britishassistant

[britishassistant]

Two stunning winners ✨️

[britishassistant]

That post about death note being "everyone's first anime" (untrue statement) made me curious and now I want to gather data for science

Can you reblog this and tell me where are you from and what was your starter anime?

[britishassistant]

Prisoners’ Dilemma WIP

“Schoenheit-senpai, I was kidnapped.” You feel compelled to point out. “And poisoned.”

“And that’s enough to border on carelessness.” Schoenheit-senpai returns pitilessly. “I expect prudence and flawlessness from all members of the VDC tribe, potato. No exceptions.”

And with that final pronouncement, he turns on his impeccable heel and swans out of the infirmary like he didn’t just drop that bombshell of unfairness on you.

You stare at your fellow first years and Kalim as you attempt to compute that that just happened. They stare back at you.

“…d’you think he came outta the womb with that bitchass mouth?” Epel mutters.

[britishassistant]

Will Yuu see Megami again at any point in twst?

If they did, it wouldn’t be until the VDC.

Either, Yuu as the manager of the Night Raven Tribe would run into backup dancer Megami while she and the dwarves were being bullied by Night Raven students…

Or, if Chen’ya let slip that there was an interesting magicless student who claimed to be from another world at Heartslaybul, who answered to the same childhood nickname that Megami bestowed upon her sister, she may rope some of her new RSA friends into a truly harebrained scheme to attempt to get her sister out of the “villain’s school”…

Either way, emotions are going to be high.

[britishassistant]

So both megami and yuu have a lot of assets from their mom. Will they both find out about that when they bacome 18?

Thank you for the ask, dear anon!

Megami will find out.

Yuu signed a contract at their father’s urging when they were disowned, acknowledging that in exchange for not being sent to juvenile detention for corporate espionage that they would forswear all rights to their birth name or their parents’ surnames, with the understanding that if they ever tried to claim relation in the future, they would be immediately prosecuted.

Note the plural.

With that contract, Yuu was cheated out of an inheritance they didn’t even know they had. Everything will now go to their sister.

(And by the time Megami’s come of age, she will hopefully recognize that the best thing to do will be to entrust these assets to her eldest brother, who knows what’s best for her. Through any means necessary.)

[britishassistant]

what are the Grayces doing now that both megumi and yuu are missing ?

Thank you for the ask, dear anon!

Yuu is gone —> The Graceys: kalm ☺️☺️☺️

Megami is gone—> The Graceys: P A N I K😱👹😱

Yuu vanishing raised eyebrows and had some PIs sent to try and track the wayward child down, but ultimately wasn’t a source of lost sleep for the family. Asahiko, in particular, was very vocal about his joy until he saw how much it was upsetting Megami. His two elder siblings just kept better lids on their jubilation.

Ken Gracey was the closest to approaching concerned, though more for where the bastard could be hiding and what they could be divulging than for their safety…

But Megami vanishing? Somehow snatched away from under the noses of all her guards and relations, with none of the security cameras able to shown what happened or where she went?

Oh, that sends the family spiraling.

It’s sixteen years ago all over again. Enji leads the charge to find his beloved, losing sleep and composure over every dead end, even outstripping their father’s frantic efforts. Leota begs for a delay on her arranged marriage, arguing that she couldn’t possibly think about such things whilst her dear baby sister is gone, and Asahiko’s clinging to his siblings every time his attempts fall short, all of them raw and hurting.

[britishassistant]

For the The Villainous Paranoiac

By @britishassistant

The Gracey family was perfect.

At least, that’s what the world believed.

Mr. Gracey was a multi-millionaire—a man of power and refinement. Mrs. Gracey, ever poised at his side, was the image of beauty and grace.

Their three children—Enji, Leota, and Asahiko—were all gifted in their own right. With matching smiles and polished manners, the family portrait radiated warmth, wealth, and harmony.But behind the gilded doors of the Gracey estate, perfection rotted.

As the children grew, so did the distance between Mr. and Mrs. Gracey. The husband who once adorned his wife with silk and sapphire grew cold. Family dinners were missed. Social appearances were made solo. Whispers circulated of Mr. Gracey’s interest in younger women—women with new faces, new bodies, new promises.

For Mrs. Gracey, this was unbearable. He had stolen her life, sculpted her into a trophy, and now—now he left her to tarnish. Desperation took root. Perhaps, she thought, another child would restore what they once had. Another baby might reignite the flame, the affection, the attention.

She was with child again.And he didn’t care.When she gave birth to a girl—a fragile infant with striking blue eyes and a tuft of black hair—her hopes shattered. There was no celebration. No joy. Her husband didn’t so much as visit.

And so, in her broken mind, she placed the blame on the one soul who hadn’t asked to be born. The child. The girl.

Postpartum days turned to weeks, weeks to months, but the storm in her mind only worsened. She had bet her sanity on saving her marriage. And she lost.

The servants would later say they heard crying—hours of it—from the Master’s wife’s chambers. The shrill wail of an infant that refused to stop. Finally, one of them, exhausted and irritated, stormed in.

What they found would haunt them for life.The infant lay writhing in her cot, hands straining against the suffocating blanket. Her face red, her cries weak but persistent.And above her, the body of Mrs. Gracey, hanging cold from the bedpost.

The Master’s reaction was not grief—it was fury. Not for the death of his wife, but for the scandal she had left behind. Her suicide, her *shame*, all because of a “damned infant.”

The other children—still young, but perceptive—followed the tone set by their father. Enji, the eldest, who had seen his father’s neglect firsthand, concluded that the girl must have been illegitimate or so they believed.No true Gracey could have caused such ruin.

She wasn't.

But the truth didn't matter.

Leota and Asahiko clung to Enji’s certainty. Hatred bloomed in their hearts, nurtured by grief and guided by bitterness.

The Gracey family was perfect.

[Just my headcanon that Mrs Gracey had Yuu in order to convince her husband to return his attention to her but her plan backfired as she ended up suffering from postpartum depression and took her own life at the end. This in turn caused the other siblings to despise yuu thinking she was illegitimate even though she wasn't.]

YOOOOO BUT THIS IS ALSO REALLY COOL AND WELL WRITTEN THOUGH????

It doesn’t quite line up with my ideas for the characters (Yuu is actually illegitimate, though their mother did not want to have them, especially not with their father), but this is so good, I want everyone to read it too!

Thank you @pihuart for sending this in!!

[britishassistant]

I still have so many questions about the Villianous Paranoiac's backstory.

Why did Megami's mom take her instead of her actual child?

Why did the rest of her siblings hate Yuu so much? It can't just be the framing thing. I smell past grudge.

What does the dad need Megami for?

Major spoilers for Villainous Paranoiac Yuu below cut!

Karatsumori Yoru was once an heiress. A sole heiress, in fact, no siblings or cousins in her parents’ generation or in hers.

Not to a conglomerate as grand as Gracey Incorporated, it’s true. But to a pharmaceutical company, who happened to own certain swathes of land in Japan. Certain swathes of land, where a plant whose seeds are copyrighted grow. A plant which has been a key ingredient in anti-aging serums and medicines for treating partum illnesses alike. The prices are extortionate for any company wishing to use this plant’s byproducts in a “for-profit” product.

Even when the sole heiress decided to go into corporate law, and appointed an appropriate successor to manage her family’s company, she still maintained ownerships of that land and that copyright.

Karatsumori Megami does not know this, because she was taken from her mother’s funeral, and a Gracey representative was sent for her to the will-reading.

But her mothers bequeathed to the Karatsumori children the rights to this land, to those copyrighted seeds. To remain in trust until they turned eighteen, and could take command or sell on their portion of this heirloom as each liked. The biological father of both children has no right to their inheritance while it is in trust.

This will was drafted and redrafted by Karatsumori Yoru during her pregnancy and internment in the Gracey family compound, until she was certain it was airtight. She only committed it to paper after she escaped, away from her captor’s wandering eyes and hands and the curious stares of his children. After his legal wife, Minna Gracey, sadly passed during childbirth.

The delay of medical care which could have saved her life is attributed to a surprise fire which required the compound to be evacuated. Charges of arson were filed against Karatsumori Yoru, but she never appeared to answer or challenge them. Only sent a copy of her will in the aftermath.

As for why Megami was taken? It was a combination of factors.

One is that the window of escape was small. Not enough time to go back for the other babe in Yoru’s “chambers” after visiting Minna’s.

The other is that Ken Gracey is straight. Karatsumori Yoru is not.

(And—a secret she’d take with her to the grave—neither is Minna Gracey. Not entirely, anyway.)

[britishassistant]

[britishassistant]

The Little Golden Fox (4)

(A.k.a. A One Piece fan’s reincarnation into a Naruto AU.)

The pair of ninja startle when they hear Lee, whipping around to face them.

She can’t see the adult’s face at all, not even through the black hole in the upper left of the orange mask, but his (her?) body language is stiff.

The maskless boy (probably a teenager, but only just) outright stares at them with an expression of dawning horror.

Naruto’s grip on her sleeve tightens, and when she glances over he’s staring up at the strangers with his chin lowered, blue eyes big and unblinking.

It reminds her so much of the small fox at the bottom of the garden peering out of the bushes that her throat goes tight.

“Sh-shinobi-san…?” Lee’s gone hesitant and quiet underneath her.

Then he bobs his head sharply, a bow without risking bending and dislodging her. “I am Rock Lee, a second year at the Shinobi Academy. Mayu-chan an-and Naruto, Naruto-san are civilians. We found ourselves taken from our beds and trapped in a destroyed facility outside of the village. Please, could you direct us to the hospital? Is it far?”

