#[ just using his terror radius to mess with people]

[thxgrxmrexpxr-archive]

[The last thing your character hear's right before Hunk jumps down from the ceiling and tackles them to the floor.]

[abyssal808]

S1 Soulmate Au prompt inspired by @subbaculture 's prompt wherein "Eddie learns Tengwar just to be special and so Steve's been kicking around with "What's Kickin', Sexy?" on his body

What Tommy Hagan hadn’t been blessed with in terms of intelligence. God - in his allegedly infinite wisdom - had seen fit to redistribute into shoulder width.

Tommy, in turn, swanned around Hawkin’s High shoulder-checking every freak, geek and nerd into nearby lockers; with the kind of wingspan better suited to weirdly proportioned monkeys.

Hellfire members were no stranger to it. Two weeks ago Hagan had run into Gareth hard enough to leave a bruise. A “bump” with enough force behind it that he’d bounced off the lockers and landed on the floor.

Which, fine, two could play at that game. Even if Hagan could barely get his hand off Carol’s tits to realize there were counter-moves to be made at all.

A grade A dick move, even if it was also incredibly boring and pedestrian. The kind of thing jocks who barely had two braincells to rub together saw as peak comedy. Giggling like a cross between a group of cavemen and a flock of pre-school girls whenever their ring-leader du jour started herding freaks like a neurotic border collie.

“Watch it, freak.” Hagan hissed, skirting around Eddie without bothering to shove him at all. Giving a wide berth to whatever zone of contagious freak cooties being Eddie Munson brought to the table.

Behind him, Gareth - blocked from the rest of the hall by Eddie’s leather jacket, in a way only freshies were short enough to pull off - buried a laugh in a cough, muffled into the heel of his hand. Not missing the way that even Hagan - the most infamous asshole of them all - looked ready to bolt as soon as Eddie waved him off in a jaunty salute.

Victory tasted sweet and electric. Fizzing under his skin the way Wayne’s Miller Lites would bubble in the back of his throat, whenever Eddie stole a sip from the half open cans in the back of their fridge. It made him stupid in a way those brief tastes of beer hadn’t managed to yet.

Being The Freak came with perks. An untouchable radius that left Eddie drunk with power. Riding the high of knowing that maybe Highschool didn’t have to suck all the time. That he could play at being a rabid guard dog for the lost little sheep of the world, rail against dickheads like Hagan and win.

Maybe he could use it to plead temporary insanity for what he did next. Riding the high into a really, spectacularly stupid idea.

Everyone had their words.

Eddie’s were tucked away, hidden along the curve of his rib. A curly chicken scratch that mixed print and cursive into a barely legible mess.

‘Is that like, yiddish?’

A weird-ass question, until Eddie had pulled an all nighter on a now infamous school night, falling in love with Middle earth. Head filled with nothing but the dark halls of Khazad-dûm, the sweeping boughs of Lothlórien.

Speak friend and enter.

Pedo mellon a minno.

He’d traced the words over and over. Thrilled by the lilt, the cadence, the beautiful rise and fall of consonants no one else would understand.

Setting his heart there and then on the dorkiest greeting anyone could have come up with. But hey, it was original, which was half the battle people went through when picking soulmate greetings.

He’d gone through several variations. Always in Sindarin, because why the hell not.

People usually saved them, tucked them far away from casual conversation. Bizarre phrases, always non-sequitour, brought out only for special occasions. That lightning strike of instant attraction. People you could see yourself connecting with. Hoping they would be a part of you as much as you were theirs.

He couldn’t see himself connecting with Tommy Hagan in a million years. Not even if they waited in that hallway until the heat death of the universe.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t terrorize him with the possibility.

“What’s Kickin’ Sexy?”

He yelled after Hagan’s retreating back, with its fuck-off wide shoulders; elvish mangled, but passable. Enjoying the rictus of horror on his face, going from anger to fear and back again.

He shifted on his heel, pushing Gareth further behind him in case things got ugly. Herding him back towards Jeff with little bumps, as both of them tried to muscle down their cackling. Nerdy enough to piece together the gist of what Eddie had been hollering about. Even if Jeff was better at Quenya, because he was a weirdo and a purist about that kind of shit.

All in all, a job well done, assuming Hagan didn’t flip his shit and start throwing punches to assert dominance.

Or at least, it felt like it, until Harrington - trailing behind Hagan - sucked all the air out of the room. Hands on his hips, a furrow on his brow, blurting it out without even thinking about it.

“Is that like, Yiddish?”

You could have heard a pin drop.

Panic clamped around Eddie’s throat like a vice. The same way Gareth’s hand, tiny and tense - he had yet to hit his growth spurt - wrapped around the edge of Eddie’s leather jacket. Pushing past the waistband of his jeans to claw at skin.

The side that mattered, one they both knew had those words that wrapped around Eddie’s chest. Curving towards the sternum.

Whatever face he was making gave it away instantly.

Harrington’s face shuttered and fell. A whole host of micro expressions that passed through in a second before he scrubbed them away. A pair of shaking hands that rubbed at his eyes and dragged down his face. Peeking at Eddie through a gap in his fingers.

“Jesus Christ it’s you; isn’t it?”

Behind Eddie, Gareth tugged him half a step back, nails digging into his hip. Little half-moon crescents he barely felt now, but would find later.

“Steve?” The waver in Hagan’s voice would have been funny if it wasn’t nauseating.

Terrifying, when Steve waved him off and stepped towards Eddie. Jerky and halting, like a puppet with half it’s strings cut.

“I can’t fucking believe this Munson. You gotta tell me if it is.” Steve bit out, with a wobble that sounded too trembling and confused to be anger. Even if it would come later.

It was probably coming later.

Anger always got there in the end, with boys like Harrington. Sharp comebacks and sharper right hook always winning out, spurred on by that bone-deep, animal fear of losing your place in the social food chain.

King Steve didn’t seem worried it yet though. Adding to the bizarre hilarity of the situation as he undid his belt and untucked his shirt to the concerned shouts of everyone left in the hall, witnesses to this trainwreck.

If Eddie hadn’t been convinced he’d died and gone to purgatory a minute earlier. He would have been convinced there and then.

As Steve Harrington turned around, bunched his striped polo up high and his khaki’s down low. Stripping down to show the athletic curve of a hip. The dip of a waist that looked small next to his swimmer’s shoulders - almost wide enough to rival Hagan’s - a scattering of moles that dusted across his lower back, framing his mark.

There, on King Steve’s back, bracketed by dimples, low enough to count as a truly slutty tramp stamp sat Eddie’s words. The swooping curves of Tengwar branded into his skin.

“What’s kickin’, Sexy?”

[marigoldsandbuttercups]

How do the fellswap gold, undertale and underfell boys annoy their brothers? Every sibling has their petty moments ;)

SO

I went a little too far with this-

How Do They Annoy Each Other

Sans:

- Will go into Papyrus' room while he's there, looks around like he's some sort of inspector, only to push his brother down onto the bed (where he had placed a whoopee cushion prior) and book it, with his brother screaming in the background.

- Will mimic Papyrus in everything he does, all the way down to the way he speaks. He can do an insanely good impression of his brother but insteads just does the goofiest voice to annoy him instead.

- Will absolutely noogie him on the head, despite the height difference. Those shortcuts aren't left to be used for going to different places alone-

- You know that one meme, where the girl is followed by her bro playing the trumpet? That's exactly what Sans does to Papyrus whenever he hears Paps talking about him being lazy as ✨ ��� payback 💕✨

- Also will low-key moves the objects when Papyrus is busy, but it's so subtle that Papyrus doesn't realize it until he's reaching for the marinara sauce for the sixth time in a row and he can hear Sans wheezing from the next room.

Papyrus:

- Likes to start random snowball fights and never fails to hit Sans straight in the face with one everytime. Little dude could be chilling at his sentry station and the last thing he'll hear is a distant "INCOMING" and WHACK his vision is clouded with snow.

- When Sans is being an ass, Papyrus plays the baby brother card. And by that, he will pull out the puppy eyes to have Sans do his bidding and Sans is annoyed that it works Every. Time.

- And of course, with only Sans raising him for most of his life, Papyrus is exposed to many embarrassing moments. And boy, does he like to recite the time Sans tried to goof around with some snowballs and got them stuck in his sockets because they were parts of the snowman word for word.

- Will deliberately write the most absurd stories and forces Sans to read it every time for him because Sans is his number one supporter, right? He knows what he's doing, and what's a good way to show brotherly love than to subject them to some story that doesn't even act like a story, more like an inner monologue of Papyrus and sans is concerned-

- Along with that, he also will make Sans his personal guinea pig for when he wants to try cooking something new. And oh boy, did he enjoy watching Sans eat up his ketchup and snow sundae and watch as his beloved older brother goes through the five stages of grief before telling Paps that he loves it.

Red:

- Any snarky comment that Edge has is instantly retaliated by Red. He can and will mess with his brother and make him even more annoyed when he wins the battle of wits that day.

- He's a bit of a bully. And by that, being a bully means he has absolutely no qualms about mimicking his brother when he gets on his nerves. Think of that one Spongebob meme and replace it with Red, it's Edge's worst nightmare because Red. Won't. Stop.

- He also likes to find the most cursed and obscure memes and send it to Edge with little to no explanation. You can imagine how great his annoyance was being called "Dababy" by Red for two weeks straight and being sent surprise messages that, upon opening it is that stupid, starsforsaken image!

- Though, they do have.... Brotherly wrestling to get all that anger out of their system. And when this happens, Red likes to do a wet willy and boy, he always sticks a mean one into Edges ear every damn time. Edge does try to prepare for this when they fight, but that bastard seems to have his ways. F in the chat for Edge-

- Red also likes to do that thing where, on occasion, he just flips off Edge for no reason at all with a "ya stink". Cue one angry skeleton and one that can teleport who, upon dodging everytime, says "Ya stanky ass" and proceeds to piss Edge off even more.

Edge:

- While he won't do this in public for obvious reasons, he will pick up Red and make fun of him for his height when man's just minding his own short business- it works everytime-

- Also has a huge amount of prime blackmail material just to bully Red into silence when he's being an ass. Just a casual mention of peeps (yes, the candy thing) and Red goes silent with an angry glare.

- While he doesn't pull dirty tricks like Red does, Edge will tug on the shorter monsters clothes if he was being rather annoying that day. It is the norm for them to roughhouse often so don't be surprised when one of them suddenly shoves the other and snickers loudly to rub it in their faces.

- Also has a tendency to noogie Red just for the sake of it.... Well, somewhat. He's gotten past the days of throwing monsters and people alike out the window. Usually, the noogies are what would prompt the wrestling matches cause Red can't let this slide by-

- Also, this is only when he's feeling ✨extra annoying ✨, he will send one of the hounds to hang out with Red. Hanging out is used very lightly when he throws a bone at the conveniently placed sentry station, almost always getting it into Reds clothes. Ah yes, watching the look of terror on his face as the massive hound rushes through the snow is delectable.

Wine:

- Can and will cry whenever Coffee is about to do something. He's usually Coffees biggest hypeman but stars, he can't help but embarrass his sweet baby brother as well and knows full well that the younger skeleton will take revenge on him-

- That one meme with the Kardashians and the mom going "You're doing great, sweetie"? That's Wine to a T, and he will do this sometimes ironically even when Coffee is eating or doing something with the other skeletons just to tease him and the rest of them.

- Oh, and if Coffee has a fit and talks back? Cue the dramatics as Wine falls to the ground, sobbing like he was in a telenovela and his rent was due tomorrow so he's doing his best. Holds a hand up to the sky, pulls it back and let's out a small, broken sigh. This is a weekly occurrence--

- If Coffee was being a butt that day, Wine would also bring out the baby pictures, saying that he could not believe this young skeleton would do him "so dirty" like this, and the way he says it makes Coffee cringe so bad like no pls stop-

- On top of that, he really, really likes misusing current slangs. If he hears Coffee using any of them within a five mile radius, you bet he's misusing the shit out of it for the next week or so just to mess with him.

Coffee:

- If Wine was being a bit too... Enthusiastic that day, Coffee is definitely hiding some of Wines things. And the man is incredibly good at stashing away things.

- Since he's the baby of the house, Wine, in a way, is not his only older brother anymore. And Coffee knows this irks Wine more than he'd like to admit. And it especially gets him when Coffee goes to Red for some brotherly bonding.

- If Wine or really, any of the more affectionate skeletons go in for a hug, they're gonna be greeted with a gross raspberry and trust me, they hate it so much-

- He also likes to trolls his brother with the ever sophisticated "jebaited". It occurs at random moments when Wine gets a text, thinking Coffee is going to be nice to him only to see that, cue a very frustrated screech.

- If Wine had been a little overbearing, Coffee will come home and head for his brothers bed first, sparing nothing, not even the pillows as he rolls around in them. This is because Wine is a bit of a neat freak and doesn't like it when people lay in his bed before changing their clothes. Oh, Coffee is already in glee at just hearing the tired sigh in his brothers voice.

[olivetreehugger]

SnK Scouts/Veterans as Health Care Workers

Note: features Eren, Mikasa, Armin, Jean, Connie, Sasha, Levi, Erwin and Hange. A part two to my “SnK Warriors as HCWs” post found here. warning: mentions of blood, trauma, gore (it’s healthcare). Also, I know Hange is nb, I headcanon them as female, so I will be using she/her pronouns. 

Eren: this boy is definitely too involved in everything and has too many people depending on him at once to not be a nurse. The kid barely passed the NCLEX but that didn’t stop him from applying to every trauma center within a 25 mile radius of him. He got hired as a night shift trauma ICU nurse  and he frequently picks up shifts in the ER. He wears the cheapest scrubs he can find, often stained with ink in the pockets area. He isn’t a shitty nurse per se but there are tasks that still need to be done at the end of his shift and he gives a crappy report that’s missing too many details. Nurses hate picking up his patients, it’s always a mess. His charting is really spotty and he gets called into the manager’s office all the time to fix it. 

Still, he tries really hard to improve his time management and skills. He wants to be like his friends Mikasa and Reiner, who are the best nurses he knows. He wants to be involved in the traumatic cases and emergencies because he wants to learn as much as he possibly can. He’s really good at wound care, for some reason (hint hint). He’s kinda cocky sometimes too, which can be troublesome when Dr. Galliard is working. People know to steer clear of those two when they’re both  in the ER. Also, Eren always has a black cloud around him; whenever he works it’s gonna be a hella busy day in the hospital. Lots of emergency surgeries, intubations, codes and deaths. He’ll always jump in to help you if your patient is crashing, though, no matter how busy he is. 

Mikasa: she’s a prodigy. She was a straight ‘A’ student in nursing school, got a perfect 75 on the NCLEX and was immediately hired to the trauma ICU after doing a short internship there. She worked night shift for a year but her sleep schedule was so so fucked she started having night terrors, so she switched to day shift. Eren still calls her a traitor for it :/. She keeps trying to get him to switch over but he just hisses at her and threatens to chug a case of Monster energy drinks. She hasn’t given upon him yet, though.

This girl’s work ethic is beyond measure. She comes in exactly at 6:30 am, looks up her patients, takes report, gives a great update to the doctors when they round, and provides impeccable care to her patients. She knows exactly which treatments the doctors will order before they even speak. She’s incredible at inserting IVs--everyone in the hospital knows Mikasa Ackerman can put an 18g in a 90  yr old lady’s arm AND get blood return (just trust me, it’s flipping impossible). She has great skill when it comes to emergency situations and is a big believer in team work. If she notices your patient’s crashing and you don’t know what to do, she’ll calmly coach you and save your patient, too. All before lunch time. 

It doesn’t take Mikasa long to be promoted to charge nurse. When she’s in charge all the reports, paperwork and audits are completed before shift change. She divides the patient assignments really well and is very fair to the new grads. All around she’s an incredible nurse and leader on her unit, but don’t be fooled. If it’s been a rough day, Mikasa will get in her car and sob so loud her throat goes raw. A lot of people depend on her and working in a trauma ICU is really, really demanding. A lot of patients are demanding, rude and busy. She has a lot of trouble with stress management and is thinking of cutting her hours down so she can catch a break. Someone please hug her <3

Armin: for some reason my brain is just SCREAMING respiratory therapist. Like, I imagine this beautiful blond boy in gray scrubs (the color for RT’s in my hospital) going around helping intubate patients, giving nebulizer treatments and doing blood gases. I can just see him huffing and puffing when the attending doctor is overzealous about weaning vent support. -“Why are we changing the patient to pressure support? do you see how tachypneic he is on volume control?”

-“are you gonna put in the order? if not, your patient’s gonna be on PRVC all day, I’m not changing it without an order”

-“Doc, the patient looks like crap and their blood gas looks like death...oh, you still wanna extubate? ok, well I’m gonna leave the ventilator in here just in case. better yet, let me call a pastor in here, too.”

This kid is sassy af and he knows it. He’s smart af too, knows everything there is to know about the lungs and respiratory care. Knows every ventilator mode better than most doctors. Will certainly tell a resident off for ordering the wrong type of inhaler for a patient. He’s so damn intelligent that he even made the ice queen Annie melt like a popsicle. 

 He has no chill when it comes to his patients and even less chill (like -4078875874670) when a doctor gets in his way. For this reason, Armin has recently been toying with the idea of going to PA school so he can have a little more autonomy. He works al over the hospital, usually frequenting the trauma, CV, and medical ICU. The nurses there love him. 

