes and mine met and he licked his lips. His gaze went past to Ruby and he glared, mechanical tail writhing in the air behind him. He looked fairly pissed. No doubt he wanted revenge for the missing appendage.

I went down until I stopped at a huntress with tattoos and claw-like weapons. I recognized her as Vernal from when we fought.

"You!" She recognized, looking at me. "You're that huntsman." She was the bandit from GaiLong with the wicked semblance. Or...

"Jaune?" Ruby asked from beside me, not recognizing the blue eyed girl.

"Vernal." I cleared the air, pieces fitting in my mind. "You're the spring maiden."

"You and I have unfinished business," she said, glowering. She'd have to get in line. I stared beyond her at Cinder. The two groups of hunters stood, sizing each other up in the middle of the atrium. Then out came Cinder's accomplices. Emerald and Mercury.

Raven herself never came through the portal. Instead it collapsed and Vernal's eyes flared with maiden power.

It seemed I indeed had unfinished business with two of the four maiden's if you counted Cinder.

"Steady Jaune," Ruby murmured. Easier said than done. I wanted to activate my semblance and fling myself at Cinder. But she had two lackyes beside her. They'd get in the way. If I wanted to do this right I'd need to be careful. If I wanted Cinder to die I had to play things straight.

Anything else and it would be my friends who suffered.

"You killed Pyrrha. I'm going to take you apart for that," I whispered.

"Who?" Cinder asked. "Oh the would-be maiden. You can hardly expect me to remember everyone but she does stand out to me."

I wanted to rush her. I wanted to charge my semblance and backflip up there and take her the fuck apart. Ruby reached out and grabbed me by my hand and my heart rate slowed down. I felt our aura's overlapped and the tension I felt in my heart eased slightly.

I remembered the words she gave me at the top of the Gold Saucer carnival ride. If I wanted to have that, if I wanted to be hers, I had to wait. I had to approach it like Yang had mentioned to me, slow and careful. I'd have my chance at Cinder's throat.

I would.

I heard a noise from behind me, the great double doors on the atrium closed as an enormous man shut them. "The Whitefang are setting up the charges. No one's getting in, an' no one's getting out."

"Leo I have to say I'm enormously disappointed in you." Oscar or maybe Ozpin said.

"That boy is Ozpin, he must be." Lionheart said.

"Ozpin is here?" Cinder asked.

"That's not a problem, is it?" Vernal interrogated.

"No. Leo, open the passageway to the vault." Lionheart pranced over and did something to the statue in the middle of the room. The dais began to descend, no guesses where it was heading.

"Ozpin?" The enormous man growled. "You're the boy from the train station." He growled and surged forward. Ruby got in his way and shot him. There was a whorl of petals and she blocked his approach.

I began to move forward as our two sides clashed in combat. The moment breaking like glass.

I approached Cinder, sprinting over the ground with a scream. She blocked with a summoned sword and we clashed again and again. She smiled at me, sharp calm in the face of my jagged anger. Vernal only stood off to the side.

I brought my sword down on her hard enough to crater the floor but she only stood firm, one sword turned sideways, her eye flaring up with maiden power.

“You better mean it,” she whispered.

“Boy do I.” I hit her with the diagonal forward slash where I whipped my blade and my hips into it and leaned back. She blocked it with a casual smirk.

"Stop messing with me!" I shouted.

"But it's so easy." She laughed. I charged a little and activated my semblance, bringing the sword to bear against her as wisps of blue flame clung to me.

"I'll show you," I growled.

We flew at each other, she was on a platform of red flames which carried her forward and I was propelled by my will with one arm stretched forward and the other back, holding the massive weight of Crocea Mors.

I surprised her by backflipping at her and I hit hard enough to send her sliding back. My strength doubled, my speed increased.

I struck out holding onto the mobility and muscle improvements.

She held out a palm and a torrent of flame shot at me but I skirted around it without traction and front-flipped at her bringing my sword down in a massive stroke.

I slammed her and her weapon shattered like, well, like glass. She fell back. Her aura flared as I bit deep into it. Then I finished the trick and Limit broke, a whirling of blue attacks stormed her as I went for the finishing touch and tried to take her down. I knocked her back into the statue hard enough that pieces of it shattered off her face.

She whipped to her feet, eyes narrowing as I stood stock still, flexing and charging my next semblance. She let out a scream and a torrent of air whipped over us all flinging us and her own allies about.

Without my semblance she put me on the back foot. She came at me spinning like a top with her glass weapons. She slashed at my stomach then tried to take my head off with a swing of her opaque weapon.

She summoned a series of molten arrows and the pieces stabbed my stomach and penetrated my aura hard enough to do some real damage to me. They were hot enough to leave welts behind where they struck.

She rolled over my back and dragged me down in a choke hold with her weapon around my neck. Getting choked hurts for those unaware. The blood in your head throbs in time with your heartbeat and it's a bunch of pressure on your neck.

The person doing the choking can control how much it hurts based on how hard they do the choke and you have one guess which decision she made about how to choke me out.

She made it hurt. A lot.

I kicked back at her and she dragged me to my knees. I managed to get my center of mass under my legs again and dropped my sword. I picked her up and slammed her into the statue. I did it again. And once more before she slid to the side and kicked off me, pushing me into the statue.

The back of my head rang like a bell against the hard stone.

When I got my bearings I slid baseball style and picked up my weapon. When I got back to my feet I faced another opponent.

Black.

I just had to trust that my friends had found their own opponents and we’d be fine. Together we can do this.

He gave me a leering grin. "Jaune, right?"

I said nothing, leveling my broadsword at him. I finished the last bit of charge and turned on Limit Breaker. It was faster to charge now than ever before. The result of practice or something more? I was unsure.

I wanted to get past him and fight Cinder again but she was descending in the elevator on a flux of wind and magic. Her eyes met mine and she gave me a beautiful smile, only marred by her half face. She blew me a kiss, promising vengeance.

Black kicked at me and pushed stepped towards me but I had my semblance activated and outmaneuvered him by hovering.

He tried to breach my space again but I timed him out with a tremendous swing of Crocea Mors. He blocked it with his legs but the blow sent him reeling. He stumbled back a few steps.

He reengaged me more cautiously the second time, without the arrogant smirk.

I struck Mercury back with my sword with a falling aerial attack. It was devastating and it rocked him on his feet.

We clashed again and he bounced off my massive blade. I rolled my wrists and another flying kick was met with the edge of my sword. He kicked off of it and tried to force me into the ground.

I was nimble with my semblance, though. I just rolled away from the pressure.

I spent my semblance while in mid air and hit him with all five hits of Cross Slash. He blocked them all arms and feet dancing about but I could tell the experience wasn't comfortable. I saw him wince, especially at the tremendous last hit. He tried to punish me but I hadn't over extended. It was all safe pressure and I punished his own jump kick by bringing my sword all the way around my body as I glid through the air.

Even without my semblance I had grown fast. Not fast enough to escape another snapping round kick. Then another from the opposite side. He'd penetrated my range and was seeing fit to make it hurt like hell.

He kneed me in the face and I managed to stumble back.

He tried to approach me and I swiped upwards. The move caught him and launched him airborne. I did it again and launched him a little higher. The tip of my blade tearing into him.

I bench pressed Mercury, juggling him with the massive sword. I hit the ground and swept the blade upwards, knocking him into the air again and I bench pressed him one more time.

It felt like a bad matchup for him and I seemed unstoppable. He backed off when he finally hit the ground and shot at me with his legs. I had range on him and I was brutally strong. Even without my semblance I was fast enough to combo him.

I countered with a blade-beam. We found ourselves staring the other down, our projectiles canceling out.

I heard Nora cry out somewhere to my side but I couldn't let my focus waiver. I had to have faith. Ruby let out a grunt behind me as I continued to glare at Black. When I last got a peek, Ruby was engaging the tall man with Yang and Qrow. I heard him let out a bellow as he fought my friend and girlfriend and mentor.

I supposed that left Weiss, Nora, and Ren fighting the Scorpion and Lionheart with Oscar. Oscar being one of the weaker members of our own squad I felt a flash of concern for him but I could ill afford the distractions.

I stood still charging my semblance, my aura flaring as I approached the tipping point. Black got the memo. He had to approach me or I would become an even bigger threat.

I'd kill him too. Black deserved it for what he put Yang through.

He came at me pushing off the ground with a flare of his boots. He kicked at me high which I deflected, then he tried low and I punished him with a rising aerieal attack. I side-flipped at him bringing my sword around my body in a massive swing. He was forced to block it and I had him trapped beneath me.

I backflipped in place, threatening Mercury the entire time I was airborne. When I hit the tile I reached out and grabbed him where he was blocking, picked him up off his feet and slammed him into the ground.

He leapt back up to his feet but I was already airborne and threatening another devastating landing aerial attack the entire time. He watched me with a wary look in his eyes, he knew how dangerous my falling attacks could be and while he wasn't quite scared he was over respecting me.

I hit the ground once more and reached out and slammed him into the ground again. If he thought he could just block against me, he'd have another thing coming.

I backflipped in place and was seriously going to do it to him a third time in a row when he boost-kicked off the ground and hit me in the face.

I fell back but caught myself on the tile, flipping back to my feet.

Cinder was back up the vault shaft, Vernal wasn't with her, and she had what I could only suppose was the Relic in her hand. A dangerous sly smile on her face as she flexed a hand and blue power flared around her one remaining eye.

A sniper shot struck Cinder's hand and the relic went flying. Her gaze snapped to Ruby who must have fired the shot. Her eye flared with power. Vernal was dead, then. I wanted to stand between her and Ruby but I held my position against Black.

Leonardo Lionheart picked the lamp up.

"Jaune stop him!" Ruby called out, she had her eyes on the prize. I was closest to acquiring the relic. The relic was what mattered.

I disengaged Black, hitting him with a triple sword swing, the first two attacks holding him in place before the last, blinding fast, flung him away.

"I got him!" Yang called out, communicating with me that Black wouldn't be free to harass one of my friends in the back.

I activated my semblance and chased Lionheart. I slashed at his shield-like weapon with Crocea Mors.

I chased him down the school corridors, the swings of my sword tore up the hallways as I sprinted after him. He fired dust back at me which I narrowly dodged again and again. I hovered in place and threw a blade beam at him but he blocked with his shield.

He retreated down a narrow passageway away from the rest of the fighting, the relic still in his free hand.

I kicked him back and threw him into a room and inside there was this glowing, hovering, Grimm, thing. It had long sweeping tentacles beneath a large orb. Before I could spend my semblance on either it or Lionheart a woman's voice boomed from it. The voice was quiet and calm but it seemed to come from inside my head as well as the orb. I collapsed as my forehead pulsed with pain.

"Now what's this?" I heard the voice say. I felt it too within my head. It was a woman’s voice and I heard it all the time.

I recognized it intimately. I knelt on the ground in front of the Grimm and looked up through my throbbing eyes.

"What have you brought me, Leo?"

"M-m-m…" I stuttered out. "Mother!?"

I'd heard that voice in my dreams and beyond. In my worst nightmares that voice terrorized me. I recalled a thousand horrible dreams as I crouched on the floor of that room.

"Oh you must be Merlot's." The voice purred. I could see her face through the orb. "And haven't you done well for yourself. For us. Hush now. Don't speak."

The voice in my mind commanded me and I bit down on my tongue rather than utter a word. Blood welled up from it in my mouth. I couldn't fight the compulsion. No matter how hard I tried to speak or move I couldn't. I had to obey the thing on the other side of the Grimm. I tried to scream out, the agony in my head far worse than the middling pain coming from my mouth yet all I managed was a quiet moan.

Salem.

"We expected you to fail. I expected you to be thrown out by Ozma when he discovered you didn't even have aura. Yet here you are," Salem's voice went on. "You will bring the relic to me." She decided.

"But your grace…" Lionheart tried, he'd regained his footing. The Grimm thing lashed out with one of its tentacles and ripped his throat out. Blood poured out over the room as Lionheart choked on nothing but blood and his own gore.

"Bring me the relic, child. My child. Long have you and your sisters filled my dreams. Jaune Arc, was it? Yes, I know your name."

I could still say nothing. Blood poured over my lips as I trembled beneath the thing. She was reaching out through it and controlling me so thoroughly I managed not a single other thought.

Obey me. The compulsion demanded. It shook something loose inside my mind and I thought I was going to go mad. I reached out and picked up the relic. With trembling hands which slowly grew smoother I strapped it to my waist by a belt.

"Jaune!" It was Nora at the door. "Ruby did something to Cinder, she and Emerald are-" she broke off. She looked down and saw me with Lionheart's corpse, kneeling before the tentacled Grimm. Ren stood behind her, shocked looks on both their faces.

"Kill her," the voice purred from the orb and in my mind. "And the boy."

I couldn't help it. I whipped to my feet and struck against Nora. I spent Limit with intent to kill. I caught her by surprise and blew her off her feet and through the adjacent wall.

Ren cried out in fear. He drew his blades against me but I swept them aside. I charged Limit between our clashes and soon I would have it again. We collided and I laughed madly in his face. Soon I could kill these two and be on my way to Mother. Nora lept from the crater I'd put her into and tried to bring her hammer down on me.

"Jaune why are you doing this?!" Nora screamed. "What's going on?!" I slashed at her with the long edge of Crocea Mors. She ducked and backed off, spinning away from me with her hammer in hand.

I choked on blood and my own mangled tongue worked in my mouth. Parts of it were hanging on by threads of flesh. "Because Mother told me to," I cried out, voice warbled by my destroyed tongue. The words were indecipherable as they exited me. I couldn't stop my movements anymore than I could stop the sun in the sky.

It was something ingrained in me. Deep in my bones. I slashed at her twice before I chased after Ren. I knew he would give me the greater trouble. I brought the sword down on him in a massive overhead slash which slammed him into the ground. Nora's hammer pinwheeled and caught me center of mass and threw me into a wall but she was holding herself back.

I could feel her holding herself back. She clobbered me again and once more. Around the shoulders and chest. She was still not giving it her all, though. If she kept that up I'd win and kill them both.

She had to stop me.

She had to kill me.

"Jaune what did that thing do to you?"

I gargled blood and babbled out something unintelligible. I laughed and tried to scream at the same time. I was sure I was frothing at the mouth besides. All I could think of, all I could focus on, was the desire to kill my friends and if they kept holding back I'd succeed.

I hit Nora like a ton of bricks. I slashed into her aura and bit deep. I cut at her again with a horizontal slash that flung her to the side.

"No!" Ren cried out.

He slashed at me and rained bullets as he jumped over me. I caught one of his blades and hit him like I was swinging a home run. It caught him in the chest and I saw his aura flare up.

"That Grimm must have done something to him. Jaune you have to snap out of it! How do we help him?!"

I knew all their weaknesses. I slashed a golf swing at Ren which nearly put him through the ceiling and ripped a long cut in the paper walls besides.

I was all over him with my sword. Swinging away and chipping at his defenses. I'd break through eventually and then… and then… and then…

I muttered madly under the pressure I felt in my thoughts. They were going to die. They must die.

"I don't know," Ren grunted under my assault. "Jaune please," he begged.

I brought my sword down on him tearing up the thin papery walls. He blocked again and again but he wasn't fighting to kill me like I was him. Instead he tried to disarm and subdue me but I backed off. Warding with the long blade, I swept it at his face.

I flew at him like I was a monster and slashed low then high then back and forth in front of my body. I brought the blade all the way around my body and down on him, trying to crush him if I couldn't slice him.

Nora came at me and I caught the handle of her hammer by my free hand and threw her into Ren. They collided and went tumbling down, over the headmaster's office desk.

Nora jumped up at me but I met her in the air with a massive helmsplitter and knocked her through a few walls with an expenditure of Limit Break Braver.

I stood in the middle of the room then. Just charging and waiting for Ren to rise. He came at me low, having seen what kept happening to Nora when she went high but I knew all his moves and never let him get close enough to grab me. I side-flipped and slashed him into a wall. Then I hammered him into it again with a giant swing.

Nora came at me again and I ducked under the swing. She reversed it and tried to catch me up in it but I blocked with the side flat of my blade and swept down towards her fingers. It forced her to back off and I climb-hazard her up onto the next floor and slammed her back down again. My blade flashed and sung through the air as I pounded her.

Ren came at me screaming and I kept him off me. I was fighting to kill him and he was fighting just to stay alive. It showed. I backflipped over him, jumped off one of the narrow walls and Limit Break Cross Slashed my friend in the back as I hung upside down in the passageway.

I hung in place as I delivered the terrifying attack. There was nothing he could do being caught up in it but grunt under the weight of the blows.

One. A slash to the side. Two. An ‘x’ across the legs. Three. A blow to his ribs. Four. A horizontal slice across his chest. Five. The last of the kanji hung in the air.

Each of the five hits struck true. The second to last one shattered his aura and the last one cut him so deeply at the stomach I knew he would die. I severed his spine and he nearly fell into two gasping halves.

"No!" Nora called out. "Jaune how could you?!" She kept at me with tears in her eyes. She brought the hammer down on me and I bounced off the floor. I slashed at her while she stood guard over Ren and relentlessly whaled on her while all she could do is block.

Some hits got through. She couldn't block everything and, even with Ren dying behind her, she still wasn't fighting back to kill me.

I reared back, took aim and thrust forward with Crocea Mors. It slid through her crackling pink aura and blood welled up in a fountain as I ran her through.

She softly touched my face as I speared her all the way to the base.

I slid my sword into her small body all the way to the hilt and with a last shudder, she died.

She fell back onto Ren and they passed together.

Like that I was the last member of team JNPR.

I wanted to claw my eyes out, I wanted to scream, all I could do was start walking in the direction I knew, knew, Salem to be. I snuck out of the school through the entrance we'd come in on that day we met Lionheart, tearing my way through the walls. I snuck away from the rest of my friends.

She'd looked so much like the blonde woman I knew to be my Mother… but her skin was ghostly white like Grimm bone and her eyes were red instead of pale blue.

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-WG

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scandeniall · 5 years ago

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leaving the fold

pairing: atsumu x reader

summary/warnings: Youre leaving the Jackals. That means your life, position, and soulmate./ mentions of death, (bsd verse so implied mafia), profanity

wc: 2.1K

notes: this is a bungo stray dogs type universe and yall are the port mafia in this case because i miss them :-). also this is more dialogue heavy than i usually do ???

“What the fuck am I hearing about ya leaving,” You mentally roll your eyes at the now likely dented wall behind your door that had been pushed open. You don't even look up from your laptop’s screen as you greet in amusement.

“Well hello to you Atsumu. You're back from your mission already? How’d it go, I’m sure it was like child’s play to you” The fist coming down on your desk does little to shock you, nor are you surprised when the top of your laptop comes crashing down.

“Cut the shit. You're trying to leave the agency-”

“Will you keep your voice down,” you hiss out standing from your desk to shut your office’s door. You ignore his comments about not giving a damn about his volume, despite him lowering it anyways. Turning back to face him, you eye him menacingly. “How did you find out.”

“So it's true huh.” His eyes glare at you just as deadly. “What were ya gonna do, just disappear one night. Ya know more than anyone here that leaving is a death sentence” His voice grows angriet the longer he speaks. “Besides, where ya gonna go. There's nowhere in this city that the Jackals don’t have eyes. We run the underground.” By the time he had finished the two of you stood face to face. “You’re an executive for fuck’s sake (Y/N) you can’t- ”

“Shugo was set up.” Silence settled among the two of you. Both of you thought about your fallen friend. You noticed Atsumu’s eyes undergo a range of emotions: confusion, comprehension. Shock, disbelief, and back to anger as he silently accused you of lying. “Foster purposely sent him on that mission, knowing he’d die.” You stand tall as the words leave your mouth, managing to calm your raging emotions. The only indication of any sort of emotional weakness came from the balled fists resting at your sides. “Why the hell would-”

“Shugo was planning on leaving the org. I don’t know how, but Foster caught word, and-” the words trailed off as you walked past Atsumu to sit on the corner of your desk. “He had a pregnant girlfriend. Said he couldn’t keep putting her or their unborn child at risk with this life. He proposed about a year ago.” You begin to fiddle with your fingers, ignoring the shock written all over the blonde’s face. “They’d been dating maybe two or three, I’m not sure. When they got engaged he told me he was gonna leave. That's why he started taking lower paid and ranked missions. Then, she got pregnant and that was the last straw for him.” The crack in your voice ultimately caused your friend to react.

“If he had him killed, why are you trying to do the same thing.” This time the words came out in hardly a whisper as you felt his body settle next to yours on the desk. The feel of one of his hands encasing yours brings you back to the reality you’d talked yourself into. “I can take care of myself and you know that. Youngest to become a Jackal’s executive ever, remember,” you lightly bump his shoulder as you tease. “Not to mention, I’m the best at hand-to-hand combat here.” At that Atsumu scoffs, “Yeah, because your ability is better for being on the defensive.”

“I can still kick your ass,” you shrug as the conversation dies down.

“You think, Foster is letting you out without raising hell.” For a second his hand tightens on top of yours so quickly that you barely notice. “Him bringing you into this world was like hitting a goldmine.”

“Which is why he wouldn’t kill me right away-”

“You don’t know that,” his voice begins to grow again. “Listen. I know why ya wanna leave, but it's a shitty idea. Ya don’t have anywhere to go, can’t get a normal job or anything. Ya know I loved Shugo too, but people here die all the time” You snatch your hands away at his words, pushing at his arm as it reaches out for you again.