The older boy tries to wrangle his face into imposing sternness. “Children like you should be in bed. What will your parents think?”

The way the mask is staring at them sets her teeth in edge, so when Lee starts to say, “Well, I’m—”

Mayu intervenes. “He’s my brother. They both are. Otou-sama and Okaa-sama adopted them, but the creepy old guy with a red eye decided to kidnap us all over it. Our parents tried to stop him, but they’re not ninja. They’re probably searching for us now.”

Lee makes a startled sound and she can feel Naruto staring at her.

It takes a great deal of self-control to stop herself there and not elaborate on all the pejoratives she’d like to apply to their scum-sucking shit-licker of a kidnapper. But like hell she’s letting these bastards know that no one knows they’re here, or that they could all be vanished as easily as they were earlier.

“A-one red eye?” The teenager says, sounding stressed. “I—that’s not possible—!”

“Is irrelevant.” The masked man cuts in. “Given that before us stands the nine-tails’ jinchuuriki.”

He points at Naruto, the spiral on his tummy clear for all to see even in the low light from far-off lanterns.

Naruto crowds closer to her and Lee, a soft warning growl trilling out of him. It sounds weird coming from human vocal cords.

The older boy’s mouth snaps shut. In the lighting, his eyes look kind of red, for some reason.

“You can prove your loyalty to Akatsuki here and now, Uchiha Itachi.” The mask declares. “If your dedication to a world without conflict is true, then you know what you must do.”

Oh, she hates the sound of that.

“I don’t know who you are or what you’re talking about.” She interrupts. “But I am very tired and in a lot of pain, and that’s not going to stop me against anyone who tries anything on either of these two.”

There’s a derisive scoff.

“I,” The tall man with an orange mask rumbles, “am Uchiha Madara.”

She feels Lee suck in a shocked breath, Naruto going even more tense in response—

“Who cares.” Mayu spits, throughly disgusted.

Lee squeaks under her.

“Wh—“ The man sounds entirely discombobulated.

“I’m Mr. Prince and this is Restaurant Le Shit,” She snaps at him in a falsetto. “Honored customer, do you want me to take your order?!”

The man and the older boy stare at her.

Naruto lets out semi-frightened hiccuped yips of laughter, and it sounds so familiar it makes her heart ache.

“That’s a reference, isn’t it?”

She’s yanked off of Lee’s back by a hand on her collar.

“Mayu-chan!”

When she twists to look at her captor, she wishes she hadn’t.

It almost looks like a man she’d see on a magazine cover in her past life. Generically handsome, symmetrical features, strong nose, chiseled jawline, visible muscles.

But the eyes were a hair too wide for its face. But muscles pulsed and bulged in ways they weren’t meant to, even when still. But the skin of this thing was pure white and stretched over its frame like some kind of too-tight costume.

“I don’t know what to,” The monster continues in a light, pleasant baritone. “But it’s not something a good kid from Konoha would say. So, you’re Fire’s interloper, hm?”

As neatly as pulling a bow loose, the monster jerks her collar up to toss her into the air, and catches her with a crushing grip on her throat.

She thinks she hears Lee screaming her name.

“Though, honestly.” The monster sighs. “Given the mess you made back there, it was pretty obvious. It’d be easier to count how many of us would leave Shimura Danzo alive than those who’d give in to their impulses like you.”

Mayu’s mind is racing even as she struggles to breathe. “Us”? Does that mean this monster’s—?!

There’s a wordless yell mingling with a foxlike screech.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spots a blur of yellow and black and white-and-green stripes rushing the monster—!

She can’t see what happens beyond a blur of white and the monster’s hand tightening sharply around her throat, but there’s pained cries that make her blood run cold.

“How embarrassing.” The monster’s tone is genial, patronizing. “I mean, no one was expecting anything from the chakraless Rock Lee, useless side character extraordinaire. But for the heroic Kyuubi container to be so weak? It’s honestly pathetic.”

“St-sto-!!” Mayu rasps.

She reaches desperately for the sensation of communing with something more than her, trying to call again on the protection that had let her save her friends not half an hour ago.

It may have been kinder to feel nothing.

The riptide of fury turned horror turned helpless dread floods her in spite of its frailty. The anguish of not having the strength left to save anyone.

Tears bead in her eyes.

“Hmm.” The monster turns her this way and that, like she’s a piece of clothing he’s checking the quality of. “…Natural genjutsu immunity. And it seems to be communicable through physical contact…this will be an excellent skill to have. I wonder, will it be immune to the Sharingan?”

“Enough, Mi—Zetsu.” The masked man says. “There are more important matters at hand than your hunger.”

The hand around her throat loosens slightly as the monster clicks his tongue.

“Truly? Are you really going to forget our duties, Madara-sama?” The monster says silkily. “I am merely trying to aid you in neutralizing a key threat to our goals. Surely you wouldn’t dishonor her wishes for a kinder world like this.”

The man stops.

His shoulders square. “Do not call my dedication into question, puppet. We will take the Kyuubi, but no blood will be shed that does not need to be.”

“Of course, Madara-sama.” The monster smiles. “I’ll deal with the interloper, we’ll leave the worthless child without chakra alive, and we’ll help Itachi-kun fulfill his destiny.”

The older boy startles, as if he’s awoken from his frozen stupor.

“My genjutsu…I fear I may have let it slip. It’s unlikely we will have the advantage when facing the rest of the Uchiha clan.”

The monster laughs. Under any other circumstances, it could be called kind.

For some reason, she can smell smoke. Something is burning.

Lots of things are burning.

“Don’t worry, Itachi-kun.” The monster says kindly. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat. Your family is still dying tonight.”

Rather than react with shock or fear at this pronouncement, the boy’s shoulders go slack. She would almost think he looks relieved, if not for the way his red pinwheeling eyes look completely empty.

“All except that darling brother of yours, of course.” The monster croons. “Don’t you want him to get stronger? To survive this cruel world? This is the only way, Itachi-kun. You love your baby brother. Don’t you, Itachi-kun?”

“Aa.” The child mutters.

“Wait! Please, wait!”

Rock Lee has staggered to his feet and is clutching at the older boy’s clothes.

“Shinobi-san, please!” Lee begs. “You’re being tricked!”

The boy’s shoulders hunch, but he doesn’t move.

“If something is so unyouthful as to kill the entire Uchiha clan, why would it care to stop at your brother?!” Lee shouts. “He might even get hurt trying to save his fa—!”

The masked man hits him with a huge fan-like thing made of metal.

Lee slams into the wall with a sharp cry, slumping into the dent the blow has created.

“Stay down.” The mask grunts.

Mayu can only let out a strangled gurgle, clawing at her captor’s arm as she strains towards Lee.

She’ll end them. She’ll destroy them for hurting her brother. She doesn’t know how, but—!

…there’s the odd sensation of something thick and stiff jammed under her fingernails.

She can see pale human skin and welling blood through the scratches she’s made in the arm. Scratches that the white stuff is rapidly sealing shut.

When she looks up, the cloying, patronizing, constant smile has dropped off the monster’s face.

“…you don’t deserve blissful ignorance.” He says, tone deceptively light. “Not when you’re such a little bitch.”

“Oh, quit trembling.” A sharp squeeze to her throat. “I’m not gonna kill you. That would release your soul to the Pure Lands, and your gift would be reborn in the next unlucky bastard the Sage grabs. What a waste that would be! No, no, no.”

“I’ll keep you inside me. A little battery for your abilities that will never ever drain. Unmoving. Undying.” A grin slits the monster’s face and just. Keeps. Growing. “Don’t worry, you won’t be alone. Your predecessors are waiting for you. Dissolving inside me, forever.”

The arm holding her contorts impossibly. Until it’s dangling Mayu over the monster’s now gaping mouth.

She thinks she hears two voices screaming her name.

“Thank you for the meal~”

She can see into the maw of forever, unchanging and static and endless.

It sounds like thousands of birds are screaming.

It smells like an awful mix of burnt meat and scorched vegetables.

The maw closes before her eyes as the monster chokes, liquid so dark she can’t tell what it is bubbling out of his lips.

She falls from his limp grip.

The ground slams into her with enough force to drive the little remaining air from her lungs.

She can see that Naruto’s chewing fiercely at the thick organic bars of a cage dripping from the monster’s foot, the weird white material pressing so tightly against his little body his mouth is all he can move.

Part of her notices the lines on his cheeks seem to be carved deeper, his teeth seem sharper. The rest of her focuses on clawing her way towards him.

Drops of dark liquid splatter on the ground in front of her.

“Haa-taa-kke.” Her eyes follow the sound of the monster’s rasp up, and become transfixed at the sight of the hand-sized hole punched through him.

Then there’s movement, sounds too fast for her to follow. A blur of white, moving in ways no animal should. The whining screams of birds. The maw, coming to engulf—!

“DYNAMIC ENTRY!!”

There’s black and red and orange and green and—!!

The mask standing over Lee is now crumpled on the other side of the street.

A white foot sticks out from under his body.

Between her and Naruto is…is…!

“Mayu-chan! Naruto-kun!” She’s dragged away from the, the head, and into Lee’s arms. He’s wincing as he moves and she’s not sure his pupils are dilating properly, but he’s curled over them like he wants to put himself between them and the world.

Naruto clutches at them both, a distressed whimper leaving his throat as he nuzzles into Lee’s shoulder and Mayu’s temple.

It’s very hard to not start crying.

“Uchiha Itachi.” A large man in a green jumpsuit and vest and orange leg-warmers standing over them booms. “I would advise that you come quietly, if you value your life. We do not wish to turn our blows on a comrade.”

The older boy is backing away uncertainly.