Jean: Jeannie boy. Baby. Sweetie. He’s also a nurse. He is strictly dayshift and trauma. When he first started, he thought he’d do a year in the ICU and then go to CRNA school. He didn’t want to be around sickly patients with hopes and dreams and fears--it was too icky for him. But, over time, he learned that he LOVED trauma. Jean loves the controlled chaos that comes with the ugly, bloody messes that roll in through the ICU’s doors. He always gears up for trauma season (summer time) by bringing Dunkin Donuts iced coffee for everyone on the unit (day and night shift because he’s a supportive king). He gets really good at dealing with arrogant trauma residents and ortho docs who think they’re hot shit. When Jean sees a resident yelling at a nurse, he jumps in and threatens to have their license revoked. He will dig under their skin and page them incessantly throughout the day, too, just to get back at them. Jean is not a fan of lateral violence in the workplace, no sir. 

He always, always makes sure every room is stocked and new bags are hanging for the next shift. He has a thing where if things aren’t properly organized on the unit his brain just spazzes. He’s on the unit council and education committee because he also loves to teach the new grads. He also doubles as charge nurse, when management can’t be there (there can be one or more charge nurses amongst the staff, they usually work different days, though) He and Mikasa work so well together, teaming up to get tasks done, coding patients, running them down to get scanned, etc. People joke they’re the mom and dad of the unit. It makes them both blush <3 (Eren doesn’t like it, lol)

Jean loves to see patients healing from horrendous injuries, he’s constantly cracking jokes with the awake patients to try to make them feel better, and he’s really good at calming anxious family members down. Our boy just makes such good connections with people. He’s the guy you call when your confused patient is one second away from ripping his breathing tube out. He can convince the most restless, agitated patient to chill out. He’s got the voice for it. Also people love his mullet. It looks great. 

Connie: I really didn’t know at first but I feel like Connie would make a great physical therapist. He’s got great energy, he’s funny and I could see him dancing to Earth, Wind & Fire in front of his patients to hype them up for therapy. He’d be very sweet with them 

Sasha: I’m sick and tired of the food jokes, quite honestly. She’s more than that. In my mind, she’s an occupational therapist, helping disabled patients learn to feed, dress and clean themselves again. She works directly with Connie as they round on all their patients in the hospital, they make a great team!  She’s extremely patient and would make a very good nurse, but is unsure of where life is taking her. That is until she meets Niccolo the dietician in the cafeteria, and she falls hard. He encourages her to follow her heart and she does!  

Levi: Hm. This one stumped me. Levi is a bit...cold. It’s not like he has incredible social skills. He’s meticulous and focused and kinda mean? He reminds me of an anesthesiologist, tbh. Like he’ll sedate the shit outta you for surgery, makes sure you don’t die on the table, and then drops you off to the unit as fast as he can. He never takes off his mask while in the hospital and he scrubs maybe four times before surgery. He is very good at medication calculations and knows everything about nerve blocks, intubation, pain medication and sedation. He can look at a person and just KNOW what kind of sedative to give and how much. Your blood pressure will never bottom out while he’s there, he’ll warn the surgeon and immediately get that norepinephrine started.

 If Zeke is the one operating, Levi is on his ass to finish up the surgery ASAP and to not linger, because Zeke takes his time and ignores the tele monitor alarming in the background. After surgery, this 5′2 demon will scream at the 6′ resident about the importance of blood pressure management and sedation in neurosurgical patients. Levi plays no games and he also just really hates Zeke lol

He seems like a jerk but genuinely cares about getting his peeps through surgery. His favorite surgeon to work with is Hange Zoe, because she’s brilliant and fast, but also cognizant of her patient’s hemodynamics. Levi likes taking trauma cases as long as it’s with her. When he drops a patient off to the trauma ICU or goes there to intubate, he makes sure Jean or Mikasa are there because he knows everything is gonna go smoothly. He trusts them a lot. He likes Armin, too and even let him intubate a few times. On his breaks, he’s drinking tea and reading a Williams & Sonoma catalog or scrolling through cleaning Tik Tok lol.

Erwin: This man. This beautiful and hunky beefcake. Omg. I HC him as someone who went to nursing school, became a charge nurse on the trauma unit back in the early 2000′s and fell in love with it. Erwin would eventually fall in love with leadership and educating, too. He went back to school and earned his Doctorate of Nursing Practice (a practice doctorate). He managed the trauma unit for ten years before his brilliant leadership skills and wicked smart brain got him elected as the Director of Trauma Surgery recently. He is the first person with a nursing degree and DNP to ever accomplish this, so it’s very controversial. A lot of toxic doctors threaten to leave the hospital for this (because they’re assholes), but Erwin threatens to fire them in response and it usually shuts them up. 

He often holds lectures in the hospital auditorium. With a mind and voice like his, people are so drawn in by him. He advocates for nursing staff, for reimbursement when continuing their education, better staffing, parking, etc. He makes nice with doctors and gets them to sign petitions for the nurses to get these things. He’s a bit manipulative He’s also a fantastic manager and director, he’s really good at negotiating things. The nurses and residents all love him because he rounds on every ICU frequently, brings food, and asks them how he can help. He can be a bit daunting because of his height and deep voice but once he starts talking to you, you just get sucked in. All around an absolute king. 

Hange: This character reminds me of a trauma surgeon and intensivist (ICU doctor) we have, Dr. Omi. A great surgeon, really really smart, but takes absolutely NO bullshit. She will yell at you if you freeze during intubating. She wants you to recite every step before you take it, otherwise she’ll take the tube from you and do it herself. In surgery, she’s the same way. She wants you to learn, but by her standards. If she asks a question, you better know the answer or fess up right away, she doesn’t like the “uhms” of uncertainty as you try to search for a shitty response. Either you know it or you don’t. And if you don’t, she’ll teach you. Yeah she can be rough around the edges, but she’s got a big heart. She loves her trauma team. She buys them breakfast and gives them funny personalized gifts. One time, she bought an apply tree for Mikasa and brought it to her car at the end of a shift. Mikasa forgot to plant it and it died in her backseat. Hange will sometimes ask, “Mikasa, how’s your apple tree growing?” and Mikasa will lie through her teeth. “It’s growing!” Fess up, Mikasa. Those google search apple trees are starting to look familiar.

All around Hange loves to work and teach. She is a wonderful trauma surgeon and has saved tons of lives.  

[kabira]

07 | trust issues

pairing — spider-man!vernon x ofc

featuring — joshua, yeji (itzy), felix (skz), yangyang (nct)

word count — 3k

genres — spider-man au, marvel au, fluff, action, angst, humor

warnings — violence

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Vernon swung over the busy street that led towards Central Park, disgruntled by the surprise subunit. Nova flew alongside him, just a few feet before him—he could probably fly a lot faster, but Vernon knew he was flying this close to him purposefully, letting him know that Nova would always be faster than Spider-Man.

God, the little things about this kid irritated him even more than the big stuff.

He spotted Shocker through the trees, the lining of his suit glinting like gold in the afternoon sunlight. The villain raised his gauntlets and slammed them into the ground with a yell, making it vibrate with the frequency of his sonic blasts. Vernon flipped in mid-air, perching on the branch of a tree out of his blast radius.

“So what’s the sitch?” Yangyang asked, hovering next to him, and Vernon cast a glance around. Terrorizing civilians seemed like a bit of a stretch since there weren’t really many civilians around, and those that were had managed to find a place that was protected from the blasts. The cops had been driven back by the blasts, and the few shots they took were easily deflected by the energy discharges.

The ground shook with every hit, but since Shocker was on hard-packed earth instead of concrete, most of the force was absorbed. The terrain was cracked in places, deep trenches left in the dry ground from the explosions. The few people in the area had been driven up the bridge, but Vernon didn’t like their chances—Shocker might not have intended to hurt them, but he was getting dangerously close. One misdirected blast was all it would take to topple the side holding up the bridge.

“Stay out of range of the vibro-shock gauntlets,” Vernon told him. It wasn’t the kind of crime that required their immediate, undivided attention, since Shocker didn’t seem to be doing any real damage, but who knew how long that mood would last? “They might look easy to dodge, but they’re actually pretty deadly and have a large discharge radius, so steer clear of them. Try to stay off the ground.”

“And the takedown?” Even though he wasn’t happy about being stuck with Nova on this mission, Vernon was still pleased to see that at least the guy was listening to him.

“I’ll web him up, hang him upside down from a tree or something,” Vernon replied. “You should fly up there first, distract him so I can get up close.”

“Why do that when I can just take him out with one blast?” Nova muttered, and Vernon shot him a dark look. “But I don’t want to get back to school that early, so we’ll do it your way. This guy sure looks like he could use some fun.”

Vernon pursed his lips, not feeling so sure. He wanted to say that it wasn’t like Shocker to behave so erratically, but that would probably just make him sound like an idiot—how was anyone supposed to know what normal behavior was for a criminal?

“Go,” he breathed, and Nova shot from his side like a rocket—a human rocket, as he often liked to describe himself. He was on Shocker in a second, zipping around him like an annoying, oversized fly, getting all up in his personal space and confusing him. Shocker’s face was covered, hiding his expressions, but from the rigid lines of his body Vernon could tell the guy was getting pissed. He took his chance, diving off the branch and executing a low swing worthy of Tarzan, kicking Shocker in the chest with both feet and sending him flying into a tree behind, which cracked and splintered under the blunt force.

“Oh, Herman, Herman,” he tutted, as Shocker righted himself with an angered yell. Vernon moved with the speed and grace of a—well, a spider, dodging a powerful blast from his gauntlets by executing a perfect helical flip. “Haven’t you learned the hard way that fighting back is only going to make it hurt worse?”

“Spider-Man!” Shocker yelled, booting up his gauntlets, which glowed like lamplights from the charge.

“Yes, of course, who else would it be?” he asked, webbing the overhead branches and pulling himself up to avoid the incoming blasts. “Did you really think I was going to leave you here all by yourself?”

“If you’re so smart, you should have known to stay out of my way!” Shocker said, sending a concentrated blast his way. Vernon rolled out of the way, coming up in a crouch.

“I didn’t say I was smart, you did,” he said, flipping back onto his feet. “What’s gotten into you, Herman? I didn’t take you to be the terrorizing type.” He avoided another blast by leaning far right. “Why are you doing this? For funsies?”

He had succeeded in drawing Shocker away from the bridge, but the clearing was too small for Shocker’s blast radius. Vernon couldn’t contain him within the safe zone for long. “Nova!” he yelled. “Get the civilians out of the way! I’ll handle this guy.”

Nova jerked his head into a nod, flying towards the bridge to evacuate the trapped people. Vernon’s spider sense tingled, but he was too late to react—a blast caught him in the chest, sending him flying into the underbrush. He coughed out the air in his lungs, and pushed himself to his feet. Ow, ow, ow.

“You should know better,” Shocker said. His gauntlets glowed again, and Vernon’s eyes widened under the mask as he raised them both towards him, the light as blinding as direct headlights.

Nova swooped in out of the air, snatching Shocker up like a bird snatching up a worm (or maybe that was a bad analogy).

“Boring!” Nova yelled, carrying Shocker higher up in the air, preparing for a good old drop to let gravity do the rest of the work. Shocker twisted, jamming his fists towards the boy’s chest and sending a shockwave through him. Nova cried out in surprise, going flying through the air in the opposite direction and ending up dropping Shocker, who righted himself by aiming a blast towards the ground at the right angle, giving himself enough of a boost to be able to land on his feet.

Not too helpful, though, because before he had a chance to celebrate the little victory, Spider-Man was upon him, webbing his fists to his chests in a cross like an empty-handed mummy, if wearing highly enhanced vibro-shock gauntlets counted as being empty-handed. Vernon webbed the nearest tree trunk, pulling himself and the incapacitated Shocker along with him by jerking at his webstrings.

“It isn’t like you to behave this way,” he said, pulling himself up to a branch. He webbed Shocker’s body, turning him in the air with the torsion of each pull, until he had him all wrapped up like a caterpillar like a cocoon, leaving only his head out. Vernon lowered himself upside-down to face the man, cocking his head inquisitively. “Aw, come on, you can tell me. I can keep a secret.”

“You’re blind, Spider-Man,” Shocker spat.

Nova reappeared next to him, scowling under the mask. “Come on, web-head,” he said. “Leave the information-extraction to the experts. Bad guys never tattle.”

“Oh, you don’t know about us,” Vernon said, shaking his head. “We go way back.” He leaned closer to Shocker. “Don’t we, Herman?” He chuckled. “Remember the first time I stopped you from robbing a bank? Good times, good times.”

Instead of answering, Shocker thrashed around in the web trap, which was pointless, of course. Vernon sighed, dropping to the ground upright, and looked up at the dangling man who was now writhing like fish bait on a hook.

“Guess you’re not in the mood to talk,” he said, keeping the note of disappointment in his voice. “Maybe the Big House will fix that for you.”

“The Big House?” Nova scoffed. “This guy barely belongs in a regular prison. How long did the fight take? Ten minutes?” He shook his head. “Are all your villains this lame?”

Vernon shot him a look that he obviously couldn’t see through his mask. “You haven’t seen a single good one yet,” he said. “My villains are dangerous.”

“Oh, yeah?” Nova barked out a laugh. “Like that one guy with a huge hot glue gun? What was his name, Trapman?”

“Trapster.”

Nova snorted. “Yeah. Real dangerous.”

Vernon rolled his eyes. “I’d like to see you handle being stuck to a wall with the same disgusting gunk that’s leaked down your pants,” he said. “It’s not always so much about danger as it is about being able to handle the grossness.”

Nova grinned, obviously not believing him. “Whatever you say.”

“I’m not messing around,” he said seriously. “Can you imagine doing a stakeout mission in the sewer, waiting for a truck-sized human-lizard hybrid to come out? Not everyone has that kind of patience and tolerance.”

“Yeah, because they don’t need to have it,” Nova said. “My villains aren’t geckos.”

Vernon gave up, waiting for the authorities to arrive and pick Shocker up instead of gracing him with an answer. Shocker had gone limp, but remained silent as stone. Vernon regarded him contemplatively, still unconvinced by the tough intimidation act.

Something was definitely up.

At the end of the team’s usual briefing in the Helicarrier that day, Vernon pulled Nick Fury aside. “Uh, Agent Fury, sir?” he asked in a low voice, casting a precarious glance at his teammates, who were in the middle of leaving. Yeji, last in the line, looked back at him questioningly, but he shook his head minutely. She raised an eyebrow, but left. “Can I ask you something?”

“Go ahead,” the agent said, in the process of shutting down the holographic display system. He looked up when Vernon didn’t answer. “What is it, Spider-Man?”

“This might sound like a stupid question,” he started hesitantly, “but do you know if Norman Osborn is secure?”

Fury gave him a searching look, movements slowing somewhat as he took in the question. “Of course,” he said. “Norman Osborn is nice and locked-up in the Raft.”

“And he hasn’t shown any…Goblin-y tendencies?”

Fury’s curious look intensified. “Not so far, no,” he said. “Look, kid, I’m only telling you this because you put him in there and deserve to know what’s happened to him, but I can’t release any sensitive details about his capture. Just enough that you can sleep tight at night knowing he isn’t breaking out anytime soon.”

“Thanks,” Vernon said half-heartedly. “But I just wanted to know if the OZ levels in his blood were—normal.”

“That’s what his scheduled test runs say,” he replied. “Parker, you don’t need to worry about him anymore. If there are any abnormalities, S.H.I.E.L.D. will take care of them. Rest easy.”

“And if he gets out?”

“Long shot.” Fury leaned against the table, frowning at him. “Kid, is there something you want to tell me?”

Vernon hesitated, thinking back to the Shocker incident. Herman Schultz’s behavior showed all the symptoms of a man under threat from a higher authority, and the last time he’d seen that happen was under Norman Osborn. Any irregularities were to be reported, since the city had only come back to normal recently after repeated attacks from multiple supervillains, but Vernon wasn’t sure if deviant behavior from a low-level criminal counted.

Plus, Fury had only just begun to hand him bigger responsibilities, and he didn’t want to destroy all that buildup by giving him a false lead as a result of Goblin-induced paranoia.

“Nope, just wondering,” he replied, pressing his lips into what he hoped was a believable smile. “You know, one of those things.”

The man gave him an unconvinced look, but let it go. Vernon turned back and exited the briefing room as casually as he could. The doors slid shut behind him as he stepped into the hallway, plunging him in a dimmed lighting. He exhaled, mind buzzing with thoughts.

“Norman Osborn, huh?”

Vernon turned, finding Felix leaning against the wall next to the door. He straightened as Vernon faced him. “Don’t tell me you honestly expected him to believe you,” he said, talking about Fury. “No person asks about their supervillains unless they’re worried about a comeback. What did you see?”

Vernon sighed, realizing there was no point in trying to hide his doubts from Felix. “Nothing substantial,” he answered, starting to walk down the corridor. Felix followed him. “Just some everyday robber acting out.”

“That Shocker guy you and Nova turned in today?” Felix asked, and Vernon nodded. “Why?”

“Scaring civilians for no reason…it’s just not like him,” Vernon said. “He does what he does for money, not just to strike fear into people’s hearts. Well, I guess that’s an added bonus at times,” he added, “but doing that without making money along the way doesn’t seem like something he would do.”

“So you think he was hired to take you out.”

“Not exactly…” Vernon turned the mask over in his hands, thinking. It was hard to put into words, but the sense of oncoming danger was there, like a very general, very muted version of his spider sense. The problem was, he didn’t know how to explain that to Felix. Not everyone understood how it worked. “He seemed kind of reluctant to kill me, too.”

Felix gave him an amused look. “You’re upset because a villain gave you the brush-off?”

“Very funny,” he said, but his heart wasn’t in it. “I kept thinking that was being threatened or something. Now, what for, I couldn’t say, but—”

“I get it. It’s like intuition,” Felix said, and Vernon nodded. “What does that have to do with Norman Osborn?”

“If you’ve seen him in his Goblin form, you’ve probably noticed that he can be very threatening,” he said. “But he couldn’t be behind this, because he’s in a maximum-security prison with zero contact with the outside world.”

“But you think he is.”

“I can’t think of anyone else who’d want to do this, since he’s been the only one who’s ever operated in this particular way. But I guess there’s no shortage of people who want to kill me.”