“You can’t be fucking serious right now,” you laugh out humorlessly. Your mind flashes back to the dozens of conversations the two of you had over the years as you practically grew up together. “We didn't choose this world, it chose us.” The phrase he’d always tell you along with the kid who used to say it long forgotten.

“Well one of us needs to be realistic. It's part of the life we all chose including him.” You shake your head at disbelief following his words.

“Get the fuck out Atsumu,” is the only thing you settle on. Your voice is low and dangerous, but he doesn’t move. “Now,” this time you were the one raising your voice. The thing you’d told him not to do as he walked in.

“We’re on the same level (Y/N). I’m not one of your damn subordinates,” the fellow executive bites back. He easily avoids the book you opt for throwing at him.

“Difference is, we’re in my office.” This time he narrowly misses the punch you’d thrown his way.

However in the attempt, he neglects the fact you managed to get behind him, until you had his arms pinned against his back. “I said get the fuck out.” You scoff as you let him go, now pointing at your door. The air is heavy, as the two of you seethe in anger. Atsumu shakes his head in disbelief as he nears the exit.

“Tell me one thing,” you raise your eyebrows signaling him to continue. “Where do ya plan on going.” The question was void of any real concern. In an attempt to further upset you it was asked in malice. Mocking you. Telling you that outside of the Jackals you had no one nor anywhere to go. And it pissed you off.

“Maybe the Adlers,” the words came out solely to spite him. The mention of your counterpart organization angered him to where his own ability activated. So you stood. Stood in anger as the books on your bookshelf flew to the ground and papers fluttered to the ground. “When you realize the way Foster is leading this organization will be our demise don’t come crying to me,” you yell over the sound of your office being trashed.

“Fuck you”

“Fuck you,” the door slammed shut behind you and you were left with an aching heart and trashed office.

The argument with Atsumu had been over a month ago. And since then, the two of you didn’t interact unless otherwise necessary. Your missions together were strictly business, both of your subordinates easily catching onto the tension. Your comments at one another just too harsh to be considered the usual joking. Whenever you had to work together, you’d opt for not riding together to sights.

The only time things seemed relatively normal were during executive meetings. You would take your rightful place as Foster’s right hand, engaging and giving updates and directives. You interacted with Atsumu as usual, even throwing in careful jokes and he’d reciprocated. He knew you still had every intention of leaving. You were stubborn. When you set your mind to something you followed through. It was one of the things he loved about you. Despite his hurt at that he didn’t want you to end up dead all because he couldn’t act in a mere meeting.

You’d finished the last letter, the one actually designated for Atsumu. It was nearing 3am and you had to be gone soon. You looked over your now former office for the last time and sighed. Eying the letters in your hands your mind thought back to the people you were leaving behind. The closest thing you could call friends in this hellhole. Directly under you in ranks were the two you entrusted as the commanders of your infiltration unit; Bokuto and Sakusa. You’d miss the way Bokuto would laugh after a completed mission somehow making the carnage left behind seem a little less gut wrenching. You’d even miss the quips at your hygiene when you got unnecessarily messy during a fight.

Then you had the guys under Atsumu’s command. His trusted commanders; Osamu and Suna, and the newest member of the organization. Hinata, a firecracker who was quickly rising in ranks.

The last letter belonged to your fellow executive. The one you shared nearly a decade’s worth of memories with. Your right hand on missions, the two of you clicking immediately and being able to act scarily in sync. the one who you’d have hundreds of sparring matches with and he’d pout whenever you let him win. The person who’d you stay getting into trouble about the base as kids, annoying everyone in your sight with pranks. The one you swore was your soulmate, despite the fact that the two of you could never be. Not with the lives you lived at least.

The buzz of the new burner phone you’d gotten shook you out of the thoughts. The text about who you were set to meet reminded of you of the time. Adjusting the straps of your backpack, you shut the light out of your office for the last time. You’d manage to drop the letters off, slipping them in the lockers of their respective occupants before sneaking off. You’d made it outside, before a voice sounded behind you. “Ya didn’t think I’d let you go by yourself now.”

Turning around you were met with Atsumu, who looked unusually happy given the situation. “Atsumu, I’m leaving and you can’t stop-” hands reached around your waist pulling you into him and effectively cutting you off.

“Of course not. Listen. You’re leaving but you're not going alone alright.” The way his index finger pressing against your lips causes your breath to catch. “It can’t be me. Not yet anyway. Listen, you were right about Foster. He’s trying to lead us into an all about war with ability users.”

That revelation causes your eyes to widen. You almost forget about the fact that Atsumu’s body was pressed against yours and that your lips were so close to one another. He only nods at your shock, looking around cautiously before continuing. “Bokuto and Sakusa are going with you. You need someone with some offensive ability, and you need Sakusa to keep you on track.”

“Are you serious,” you whisper. Your friends were coming with you? He only nods offering a smile that disappears just as quickly as it occurs.

“I assume you already had a plan for yourself. Got room for two more?” You quickly confirm, making a mental note to text your awaiting party. You also confirm after he asks you about a burner phone. “Alright good. Sakusa has my burner and some information about where we can meet up later.”

Your hands go towards his chest gently pushing him away. “I have so many questions right now-”

“Babe, you have to go. Morning guards will be here soon. We’re going to bring Foster down. For now Me, Samu, Suna and Hinata are staying here. Acting as normal. But we’re your inside eyes ok and when the time is right we’re here with you.” Your mind hardly registers the new nickname. He was with you. He believed in you and thought you were doing the right thing. The only thing you could do was wrap your arms around him in a hug. You only nod as he whispers for you to please be safe.

“Fuck! Tsumu, I wrote you all-”

“Already got Samu on it. I knew you couldn’t just leave. By now he should have already picked the locks to your guy’s lockers. Now you have to go. Bo and Omi are waiting about 2 blocks down at the end of the street.” You find yourself nodding once again, this time caught off guard when his lips come down to meet yours in a quick kiss. You’re the one to pull away, this not being the time nor place. “Get the info from Omi- and we’ll figure out a meeting for next month.”

His words cause you to step away from him, taking a deep breath. “Be safe Y/N”

“Aren’t I always,” you shoot him a smirk before nodding. He watches as you depart, lost in how he was now going to have to act in order to uphold his promise to you. “You couldn't even say I love you? How lame,” the voice causes Atsumu to jump as he scowls

“Shut up Suna! You’ve been spending too much time with Samu”

a/n: not me making meian oda and coach foster mori LMFAO. Yall also peep how i made bokuto and sakusa both hirotsu. Ok so yeah idk if im making a part 2 so in the case that i dont (bc this plot wasn;t even supposed to get a happy ending)

atsumu’s ability is basically gravity control so basically chuya (yeah he manipulated it to trash ur office), you ability is smoke manipulation aka you can form it, its poisoneous but not deadly and can only really stun momentarily or be used as a way to impair vision. Atsumu got them dazai brains, and you got them chuya hands. But yeah you were the youngest exec like dazai due to a back story that u wont know unless i decide to make another part, and yall basically double black

#haikyuu x reader #hq x reader #haikyuu imagine #atsumu x reader #haikyuu imagines #hq imagines #atsumu imagines

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quicksilversquared · 5 years ago

Text

The Wavering Peahen: Chapter 4

When Nathalie started feeling oddly ill again, both she and Gabriel were worried that the Peacock Miraculous might somehow (impossibly) be to blame again.

So naturally, they pick someone else to be the Peacock for a bit. You know, as a test subject. Except the new Peacock… doesn’t exactly know that.

links in the reblog

Two more battles passed with Pavona's role reduced to the sidelines only, her only contribution to the battles being her amok. The restriction still chafed at her, of course, but since her cold had only gotten worse Lila had to admit that maybe it was a good thing that Hawkmoth wasn't expecting her out. She felt absolutely drained and exhausted by the time she detransformed after each battle, and it was only because she was fantastic with make-up that she managed to hide how terrible she felt from her mom and everyone at school.

Normally she wouldn't hesitate to jump on the opportunity to get even more sympathy and help, but who knew who Hawkmoth was? He could be anyone and have eyes anywhere, and she couldn't risk her poorly-timed illness getting back to him. A minor cold was one thing, but this whatever-it-was was out of hand. That didn't mean that she was an invalid or something- she could still participate via her amok, obviously, since that was the only way that she had been participating for the last several fights- but he might decide that her judgement would be impaired by her being sick or something ridiculous like that and take away the Peacock.

At this point, Lila was scrambling just to keep the Peacock in her hands at all. Having some power was better than none at all, especially when it came to Ladybug and trying to defeat her.

(At this point, Lila had to see Ladybug defeated. Her blood boiled more and more every time she saw the stupid bug- how dare she be so smug about beating the akumas and sentimonsters? She should be- what, Lila didn't know for sure, but every time she and Chat Noir defeated the supervillain's monsters, Ladybug had this stupid little smirk on her face and Lila just wanted to wipe it off.)

Still, even with Pavona operating from the sidelines, Hawkmoth hadn't been happy with her. He had snarked about how bad he thought her amoks were- as though he had a leg to stand on, considering some of his akumas in the past!- and acted as though they were super-weak, even though he and his akuma were definitely hiding behind her amoks and making them do all of the hard work. If Lila hadn't been worried about losing her Miraculous before, she definitely was now.

And then Hawkmoth showed up at her window again, late at night, and Lila's heart dropped straight into her stomach.

No! No, she hadn't gotten enough of a chance to prove herself! She hadn't gotten to really fight Ladybug and get under the superheroes' skin. She just needed a little longer, another week or two and some advice to get back on track so that she could be a strong partner for Hawkmoth. It wasn't- it wasn't like she was actually incompetent!

Hawkmoth rapped at the window again, looking less than impressed with the delay. Lila startled out of her thoughts, then scrambled to go get the window and let him in. She didn't have much of a choice, really.

If this was the end of her time as Pavona, hopefully- hopefully- Hawkmoth would at least keep akumatizing her so that she could have more chances to defeat Ladybug. Hopefully she hadn't screwed things up so badly that he was going to decide that he wasn't even going to have her as an akuma anymore.

"Good evening," Hawkmoth said stiffly once he had crawled through the window and straightened up inside of her room. His eyes flashed to her neck, where the Peacock pinned to her shirt. She had had it under a scarf earlier- thankfully her cold made for an easy excuse as to why she had suddenly started wearing scarves- but it was annoying to wear scarves for longer than strictly necessary and she had taken it off as soon as she went to her room for the night. "I trust you are well?"

"I- yes, thanks," Lila managed, vaguely puzzled by the inquiry. Hawkmoth had never asked after her before. She was there to be a tool and a help, not to be coddled and watched after. "A-and yourself?"

"Good." Hawkmoth glanced around her room, then back at Lila. "I came to give you an update. I'll be out of the city soon, starting this upcoming Saturday and extending for at least a week. It's unfortunate, but unavoidable. I figured that I should probably let you know so that you wouldn't wonder why there weren't any akumas, and to let you know that you are not, under any circumstances, to try to battle the superheroes during that time. And that includes sending out amoks." He fixed her with a long look. "And I will have a very close eye on the news, so I will know if you disobey orders. And if you do..."

The silence hung in the air, threatening and ominous. Lila quashed the urge to gulp and glance towards her door, towards the room where here mom was sleeping.

"I won't try to fight them," Lila said hastily. "I promise."

"Good. We both know that it would end in disaster anyway." Hawkmoth's voice was curt, clearly not about to waste time sparing her feelings. Lila thought that that was rather unfair, really- disaster was such a strong word- but she would probably feel a bit on edge without the assurance of both Hawkmoth and one of his akumas. "I hope to send out a couple more akumas before I leave. With any luck, one of them will be successful."

Lila nodded, refraining from saying anything. Luck didn't exactly seem to be the supervillains' thing, but maybe they had been wearing down the superheroes more than they realized and a strong sentimonster and akuma combo would finish them off.

A supervillain could only hope.

"Anyway, that's all I came about," Hawkmoth added when Lila didn't say anything. "Continue to stay out of battles but be ready with a sentimonster, that's all I ask."

Lila nodded again, feeling like a bobblehead doll. "Of course. I can manage that."

"I should hope so. I'm hardly asking for a miracle." Hawkmoth sneered at that, then headed out the window. Lila stayed where she was for a minute before hurrying to close the window and lock it, pulling her blinds shut so that Hawkmoth couldn't spy on her.

And then she rolled her eyes. Seriously, that was all Hawkmoth had to say to his partner? He could have given her tips to help her improve her skills as Pavona for her to work on while he was gone, or ideas that he wanted her to implement! She might not listen to all of them- after all, he had been failing for a lot longer than she had- but it would be useful information to know, at least, and then she could come up with her own ideas based off of his.

It was like he wasn't actually interested in improving her abilities as Pavona before Mayura took the Peacock back over again. Like he wasn't actually interested in winning.

(Or like he had given her up as largely a lost cause, but Lila wasn't going to think that way. No, the entire problem laid with him, not her.)

Still, she wasn't about to lay down and let Hawkmoth's incompetence spoil her opportunity. Lila could practice fighting while Hawkmoth was gone- not with an opponent, of course, just by herself, that would have to be enough- and then maybe she would be good enough to rejoin him on the front lines and try to kick Ladybug's butt again. She could make her excuses with her mom and head out after dinner- not that she really needed excuses, as if her mom would ever stop her from going out- and then do a bit of jumping around and kicking in the relative privacy of some abandoned warehouses or something. There were bound to be a few around Paris, right?

...maybe she would just practice in her own room after school or something. Actually searching out warehouses and walking over to them sounded like too much work. Maybe the neighbors downstairs would complain, but really, who cared?

(And if they said something to her mom, then Lila would just say that she had take-home exercises for gym that she had to do to help catch back up to where they were meant to be after the school was closed for so long, or maybe she could say that she still felt very behind the other students after transferring and so was trying to get in the same kind of shape that they were in. Her mom would eat up either excuse, Lila was positive, and ta-da, problem solved.)

Maybe Paris was going to get a week off from akuma attacks, but Lila wasn't going to let the week go to waste. She was going to train, and prepare, and-

Lila's thoughts got cut off by a round of painful coughing, her throat pulsing in pain with every cough. She grimaced, reaching for her water bottle in an attempt to sooth the ache.

Well. She would train and prepare and all that, as long as this stupid cold went away.

Three days into her akuma- and Hawkmoth-free week, Lila decided that really, hand-to-hand combat was overrated.

After looking at more than a few at-home training videos, it became very obvious that getting to a level where she would actually be able to hold her own in any sort of fight would take a lot of time (and effort, which- ugh. No, thanks). It would be impossible to put in that sort of work and make any sort of meaningful progress before Mayura reclaimed her Miraculous, or at least Lila assumed so. She hadn't exactly been told when that might happen, but Hawkmoth had made it clear from the start that this wasn't going to be a long-term thing.

Besides, Hawkmoth had made it clear during their final fight before their break that she wasn't going to be returning to the front lines as Pavona anytime soon, not even on a trial basis. So Lila abandoned that idea.

(The attempts at exercise were also wiping her out in- in minutes, really. Sometimes even only a minute of moving fast was making Lila struggle to catch her breath. It was starting to get a bit concerning.)

That didn't mean that Lila wasn't going to do anything with the Miraculous while Hawkmoth was gone. No, she wasn't going to put up with Duusu in return for nothing. Even if she wasn't allowed to send out amoks to fight Ladybug and Chat Noir, there was so much more that she could do with the Peacock. It hadn't occurred to Lila before, but the amoks could look like anything- or, more importantly, like anyone.

Maybe Marinette had finally shut up with trying to call out Lila's lies for the time being, but it never hurt to have some evidence on her side. She didn't have to be transformed for her sentimonster to stick around- she had learned that after several battles- so she could put up some poster backgrounds, make some sentimonsters that looked like the celebrities that she had claimed close connections with, and ta-da, she would have bought herself a good year's worth of no questioning of her stories. Maybe she could even sneak into the school over the weekend with a Marinette-sentimonster and take photos of it breaking into Lila's locker or otherwise acting absolutely terrible. That should be enough to get even Adrien to abandon Marinette's side, which. Well.

If she couldn't get her revenge on Ladybug while she was Pavona- as much as Lila hated to admit it, that was looking increasingly unlikely that they would defeat the superheroes any time soon- then at least Lila could get some revenge on Marinette for being such a pain in the butt.

Lila smirked to herself. That was such a good idea, and she was glad that she had come up with it. She would have to brainstorm more to hammer out the details of what she would make "Marinette" do- maybe stealing from Lila's locker and then cornering Lila in the bathroom and yelling at her?- but it was definitely something that she had to do while Hawkmoth was away.

Things were really looking up, pieces the puzzle falling into place. And after feeling so crummy for the past several weeks, it was about time things went her way. With a little luck, the ugh feeling from her cold would leave soon, and then everything would be perfect in Lila's world.

Or maybe not perfect, since of course Ladybug would still be out and insufferably smug, but close enough.

The photos, Lila decided after a bit of thought, could wait until Saturday. Her mom was going to be gone all day, so Lila would have all morning to do her transformations, and she would have the rest of the week for her to gather up her posters and other props so that her pictures would turn out perfectly. And- making it even more perfect- the class had been talking about getting together for a group picnic in the park on Saturday afternoon, so Lila could show off her photos right away. She could scope out the school, too, and figure out how she could get into the building on Sunday with her senti-Marinette without being noticed.

Once school let out on Thursday evening, Lila patted her pocket to make sure that she had her wallet and detoured off of her path home, towards the bus stop to head across the city to a poster store she had been to before. Her wallet was going to take a hit from the stop- posters weren't cheap, which was annoying since really, anyone could point a camera and print a picture out- but her mom had given her more money on top of her allowance to buy hot drinks for her throat all week and she hadn't spent it because her classmates were bringing her hot tea, so at least she had gotten a bit extra to spend.

"Ooh, are you getting decorations for your room?" Duusu asked eagerly from her collar as Lila stepped inside the shop thirty minutes later, fully fed up with Paris traffic. "There's some pretty ones! Do you even have space on you walls? Or you could rotate stuff, maybe-"

Lila tried and failed not to sigh as she did her best to tune out her kwami. Honestly, as much as she didn't want to give up her powers, she really couldn't wait to be rid of Duusu. Clueless and naive were both excellent ways to describe the peacock kwami, and it was pretty irritating to deal with.

Seriously, after being with a supervillain for who-knew-how-long and then with Lila for several weeks, one would think that Duusu would actually get used to a less-than-honest way of thinking. Sure, it might also be annoying to have Duusu judging her outright all the time, but the idiocy...

Gritting her teeth, Lila prowled down the aisle that was most likely to have the posters she was looking for. Honestly, the idiocy was worse. Then she had to decide if she wanted to even try to explain- which sounded annoyingly like justifying herself, which she didn't have to do- or just ignore Duusu's increasingly bewildered and off-base questions.

"Ooh! What about this one? It's a lovely flower field!"

Lila spared the flower field poster a glance before continuing to scour the shelves for the scenes she wanted. There were a couple specific city streets that would work perfectly, and then maybe some generic backstage scenes. If she could find some that were set inside a mansion or a palace then she could do some poses with sentimonster royalty. Since no one in her class had seen the inside of Prince Ali's castle or Buckingham Palace, it wouldn't matter if she couldn't get posters of the insides of those places.

Thankfully, the shop was well-stocked. Lila found everything she needed- she was going to get to take a lot of pictures, her evidence was going to mean that people's trust in her would be absolutely unshakeable- and checked out, trying not to grimace as the price tag mounted up.

She would just take the pictures and then return the posters, but apparently the store had a no-return policy when it came to getting a bunch of posters and then trying to bring them all back. It was annoying, but if she had to pay to keep her lies in place, then she would. It was worth it.

(Besides, she could always sell the posters online or something once she was done with them. It wouldn't be all of her money back, but it would be some, and that was better than nothing.)

Lila tucked her posters deep in the bag that the shop provided- she didn't want to risk anyone she knew seeing her with the posters, and they were all too big for her school bag, even all rolled up in the poster tubes- and headed out, eager to get home. While she didn't exactly need to rush back to her apartment to work on homework- several of her classmates had been 'helping' her by sending her either the answers or pictures of most of the work required for the problems, so several hours of homework ended up taking about half an hour instead, just copying things over and scanning whatever reading Ms. Bustier had assigned- Lila didn't exactly feel like dealing with Paris rush hour.

Besides, the longer she was out with her posters, the higher the chance that someone would see her. Maybe most of the class wouldn't think anything of it- Lila could always lie and say that she was getting the posters for her mom, showing places that she had worked, since it wasn't like the outside of the tubes showed the pictures- but she preferred to not have any trails at all, in case that brat Marinette tried to claim that she was in front of posters and that was how she got the pictures. If one of the classmates saw her now and then heard that then...

Well, she was no Max, but Lila figured that the chances were at least 9/10 that they wouldn't think anything of it. But she didn't want to risk anything.

Not when she was so close to cementing her reputation for good.

Lila set up her room on Saturday as soon as her mom left for work, sacrificing her weekend lie-in. The posters came out and got unrolled, and Lila tacked them up around her room, one after the other. She set up some lamps to mimic the light sources in the photos- something she had learned to do after one of Marinette's none-too-subtle comments about the shadows not matching up during one of her video calls- and then set out changes of outfits for between pictures. She had spent the previous evening coming up with poses and figuring out what clothes she should wear with what setting and which celebrity, so all she had to do was follow her checklist- complete with reference photos- and it should go smooth as butter.

(She also had a bowl heaped with fruit for Duusu set out and ready, to recharge her kwami in between goes. Once she got going, she wasn't going to stop for anything, and that included her kwami's annoying appetite.)