His red eyes begin pinwheeling faster and faster.

Mayu frowns.

She reaches out, and curls a hand into the thick fabric of the leg-warmer in front of her.

She doesn’t know much about this series, trying to absorb as little as she could from online flame wars.

But, despite her best efforts, she knows the Sharingan is magic red eyes that are meant to destroy all opponents.

And she knows that the monster said she could spread immunity to them, somehow.

The teen looks faintly sick as he meets her glare.

The man in the jumpsuit glances down at her. His face splits in an oddly reassuring smile and he reaches down to ruffle her hair and Lee’s.

“Worry not, blossoming youths!” He moves one hand from her head to Naruto’s so he doesn’t feel left out. “You have all shown your strength and courage in delaying these adversaries until my rival and I could arrive! Allow us to take it from here.”

Then the sound of metal meeting metal clashes behind them, and the man’s face sharpens.

He gently detangles her hand from his leg, gives them all a final quick hair ruffle and then springs into the fray with a roar of, “I WON’T LET YOU!”

The older boy blinks, pinwheeling eyes slowing. He shifts, as if he’s about to make a run for it.

“Ah, ah.” A lady with red eyes and a man with a cigarette land on either side of him, weird diamond knives to his throat. “You’re outnumbered, Uchiha. Even you can’t hope to take on every jounin in the village at once.”

Then a set of huge gate doors BANG open in front of them and a whole load of dark haired people come pouring out, led by a tiny girl about their age with pink hair.

Almost in the same breath, a choking gurgle sounds behind them, almost drowned out by the nice green spandex man’s shouting, what sounds like a dog growling, and a high feminine cackle that wouldn’t be out of place in a mad scientist’s lab.

The teenager drops his head, and raises both hands.

“Can we go home now?” Ketsugi Mayu asks plaintively.

The answer to that is no, no they may not.

They aren’t even brought to the hospital. They’re taken to a large room in the big tower in the center of the village, surrounded by guys in white masks. Green-spandex-man is there too though, along with a grey-haired man in a half-face-mask Mayu doesn’t want to recognize.

Green-spandex-man at least tries to have a doctor summoned for them, but the white masks refuse, saying that something called a “Hokage” needs to come first. The grey-haired guy just alternates between staring at Naruto and looking like he’s going to be sick.

Eventually, an old man in white robes with a weird wide hat comes in flanked by more white masks. He sits behind the desk, a glass ball in front of him.

“Well.” He says, sounding very tired. “This has been a long night.”

Mayu refuses to be swayed by humor, shifting forward as much as her aching leg will allow to put herself between Naruto and Lee and this new adult.

The old man notices her glaring at him, and tilts his head. “Is something the matter, young one?”

“This.” Mayu declares. “Is the third time we’ve been kidnapped by a strange old man and masks tonight. We’re tired. We’re hurt. I’m in my nightie. I want Otou-sama and Okaa-sama. We. Want. To. Go. Home.”

The adults in the room stare at her for a moment, as she struggles to keep her lower lip from wobbling, eyes burning.

The old man pulls out a long pipe and begins packing the bowl with tobacco. “I am sorry about this. However, I swear on my office as Hokage that you will be allowed to return to your families once we understand what has happened tonight. Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

So she explains, in fits and starts, everything from waking up to being kidnapped to the giant fox-like creature to fox Naruto being turned into human Naruto. Lee jumps in to help at that point, and between them, they manage to relay the entirety of the sordid tale.

“Well.” The Hokage lets out a plume of smoke before continuing. “This tale is certainly…fantastical. Were it not for the fact that the Kyuubi’s chakra was felt throughout the village, and the two perpetrators who were killed attempting to massacre the Uchiha, I would be inclined to take this all as a child’s dreaming. You will both meet with Yamanaka-san to verify that this is the entire truth.”

“I don’t know what that means.” She complains.

For some reason that makes the old man chuckle indulgently.

The green-spandex man at least kneels down and pats her hand reassuringly. “Worry not, young blossom. All the Yamanaka are proficient in their clan’s mind-walk jutsu, but none more so than Yamanaka Inoichi-sama! He will be able to ascertain the truth you’ve told us.”

She doesn’t know that she fully likes the sound of that (what will someone going into her brain make of her past life memories?) but green-spandex man has honstely been the best and most responsible adult so far, so she gives him a brave nod and as much of a smile as she can muster.

Maybe she should ask him to take them all back to Otou-sama and Okaa-sama? She kind of hopes they’d get along.

“Only one matter remains to be resolved.” The old man says, completely going back on what he said before. “Young lady, please do not slouch or groan when I am speaking.”

“Mayu-chan!” Lee hisses, scandalized, one arm bracing his middle as best he can. She shifts upright grumpily and painfully.

He gives her a grateful smile. She smiles back at him and pointedly doesn’t look at the Hokage’s face. She didn’t do it for him.

The Hokage ignores her ignoring him. “The young man between you there, Naruto, I believe you called him? We have reason to believe he may be very important to the village. Is that not so, Kakashi-kun?”

“…We’d need a more thorough test to be sure.” Grey-haired guy says slowly. “But physically, he bears too much of a resemblance to Kushina-n—Uzumaki Kushina-san to not be directly related to her. That seal is also Mi—Yondamie-sama’s work.”

Naruto fidgets with her and Lee’s fingers, eyes flicking around warily in the face of all this scrutiny.

She peers at the now perfect spiral on Naruto’s belly. “It didn’t used to look like that when he was a fox. It was kinda squished. Like a snail, or Sanji’s eyebrow.”

“Ah.” The Hokage nods. “That may be why he was trapped in that form—if the seal was imperfect, the Nine Tails’ chakra likely caused the change until it was corrected. How was that managed, by the by?”

“I kicked it.” She says. “Sanji and everyone helped me a lot.”

She watches as the old man struggles to parse this, and then visibly makes the decision to not think about it.

“Still, there is the matter of what is to be done with our young jinchuuriki. Arranging housing, a guardian, and the like.”

“We could look after him.” She pipes up. “Otou-sama and Okaa-sama want to adopt Lee too, and we were all taking care of Naruto already.”

Lee makes a small squeak of shock.

Oh. She forgot to tell him, didn’t she? Whoops.

The old man doesn’t even twitch as he demurs. “Be that as it may, a child is a large responsibility. A child who is also the jinchuuriki and aspires to become a venom of Konoha even more so. We will need to review all avenues of possibility before settling on one out of impulse.”

She doesn’t quite scowl at the man, but it’s a near thing.

“Maa.” The grey haired guy says, nonchalance not quite convincing. “Why don’t we ask the man of the hour? Rather than talking over him like this.”

“A splendid idea!” Green-spandex-man cheers, lamplight reflecting off of his teeth. “As expected of my cool and hip rival!”

“Well, Naruto-kun?” The Hokage prompts, face a mask of grandfatherly concern. “Don’t be shy. You can speak your mind here.”

Naruto glances towards her, then at Lee.

Lee grins and gives him a thumbs up. She squeezes his hand twice, tight and reassuring.

Uzumaki Naruto takes a deep breath.

“I’m gonna become King of the Pirates, believe it!”

The Hokage drops his pipe.

Ketsugi Mayu screeches.

[britishassistant]

I was today years old when I worked out that all the members of Octavinelle trio have color themed naming

[britishassistant]

The Little Golden Fox (3)

(A.k.a. A One Piece fan’s reincarnation into a Naruto AU.)

When the ink-thing comes off of her face, she doesn’t know where she is.

All around her is grey metal walls and pipes and floor, and figures the same size as her in white animal-like masks and dark cloaks.

Mayu is in her grey nightie with yellow and blue flowers all over it.

She likes it usually, when she gets to sleep in it.

Not so much when it’s the only thing she’s wearing in front of a room full of masked strangers.

She tries to struggle against the mask holding on tight to her shoulders, but her hands are bound behind her back with something cold and oddly slick. Her ankles have the same substance acting as a chain between them.

A flash of color catches her attention.

One of the other masks has Rock Lee slung under one arm, his braid drooping down, small black specks crawling over his face and green and white striped pajamas.

“Lee!” Mayu cries, twisting and bucking to try and escape, to reach him. “Put him down! Let him go, you, you shitty jumped-up—!”

“Why should they?” Comes a creaking voice. “He is a ninja of Konohagakure. To be welcomed into our ranks will be the greatest honor he will ever receive.”

Mayu looks to see an old man with a cross-shaped scar on his chin, and bandages covering one of his eyes. Both of his hands rested on a wooden cane.

“It will certainly be better than being indoctrinated by foreign scrap, poisoning his mind against the Leaf.” The old man looks at her like she’s something foul he found on one of his shoes. “Iron snuffing out his Will of Fire.”

Mayu gapes at him. “Wh—wait, is that what’s happening?! You don’t like that my family’s not from here, so you kidnap us?! Otou-sama and Okaa-sama haven’t even told Lee yet, let alone started any of the adoption process! And why am I here then, if you hate ‘foreign scrap’ so much?!”

The old man tilts his head. A cruel smirk plays on his lips. “The skills you possess, and those you have the potential to can be best put to use for the village, rather than wasted in obscurity.”

Mayu initially can do nothing but gape in the face of this hypocrisy.

And then, she promptly begins employing every single swear word she’s ever learned in this life and the last.

“Enough!” The old man eventually manages to shout over her.

The mask behind her has bite marks on their fingers from where they’d been shoved into Mayu’s mouth as an impromptu gag.

His glare has grown more rancid. “That crude mouth of yours will be fixed along with the rest. Fū.”

One of the others steps forward. The mask is removed.