“So he’s tried to get small-time criminals to kill Spider-Man before,” Felix said. “Doesn’t sound to me like a good judge of strength.”

“To kill Vernon Parker, actually,” Vernon corrected. “He kind of…knows my identity.”

Felix frowned. “He unmasked you?”

Vernon stopped close to the end of the corridor, glancing back to see if there was anyone around, but the place was empty. Fury had probably taken a left. “Do you know how I became Spider-Man?” he asked Felix.

“Didn’t you get bitten by a radioactive spider?”

“It was an Oscorp experiment, bonding OZ to spider DNA,” Vernon said. “One of the test spiders escaped while I was touring the facility with my class, and bit me. The enhanced spider DNA bonded with mine, giving me powers. Except here’s the thing—Norman Osborn knew.”

“He did?”

“Him, and a couple of other scientists working on the OZ formula,” he said. “Figured it out by taking a sample of my blood while I was on watch in the hospital. He took the same formula and bonded it to his own DNA to enhance himself, but it messed with his brain.” Vernon studied a tiny web in the corner of the ceiling. Spiders, even up here in a S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier hundreds of feet in the air. “He told me all of this just moments before accidentally killing Harry. Turned himself in when he realized what he had done.”

“Oh.” There was a short, awkward pause. Felix came to stand beside him, following his gaze up to the tiny spiderweb in the corner. “I’m sorry.”

Vernon shook his head, turning away from the web. “It wasn’t your fault.”

They stood in silence for a few moments before Felix spoke up again. “Tell you what,” he said, making Vernon raise his eyebrows. “I’ll ask Yeji to look up both Shocker and that Rhino guy in the S.H.I.E.L.D. database. We’ll go over his record later, see if he has anything to do with Norman Osborn. If something comes up, we’ll report it to Fury. You don’t have that spider intuition for nothing.”

Vernon cracked a smile. “You mean my spider sense.”

“Same difference.” Felix smiled back, but it dropped from his face just as quickly. “Hey, I almost forgot to ask—did you tell that Joshua guy who you are?”

Vernon winced, sheepishly massaging the back of his neck. “Maybe,” he said, then added hastily, “But I was going to tell you soon.”

“Never mind that,” Felix muttered. “He figured out our identities already.”

“He told you that?” he asked, trying his hardest to suppress a smile.

“I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of protocol about it,” Felix said, “but I’m not sure. Plus, it’s one of those things you gotta deal with yourself, you know? I’m not great with the whole secret identity thing because Iceman is a public figure, but not that I’m some kind of undercover agent—” He shivered, which was a bit ironic, because Iceman and all. “You know being out could get me killed, right?”

“Because of your supervillains?”

“No, because mutant-haters.” He gave Vernon a meaningful look. “Like that girl Liz Allan in History.”

“Nah, that one’s all bark no bite,” Vernon said. “Besides, Josh isn’t going to tell anybody. He kept my Spider-Man secret for a year and still going strong.”

Felix looked at him curiously. “You trust him that much?”

“I’ve known him for years,” the brunet answered confidently. “I’d trust him with my life.”

“Well, if that’s what you think,” Felix said, “then that’s good enough for me.”

[k1ng-for-a-day]

Can you do fluff and nsfw headcanons the nurse x survivor s/o?i think sally deserves love.. thank you!

Good morning my beautiful demons. The king has finally arrived, and I like to say I’m VERY SORRY for the inactivity. Due to schooling, my motivation to create posts is AWFUL. So please stay patient! If I haven’t gone to your requests, then again I’m sorry.

(And also yes Sally needs more attention 🥺🥺)

(And sorry for this being so short. Again I’m having a huge lack of motivation. Either way thank you very much 💞💞)

The Nurse has arrived...

💊💉 Upon arrival to the realm, you made a quick realization that you were at the Crotus Penn Asylum. This was the worst place that you were put in due to the cathedral like building in front of you. Maybe it was due to the eerie feeling, but something or someone triggered terrible thoughts to your head. Syringes: These tiny little things made you feel nauseous every time it like you. Additionally it made you feel terrified each time one appeared near you. Hell, even when it’s on your hand you start to shriek! These small needles just made you curl up in fetal position, and weep on the floor. It was technically a phobia since it was that bad.

💊💉 Nevertheless you knew you what you had to do. Get generators done, attempt to hide, and escape without blood on your hands. That was all.

💊💉 When you finally reached your first generator, you quietly crouched down and walked towards it, attempting not to alert anyone. Once you reached it you decided to work on the wire portion of the machine since it was an immense hassle. You never enjoyed working these little strings of torment since they would always function improperly, or they would be inadequate. Additionally you despised the fact that it could possibly blow a fuse if you made the wrong plug in, use the incorrect wires, or simply have the incorrect tools for it. (However this only applied with the toolbox). Nevertheless your ambition got the better of you, and you persisted. You wanted to get this terrible gut feeling out of you, so you needed to complete this efficiently.

💊💉 Though you could feel the taste of an exit door holding you graciously, you accidentally put the incorrect wires together. As you stared for an hour or two, you shook your head in disbelief. Shit! They’re going to kill me! You thought for a brief moment, and you quickly went in hiding. You crouched down to a corner, and held onto your knees hoping the killer would just pass by you. The fear of something poking you at any instant grew immensely, and that uneasy gut feeling made you tremble weakly. Your fragile body being slashed at and picked up, your whole entire plan being frabricated in seconds; everything was seemingly ruined. But why did you have this hopeless feeling? There wasn’t anyone near you since there was no terror radius. Then again it could be Ghostface... You thought for a bit, but proceeded back to your Gen. and surprisingly it wasn’t kicked! You completed the generator in no time, and went running to the next one.

💊💉 The next generator you approached was with someone you knew, but never interacted too much with outside the trials. It was Meg: the athletic workaholic. She always loved to loop killers around, and annoy them somewhat. She’s always a bundle of joy during these types of circumstances, and tries to comfort other people. She’s also immensely competitive, yet plays fair. You always strived to be like her, but with her dedication and hard work it’s nearly impossible to make headway like she does. Nevertheless you crouched down next to her, and worked on a different portion of the Gen. This particular portion was the power supply. All you had to do was make sure the energy levels were all evenly dispersed, and if they weren’t you had to remove a piece and plug it in a different section. This was much more difficult to fail since it didn’t require experience with wires and such. It was just a simple “where does it go?” Type of deal. Unfortunately, Meg accidentally blew a fuse do to her sudden excitement. And even worse; you heard a terror radius. You didn’t know who it was in particular, but you were terrified needless to say. You quickly hid in a locker since it was the closest thing near you, even though you knew they would search it. You held onto your mouth, trying not to make a sound, and closed your eyes. You imagined that you were dancing in the middle of your room with your favorite song. The anxious feeling in your stomach was dissolving, but you still heard the terror radius coming closer, closer, and even closer... you started to cry softly, trying not to alert them, but it was too late.

💊💉 When you saw the killer, your eyes shot wide and tears ran down your cheeks. It was the nurse: the most terrifying killer you’ve ever met. You always heard rumors about the syringe she carries, and how aggressive she can be to other survivors. She’s so quick to her feet that she could easily pull you to the ground. It made you tremble immensely to the point you started to cry even more. You never really looked at her hand since you were afraid to encounter the weapon she would carry, but oddly enough she didn’t even take you. She just stared at you blankly, or you assumed she did, and simply patted your head. She realized how scared you were since you were either new to the place, or you had some sort of phobia. In attempt to make you feel a bit more happy, she picked up a flower that she found on the ground, and handed it to you. She then left you in your little closet, hoping that you would come out and feel much more stronger. And surprisingly you were more collected with yourself. You slowly went out of your locker, and walked back to your generator. It was kicked, but not insanely a lot. Just enough to motivate you to continue.

💊💉 And just like that you were finally finished! Now all you had to do was move on to the next generator. And you were done. And fortunately enough your team only needed one more Gen... Coincidentally it was near you, so course you ran towards it.

💊💉 While the nurse was distracted by the other survivors, slashing them one by one, you quickly worked on the wires, slowly placing them in the correct order. You were becoming use to the way everything was, I mean you were slightly new to the world of the entity.

💊💉 For a while you forgot how you ended up here, but that nurse you met reminded you of certain aspects: syringes, people with blurred faces, and a commotion in the halls. That was all you could gather from that meeting. It gave you a chill down your spine, even though now was not the time. You needed to concentrate on your goal, which was to finish the generator and leave. Luckily someone approached you with a soft smile, and that person was Adam. He seemed very nice and philosophical. He would always talk on and on about what he believed, what books he read, and his advice towards you. Sometimes it got to the point you would zone out and forget what you asked him. You could tell he was very intelligent, but his mouth was what led him to victory. Nevertheless you continued on your Gen until you heard a familiar noise... it was the nurse! She was coming straight towards Adam with her hatch saw!

💊💉 Weirdly enough you kept hearing people talk about her holding a syringe instead of a saw. Maybe it was to torment you since you were alarmed easily. But currently it made absolutely no sense why people would confuse such a dangerous object to something more painful like a saw. You shook your head in disbelief, and was about to finish the Gen, however you accidentally blew another fuse! Quickly and quiet you looked behind you, and crouched down near a corner. She was coming quickly and saw you right then and there. She simply stared at you again, and reached her hand out.

💊💉 “Dont be afraid dear child,” she spoke to you, “I won’t hurt you as long as you don’t hurt me.” Her voice seemed to be genuine, semi intangible, and monotone. You took a good look at her before reaching out your hand: she seemingly had a bag on her head for some odd reason. Additionally she had blood all over her white unform. Her blood was possibly due to the other victims she has come acrossed and attacked, but then again it could possibly from her past. You didn’t want to ask since you were terrified. Additionally she seemed very hesitant to actually take you with her. She wasn’t really to sure if she should’ve even picked you to take care of in the current situation. Either way she just hoped you got her message clear. She didn’t want to actually hurt you, she wanted to take you out alive. In response, you reached your hand out and touched her’s. It felt immensely cold, like an ice cube or even a glacier. She then pulled you up from your position, and led you back to your generator. She stood beside you, and let you work on the machine, hoping you would finish it soon enough. She then left you to complete it, and chased down other survivors as well.

💊💉 Once you finished your Gen, you ran to the exit and pulled the gate open as quickly as possible. Someone was near you as well, and that person was Zarina. She waited patiently for the door to open, and asked you a couple questions about your arrival. These questions being “how are you doing so far? Are you alright?” And other similar ones to make sure you were alright. She didn’t want you to be scared, but wanted you to relax for right now. She seemed nice to you, but you weren’t very sure of it. Again, you were still new to this realm, so you didn’t want to mess around too much. As the exit gate opens, you heard that same noise, and suddenly the nurse appeared again! She stood in front of you, holding her saw, ready to strike! But she didn’t... she just stood in front of you... “Be careful dear... others will be harsh...” she told you, somewhat unintangible. You nodded and was about to leave, but you turned back. “Thank you... very much..” you told her and left. For some odd reason you felt saddened for leaving her. It was strange..

💊💉 After you left, you remembered how you came here, but you could barely vision it. A hospital, an exit, patients galore. It all came back to you within seconds it seemed. Again you weren’t really sure of it too much. Nevertheless you wanted to see the nurse again, and talk to her. Even though it may seem difficult, she probably would actually talk to you but not so much. She barely has a tangible voice in general, so she probably would barely talk since it may hurt her.

💊💉 One day, you saw her again, and you tried to go up to her. However, unlike last time, she was much more harsher towards you. Instead of approaching you kindly, she chased you around, striking you or attempting to. This behavior made you immensely scared to the point you trembled to the ground. Then it hit you. Your memories, fears, and visions of that night... that one night that landed you here...

💊💉 From what you remember vaguely, there was a hospital you use to work at with many clients. Those patients were very needy, and forced you to do things for them. Those tasks were to give them more medicine every hour, everyday until they snap. This place felt like a living hell for you, especially since you had no idea why they wanted to be injected. It got to the point they labeled you as “Dr. Injector” in order to tease you. One day you stopped giving them their precious medicine, and explained to them that they were running out of samples. However, they believed that you were lying considering the fact that this was the most rich hospital in your state. They went after you, chasing you down the halls, ripping at your clothes, until suddenly you flew through the exit! Unfortunately it wasn’t what you had intended it to be. It was a void like substance, staring back at you with those saddened, terrified eyes. You then arrived at a new location, brimmed with fear.

💊💉 From that moment you started to cry, desperately trying to get up from where you were. Unfortunately she picked you up before you could escape, however she didn’t hook you. Instead she took you to a certain location and put you down. She patted your head gently, trying to reassure you. The other members of your team were completing generators, and here you were right next to the killer. She then began to speak, “I’m sorry... I had too...” she seemingly whispered, “the entity... was after me...”

💊💉 What basically happened was that the killers criticized her when she would spare new survivors, and try to act friendly. Once this rumor spread around, the entity started to get fed up with her bullshit, and forced her to kill ever single survivor. If she was unable to do so, he would take something precious from her, and burn it in a fire. He would then use her as a puppet or decoration for a new killed. You satred at her in disbelief, and hugged her gently. This was terrible: having to be forced into killing others just because of your friendly nature? It was unimaginable. She stared at you, with what you can assume a melancholy glint, and hit you softly. You instantly fell on the ground, and were hooked. You closed your eyes and let the entity sacrifice you...

💊💉 Once you were back at the lobby, you cried silently away from everyone. You really wanted to see her again, but it would be immensely difficult. Luckily the match was finally over, and all the killers might’ve been talking with each other. You slowly went over to the killer area, sneaking past several security type things, and entered the area. You slowly tried to find the nurse, but you were met with other killers instead. The first one you recognized was Ghostface, but he was talking with someone that you saw as well. Another survivor here? Is this normal..? Next you saw Michael talking with another killer, and then you saw her. The nurse all by herself, sighing in relief. You quickly ran up to her, trying not to get caught, and wanted to jump out to hug her. However, someone already caught you...

💊💉 The entity caught you in the act, and tried to drag you away from her! You tried to remove yourself from him, but it was no use! You kept being pulled back into your lobby, and you were immensely weakened! You could barely even stand!

💊💉 Once you realized your circumstance, you held onto your knees and started to cry. You knew it was no use in seeing her. It was unfortunate how you could never seen her again. Maybe not even in another match..

💊💉 The next day you heard someone or something enter the lobby. They were immensely quiet, but you recongnized the noise. It was her.. next to you... alone...

💊💉 “Hello my dear...” she whispered, “I’m sorry for not coming towards you...” she apologized, and you hugged her in response. You wanted to make sure she felt okay, comfortable, and happy. You told her about a vision you had the other day, and she sighed. It was similar to her story as well.

💊💉 Basically she moved into a small town with her husband, smiling hand in hand. However he unfortunately died, and she was alone. With no other way to sustain herself, she had to work at the Crotus Penn Asylum, which was filled with patients that verbally, physically, and even mentally abused her. One day she just snapped and killed them all. Their blood was all over the walls, the beds, and simply everywhere you looked. She went insane.

💊💉 You held her hand gently and tried to reassure her. You told her that Andrew’s death wasn’t her fault, and that she would be alright. You both ended up cuddling against each other until the next day. You were finally happy, and had someone with you to keep you comfortable. To keep you as safe as possible.

[dragonindigo245]

Another Sanders Sides Monster AU

Patton Canis

Patton was originally a human before he was bitten by a rabid dog.

Or at least he thought it was.

Now Patton be a werewolf.

He appears human normally but on a full moon he becomes a white wolf with bright blue eyes.

None of that stuff where you can see their werewolves in their human form. Makes Patton harder to hunt.

His hair is actually dog fur now though, it looks like human hair but feels like petting a dog.

Pat does like to be pat.

When he becomes a wolf he can only suggest doing things. Otherwise the wolf part is in full control. Begging does nothing.

Patton doesn’t tend to remember much during full moons but he does get dreams about being the wolf.

He’s extremely afraid of big dogs. He doesn’t mind small dogs though and will cuddle them.

One time when he was a werewolf the wolf actually communicated with a few dogs. Turns out dogs are by far smarter than humans.

Patton barely remembers it and couldn’t go into full detail about why they were.

He was coincidentally allergic to silver before being bitten. The silver adjustment wasn’t to bad.

Patton is now allergic to chocolate and grapes like a dog is. He mourns not being able to have real chocolate in his cookies.

In wolf form he did try dog food. Horrible but not as bad as you would think. It was mostly the aftertaste.

Patton can growl and do other dog noises if he chooses but can’t understand dogs in his human form.

So he doesn’t really do that.

Logan Silver

Logan died on October 19th, 2016.

Don’t ask him how he died. He goes quiet until the subject is changed.

He was risen from the dead as a zombie because yes.

Well that was the reason at first.

He later found out Emile summoned him on accident.

So Logan tried to live a normal ish life again. He was thankfully guided by Emile and Remy back to it.

It didn’t take much adjusting however due to dying only 3 years ago. Society hadn’t changed that much.

Logan has dead white eyes and is covered in stitches, otherwise he is pretty much like a normal human.

Oh and he can dismantle and regenerate himself. There’s that.

He will sometimes play fetch with Patton in his wolf form to keep him from running off and killing things. Fetch as in throwing his arm and Patton biting the crap out of it.

Logan is extremely smart and was originally an detective. When he died though he was lost to the world. Now he studies anatomy.

He often has to bandage wounds for everyone. He doesn’t mind.

Logan goes stargazing with all the sides frequently.

Roman Gryphon

Roman is a harpie who was raised by human parents after he was shot in the wing as a child.

Roman is terrified of the sound of fireworks due to this, he does like watching them with noise canceling headphones though.

His parents are both male because we need a dose of even more gayness.

It was really a coincidence that Roman ended up Bisexual.