Duusu had watched the entire proceedings with his head tilted to the side, the picture of confusion. He had been incessantly asking questions at the start, but finally- finally- fell silent when Lila snapped at him to shut up already. She didn't need his input, as absolutely useless as it was. All she needed was his powers.

"Duusu, transform me!"

Blue light flashed and Pavona smirked from her spot in the middle of the room. She hadn't transformed all week, and the feeling was even more amazing than she had remembered. She was powerful, she was fearless, she was invincible. Her confidence in her plans- well, obviously they were foolproof, and she was a genius for coming up with them.

It was pretty obvious that being sick had been muting how incredible transforming felt, or maybe she had just been feeling so miserable that she hadn't been able to truly appreciate it.

(Pavona coughed a few times seconds later, then scowled. Seriously, couldn't her cold be over yet?)

"All right, let's make a Jagged Stone!" Pavona announced to no one in particular, grabbing a button off of her bed. She had grabbed them from her mom's emergency sewing kit that morning, in case she couldn't recall the amoks once she was done with the sentimonster (after all, before now, they had all been purified by Ladybug) and had to simply smash the possessed item. With a grin, Pavona called up her power and the first sentimonster bubbled to life.

It was a perfect replica of Jagged Stone, though the eyes were perhaps a little blank. That was fine, though- the rock star was a little on the strange side anyway, a bit spacy and distractible. If he didn't seem 100% there and people could see that in the pictures at all, they would probably assume that he was just thinking about a new song that had popped into his mind or something.

"Detransform me," Pavona ordered as she strode forward, snagging senti-Jagged as she passed him and dragging him along with her. "Come on, we're taking some photos!"

"Pho-to," senti-Jagged said slowly, stumbling after her. Clearly it wasn't smart like an actual human, but that didn't matter. All she needed was his face. Lila shoved it into position, maneuvering its arms and face into a happy pose before hitting the timer button on the camera that she had set up and taking her position next to senti-Jagged.

"Look at the camera!" Lila demanded, pointing at the camera. She glanced to the side- good, it was listening, or maybe it was just coincidence- and then leaned close and beamed at the camera. One click, two, three photos, and then she could relax. "Okay, now a selfie!"

Click, click. Click, click. Lila snapped the photos, one after another, then looked through them. There were a few that just looked a touch unnatural, but the rest were fine.

"Okay, we're done," Lila told senti-Jagged. "You're dismissed."

It didn't move. It hadn't understood.

Of course it hadn't understood, that was dumb for her to even think for a moment that it might. Senti-Jagged was as dumb as bricks. Besides, telling it to vanish obviously wasn't going to work. She had to use her powers to recall the feather somehow, unless she just wanted to stomp on the button.

She transformed, and then Pavona looked towards senti-Jagged again. She didn't have any more of an idea of what to do to recall the amok then she had had the first time, so she just stomped on the button and snagged the feather out of the air. Senti-Jagged let out a surprised shriek as it dissolved, but Pavona ignored it in favor of getting another feather out and ready.

Prince Ali was going to be next, Pavona had decided. Then it would be Clara Nightingale next, followed by Ladybug, then a couple other celebs that she had claimed connections with. One after the other, no problem at all.

Was it going to be a lot of work? Maybe. But it was well worth it. And with every new character she made, they seemed to have more life to them. There was more of a spark in their eyes, they understood French- to some degree, at least- and their poses came completely naturally, and she had even been able to take a few short videos. That was pretty nice, but it did mean that they seemed to recognize that they were going to stop existing before she stomped on their button and begged her not to make them go. That was a bit annoying, but it wasn't about to deter her at all. Their pleas fell on deaf ears as Pavona wiped them out of existence and reclaimed their feathers.

She didn't have time to cater to their whines or try to explain to them why they couldn't stay, nor did she want to even bother with it. It was a waste of time.

After all, they were gone now. Why bother caring about their feelings? They were a tool, not a living being.

"And done," Pavona said happily once she had reclaimed the last of her feathers. She was feeling pretty drained and tired now, but that was hardly a surprise. She had gotten up earlier than she normally would on a Saturday to get everything ready, and then she had been going full-tilt ever since. She would have to keep working, honestly- she had to go through the photos and pick out which were natural enough to keep- but the transforming and set-up and staging was all finished. "Detransform me."

Duusu spiraled free of the brooch, making a beeline for the remaining bit of fruit left in the bowl. Lila barely spared him a glance as she headed for her computer, eager to dive right in and see what she had. Another coughing fit gave her momentary pause, but Lila wasn't about to let that deter her for long.

Some photos had to be cropped to hide the exposed edges of posters because she hadn't quite gotten the camera angle right, but that wasn't much of a problem. Others she cropped just to change things up and make the photos not quite so similar. The videos turned out to be useless, unfortunately- listening to them back, it was very obvious that there was outside noise from the street and from the neighbors above her- so they had to be benched until she could figure out how to edit that out. Or, more likely, until she had time to transform again and re-do those clips, hopefully while Bigfoot upstairs was out instead of stomping around.

For now, Lila had to get going or else she was going to be late meeting with the rest of the class.

As soon as her photos were loaded onto her phone, Lila snatched it up and stuffed it in her pocket, pushing herself to her feet and heading for the door with a spring in her step. She knew for a fact that Marinette was going to be there, so with any luck the photos would be enough to thoroughly ruin her day. Maybe they would be enough to start the process of ruining her friendships, too, since Marinette was hardly going to start believing Lila even with the photos and that would make her look pretty bad in her friends' eyes. That was going to be great-

Lila's progress was brought to an abrupt halt by a hacking cough before she reached the apartment door and she was forced to pause and lean heavily against the wall as a wave of lightheaded dizziness passed over her.

Ugh. How was it that her cold was coming back, but worse? She hadn't gotten any dizzy fits since the previous weekend, and certainly none as bad as that. Lila grimaced as the wave of dizziness and nausea passed, then pushed herself back up straight.

It didn't matter. Lila had her fabricated evidence in hand, and she wasn't about to let something as inconsequential as germs stop her.

#Miraculous Ladybug #My writing #The Wavering Peahen

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tristanlovesthequeen · 4 years ago

Text

Something Smart

Tristan Arcelona

Claire Daigle

Minding the Canon HTCA-502-01

11/30/16

Artist as Purveyor of the Contemporary Landscape

The first time I saw a representation of Salvador Dali's “The Persistence of Memory” was in a cartoon on Nickelodeon called “Tiny Toons.” I forget the exact scene but somehow this image stayed with me and has pervaded popular culture since its inception. Dali first came up with the idea during a after a dinner party with his wife, Gala and some artist friends. After dinner the group decided to go to the cinema and Dali decided to hang back. He sat at the head of the table observing a loaf of Camembert cheese and pondering the super soft texture of it. He sat down and began to work at the painting. It was almost complete upon the return of his wife. Upon seeing it she proclaimed that it was a sight impossible to be unseen.

The simplicity of the initial concept of soft cheese was then taken to the next step through Dali's hyper paranoiac conceptualism and then taken even further by art critics, theorists, and historians who believed it had to do with Einstein's theory of relativity. Later on in Dali's career he began to paint about this topic, with the advent of nuclear physics and string theory, molecular structures and DNA mapping. This is an instance of artist creating a brand, and the symbiotic relationship between the supply chain and the demand creating new technologies, hybridized paintings, and advancement in concept. Dali drifted between faith systems his entire life, finding sources of inspiration and exploring them, sharing his findings and experiments through the medium of art. What started as landscape and portraiture evolved into impressionism then cubism and then his most famous surrealist stage. This period explored the concept of dream reality and meaning of dream symbols which directly connected him to the theories of Sigmund Freud. When criticized by fellow surrealists as purely a commercial painter, he denounced surrealism, needing only his wife Gala. He lived a life in the spotlight through wars, moving from Europe to New York and back again. He progressed the ideas explored in surrealism to scientific theorems and in the tail end of his career he became more of a faith based painter.

Sometimes the mythology of a painting's creation is more interesting than the painting itself. It's reputation precedes it and therefore it achieves high levels of fame. One such painting is “Dance at the Moulin de la Galette” by Renoir. The Moulin de la Galette was a popular dance hall/ bar/ restaurant for the impressionists to meet in Montmarte Paris, France during the late 1800's. Pierre Auguste Renoir had a studio nearby. Legend has it that everyday he would carry the canvas with a friend down to the Moulin de la Galette and set up his easel.

Renoir leased a studio at 12 Rue Cortot, in April 1875. It came furnished and had two floors, where he lived with his brother. He made several studies at the Moulin de la Galette. Renoir's civil servant friend Georges Riviere writes how friends helped carry the canvas back and forth “We would carry this canvas every day from the rue cortot to the moulin, because the painting was executed entirely on the spot. This was not without difficulties, when the wind blew and the big canvas threatened to fly away like a kite over the Butte.” (pg. 64)

Renoir used his friends and acquaintances from all walks of life as models. He had a favorite female sitter, whose name was Jeanne and was sixteen who refused the main role in the painting but appears later in life as the main character in “The Swing.” Instead, her sister Estelle models the pink and blue ribbon dress.

Renoir went through a period in his life where he and his fellow impressionist compatriots were penniless. Renoir combated this period in his life by writing letters to friends asking for money, also by staying with fellow artists such as Monet. It seemed the impressionist vision was fading with the salon show actually losing money and his artist group parting ways. His main gallerist Durand-ruel closed his London location and it seemed that all was lost. Famished, Renoir started painting portraits and with a stroke of luck and genius, he was able to make the acquaintance of one of Duret's friends Deudon, who was a wealthy lawyer and owner of a clothing store Old England. Duedon comissioned him to paint a mural in his estate, a portrait of Madame Duedon and five of his finished pieces.

This granted Renoir passage to build upon what he had been pursuing with his portrait studies to create the symphony of motion and light that we know as Bal du Moulin de la Galette. After exhibiting, he was able to land several published reviews as was the style at the time. However, instead of advancing his process and concept, the reviews were mostly negative, 2/6 were favorable.

Most of Renoir's paintings are figurative, all signifying spacial pictoral depth. Some are landscape. Now they seem highly unoriginal, the best part about them being the color and motion of brushstroke. His model choice changed slightly over the years, yet remained mostly young white women, beginning with light red hair and progressing to black. He undeniably had a type, at his worst remained a blank, doll-like expression. Even in the Bal du Moulin de la Galette, his most populated painting, it looks as though the main female model repeats over and over as though she were dancing with her clones. However, he combats this with the dappled shadows from the overhanging branches, the representation of the contemporary styles of the time, and the bright and sunny disposition of all the participants of the scene. One cannot help but feel nostalgic for a period that would not have existed if the Impressionists had not imagined and created it.

Advance time about a hundred years or more and we find Bruce la Bruce's movie Super 8 1/2. This movie is a mockumentary based on a queer fetishistic porn producer's life and work. Things have changed since the 90's, with the advancement of the internet interrupting basically every aspect of our lives. Porn is everywhere. This movie is reminiscent of John Waters' tongue in cheek reality. The stars are not perfect right wing citizens, they are “underground” and rife with problems, and we see how very real they are. The main character takes after Andy Warhol, he has taken to alcoholism and lives in a dingy room with aluminum colored space blankets on the walls. He is always in a state of heartbreak and his relationships with his costars are argumentative and violent.

Googie is an adventurous porn producer who finds her subjects in mysterious ways. She finds a lesbian couple hooking up in a graveyard and casts them as her new stars. A confessional interview shows them talking about their threesomes with strangers and hatred for hetero cis men. They like to “fuck them, and fuck with their minds.” Wednesday and Friday describe going into clubs with a pair of scissors and cutting off straight men's ponytails. They aren't serious strippers, they are quirky and take their sexuality and dancing with a slight humorous bend.

The stars are full of themselves and obsessed with fame. Their egos cause them to blow up in violent outbursts at each other and exploit each other. The difference between Bruce la Bruce's porn and every other run of the mill porn filmed in New York or the valley, is that these stars have been given credit for being avant garde art stars. One such plot is Bruce driving an old Jaguar down a a desolate country road and hitting a hitchhiker. He gets out of the car to check on the man who he has hit and ends up getting a blowjob when he regains consciousness. The movie concludes with the stranger throwing up on the side of the road and Bruce hopping back in the car and driving away.

A movie directed by Googie and starring Wednesday and Friday, the two lesbian “sisters,” pictures them holding a man up with a WWII army beretta, lubing up his rear and shoving the covered pistol in his behind. They finish him off by stripping him bare in the brush, powdering him and equipping him with a diaper.

The movie is a black comedy. Visually it is devoid of colour. Needless to say, it is weighty in its stark portrayal of a scene that is hardly ever represented in the main stream without being over glorified. It is an industry, much like the meat industry, that remains invisible in its process, yet is pervasive throughout history, since the dawn of photography. It has it's parallels in the art scene, with painters and photographers alike representing models who may or may not have participated in porn shoots. The credit goes to the artist usually, with the model being a conduit to his concept, and it is impossible to see how much the subject actually contributed to the process and final image.

Eventually we see Bruce's participation in the industry drowning him in sorrow. He stumbles around the courtyard of an insane asylum in black doc martens, white pants, and a white straight jacket. He has been exploited to no end, what was supposed to save his career, the interviews and collaborations, actually detrimented from it. His friend describes him as losing touch with reality, blurring the line between his movies and his waking life. We see him shellshocked on camera dropping a line of infinite wisdom and rebuking it, attempting to cover his tracks, rephrasing it as if it can be edited out of the space time continuum.

The film is filmed in low-fi black and white with almost no budget. Needless to say, it is an art film. It documents a sub culture that concerns itself with a subversive beauty, that the mainstream is dangerous. It takes hard work no matter what you do, whoever said being a pornstar is easy? We see the image of a young black man on a benchpress, the director condemning him for not being able to get it up, that he has had “Three fluffers already.” That the price of fame might be the price of your mental well being, that the more one departs from mainstream society the more danger one welcomes into their personality. That somehow being beautiful and volatile gives you control over others, it creates a desire in them to do your will. However, it is only tolerable for a short period of time. Misery loves company but it also attracts a certain type of self aware genius. We are only comfortable with our avarice in the midst of a reflection, and when that reflection starts to change we are disgusted and need to move on. We accept that life is hard and must accept the most gruesome of challenges because our ability to tolerate and moderate these events bring us a sense of personal satisfaction, the sense of grit to survive. The fear always lies with our insecurities. When will this life bring me under? How much is too much? In this industry, pain and substance abuse go hand in hand. In theory, the dampening of the limbic system allows us to surpass the constant onslaught of painful memories. What is actually happening is quite the opposite. How one chooses to combat these issues or feelings depends on a personality type or a type of abuse someone has endured in the past, whether it was mental, physical or sexual. Occasionally people attempt to welcome back this type of abuse into their lives, they put themselves in situations that repeat or glorify an abusive situation and it becomes a cycle without rebirth leading to their ultimate destruction and downfall. Given the right willpower, resources, and technique one can break this cycle. Life is not without pitfalls and setbacks, but only if we take them that way. This can lead us further into space or further equip us to deal with life has to offer us.

Ultimately society was not built to do us any favors. The kind of free sexual rebellion that this movie introduces is somewhat refreshing somewhat stale. It shows us that this behavior might not land us in prison, but might lead us to a sort of mental exile where we feel alien to the world. The world has offered us an escape from mainstream only to find that we are caught in another mainstream. Crimes against humanity are rampant wherever we go and it is not until we accept them as part of our culture that we find any release.

Tony smith created the steel sculpture “Die” in 1968 with the intention of representing the “square root” of six. It is literally six by six feet, metaphorically representing death by being six feet deep and a six foot box. It is brooding in its intentionality, also seems to be a means to an end goal of traveling to New York. The NGA describes the piece as “embracing the heroic and humanistic attitudes associated with abstract expressionist art of the 1950's,” however I would describe the movement as one filled mostly with a sense of white male machismo. How could he have not noticed the gigantic black cube in the middle of Jerusalem called the Kaaba which houses the holy book of the Q'uuraan? Millions of people flock to the religious site each year to pay homage to the prophet Muhammad. Arguably, this is an even larger homage to organized religion and the prowess of another man of a separate ethnicity. Both cubes are homages to death, one is immensely popular and other remains a mirror of a small dying culture, we shall presume the reader knows which one is which.

Sometimes art is less conceptual as a metaphor for what is already present in life, and turns into a science project that invigorates the future of materiality, which is what all visual art media is based. Traditional materials are often decided by trends in the economy, sudden turns of fate determine which path is chosen and which materials will become the new norm. What replaced the steam engine with the gasoline powered motorcar and what replaced paper made from trees instead of hemp, was usually a rich investor that decided it was easier to pollute than to create something that is sustainable and equally as useful. What we have now is a bunch of overworked, underpaid employees that are just as polluted in their minds as the environments lakes and rivers.

Iris van Herpen is a designer that falls into a new genre of material futures. Material futures deals with finding a category of unsustainable or overused materiality, whether it be, organs, meat that we eat, or clothes that we wear. She creates new fabrics that are produced using 3d scans and furthermore printed and stitched by hand and machine to create designs reminiscent of HR Giger meets fairy princess, Hufflepuff meets Slitheryn in Harry Potter fan lore. She is conducting science with the touch of a skilled wizard, producing new leather from cow cells and lightweight fabrics lighter than silk. This technology continues to progress around the world. Her theory is not that we should be creating new wearable technologies that are stylistically unsound, meant to connect us to the outside world without bringing anything new to the physical realm. Her textures and textiles connote that we can represent how we feel and what we have experienced through a suit that we wear. 3D printing is becoming more accessible, to the point that people could do it “if they could only find the time.” If Iris van Herpen ever becomes mainstream we might not find the time to leave the house in the morning, staring at our reflections, robing and disrobing again until we can find the right form to describe our ever changing mood.

As it so happens, Iris van Herpen interned for Alexander McQueen, a famous English fashion designer who has died but his name still rings on. Before his death in 2010, he put together a show called VOSS, in which models were to reenact the mentality of being in an inpatient unit. Models shaped like gazelles stumble around in high heels looking posh and sleek with some sort of headdress that looks as though they have strapped pantyhose to their heads. Kate moss fumbles at the walls, which, are double sided mirrors, the audience can see in but none of the models on the runway can see out. The models, while nice to look at, sporting some amazing designs by McQueen, are perhaps not the most interesting part of the show. The climax comes, as the large rectangular rhombus in the center of the room comes crashing open, glass shatter and butterflies spread everywhere, fluttering about in the light. The main character, unclear whether she is the protagonist/ antagonist, reclines nude inside the cube, sporting a gas mask with concord wings a precursor to a character in Mad Max Fury Road.

It just so happens that this model is Michelle Olley, a London based writer and magazine editor who specializes in culture. She was a key figure in queer and fetish culture in the 80's and 90's and has since hopped around from job to job and now works as content manager for Turner Broadcasting's Adult Swim. On her blog, she describes the experience of being involved in the project. The all around stress she was under and the real life torture she felt being kept in the box.

“If it weren’t for yoga I’d be in absolute agony by now. I can’t move much because moving breaks wings; my lower leg is dead after about twenty minutes on the chair. I’ve got at least an hour and a half alone in here, and that’s if the show starts on time, which of course they never, ever do. After about another fifteen minutes my right shoulder, which is leaning on a cushion, starts to ache. I’m clutching onto Stephen’s best scalpel—which I need to slash open the butterfly net that contains 250 live moths and butterflies. I’m holding the net in my other hand trying to keep it still so I don’t disturb them. The radio earpieces are throbbing—they’ve been hurting since they wrapped the bandages round them. It’s not too bad in the mask. I can breathe OK. The temperature is awful, though. They need to keep it cold in there so that the moths will remain still/placid. Cold air is being piped in, as when the lights go on at showtime, it’s going to get really hot. The cold air is giving me goose bumps and making the glue/moth parts all around my body really itchy. My head’s hot, my body’s freezing. Time to test whether they really are listening at all times. I ask Anna to turn off the air con and they agree to give it a rest for ten minutes. I have no idea how long it took to shut it off or low long it was off for, but it wasn’t enough. Before I know it, the pipes are blowing again—sending another flurry of broken wings and antennas off me and I’m shivering. Anna tells me they’re running about twenty minutes late (it was about an hour to the official start by this point). By this stage I have no idea how long I’ve been in there, or how long I have left. Time has ceased to be quantifiable. I’m too focused on not thinking about my discomfort, not getting emotional, saying warm and not thinking about the fact I was busting for a pee. I just wanted desperately to get it over with. Sometime later Anna calls to say it would be another fifteen minutes on top of the twenty (“We’re waiting for Gwyneth, who’s stuck in traffic”). Bring. It. On. Before getting in the box, I’d seen all the names on the chairs through the two-way mirrored glass. Paltrow was at my feet, next to Nick and Charlotte Knight; my backside was right to Isabella Blow, Grace Jones, Sharlene from Texas and Ronnie and Jo Wood. Could they tell I was hatching a radio mic? I’d also spotted Tracy Chapman, Tracey Emin and Jake Chapman’s names on the chairs. My early comment about “doing it for art” was coming true in an unexpected fashion...

No, it’s the art thing again. I want people to know what I just went through wasn’t a breeze and I did it for art. Yes, art. Because I believe it’s worth going through that much palaver if it creates a strong image that conveys an important idea. And I believe that the idea that we are trapped by our “civilized,” socially approved identities is massively important. It causes women so much suffering. Fear of aging, fear of not being thin enough. Fear of not having the right clothes. Fear of our animal natures that we carry in our DNA—fish, bird, lizard, insect, mammal. We’ve never had it more techno, we’ve never needed it more human. We humans living now still cannot turn ourselves into perfect beings, no matter how long we spend at the gym, beauty parlour, shops, etc.”