A boy with reddish hair and golden eyes stares at her, expressionless. No matter where she looks, he constantly maintains eye contact.

A cold dread slithers down Mayu’s spine and she tries to turn her head away.

The mask behind her uses their grip on her mouth to force her head back, and peels her eyelids open with the fingers of their other hand.

The redheaded boy begins moving his hands into shapes that seem purposeful. Shapes that Mayu doesn’t want to recognize.

She lets out a terrified whimper.

There’s a growl that crescendos into a scream.

The redheaded boy grunts as a small blur barrels into his leg at the knee, doing its best to claw and tear.

He tries his best to keep going with his hand signs, but when the wet ripping sounds start even his fingers flinch and spasm as he screams.

Mayu remembers a story from her old life, of a Spartan boy who hid a baby fox in his tunic and lied to his elders about it until he dropped dead from the fox eating its way into his guts.

She wonders absentmindedly if she should’ve paid more attention to the lesson she was meant to learn from it.

The redheaded boy finally kicks the yellow blur away, falling back as his savaged leg is unable to support his weight.

Naruto, red coating his maw, growls and barks furiously at him and at the other masks around them.

He tries to lunge for the one holding Mayu, whose hand finally leaves her mouth to go for a weapon.

The end of the cane slams into his little body, knocking him away.

Mayu cries out as the old man advances, seizing Naruto’s tail.

“A summon?” He sneers as he lifts the hapless fox into the air. “How fitting, that one such as you would contract with vermin like—?!”

The old man stares at the spiral on Naruto’s belly.

Hoarse, croaking laughter fills the room.

“The Jinchuuriki!” The old man crows. “After all this time! Vanished under Hiruzen’s foolish nose, sealed away into a fox, of all things!! And now…now, I can—!”

“Let him go!” Mayu shouts, twisting against the mask’s grip.

The old man looks at her. A cruel smile spreads across his face.

“Let it go?” He chuckles as his hand reaches for his head. “No, my child. I shall do what is best for all of Konoha. I shall do what I must to get rid of the twin pests plaguing it.”

He pulls the bandages off of his face.

The eye under them glows bright red as it spins.

“I,” The old man hisses as his eye turns on the little golden fox. “Shall Let It Out.”

For a moment, as he looks at Naruto, nothing happens.

Then Naruto begins to squirm. Whimpers become growls become pained-sounding yipes and yowling.

The air feels like it’s boiling, swimming in front of Mayu’s eyes. It’s hard to see Naruto’s small yellow form through the heat haze, especially when the room flares an angry orange-red.

The old man laughs, and laughs, and laughs, even as the masks around him begin to edge away or pull out weapons.

Then the energy explodes outwards.

For the second time in seven years, the malevolent chakra of Kyuubi-no-Kitsune unleashed floods the village.

Mayu blinks back to awareness with a sheet of metal pressing down on her.

When she sits up and shoves it off, she finds she was lying on the masked boy who was holding her.

His mask is broken now, and his pale skin seems wan. She can feel him breathing, but she drags him out and props him up against some of the more stable looking rubble just in case.

The night air outside is cold and she shivers, looking up at the walls of the crater where this underground facility where she and Lee were brought used to be.

Lee. Lee!

She starts franticly shoving metal and rebar off of any body-shaped lumps, pulling the masked and semi-masked figures to safety before she keeps searching.

When she finds the old man’s body, more smushed than whole, she doesn’t pull it out.

She kicks one of its miraculously intact feet, gags at the sensation of rapidly-cooling flesh, and keeps looking.

Finally, finally, after she hefts away some metal and props up the rocks, she finds Lee curled up in a small cavity.

It takes all of her strength to haul him out to a space where nothing will crush them. There are black splotches all over him, like crushed insects, but otherwise he looks more dusty than hurt.

She tilts her head over Lee’s mouth, fingers pressed to his neck.

His breath whistles gently against her ear, pulse thumping strongly. As her hair brushes his face, his nose scrunches briefly.

She lets out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding, slumping over his chest.

Thank Luffy. Thank Chopper, thank Ace, thank Zoro, thank Robin, thank everyone.

A monstrous rumble that shakes the crater has her looking up.

There, towering over them, is a burnished orange ghost of a creature. Its limbs are long and cruel. Its teeth are red-rimmed black and as tall as Mayu is. It has nine tails. It is staring at something she can’t see, muzzle curving into a furious snarl.

Floating in its belly, so tiny as to almost be invisible, is a yellow speck of a fox.

Its little body cringes and twitches as the beast moves, as if in the throes of a nightmare.

Mayu doesn’t think.

She stands and runs and begins to clamber up the sides of the crater after the thing that’s hurting her friend.

“Hey!” She shouts, picking up a piece of stone. “HEY!! Give Naruto back!!”

The rock bounces harmlessly off of the tailed beast’s see-through flank. It seems so small against its bulk that it’s hard to believe that it could ever have an impact.

But the beast stops.

It turns.

Its eyes, wet red pearls of malice, train on her with all the intensity of a gun barrel.

She can’t get away in time.

The grip around her body is crushing, grinding her bones together with its force.

Lifting her up to its face forces her to endure rushing winds that feel like they’ll shear her face off.

It’s a struggle not to be sick once it has her held aloft, so many thousands of meters into the air.

“You.” The beast rumbles, its voice ringing tinnitus in her ears like a speaker set too loud. “You are the one who kept us. Tried to tame us, like a pet.”

“No I didn’t!” Mayu protests, trying not to squirm so she doesn’t get dropped. “Naruto was hungry so I fed him! It’s what Sanji would do!”

Incorporeal lips pull back over those giant teeth. “I have spent too long listening to lies peddled by humans who think themselves too clever for me. Let me tell you a secret, little human: I. Am. Sick. Of it.”

She’s hit with intense vertigo as the hand (paw?) she’s being held in moves and flexes, until she’s staring at the lights of the village she lives in.

She feels distinctly queasy when she notes how close they are. Close enough to hear a high, fluting birdsong.

“Finally.” The creature rasps. “Finally, after all these years, after everything I have been forced to endure, I can have my vengeance. I can make them pay for what they have done to me, the indignities they forced me to suffer!”

The wrist flexes again, and Mayu finds herself paralyzed in the gaze of something older and angrier than she could ever hope to be. “All I need do to be free is break the will of my container and subsume him into my being. Killing you will be more than enough to accomplish that.”

“Wait wh—gnhk!” Her shout is cut off by the feeling of the grip on her tiny body tightening.

“Give thanks to the Great Sage, little human. Your death, at least, shall be quick.”

The pressure around her body increases sharply, forcing a shriek from her mouth.

She’ll die like this. She doesn’t want to die. She doesn’t, she doesn’t, she doesn’t, she—!!

There’s a thumb in front of her face.

Ketsugi Mayu blinks because both of her arms are pinioned to her sides in the beast’s grip.

There’s a whispery giggle next to her ear, and the sound of teeth snapping shut.

Mayu leans forward and, following the cue she’s been given, bites into the knuckle.

Hard.

It tastes sweaty, bloody from where her teeth broke skin and pierced muscle and cracked bone, and feels…rubbery.

She blows with all the force her little lungs can muster.

The Kyuubi-no-Kitsune watches, astounded, as a hand and arm ballon into existence from the tiny human’s mouth and just. keep. Growing.

Say what you will about faith, but sometimes when you believe in something with enough love and devotion…

Well. Sometimes, it’ll want to return the favor.

“GEAR THIRD! GOMU GOMU NO GIGANTO PISTOL!!”

The only downside of the nine tailed beast getting walloped in the face by a gigantic fist is that it lets go of Mayu at the force of the blow.

Hundreds of feet up in the air.

The wind rips her screams from her as she plummets, tumbling wildly in free fall.

She shuts her eyes as the ground gets closer and closer—!

She bounces.

As if she’s somehow landed on a trampoline, she bounces back into the air, once, twice, before sliding to the ground in an undignified heap.

There’s a pressure like hands on her shoulders, trying to urge her up, away from the beast—

“Wait!” She begs the empty air around her. “Pl-please, wait. I, I know it’s really scary, but. But my friend’s inside that thing. I can’t run away and let it hurt him.”

The pressure pauses. There’s a sensation of anticipation around her.

“If, if it’s not too much trouble.” Mayu licks her lips, before lowering herself into the proper dogeza her mother taught her. “Please, please help me. I can’t save him on my own, I’m, I’m not strong enough. And I know you aren’t heroes, but please. Please. He’s my friend.”

For one awful, awful moment, there’s nothing. No one.

And then she feels a large, warm hand scruff through her hair, smells salt-spray and sun-baked skin and cherry blossoms and cola and tangerines and cigarette smoke.

The hands on her shoulders are trembling much more than they were before, but they push her onwards towards where the beast has regained its footing, and is howling its rage.

Ketsugi Mayu runs on bare feet, heedless of the debris scratching her to ribbons, urged on by hands at her back and hooves at her side and the cry of “SUUUUPER!” in her ears.

Ketsugi Mayu runs as fast as she can, heedless of the balls of dark energy which thunder down around her, destroying illusions made of humidity and color and hands that disperse into flower petals.

Ketsugi Mayu runs through burning lungs and a stitch in her side, heedless of the massive claws that only don’t rend her in two when they’re caught on invisible blades.

Ketsugi Mayu runs until she is beneath the wonky spiral on the beast’s belly, until an energy that is not her own flows through her limbs, until she lets out a shout that reverberates with another’s voice as she kicks upwards.

“ANTI-MANNERS KICK COURSE!!”

The Kyuubi-no-Kitsune soars into the air.

The curves of the seal snap into their proper place.

The demonic chakra vanishes.