Roman was homeschooled to prevent any further harm to him so he ended up creating a Discord server where he met people instead of meeting kids at a school.

The humans on the server didn’t believe he was a monster so he took a picture showing his wings and talons. There the other monsters DMed him, freaking out about how they weren’t the only ones.

He created another server specifically for the other monsters. There was only 8 members on there but still. They talked and stuff.

More on that later too.

Roman really wants to be an actor but is unable to pursue it due to his wings.

He just sticks to preforming in his prince outfit in his room. His favorite skit currently is playing Prince Neeven in The Princess and the Frog.

His favorite Disney movie is Aladdin though.

We don’t talk about the sequel though. He gets passionate about it.

Virgil Nimbus

Virgil has been around since the end of the Dark Ages.

He got bitten by a vampire and barely managed to escape with his life.

When his teeth and nails grew sharp he locked himself in a room held together by silver.

There he developed his powers for many centuries. He can become a wolf but besides changing his shape he can fly, regenerate, lift things three times his size, and another power to be mentioned later.

He has developed a way of feeding off of himself but it hurts tremendously as well as taking time.

He has to cut himself and let the blood drain off of him so his heart can replace the blood, and then drink the old blood. So yeah, not pleasant at all.

He would often go days without eating cause of this.

On his birthday (December 19th) of 2001 he was found and immediately killed all 10 of his rescuers out of hunger.

Seeing as how it was his first kills, it messed him up mentally.

His other power comes from feeding off of others. If he bites someone, as long as his fangs are in them, they feel calm and become unable to move. A lot like a spider.

Deceit found him curled on himself and they ended up getting into a fight because Virgil attacked him.

Deceit pinned him easily after he noticed Virgil was really small and weak.

Virgil ended up learning how the human language developed from Deceit as well as modern technology.

Virgil also learned only human like blood can feed him so he still uses his old methods.

He eventually met everyone on Romans discord server and he’s the only one who hasn’t seen the others face to face.

Vines are his favorite thing ever. He’s disappointed it died.

He’s actually the most up to date with memes despite being centuries old.

He has been “adopted” by Patton on Discord. He is surprising okay with this.

Deceit Malpolon

Deceit was born a naga. He has the lower half of a snake and an upper half of a human.

He is actually gender fluid and will bite you if you refuse to use his correct pronouns for the day.

Which would hurt cause he’s venomous.

He can also hypnotize people who stare into his eyes.

He was visiting Germany and came across Virgil. He was stow away and had a much harder time bringing Virgil back with him.

Thankfully he could speak fluent German and semi understand Virgil even if his speech was outdated.

He was hurt pretty badly a bit after the trip back. His hands were crippled for some time and he lost some scales around the left of his face.

This was by a hunter who was honestly stupid for wanting to hunt him. It was more of torture for Deceit.

Virgil did kill the hunter before he decided to shoot Deceit. Afterwards Deceit would attack any human that tried to get within a mile radius of where they lived.

Deceit is actually really protective of Virgil and hardly lets him leave the house alone. They only leave when Virgil goes out hunting really. Virgil doesn’t mind most of the time but it leads to complications.

Deceit won’t admit he gets separation anxiety.

Remus visits them every now and then but he’s not allowed near Virgil because he will eat Virgil as discovered.

Deceit is a pathological liar. He loves lying despite how much it seems wrong. He has to resist the temptation and it can get hard for him.

What he can’t control is the urge to chew everything. If he gets anxious or upset he has to clamp down on something.

His hands are full of bite marks and he has holes in all his sleeves. He has plastic shapes he should bite on but he doesn’t carry them around.

Another anxious habit is coiling around himself over and over until he manages to painfully knot himself.

Deceit owns little necklaces that have a tablet on them and give the days pronouns.

I’m calling Deceit a “he” for now cause I’m used to it and they can’t determine their gender out of the fic.

Remus

Oh no we reached Trash Goblin who isn’t actually a goblin.

That would be a funny alternative to what he actually is though. XD

He’s actually a wendigo in the skin of a human.

He kinda created his own body.

He started hanging around humans way to much and developed a personality besides whatever an “endless hunger” personality is.

He often chews on stuff to keep the edge off his hunger.

He owns dog chew toys and chews on those too. His favorite thing to chew on besides bones.

So he’s doing better than Dee.

Despite his... exhilarating personality... he’s actually very tactical. He picks humans to kill very carefully and waits until their guard is lowered, most of the time when their sleeping.

Though he wakes them up on “accident” so he can see the terror in their eyes.

Yeah he’s a sadist.

That’s pretty much expected.

He was on the Discord server once and people immediately assumed he was Romans brother. Now it’s a huge joke because Roman hates it.

Remus is aro despite his sexual remarks.

He also eats small rodents for the heck of it.

One time he presented Logan the head of someone and Remus immediately claimed him as his favorite when Logan asked if he could keep it.

Remus hasn’t tried to eat Roman or Logan but has attempted eating Patton and Virgil. If he met Remy or Emile he would most certainly try to eat them.

He only goes after the more human like ones.

Emile Picanii

Emile is around 26 and is a trans male.

Emile is a couples therapist as usual but has taken up trying to do therapy for the monsters.

He has a spell book that he can use to make magic. That’s how he summoned Logan.

Most of the time he keeps it tucked away in his jacket but rarely he will use it on patients discreetly.

He still asks for their permission but does it in a way he doesn’t sound like he’s asking.

So far his spells haven’t backfired except for the Logan incident.

Emile is on the Discord server and has his own channel to help the monsters on.

He has actually gotten Roman and Patton to come to a live therapy session that turned more into a hang out.

Logan has had a therapy session in voice chat but nothing more. Virgil has text ones while Remus and Remy don’t do any.

Emile tries to convince Remus to at least but he declines.

Emile got into cartoons from Roman because Emiles parents didn’t allow him to watch cartoons.

So now Emile has a Stich onesie among many other things Disney, SU, and anime.

However just because of all this doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his downs. He sometimes has depressive days and overworks himself often.

Thankfully he has a therapist as well because he can’t recommend seeing a therapist without taking his advice.

He’s getting a lot better too!

He has naturally pink hair for some reason. He likes to dye it streaks of blue to match.

Remy

Remy is a sleep paralysis demon. He gives people nightmares that lead to sleep paralysis.

He doesn’t exactly care tooooo much but occasionally gives sleep paralysis to people when he’s not sleeping or drinking coffee.

He can enter dreams if he wishes to but doesn’t really do that.

His eyes are light sensitive so he typically wears sun glasses.

He also has narcolepsy and people tend to fall asleep around him. It’s a weird thing where nobody can stay awake.

He still tries to be awake though.

His coffee is always from Starbucks with the seasonal flavors or caramel.

(I’m really tired writing this so that’s funny.)

Remy is a part of the server but already knows who each person is.

Remy owns an black barn owl named Roast, a reference to coffee.

He met Emile before any of this and grew to be good friends with him.

They drink Starbucks together and ‘gossip’ (Emile doesn’t really gossip but they talk about celebrities and stuff)

So this is the monster AU for Halloween! Will probably write something with these bois. Happy Halloween!

(Also I tried to make the last names unique from the typical ones okay bye)

[lyricwritesprose]

My New Who Fic Masterpost For Those Stuck At Home

More fic to take peoples minds off things.  After all, the only things I can do at this point are (a) wash my hands, and (b) entertain.  Please consider reblogging rather than just liking, so that more people will see the post.  And please feel free to comment on AO3 no matter how old the fic is.  Comments feed my ego let me know how a fic works, and they’re also tremendously encouraging.  If you want to know which ones I think are best, I’d pick “Dragons of the Mind,” “Practical Mythology,” and the duology of “They Say” and “Invisible Road.”  But I’m not great at judging my own stuff, so.

Doctorless Doctor Who Stories I think these fit into New Who because they feature some New Who species.  However, they don’t feature the Doctor, and the companion they include is a classic companion.

“They Say” A slave tells a disobedient prince about a planet that eats armies.  Somewhat experimental narration. “Invisible Road” The prince makes his way to the Dark World to save his sibling.  Somewhat experimental narration.

Ninth Doctor Stories

“Homefall” After the Doctor burns Gallifrey, the TARDIS looks for someone who can persuade him to stay alive.  Jossed by later events.  Angsty. “Sense Memory” Rose should try to sleep off the drug.  She doesn’t want to.  Emotional hurt-comfort, mental violence warning for attempted brainwashing. “And Anon Stands For Memory” Outsider POV fic that I wrote when I was still somewhat finding my feet in fic writing.  Basically, the Doctor meets an OC from a world he saved way back in the classic series. “Practical Mythology” Jack’s first night on the TARDIS, and the next morning.  Action/adventure fic with some angst and one of the huge reveal moments that I really love.  Borders on Outsider POV because Jack is new to the team.  Easily one of my most popular Who-fics. “Things of Great Worth” Lighter and fluffier sequel to “Practical Mythology.”  Team TARDIS attends a festival. “Of Strangers and Second Chances” After "Boom Town," Team TARDIS needs to find a place that will welcome an egg with no Family.  Outsider POV.

Tenth Doctor Stories

“Inspiration” Martha and the Doctor try to help with a plague, and Martha discovers something about the Doctor’s past.  Crossover with classic Who. “To Catch Us When We Fall” When traveling with Alonso, Jack gets into an unsurvivable predicament—which is a problem, because Jack will survive it anyway.  It’s a virtually impossible rescue, but Alonso isn’t as alone as he thinks.

Eleventh Doctor stories, Twelfth Doctor stories and others under the cut (there are a lot of them).

Eleventh Doctor Stories

“Dragons of the Mind” Crossover between new Who and classic Who.  In a dark, menacing landscape, Ace McShane tries to work out how she’s being played, and by whom.  Adventure, mental manipulation warning.  One of my more popular Eleventh Doctor stories, and also probably the longest. “Little Details” Rory’s first morning on the TARDIS.  Fluff. “Boxing Day” Wilfred Mott meets Eleven.  He isn’t happy about it.  Angst with a happy ending, containing many thoughts about regeneration. “Just Because” Rory doesn’t feel like he measures up.  The Doctor decides to do something nice for him.  Fluff. “Interleaving” A look at exactly what was up with Amy’s Aunt Sharon, somewhat more sympathetic than most fandom interpretations.  Effectively Outsider POV. “Faces” A look at regeneration, set soon after the ending of “The Big Bang.”  Jossed by later events. “Night Terrors” After the events of “The Doctor’s Wife,” Rory is having nightmares.  He talks to the Doctor about it.  Angst with a happy/hopeful ending. “Edge of Human” After the events of “Let’s Kill Hitler,” the Doctor visits River.  Doctor/River. “Sweet Sixteenth or Close Enough” Mels has a good time.  Rory experiences the joys of time-scrambled fatherhood.  Fluff.  Short-term Mels/Jeff. “First Time Flying” There’s a first time for everything, including leaping off very tall structures.  River-centric. “Goodbye” The Doctor visits a dying friend.  (Canonical) major character death, tissue warning. “Definitions of Victory” River has issues with losing.  The Doctor has his own doubts about winning.  But he also has a lot of experience in changing the game.  Doctor/River. “Cheek” River is one of the few people to learn Gallifreyan without being born there.  Linguistic musing disguised as a fic, with a joke at the end.  Offscreen Doctor/River. “In the Winter Woods” Team TARDIS plays around in the snow.  Christmas-y fluff. “Christmas Punch” After the events of “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe,” Rory has something important to say to the Doctor. “Freedom and Lies” The Doctor says incredibly disturbing things when he feels like he has to.  An attempt to make an out-of-character idea in character.  Warning for lots of sexual violence in the background of an original character. “Torpor” Vastra and Jenny and huddling for warmth, which isn’t quite as sexy when you have to do it to revive a reptile. “Disaster, Pizza (Comma Optional)” A cracky little crossover with the original Teen Titans show, centered around the fact that both feature aliens with weird taste buds. “A Problem of Background” The eleventh Doctor needs Martha Jones’s advice about a new companion.  Warning: the OC’s background is messed up.  Please mind the warnings.  This is one of the more serious pieces I’ve ever done for Doctor Who. “Always a Bit Left Over” The popcorn button on the TARDIS microwave causes all corn within a two mile radius to violently explode.  Inspired by a tumblr post.

Twelfth Doctor Stories

“Someone Else’s Promised Land” The Doctor promised he would do something amazing in honor of Gretchen Allison Carlyle. “Strange Creatures” Martha and Mickey are looking for an alien hiding at a university.  They find one.  Actually, they find more than one. “Flashpoint” History on the planet Enuan has gone wrong, and it's up to Bill and the Doctor to put it right.  But they're not the only time travelers here.  Crossover with classic Who.

Original Doctor Stories These came about when I was experimenting with the idea of a female Doctor, before Jodie Whittaker was cast. “Polarity Reversal” Unfinished and abandoned vignette that was more a writing experiment than anything else.  Features the same introduction story, once for a male Doctor, once for a female one. “The Lies of Garden” Unfinished and abandoned multi-chapter that began as a sixth Doctor fic and then suffered through me changing all the pronouns to see how it played out.  I think I taught myself some interesting things, and I like the story, but if I ever finish it it’ll probably be by making it into an original dystopia novel.  (Because this thing is about two hundred percent YA dystopia novel.) “Green Menace” Part one of a three-part story arc.  A regeneration story featuring an original male Doctor, a far-future companion, and a classic monster.  Warning: body horror, cliffhanger (continued in the next story, “Maze of Fears”). “Maze of Fears” Part two of a three-part story arc.  Immediately following the events of “Green Menace,” the original companion struggles to fix her mistake and figure out what’s real.  Warning: unreality, disorientation. “Two of Hearts” Part three of a three-part story arc.  A woman named Stella is working at a radio station in a city that seems a little—off.  And then she finds a playing card with a phone number on it, and a note: “The Doctor—call me when it goes odd.”  One classic monster, one New Who monster.

Sarah Jane Adventures

“Du Liebes Kind, Komm, Geh Mit Mir” Crossover with classic Who, slight crossover with new Who.  After she moves to America, Maria Jackson meets young Sarah Jane and gets caught up in an adventure with the Fourth Doctor.  Warning: Mental Manipulation.

[nour386]

Ballad of the Past

My gift to @lyeox for the @pinesconessecrets 2019 event! I apologise for the wait. I hoe you enjoy your youtuber au.

(also on ao3!)

“It’s so beautiful.” Dipper’s fingers trembled as they neared the golden plaque. “If I were to die right now, I would have no regrets.”

“Hey! No dying yet. You still owe me dinner.” Wirt placed his hands on his hips. 

The pair stood in Dipper’s bedroom, hastily cleaned for their impromptu recording. Dipper had just received his 1 million subscriber award. The golden plaque had arrived that very morning, and every person and cryptid within a 3 mile radius was made well aware of its delivery. But in this present moment, Dipper was hoping to let his fans know how grateful he was for their help in reaching this milestone.

Dipper pressed his finger to his lips. “Hush, I’m celebrating.”

“This is what I have to deal with.” Wirt said. He turned to the camera at the foot of the bed and pointed to his boyfriend, who had started to weep over the golden plaque.

“I’d like to thank the academy,” Dipper sobbed.

“Okay, we’re going to cut recording for now. Dipper needs some time,” Wirt said. “See you guys in a few minutes. Or an hour if his uncle sees the gold plaque and tries to pawn it off.”

Wirt clicked off the recording and turned to his boyfriend. “Are you feeling okay?” “Yeah, yeah, I just need a second.” Dipper wiped his eyes.

“Oh my gosh, I thought you were just being dramatic.” Wirt withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket. He gently pressed it against Dipper’s cheek, wiping away his tears. 

“I’m fine.  No, really.” Dipper took the handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “I haven’t been able to cry properly for years.” “Yeah…that doesn’t sound anywhere near the definition of fine.” Wirt crossed his arms.

“Don’t get your antlers in a twist.” Dipper punched Wirt’s arm. 

“Rude!” Wirt gasped.

“Says the man who speaks in demonic tongues when he stubs his toe.” Dipper stuck out his tongue.

 Wirt stomped his foot. “Your cabinet is made of redwood! It hurts!”

“Well, good to know what the biggest weakness of a tree demon is.” Dipper rolled his eyes.

“I refuse to be insulted this way,” Wirt said.

“How would you prefer to be insulted then?” Dipper smirked.

“Not at all. Thank you very much.” Wirt sat down heavily on the bed, making Dipper jump.

“Guess these are sticks in the mud then.” Dipper tugged at Wirt’s antlers.

“That tears it.”

Wirt tackled Dipper onto the mattress. He mercilessly tickled the other boy, smirking wickedly as Dipper begged for mercy between giggles. Dipper tried to fight back, but Wirt was wiggly, like a palm in a hurricane.

“Uncle! Uncle!” Dipper cried between giggles.

Wirt stopped his assault, giving his boyfriend a chance to catch his breath. Dipper took  this moment to attack Wirt back. Reaching under his boyfriend's arm and tickling his sides. 

“That isn’t fair!” Wirt gasped. “You gave up.” “All’s fair in love and war,” Dipper grinned. He decided to grant Wirt some mercy and got off the bed. 

“That has to be illegal,” Wirt said after a few deep breaths.

“Under the Geneva Convention, probably, but in the Pines house hold it certainly isn’t.” Dipper stuck out his tongue.

“Ugh, my own boyfriend assaulting me in my time of need.” Wirt rolled over, turning his head away in faux disgust. “I knew I should have stayed in the forest.”

“Sour puss.” Dipper flicked Wirt’s ear before sitting back down onto the bed. 

He laid the plaque on his lap.  Inside the rectangular frame was the Youtube logo, a play button. Below were the words, warded to Cryptid Hunters Anonymous for passing 1,000,000 subscribers”. Not to mention the most important detail: it was entirely made of gold. Dipper gently ran his hand over it. The cool metal reflected his own teary eyed grin.