Sometimes it takes a whole orchestra of behind the scenes folks to get a project realized. Sometimes it is only a handful of people who receive the credit for a massive undertaking such as this. Why is Tracy Chapman still relevant? Because she is involved with the culture. And when all is said and done, however equally distributed the pain and strife of the work that was completed, we still live in a world where Benjamin Franklin is accredited with the discovery of electricity. Perhaps McQueen would have not felt so weighed down by the responsibility of stardom if the attention received for such a project was distributed with more equity. Michelle Olley still learned a valuable lesson in body image from the experience of participating in the project, so it seems that process can be the most important part of creation.

Haruki Murakami writes in his novel Kafka on the Shore, “That’s why I like to listen to Schubert while I’m driving. Like I said, it’s because all the performances are imperfect. A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I’m driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of—that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. And personally, I find that encouraging.”

Contemporary art seems to operate solely upon this concept, that there are continuous builds based upon the notion that everything here is imperfect. Competition is based on this nodule that human kind has something to prove, that there is somehow something better to be strived for. Competition within contemporary art pushes boundaries of what is conceptual, accepted, what element of art history the piece is derived from, and what new materials can be used. Since there is no purpose in striving for perfection, it eliminates the competition within the art world. What is left is abstract free flowing ideas. Competition in the art world, it seems only exists within the art market. Survival of the fittest is based on who has the latest advancement in technology “who has the biggest guns” and who can obtain the largest chunk of the economy. Eventually people try to compensate by dumping the largest amount of money into a particular project, here size of the object, materiality, location, and finish come into play. What is left can be impactful, just because of the immense capabilities of one particular artist.

The Japanese synth composer Yuzo Koshiro, who is famous for his video game scores during the 90's describes this concept when being called the king of FM synthesis. “It’s an honour for me. Though there are a lot of people who use the FM synth well. As I said before, in terms of game music... Trying to use an FM synth with MIDI had so many restrictions. I don’t think people could use the chip to its full potential exactly as they wanted. Since I made my own editor and driver, I could control everything about the chip down to the fine details. So I think that’s why I was able produce that level of sound. I definitely don’t think I’m great at making quality tones though. Being able to control every little thing freely was one of the main reasons I received that kind of praise.” Koshiro was able to fine tune his process by using his own tools, which he developed, using his own ideal of how he saw the future. Still, he believes the final product was not the embodiment of perfection. He finds that the more one plays through a video game with the music that he has composed, the more the melodies grow on us.

“Is it the quiet shore of contemplation that I set aside for myself, as I lay bare, under the cunning, orderly surface of civilizations, the nurturing horror that they attend to pushing aside by purifying, systematizing, and thinking; the horror that they seize on in order to build themselves up and function? I rather conceive it as a work of disappointment, of frustration and hollowing—probably the only counterweight to abjection. While everything else –its archaeology and its exhaustion—is only literature: The sublime point at which the abject collapses in a burst of beauty that overwhelms us—and that cancels our existence” Kristeva.

Kristeva's “Powers of Horror” is a long, drawn out study on the abject. How she was able to complete such a tour de force is beyond us, which is probably why it seems so intelligent. She was able to sustain concentration on the most unbearable subjects, and most art students, given the the task of completing the entire transcript, are unable to do so. If there is one positive concept to be derived from this reading, it is that the abject is necessary in small doses, in order to achieve the opposite. What disrupts and disgusts us can make us believe that there is an opposite. That notion is described in the quote as the sublime.

If we look at the hollowness of space as terrifying, then we see why people decide to huddle together within city walls. We condense only to realize that this too, can be perceived as abject, and in the instance, we decide to disperse. In this way, the feeling of abjection can flip flop, all at once describing the fickle nature of the human personality, and the lightness of being alive.

“Women artists are more inward-looking, more delicate and nuanced in their treatment of their medium, it may be asserted. But which of the women artists cited above is more inward-turning then Redon, more subtle and nuanced in the handling of pigment than Corot? Is Fragonard more or less feminine than Mme. Vigee-Lebrun? Or is it not more a question of the whole Rococo style of eighteenth-century France being "feminine," if judged in terms of a binary scale of "masculinity" versus "femininity"? Certainly, if daintiness, delicacy, and preciousness are to be counted as earmarks of a feminine style, there is nothing fragile about Rosa Bonheur's Horse Fair, nor dainty and introverted about Helen Frankenthaler's giant canvases. If women have turned to scenes of domestic life, or of children. so did Jan Steen, Chardin, and the Impressionists-- Renoir and Monet as well as Morisot and Cassatt. In any case, the mere choice of a certain realm of subject matter, or the restriction to certain subjects, is not to be equated with a style, much less with some sort of quintessentially feminine style.”

Traditionally, throughout history, most of the credit of winning has been given to men. Credit is sometimes equated to fame, such as Alexander McQueen's stylistic designs and art shows, where there are numerous participants. However, what equates fame? How do we quantify how well known something is? If something that lives in our hearts is more important than fame, how is it that we measure? Many ideas presented in the art history canon have been proposed by women first. We see this in the example of Carolee Schneemann's “Meat Joy” and also “Up to and Including Her Limits.” Matthew Barney used the same ideas in his piece “Drawing Restraint” several years later and arguably received more credit. He is also referencing his “personal mythology,” which might include pieces that Schneemann has produced. Meat Joy creates a scene where the body is abjectly presented as a vessel of meat, flesh we consume is also the flesh we destroy, and the theme of abject flesh is now popularized in contemporaries like Jenny Saville. Where once upon a time it was popular to idealize the human form, it is now popular to debunk the myth of a perfect form and present the new ideal as a medley of body types and human characteristics, not ignoring the ever presence of the abundance of flesh, and bodily fluids. In terms of art, the gender of the object is attributed to whomever created it, no matter how rugged or polished the piece may be. The independence of women artists does not suggest that they did not particularly belong to a certain school or class of artists, it just means that they were not recognized for being there. Since the presence of art history is also based upon the presence of critics and historians, the relationships between these individuals and the people they chose to represent is important too. The interpersonal relationships amongst individuals in the art world also influence who receives a review. Ana Mendietta is mostly recognized for her relationship with Carl Andre, as Lucian Freud is mostly recognized because he is grandson to Sigmund Freud. Not to say either is necessarily without talent, which is quite the opposite, however people are recognized mostly from their upbringing and what circles they revolve in.

Which leaves me believing something is missing within the art world and the world at large. We all experience the sense of the void, which is a mirror of the total amount of dark matter in the universe. There is something amiss, and we are not quite sure what it is. The Fifth Element addresses this concept, with the notion that there is a missing element that will save the universe. With designs by Jean Giraud Moebius and Jean Paul Gaultier, this french cult classic is one of the most visually stunning movies to date.

The plot revolves around the main character Korben Dallas and his relationship with the embodiment of the fifth element, Leeloo. She is a fanboy's dream, a young model actress that does not speak English, is the visage of perfection but does not have any visual or cultural preference of her own to speak of, nor any knowledge of who she is or what humans are. Besides this general monotony, she contains an element that is activated by a particular piece of knowledge. What Korben Dallas teaches her, is the concept of love. This is the final unifying element in the universe, the one that clarifies the dream, and brings light to an otherwise dark place. No matter what your belief system is, if you are a human, animal, sentient being, this rings true. What is the essence of life, what is the point of materiality if there is no feeling there?

With my own work, I feel a sense of displacement usually rather than belonging. A jumble of ideas are mashed together usually to bring a solution to some sort of negativity, in order to see the light shine through. Many artists use their art as a way to connect on a broader spectrum, in this way I am no different. I find that personally I connect best at a small scale, one or two people rather than a huge group. Limiting options of who to talk to can create a stronger bond, as if limiting one's palate, in order to know what is truly motivating one's soul.

With what I create, I tend to maximize my reference points. I create a mashup of things I have experienced, usually told in the form of a fable created through symbolism of images derived from 90's pop culture. Perhaps this is me bringing to the forefront the notion of keeping my childhood alive, by subliming memories of contemporary life. Art can be about breaking free of limits, so my process constantly changes to remove myself from an XY axis and a grid, to constantly build and destroy, to remove anger, hate, and turn it into love.

This semester I have learned a few things about the art world and art school in specific. There are a few key tropes that reoccur and navigating them is mostly about the language used to describe them. For example, using the word umwelt for someone's personal bubble; using the term post humanism when someone really means Sci-fi; structuralism for patterns that repeat; anthropocene for the current affect of global warming. Part of the interchangeability of words to describe these things has to do with the malleability of the ideas themselves. As we saw with Salvador Dali's study of string theory, different personal views conjure up different worlds. The study of these worlds leads us on our own personal journeys. We envelop these concepts and let the future unfold, perhaps we use art as the mechanism to advance human kind. I always thought of art as some kind of pseudo-science, now I can say that these things are interchangeable, art can be science, theory, personal reflection, fortune telling, and the economy. The mythology that leads us here today can change time.

Works Cited

Barbara Ehrlich White, Renoir His Life Art and Letters. 1984. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. New York

NGA.gov for tony smith's die

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/t-magazine/iris-van-herpen-designer-interview.html?_r=0

http://blog.metmuseum.org/alexandermcqueen/michelle-olley-voss-diary/

http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2014/09/yuzo-koshiro-interview

The fifth element

#Tristan Chase Arcelona

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youtuberswithalex · 5 years ago

Text

PRVL, Volume 3, Chapter 1: Round One

A/N: I TOLD Y’ALL I WASN’T GIVING UP!!!!! I'm not going to promise there are going to be weekly updates again like there were with Volume 1, but what I *can* promise you, and you hopefully will trust me on this, is that it WILL come in time!!!

Also, be on the lookout for links throughout this fic-- I’m trying to compose more music for this fic!!

Summary: Four schools. Thirty-two teams. One hundred twenty-eight students. One winner.

It's the weekend that everyone has been training for, but not everything is as ready as it seems. Between Virgil's ever-growing disrupting anxiety, Patton's fear of his parents, Roman's brother-despised relationship, and Logan's mysterious threat, chances are that something is bound to go horribly wrong. But with their friends and families surrounding them, Team PRVL is confident that they're going to make the most of the three biggest days ahead of them.

Welcome to the Vytal Festival Tournament!

Word Count: 5,350

Warnings: Fighting (in a tournament), panic attack, cursing

PRVL Tag list: @faithfulcat111 @haikyuupaladin @virge-of-death @nose-to-meet-you @themysteriousinternetentity @will-iswriting-again @capripian-light-of-my-derse @isabel3710 (I’m going to be revamping this after this chapter, so please let me know if you would like to be added/kept on!)

Masterpost -- Volume 1 -- Next

-----

Virgil was certain he’d never felt his heart beat any faster in his life than in this moment. It was practically vibrating out of his ribcage. He couldn’t believe the others didn’t hear it. It was sending his head in a spin, his hands into a sweat, his jaw into a clench so tight he swore it could break through his own armor.

Not that he thought it was without reason, of course.

Despite the locker room being clear of any movement outside of PRVL putting on their armor, the chaos of the crowd outside refused to be silenced. It mixed sweetly with the heavy excitement radiating off of the other three, creating a buzz in the air that only seemed to make his pulse race even faster. From the corner of his eye, he could see Roman’s hands shaking, Logan’s stiffer-than-normal posture, Patton shifting his weight back and forth between his feet.

Each of them had an excited grin on their face. Virgil couldn’t find himself doing the same, but he couldn’t blame them.

After all, it was the day they’d been training for for so long.

The Vytal Festival Tournament.

Slamming his locker shut, Patton whirled around and held his fists to his chest. “Guys, it’s almost time!”

“We’re right here,” Logan responded, little venom in his voice. “You don’t need to yell.”

“I think there’s plenty of reason to yell!” Roman exclaimed. He lifted himself off the ground and twirled. “We have the first fight of the whole tournament! Have you any idea how much of an extravagant privilege that is?!”

“Privilege isn’t the word I’d use…,” Virgil breathed.

Logan crossed his arms. “While I do agree with you that this is an excellent opportunity, we can’t let it figuratively cloud our minds so much that we forget how to fight,” he stated. “We must remember to keep our guard up, regardless of whomever we’re against, and remember our training.”

“Oh, c’mon, Lo! This is gonna be fun!” Patton said. “We get to meet new people, make new friends—”

“—And represent Beacon as skilled, promising Huntsmen to the rest of the world,” Logan interrupted. “We cannot forget that.”

A shiver ran down Virgil’s spine.

“Plus, with you refusing to use your Semblance, despite any and all reasoning, we need to be extra careful about our tactics,” Logan finished.

Patton frowned. “Lo, I’ve told you, my parents are going to be watching. They’ll be furious if they see that.”

“I have to agree with the Grimm Sleeper, here, Pat,” Roman said. “What does it matter if they see when you won’t be speaking to them again?”

“I…”

The speakers screeched to life. Virgil felt his stomach leap to his throat.

“Ladies, Gentlemen, and everyone in between! Welcome to the 40th Annual Vytal Festival Tournament!”

The crowd erupted into cheers above them, amplified by the close, metal walls. Patton threw his hands over his ears while Roman let out a squeal.

“This is it!”

“We’re broadcasting to you live from Amity Colosseum, floating high above a beautiful day in the Kingdom of Vale! And boy, do we have a crowd today!”

“Yes, Peter, I’d say this is one of the best crowds we’ve had in years! It seems almost every seat is filled with someone on the edge of their… well… seat!”

“Oho, and why keep them waiting? Please welcome our first two teams of the tournament!”

Patton gasped and started to run for the door. “Come on, we better get out there!”

Roman and Logan were hot on his heels; Virgil took a second to take a shaky breath before following suit.

“Hailing from the Kingdom of our last Vytal Festival Champion, Shade Academy’s Team JTTT is here to uphold their title!”

“We got this guys,” Patton stated.

“And, representing our very own Beacon Academy, we have our promising Team PRVL to kick things off!”

The door slid open.

Screaming and bright, stadium lights nearly knocked the four off of their feet, but they managed to press forward towards the stage, however slow their pace. It was hard to not stare at their surroundings.

Dr. Oobleck hadn’t been kidding when he’d announced how packed the crowd was. Thousands of people were staring at them, waving, cheering, anything imaginable. From where they stood, the faces beyond the first few rows of the first level were far too small to distinguish, but was it loud.

Roman was quick to soak up the attention, twirling and sending kisses and waving right back. Virgil couldn’t shake the tremor in his hands.

By the time they made it to the stage, Team JTTT was lined up, weapons at the ready. PRVL scrambled to do the same.

With a wave, Patton grinned at the opposing team. “Hi! I’m Patton, and this is Roman, Logan, Virgil! It’s nice to meet you!”

“Pat!” Roman hissed. “You’re not supposed to befriend them until after the match! We’re enemies right now!”

Across the way, one of the members burst into a hearty, full laugh. He nearly dropped the camera in his hand. “Nah, c’mon! We can be friends now! It’ll be a friendly competition!”

“Of course you’d go for that,” the person next to them retorted, a smirk on their face.

“Did you expect anything else?” said the member furthest left.

“I sure hope not!” the first guy laughed. He beamed at PRVL and waved. “My name’s Thomas!”

The person next to Thomas scoffed before looking back at them. “Sorry, he’s like a big dog. I’m Joan.”

“Terrence,” said the guy on the left. He waved with two fingers before adjusting the baseball bat on his shoulder.

The person on the far right peered over their shoulder. “I’m Talyn.”

“It’s nice to meet you all!” Patton exclaimed.

“Just don’t expect us to go easy on you,” Roman shot.

Thomas made eye contact and gave a confident grin. “Trust us,” he said. “We won’t.”

“The rules of the tournament are simple,” Professor Port announced. “As per tradition, we will once again be breaking the competitions into three categories: Teams, Doubles and Singles.”

“The winners of the Team battles will choose two members of their team to progress to the Doubles, and whichever team wins that chooses one member to progress to the Singles!”

“From that point, the remaining combatants will fight their way through the final bracket in hopes of achieving victory for their kingdom!”

“Yes, and it is crucial to note that the only attribute being tested is skill!” Dr. Oobleck shouted. “Age and school year are completely irrelevant in this tournament!”

“Thank the gods for that,” Joan muttered.

Screens popped up around the stage, each with a rainbow of icons rapidly scrolling around them. Patton’s grin faltered as his eyes fell on them.

“What is that?”

Terrence blinked. “Have you never seen a tournament before?”

“Uh…”

“Don’t judge him. You know how hard it can be to watch these things,” Talyn pointed out. “Especially in Vacuo.”

“I grew up in Atlas! How am I supposed to know that?!”

The screens slowed to a stop. Behind Team JTTT showed a silhouette of a sun high above jutted structures. Patton turned in time to see silhouettes of geysers appear on their screens.

The ground rumbled.

Gasping, Patton stumbled back, both Roman and Logan grabbing an arm to keep him from falling to the ground. He saw Virgil drop to a crouch out of the corner of his eye; somehow, Team JTTT was hardly phased.

Aside from the middle panel they stood on, the floor began to recede into itself. Patton watched in awe as two environments rose out of the ground: one covered in high mountains of sand, and the other full of rocky geysers that blasted boiling water as soon as the floor settled.

When the stage stopped shaking, Roman shot him a grin. “That’s what those mean.”

“Students, are you ready?! The Vytal Festival Tournament is about to begin!”

The teams were quick to get into their fighting stances before Patton and Joan offered curt nods.

“In three…”

Roman’s wings fluttered.

“Two…”

Joan smirked.

“One…”

Patton smiled back.

“BEGIN!”

Patton reeled back and hurled his shield as hard as he could.

It soared across the gap between the two teams until it came just in front of Thomas’s face, who was quick to flip back just out of its reach. He eased into a backhand spring before lifting his camera and snapping a photo.

A flash of light blinded PRVL, and they threw up their hands to cover their faces. As soon as Virgil blinked his vision back, Talyn was flying towards him, sword extended; it split in the middle and spread apart, and red bubbles pelted him in the face, exploding into fire. He stumbled back, but had the quick intuition to throw his pole up just before they slammed their sword into it.

There was a blast of air next to them as Terrence leapt into the air. His baseball bat snapped into a scooter, which he was quick to put under himself before landing. He sped into the geyser field before anyone could react.

Logan launched his book at Joan, prepared to catch them while they weren’t paying attention, but they threw up their gloved hand and snatched it out of the air. A yelp escaped him when they gripped it tight and yanked it towards them, sending him tumbling in their direction.

Thomas beamed at the sight until a shadow loomed high above him, and he glanced up just in time to see Roman diving towards him, sword extended; he was quick to snap his camera into a tripod and hold it above his head. As they collided, a blast of air burst around them, sending dust and gravel flying everywhere.

Patton’s shield wedged itself into a sand dune far behind the others, and he sprinted to get to it before anyone else could. The wind toppled him over; he somersaulted to keep his momentum, only stumbling a bit before steadying on his feet. As soon as he was close enough, he yanked it out of the sand and snapped it back onto his gauntlet, whirling around to see who he could fight.

In the distance, a small figure wove through the geysers. Patton lifted his shield and fired.

“What an explosive start to this year’s tournament!”

Terrence kicked onto the flat, middle ground of the stage and sped towards him, dodging the bullets with ease. The closer he got, the more Patton’s heart pounded, and the harder he focused on firing bullets.

He leapt into the air and swiped the scooter out from under his feet; it transformed back into a bat as he held it above his head. Patton threw his shield up just in time. The resounding CLANG! Caused him to throw his hands over his ears, and Terrence took the opportunity to smash the bat into his side and knock him to the ground.

As soon as Logan was close enough, Joan thrust their bare fist at his face; he was quick to duck back and grab their wrist, pulling it over his shoulder to smash the heel of his hand into their jaw. They snatched his hand and spun until he was behind them. They launched him into the air, over their shoulders, but Logan ripped himself away and landed steadily on his feet. He threw up his arm just as they threw a punch, blocking it and repeating the action a few times.

Joan took a step back, pulling their right arm with the motion. The glove began to crackle with electricity. Logan shielded his eyes from the flashing lights, only for it to collide with his chest a second later; the jolt sent him flying through the air, and it took every muscle in his body to get him to slide to a stop on his feet, one hand on the ground for balance.

He shot a glare. They grinned back.

Gritting his teeth, Logan gripped his book and charged forward.

Talyn flipped over Sangria Salvia and landed neatly on their feet, switching their sword back into a bubble wand and shooting more bubbles; Virgil was quick to respond this time and spun his pole to block them. As soon as the fire was gone, he gripped it with both hands and swung. They matched his motion and blocked the attack.

The two hit, blocked, hit, blocked, back and forth until Virgil shoved his weapon between Talyn’s arms. He yanked it back towards him and knocked their sword out of their hands, sending it flying through the air and onto the ground far out of their reach. They watched it go before looking back at his beaming face.

Virgil couldn’t help but feel his anxiety dissipate just a little. We might actually be able to do this!

Talyn glared and held out their hands on either side. Claws shot out from underneath their nails.

His face dropped.

Roman let out a battle cry as he slammed his sword into Thomas’s tripod. The steel clashed back and forth until he leapt into the air and twirled above his opponent, landing behind him and kicking sand into the air. He swung, but Thomas was quick to snap the back of his camera open; film ribbons shot out and wrapped around the blade, and he ripped it right out of his hands and sent it flying. Roman lurched for it, but Thomas pointed an open palm at the ground and lifted his hand, and a giant column of sand rose up and knocked him away.