The little golden fox in the middle of it all twists and glows and grows—

A little boy, with vivid blond hair, six whisker marks on his cheeks, a proper spiral on his belly, completely stark naked, begins to fall.

Ketsugi Mayu uses several swear words that have even her gods looking at her askance.

Her past life tells her that putting herself under the falling boy will probably just hurt her along with him, that he’ll probably be dead anyway even if she does catch him, that there’s no way to save him—!

Her legs propel her forwards, arms outstretched as she races gravity.

They collide.

They tumble, bouncing off rubble and masonry, and collapsing into a sorry bruised heap.

The boy blinks his blue, blue eyes open to see a bloody and battered girl staring up at him in horror.

Her eyes fill with tears. Both of her hands cover her face with a resounding slap.

“YOU’RE—YOU’RE NARUTO!” She wails.

This is how Rock Lee finds the two of them.

A naked blond boy blinking owlishly at Mayu, on her back with one leg deeply bruised and swollen, sobbing her little heart out.

“Mayu-chan!” He cries, rushing to his friend’s side. “What happened?! Are you hurt?! Where, where are we, who—?”

“HE’S NARUTO!!” Mayu bawls. “HE-HE WAS A FOX AN’ AN’ THEN HE—THAT GUY WAS SO MEAN AN’ I WANTED TO SAVE MY FRIEND, BUT, BUT—”

As she trails off into incoherent blubbering, Lee comes to a decision.

“We-we need to get back to the village!” He declares. “Chie-oba-san and Jirou-oji-san will know what to do…and, and if they don’t we can ask Mizuki-sensei, or Iruka-sensei! Yosh! Mayu-chan, can you stand?”

It soon becomes very clear from the way her leg buckles and sags, and her feet are bleeding freely that no, Mayu cannot.

The naked human Naruto makes a small noise of distress and moves closer.

Both children immediately avert their eyes.

“We need to get him some clothes.” Mayu decrees. “Immediately.”

Lee nods in agreement. “Indeed.”

With a quickness that is only mildly worrying, Lee promptly strips off his pajama pants, leaving him in the striped button-up top and…

“What is that?!” Mayu yelps.

Lee looks down at his choice of undergarments. “It is a fundoshi, Mayu-chan. Have you never…?”

Mayu scrunches her eyes shut with a furiously embarrassed whine.

“…Otou-sama wears one.”

Lee beams brightly. “Ah! I am glad to know that Jirou-oji-san too is a man of youth and vigor!”

“Can we please,” Mayu begs. “Go home and never talk about my dad’s underwear again?”

And so, after a complex series of negotiations to get the human Naruto to wear pants, they set off in odd little troupe.

Mayu is carried on Lee’s back as he walks, with Naruto holding onto a sleeve of her nightie and trotting next to them.

After they make their way out of the crater, it’s a much smoother journey to pick their way through the partially decimated forest back through the village gates.

They’ve been left ajar for some reason.

“Where is everyone?” Mayu mumbles, fighting desperately against exhaustion.

“I…am not sure.” Lee admits, with a quaver in his voice.

Then, suddenly, he perks up.

“Ah! There—shinobi-san! Shinobi-san, we need help, my friend, she’s, she’s injured!”

He begins jogging towards the people he’s spotted with Naruto in tow, as Mayu watches the red and white fans painted on these walls flash by.

She turns her head to peer over Lee’s shoulder at whoever he’s found.

One of them looks fairly normal. A slim young man with long hair, wearing the clothes of the people she usually tries to ignore in the village.

But the other one with him? The man in the orange mask, wearing a black cloak with red clouds on it?

Oh, Mayu doesn’t trust him at all.

[britishassistant]

The Little Golden Fox (2)

(A.k.a a One Piece fan’s reincarnation into a Naruto AU)

So she meets Rock Lee at six in the morning, and he shows her the katas that he’s being taught by the Shinobi Academy.

Lee-kun’s a very good teacher, showing her the moves slowly and patiently and doing his best to correct any flaws in her stance. Sometimes doing so shows him a flaw in his own form, which he always thanks her for.

Feeling as though he’s not getting nearly as much as she is out of this (and hearing his stomach growl), Mayu invites Lee to her home for breakfast.

Well. Maybe less “invites” than “insists”.

If her parents are surprised at her marching through the door with another child in tow, they make a decent effort to hide it. Her mother is gracious and her father is gregarious and both are welcoming as they set a fourth place at the table and ask Lee-kun about his interests.

She isn’t sure why Lee-kun seems so flustered at all the attention, going stiff or loud in turns, before he stammers out that he lives in the village orphanage when her mother asks if he has any brothers or sisters.

She decides then and there that she’s going to invite him over so much that he doesn’t ever feel weird about it again. And then she’s going to keep doing it.

All in all, life is good.

Except she keeps thinking about the little golden fox.

Even after months of training with Lee-kun, of slowly improving her cooking repertoire, of preparing for the start of civilian school with new pencils and a backpack that had the Ketsugi pelican embroidered on.

It’s not always conscious—sometimes she’ll be cooking or showering or just walking somewhere, and the memory will suddenly hit her with full force.

She thinks she’s gotten a bit better at handling when that happens.

At least she doesn’t burst into panicked tears anymore.

(Her father carried her downstairs the seventh time she woke up with her throat hoarse and face wet. He cradled her to him like he did when she was small while her mother brought in a mug of warm milk that was somehow sweet. They’d listened as the story had tumbled from her like overripe fruit, interspersed with tears and nonsensical whispers of, “I didn’t mean to—�� and “It was so little.”)

She prays to Chopper to look after it and fix it up so it’s not in pain anymore, to Brook to keep it company on its way to the afterlife, to Sanji to make sure that it is never hungry again.

And then one day, while she’s practicing kata that her father has set her with a smaller bokken, she hears a rustling sound from the bottom of the garden.

When she turns to look, something’s moving in the bushes. Not enough to shake the whole plant, just to disturb the leaves and branches closest to the ground.

As she watches, a small black nose emerges.

The nose twitches.

It’s attached to a muzzle covered in matted golden fur with a pair of big blue eyes above it.

A little golden fox slinks out of the bushes and trots over to Mayu, as if it hasn’t upended weeks of semi-processed trauma.

She doesn’t point at it and scream out loud, but it’s a close thing.

As it is, she lets out a strangled little croak of “You’re alive.”

The fox startles back some when she sits like a weight is dragging her down, but after a moment’s pause it creeps closer again, sniffing at her. Its nose is cold and wet when it nudges her knee.

“You’re alive.” She breathes.

“How—thank Chopper and Sanji and Luffy you’re alive—you caused me a lot of stress, you know? There was all the blood, and—well, what matters is you’re alive but for Chopper’s sake, you couldn’t have said something sooner?”

She babbles, low and careful as the fox keeps investigating her arms and legs, ignoring her words entirely.

After the third time it completes a circuit around her, Mayu folds her legs into a criss-cross with a sigh too heavy for a girl her (physical) age.

The fox wriggles its way onto her lap.

Mayu freezes, warnings about wild animals flashing through her mind.

The fox pokes holes in her trousers with its claws as it shifts, trying to find the comfiest position in the little well between her legs.

This close, she can’t even see where those boys hurt it.

She hovers a hand above it. “Is it okay if I touch you?”

Even though the fox is an animal, and can’t understand a word she says, it still stops moving and eyes her hand warily.

It doesn’t look agitated, but the way it’s still sends a clear message: No thanks.

“Alright then.” She puts her hand down.

The fox watches her for another moment, then lets out a chuff and contorts itself so it’s splayed on its back.

Mayu is exposed to the brief but intense embarrassment of realizing an animal is, in fact, a boy.

After she gets over herself enough to look again, she notices the swirl on the fox’s belly.

No hair grows over it and so the gold fur is stark against the dark lines, carved like a scar into the animal. It’s almost a perfect spiral, except the outer two passes flatten as though squished on the right side, looking almost like a child’s drawing of a snail.

For Ketsugi Mayu, it holds a different significance.

“You have a swirl,” She says, delighted. “Just like Sanji!”

The fox’s head tilts to the side, tongue hanging out as if grinning.

“Little curly swirly fox.” She coos, warming to her subject. “You’re blond like him too, aren’t you? And I know you never see his eye color, but lots of people think he has blue eyes. Goes with all those blue suits he wears. How about it, hm? Should I name you Sanji?”

The fox nips at her toes.

“Rude.” She pouts. “Maybe I won’t call you Sanji. Maybe I’ll call you…” She pauses to think of a suitably insulting character who also matches this description. It’d be mean to just substitute Duval, but…! “Maybe I’ll call you Naruto, ‘cause you’re annoying and you stink. How about that?”

The fox promptly clamps his jaws shut around the strap of her sandal and whisks it off her foot, dancing out of her reach with a series of high-pitched yips like laughter when she gives chase.

And so Ketsugi Mayu names the fox Naruto.

This is how her parents find her, losing a footwear tug-of-war to a wild animal.

Naruto the fox runs away to the bushes while Mayu convinces them to not chase him out the garden or away from the house.

It helps when Naruto pokes his head out of the bushes at her coaxing, nose twitching curiously.

He’s still pretty scrawny and dirty, but he has a little face and big eyes.

He’s cute by anyone’s standards.

So, some provisions are made:

Naruto the fox is to stay outside, because that is where foxes live and are happiest. Mayu is to be very careful while playing with him, and to go to her mother immediately if she gets scratched or bitten. Mayu is also to be very careful with Naruto, and go to her father if she somehow hurts him at all.

She nods and solemnly swears to follow all three rules in letter and spirit.