“So, do you have any plans for your big one mil commemorative video?” Wirt asked. He sat up and rested his chin on Dipper’s shoulder. “A special cryptid hunt? A behind the scenes tour?”

“Bleh, I’ve already shown my recording equipment. Although, I guess I could try an AMA for the multibear. He seemed to enjoy the interview last time.” Dipper furrowed his brow.

“What about unreleased hunts?” Wirt asked, wrapping his arms around Dipper’s waist.

“I already posted everything,” Dipper said. “Well...there is one. But, um...”

“Yes? What’s the problem? It can’t be the video, you’re a wonder on your laptop.” Wirt flourished his hand. “You colourised an old video that was dyed grey from those monochrome goblins.”

“It’s not that.  I did need to replace the camera after that one, though. And funnily enough, I also couldn't edit the footage whatsoever.” Dipper shrugged awkwardly. “I guess it’d be easier to show you. But you have to promise to not make fun of me.”

“Dipper, please. I would never. I’m a respectable tree monster.” Wirt nuzzled into Dipper’s neck. “Besides, I watched your earlier videos. I’ve seen you at your worst. How bad can  it be?”

Dipper brought his laptop to the bed. With a couple of clicks, he opened up the video he had hidden away from the public eye. He gave a heavy sigh as he sat back and cuddled up to Wirt.

“So, remember when we met up at that cafe on Fifth Street for the first time?” Dipper asked. “And how you said it was really lucky that I decided to sit next to you that day?”

“Yes, I remember Mabel waving to you from across the cafe and pushing us to spending the day together.” Wirt tapped his chin.

“It worked out, didn’t it?” Dipper grinned. “You even said yes to a date with me by the end of it.” 

“What could I say? You were adorable. Especially when you snuck looks at that script you wrote on a napkin,” Wirt teased. “Who even does that?”

“Someone worth dating, quite obviously.” Dipper raised his nose in pride.

“C’mon, start it up, Francis Ford Coppola.” Wirt nudged him with his elbow.

“Fine, fine.” Dipper reached forward and started up the video.

The screen was dim. A squelching noise came out of the laptop’s speakers as the image focused on the muddy ground. Leaves lay strewn all across the forest floor while Dipper detailed his goal for that day’s hunt. Mabel occasionally called out her opinions to ‘lessen the nerdiness,’ as she phrased it.

“It’s been raining really heavily for the past few days, so I decided to check out if this affect anything in the forest. I mean obviously it would, it’s not like rain was invented yesterday.”

He kept talking, leaves squelching underfoot as he walked.

“I know the gnomes are probably not too happy about this. They had an outdoor barbeque planned for today. They handed out invites and everything.” Dipper flashed a crudely drawn greeting card. It showed a crayon drawing of a short man with a pointy red hat and a white apron standing behind a smoking red barbeque. 

“But no one shows up to their barbeques!” Mabel’s distinctly cheerful could be heard behind the camera.

Dipper turned the camera to show his sister sticking out her tongue. “When the only thing on the menu is pinecone, roast pinecone, and pine cone steak, I doubt you’d have crowds flocking over.” 

“Maybe they’d have more people come if they didn’t kidnap people all the time,” Mabel teaseded. 

Dipper turned the camera around and continued his hike through the woods. He would occasionally stop to point out different tracks and markings he came across. Mabel would drop in a comment or two, often at her twin’s expense. After concluding that the venture was uneventful, the pair agreed to head back.

“Dipper, if it starts raining on me and my hair gets ruined. I will never forgive you,” Mabel said from off screen.

“Let me just check that next clearing.” 

“Fine, only because I know you need the exercise,” Mabel teased.

The camera was pointed at the clearing in question. It looked rather dark, much like the rest of the woods, thanks to the dark clouds above. As Dipper neared, a figure came into view, standing in the centre of the clearing.

“Hey, I see something over here!” Dipper cried, walking further into the clearing. 

Before him stood a wooden statue of a gnome no taller than his knee, including the hat. The statue’s face was caught half way through a scream of terror, mouth openwide, eyes half closed andarms raised defensively.

“Is it petrified?” Dipper tapped the statue with his finger. “It’s too detailed to be handmade.”

“Dipper, look out!” Mabel’s voice was distant.

Before he could realise what his sister meant, Dipper bumped into someone he hadn’t noticed. The camera fell to the ground, pointing upwards, showing a tall, shadowy figure with antlers that seemed to meld with the branches of the trees above. They stared Dipper down with shining eyes.

“Oh no, he’s hot,” Dipper muttered just before he was dragged out of shot. “Wait no the camera!”

“Camera later. Staying alive now!” Her voice faded out.

The creature looked down at the camera before the picture cut to black.

“And that was that,” Dipper said. He did jazz hands.

“That...oh, no.” Wirt rested his head in his hand. “Oh cheese and crackers. Please tell me I didn’t chase after you.”

“No, we got back to the Shack safely. The camera, on the other hand, showed up on our doorstep a week later, covered in oil with the SD card being the only thing still intact.” Dipper rubbed the back of his head. “This footage was kinda messed up, so I couldn’t really edit out that last comment at the end there. So I kinda shelved it.”

“Oh no. I can’t believe this is happening right now.” Wirt’s face was now completely buried in his hands. “Please just kill me now.” 

“Sorry, fresh out of holy water,” Dipper said. “So, um you wanna explain what was going on there?”

“Okay, so long story short, I was working off some steam and petrified a gnome in the woods.” Wirt had laid back on the bed.

“Wait, that was an actual gnome?” Dipper asked. “You just petrified someone?”

“He was a fairy dust dealer.” Wirt rolled his eyes. “It was a moral freebie.”

“Right.” Dipper didn’t sound convinced. “And why were you so peeved?” “Oh my gosh you would not believe.” Wirt sat up fingers rubbing his temples. “Alright so, the elves in the wood hold a poetry competition once every 5 years. So I enter, all wide-eyed and hopeful thinking that my poetry has a chance of making it in, right?” Dipper laid back, rolling his eyes at his boyfriend’s enthusiastic narration. A soft smile spread across his face as he leaned against Wirt.

Wirt started waving his arms as he spoke. “I walk up to the stage, my nerves making me feel sick after waiting 3 hours for my turn. I stand up with my ballad. I had spent months writing, re-writing, re-writing again and re-writing one more time for luck. Not to mention rehearsals. And then after sitting through the extravaganza of elvish poetry, which can last for days at a time, I leave the competition wish last place! The judges said my entry was ‘too short’.”

“What was an acceptable length? 2 weeks?” Dipper chuckled.

“Apparently! “ Wirt threw up his arms. “I thought for sure I would have scored higher than the one elf who just stood there and gave a failed improv routine. He didn’t even rhyme! Not even once! And he somehow left with third place.” 

Dipper leaned over and lightly pecked Wirt’s cheek. “I would have given you first place.”

“You’re my boyfriend. That would be cheating.”

“How about you read your poem to me and I’ll judge it,” Dipper said. 

“Interesting.” Wirt tapped his chin. “It would give me the opportunity to show off my prowess. Sure, why not. I’ll be back in a few.”

As he watched his boyfriend scurry out the door; Dipper smiled fondly. He grateful for that fateful day in the woods. And while he made himself comfortable in bed, he wondered if he could have poetry reading be his one million subscriber special. His fans were interested in his love life, so maybe a small preview wouldn’t hurt.

[jawnjendes]

i don’t know why | shawn mendes

university au a totally perfect summer babey, shawn x goth gf

AN: u know how life imitates art or vice versa???? yeah sometimes i hate that. anyway i thought i was gonna slow down with updates but i had one (1) free day before i move (tomorrow) so here is this do with her what you will

******let me know if you wanna be tagged in future chapters

masterlist | playlist

In the past, if there was ever a time I could trade 120°F weather for literally anything else, I would have taken it. I would have given anything to stay in Toronto over the summer if it meant I wouldn’t experience heat exhaustion from the moment I stepped outside. I would sell intense SoCal weather to Satan for a single cornchip.

It’s halfway through May, and I still wore a long sleeve and jeans when I went out. It rained sometimes, and when it didn’t, it was cloudy. I could appreciate the coziness that accompanied the weather, but for the time of year, it was also putting me into a weird headspace. I couldn’t shake the feeling of my body unconsciously waiting for sweltering, dry desert heat. I was supposed to be in shorts and a tanktop in my hometown, and Shawn was supposed to be there with me. We were both supposed to be facing the chaos that was my extended family.

On top of that, I was hating having to go to the dealership five times a week. That was all I had going for me now that school was out. I didn’t even work five days during the semester. I never worked in the summer at all in the last few years, and again, I was wearing sweaters in May.

On the bright side, Shawn went to his first therapy session, and it went well for him. Said he had a breakthrough, and ways to combat the night terrors, but he had more that night anyway. I had to time when his body would start twitching, and then wake him up 15 minutes prior. It worked well, and it brought some relief to us and our sleep. I was just glad he was finally doing something about all of this, even if he was still reluctant to talk to me about it.

Sometimes, we were on different wavelengths. Shawn was in the process of getting his perkiness back, and it showed when my pessimism was out and about. There was a balance of light and dark between us, and today Shawn had all of the light.

I decided to go barefaced today. I felt the need to not hide how tired and done I was with the world and its bullshit. My eyebrows were incredibly sparse, and the under eye bags were just a little sunken in. While I was eating solid food again, I was lacking in other nutrients, therefore I was still dropping weight. Why hide it, right?

Shawn just had to point out that I was not wearing makeup, and I just had to take it the wrong way.

“I can’t look pretty all the time,” I snapped.

“But you do look pretty all the time,” he replied, unfazed.

I rolled my eyes and turned away from the bathroom mirror. Shawn was standing next to me, putting product in his freshly washed hair when he noticed my body language.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I have nothing to complain about. I should be grateful.

I left the bathroom and went to change into my uniform. My company shirt needed a wash, but I made a mental note to douse myself in perfume before I left. I was also on my last pair of clean white leggings, which gave me another thing to do when I got home because Shawn doesn’t do laundry. He waits for his mom to come over and do everything for him.

He came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, in his white Sting t-shirt and black jeans. I don’t know why I envied the fact that his only uniform was a stupid apron. Or the fact that he actually looked forward to going to work.

“Okay,” he spoke firmly, “not that long ago, you were pushing me to talk, now it’s your turn. What’s wrong?”

I sighed, not wanting to destroy the last chances I had at pulling myself together before my shift. “It’s nothing. I’m totally happy to be here.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means exactly what I said.”

“Doesn’t sound like it.”

My skin was crawling with unreasonable annoyance. I wanted to yell at him, and for what? Was it his fault that my insides were the actual worst?

I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. Then I looked at him, and the underlying sadness started to creep in. “I just miss my parents… and California. I kinda wish I was there.”

Shawn’s eyebrows scrunched together. His tone was something I was not expecting in the slightest. “You don’t wanna live here?”

It didn’t take much to get me back to my angry state. “I didn’t say that,” I defensively argued. “I said I-”

He interrupted me. “No, no. You don’t wanna be here. You don’t wanna live with me. It makes sense, you’ve been moody this whole time!”

My eyes narrowed into a death glare. “What, am I not allowed to miss my hometown? Am I not supposed to be angry that my large intestine refused to cooperate and part of it had to be removed? Should I not be pissed off that I’m eating bland rice everyday?”

He looked more confused than angry. “I think you should be happy you made it, that you’re okay now.”

I scoffed. “I should be happy? I don’t get to go home until December! I don’t get to see my family this summer! It’s almost June and I’m wearing a fucking sweater!”

“Don’t you hate the desert?”

“You don’t understand!” I yelled. Well, I did it.

“What don’t I understand?” Shawn shot back, raising his own voice. “You hate living here, right? You want to leave, eh?”

“I never said that!” My fingers pulled at the hair on my scalp. “I’m pissed that this is how I ended up living with you! And I wasn’t ready to live with you to begin with! I’m pissed that I won’t get to see my family until the end of the year! And I’m pissed that I’m the one who almost died and you’re the one who’s traumatized!”

That definitely silenced him. Shawn's face fell in a way I had never seen before. My rage faltered a little bit, but not enough to take back anything I said. He asked what was wrong, and I told him. I was too impatient to wait for him to say something, so I grabbed my purse and my keys and I was out of the apartment in a flash.

~

Under normal circumstances, I was very good at keeping my personal problems under wraps for the sake of remaining poised and professional. A customer could yell at me and throw a tantrum, and I'd keep my face neutral and polite. When I ended things with Luca, I feigned composure so well that I was named employee of the month.

But no, a stupid fight with my boyfriend threatened my professional-but-mildly-bitchy reputation! I was able to be polite to customers, both over the phone and in person, but I was testy to any coworker that came within a five foot radius of my desk. The finance, sales, and parts managers all fell victim to my signature death stare at various points in the morning. I was honestly shocked I wasn't fired by lunch.

Shortly after my lunch break, Stacy made her departure, leaving me with Jason and Luca. I gave them the cold shoulder from the moment they entered the office, a signal for them to leave me the fuck alone. They obliged, but they still clowned around at the back of the office.

"Dude," Jason said in his stoned out drawl, "they should replace lube… with hand sanitizer."

Luca chuckled. "The fuck? What'd you smoke today?"

"Nah, dawg," he continued, "replace lotion, with IcyHot."

I had my back to them, so they didn't see the puzzled expression on my face. As if I haven't heard such crackheadery like this before. Sometimes it made me laugh, but obviously not today.

"Okay, I got one," Luca said between laughs. "Replaces pads… with aluminum foil."

"Replace tampons with paintbrushes."

"Or! Sticks of dynamite!"

There was only half a brain cell in this room, clearly. That half was taken by Jason, who had a customer come in asking for him. He left the office, giving Luca a smug look through the small window.

There were plenty of people still in the building. The other managers, sans Stacy, and the rest of the salesmen were running around doing boring business things. I wished I had things to do, like file repair orders in the filing closet that was nowhere near this office. Or add up more gas receipts… Or have a long, pointless conversation with a customer over the phone. I literally wished I could do anything to avoid the fact that I was alone with Luca for the first time in months.

Of course, he could never keep his mouth shut.

"So, did your boyfriend break up with you?" he asked in a teasing, childish tone.

I ignored him and pretended to be busy with car repair orders. I didn't even know how to read them most of the time.

"You know I helped Shawnie boy write a song," Luca went on.

My blood boiled remembering how badly Mercy was ruined for me. The real meaning behind the lyrics messed me up more than I liked to admit. I hadn't listened to that song in months because of him, apart from when Shawn would perform it. Still, spite kept my mouth shut.

"Answer me, you little whore," Luca deadpanned. "Thought we were cool."

No, I do not know where the logic is behind that. Luca's mind was unlike anything I've ever encountered, and I can't believe I used to find it so attractive and endearing. I used to take his degrading name calling as terms of endearment. Maybe it was in a twisted way. But that was then. Now, he couldn't even compare to the man I had now.

Luca grew impatient, and decided to approach my desk. He leaned against the surface, practically sitting on it, and his brown eyes burned a hole into the side of my head.

"That song was about you."

Brand new information!

"And I'm assuming you've heard it," he continued. "So you know how I really feel."

Finally, I huffed out a sigh and looked up at him. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you know it's true and it gets to you." He smirked, showing off dimples that I used to adore. He talked like this was some sort of challenge, and god knows he loved to challenge me.

"You're a lot of things," I said, "but you're not a liar. Why start now?"

"I'm not a liar. You just don't wanna believe that someone could love you."

I really did not know where to start with that. He never loved me because he frequently went to me when he was bored and horny. He never loved me because he didn't want the things I wanted, and instead of letting me go, he kept stringing me along. He knew I wouldn't leave.

I  scoffed and got to my feet, not wanting to be looked down on anymore. "You don't know that. You don't know anything about me."

Luca turned his whole body towards me. He was still smirking as he fixed the stupid RayBans perched on his nose. "If anyone's gonna know anything about you, it's me. I know you better than anyone here. I probably know you better than Shawn does. And you hate that, huh?"

He was the only person who wasn't intimidated by my death stare. He was the only person who made me powerless and small. And yeah, I really fucking hated that.

"Oh, so now you suddenly wanna admit that? Now I'm worth something to you?" I spat.

Whatever cockiness Luca had on suddenly faltered. He took a step back, ready to shut down, but I wasn't having it anymore.

"You had feelings, eh?" I asked, internally cursing the vernacular that planted itself into my vocabulary. "So where was all of that last year? Where was all of that when I was tearing myself apart to put you back together?"

"I never asked you to fix me," Luca said. "You just didn't want to fix yourself. I know I was just another person you didn't want to commit to in the long run."

"I wanted you to-" I tried to say, but he interrupted me.

"Oh, I bet you wanted me to be your boyfriend. But I know a crazy bitch when I see one. Doesn't look like anything's changed. Wonder how Shawn deals with you."

It felt like the glass bubble surrounding me was shattered with a sledgehammer. It felt like the wind was knocked out of me, or like my spirit had been forcibly removed from my body. My face was hot to the touch, and angry tears were threatening to come out of my eyes. Everything around me suddenly turned grey and went in slow motion. This feeling in my chest was dull and aching, and I wasn't sure how to deal with it.

Even when Jason entered the office again, I still felt like I was floating. Luca went back to his desk, and my body moved back into my chair. Memories of finishing up my shift were spotty. This darkness was awfully familiar.

I found myself wandering around Walmart after work. My legs felt numb, but they moved and worked like they should. My breath was constantly getting caught in my throat, and my spirit was just following its vessel around the store. I felt like I could collapse at any moment, and I could just let the ground swallow me whole. I tried looking at the video games in the electronic section to get myself back to normal, but I just felt numb. I ended up buying a stick of deodorant and an ice cream bar I couldn't eat.