As quickly as he could, Roman twisted to right himself, coughing and spluttering to get the grains out of his mouth. He growled and dove towards his sword, but another blast slammed into his stomach; by the time the third was hurdling towards him, Roman was quick to spread his wings and use the wind to soar around it.

Seeing his opportunity, Terrence switched his weapon back into scooter mode and drifted around where Patton was pushing himself off of the floor. He shot him a grin and a wink.

“Catch me if you can!”

With that, he shot back towards the geysers. Patton beamed and jumped to his feet with a laugh, sprinting after him.

“You bet I will!”

As he ran onto the rocky, uneven ground, he dodged and jumped over the cracks and geysers that Terrence seemed to be skipping over with ease. He couldn’t figure out how, or how he was going to catch up to him in the first place, but… He couldn’t find himself caring. Despite the thousands of people watching in the stadium, and millions around the world, and all of them putting all their expectations of Beacon on PRVL, he didn’t have any care over which team won. This was fun. His heart was full of sunshine and joy over meeting new friends and getting to spar with them like this.

A little too full of joy.

Energy started to flow down to his feet, and Patton skidded to a stop just in front of a geyser, heart leaping into his throat. He looked down in time to see little patches of grass forming where his footsteps had landed.

Ice seeped into his veins.

Millions of people included his parents.

Semblance.

The ground rumbled in front of him, and he stumbled back just in time for the geyser to blast boiling water into the sky.

A green light formed around it, and the stream twisted and turned around itself. He blinked and glanced to the side to see Terrence holding his hands out in front of him, eyes shining a bright green.

“Oh!” Patton yelled. “Your semblance is—!”

Boosh!

The water slammed him directly in the gut, and he was sent flying high into the air, tumbling and twirling at almost the height of the second level of seating in the colosseum. Briefly, he caught a glimpse at the whole field from a birds’ eye view, watching as Virgil and Talyn parried, Joan and Logan battled hand to hand, and Roman bobbed and weaved through the sand Thomas was blasting into the air.

Roman caught him out of the corner of his eye, and he froze. Quickly, he calculated where it was Patton was going to land, and—

“Patton!”

He shot out of Thomas’s sand trap as fast as he could and dove for his leader, snatching him in his arms just before he hit the floor just outside of the battlefield. They each let out an oof, but recovered without a second to spare.

“What a save performed by Roman Reptilia!” Professor Port exclaimed. “Team PRVL’s lucky to have someone so quick-thinking on their side!”

Patton beamed up at him as he flew them back towards the battlefield. “Thanks, Ro!”

“Of course, Padre! Can’t have our leader losing from something as silly as falling out of bounds!” he replied. “Just be careful, alright?”

“You know I will, kiddo!”

Before Roman could say anything else, a blast of sand slammed into his side, and he was sent tumbling through the air; Patton fell towards the main stage, but, prepared this time, he tucked and rolled before sprinting back towards the geysers. A boulder came flying at him, covered in green light, and he was quick to throw his shield up to block it as he continued on his path.

Roman landed in the sand with a poof, skidding and sending sand down the inside of his shirt. It scratched and burned at every inch of his skin; as he pushed himself into a sitting position, he cast a quick glance to the big screens at the very top of the colosseum.

He found his name on the left side, second person down, and checked his aura levels.

27/100

He had a feeling.

A flash of light blinded him, but he leapt to his feet, reaching for his sword that was still stuck in the sand on the other side of the field. He cracked his eyes open just in time to see the tripod heading straight for his face; all he could do was throw his arms up to take the attack.

Roman formed a shield of light, but it shattered within the next blow. With a battle cry, Thomas jumped and held his tripod high above his head.

Thwack!

“Oh, and there’s our first knock out of the tournament!”

Logan gasped and cast a glance over his shoulder in time to see Roman staring up at the big screens, brow furrowed and mouth set in a slacked, deep frown. Next to him, Thomas was cheering and throwing his hands in the air, waving at the crowd. If he’d been facing him, Logan figured he would have seen a huge grin on his face.

He threw up an arm to block Joan’s punch, and, with his other, gripped his weapon’s strap tight, flinging the book as hard as he could at Thomas. It hit him square on the back and knocked him out of sight.

“And our second, just a second later!”

“It seems that PRVL and JTTT are evenly matched against each other! There’s no telling who will win this fight!”

“Ah, but whoever it is will clearly be worthy of going on to the next round!”

Virgil swallowed thickly as he blocked another scratch from Talyn’s claws. “That’s debatable,” he whispered to himself.

“Not so confident now, are you?” they snarked, shooting a smirk.

Glaring, he shoved them back as hard as he could, and they fell to the ground; without missing a beat, they did a backwards somersault, snatching their sword off the ground and firing bubbles at him again.

Virgil snapped his pole into its shotgun form and shot at each of the bubbles, letting them explode in the air instead of in his face. He crept forward as quickly as he could at the same time. Talyn inched back on their own with each step he took.

Finally, he ducked, snapped his weapon back into a pole, and swiped it under their feet. They hit the ground with a thud, and the buzzer sounded through the arena.

The crowd cheered. Distantly, Virgil heard Dr. Oobleck and Professor Port announcing the win.

He should have been happy, or at the very least, on his way to helping his teammates. But he couldn’t.

His eyes were glued to the people and cameras surrounding them.

Patton grit his teeth as his and Terrence’s weapons collided. With a grunt, he shoved him away, but Terrence kicked him in the chest and knocked him to the ground. He gasped pushed himself up, only to pause at the sight of an unsettlingly still figure.

“Virgil?” he muttered.

He glanced up at the screen to check his Aura level. 56/100.

Virgil realized with a start that he couldn’t breathe. His chest squeezed to the point where it felt like each breath was restricting his lungs even further, and his heart was feeling it. Pain started to run down his left arm as he broke into a cold sweat.

Something was wrong. Something was horribly, horribly wrong, and he was going to die, right here, in front of all these people, on live TV.

His legs trembled under his own weight, even though he felt like he was going to float away. All of these people were going to watch him die, and—and they were going to be traumatized. And all that panic and trauma was going to attract Grimm, maybe so many that the Atlas Military couldn’t hold them back, and everyone was going to die and it would be all his fault because he couldn’t handle a single, stupid fight in front of some people—

Virgil’s knees buckled.

Patton’s heart leapt to his throat. “Virgil!”

“What’s this? It seems Mr. Vengier is exhausted from the fight!”

He snapped his gaze towards Logan and Joan, just in time to see Joan staring at Virgil with a calculating look in their eye. They strategically hit Logan in the gut with a charged punch, and then they were running.

Patton glowered.

He whirled around and slammed his shield into Terrence’s shins just as he was raising his bat above his head. As he toppled forward, Patton leapt to his feet and smashed his fist into his chest as hard as he could.

A streak of flames followed Terrence as he flew out of bounds. Patton hardly registered the buzzer, as he was already sprinting as fast as he could.

Joan leapt into the air, their glove crackling with electricity and aiming right for Virgil.

Patton felt the ground rise under him with each step he took. Fire engulfed his fists.

They made eye contact.

Joan’s face fell.

With a scream, Patton slammed his fist into them, and they were sent flying through the air; when they hit the ground, they smashed through a rock formation in the sand before skidding off of the stage and slamming into the far wall.

“AND THAT’S THE MATCH!”

“TEAM PRVL OF BEACON WINS!”

Patton landed back on the ground and stumbled, cloak landing over the top of his head and blocking his vision. He yelped and scrambled to get it off; by the time he could see and whirl around, Talyn was already knelt next to Virgil, gripping his arm tightly.

“Virgil, right? Try to focus on me,” they encouraged. “Can you hear me?”

Logan dashed up behind them. “What’s going on?”

“Is he okay?!” Patton asked.

They shot them a quick glance, but kept their focus on Virgil. “He’s having a panic attack,” they stated. “I’ve got this. Virgil, if you can hear me, I need you to breathe in through your nose for four seconds…”

A hand rested on Patton’s shoulder; he turned to see Thomas giving him a gentle look. “Has he ever had one of these before?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Logan replied.

“Mine, either.”

Thomas nodded, and then he offered them a smile. “He’ll be okay. Don’t worry. If anyone knows how to help, it’s Talyn.”

“We need to get off the field soon, though,” Talyn pointed out. “Help me out?”

“You got it.”

Carefully, Thomas and Talyn lifted the trembling Virgil to his feet; when his knees buckled again, his weight caused Talyn to drop as well, and the other three scrambled to grab them both before they could fall. Patton held Talyn steady while Logan helped Thomas with Virgil.

“Aura depleted?” Thomas asked.

With a groan, Talyn could only nod. They leaned almost their full weight against Patton, eyes squeezing shut. Weakly, they pointed at Virgil and frowned.

“Help him do my breathing exercises.”

Thomas nodded and started to softly speak to Virgil, leading them carefully towards the locker room. Patton was about to do the same, but he stopped when he heard footsteps running up behind them.

“Talyn!”

They immediately turned and drooped into Joan’s arms the second they were within reach. Joan let out a breath, and then they lifted them bridal style, pressing their head carefully into the crook of their neck.

“I think you pushed yourself just a little too far today,” they muttered.

Talyn let out a moan, shaking their head. “’M fine.”

“Um…”

The two looked at Patton as he glanced back and forth between them and the locker room. He shifted on his feet, gripping tight to his cape.

“Are— Are you okay?” he asked.

Talyn hummed, dropping their head back onto Joan’s shoulder. “I have EDS,” they explained. “My Aura lets me fight without it hurting too bad, but once it’s gone, it hits full force.”

“We should probably go take a nap or something,” Joan said.

“No— No, I want to make sure Virgil’s alright.”

They blinked.

“What do you mean?” they asked. “Did something happen?”

Talyn raised an eyebrow at them. “Uh, yeah? He started having a panic attack in the middle of our match!”

Horror spread across Joan’s face, and they looked at Patton. “Wait, so—that’s why he collapsed?! Shit, I had no idea—”

They bolted off towards the locker room, holding Talyn tight in their arms; Patton let out a breath and followed.

------

Virgil lowered the water bottle from his lips, making sure he kept his eyes shut to avoid any eye contact. “Thank you,” he wheezed.

“Are you feeling any better?” Thomas asked.

He let his head drop and gave a non-committal shrug. “’M not dying, so…”

“Not that you ever were in the first place,” Logan stated.

There was a soft thwack!, followed by a yelp.

“Not now,” Roman hissed.

“It was intended as a reassurance!”

A weak laugh escaped his lips, and he cracked his eyes open to look around the locker room. From where he sat on the bench, he could just barely see Logan and Roman glaring at each other off to the side. Terrence was watching them with a raised eyebrow, and Thomas was next to him, still focused on Virgil. Next to them, Joan leaned against the lockers, holding a steady hand on Talyn’s shoulders, who was sitting cross-legged and exhausted right in front of him.

By process of elimination, that left Patton as the weight pressing against him. Not that he’d ever had any doubts on that.

“Was that your first panic attack?” Talyn asked.

Swallowing thickly, Virgil lowered his head again. “I-I guess.”

“They’re pretty terrifying the first time. I know,” they said. “But you learn how to handle them.”

First time?

“I’m really, so sorry for attacking you like that,” Joan said. “I really had no idea that was happening.”

“S’fine,” Virgil groaned. “Didn’t even notice you, honestly.”

“And you have Patton to thank for that. That final blow was awesome,” Terrence pointed out.

The grip on his shoulder tightened a bit, and then Patton let out a nervous laugh. “Uh… Thanks.”

“No, he’s right! I didn’t see that coming at all!” Joan added. “Was that your Semblance? How many years have you been—”

Virgil quietly sucked in a breath too big for his lungs to handle at the moment and threw himself into a coughing fit. Talyn leaned forward to push the water towards his lips; he took a swig and tried to ignore his burning lungs.

“You okay?” they asked.

He swallowed and slowly nodded. “Thanks.”

Talyn nodded back before pointing to his pocket with a shaking hand. “Let me give you my scroll number,” they said.

“What for?” Virgil replied. Regardless, he pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to them.

“If you’re ever having a panic attack, or just want to talk, you can always call me. I’ll help as much as I can.” They typed in their number and moved to hand it back, but Thomas stepped forward and held out his hand before Virgil could take it back.

“Let me put mine in too,” he ordered, “Just in case Talyn can’t pick up.”

“Oh, I want your numbers, too!” Patton exclaimed.

“So do I!” Roman added.

Joan pulled out their scroll. “Why don’t we all just exchange numbers with each other? Maybe we can hang out later during the festival.”

Patton grinned. “Would that be okay?!”

“Of course! You guys are cool,” Terrence said, “Even if you did beat us up and knock us out of the tournament.”

After they all exchanged and returned scrolls, Joan helped Talyn to their feet and looked at PRVL. “Do you guys want to get something to eat? I hear there’s some great ramen down on the fairgrounds.”

“As much fun as that sounds, I’m afraid we already have plans,” Logan stated.

Patton frowned. “We do?”

“Yes. Team CTLN asked us to watch some of the matches with them, remember?”

Waggling his eyebrows, Roman leaned in. “Oh, of course you’d remember.”

“Maybe some other time, then,” Thomas said. “We’ve got three days before the festival ends, so there’s plenty of time to plan. Let’s meet up again soon!”

“And don’t forget to call if you need anything,” Talyn added.

The two teams headed out of the locker room, each waving goodbye as they headed in different directions down the hall. Roman was quick to hop into the air and hover in front of Logan as they moved.

“So, skipping out on new friends to spend time with Thamir, hmm?” he said.

Logan rolled his eyes. “Do not assume it’s for any hidden reasoning. I simply wish to support them during the tournament,” he replied. “The members of Team CTLN have seemed to expressed remorse that they were unable to qualify to compete, and I’m certain that being with friends will help their emotional states.”

“Uh huh, sure.”

Taking a shaky breath, Virgil slowed to a stop and glued his eyes to the ground. “Guys? Uh… I-I think I’m just… gonna go lie down for a bit,” he softly admitted. “I’m kinda tired after all… y’know. That.”

The others stopped and looked at him; they cast a quick glance at each other, and then Patton stepped forward and put a hand on his arm. “Do you want us to come with you?”

Virgil shrugged, swallowing thickly. “I don’t want to keep you guys from CTLN, or from watching the tournament.”

“I’m sure they’d understand,” Logan replied.

Roman nodded. “And we could always watch on our scrolls.”

Offering a gentle smile, Patton tipped his head to the side. “I don’t really want to be in the colosseum, anyway, if I’m honest,” he said. “It’s a bit too loud for me in there.”

“And crowded,” Logan added.

Virgil chewed on his lip, looking between the three. “Are you sure?”

Shooting forward, Roman threw an arm around his shoulders. “We are certain, you nervous little Nevermore!” he exclaimed. “Now, let’s head back to the airships before this match ends! Best time to beat the crowd!”

A weak smile formed on Virgil’s face. “Okay.”

The group turned and began to head the other direction, towards the light at the end of the hall and the rumbling of the airships.

(https://youtu.be/-0E3bheVYRQ)

#sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #sanders sides fanfic #rwby au #prvl #virgil sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders #roman sanders #alex writes #OH IT FEELS SO GOOD TO POST THIS AGAIN

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 6 years ago

Text

Humans are Space Orcs “For Science”

Hello everyone, and Happy 4th of July. I hope you are all doing well and having a great time. I wanted to get a few things out this week despite how busy things have been. Luckily my schedule frees up dramatically Friday of next week, so hopefully I will be able to write more. Hope you like it, and have a great day!

Commander Vir stood at the helm of his ship hands clasped gently behind his back single eye staring outwards and into the blackness of space cold and focused.

Well, perhaps not completely black. The Deep Space Galactic Penal Detention Center sat at the forefront of his vision. So deep in the vastness of space near nothing and no one, it was difficult to fathom the absolute isolation in which these prisoners existed. In all the galaxy it was most known for its miles and miles of maximum security isolation cells housing the GA’s most dangerous criminals, and only recently, for the housing of its most dangerous human prisoners.

Of course, General GA policy, supported by the UNSC, prohibited the use of solitary confinement on human subjects due to the severe and negative psychological effects it was proven to cause. And as a Rundi run prison, the rules and regulations were sure to be followed to the letter. However, even the UNSC and by extension the GA had to admit that there were a few human subjects too dangerous to subject even to other prisoners.

A soft set of footsteps cut into his thought process, and a looming figure paused at his back.

He knew her without even having to look, and A dulled smile tugged at one corner of his mouth, and, as if in response he was rewarded with a soft hum.

“This is hardly the place for humor.” He commented wryly turning to face her. Sunny stood a few feet to his back half in and half out of shadow, her blue carapace gently kissed by the incoming ambient light form the view outside, “Something on your mind?” He wondered

She shook her head and shrugged large golden eyes tilting to watch him more intently, “I was just thinking how far you've come.”

A raised eyebrow, “And what is that supposed to mean?” He wondered.

She stepped out of her pool of shadow and came to lean on the back of the captains chair staring out into the darkness. He couldn’t help but notice just how much her body language seemed to scream HUMAN these days, “Once upon a time you looked uncomfortable in that uniform, you weren’t sure you were ready to be commander. And now look at you.” He allowed the smile to tug, again, wryly at the corners of his mouth as he walked to stand next to her, “Perhaps I’m just very good at faking.” His expression grew serious then, “Now my station means taking care of this Issue.” He nodded towards the unlit prison station.

Sunny thundered low in her throat causing his ribs and chest to rattle with the power, “How did he manage to do it?”

The commander shook his head slowly, “Honestly…. I have no idea.”

“Want me to get the marines ready?”

“You read my mind. Tell the boys and girls to suit up for a full tactical breach, two teams inside with us, and two teams on the outside just in case. Get Cannon to take care of them. I want Krill and Conn with us on the entry.”

Another low hum, “Yes, sir.”

“What?”

“Nothing, I like it when you get all authoritative on me.” She teased heading towards the door.

“Ah can it you big beetle.” He muttered softly, the same smile still playing over his face as she left.

***

“Approaching target 5 knots 45 degrees on entry, over.” Adam flew primarily by the ambient light of the universe tracking the other ships on his radar as they moved around to their positions. Sunny sat in the back with the marines watching as her human companions readied themselves for the boarding. Sunny wasn’t human, and so had never experienced the sensation that humans called ‘intuition’, but even she wasn’t clueless enough to miss that they were walking into a very serious situation.

The days following the capture of the infected starborn and the experimental human soldier had been characterized by a series of horrible realizations stacked one on top of the other. The starborn and the human experiment were connected somehow experimentally tampered with in such a way that gave the human near supernatural powers, and the ability to receive telepathic communication with the starborn receiving a horrible and crazed state of mind and a deteriorating body.

She glanced to the side where Conn hovered towards the back of the troop transport exchanging insults with one of the marines.

Their investigation, and scattered memories gleaned from the humans broken mind, hinted at a possible connection between the human, the starborn, the cult, the protests, and the Tesraki earthquake. Their first assumption had brought them to a forgotten source of information: A Gib scientist who had been jailed towards the beginning of the Commander’s career for experimentation on humans, which generally lead to their eventual and horrible death at the hands of the scientist.

They had originally planned on interviewing the scientist for his opinions on the kind of person that would attempt such a thing, but when they attempted to contact the prison, usually self sustaining, and without the requirements of food shipment or even equipment, they found that no one was responding. Further investigation showed that all the radio channels had been blocked.

Even worse was the knowledge that the prison was one of the most advanced ever built with the guards safety in mind. How a prisoner had managed to break through without alerting any number of warning systems was more than a mystery. When they checked fingerprint and facial recognition of the human against the prison databases, they found what they were looking for.

The situation really couldn’t have been worse. Someone was back at experimenting on humans, and even starborn, most everyone’s money was on the original Gib scientist, and if that was the case, he was locked in with a large supply of human prisoners to experiment on freely and without repercussion. Who knew how long he had been at it, and what he could have accomplished in that time frame.

“Approaching the docking bay, prepare to board.” Adam said from the pilot’s seat voice metallic and distorted lightly over the intercom. To her right, Krill slid his arms through the small black backpack, while one of his neighboring marines double checked the small motor in the back for its functioning. When Krill had joined them on previous outings he had admitted to being the slowest member of the party on his legs, and especially when he was inflated, so to combat these issues, the engineering team had designed the small motor to propel him through the air when his helium sack was inflated. Of course one of the marines was still in charge of lugging a medical kit, but it was better than their earlier system.

Sunny listened to the rattle of the shuttle as it came to a light landing inside the docking bay. Vrul shielding technology allowed for a ship’s easy entry from the outside while also keeping the air pressure inside the ship. As the engines powered down, the marines, and sunny quickly flooded out onto the deck leveling their weapons towards the dark corners of the room. The second shuttle followed close after making landing on the distant side of the docking bay.

Sunny turned in a sharp slow circle her eyes scanning for waiting threats, which she expected to appear from the shadowy corners of the room at any moment. Due to the close-quarters nature of their mission, they had been forced to leave the mounted machine gun behind, and she had traded the bulk of the machine gun for the light maneuverability her mother’s old war staff. Of course the decorative head at the end of the shaft could be used for slicing someone to ribbons in a pinch, but the real power came from the energy coils stacked one atop the other inside the interior of the staff, the discharge of which could be absolutely devastating at middling distances.

The Drev had historically fought most of their wars in hand to hand combat, close quarters being the more HONORABLE way of fighting, but that hadn’t stopped them from developing greater weapons technology in their free time.

She finished her threat assessment of the room, and found nothing. But that in itself was a problem seeing as the docking bay should have been alive with engineers and employees, yet there was no one here, but the deep darkness of the waiting prison.