Naruto yawns and scratches behind his ear with one of his back legs.

And thus he becomes a key part of her daily life.

It takes a while for Naruto to trust her enough to let her touch him.

The fox is happy to wind his way through her legs, or attempt to steal her sandals, but he freezes up whenever her hands lift a little too quick, or she moves slightly too fast.

Too many bad memories, which is fair.

He even eyes the food she leaves out for him suspiciously, before creeping forward to wolf it down.

But gradually, as the days turn into weeks, the suspicious looks stop. The flinching if she moves too fast lessens.

And one day, when her hand is hanging off of her knees as she sits in the garden, Naruto the fox pushes his head into her palm, chuffing when her nails gently scritch between his ears.

She very carefully doesn’t set back weeks of progress by squealing in delight, but it’s a near thing.

Her father insists on feeding the fox raw chicken.

“This is what he’s meant to eat, Mayu.” He soothes in the face of her pout. “It’s not good for him to eat cooked food, especially not with onions. This’ll be much better for him.”

Naruto chews and chews and chews on the pink strip of chicken.

Then, an hour later, the fox is rather violently sick in the bushes at the bottom of the garden.

He doesn’t get better for a good part of a week.

Mayu glares at her father as she sets lukewarm broth next to the old towel Naruto’s huddled in. He’d managed to keep down water yesterday and this morning, so hopefully food will start to agree with him too.

Her father accepts his abashment with grace and helps her clean up after and care for the sick little fox until he’s well again.

She notices her father squirrels away bits of meals and feeds them to Naruto when he thinks no one’s looking.

Her mother wants to give the fox a bath.

Mayu suspects it has something to do with the way she frowns at Mayu’s clothes after she’s been playing with Naruto.

Her mother is undeterred even when she points out that her bringing the fox indoors and trying to put him in the tub violates the first rule they’d laid down.

“He’s filthy, and might have fleas.” She decrees. “It doesn’t look like he knows how to groom himself, so he needs a helping hand and we are going to give it to him.”

What they end up doing is buying a big metal tub, the sort usually used for laundry. They fill it with water from the garden hose, then her mother checks to make sure no one but them is there.

Mayu, for her part, tries to make sure the masks are distracted watching Naruto try to bite the stream of water from the hose and chase it wherever she points it in the garden.

Her mother puts her hand in the water, and after several minutes, small wisps of steam begin to form on the water’s surface.

From there it’s surprisingly easy to get Naruto into the water and apply only as much soap as he seems necessary (which is not very much) to wash the dirt and grime and a few fleas out of his fur.

Getting him to submit to towel-drying is a much more difficult ordeal.

She tells Lee-kun the good news the very morning after the fox reveals he’s alive, of course.

He seems a little bewildered that the thing she was so upset about was a fox, but he’s very supportive all the same.

“So…” Lee seems hesitant, but plows on all the same. “Does this mean you won’t train with me anymore, Mayu-chan?”

Mayu shoots him a look of deep offense.

“Of course not!” She declares, arms folded. “After all, we aren’t nearly masters of kicking yet! What’ll I do if those guys come after him again, or if people are mean to you? I need to get stronger to be able to protect you guys!”

A broad and joyful grin spreads across Lee’s face.

“Yosh!” He exclaims. “I’m going to give it my all from now on to protect you too, Mayu-chan! No, even more than that! I’ll become a ninja to make you, and Chie-oba-san and Jirou-oji-san proud!”

“You can be a ninja, and I’ll be a pirate.” She decides diplomatically. “And we’ll have each others’ backs, okay?”

When she raises a fist, Lee slams his own into it with a determined grin.

The two of them then spend the next minute shaking out the jarring pain before they can get back to training properly.

If it takes Naruto a while to become comfortable with her and her parents, it feels like it takes forever for him to feel safe enough around Lee to not skitter away when the boy gets too exuberant or moves too fast.

It’s an exercise in patience for everyone involved.

Mayu finds it goes by quicker if she can get the two of them sitting quietly together for a period of time, so Naruto can learn that Lee won’t hurt him.

And the best way to make that happen, is by telling them all about the story of One Piece, from the very beginning.

And yes, Naruto the fox will often fall asleep during her retellings, but he’s probably still hearing her in his dreams! She’s sure of it!

(She retells the bits he missed in the evenings though, just in case.)

It’s during one of these morning retellings, before Lee has to leave for the other school and Mayu has to get ready for civilian school that he poses a question.

“Why’d you name him Naruto?” Lee asks innocently. “I would have thought you would name him Sanji, with how he’s yellow.”

Ketsugi Mayu freezes for a moment under the weight of knowledge she is not meant to have.

“I call him that.” She says, smoothly and calmly. “Cause he’s not cool enough to be like Sanji. Also when he sleeps he curls up into a ball and his fur is spiky, so it looks kinda like a narutomaki.”

Lee looks at Naruto.

Naruto’s leg twitches as he’s sprawled on his back, dreaming fox dreams.

“He’s not really sleeping right now.” She lies. “He’s napping. There’s a difference.”

Lee tilts his head in confusion, but eventually accepts her story with a shrug.

The autumn turns into winter, into spring and summer and early autumn again like this.

Mayu trains her kicking with Lee, excels at cooking class at school, and plays with Naruto when she comes home. She prays to the Strawhats and gives thanks to them when good things happen.

She hasn’t really made many friends at school, as all the other kids think she’s weird. In part because she wasn’t born in the village, in part because she constantly vows to become a pirate chef once her cooking and kicking skills are up to par.

But that’s fine. She has Naruto and Lee and her mother and father after all.

What more could she ask for?

And then, one afternoon, her parents ask her to come into the living room when she gets home.

“There’s something we need to talk about.” Her mother demurs. “As a family.”

Mayu feels a shadow of her old life as hairs raise on the back of her neck.

She knows to expect nothing good from “as a family” talks.

“We were thinking,” Her father begins. “You like Lee-kun, don’t you?”

She nods, unsure where this is going.

“And,” Her mother adds, “You’re aware that Lee-kun lives in the orphanage here in the village? Because he doesn’t have a kaa-san or tou-san of his own to go home to?”

She gives her mother a faintly derisive look as she nods again. She’s turning seven soon, she isn’t stupid.

“Well.” Her mother looks at her father, who squeezes her hand and smiles before they both look back at Mayu.

“We were thinking about adopting Lee-kun. So he could live here with us, and take the Ketsugi name. He’d be your brother.”

She feels short of breath for some reason.

“Of course.” Her mother says, hesitant, “If you’re not happy with that, Mayu, then we—“

“No!” The force of her shout startles even her. “No, I. Lee…Lee would be the, the best—! Lee deserves to have us. We’d be, I’d be so, so happy to have him as a brother.”

The way her mother and father are looking at her have her add defensively. “I’m still the big sister though, right?”

For some reason that makes them break into teary-eyed laughter, pulling her into a hug that has a frog swell in her throat.

Apparently there are forms to fill out, and visits from important orphanage/village people to be on her best behavior for.

Her father will have to reaffirm his oath to forswear all loyalty to kin and clan in favor of the village. Her mother will have to do the same.

But, if they do this and it all works out, Lee’s going to be her brother.

Like Ace and Luffy and Sabo.

Mayu vows as she goes to bed that night that she’ll be a much better big sister in this life than she was in her last one. She swears on the One Piece itself.

And then, in the middle of the night, she wakes to see a small white mask standing over her bed.

She can’t even scream before something black and squishy and ink-tasting covers her whole face.

[britishassistant]

The Little Golden Fox (1)

(A.k.a a One Piece fan’s reincarnation into a Naruto AU)

In one world, the nine-tailed beast is unleashed while its container is at her most distracted.

In one world, a man long-thought dead drives the beast to madness and rage, venting its wrath upon the villagers who have trapped it for so long.

In one world, her husband is entirely successful in sealing this rampaging monster into the body of his newborn son, with nothing to show for it save a spiral on his belly and whisker marks on his cheeks.

In another, he…fudges it a bit.

In fairness, the Kyuubi is sealed. It’s even sealed inside the squalling infant who hasn’t even been named yet.

But Namikaze Minato is badly injured, his hands trembling with exertion and blood loss. So he can’t quite get parts of the spiral meant to seal the tailed beast’s Yang essence to be as curvy as he needs.

Uzumaki Kushina watches in horror as the human babe in her arms shrinks and deforms, glowing with bijuu chakra, until a little fox kit lies in his place.

Somehow blonde. Still squalling.

Her husband meets her gaze with matching disbelief, unable to stop an embarrassed, blood-soaked chuckle.

“Minato,” She groans with her dying breath. “You idiot.”

They both have passed by the time the search and rescue teams find them.

No matter how a young ANBU, an old seal-master, or an older Hokage search, there is no sign of the jinchuuriki.

Even baby fox kits have instinct enough to seek out shelter to hide from predators.

The scent of the greatest and most monstrous fox of them all permeates the village for weeks afterwards, lingering in repaired walls and roofs. It irritates the noses of the Inuzuka and the Hatake something fierce, and leads to a boom in the local fox population when the hunting hounds cannot smell where they’re hiding.

So the Village mourns the Yondaime and his wife, taken from them too soon

And its Intel Corps works double time to lay false information trails asserting that the Leaf has Not lost or killed its Tailed Beast, Definitely Not, that would be Ridiculous, Stop Asking Questions.

Ten months later, a twenty-year-old is reincarnated into the life of a baby born to a venerable clan of samurai.

Specifically, to its second son.

Twelve months later, the second son and his lady wife flee the mountains and snows of Iron for the sanctuary of the Village Hidden In the Leaves.