~

Shawn was already home when I got there, and he still wasn't talking to me. There wasn't anything in me that wanted to try to fix that. He needed to sit with his angry boi feelings anyway. My body moved past the living room, where he was sitting watching Netflix. He looked at me, I saw it from my peripherals, but I just silently turned into the bedroom.

I spent the next hour leaning against the wall in the shower, hot water coming down on my back. I had a specific Halsey song on repeat blaring through the bathroom, even though my spirit floating above my body knew it wouldn't help the situation. I just needed to feel something.

"Tell me how's it feel sitting up there

Feeling so high but too far away to hold me

You know I'm the one who put you up there

Name in the sky, does it ever get lonely?"

Eventually, I was back on Earth, and the water was cold. My limbs ached as I moved around again to shut the shower off, but at least I was feeling something. Once the noise from the running water was gone, I was forced to hear more of that damn song. I still didn't bother to change it as I stepped out of the tub and wrapped a towel around myself.

"Gave love 'bout a hundred tries

Just running from the demons in your mind

Then I took yours and made 'em mine

I didn't notice cuz my love was blind"

I made quick work of drying off and getting dressed. I didn't bother with putting leave-in conditioner in my hair or moisturizing my skin. I stared down at the sink and processed what went down at work.

"I didn't ask you to fix me. You just didn't wanna fix yourself. I know a crazy bitch when I see one. Doesn't look like anything's changed."

Shouldn't you want to fix the one you love when they're down? Wouldn't you do anything you can to ensure that the one you love would be okay? Why else would I give up therapy so Shawn could take my place?

Oh, crap. Shawn.

Before I knew it, I was walking out of the bathroom, back to the living room. Shawn was still on the couch, take out box in hand. I watched him eat pasta as I leaned against the doorway. My voice came out raspy and wavering, but still coherent.

"I'm sorry about this morning. I didn't mean to snap at you."

Talking alone caused a crying fit to form in my chest and throat. I turned on my heel, not expecting much of anything until-

"Did you eat?"

I stopped in my tracks, but I didn't face him. I cleared my throat before speaking again. "Not hungry."

"Hey, I know we fought, but you still need to eat."

"That's, that's not why…" I trailed off. This was a time where I wanted to sit and cry in his arms, something I never did. (The hospital doesn't count - I was under the influence of morphine.) I knew he was still mad at me, though. I couldn't ask him for anything. The only thing I could do was clear my throat some more.

Mad as he was, Shawn was still persistent. "Do you feel sick?"

Yes, but not the way he was probably thinking. I wouldn't even know how to explain it.

"No," I said simply.

I heard Shawn move from the couch, but I still kept my back to him.

"Is something-"

I cut across him. "Don't try to be nice to me. You don't have to after the way I acted."

"We had an argument, we didn't break up," Shawn said.

Slowly, I turned my head to look back at him. The only thing between us was the doorway. Shawn didn't seem as wound up as he did this morning, but that didn't mean he probably wasn't feeling it anymore. I didn't want to risk another fight.

"I didn't mean anything I said this morning," I told him, my voice still small. I couldn't find it in me to fake composure. "I like living with you, and I appreciate everything you've done for me."

He nodded. "I'm sorry too. I understand that you miss your family. I miss mine, and they're only a half hour drive from here."

If I didn't have this surgery then I would be at home and I wouldn't have been irrationally shaken to the core by Luca's words. I could literally be in my childhood bed right now.

"Yeah," I mumbled, reaching my threshold. "Yeah, I do miss home."

Shawn then waved me over. "Come on. Come here."

I felt like I was going to fall apart as I stepped out of the small bedroom. My knees shook slightly, but Shawn took my hand and led me into the spacious area, over to the couch. He watched me as I sat down. I must have looked like a right mess if he was giving me careful eyes, like I might break into pieces at any given moment.

He got up and grabbed the grey, woolen blanket from the other end of the couch and draped it over my lap. "So… how was work?"

"I don't wanna talk about it." I stared at the TV, but I didn't really care about what was on.

"Alright. Do you wanna play Breath of the Wild?"

Tears welled up in my eyes in a split second, and I rapidly nodded my head and sobbed out, "Yeah…"

[andieperrie18]

OSIRIA ROSE: KUROSHITSUJI FANFIC (MANGA BASE)

This is just a sample

• o n e •

OSIRIA FOUND HERSELF at the same spot in the hallway where she stuck her ground as she had once watched her brother's small fragile frame fade and the sound of running neared to her left ear. The difference with this one was it is unbelievably peaceful though she didn't give any mind. But she knew it wasn't long before the small chaos would come uninvited by the Phantomhive manor.

"They are now scouting around the house miss Rose." she turned to Tanaka who stood by her side right at the moment. She nodded her thanks as before turning her view back to where it was.

"HAHAHAHA!!!"

The butler stared at the laughing circus hostbefore him and his master. Joker, who cackled like a mad man as he laid sprawled out on the cold concrete in the of his own crimson liquid. His maniacly laughter bounce on every wall and pillar of the large torture hall.

"However, you will also have some important things stolen from you from you tonight." the cackling mad man quoted as he waited for the smuggness on the their discombombulate to pieces. And when they did and it only brought up Joker's confidence more.

"My fellow circus members are paying a visit to you manor tonight." he continued

The two servants stood side by side under the light of the moon as they waited. The maid's onyx orbs shot open as she heard the rustle of shrubs from across the estate's yard.

"Mister Tanaka, please be on guard by Lady Elizabeth's room. I'll take it from here." the said butler bowed before ushering away. After a good distance, the maid pulled out a red hard-bounded book with the words 'Danse Macabre' embedded on the front portion. It revealed pages of writings and pictures with a stamp that quoting "completed" on every page. The flipping came to a halt as it landed on a blank page. She stared at it from for a good minute before a set datas appeared on the once blank pages.

Five new victims.

A smile crept on her lips, she loved the idea of how her victims likes coming to her web unknowingly and making her job easier to collect their precious memoirs. Ever since she entered the business of being a fairyman or woman of death, she hadn't have the need to obviously chase the souls assigned to her. They would always be aroung her ten meter radius.

She closed the small diary and waited for the perfect time.

| • | • | • | • |

"My servants?" the young earl trailed as his butler bursted into a small fit of giggling after finding such an amusing intel. The poor man's turn to be morphe in disdain, he turned to the two gentlemen.

"what's so darn funny?"

Slamming the metal tip of his cane to the ground, the earl stood with a fierce complexion. His worry completely thrown out the window and his butler by his side smiling maniacly.

"Just who do you think your dealing with? They are Phantomhive servants."

A cheshire smile was etched on Osiria's face as she watched the gardener give the large bald man a harsh blow sending him flying to the walls of the stair case of the front porch.

She could feel her hands itched with the need to pull a heavy object but she mustn't intervene with the cause of a human's death.

"How unfortunate souls~" she breathed.

The brawl continued as the young gardener came face to face with two trapeze artists. He was a bit out numbered at the moment, Osiria took the liberty to make the numbers fair as she now stood by the roof with the once clumsy maid by her side. Surrounded by a number of riffles and loaded with ammo. The raven haired maid whisked to the sniper's back and her lips neared her left ear.

"What is a maid's duty Mey-rin?" her tone etched with somewhat playfulness as she eyed the sniper's targets as the bullet was released to the air aiming a perfect mark.

"Always follow the young masters instructions, welcome the master every day with a manor that is spotlessly clean." the sniper dressed in a maid's outfit voice transitioned from a muffled voice to a sly tone.

"Very good, now what do we do with filth?" Osiria inched away as she let the femme before her do her job.

Little Elizabeth sat up from the bed's comfort as she was woken by the sound of some glass shattering from outside her door.

"what was that sound?" the door of her quarters opened to the old butler with a candle lit. Asking what was the matter to the young girl.

"Wasn't their just a huge sound by now?" she asked with curiousity and confusion for she was sure there was a sound since it was very loud.

The butler spoke with an unmasked tone of calmness as he assured her that there was no such sound was heard. Finding assurance from the words of an old man young lady descended to the comfort of her bed unknown to her that behind the frame of the old man and her door laid the bloodied body of one of the manors threatening visitors.

"Yo! I was waiting for you. I gotta tell say that you're both lucky to come face to face with me because if you had to face Miss Rose. It would probably messy."

Bardroy rested himself by a frame of the staircase as he eyed the two circus perpetrators before him. He continued to blabber until one of the two threw a set of knives towards him.

"Hey! That was dangerous! I was in the middle of talking!" the chef was now being attacked by woman with a whip. He continued to dodge until he called the aid of a familiar blonde gardener. The said gardner replied by throwing countless statues towards the infiltrators.

The two unwelcomed guest dodged every rock. It was a bit tricky to create diversion for the two but once they did, they dashed out.

The sound of chaos got louder and louder as every second passes. A figure sat restlessly from one of the roofs of the manor. Along it was a figure of a long scythe the it owned. The shadow revealed a pair of bright green orbs staring down at the three servants that stared down a hole that they created with the unwelcome guests were. The climax has been reached as the shadow stood up and swung the huge modified garden tool to the air.

| • | • | • | • |

"My servants, those are actually private soldiers hand picked to guard my manor."

The look of terror shook Joker to his core. He had sent his family to their unknown doom. He sent them armee with baby knives in a war. He could only mutter one word as he stared at Ciel with disbelief.

"They'll protect Phantomhive secrets and Phantomhive pride from any thing."

The moon was the only witness to the horror. The amusement on head maid's face remained as she watched the chef throw a lit match to the whole, leaving no evidence of murder.

Osiria had finished cleaning up the other messes around a few parts, meaning disposing and leaving no traces as well.

"After all, thats what makes a Phantomhive servant."

| • | • | • | • |

"WAAAHHH!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH MISS ROSE!!!"

"WE COULDN'T THANK YOU ENOUGH FOR THIS!!"

"MISTER SEBASTIAN WOULD HAVE KILLED US IF HE FOUND OUT!"

"HOHOHO!"

The mayhem of last nights events may have left a big mess on a portion of the mansion. The three servants would have to face the wrath of the head butler but then came Osiria to their aid.

"Don't worry, I just had a friend come by last night to fix the mess. We don't want miss Elizabeth worrying now won't we?" the maid quoted as the three servants fervently nodded to the sweet lady. It's been a long while since the woman came to the Phantomhives and they never felt so thankful in their life. They often compare her to Sebastian as they both carried perfect qualities of a servant but a plus side to her since she always helps and covers for them at all times. She was much kinder than Sebastian, much like the indian prince's servant but a female one.

She had become the big sister of the manor as despite of her height. She was a lot older than what her looks give out.

"Now I'm sure that you all are hungry from last night's events so I have prepared breakfast for all of you at the kitchen. Go get yourselves stuff then proceed to your jobs." as she said the words breakfast, the more their eyes sparkled in delight and they ran inside the unscratched manor to receive their prizes with a skip in every step.

"RIA!!" a high pitch lively voiced call from behind her. The maid spun to greet the young fiance of her master as she was glomped on the process. The lively blonde nuzzled into her embrace.

"WHEN IS CIEL COMING HOME!!?? TELL ME! DID HE TELL YOU?? WAAAHHH!!" the sweet child cried to her as she could only chuckle.

"Don't fret now my lady, he is already here." she cooed as the girl spun to see her beloved fiance stepping off of the carriage with his butler. Lizzie got off the maid's arms and ran to the small boy to glomp him. Smiling, she met the innocent eyes of the butler. She nodded to him as he did aswell. Sebastian had no doubts of leaving safety of the Lady Elizabeth's to her and the other servants for she was extremely different like him.

"Oh Ciel! I've missed you so much! Let's get inside! Ria made us teas and cakes!"

| • | • | • | • |

Mey-rin sweeped the remaining rubbles that was left on the floors as she hummed in delight after a wonderful meal. Then came a knock on the door, running to attend it the maid greeted the guest but only to be cut off to find out who it was.

"Ca'va!" the tall woman dressed with the most flamboyant clothings as it screamed different seasons to every eye.

"Miss Nina!" the said woman jumped on the poor maid kissing her cheeks in delight for seeing her again. She was the one who designed the maid outfit the Meyrin had found quite handy in times of need like last night. It allowed her unrestricted movements from any type of brawl. For it was only crucial for the home of the Queen's guard dog to have a well guarded household. If he can't protect his own household, it will quickly reflect to what might happened if he serves the queen. The tailor fumbled around the maid's frame as she was overcomed by delight from having the people she dresses find comfort and a sense of exploitable to any type of situation.

"Ms. Hopkins, what a delight to finally see you again." the tailor gasped and turned to the person who greeted her. She removed herself from the poor maid and launched herself the girl, purposely ignoring the other two male servants who have been calling for her attention for quite a while now.

"Oh how cute you look!! Why don't you lead me to where Ciel is while share to you my new ideas that are inspired by you!" the woman said in delight as the raven haired maid happily lead the woman to the stair case.

"Your clothes are in the horse carrige." she ushered to the two males as one of them seemed to have had enough of her rudeness.

"What with this different in treatment!!?" the chef claimed.

"Miss Hopkins." Sebastian's voice echoed around the hall as tailor and the head maid stared up to find the man by the upper wing of the stairway. The woman grumbled in disdain to find the familiar butler. "I believe I told you many times that merchants are to come in through the back door." he said coldly. "So you've come out huh.. Mr. Stiff." the woman muttered under her breath.

"Mr. Sebastian please do calm down. I'll escort Ms. Hopkins to drawing room while I speak to her about going to the back door. Would that be alright?" Osiria politely intruded as she placed a hand behind the Nina's back. The tailor completely sweeped off her feet with the maid's sweet voice, "what an angel you are Osiria!"

With that, they head off their way to the said room with the maid letting the tailor babble.

"Young Master and My lady, Miss Nina Hopkins is here." the maid slide the door to the side to reveal the said woman to the couple.

They went along with their greetings and discussion about the what the young lord would like to add in his line of outfit at the moment. Sebastian who came in a five minutes after they entered started to state the demands of what the Ciel would like to have.

| • | • | • | • |

[jflashandclash]

Tales from Mount Othrys

         Our tale is one of heartbreak and loss. One you know how it begins and how it ends. My friends are faceless ghosts left to be tortured in the Fields of Punishment, forsaken—not for their own sins—but for the neglect of our parents. Our song isn’t the one you want to hear; it’s the one that needs to be told. Losers never write history. They fade to urban legends and night terrors. If the only way for us to be remembered is as monsters, then monsters we shall be. And in the night, you will hear us scream.

             Luke Castellan saved my life. Not the way you might expect—and I did die several times later, but the Sisyphean feat of keeping me dead is for another story.

--dictations from the ramblings of Jack Flash

  Histories of Luke Castellan:

 Uncomfortable Beginnings

(or: Plans Never Go How They Should)

           While watching the cop car pull up to the school, Luke chewed on his lip. He squeezed the hilt of his sword, suddenly unsure he should have brought any weapons. He’d tied his orange Camp Half-Blood sweatshirt around his waist to hide the blade and logo with the hopes that the color wouldn’t attract as much attention if he put it lower on his body. Nothing said subtle like traffic cone orange.

         Sometimes, he wondered if their camp director wanted them to get attacked by monsters.

         “What, kid, getting cold feet?”

         Luke was used to people being shorter than him, but his companion, Phil, was barely at chest height.

Luke looked like he belonged to this school. Phil looked like he should be thrown in jail if he got anywhere near a school. He had an untamed black beard, scraggily black hair, and dark eyes that constantly seemed to seek flaws in every person and institution for some internal mockery.

         Another horrific crunch erupted from between Phil’s lips, like an eighteen wheeler obliterated a Smart Car inside his mouth.

         “Could you chew with your mouth closed?” Luke snapped, unable to handle the foreboding smash of iron again.

         “Can you turn down the sun glare on your hair gel?” Phil asked, removing the metal rod from between his lips like a cigarette. “And maybe your panic? You’re going to attract monsters for a twenty mile radius with how much you’re sweating.”

         If Phil hadn’t been such a skilled keeper, and annoyingly right about the sweat, then Luke would have smacked him. Phil was a satyr—horns, tails, and all—and excellent at sniffing out new demigod blood. Unlike many of his counterparts, Phil had learned to use human technology to his advantage to gain access to unexplained incidents in police reports, newspapers, and magazines.

“The cops aren’t exactly inspiring confidence. You think this has something to do with Fai Lan?” Luke asked. He and Phil were waiting by the senior parking lot, by a side exit that Phil said this girl used to skip class. She was running late in her class-skipping, and Luke was wary that the cop car parked in the kiss-and-ride loop had something to do with it.

“Fēi Lín,” Phil corrected again. “That’s a fast way to get to a girl’s heart—mispronouncing her name. And unlikely. She’s not exactly known for getting caught, nowadays. Ah, you gotta love when a young, aspiring vagabond finds her way to proper subterfuge—there’s our birdie, now.”

On cue, someone exited the side doors. The girl was in the middle of taking off a gym shirt, revealing a too-tight, too-short black tank top that a teacher must have made her cover. Her red, pleather pants and black combat boots made him grin. Black bangs and side wisps bobbed around her face as she ran out, head tilting towards the cop car in the kiss-and-ride. She looked like an Asian version of that vampire slayer, Buffy.

Maybe the cops did have something to do with her.

“Remember not to stare at her face,” Phil said, taking another bite off the iron rod and munching.

         “Not going to be a problem,” Luke said, though he hadn’t meant to say it out loud. His face warmed. Luke had been around lots of Aphrodite’s cabin members and intimately knew how attractive Selena Beauregard was. Especially with that knowledge, this girl was smoking.  

         “Just remember: she killed the last satyr that came after her. Do. Not. Stare. At. Her. Face,” Phil emphasized every word.

         She turned to examine the main entrance to the school, so all Luke could discern was a hair bun with… with hair sticks? Or stilettos? They glinted like they were sharp. She was only fifteen feet away now.