The clatter of boots followed her silent inspection, as Adam came marching down the ramp wearing matching gear to the marines and carrying a matching weapon. Sunny was aware that Adam had originally trained as a fighter pilot, and had never been meant for ground combat, but the Drev war had changed most of that, and in the past few years he had taken it upon himself to have an at least more-than-passable ability in the field.

Even so, he kept at the back of the group allowing the more experienced marines, spearheaded by her, to lead them deeper into the dark. On the other side of the room, the second team of marines were doing the same.

Outside the circling shuttles were checking in.

Krill stuck to the back of the group next to the captain, Conn and the marine’s medic surprisingly silent despite the small motor which propelled him along.

They made it at first to two matching doors on either end of the long docking bay. The second team gave a thumbs up and each team stacked up on the doorway, while the lead marine stepped into place to input the provided security codes. They readied themselves for anything that was to come behind those doors, but found nothing but a long dark hallway stretching off into infinity in either direction.

Two marines cut into the hallway glancing in either direction and clearing the space before ordering the others to follow. A designated two man team hung back to keep an eye on the docking bay as the rest of the group moved further into the ship. As the layout would have it, the hallway they were currently in would eventually take a ninety degree turn to the left or to the right, then again before meeting right back up with each other at the prisoner intake station.

What they were currently seeing was simply the product of administrative offices and storage rooms.

The two teams of marines kept in close contact with each other as they moved down either hallway cutting around corners and clearing wrooms with the silent efficiency only humans were known to exhibit. Sunny did her best to emulate those same practices staying cautious as they moved forward into the blackness.

The life support was still on of course, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to breathe so easily. However, both the main lights and the backup lights had been mysterious shut off leaving them with only the beams of their rail-mounted flashlights to illuminate the way.

They took the next corner quietly alerted to the far end of the hall by the lights of the other marines. Nothing stood between them and their companions, so they kept their weapons low.

Sunny fell towards the back of the group, allowing the other marines to take point. If she was human, she was sure she would feel some uneasiness about their open back, so she kept an eye on the receding blackness behind them.

The two groups met in the middle just outside the open intake lobby. A single door to one side lead into, what appeared to be an observation room for the intake. Sunny stepped forward volunteering to go first as one of the marines opened the door for her. She swept in quickly and silently greeted by a cramped room, with a cramped desk and cramped chairs surrounded on all sides by cameras and other monitoring machines.

And nearly lit the entire place on fire when she saw the figure hunched in a corner.

She leveled her weapon ready to cut through the thing with a bast of searing energy, but stopped immediately as her light cut over the figure…. A rundi corpse lifeless and staring, surrounded by a pool of discolored, dried brown bile.

She finished clearing the room before calling Krill in. He turned off his backpack and stepped inside walking over to examine the body. At the door Conn floated like a ghost head tilted as if he were listening.

One look by Adam, and the starborn shook its head.

The marines had now moved their way onto the intake floor weapons held at the low ready. Adam followed them slowly glancing around at the open stalls and discarded equipment which blocked their path. Krill stood, finishing his examination.

And they were suddenly blinded by a searing white light. In the other room he could hear the humans cursing and calling to each other as they staggered to stay in place and adjust to the light. Sunny lifted her weapon ready to step through the door but was blocked by Conn in the last moments.

There was a metallic hiss, and the intake’s open end slammed shut. Sunny shoved Conn out of the way and ran to the closed doors slamming up against them as if she could break through, but to no avail. She ran back into the observation room where Krill was watching hands pressed up against the glass.

She slammed her staff against the viewing window, but despite her power it rebounded back towards her head.

The humans had backed themselves into a double wide circle. Those on the front knelt on the ground with those on the inner ring of the circle standing behind them and aiming over their heads. Adam stood behind one of the marines facing the direction they had originally been going.

The intercom buzzed loudly, and all weapons snapped to apprehend the sound.

“I was wondering when you were going to show up.” The marines looked at each other in confusion and shock while sunny frantically began pressing buttons and pulling on levers and slamming her staff against the glass.

“I was saying to myself, you know humans always show up to save the day. Probably the souls of theirs…. Isn’t that right, Deus.”

Adam slowly panned his weapon from one side to the other eyes narrowed in concentration, “So it is you, the Gib Scientist. The one who went mad experimenting on humans?”

There was a scoff over the intercom, “Not mad. I was right, and people couldn’t accept that now could they.” There was a long pause, “Commander Adam Vir….. I WAS hoping that they would send you. Saw it in your eyes last time we met. Something special behind there, something powerful.”

The man made no reaction to that statement other than to continue panning his weapon slowly, “Any other day I would be flattered, but today I am going to have to ask you to turn yourself in.”

The Gib let of a rather choked laugh somewhere between a squeaking and a trilling, “Now that wouldn’t be prudent commander, besides, if I did that, than what would be the point of gassing you. See it would be silly, you would all be sleeping, and I would be standing around waiting.”

“GET DOWN!” Sunny commanded stepping away from the glass and aiming down the shaft of her weapon.

In the other room, The humans had scattered like leaves on a high wind pulling anything they could find over their noses and mouths scrambling to cover the intake vents with whatever they could find.

“I have been studying you humans for a very long time. I know all your weaknesses, I know all of your little quirks, so I think to myself, why bother fighting a human when you can knock them out remotely with chemical incapacitating agents.”

A burst of energy roced Sunny backwards shooting across the small space before crashing into the glass. The entire room shook, but the energy dissipated as if it had crashed into solid steel.

The humans were frantically calling information to each other faces covered. But sunny noticed how their movement grew lethargic, their bodies sagged.

At the other door Conn was waving to get her attention, but she ignored him as the voice came back over the com, “Do you like it, it's a little fentanyl derivation of mine that I cooked up. Of course, I wasn’t the first to think of it, I think it was originally the Russians, a human chemical derived for human incapacitant. But you know that's how you should deal with humans because the only ones that can truly handle humans are other humans.”

Inside the rooms the marines were fighting to stay upright, but it was no use; the first to go down was one of the shorter female marines. She staggered once, and then spilled onto the floor her weapon clattering loudly against the tiles. Adam leaped forward to check on her kneeling next to her body.

She was followed closely by two more marines who hit the floor with a dull thud. The others leaned heavily against the walls before sliding slowly to the floor.

“Of course, the last time this was use 15% of the people it was used on died. I really hope this batch gives me a higher survival percentage, but I can only hope.”

“Why ... are you doing this.” Adam whispered head bobbing as he fought against the chemical.

“ADAM.” Sunny screamed

He didn’t hear her as the voice above his head continued speaking, “Personally, I just want to continue my studies, but in order to pull this off I needed help, and their plans are a little more wide reaching. Conquering and destruction, you know that sort of thing. Of course, I don’t much care for it, but if all goes well, I get an endless supply of test subjects and they get dominion over the known galaxy. Oh, and don’t worry about your friends, the two in the docking bay were subdued without issue, and the two troop transports have been taken command of by my starborn friends.”

So that’s why Conn had been trying to get her attention.

Inside the room, Adam’s mouth opened to speak, but at the last moment his eyes rolled back in his head and he sagged downwards slumping over the body of the original fallen marine.

“ADAM!”

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laqualassiel · 5 years ago

Note

Oh my /god/, Sola and Gladio are great. What about the other Chocobros? -Nani

XD Glad you liked it!

Alright, the other three are under the cut because this is gonna be STUPIDLY LONG.

Noctis:

-Sola loves her brother from the moment she learns that she’s going to be a big sister. It’s a fierce, unending love and it’s almost terrifying how easy Sola loves Noctis with her entire being.

-After Noctis’s birth, Sola drives the nannies up the wall spending every moment of her free time with her little brother. On one hand, they DO know where she is - just look for the Crown Prince and there’s Sola right next to him, napping or playing or - later - reading to him. On the other hand, they would like it if Sola would Stop disappearing with Noctis and let them do their jobs. (Regis and Aulea find Sola’s insistence on caring for Noctis too adorable to really help the nannies out in this case.)

-Noctis also doesn’t speak until late, and when he does, he also speaks clearly and skips almost directly to full sentences like Sola did. This is due to Sola communicating with Noctis almost solely with magic unless she is reading to him, in which case she’s often reading closer to her level and patiently explaining everything Noctis doesn’t quite grasp yet.

-Noctis gets all the piggyback rides. Regis is worried about Sola and Noctis hurting themselves (at least, when he isn’t getting ALL THE PHOTOS and Dying From The Cute) but Sola is Determined not to hurt Noctis and so takes great care when carrying her brother.

-Aulea dies when Sola is nine and Noctis is two, having never recovered from giving birth to Noctis. Sola doesn’t blame her brother. She could NEVER blame Noctis. No, Sola blames herself. Not for asking for a little sibling (because she can’t regret having Noctis as her little brother) but because she couldn’t save her mother. Even though her magic is able to heal, it was all but useless in helping Aulea. Sola deems her magic useless and decides to become strong enough to protect Noctis without it.

-Sola all but abandons using her magic, even learning to speak rather than communicate via magic. The only exception is with Noctis, the only person she will still tangle her magic with without reservation. Noctis follows her example - speaking to everyone verbally but using his magic to talk to Sola.

-It physically hurts Sola that Noctis forgets Aulea as he grows. Because it’s not fair that he won’t know how amazing their mother was, that he won’t know just how much she loved them and that he can only hear about her from stories and pictures. And it’s not fair, because Noctis deserves to have known her.

-Then Noctis finds a hurt kitten when he’s six and Sola thirteen, and his magic is so distressed and begging Sola to do something that Sola cannot bring herself to say no. She reaches for magic she hasn’t touched in almost five years, but it’s not enough. She doesn’t have the skill. She doesn’t have the power. (Sola was never meant to have deep reserves of magic. After the Healer King, no LC with golden magic would ever be born so powerful.)

-But Noctis mingles his magic with hers out of desperate need to help, and the sheer power that floods through Sola’s soul cracks her skin and turns her eyes to burning embers. When Regis comes running, Cor and Clarus hot on his heels towards the flare of desperation-pain-help-help-help, Sola and Noctis are unconscious. Noctis is pale, practically shivering with magic depletion. Sola on the other hand is flushed and feverish and just about burning up from channeling more magic than she was ever meant to wield.

-Noctis wakes first, and he bursts into horrified tears when Regis explains to him why he and Sola can never do that again. He hadn’t meant to hurt his sister, he just wanted to help. But Sola’s still unconscious and seeing his strong sister so helpless only makes Noctis feel worse and almost vow never to use his magic ever again.

-When Sola wakes, she learns that she has far more magic than she honestly knows what to do with. She doesn’t care much, because she’s more concerned about comforting a sobbing Noctis and reassuring him that she doesn’t hate him and she knows he didn’t mean to do whatever it was he did.

-Sola and Noctis are thrown into magic lessons. Noctis takes to magic easily. Sola hates the lessons but puts up with them because, well, it’s Papa teaching them. Sola’s lessons with Cor increase as well, Cor pushing her to use her magic in combat until it’s reflex no matter how much Sola loathes it.

-Then, when she’s fifteen and Noctis eight, Regis takes Noctis out to Galdin Quay for a day trip as a reward for how well he’s doing in his lessons. Sola’s own reward comes in the form of Cor presenting her with her own katana and a day of purely physical training, beating each other into the training room floor until Sola can hardly move and grinning ear to ear for it. Then flopping on top of her Uncle for a well deserved nap despite Cor grumbling half-hearted about him getting too old for this.

-Noctis comes home in a coma. All Sola can do is sit by his bedside and curse her magic for being useless. Again. She doesn’t know how to use her odd healing ability - it’s hard enough using it to heal herself from the odd training injury but she’s never really figured out how to use it on others for more than the basics. The only reason she healed Abyssus was because Noctis overpowered her ability and forced it to work when it shouldn’t have.

-Sola sobs when Noctis finally wakes, crawling up into his hospital bed and carefully curling herself around him. She wraps her magic around him, all her relief and love and guilt for not being there.

-Regis takes Noctis to Tenebrae to be healed. He refuses to allow Sola to come with, and Cor helps Regis keep Sola in the Citadel until they are far enough Sola can’t catch up. Sola Rages. That’s her little brother. She failed to protect him once already, failed to heal him, and now she is not allowed to help him again. (And part of her wonders if she’s not allowed to go because of her failure. Because she’s not good enough to be Noctis’s Sword.)

-Sola refuses to fail again. If she’s not good enough, then she’ll work until she is, with both her weapons and her magic. And there’s only one place she can push both past her limits, where they won’t try to stop her.

-The Kingsglaive.

-Cor forged her into her brother’s Sword. The Kingsglaive tempers her into a living weapon. Where Cor trained magic into reflex, the Kingsglaive pushes until it is instinct to reach for the power humming in her veins, to wield it as easily as she does the steel in her hands. Sola learns to heal her own wounds until she can do it without thought, learns to take the wounds of others with a mere touch, and learns to take the pain and keep going.

-They push Sola until she doesn’t merely use her magic, but embraces it.

-Sola doesn’t intend to enlist with the Glaive at first. She only joined their training for Noctis and had every intention of leaving after. But then the assholes grow on her, and it’s Noctis who points out that Sola is happy whenever she talks about her day with ‘her idiots,’ even if she’s griping about them. Noctis tells her with wide blue eyes (not their father’s shade, but their mother’s) that he likes Sola spending time with him, but he wants Sola to be happy too and giving up the Glaive would make her miserable. Then he brightens and adds that Sola can be his Captain of the Kingsglaive like Titus is Dad’s. Sola blinks and teasingly asks if she shouldn’t take over the Crownsguard from Uncle Cor. Noctis solemnly says that’s Gladio’s job, since the crownsguard protect the King, while the Glaive attack. Much better for a Sword. Sola hugs the stuffing out of her brother and asks when he got so smart.

-Noctis is there when Sola comes back from her first tour outside the Wall, frazzled and shaking from the sheer level of stimulation against her senses. He doesn’t hesitate to drag her to a sun patch and curl up beside her, wrapping his magic around her in comfort-safety-love, practically drowning out the world with the sheer strength of his magic.

-Once Noctis clears his physical therapy well enough to start combat training again, Sola is put in charge of training Noctis and Gladio. Sola pushes both of them as hard as she can, keeping close watch on them via her magic and stopping once Noctis or Gladio’s pain levels get too high, forcibly stopping Noctis when her little brother tries to push himself further.

-Noctis is the only one Sola ever tells about her dates, because while Noctis is protective of his big sister, he only wants her to be happy and knows Sola can take care of herself. Therefore he never threatens any of Sola’s dates - not even the one idiot that made Sola cry - only asks Sola if he can take a crack at whatever she leaves behind. Sola laughs and ruffles his hair and only promises a ‘maybe.’ Noctis will take it - it wasn’t a no.

-Sola worries about how isolated her little brother is in the public school system. She knows he doesn’t really have any friends, and while Noctis pretends he isn’t bothered by it, pretends that Gladio and Ignis are more than enough, Sola can see right through him. She can tell that Noctis wants what Sola has - friends that treat her as Sola first, and not royalty.

-For Sola’s Coming of Age, Noctis presents Sola a masterfully crafted glaive (that he may or may not have commissioned from a Bellum weaponsmith instead of the usual Insomnian ones, shhhh) as he Officially appoints her as his Sword. (And if every single Glaive in the room recognizes Noctis’ unspoken support of Sola staying in the Kingsglaive, well, Noctis all but verbally named Sola the King’s Glaive.)

-The first time Sola lands herself in the hospital with serious injuries, twelve-year-old Noctis is not happy. He and Cyrus curl up on her hospital bed next to her and then throw the mother of all tantrums once she wakes up. It takes Sola promising Noctis that she will not die on him for Noctis to calm down, sniffling into Sola’s shoulder.

-After that first scare, Noctis actually handles Sola’s other hospitalizations - of which there are a few, to the Glaives’ exasperation - with remarkable ease. When questioned, he simply says that Sola promised. And his sister doesn’t break her promises. Ever.

-Noctis teases the hell out of Sola when she and Lib finally start dating. He loves his sister, he really does, but Noctis tells Sola that her boyfriend is Oblivious. He also insists on meeting Libertus properly if the two last longer than she and Crowe did (who Noctis did meet, and took an instant liking to).

-(Noctis does in fact meet Libertus. Noctis decides that he Approves and agrees to help keep Dad and their Uncles from finding out and Overreacting. Noctis also sits back with a bowl of popcorn when Regis and Cor try to threaten Libertus and Sola Is Not Having It.)

-Then Noctis meets Prompto and for the longest time doesn’t introduce him to Sola. Sola somewhat overreacts out of worry, before Cor helps her realize that Noctis doesn’t want to share his Best Friend with Sola. And is probably nervous about Sola approving of Noctis’ best friend. Sola promptly goes to give her little brother a noogie and reassure him.

-Noctis is Pleased at being the Ring-Bearer for Sola and Libertus’ wedding. It also means he gets to sit at Sola’s table for the Wedding Dinner as part of the Wedding Party (along with Prompto as his plus one, though his best friend had laughed at his desperate plea because the only other option was 12 year old Iris and Gladio would skin him alive) rather than at one of the other tables with stuffy nobles and their - shudder - eligible daughters. No thanks! He’ll leave that to Gladio and Ignis to represent him! Six, Gladio will enjoy it!

-Then Noctis has his own Coming of Age and Sola just about face palms when a messenger shows up and names Noctis the True King, Bringer of the Dawn. What the Pyre. Little Brother why does ridiculous stuff like this always happen to you?! Noctis just wants to sink into the floor already as Sola, Gladio, Ignis, and Prompto all tease the hell out of him.

Ignis:

-Ignis, like Gladio, was originally meant to be Sola’s Hand. Also like Gladio, Ignis was never told this because he was all of three years old when Sola removed herself from the line of succession in favor of Noctis.

-Unlike Gladio, Ignis did eventually piece together why he is not serving as Sola’s Hand when she is seven years older than the Crown Prince. After asking Sola why she gave up the throne when he’s eight, Ignis accepts the answer she gives him and instead focuses on getting to know both his Prince and fellow member of Noctis’ Retinue.

-Sola likes Ignis. The kid’s a genius and absolutely devoted to her little brother. If Sola sometimes brings her own homework over to where Ignis is studying... well, Ignis is really good at explaining whatever she’s stuck on and picks up the material stupidly quick for all that he’s four years younger than she is.

-If by the time Ignis is nine he’s joined thirteen-year old Sola in her own lessons, well, Ignis finds the material much more interesting and Sola is quite the attentive student whenever he tutors her. Ignis doesn’t mention how pleased it makes him that Sola treats him like an equal despite the age disparity.

-Then Sola and Noctis end up in the hospital after healing a kitten, and Ignis gets a front row seat to Lucis Caelum Drama. Because while Sola is unconscious, Ignis deals with a horrified and despondent Noctis (and manages to talk Noctis out of never using his magic ever again, because Ignis has literally just read up on what can result from that and None of them are Good), and caring for the kitten they saved. As such, he’s the first one to realize that the kitten is by far Not a Normal Kitten.

-If he happens to hunt through the royal library for past examples of animals exposed to high levels of magic, stumbling across stories of Gilgamesh’s eagle companion that suggest said eagle was not in fact an eagle at all... well, Ignis is at least Prepared when the newly named Abyssus starts getting up to Shenanigans.

-Ignis is also the only other one in Noctis’ Retinue that Abyssus will listen to outside Sola. Ignis is not ashamed to admit that it is solely due to plying the massive cat with gourmet meals of meat and fish. And the occasional cream. A smart man knows to pick his battles.

-Then Sola joins Ignis’ magic lessons, and Ignis’ practical lessons are instead taught by the King. Ignis... needs a moment to adjust to that. But he adjusts and focuses on the lessons. As is the norm for his and Sola’s lessons, Ignis spends a fair amount of time tutoring Sola because, as the Princess once put it, Ignis is ‘a damn genius.’

-Something Sola would definitely appreciate more if it didn’t mean Ignis noticed things. Like how different her magic is to both Papa’s and Noctis’. Or how inexperienced she is using her magic and how much she honestly would prefer Not To. And well, Ignis is polite enough not to ask when clearly it’s a topic she’d rather not talk about, but Sola can FEEL Ignis’ curiosity like an itch between her shoulder blades and it’s driving her nuts.

-Sola tells Ignis how her magic is able to heal others by taking the injuries onto herself, but how she’s never been all that strong. She tells him how useless her magic is when it’s needed and how she decided that she never wanted to have to rely on it since she can’t afford to. Not with her little brother.

-And ooh, Ignis is curious about Sola’s magic. Curious and speculating on the exact measure of her abilities, but Ignis respects Sola’s boundaries and keeps his speculations to himself. Sola is trained enough that her magic is not a liability. Anything beyond that is Sola’s prerogative and Ignis will respect Sola’s wishes not to use her magic beyond the necessary basics.

-Then Noctis comes home from a day trip to Galdin Quay in a coma.

-It is Ignis’ first time seeing Sola look so fragile. Like the slightest touch will shatter her into hundreds of shards. It looks wrong. Ignis keeps a close eye on Sola. He cannot do anything to help Noctis, but he can hopefully help his fellow Retinue until Noctis - their Prince, their brother, their King - recovers.

-Ignis is there when Sola Rages at being kept from Noctis’ side. He is there when gold magic erupts from her, turning the air thick with pain-anger-betrayal. He notices how her magic skips over him even as it barrels into the Marshal with the full force of her fury.