The small family settles there, and begins the process of adjusting to their new life. Ketsugi Chie uses her impeccable graces to take a part-time position in a teahouse. Ketsugi Jirou applies his methodical mind to managing funds on the lowest rank of village finances.

Ketsugi Mayu grieves a life in a world no one else knows exists.

This naturally causes some concern to her parents, who try and fail and try to connect with their reticent young daughter.

The only thing that brings a spark into her eyes is food. She watches eagerly as her mother prepares it, eats everything her father prompts her to try, and never leaves so much as a grain of rice behind.

She does this out of adoration of a certain comic from her previous life, whose tenets she follows religiously. Her parents do not know this, and are unlikely to care so long as their child is happy.

Ketsugi Mayu is four years old when she sees the fox for the first time.

It stands out from the other foxes and scavenger animals she’s seen roaming the alleys and edges of town because it’s little and because it’s gold.

She almost thinks it’s a kitten before it moves, and she realizes that the shape of its head is too dog-like, its tail too bushy. Its fur may be dulled with filth and grime, but it is still a yellowy-gold vibrant enough to set it apart from its orange-furred kin.

Her mother is still serving customers at the tea house down the road and won’t worry if she’s gone for a few more minutes, so Mayu stops and stares at this odd little creature.

She watches as the golden fox attempts to clamber into the dumpster.

It’s so small that its highest jumps barely bring it halfway up the side of the receptacle. When it stands on its hind legs, snapping and whining, she can count its ribs through its fur.

This upsets Mayu viscerally.

Her favorite character teaches that no one should go hungry if she can feed them—not even wild animals.

She’s not going to stand idly by ever again.

She has a small money pouch with two hundred ryo coins and one fifty ryo coin in it.

There’s a store next to the alley which only charges one hundred ryo coin and one fifty ryo coin for meat buns.

She blows on it as she exits the mart, trying to get the steam and heat to dissipate as much as she can. It’s big, and she’s not sure if the golden fox will eat it if it’s too hot. After three minutes, she judges it to be as cool as it’s probably going to get.

She throws the meat bun near the fox.

The golden fox startles, skittering away from the dumpster and the pastry.

Then its nose twitches.

Mayu watches with bated breath as the little fox slowly and carefully inches towards the meat bun.

It nips cautiously at the air next to the bun. Then one of its paws swipes at it and tears the dough covering the meaty contents.

She can mark the moment it smells the bounty before it and realizes food , because it suddenly lunges forwards and starts devouring the bun in earnest.

She giggles a little, pleased with herself at living up to Sanji’s ideals.

Then she hears one of the junior girls at the teahouse calling for her, and hurries away so she won’t get scolded.

She doesn’t see the fox there again.

She tries looking whenever her mother brings her along to work, peering down the mouth of the alley so as to not scare it off.

But even though she sees other foxes, and crows, and mice, and even a snake once, she never sees the little golden fox hiding by the dumpster.

So Ketsugi Mayu keeps going with her new life, where there are plans for her to join the civilian school once she turns six. Her parents are teaching her the skills she’d need to survive in their old home, if they ever need to go back there. But in the interim, it’s important for her to learn her literature and her numbers, to socialize with her peers, to decide if there’s a trade she’d benefit from learning and connections she can make for the future.

(The civilian school does have paths for cooking and restaurant apprenticeships. She’s a little excited for them.)

She’s not looking for the little golden fox at all when she finds it again.

The screams are loud, is the thing.

They’re loud and high-pitched and not human in a way that sets her teeth on edge.

There’s a group of bigger boys under a tree in one of the many cleared, grassy areas this village has for its soldiers to fight each other.

Mayu has thus far attempted to ignore all such spaces and the people who use them. They give her an awful suspicion that she will not entertain.

(She is skilled in ignoring inconvenient things, like the shinobi hopping across rooftops, the symbol tied to the tweens that graduate from the other school in the village, the black figures wearing white masks that occasionally linger in the trees around her home. Watching.)

But today she looks, if only to see what’s making such an awful sound.

One of the boys has a diamond-shaped knife in hand, and four others are holding a bundle of golden fur and red blood upside down. They’re laughing when it thrashes and screams, trying to get away.

She doesn’t quite know when she started running.

Just that it gives her a good bit of momentum to kick knife-boy in the bollocks.

He squeals and goes down, dropping the knife as he does. She grabs it and hurls it as far away as she can, ignoring the flash of pain across her palm.

Knives are for the kitchen. Not for brats like this to play with.

One of the four lets go of the fox’s leg and lunges for her. She lets him get close enough that she can grab both his ears and twist. He howls as she swings around and lets go, kicking his downed friend in the mouth as he trips over him.

Something smacks into her temple and her vision jars for a moment. When it settles, she sees a third kid pulling back for another swing while the last two try to wrangle the furiously snapping fox they’ve been left with. She takes the hit to her shoulder and punches him in the throat.

He makes a choking noise, face turning red, when she kicks him in the bollocks too.

One of the last two boys sees her coming and has the sense to drop his hold on the fox and run. The other is shrieking as the fox starts getting closer to biting him, and can’t defend against her sharp little nails scratching across his cheek and arm.

That finally makes him drop the fox, which lands in a crumpled heap on the tree roots with a yelp.

She steps in front of it, glaring at the boys with blood beneath her nails and her face throbbing. They’re staring at her, frightened but unsure, trying to gather their wits for another go—

“FUCK OFF!!” She roars, running at them with a face she hopes is half as scary as Zoro’s.

They shriek and scramble away from her, tripping each other over in their haste to get away.

Ketsugi Mayu places her hands on her hips, satisfied in the way a child can only be before they remember they’ll be scolded for using profanity.

A pained whine has her turning and hurrying back to the base of the tree.

The golden fox lies there, paws scrabbling at the dirt but unable to get up, cuts along its back bleeding sluggishly and one leg bent too far to be normal.

She reaches out to try and feel how bad the damage is—!

The little fox’s teeth are lodged in her hand, small growls escaping it as it weakly tries to shake and make the bite worse.

She cries out, digging her nails in to her leg to try and distract herself from the pain.

The fox stares at her. She frowns at the fox.

Slowly, slowly, it opens its mouth and lets her go. It watches as she cradles her hand against her chest.

Its eyes are big and surprisingly blue.

Then it lays its head back down and whimpers, sad and pained.

She doesn’t know how to help it, Mayu realizes. She’s not a doctor like Chopper, these wounds aren’t something that just food can fix. She needs proper help.

Professional help.

She goes and buys it some food anyway, because it’s better than nothing.

The store attendant eyes the blood seeping from her hands, but sells her a package of pork cracklings that she tears open and leaves within easy reach of the fox’s mouth, so who’s counting.

Then she’s off, trotting towards the veterinarian clinic with determination.

It’s huge, which surprises her for reasons she refuses to think about, and the smells of animals and medicine hit her in the face when she enters.

She walks up to the reception desk, where a girl with two large red triangles on her cheeks slumps, bored. Three large dogs pant at her feet.

“Excuse me.” Mayu says. “I need fox medicine if you have any, please.”

The girl startles, before peering over the desk’s edge at her.

She huffs, eyebrows raised in exasperation. “Kid, we don’t treat humans here. If you want those seen to, go to the hospital.”

“I’m not here for me.” Mayu frowns. “I need medicine for a fox. It’s hurt badly.”

There’s a whuff and a boy’s voice startles her from under the desk. “Why’d you want medicine for a fox? They’re vermin.”

She’s barely gotten over one talking dog when a second pipes up. “They’re bad luck.”

“The only good fox is a dead fox.” Says the third dog, to round out things. “Killing for sport, making a mess of things…”

Defensiveness wins out over shock. “Dogs can do those things too. My fox is only little, and it’s hurt. I’ll buy the medicine if I have to. How much?”

The girl with a triangle face makes a “hsst!” noise when her dogs try to argue with Mayu. Her eyes are tired, for some reason. “Look kid, your heart’s in the right place, but we don’t have any medicine for foxes here. Haven’t you heard about the Council edict?”

“It can’t be that different from dog medicine, or even cat medicine!” Mayu argues. “Why can’t I have some?”

“Because that fox is probably already dead, kid.” The sternest of the trio barks. “There’s a cash reward for all fox hides handed in to the mission desk. And if your fox is little and hurt, how hard do you think it’d be to skin?”

She stumbles back a step. Two.

The girl behind the desk says something in a scolding tone to that dog, but she’s not listening. She can’t.

She’s turning and running as fast as she can.

Pushing through crowds, ignoring when people bump into her, because if she can only get back in time, she needs—!

The little golden fox is gone.

All that’s left are smears of red on the grass.

She begins to cry.

“Are you okay?”

She looks up from where she’s buried her head in her knees.

A pair of bushy eyebrows are drawn together in concern. When she blinks, the eyebrows are attached to a boy with a braid dangling over his shoulder. He looks like he’s a year older than her or so.

Her head aches the way it always does after a long cry, her nose stuffy with mucus. Her voice wavers when she replies, “No.”

The eyebrows draw down over his eyes in distress. “What happened?”

“I let my hands get hurt. I wasn’t good enough. Wasn’t strong enough.” Her eyes start watering again dangerously. “I thought it’d be fine if I left to get help. I wasn’t gonna be long. I was coming right back. But I couldn’t, couldn’t protect it. It was only little.”

The boy with the bushy eyebrows sits next to her.

After a moment he says, “I could help you get stronger? If you want?”

She squints at him. “…Can you do it without me using my hands? I need them for cooking.”

The bushy brows furrow before the boy nods determinedly. “Yosh! Even if I cannot, I will make myself stronger until we both become masters of kicking!”