         Luke had to keep calm. He’d lead plenty of people through Camp Half-Blood, getting them comfortable with the fact that the Greek gods were real. This wasn’t even the first time he’d handled someone who had a criminal record. Most of his blood siblings had them. This was, however, the first time he would work with someone that could easily kill him, according to Phil’s research.

It was also the first time he’d reached out to someone before Kronos had gotten into their dreams. Luke would prove that he was useful without his master’s direction.

         “Hey,” Luke said in greeting. He stood up tall, shoved his hands in his pockets, and gave her a charming grin, trying to look as harmless as possible. “Fai Lin Davidson?” He decided to use her American last name, since there was no way he’d properly pronounce her other one.

         “Dǒng Fēi Lín,” Phil muttered under his breath.

         “My name is Luke—”

         Luke stumbled over his introduction. Fēi Lín glanced in his direction. Her eyes were icy, calculating, and panicked, but that wasn’t what distracted him. When Phil had warned that she had scars, Luke assumed her scars would be like his, like the single, massive claw mark that stretched from his forehead down one cheek.

The skin on her face and part of her neck was shriveled, ribbed, and discolored. Her lips looked stretched too thin. One eyelid didn’t look like it should be able to close all the way.

Phil elbowed him.  

         Fortunately, Fēi Lín didn’t seem to notice Luke’s pause. Her gaze darted back to the front entrance, where two officers escorted someone out.

         Although her lack of attention saved him some embarrassment, Luke was annoyed that she ignored him. He, in fact, was the most popular boy at Camp Half-Blood. He wasn’t used to being ignored.

         “And I’m his rustic side-kick,” Phil said with a wry smile. “Phil. As a heads up, I’ll gore you if you mention Disney’s Hercules.”

Luke always enjoyed how ridiculous and pompous that movie made the gods look. Though Disney liked to skirt around the whole incest and abuse thing that was rampant in Greek mythology and it made the Titans look like mindless fiends.

         She gaze shot back to them. They narrowed at Phil. “You monsters always pick the worst days to attack,” she said, slipping the sharpened hair sticks from her bun. The bun stayed neatly in place, proving they weren’t there for aesthetics. Her voice was a hoarse whisper, almost too soft to hear.  

         Phil took a rapid step backwards.

         This was not how this was supposed to go. Luke put his hands up, but kept one close to Backbiter. “Not monsters. He’s a satyr. I’m a demigod like you. We’re here to help you—”

         “If you’re here to help me, get that boy away from those cops before they drive away.”

         Luke had to focus to hear her words. Each one seemed to grow softer and softer until she erupted into a fit of coughs.

         “Oh,” Phil said, relaxing. He crunched another chunk out of his iron bar. “You’re sick. I guess a charm speaker can’t charm anyone if she can’t speak.”

         Her eyes narrowed further.

         Before Luke could stop her, her palm struck Phil’s face. The satyr staggered backwards. Iron spit out his mouth like a Pez dispenser. He barely caught himself on one of the cars, fortunately out of the cops’ line of sight.

         “Hot damn, she hits hard!” Phil said, clutching his face. Blood seeped between his fingers.

         Luke clutched the hilt of Backbiter, ready for another strike.

         She didn’t attack. Instead, she pointed her finger back at the cops and their escort. “Help him, or it’s an auto-no for whatever you want to talk about. Or are you worthless and I need to kill those cops on my own?” Her voice sounded like it should earn a month off school for threat of contaminating everything within a thirty-mile radius. Had he heard her on the phone, he would have thought the threat cute. With those sharpened hair stick in her hands and the ferocity of her gaze, Luke took a step backwards.

         Luke didn’t want to get involved with the cops. No one at Camp Half-Blood knew he had slipped away. If his face showed up in the news and Chiron found out, or worse, if they were able to connect him to his mother as a runaway…

         Luke hated her wording even more: worthless. He’d felt worthless for years. And then he’d messed up his first mission for the false glory of something that had been done before. All the time he’d spent at Camp Half-Blood: worthless.

         “You have five seconds to decide, or I’m coming after you as soon as I’m done with those cops,” Fēi Lín said. Her panicked eyes darted back to the officers. They were almost to their car. Their escort didn’t have handcuffs on. He was just some kid, maybe a junior, who looked dazed as he walked between the cops. “Four…”

         Luke did not like being bossed around or being put onto a tight timeline. But, there were so few numbers for the Kronos cause; he needed this girl. Phil said she was incredibly powerful.

         ‘Three—” she said.

         “Cause a distraction,” Luke commanded Phil. They needed more time to plan.

Phil snorted, pinching his bleeding nose. “Cause a distraction he says. I ain’t going back to jail for this, you know that kid?”[1]

         In a motion so quick and precise that Luke couldn’t believe a sick person had done it, the girl grabbed Phil, spun him, and tossed him in the direction of the cops, out into the open. A little more power and she could have gone skeet shooting with a satyr.

         “Help!” she tried to call out, but her voice broke. She tucked the hair sticks back into her bun.

         Luke picked up on the charade immediately. He would find a way to make it up to Phil later, else he knew Phil would threaten to tell Mr. D about him.

         “What makes you think it’s okay to creep on our school property?” Luke shouted, and took a step towards Phil. He really hoped the school’s assigned officer wouldn’t come out to see what the fuss was about. Then they’d have three cops to deal with, and they were dedicated to the act now.

         The officers noticed the commotion.

         They motioned for their escort to stand by the car, then made their way towards Phil, Luke, and Fēi Lín.

         “Hey! Break it up!” one as pale as the clouds shouted. He had a tiny, handmade paper flower attached to his breast pocket, like something a kid might give a dad. If the kid liked their dad and got to see him, Luke thought bitterly.

         “I told this perv to get lost!” Fēi Lín tried to say. The words came out a hiss. She stomped towards Phil, though her steps were wavering. Luke couldn’t tell from her disfigured face, but he thought she was sweating from fever.

         If Luke had to guess, the officers were rightfully confused. Phil did look like a creep, but, this girl looked way more threatening than the downed satyr.

         “What’s going on here?” the other officer, this one with chocolaty skin, asked. This man looked like a heavy-weight boxer with dimples so deeply embedded that they didn’t go away in serious mode. Luke was suddenly unsure if he was okay with Fēi Lín’s comment about killing them.

The cop put his hands up in an everyone calm down maneuver. Meanwhile, his pale companion had settled one hand on his sidearm, at the ready.

         The pale officer was closing in on Phil while the other carefully moved to make Luke and Fēi Lín back up. “What’s going on?” he started to repeat.

         “What the—”

         Behind him, once the pale officer got close, Phil kicked off his boots, revealing two hooves. He proceeded to nail the officer in the head with a solid hoof print.[2]

         The cop flopped over.

         As Luke and Fēi Lín’s officer went to glance back at his partner, Fēi Lín lunged forward. Within seconds, she had him in a headlock, pinching his neck between her forearm and bicep. Her arm trembled with the effort.

         No turning back.

Luke rushed up to snatch away the officer’s handcuffs, radio, and gun. The cop kicked Luke backwards with one solid hit to the diagraph.

Luke stumbled back a step, clutching his chest. This was nothing compared to fighting monsters or demigods, but he’d lost a few valuable seconds to gasping.

The cop fumbled for Fēi Lín’s forearm. When that failed, he thrashed, trying to buck her off. His eyes and forehead vein were bulging when he elbowed backwards.

This guy had at least a hundred pounds on Fēi Lín, but she didn’t flinch when he hit her. His elbow strike nailed her in the ribs. She barely gasped, though Luke didn’t know if that was because of lack of breath from her sickness or because of pain tolerance.

Luke gritted his teeth. Was she really going to kill him?

         The struggles became weaker as he collapsed to his knees, then his hands. His eyes rolled up and Fēi Lín gently set him onto the pavement.

         “Jack!” she called hoarsely. She loosened her hold, though kept the headlock position. Her eyes frantically traced back to the cop car.

         The boy by the car approached them slowly. His steps were uncertain, like he wasn’t sure if he was really walking here or if he was about to fall off a virtual reality platform.

         “Call for him,” Fēi Lín said, her voice too soft to be heard at his distance, “Tell him we’re real.”

         Phil didn’t hesitate. “Hey! Jak-Jak! We’re real and could use your unexplained help!”

         “This is getting stupid,” Luke said. He shoved the gun into his belt, chucked the radio further into the parking lot, and handcuffed the huge cop. Fēi Lín moved to give him access to the cop’s wrists. She unwound a silk ribbon from around her waist and tied it firmly between the cop’s teeth, tight enough that his cheeks and the back of his head bulged.

         The boy, Jack, leveled with them. He was probably a junior, maybe seventeen or so. His brilliant, red hair was spiky, similar to Luke’s blond, except Jack’s was long enough to dip against his forehead. His eyes were watery and unfocused like a distant, forgotten dream had left him deeply disturbed. He was as tall as Luke, though unhealthily thin and gangly. The black nails and Coheed and Cambria band shirt gave Luke an annoying sense of nostalgia for one of his old friends.  

         Slowly, Jack’s gaze focused on Fēi Lín with no recognition of the cops, Luke, or Phil. “You’re sick,” he said in concern. His voice trembled as much as his body did.

         If Luke had to guess, these two wouldn’t last long as friends once Jack found out that she was a demigod. Mortals tended to run from their brand of crazy. Or, they were dumb and thought it was cool to almost die all the time and be neglected by your godly parent. Luke didn’t know what his deal was and didn’t care at the moment. They needed to get Fēi Lín and get away from here.

         Fēi Lín pointed to the cop Phil had kicked. By now, Phil had sat up and was dusting off his hoof, cursing about ungrateful children under his breath. The pale cop with the flower pin, on the other hand, hadn’t moved. Blood trickled onto the ground from his head. Luke couldn’t tell if it was from his ear or his mouth.

         Luke’s stomach clenched. Had they killed someone?

***

Author’s Note:

I’M FINALLY POSTING THIS!!! This is Part I of the first Tales from Mount Othrys short. I hope you enjoyed! I’m aiming to post every other week :D Ready to watch Luke and his friends skid into madness and betrayal? Join hands and listen to how the crew from Othrys fell apart.

 [1] Oh gods, I accidentally made Grunkle Stan into a Satyr Stan.

[2] Pax wants to know if satyrs have battle “horse” shoes for this occasion.

[thiccjuicynut]

So I had an idea for a dead by daylight chapter if anyone wants to listen.

Chapter: The Brave And The Afraid.

Killer: The Paranoiac 

Bio: Chase Winchester was a nice kid growing up. He went to after school activities and Cubs and boy scouts during the summer as much as he could, but he always stayed on high alert due to the neighborhood and stories his parents told him. He also did growing up into adulthood. After almost losing his house and talking with a friend from his childhood whose family was a higher upper in the city, he got his rent paid and after a while of the cycle happening, the friend had cut him off because he hasn't paid them back. One morning he found a guy at his front door, a debt collector. He pushed Chase back into his house and started to fight him. Punches being thrown, cuts being made, and bruises forming was all it took for Chase to get out of his comfort zone of fighting. He got knocked into a vase and it shattered. Chase got knocked onto the floor near the glass and took action, he kicked the guys shin, making him fall and took a glass shard, stabbing the man in the neck. He got the man off of him and realized that he messed up. So he took food, water, and anything he deemed necessary and booked it to the woods. For the next few days of hunting, he thought he lost the people he was running from, so he returned to his house, surprised no one had taken things out, What he didn't expect was to see people in the house, with weapons. They jumped him, hitting him with blunt objects, stabbing him to near death. They left him suffering in pain. He closed his eyes, tears falling down his cheeks. But after a minute or two, he felt nothing but darkness. He opened his eyes and saw he was in his house, but it wasn't his at the same time. He heard people running around outside, and took his initiative to take them out. He picked up a glass shard and walked out, crying, knowing what he was going to do.

Name: Chase Winchester

Height:6'5

Sex:Male

Weapon: Glass Shard

Power: Swift Pounce: If The Paranoiac is by a low surface, he will crouch behind it, his hearing is heighted and he will see the auras of the survivors feet. When the ability is activated, he will jump over and slam his weapon down, if it hits a survivor, they will go down. If he hits the ground his weapon will shatter, then he has to take out another piece of glass.

Power: Deepening slash: The Paranoiac will stand by a wall or around it's corner and slash if activated. The Paranoiac will have heightened hearing and will see that aruas of the survivors hands. The attack will put the survivor down a health state and will give them the haemorrhage status effect.

Perks: (Unlocked at Level 30) Paranoia: You have heard the noises over and over again and can tell where and who made them. Random auditory alerts will appear by pallets and windows. If an auditory noise is made from a survivor and they are on the move, the alert will move with them for 2/3/4 seconds.

Perks:(Unlocked at Level 35) Preferable Vision: You can choose the amount you see. Standing still for 3 seconds grants you the ability to see in two different directions by holding either to the right or left and looking in that direction. Half the screen will be in that direction and the other half will be looking forward.

Perks:(Unlocked at Level 40) Hex: Haywire: You have inflicted the sense of craziness in the minds of your prey. While working on the objective, be it generators, healing, searching chests, etc., the survivors will hear small terror radiuses and see red stains randomly.

Mori: The Paranoiac will turn the survivor onto their back and pin them down and will grab their throat to attempt to choke them, said survivor will punch him in the face, giving them a chance to escape as he stumbles back and they kick him in the stomach, he gets out a shard of glass and stabs them in the stomach, showing his face is full of regret and tears, then he will stab their head and he will get off of them, crying before getting up and walking away.

Add-ons: Common

Torn contact piece: slightly increases the arua on the survivor

-----

Worn Bandage: slightly decreases your terror radius when ability is in use.

----

Scratchy Glass: increases timer on the haemorrhage status effect.

Add-ons: uncommon

Half of contact: moderately increases the aura of survivors.

----

Reusable Bandage: moderately decreases terror radius while ability is in use.

----

Sharpened Shard: moderately increases the timer for the haemorrhage status effect

Add-ons: rare

Colored contact: see the full aura of the survivors limbs

----

Sanitized Bandage: Tremendously decreases time to swing

----

Coarse Glass: Replaces the haemorrhage status effect with the mangled status effect.

Add-ons: very rare

Cloudy contact: see the survivors full aura

----

Fresh bandage: removes your terror radius entirely when ability is used.

Add-ons: Ultra rare

Bloodied Shard: hitting a survivor will give them the oblivious status effect for 25 seconds

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Survivor: Hector Garcia

Bio: A poor kid growing up and normally known as the school bully, Hector Garcia tried his best to keep his strength up. He would get in fights with his brothers and would try his best to win them. He did, most of the time, but he was compassionate and barely showed it. He would play off insults like it meant nothing, but he took it to heart. He would help out people if needed. When he grew up and was out of the house, he would get together and spar with his friends or brothers in the woods. One night, when drinking and sparing, someone hit too hard and he was out, them being drunk had made them to believe they killed him so they bailed. When he woke up he was in a forest, but not the one he was in. He saw a campfire next to him so he just sat down and waited.

Name: Hector Garcia

Height: 5'7

Sex:Male

Perks:(Unlocked at Level 30) Activation Perk: Save Your Friends: As your friends are hopelessly wiggling, you try your best to help. You throw your body weight into the killer as a last attempt to get them free. Only active when in a 3m radius of a carried survivor. Will exhaust you for 140/130/120 seconds.

Perks: (Unlocked at Level 35) Heavy Hitter: You give things everything you've got. For successful stuns, be it with a perk or pallet,you stun the killer for 2/3/4 seconds longer.

Perks: (Unlocked at Level 40) I've Got You: Each time you are unhooking a survivor and are grabbed, you resist the grab and will finish getting the off the hook and you will then be grabbed.

Map: A neighborhood that consists of apartments, mobile homes which connect to a cemetery.

For some, friends mean everything, for others, friends were just a dream and for all, they can agree that some of those friends are worth protecting.

If I get criticism, I'd greatly appreciate it, I'm down for whatever help I can get while making this

[proxylynn]

Lynchtale: File Name Game of Death #4

Chapter 4: To aid is sin and one that brings more pain.

WARNING: THIS IS A MATURE STORY THAT WILL HAVE BLOOD, GORE, PSYCHOLOGICAL SURVIVAL HORROR, HEAVY CURSING, AND LIKELY SEXUAL THEMES/BONING. I DO NOT OWN UNDERTALE, THAT BELONGS TO LORD TOBY FOX. I DO NOT OWN DEAD BY DAYLIGHT, THAT BELONGS TO BEHAVIOUR DIGITAL INC.. I DON'T OWN THE AU'S THAT SOME OF THE CHARACTERS COME FROM, THEY BELONG TO THEIR RESPECTIVE CREATORS. I DON'T OWN THE IDEA FOR LYNCHTALE, THAT BELONGS TO PUNNYSIDEUP (AKA. SANSFULPUNS). WHAT I DO OWN IS MY SELF-INSERT OC ANOMALY LYNSIE AND THE LOVE OF FAN PARODY. IF YOU'RE STILL READING THIS, THEN CONGRATULATIONS ON EITHER BEING ONE WITH STRONG DETERMINATION OR AN ENDLESS WILL TO OVERCOME THE CHALLENGE OF STOMACHING WHAT I HAVE IN MIND. EITHER WAY, IF YOU LIKE THIS AND/OR MY OTHER CONTENT, SIT BACK AND ENJOY THE ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. HAVE FUN SINNERS. ^_^

--------------------------------------------------------------

Two trials have passed since my reawakening. With a bit more explaining, Claudette was more willing to teach me her perk of Self-Care. Every little bit helps when it will come to stopping the killer within me. Even Dwight makes amends with me by showing me how to access the Bloodweb. To do so, one must close their eyes then enter a meditative trance-like state where the mind is a space between reality and abstraction. Basically, it can be accessed through thought and sleep patterns. In this space, one can use the Bloodpoints, Iridescent Shards, Auric Cells...mostly Bloodpoints though. With these points, one can acquire Add-ons, Items, Offerings, and even other Perks that aren't person-specific. But I don't have many after my first trial so I don't get to collect many things. If I'm honest, I just grabbed a few random Nodes. Though I did notice something odd. The web was broken in half and some of the things I got...I don't think are meant for Survivors. Despite this obvious red flag, I don't tell the others about it. I mean, I don't plan on using these blatant killer things so why tell them about it? Well...Maybe just one. The one that offers me bonus Bloodpoints. An unidentifiable cocoon that was breached by whatever was inside called Hollow Shell that gives a 25% increase. I don't see how this could do any harm. And extra points are extra points worth at least possibly getting. The timing of all this is rather convenient. A new trial is commencing. One that involves me. Time for my second trial to begin now.