-And if Ignis helps Abyssus make the Marshal’s life somewhat... difficult for the next couple days so Sola can join the Kingsglaive training without interference... Well, Ignis is no less pleased at being kept from Noctis’s side. And it’s not like anyone but Sola knows of Ignis’s involvement. They might suspect, but they cannot prove anything.

-Sola appreciates Ignis’ help in the days following Noctis’ injury more than she is capable of expressing with words. She also deeply appreciates just how much of a sneaky little shit he can be when pissed off, because wow. Sola didn’t think anyone could pull one over on Uncle Cor and Ignis managed two weeks. Sure it was mostly Abyssus, but Sola could see Ignis’ fingerprints all over some of her cat’s actions.

-Sola can’t wait to see how much better Ignis will get when they’re all older. Maybe she can suggest he practice on the old codgers that still insist Sola needs a Shield?

-She also really appreciates how much talent Ignis has for magic. Practically, Ignis’ specialty leans heavily towards Elemancy, but theoretically Ignis is, as usual, an utter genius. Ignis helps her work out how to use her odd healing ability, so that her injuries - and damn Tredd to Ifrit’s Pyre, the asshole - are fixed by the time she has to report for training the next day.

-Ignis wants to get revenge on Sola’s behalf, but Sola’s called dibs so Ignis takes his satisfaction in hearing about the utter disbelief when Sola shows up to training fresh as a daisy no matter her injuries the night before. If he also helps Sola come up with increasingly inventive applications for other spells to test on Sola’s victi- erm, volunteers, Ignis says nothing. Plausible deniability and all that.

-When Crowe demands to know how Sola comes up with half the spells she does, Sola takes great glee in introducing Crowe to Ignis. Because Crowe’s face at meeting the twelve-year old genius is hilarious.

-The two get on like a house on fire, and Crowe pouts when Ignis flat out refuses to consider joining the Glaive when he’s older, reasoning that Sola can just as easily convey the results of their magical experimentation. His place is at his Prince’s side.

-Sola decides Ignis is Terrifying when he manages to wrangle her into a dress for her Coming of Age Gala. She still doesn’t know how he managed it, and is more than a bit miffed that she has to actually wear the damn thing. At least until after Crowe escorts her back to her quarters after the party and her girlfriend demonstrates how much she liked the dress.

-Ignis reads Sola the Riot Act the first time she lands in the hospital. It’s also ten times worse than Uncle Cor, Uncle Clarus, Captain, or even Papa scolding her because Ignis figured out how to communicate the same way Noctis and Sola do so she can feel every ounce of Ignis’s disappointment-worry-relief.

-That Ignis then goes out and procures a supply of Phoenix Downs and Hi-Elixirs for the Kingsglaive tells Sola exactly how much he appreciates Sola getting injured as well as how much he believes in Sola’s ability to stay out of the hospital. Sola just really wants to know how on Ifrit’s Pyre Ignis managed it, because Phoenix Downs and Hi-Elixirs are expensive. (The Glaive also would really like to know and may or may not be in Awe. They also ask Titus where they can get an Ignis of their own.)

-(Ignis is Smug. Then again, helping Noctis sneak down to Little Galahd to discreetly commission Sola’s Coming of Age gift was far more difficult. If less expensive in the long run.)

-When Sola goes head to head with the Council over the conditions of Little Galahd, she takes vindictive pleasure in securing Ignis’ help. Because Ignis sees it as experience for when Noctis becomes King and is absolutely vicious in tearing apart the nobles Ignis sees as taking advantage of his King’s people. Especially when a number of those same people are responsible for keeping Sola alive on the battlefield.

-Ignis is seventeen going on eighteen when he finds out about Libertus and Sola dating. By seeing the rather distinct bruising on Sola’s neck during one of their training sessions and Ignis blue screens. Just, nope. Ignis did not, at any point in time, want to consider the fact that his Big Sister might have a sex life. (Him telling the Marshal and watching the subsequent Chaos as Cor and Regis Overreact is Ignis’ Petty Revenge. Noctis, pass the popcorn.)

-(Ignis and Noctis also dig out the popcorn when Gladio tries to threaten Libertus and Sola kicks his ass around a training room.)

-Ignis absolutely helps Sola and Libertus plan their wedding. In which he helps Libertus mediate between Sola and the Royal Wedding Planners and finds convenient excuses to drag Sola away from the preparations whenever it’s clear she’s about to strangle someone. (Though he does come to the aid of the Royal Tailors if only so Sola will have a not-dress that doesn’t sear the eyes of every non-Lucis Caelum present. He’s picked up enough of the Galahd Color Code from the Florist Debate to be able to argue the basics with the Walking Fashion Disaster that is Sola.)

-(Ignis even manages to wrangle Regis and Noctis into Decent Suits, at which point the Royal Tailors probably cry because it’s a MIRACLE-)

-Ignis repeats his miracle of dressing Sola and Noctis (not Regis this time, he leaves the King to the Royal Tailors who don’t quite manage to get rid of the pinstripes) for Noctis’ own Coming of Age Gala. Sola compromises with Ignis for an outfit cut similar to her wedding not-dress because ‘I’m going as Noctis’ Sword, not as Princess.’ Ignis is just thankful that Libertus is so easy going when it comes to formal occasions requiring his presence as Prince-Consort and can help Ignis with his wife.

Prompto:

-At first, Sola is concerned about Noctis’ new friend. Because her little brother has been friends with this kid for weeks now but hasn’t said so much as a word to her. Sola Worries. And Overreacts.

-Sola ends up doing a full background check on one Prompto Argentum, digging up every little bit of intelligence she can find as far back as there are documents for.

-She even breaks into Uncle Cor’s files, because some of the files she’s found has her Uncle’s fingerprints all over it and why the Pyre are the Crownsguard watching Noctis’ civilian friend?

-The reports Sola steals from Cor’s office nearly make her throw up out of horror. Because how could someone do that to a baby?! Cor finds her later as she’s doing her level best to trash a training room and Sola confesses to the documents she stole from his office. Cor reassures her that they’ve been watching Noctis and Prompto, and it really is just friendship.

-Prompto is honestly terrified the first time Noctis introduces him to his older sister. Everyone knows how protective the Princess is of her little brother, and Noctis adores his sister. If Sola doesn’t approve of him, Noctis would probably drop their friendship like a hot potato.

-He’s... not expecting her to be so short. From Noctis’ stories, Sola seemed to be larger than life so meeting her and realizing that he’s actually taller than her is jarring.

-Noctis introduces him, and Prompto can see how tense he is as the two siblings somehow hold a whole conversation in one look alone. But then Sola smiles at him, then she’s hugging him and thanking him for being Noctis’ friend and Prompto would really like it if the ground could swallow him now. Noctis’ face is so red that he could probably cook an egg on it but he’s also relieved so Prompto decides he can put up with a bit of embarrassment at being thanked by the Princess.

-Sola feels any lingering concerns about Noctis’ friendship with Prompto disappear the first time she meets him. Because while Noctis hasn’t realized it yet, he’s already slotted Prompto in as his Heart. And Prompto, for all that they’ve been friends for a few short weeks is whole-heartedly devoted to Noctis.

-But Sola can see the insecurities dogging Prompto’s heels. He’s not of noble or royal (or even Lucian, but Prompto doesn’t know Sola knows that) birth, he’s not had a day of combat training for all that he’s in decent shape for a civilian, and at sixteen he’s the only one not Officially part of Noctis’ Retinue. Or even unofficially, because Noctis is Protective and doesn’t want to seemingly drag Prompto into the Drama of Court against his will.

-So Sola goes to talk to him. Because she knows what it’s like, feeling like she isn’t good enough for Noctis. And Prompto is just as wrong as Sola was at fifteen.

-While Ignis distracts Noctis, Sola drags Prompto off to a corner of the Citadel she knows will be absolutely free of anyone trying to eavesdrop.

-Prompto is blindsided when Sola tells him, dead serious, just how much Noctis values his relationship with Prompto. That for years Noctis has longed for a friend that sees him as Noctis first instead of the Crown Prince. That Noctis doesn’t care that Prompto isn’t noble or combat trained or a genius like Ignis, because face it, no one’s as smart as Ignis - Sola grins when Prompto can’t hold back the snort at the way Sola complains about Ignis’ intelligence.

-Then Sola tells Prompto about the four positions of the King’s Retinue. The Sword, the Shield, the Hand, and the Heart. And Prompto feels his heart thunder in his chest because he knows where this is going. Noctis already has three Retainers. He sits, wide eyed and breathless as Sola tells Prompto that the Heart is someone who protects the King, not from physical harm, but emotional. Someone who supports the King through life as his friend. Good times, bad times, everything.

-Prompto chokes out that Sola makes it sound like marriage. Sola snorts, but states that it’s not uncommon for a King’s Heart to also be the King’s Consort. Her grandfather King Mors’ Heart was her grandmother Queen Vita. Papa’s on the other hand... Papa’s was Uncle Cid, and after their falling out Mama tried her best, but it wasn’t the same. Just like how Ignis’ father is the Royal Advisor but not Papa’s Hand because Uncle Weskham lives in Altissia.

-Prompto thinks about that, thinks about having a fight with Noctis so bad that he never talks to him again and something in his chest clenches. Prompto wants to say that it will never happen, but the secret of his origins weighs down on his shoulders.

-He asks Sola why her Uncles left the King, if they were part of his Retinue. Sola fiddles with the end of her braid as she sadly says that Uncle Weskham was injured and they had to leave him in Altissia so the Empire didn’t catch them during the Great War. Uncle Wes told them to do it, but apparently it really hurt Papa to leave him. Uncle Cid, something about Grandfather, she’s never learned the full story there. But them leaving broke something in her Papa, and it’s why Lucis Caelum’s don’t bond with just anyone. Because when it goes wrong...

-Sola looks at Prompto, and she tells him that Noctis chose Prompto as his Heart before Sola ever met Prompto. Prompto gapes at Sola, because, what? Sola’s mouth quirks into a half smile, and she tells him that Noctis hasn’t offered the position to Prompto because being recognized Officially comes with Expectations and Noctis doesn’t want to force that on Prompto.

-Prompto protests, Noctis wouldn’t be forcing Prompto into it, Prompto would be happy to take the position! Sola grins and says that she knows that, but her little brother can be a bit Dense. He also worries, because it’ll make Prompto a target and he doesn’t want Prompto to get hurt. Hence why she’s telling Prompto all this because Astrals know Noctis won’t.

-Prompto has to sit there, dazed as he considers everything Sola just dumped into his lap. Then he turns to Sola and says that Retainers are Officially appointed at 18, right? Sola nods, and Prompto says that he’s got two years then, can she teach him self defense? Because he wants to protect Noctis too.

-Sola beams at him, and Prompto can’t help but grin back.

-Sola teaches Prompto self defense, which Gladio takes over when Sola is busy with the Glaive. Ignis keeps Noctis from finding out about the training, because Prompto wants it to be a surprise.

-Sola helps Prompto find a weapon he favors, and then proceeds to join him for firearms training and the two bond over guns. Sure, Sola’s interest is in weapons in general rather than guns specifically, but she is able to keep up with him when he goes off on a ramble about whichever model’s caught his interest and it’s nice.

-It’s also nice when she finds out about Prompto’s photography hobby and Prompto learns that she weaves tapestries. The first time Prompto helps Sola prank the Glaives by taking a series of photos for Sola that she then makes tapestries from to secretly hang in Glaive HQ, Prompto is practically giddy as the Glaives all but lose their minds trying to find out who the artist is. (Apparently the inclusion of the photographs completely threw off all their previous assumptions, leaving them back at square one.) He and Sola exchange fist bumps.

-Prompto ends up revealing his training to Noctis earlier than expected, because Noctis frantically comes begging for Prompto to be his plus one to Sola’s wedding so Gladio doesn’t kick his ass for asking Iris. Sola overhears and dryly tells Noctis that him taking a member outside of his Retinue will give everyone the impression that he and Prompto are dating. Iris doesn’t count because she’s twelve and his Shield’s little sister.

-Noctis freezes like a spiracorn in the headlights and Prompto watches with some amusement as Sola rolls her eyes and tells Noctis to just ask already. Because as funny as everyone’s reactions would be to thinking Prompto and Noctis were dating, he really doesn’t see Noctis like that. Nuh uh. That’s his brother.

-Noctis stammers so bad trying to ask Prompto to be his Heart that Prompto takes pity on him and accepts. Then, while Noctis is gaping, Prompto points at Sola and says that his sister explained the whole thing, like a year ago. Noctis shoots a wounded look at Sola, who is completely unsympathetic when she tells Noctis that he’d bonded with Prompto at fifteen. She got impatient. Now go drag his Heart to Ignis so he can get outfitted for this shindig.

-Alongside the professional photographers hired for the wedding, Sola asks for Prompto to take photos beforehand because she wants some photos that feel more candid and she really likes Prompto’s work. Prompto is over the moon. Especially when he later sees one of his photos (of Sola and Libertus, flanked by Nyx and Crowe) being turned into a tapestry on Sola’s loom and Sola confides that it’ll be placed in the Hall of Arts with all the other Official Royal Art.

-Sola complains when Noctis’ Coming of Age Gala comes around, because as Prince he doesn’t need an escort, and Prompto just laughs at Sola. Sola throws one of her warp balls at his head but Prompto catches it and whips it back, starting a game of catch/dodge ball until Ignis comes in and tells them to take it to a training room before they break something. Again.

-As a civilian, there’s no pomp and circumstance for his eighteenth birthday. Even his appointment as Noctis’ Heart is a much quieter affair than the rest of the Retinue (though considering Sola’s Appointment was during her own Coming of Age Gala, everyone else’s was quiet comparatively).

-Prompto is more than fine with that. They celebrate his birthday with presents (Sola gets him an absolutely gorgeous camera) and then he and the guys go out downtown while Sola tells them to have fun.

#Shadow of Heaven's Light #ffxv #Sola Lucis Caelum #Noctis Lucis Caelum #Ignis Scientia #Prompto Argentum #Nani asks #this got stupidly long #like holy crap

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mutantsrisingrpg · 5 years ago

Photo

Congratulations NOEL! You’ve been accepted as IAPETUS.

This was the hardest decision we’ve ever had to make. Both of the applications for Jack were so damn good and we went back and forth on it. But, the way Jack idealizes Alma in your expanded connection has what hooked us, Noel! The way you ended Jacks bio to everything written about Alma, to this “He’d expected a gun to his face; instead, he’d gotten a lifeline.” This, this line right here had us SOBBING. We can’t wait to see you bring Jack to life on the dash!

Welcome to Mutants Rising! Please read the checklist and submit your account within 24 hours.

Out of Character Information:

NAME/ALIAS: Noel :~)

PRONOUNS: They/them

AGE: 24

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: CDT / GMT-5

In Character Information:

DESIRED ROLE: Jack Mizuno

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Cismale, he/him

DETAILS & ANALYSIS:

I see Jack as someone with an identity whose boundaries are constantly in flux, and the consequences of that endless/unsure sense of self. Someone (largely) unrepressed, unrepentant, unashamed, whose depth comes from his own unknown limitations, and the exhilaration that comes with exploring that edge. What could he do, what will he do? He hardly knows himself, but rather than being a problem, it’s a challenge, a philosophical question. He shares his brain with so much all the time, and sometimes the space between himself and everything else is more a suggestion than a defined line.

He’s like one of those kids raised in excessive, grotesque wealth, except with information instead of money; information, which is often power. Definitely someone who never learned to shut up, turn down the drink or the job or the daring glance. No one can be tapped into the Internet like that, an endless sea of screaming neon and screens and signs and meaning and nonsense and desire, and not be a little bit unhinged. He combats this with a straight-forward, analytical nature, a temperament capable of riding the crest of all that data without drowning. Most of the time.

Ultimately, Jack is someone with immediate access to anything and everything he could ever want to know, and a personality just morally flexible enough that he wouldn’t for a moment think to feel ashamed using it against someone.

BIO: (cw: neglect, violence, addiction, drugs, suicidal ideation)

Jack’s power had started as a party trick.

It was the first time he’d been invited to a sleepover. The other boy’s parents probably felt bad for him, the kid with no mom and no friends and an always-absent father, but the specifics didn’t matter much. He’d been hungry for their attention, anyone’s attention, and when the opportunity was given to him he intended to leave an impression. Do you have a computer room? There’s something you should see. He’d rested one hand on the mouse, one on the keyboard, scowling-serious like the hackers he’d seen on TV. The posture was more for the visual than anything else; he wasn’t going to need to press a single key tonight. Give me a name. Someone you hate.

One brush of his thumb against a wire, and the screen flickered a hundred colors. Garbled words and images, resolving into a series of personal photos, emails meant for someone else’s eyes. A social security card. A private world cracked open for him, as easy as asking please.

It was the last time he’d let anyone watch him work. The other kids had looked at him in horror, his still hands, the blank look on his face. Blank as the static on a broken TV, or the waxy face of a corpse. Freak. Mutant. It didn’t bother him— other people’s opinions rarely bothered him— but it made the reveal less effective. Distracted from the point, which was: Look what I can do. And, more importantly: What can you give me for it?

Jack had been glad when they'd moved states not long after. Moving every few months was mostly an annoyance, but it did give him an unlimited supply of second chances at first impressions. By his teens, he’d perfected his routine. Cash for information. Blackmail, answers to tests, access to any secret. Any question answered, for the right price. Even if he had nothing to spend the money on but video games, candy, cigarettes and (eventually) drugs, whatever— it was the power that got to him, the real fun of the exchange. Before long his clientele had expanded from his fellow students to the local teachers. Then their friends. Then, a more dangerous kind of customer. More dangerous friends. If his father noticed his new schedule of late-night outings, he never mentioned it. Richard Mizuno had never been much of a parent, coming and going with no notice, sometimes for weeks on end. When they were sleeping in the same house, he didn’t seem to notice Jack’s movements around him at all.

Jack got caught when he was fifteen. A client looking for dirt on a cheating spouse recognized him, his dark hair, those blank eyes. Hey, aren’t you Mizuno’s kid? It was inevitable, running in circles adjacent to criminals, that he’d eventually run into someone who knew his own criminal father. Rich was a small-time con man and a big-time gambler. What money he made never lasted long in his pockets; it was rare that he made more than he lost, and outrunning his debts had been what kept them on the move through Jack’s childhood. That evening, his father called him into the kitchen and passed him a cigarette over the cheap plastic table where they’d never eaten a meal together. That evening, his father looked at him with interest for the first time in his life.

Once again his ability was a party trick, this time for his father’s benefit. Something to show off to strangers in the back rooms of clubs and anonymous private basements. Look what I found on you. Imagine what I could find on your enemies. Blackmail was a dirty business, but it paid better than the various scams his father had been working through the years. Pretty soon, they were making good money, more in a week than they’d previously seen in months. For the first time, they signed an actual lease on an apartment. He swapped out his Craigslist bed frame for one from Ikea. Soon, all Jack’s evenings were spent scowling in corners, the prop for his father’s grand reveal, and his mornings were spent sleeping through classes. He didn’t need to be present for the actual deals, but his dad liked leaving an impression, and silent boy genius hacker was a pretty memorable one.

That routine lasted nearly three years. The Mizunos made a name for themselves as the ones who could get dirt on anyone, anytime, and bore no strict alliances; it was more lucrative that way. Their reputation began to precede them. Even at a young age, Jack knew enough about the world— enough from watching his father, and the men who came after him— to know it could never end well. Inevitably, his dad made a gamble on the wrong person, and got a bullet in the head for his trouble. Jack took what was left of their money and ran as far as he could run, all the way to the opposite coast, into the familiar arms of an anonymous face and an unfamiliar town.

In another life, that would have been his lesson to take a sharp right turn and set down some more legitimate roots. As it was, he’d spent his years honing his abilities, learning how to control them and sell them to the highest bidder. The money was too easy, the satisfaction of a new impossible puzzle cracked— it was addictive, all-encompassing. Where most people only accessed a trickle of information at a time, their own personal corner of infinity, Jack bathed in it. All the world’s secrets at his fingertips, if he did things right, if he kept at it. Every puzzle had its solution. He could have anything and everything in the world he could want, and at that moment all he wanted was more.

He was so cocky. Cocky, and empty, and often bored. Sometimes high. It was a dangerous combination. First, he got run out of New York with his life, just barely. He’d bet on the wrong person, someone who knew that all it took to get him to do something was telling him he couldn’t. Nothing more attractive than a locked door and a challenge. Nothing better than proving someone wrong. Next stop, Chicago, where he hadn’t fallen into old habits as much as his only habits. It started with some high-powered mutant at a house party, looking him up and down with a raised brow— This guy? Really?— and it was like he lost his fucking mind. People could call him any name in the books and he wouldn’t bat a pretty eyelash, but questioning his abilities set him off like a rabid dog, what little common sense he had disappearing behind a smirk. All the mutant had to do was cock his head and ask, Can you? And Jack had said, Try me.

Jack would show them. He would show everyone in the entire world if he had to. And that was how he’d found himself on the wrong side of the Blackburn Syndicate.

EXPANDED CONNECTIONS:

ALMA: When Jack looked up from his crouch on the floor of the Blackburn server room and saw Alma, pure rage in a five-foot-two frame and looking ready to snap his neck, he’d laughed. In the split second between seeing their face and recognizing it, his mind tried the odds of getting out of that room alive and came up with the equivalent of an error message. So this was it, his penultimate moment, the last bad decision in a history of bad decisions. He’d lived his life from one increasingly risky gamble to the next, always left unsatisfied and searching for the next big thing-- assuming he didn’t get his face kicked in first. Not a great way to live if longevity was a priority, but he’d been running long enough on hubris to ignore that part. Until now. Now, it seemed the ever-chaotic universe had found a small justice to be done, one small moving part of chaos to put back in its place. He was going to be powered down for good. All that was left was to let go, with the finality of an animal going limp in the mouth of its mother, submitting to the inevitability of the narrative he’d always seen coming.