Part of her registers that someone’s calling her name, loud and frantic. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Rock Lee!” The boy says. “I’m six!”

“My name is Ketsugi Mayu, and I’m five.” She gets up and bows to Lee politely. “I need to go now, but if you’re okay meeting here tomorrow, I’ll be in your care?”

Rock Lee’s lips purse and his eyes sparkle in excitement. “Yosh! Then I will see you tomorrow at six o’clock, Ketsugi-chan! Let us work hard together!”

“Let’s.” She nods decisively, before finally heeding her father’s increasingly worried calls.

She gets scolded for getting distracted while running her errand, and then she is scolded for not seeking medical attention right away when hurt, and then the mothers of the boys she beat up call round to complain and she’s scolded for attacking them and using profanity.

(Though her father breaks into a gleeful grin after her mother closes the door on the last harpy, and murmurs “Second year students at the Shinobi Academy! And our little Mayu made them look like—!”

Her mother shushes him. “Anata, please, don’t encourage her.” Then, with a quiet huff. “It isn’t as if those dabblers could hold a candle to Mayu-chan anyhow.”)

[britishassistant]

can I suggest a new soulmate finding method for the twst soulmate au?

~✨The soulmate goose✨~

It manifest to one of the soulmates and guides them till they find their soulmate. If the the soulmate they manifest to are stuborn it will ✨creatively get them to their other soulmate, it's also immortal and won't krave till it's fullfiled it's mission

Thank you for the ask, dear anon!

“So my arm is broken.” You start, gesturing to where Nurse Kamac is layering strips of plaster over the layers of gauze already encasing your poor forearm. “Because the waterfowl that attacked Deuce is somehow. Magic?”

“Fated.” Nurse Kamac corrects. “It’s a fated goose to bring together Deuce and his soulmate. The soulmate goose of destiny intended for Deuce. Deuce’s goose.”

“Deuce’s…goose.” You manage not to swear at a member of school staff, which you consider an exceptional show of self-control. “Which isn’t magic, but still isn’t a normal goose somehow. And isn’t going to experience any consequences for breaking my arm.”

“Yup!” Nurse Kamac chirps. “Now ya got it!”

Your glare is withering.

“Look, I feel for ya, I do.” Nurse Kamac clips together the last layers of plaster and peers earnestly at you. “I was pretty freaked when one of my friends got their goose for the first time too. But ya gotta remember, they’re performing an important service, helping two fated people be together, no matter how scary they look. Or sound. Or are.”

“I can’t ‘remember’.” You deadpan. “I didn’t grow up here. Soulmates in my world hear a melody in their head that’s associated with their other half until they meet. I didn’t even know murder geese were a thing until it showed up and started making Deuce cry and tried to eat Grim.”

The melody that constantly plays in your head is an organ dirge with accompanying bells and a backing choir, but that’s neither here nor there.

“Oh. Hm.” This only stymies Nurse Kamac for a moment, before moves to the sideboard and pulls a plastic container out of a bag. “That’s some pretty bad luck there. But nothing a spinach puff can’t fix, huh?”

He pulls the top off of a box of small pastries, and waves it temptingly under your nose until you relent and take one. Or two. Or three.

You chew mutinously.

They’re delicious.

Of course, given that people in this Twisted Wonderland apparently begin getting pestered by geese once they turn and their soulmate turn 16, it means you only have so much time before webbed feet come slapping to your door.

It comes a day or so after your own birthday, when you’re woken up by one of the ghosts who excitedly tells you “I think you have a special guest outside!”

You can hear the shouting and hinking from down then hall, and a preemptive headache is throbbing behind one eye even as you open the door.

There stands a boy, a fair head or two taller than you, though his height seems exaggerated by the odd black and purple hat he’s wearing. He’s dressed in black robes too, not unlike a Western priest’s cassock. He’s currently trying to yank them out of the grip of a goose’s beak.

It’s a very raggedy looking goose, feathers rumpled and askew, eyes half-crazed.

The moment it takes notice of you, they go full-crazed.

It beats its wings and pulls with all the force its neck and body can muster. If the way the boy slips and stumbles is any indication, it’s quite a lot.

You find a person’s worth of strange boy being flung in your direction by the goose.

You hop to the side with a yelp, leaving him to crash to the floor of your foyer in a heap. Something goes crunch alarmingly.

The goose raises its wings warningly, a deep, resonant hiss escaping its beak.

You slam the door shut and lock it.

Grim plops onto the bannister in time to see you trying to barricade the door with your coat rack.

“Wha’s goin’ on, minion?” He grumbles. “It’s too early t’be so loud…”

“It’s another fucking goose!” You call up to him. All you hear in response is a loud and startled “MRAH?!” and the sounds of what must be Grim scampering back to your room to hide under the covers.

Given what Deuce’s goose tried to do to him, you can’t say you blame him.

You turn back in time to see the boy in black pushing himself up on all fours, blood dripping from his nose onto your floors.

The organ and bells and choir in your head have gone silent.

“So.” You say awkwardly. “You’re. Hm. Do you, um, do you need some ice?”

He shoots a poisonous glare at you.

“If it isn’t too much trouble.” He mutters, fishing a purple and gold handkerchief out of a pocket and trying to stem the flow of red dripping out of his face.

The two of you end up seated on either end of your dining table. You’re still in the hoodie and shorts that serve as your pajamas, with Grim’s drool staining the front. Half of his face is obscured by the makeshift cold compress you fashioned with some of the ice buildup you managed to break off the freezer at a manageable size wrapped in the cleanest tea towel you could find. He also has dark bags under his pale eyes, and gray hair cut in a way that leaves you certain a bowl was involved somehow.

“I did not have high hopes when I saw which school I was being led to.” The boy mutters. “Fascinating to discover that Night Raven College can exceed my expectations in this regard too.”

You feel an irrational spike of indignation that you squash as small as you can. The allowance Crowley gives you isn’t big enough for school pride.

“I take it that you’re a student somewhere else then.” You say. “Royal Sword Academy?”

The boy’s face crumples in distaste. “I am the school council president of Noble Bell College. In Fleur City.”

“Ah. That’s nice.” You say, as if that means anything to you. “Was it a long journey to get here?”

“Given that it’s located in Pyroxene, yes, it is a ways away.” He says, as if primness could make up for his personality. And the blood he’s still leaking onto your table. “Luckily, the Dark Mirror of Night Raven College is exceedingly useful for traversing long distances, as expected of such a venerated magical heirloom.”

You murmur an absent agreement as you consider this. True, getting to the Coral Sea in three days would have been difficult without it for Azul-senpai’s contract. And Ace and Deuce certainly said it was a pain getting to school from the Queendom of Roses…

“Let’s make one thing clear.”

You refocus on the boy who hasn’t even bothered to introduce himself, yet is staring you down like you’re some kind of insect. “Given the distance between our schools, and my academic commitments, I can only spare short periods to ensure that that…animal does not return. While it would be more convenient for me if you were to utilize the Dark Mirror to travel to Noble Bell College, I will ask that you do nothing which could bring shame to either you or myself—”

“Yeah, yeah,” You’re nodding along, having heard this spiel enough times to finish it yourself. “How dare I, the magicless prefect, impugn on your honor, I get it already. Look, I know how to behave in pub—”

“Wait.” For some reason the boy’s pale eyes have blown wide. “What do you mean?”

You shoot him an irritated look. You dislike having to repeat yourself. “I’m magicless and from another world. The only reason I’m counted as a “Prefect” is because I’m meant to supervise the fuzzball cowering upstairs. We’re a two-in-one student.”

Come to think of it, you’re not entirely sure that’s legal. You’re also not sure if this guy will turn out to be a scab.

When you try to surreptitiously glance at him to check, it’s like you’re met with an entirely new person.

His previously harsh glare has vanished entirely, and he’s gazing at you like you’ve just handed him something wondrous and precious. It’s not. Not entirely unappealing. The faint flush in his cheeks seems pinker next to the steady plip-plop-plip of blood from his bruised nose.

“You’re magicless.” He murmurs, as if in a daze. One of his hands is reaching for where yours are resting on the table. “Entirely without it. Untouched by it. Pure.”

Aaand you’re officially weirded the fuck out.

You pull your hands into your lap and clear your throat loudly. “He-hem. I believe you were saying, about visiting…?”

The noise startles him, and he lifts the makeshift compress back to his face, flickering little glances to you and away again. “A-ah, yes, my apologies. I, I would be honored if you would visit me in Fleur City, at Noble Bell College. We may not be as talked-of as Night Raven, but I can assure you we are splendid in our own right. Would that be suitable for you?”

You chew on your lower lip for a moment. “…I can set aside some weekends, if that works for you. I’ve got class during the week, and it may not be every weekend because, y’know, homework…”

“But of course.” The boy’s eyes curve in a smile as his free hand withdraws a small planner from his robes. “Why don’t we go over our schedules together?”

Man, you think as you take a chair closer to his. You hope Tsunotaro hasn’t destroyed his new phone already.

You kind of can’t wait to tell him, Ace, and Deuce about what the goose brought you.

[britishassistant]

Tumblr is so wild sometimes

Like yes, I get that the whole”based on my likes” thing is meant to put me in contact with more creators who are in the fandom/have similar vibes who I may or may not have heard of yet based on posts I’ve interacted with recently, which in theory is fine.

But it does mean that I end up scrolling frantically through my likes, wondering which one of them could have possibly spawned the “batman has erectile dysfunction” post now on my dash

[britishassistant]

I wish you would write a fic where...

Send me an anymous (or not) summary of the fic you wish I would write. (maybe I will write a tidbit)