Jack wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel. Disappointed? He should be. He’d gotten caught before he could deliver the product to his client. He’d failed the job. But he’d gotten into the Blackburn servers first, cracked open the deepest secrets of one of the most secretive gangs. The rest of the job was just… transportation. This was his biggest challenge to date, and he’d— somehow, incredibly— pulled it off. Which was how he’d found himself laughing in the face of the inevitable, expression lit only by the blinking red and blue lights of the monitor below him and his hands nested in a tangle of wires like the hair of a lover.

He can’t imagine what she saw in him at that moment. A scruffy kid in old clothes living out of a hotel on the South Side, spending his days chain-smoking out the bathroom window while he waited for his phone to ring. Those days, he’d always had this feeling like he was about to vibrate out of his skin, worst of all when he was waiting for a job. Bouncing between all these intense, erratic impulses, always on the edge of shaving his head or robbing a bank or jumping in front of a car. He was a ball of tightly-would energy with no container, spinning and ricocheting and destroying everything it touched, and getting himself banged up in the process. An attack dog without a leash, biting its own tail into infinity. Jack was on his way to a dead end, full-speed, and changing paths wasn’t an option. Stopping felt like drowning; moving, outwitting every challenge, outrunning all consequences, at least it had a rush.

Until Alma Rosario looked at him and said, I’ve been looking for someone like you. He’d never been looked at like that before, like they were taking the whole measure of him, like they knew what he was and what he was meant to do. You’re with us now. Like he’d been theirs the whole time, and everything up until that moment was just practice for the real work of his life. He’d expected a gun to his face; instead, he’d gotten a lifeline. Someone who gave a fuck about him in a way no one ever had before. A cool hand on his shoulder, a direction to point his focus, and a leader who took his restlessness and alchemised it into blood-deep loyalty. The rest of the world could get fucked, but Alma Rosario had spared his life in more ways than one, and he’d follow them to the ends of the Earth.

EXTRA:

Jack speaks English, Japanese and Polish. The last he learned from his friend group in high school, who he had nothing in common with apart from a mutual interest in doing drugs and World of Warcraft. A fun side-effect of his ability is a natural aptitude towards languages, which could be cool if he ever cared enough to do something with it. In reality, he’d only learned Polish so he could talk shit as well as the rest of them during games.

At one point in his childhood he’d gotten really good at card tricks as an outlet for his fidgeting. It didn’t stick, but he still has the muscle memory.

There is an irony to the fact he ended up in the Blackburn Syndicate, the most holier-than-thou of the gangs, considering he doesn’t give a fuck about mutant rights. He’s never cared about politics or paid much attention to life outside his circle, and the interiority of his ability has spared him from the abuse other mutants experience on the day-to-day.

The last romantic interest he expressed in a girl was Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion; to be fair, he was 12 at the time.

There was a period at the beginning of his work with the Blackburn Syndicate where he lived in Alma’s guesthouse, because he had nowhere to go, and had been kicked out of his hotel for not caring enough to pay their bills. While he didn’t spend much time with Alma personally, being literally taken in off the street solidified his trust in their promise that Blackburn takes care of its members.

Jack was born on August 6, 1990 (which makes him a Leo sun, Scorpio moon, Capricorn rising.) Yes, this is a year to the day the internet went public.

His mother left him with his father when he was five. He doesn’t remember anything about her, but if she was thoughtless enough to leave her child with a man like his dad, he doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t think about her much anymore.

Jack has a secret obsession/fascination with the arcane and occult. Possibly because it’s one of the few topics that remains mysterious, no matter how much digging he does.

His home computer has a Sailor Moon-themed keyboard. It is wholly incongruous with the rest of his place, which has as much personality as a cheap motel room.

Jack reads everyone in Blackburn’s emails. Because he can. Occasionally their texts, too, if he really doesn’t like them, or distrusts their motivations. (He distrusts most people’s motivations.)

On that note, he considers it part of his job to keep some amount of dirt on everyone he knows, from bank account details to embarrassing archived Myspace profiles. The only one he affords their privacy is Alma.

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/remusjlupin/jm/

ANYTHING ELSE: N/A

#Accepted #accepted: iapetus

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mcnypieces · 5 years ago

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&&. META 03. ( PICA / MODERN )

♠ One of the big heads of the Donquixote crime family. With a brutish amount of physical strength and knowledge in handling larger blades, it makes standing up to him bare-handed a nigh impossible task. He is an effective option in dealing a heavy hand to those uncooperative to the fine print of deals and contracts. His entire unit is dedicated to looking into newfound targets, picking off unnecessary partnerships and ending agreements... permanently. Pica has a low tolerance level and an especially fervent disdain for betrayal, which makes it all the easier to carry out. In papers he’s described as highly dangerous, secretive, and intimidating. In practice he always wears the same appearance ─ a leather biker’s jacket with studded lapels and three large spikes on either shoulder with a stylized family symbol in a giant spade emblazoned on the back, a plain undershirt and pants, studded boots, and a biker’s helmet. Everyone in his unit has the same jacket, though not all of them choose to wear it at all times. The helmet bears a resemblance to his armor, with smaller tips jutting in the cardinal directions and the top bearing a similar spade-shaped spike. He always wears it while doing business. Unbeknownst to most, it has a built in voice modifier that gives him a much deeper tone fit for his stature. No one has seen his face, much less heard the actual soprano tone of his voice, making it simple for him to blend into everyday life as he is.

♠ In day to day life he works in stonemasonry dealing mainly as a fixer with a slight dabbling in structural landscaping. The latter is excused as part of his dedicated undercover work, but in reality he views it as a hobby. He does this alongside Gladius, who deals with the finer details down to a point and speaks with clients while his superior handles the craft in silence. As a sniper who’s real work has yet to be identified with a name ( he’s just that good at his job, folks ), he has no reason for an alias. Pica lives an average life under the name “Titus”. At one point the name “Antaeus” was considered, but it felt suspiciously out of place in a modern era.

♠ He still likes stonework. He takes a great interest in abandoned, dilapidated arches and buildings made out of stone as well as statues, headstones, bridges, and the like. Even what most would consider the smaller, more insignificant pieces catch his attention. There is a great sense of appreciation and comfort in being surrounded by handcrafted stone. He knows just about everything there is to know in regards to the craft and can do some rather impressive things with it. Despite not often accepting it as such in conversation, it is in fact one of his only true hobbies.

♠ There are very notable scars on both his shoulders. From near the base of his neck down to the end of the ball of his shoulder are terrible surgical scars. In both he developed tumors, likely from his sporadic growth. Though identified as benign on discovery, the risk of further development into malignancy was enough to heed a suggestion to remove them entirely. Since then the growths have not reoccurred, but stubbornness and dedication did not stop Pica from continuing life as normal while he recovered. This lead to constant shoulder pains, muscle soreness in the back and chest, and a general state of continuous discomfort. Shortly after the initial surgery his stitches tore, further damaging already scarred skin and making a mess of things. This makes them a startling sight, and they remain quite sensitive. While already not a fan of physical contact, he HATES when people touch his shoulders. Even a well-intended courteous tap around the area is enough to make him snap. It takes an unthinkable amount of effort and restraint to uphold decency in public when this is done unintentionally by strangers or coworkers. The family only barely gets away with it, but they also know better by now. Only the most trusted individuals even get to see them, much less touch them. He’s taken to wearing shirts with short sleeves to cover them up. It was some time after he decided to find someone willing to tattoo his shoulders to combat the underlying insecurity to no avail. Most of the time they are covered up as well. His prideful self-image is far too prevalent to openly admit anything but it competes with ( and in many cases overcomes ) his voice in terms of anxiety.

♠ Unlike his main counterpart, making fun of his voice will not immediately warrant a death sentence but you probably still shouldn’t do that. It’s really not good for your health. Or his. Also it’s just not nice. He’s physically capable enough to put you in the hospital for a week with little effort and that chain of upholding appearances nailed in the ground keeping him restrained is only going to handle him tugging on it so hard for so long. He’ll undoubtedly get away with it without issue, too, considering the numerous family connections. But on an average, perhaps even good day, you’re getting a ticked off stare. Consider it a warning and pray you don’t run into him on the night shift.

♠ In tandem with the biker theme, his preference in vehicles are heavy-set motorcycles. He has one he only ever rides while working under the family name and tends to walk about a lot otherwise. Driving cars is a pain but it’s a much safer alternative for both riding and appearing normal. He keeps another cruiser built more with joyrides in mind than escaping authorities but he hardly ever rides it with that purpose in mind. Most of his personal time is spent in quiet isolation either preparing for a messy night job or plans for the next work day. He doesn’t really give himself any unoccupied “free” time.

♠ Not a fan of public places in general. Doesn’t care for going out for a coffee, doesn’t like to shop, doesn’t want to hang around. Ideal time is spent going out to deserted places and hanging out in the quiet when sitting in the shade of walls isn’t cutting it ( which is rare, considering who he is ). He only does it out of necessity and for work, and Gladius is with him a fair bit of the time so he can avoid talking to others. They both share a dislike of wasteful small talk, but Gladius is far more vocal about it. It doesn’t take much effort to shoo off unwanted company. Often those that have run into them more than a few times have learned to steer clear and not bother. It doesn’t always keep away the persistent, though, and sometimes passing, civil conversation is necessary. Doesn’t mean either really like it. Most of the time when someone is talking nonstop to Pica, he just listens and doesn’t respond. A lot of his coworkers are used to this though and don’t really mind. They’re chatty, anyway.

♠ He’s rich by common standards but he doesn’t really do anything with the money unlike most the family. It’s real, but most of it is pretty shady. A lot of it gets saved and what doesn’t is used for necessities. As a general handy man and someone that has connections to handle things when they break, it’s very rare he has to pull anything out for emergencies. He knows his place like the back of his hand. People don’t come over very often. If anything, people tend to avoid his house despite it looking very welcoming on the outside. Not-so-nearby neighbors don’t so much care for him as they care for his surprising affinity for stone landscaping. Before you ask ─ No, he will not lend you sugar and he’s not giving you landscaping tips, Sharon.

♠ Just like with the rest of the family, when things are rough and it’s time to lay low for a little while, Pica goes to Bellamy’s shoddy complex and stays. He doesn’t have space for everybody all at once in his apartment but there are always vacant rooms. Always. Pica never stays directly with him. It’s very rare he rooms with any of the family if they’re there as the space is limited and he needs the peace and quiet. He especially doesn’t care for staying with his fellow suit executives despite considering them family and some of the very few people closest to him. Diamante and Trebol are too wild for him and Vergo hardly has to lay low to begin with ( He, too, is just that good at his job ).

#♠ // * eroded by sinful living; a faded obelisk of what could've been ( modern. )#♠ // * headcanon ( pica. )#❥ // * ever running on stories of the sea ( long post. )#|| because apparently I can't be trusted to just.#put it on the verses page like a normal person.#listen!! there's just!! Not Enough Space.#I mean clearly there is #but there are valuable details.#hot take: what if titus is his real name #imagine picking it on a whim for blending in but it's actually his birthname #it's already been assumed the spanish suit names are actually aliases anyway #maybe to him ''pica'' IS his real name though #i like to think he just. showed up without one.#like a blank slate.#could be trauma. repression and the like.#maybe his parents just. didn't name him.#wouldn't that just be so sad.#I was THIS close to going with antaeus.#because greek mythology good.#but no.#felt like I needed something more modern.#anyway as you can tell I have invested my entire heart and soul into this.#I have absolutely no regrets. ||

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davids-cartoon-corkboard · 6 years ago

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I'm starting to think that Venomous and Shadowy Figure aren't twin brothers but one of them is the turbonic form of Laserblast. It's hard to say for sure which one is the turbo form because while Venomous is similar in personality to Laserblast ( Calm and collected, likes cute animals, romantically attracted to those who show strength. ) it feels like Shadowy Figure is more actively fit, carefree, goofy, and seems to genuinely care for K.O which gives him heroic traits.

I think Venomous and Shadowy Figure are brothers (maybe nottwins), and Shadowy Figure is Laserblast. However, Shadowy isn’tturbo!Laserblast. Which sounds confusing, but I’ll try to explain.

(longish post under the cut)

Coincidences happen all the time in real life. But OK KO isa story, and coincidences don’t happen nearly as often in stories. This storyhas only two purple snake people. Not two prominentpurple snake people, two purple snake people period. And they’re both voiced by Steven Ogg! They’re connected somehow.To fit with the show’s themes of family and identity, they’re either related orthe same person. (If someone can think of a third option that would fit, I’dlove to hear it.)

Ven and Shadowy aren’t the same person. Shadowy is veryfixated on KO and his power. Wouldn’t figuring out how to obtain it be aninteresting and complex project for Ven? But Ven had been dealing withlong-term boredom as of “Boxman Crashes”. Wouldn’t he have at least mentionedbeing frustrated at “not making progress” or being “stuck on a problem”? Thosetwo puzzle pieces don’t fit together.

Also, Shadowy Figure made a huge tactical blunder that wouldn’t have happened if he wasVenomous. When Fink was upset she couldn’t go to the party in “Villain’s Night In”, Ven apologized for disappointing her (via text, but still an apology). Every good parent knows the powerof an apology. And from a strategic standpoint, Shadowy should have apologizedfor hurting KO. I doubt he feels guilty about it, but when has the idea oflying ever stopped people like him? The second time he interacted with KO wasin “Let’s Have a Stakeout”. He acted manipulative, insulted KO, and physicallyattacked him. What if he hadn’t done that? What if he had met KO in the sewersand said, “I’m sorry”?

“KO, I’m sorry for what happened to the Plaza. If I hadknown the true extent of your power I would never have pushed you so hard inthe first place. I wanted to help you, but I wasn’t careful enough and wound uphurting you and many others instead. This is all my fault, and I am so, sosorry.”

Suddenly KO doesn’t feel quite so guilty for wrecking thePlaza, because Shadowy has taken the blame instead. Suddenly this guy isn’t anenemy, but a potential ally who just made a mistake. People forgive KO when hemakes mistakes, shouldn’t he do the same? And so what if Shadowy’s POW cardsays he’s level negative eight? KO’s card obviously isn’t accurate, so maybeShadowy’s isn’t either!

Maybe KO starts to trust Shadowy again, putting him in theideal situation to be manipulated. Carol and Gar and everyone else would thinkhis new friend was evil, so KO can’t tell them he’s visiting Shadowy. Shadowywants to fix this, so maybe it’s okay for him to take a few hair and salivasamples. Both want KO to use this power responsibly, so maybe he’d considerpracticing with it… just a little…

But Shadowy isn’t Venomous, so he messed up and none of thathappened. It would have been so cool,though.

Since Ven and Shadowy are not the same person, they must berelated. I only call them brothers for convenience, they could be cousins orsomething.

Where does Laser fit into this? Well, he’s not dead. Acharacter isn’t confirmed dead if nobody finds the body. And it doesn’t makesense for him to have said “screw this” and gone off to chill on a tropicalisland for the past six to eleven years without letting anyone know he wasokay. He must still be relevant. “Where did Laser go?” and “Where did Shadowycome from?” are questions that easily answer one another.

Both the blue and green orbs activated in the “Let’s Take aMoment” flashback. It’s possible the red orb also activated, removing Laser’spowers. Laser is clearly KO’s father. Children tend to inherit their powersfrom their parents. Shadowy wants KO’s power, but we don’t know the reason. Laserhas a reason, though. Them being the same person would fill in that blank verynicely.

While Shadowy is morecarefree and goofy than Laser, Shadowy isn’t under the pressure of Being a GoodExample, Not Disappointing Foxtail, and Not Blowing His Cover. I’m much morepolite and formal at my job than I am at home. This difference in personalitycan likely be chalked up to a difference in environment. Goofy isn’t inherentlya heroic trait either, Boxman is very goofy but he is absolutely a villain.

I don’t see any evidence for the Laser=Ven idea. While theirpersonalities are similar, it’s possible that’s just due to being raised in thesame environment. Sure, Ven has something to do with turbo power, but hisinterest in KO specifically is minimal, even though KO is apparently a sourceof it. He doesn’t seem to prioritize antagonizing KO over Rad or Enid. He hasno reason to attack the Plaza or its members other than to have fun withBoxman. We haven’t seen him interact with or comment on Carol. His opinion onP.O.I.N.T. seems to be wholly negative instead of wistful or bittersweet. Therearen’t enough strings linking the two for me to think they’re the same person.

Laserblast is Shadowy Figure, and that person is Venomous’brother. “Shadowblast” wants KO’s power so he can restore his own. But thepower he wants isn’t just turbo power. In “Boxman Crashes”, Venbecame more snakelike when he lost his temper. Ven has shapeshifting abilities,but he doesn’t use them a lot because he fights with science instead of hisbody. His brother Shadowy may have also had shapeshifting abilities. But sinceShadowy is a physical fighter, hewould have had more incentive to train and improve his powers.

Perhaps he got so good at shapeshifting he could change intoa human form?

And that is where“Laserblast” comes from. No turbo power, no two identities housed in one body,just regular-ass shapeshifting and a whole lot of lies.

KO’s eyes are typically brown (like Carol’s?), but have beenred, purple, both, or a mix when influenced by turbo power.

Maybe Shadowy hadpurple eyes and tried to change them to red to match Laser’s visor beam, butcouldn’t do it fully? Laser always hid his eyes because one was stuck atpurple. We could see this heterochromia in modern day Shadowy and that will beThe Big Reveal.

But why wouldShadowy undergo such a dramatic change for such a long period of time?

My theory is that Ven and Shadowy are from a formerlypowerful villain family. Shadowy had a mission to infiltrate P.O.I.N.T., butcouldn’t complete it because he lost his powers and permanently reverted to hisoriginal form (except possibly for his red eye). His failure disgraced thefamily. Ven often wears a hat and glasses in public and Shadowy Figure wears ahood because they don’t want to be recognized as members of the disgracedfamily.

Shadowy wants his powers back so he doesn’t have to sneakaround everywhere. Perhaps he even wants to become Laser again, to make up astory about why he was gone so long and return to his former friends. Cob knowshis family won’t take him back.

Shadowy had major shapeshifting abilities, while Carol hasnone. This gives KO minor shapeshifting abilities. Because the abilities are sominor (and possibly because he doesn’t know he has them), they only manifestwhen boosted by turbo power. We can see this in “You’re Level 100”, when KO wasusing turbo power before TKO had fully formed. His eyes, teeth, and claws areclearly different.

KO’s minor shifting powers with enough turbonic energyshould get Shadowy back to his original ability level.

“But David!” you ask. “If Shadowy’s power is onlyshapeshifting, then where does KO’s turbo power come from?”

It comes from Carol. And I know that sounds like a reach,but hear me out. Carol can mimic any combat move she sees. We see this mostoften when she copies Gar’s signature move. But it’s not your standard elbowattack- it also emits a pink energy. This suggests Carol could mimic otherenergy emitting moves.

Remember that turbo collar Ven made for Fink? It worked very well! The only reason it stopped was because it ran out of power. There weren’t any glitches or malfunctions. That means it probably isn’t the first iteration of this project. Perhaps he’s had prototypes for years and years, but hardly made useof them because he a) didn’t have a stable glorb supply, b) doesn’t dohand-to-hand combat himself, and/or c) didn’t trust anyone he might have beenworking with to use it. But he let Fink have it because she’s loyal and theynow have access to Boxman’s glorbs.

The tree under the Plaza is a source of glorbs. Presumablythere’s another one somewhere else underground, as suggested by the glorbcluster Gar sealed up in “GarQuest”. There are likely more of them scatteredacross the world. If we’ve noticedthe similarity between glorbs and the colored orbs, P.O.I.N.T. may have too.Carol’s new outfit in the “GarQuest” flashback suggests she still did somenon-secret hero work after Laser’s death, presumably until she realized she waspregnant. I think she was sent on a mission to make sure a glorb tree didn’tfall under villain control, and got in a fight when she arrived; perhapsagainst Venomous himself, perhaps against someone he used to test the collar on.If Carol fought a collar-powered villain while in a glorb-rich environment, shecould have used her ability to temporarily go turbo herself.

Which could do odd things to a fetus.

While KO has a weaker version of his father’s power, he alsohas a weaker version of his mother’s. “Copycat” becomes “Imprint”. He can copyan energy-emitting ability… but only once, and then he’s stuck with it.Normally he wouldn’t have been able to do this until after he was born, butsince he was essentially soaked inturbo power, he imprinted early.

This would explain why his standard power fist is blue- it’sthe color of a normal glorb. Only under special circumstances can he use theturbo version. It might also be why PKO’s headband and wristbands are blue.

That’s why Carol has no fucking clue what’s going on withher kid. It wasn’t a particularly memorable mission, and she was focused on hergrief. She has no reason to connect it to KO’s situation six to eleven yearslater. Maybe now that Foxtail’s done a heel face turn we can get access to someold mission files.

I’d say, “this is a bit complex for a children’s cartoon”,but Gravity Falls and Steven Universe pulled off some wild shit. It couldhappen!

This was probably way more of a reply than either of us were expecting, haha. But that’s my take on things! Y’all are welcome to bring up new evidence, alternate theories, corrections, etc.

#bluenebelung #ok ko #ok ko theory #tko #professor venomous #shadowy figure #laserblast

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