[INTO THE FOG AND OUT ELSEWHERE]

My vision clears to a blackened sky, dead forest, full moon, and the faint scent of char of a long since past fire. I have never been to this realm but I know where I am. The Entity literally drilled all sorts of knowledge into my mind, Maps being some of it, and this one is the Disturbed Ward of Crotus Prenn Asylum.

There is insanity, and then there are minds that are so severely distorted that they cease being humans. Instead, they end up a feral, living, unwanted things. These people must be "stored" somewhere, and that's where the Crotus Prenn Asylum played a crucial role. Established in 1857, Crotus Prenn was originally a hospital, but as the need for storage grew, it was turned into an insane asylum. Crotus Prenn was a place riddled with tall tales that aren't even close to the reality that takes place within its walls. It was never the biggest asylum, but the one that held the most violent and warped minds the country had ever met. But it was not the residents that etched the name Crotus Prenn into the history books. Instead, it was the mass homicide where over fifty patients were found dead in their beds. The building was abandoned shortly after that. Investigators had no answers, and the town's folk became more and more worried as rumors talked about a woman still living inside the asylum. Finally, one night, smoke rose from the woods as Crotus Prenn had been set ablaze. The bystanders did nothing. They just let it burn. The last standing structure after the fire, that still shows the grandeur of the original architecture. Its two floors and dark basement leave nothing of the tale of horrors that took place here. Nothing but memories that linger in the abandoned rooms.

This place...This place is the home of the Nurse. In a funny sense of irony, the Entity did little to informed me of the monsters outside of the basics. She is technically the slowest killer currently in the realms but can blink/teleport with blinding speed to anywhere all over the area and slash you with her bonesaw, a rusted metal implement for tearing through flesh as well as bone. There is a painful tell if the Nurse is indeed here. In order to Blink, she channels the dying breath energy of past kills to allow her to pierce and jump through the Spirit World, sometimes multiple times in a row. Doing so leaves her in a state of fatigue as blinking is quite painful to her, hence why she will shriek after each Blink. Yet so far, as I crawl in the thick tall grass and decaying structures littering the grounds, all has been quiet. I'm lucky to find a generator with some decent cover and I start to fiddle with it. I'll show my team that I'm productive and not as big of a liability as they think. As this team is probably expecting me to fail. I got stuck with Adam, Min, and Nea. Poor guy is drowning in a torrential estrogen agro sea.

*GHASTLY SHIRK*

That is a sound I was hoping not to hear.

*GHASTLY SHIRK*

I don't even have to peek to see the ghostly figure fly upwards, leaving a trail of glowing dots and black smoke in her wake, through the asylum. My progress on the generator stops as I don't want to be distracted and mess up, alerting to my location. I know not if this is her intended strategy, but if I had that power, I'd use the height advantage to look for any movement or gen-repair happening in the mist. I don't know if she can see me from wherever she has landed in that place, but sight is only a minor thought. It's likely Legion has said things to the other monsters. He knows about my strange terror radius. If he told them anything, it was probably that and now I have to be on guard even more for monsters that are listening for me and can hunt me down easy.

*GHASTLY SHIRK*

She sounds further away. Spotting prey elsewhere and going for it. I feel safe enough for now to continue repairing the generator. It feels a good 60% done when I hear softly crunching earth and yet no terror radius. One of my teammates is near.

"*whisper* Yo, who's there?"

His hair stands out before he can say anything.

"*whisper* It's me. Do you need a hand?"

"*whisper* Not really. This thing is almost done. But the boost wouldn't hurt."

He creeps over to help me.

"So...Did you see her yet?"

Here come the questions that will annoy me.

"Nurse? Not up close. She blinked up into the asylum and then out of sight."

"I saw her for a moment then she went near where Min was repairing."

"She'll be fine. She has Nea to cover her."

His expression is blank though it feels forced.

*CLANK*

The lights pop on and I back away from the generator.

"Where are you going?"

I don't look at him.

"She'll come investigating. You don't want to be around me in case things happen."

"You don't have to go it alone. We're a team. There's no 'I' in team."

"But there is a 'me'. And this me is going to make sure I don't hurt anyone."

He reaches out to follow but I scamper away into the thicket. I know Adam means well, but I am not a very sociable person. I prefer to be by myself. I'm a team player that doesn't like to be on a team. I know, that made no damn sense. Sue me.

*CLANK*

*HIGH-PITCH SHIRK*

Two gens down and someone's only now just got hurt. Not bad.

*HIGH-PITCH SHIRK*

...Never mind. I guess I have no choice but to play distraction to keep them from dying. Ugh...They're already forcing me to do shit. Damn it!

[Breaking Point: Triggered. Resentment Tier I activated.]

What?! God damn...No, no, calm down. Ignore the crap and be a good helpful person.

"Hellooooooo, Nurse!"

I shout to the heavens. Come on. Take my bait. Why go after them when I'm here and you can see what I can do?

"Come on! What are you waiting for? Don't waste your time on worms when there's a beast right here!"

Somehow I can feel the rage from across the map. Nea is so easy to piss off it's sad.

*GHASTLY SHIRK*

lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...

I barely see the burly movement zipping through the fog. I need to play this safely or all hell will happen. So what do I do? I impersonate Kermit the Frog like a flipping moron. Of course, this gets the Nurse's attention and the real game starts.

*GHASTLY SHIRK*

lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...

The sudden whoosh of a weapon just missing its mark to hit a rock behind me has me kick it into high gear.

"Wee-woo, mother fucker!"

Probably more cocky than needed but can't take it back now.

"You can run, child..."

*GHASTLY SHIRK*

She cuts me off, taking a swing and slicing deeply into my arm when I try to dodge.

"But there is nowhere to run. Especially, from the likes of me."

True to the nature of my skills as dictated by the Entity, I don't make a loud sound of pain. I grit my teeth while biting my tongue and grab the wound as if my skin were to roll off like a torn sleeve. Blood covering my arm, hand, and ground in a steady stream.

[Breaking Point: Triggered. Resentment Tier II activated.]

My nerves jitter with a sense of warm darkness. I can feel that call from before. That want to panic and overreact, to lash out.

*CLANK*

The third generator pops and the Nurse is momentarily distracted and this good step toward progress does quell the feeling enough to remember I need to run! Nurse makes the choice to ignore the others and keep after me.

"You've got to be kidding?!"

She isn't blinking. She's merely chasing me, her form floating seamlessly and faintly gaining speed as she continues to follow. All while my pace isn't as steady, I'm stumbling over the slightest thing and seem to spook every crow without fail. I am regretting doing anything! During this messed up run, I notice lights flickering with power and decide to do a little test. I make a beeline for that generator. Of course, the three others working on it don't react well to this. To Adam's credit, he takes cover against the gen and a tree, letting the dark camouflage him. Min takes off in a burst of speed, probably telling herself button commands because of gamer logic. Nea, however, hurls an uncreative obscenity at me and proceeds to shove me back into the Nurse herself. Nurse doesn't take this well, her frail form is unable to support my weight and I crush the monster in my awkward tumble.

"Get wrecked, asshole!"

Nea flees into the darkness, aiming to find another generator since we only need two more to escape. My annoyance levels increase. I can feel the urges for violence strengthen. Whispers of dark intentions. I stain as hard as I can to keep sane and move away from the Nurse. But I can't see right with all this mental pressure and blood loss, I have to lean against a tree to not trip over my own feet...again. The Nurse takes some time returning to her floating state. She looks my way, her bonesaw clenched in her hand, yet she doesn't move from her position. She merely stares at me. I'm not sure which is more unnerving, her featureless staring or the loud heartbeat pounding my already aching mind? The uncomfortableness and pain are not letting me think straight. So I'm not too surprised that the part of me that controls speech goes off.

"*strained* What are you doing?"

"I beg your pardon?"

I turn to her as she tilts her head, at least getting a good look at her. The shape of this monster is...odd to me. She's not a shadow like Wraith or skeleton like Legion. She is an anthropomorphic mammal, one that seems familiar yet unknown due to not being able to see her face. An old stained white linen pillowcase seems to be smothering her head, tied tight by unseen binds, though this does allow for a shape to be defined. Her head is Bovidae-like and even has two slightly curved horns that poke out. She wears a worn standard-issue dirty purple nurse uniform from the early twentieth century, designed with white lace patterns on the breast and held around the waist with a blood-stained red belt. The bottom of her uniform is torn and tattered, showing off her white fur covered broken legs. Granted, I'm 100% that they're broken but damn they look it or are just deteriorated to the point that standing on them would be next to impossible. Her bare feet resemble paws and so do her hands except, you know, they're hands that are covered in fur. Honestly...She's the least scary thing I could've imagined when told a Nurse was going to kill me.

"*strained* Why aren't you trying to kill me? I'm an easy mark right now."

She ponders for a moment.

"I am assessing the situation."

"*strained* Why? You've hit me once already and I haven't healed. Hit me again and I go into the dying state to which you can hook me. What's to assess?"

"How much longer you will last with such a sickness eating away at your mind."

My eyes widen. She knows? Knows what's happening to me? How? Legion didn't know. He couldn't have jumped to such a conclusion with the tiniest of hints. So how in the hell does she know? What the fuck?!

"*strained* ...You're going to keep after me till I snap, aren't you?"

She holds the weapon in front of her, delicately skimming a small claw at the end of her finger over the smooth metal back.

"You are a clever one for one so sick. Then again, the clever ones always tend to be the sickest...and require the most attention."

Her tone is something more creepy than she herself is. It holds this strict authority and threatening power that has me flashing back to watching the movie Matilda as a kid, more accurately, being intimidated by the character Miss Agatha Trunchbull. And much like a child in the face of something dreadful, I mentally freak out running like a rabbit from a wolf.

My chest is pounding like crazy, not helping the bleeding arm. Nurse, again, resumes her pursuit of me yet now she's hammering me with jump scares blinking so close that my breathing falters quite a few times.

"*shrike* Leave me alone!"

If she speaks I know not. I can't hear anything but the heartbeat.

lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...

I crash in my panic into everything in my way. I'm a mess. I'm not even sure how I'm still running other than I'm burning adrenaline like crazy.

*CLANK*

The forth generator pops. I feel pressure lessen from my soul and for a second I recall relief.

*GHASTLY SHIRK*

*HIGH-PITCH ROAR*

The slash to my back is so sudden I collide with one of the burning oil drums that light the fog. The drum remains standing. I do not. I'm in the dying state. Bleeding out unless hooked or healed by a teammate, the latter being highly unlikely.

"Poor child..."

She hovers over my bloody twisted form.

"They have left you to die."

Fuck! What is she going to do? Hook me? Mori me? Leave me to bleed? Damn it! I don't want to die! Not like this!

[Embrace it, worm. Embrace the gift the Entity has given you. Unleash the beast.]

The whispers repeat and overlap. Madness is engulfing what little humanity remains at this point. I can't take this!

"What will you do now, child?"

She reaches down to pluck me like a flower.

"What will you do to stop me from killing you?"

*THUD*

She pauses. Something is nearby. I'm not going anywhere, even if crawling is an option, so she investigates the sound. Might as well try to stop the other humans I suppose. She gets out of sight when something else enters my visual range.

"*whisper* Don't move. Man, she really got you good."

Adam? He came for me? I...I'm brain dead. He used his Distraction perk to toss a pebble. Yeah, as dumb as that sounds, that's a special perk of his. It's like my Snowball's Chance but only works when not noticed by the killer.

He works as quickly as he can to heal me, for it is the power of the Nurse to know when healing is being done. Thank goodness he has acquired a med-kit and gets me out of dying state, though not fully healed, by the time the heartbeat starts to return. I hobble just behind him, the Nurse no doubt trailing my blood and scratch marks.

"Can you keep up?"

Why is he concerned for me?

"*wince* Why did you risk exposing yourself? You only need one gen to leave."

He chuckles.

"There might be a 'me' in team, but this me won't let my team die if I can help it."

That hit me. He used my own words on me. Such a mad lad.

"*wince* Heh...Thanks, man."

He throws a peace sign and I laugh, feeling the most normal since this trial began.

*GHASTLY SHIRK*

*LOW-PITCH YELL*

Wetness...Crimson...It's in my eyes. I'm blinded by Adam's blood spray.

"Look out!"

Of course, I can't.

*HIGH-PITCH ROAR*

I'm slashed across the chest and I drop to the ground, feeling so very weak. I blink enough to see in colors other than red only to see Adam scurry away. I don't blame him. It's only natural. What pains me is the look back take he does. His face screams "I'm sorry". He's not coming back. Not this time.

[What will you do now, little worm? He was your last chance.]

I feel myself being lifted and put over Nurse's shoulder.

*CLANK*

*ALARM*

The popping of the fifth generator unlocks the gates and now I know all hope is lost on anyone coming to get me. Nea and Min definitely won't make the attempt. And Adam? He might but it would be illogical to self-preservation. My attention returns to the here and now when Nurse stops moving...she's found a hook.

[Last chance, little worm. Will you let them get away with their sins? Their abandonment of you? The betrayal? The disrespect? Embrace the beast. Teach them the error of their ways. Embrace the Entity.]

As she lifts me, ready to pierce my back on the dirty metal of sacrifice, I give up...and give in.

[Breaking Point: Triggered. Resentment Tier III activated.]

[You made the right choice, little beast. Now...Prove to the worms that it is a mistake to wrong you.]

[Special Ability: Anomaly State...Activated.]

...

[Toriel.]

Nurse freezes in her action.

"Master?"

[Put the little beast down. Stop the other worms. The Entity will reward you handsomely.]

This is a bit puzzling to the Nurse.

"Of course, Master. But why not accept this one? Is she too sick?"

[You will see soon enough. Enjoy having a friend, my dear.]

Further confusion comes to her but no killer disobeys the Entity unless they want to be tortured. And the Doctor did say they should observe this one. So she sets the lifeless looking human down and does as instructed, blinking away towards one of the exit gates. A sudden light comes to Nurse's vision...Healing is happening. Locking onto this, she moves with long blinks to find the male being tended to by one of the females. The surprising yet predictable ambush does not go without bloodshed.

*LOW-PITCH YELL*

The male is struck down while the female tries to escape. He's not going anywhere, so Nurse blinks and lunges for a hard slash, but the female dashes quickly just out of range. Probably used that damn perk called Dead Hard to avoid the damage.

*HIGH-PITCH SHIRK*

This has Nurse and human stop in puzzlement.

*ROAR*

The confusion only grows. But it's not like the monster or human forget where they are or what the situation is and resume the chase.

lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...

The heartbeat? Then that means that sick one is near. Poor thing. She must truly be ill of not even the Entity wanted to feed on her soul.

"*grunting* Fucker! Get off of me!"

The sounds of a distressed and agitated human is close...real close. Curiosity peeked, Nurse shifts directions and follows the ever increasing pounding.

lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...

Leaping out from the top of the asylum, the distasteful female lands on her feet to keep running as the sick human pounces down to chase after her on all fours. This sight is a perplexing one indeed. She couldn't see much, but based on their movements, they seemed to be healed. And their eyes...glowing?

*LOW-PITCH GRUNT*

Someone's healing. That's a no-no.

*GHASTLY SHIRK*

Zooming over to the healing humans, suddenly the healing stops. Before it clicks in her head as to why, Nurse blinks through a wall only to be blinded by the bright focused beam of a well-aimed flashlight and smacks her face into a large rock. The offending human is gone by the time Nurse's vision returns but the male they were trying to help is futilely crawling into the grass.

"I think not, little man."

If left alone he'd only need a bit more healing to get back up or bleed out. Nurse skips to the chase and hooks the poor soul up like a cow in a slaughterhouse.

*LOW-PITCH YELL*

"Now...Where did those little brats go?"

*HIGH-PITCH SHIRK*

Well, that's helpful.

She doesn't blink away, simply following the sounds of pain and heavy breathing off in the distance.

lub-dub...lub-dub...

This sick one again? What insanity is she doing now?

lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...

"The hell is wrong with you?!"

"Get to the gate!"

Do they know she can hear them? Do they think monsters don't understand them? Such idiocy will be their downfall.

lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...

*HIGHT-PITCH SHIRK*

"Blind this bitch!"

"I can't get a clear shot!"

"Don't you fucking leave me!"

Oh really? This is sounding more interesting.

lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...

"You are so lucky I don't have Decisive Strike or I'd so stab the shit out of you!"

"*snarling*"

lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...

*HIGHT-PITCH SCREAM*

Was that...a hooking? No...It couldn't be. 'Twas impossible. This had to be a fluke. She was the only monster in the trial. Only one could be in a trial. That's the rule.

*ALARM BLARE*

The gate is being opened. Though judging by the hooked auras, it must be by the remaining female. Fine. Escape this time, brat. Your demise can wait a little longer. There are far more interesting events going on.

lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...

It's coming from behind the shack? It makes some sense. The basement hadn't spawned in there this time.

"*grunting* Disgusting freak! You're so dead when we get back to camp!"

Harsh words. Aimed at a fellow human? Such a strange trial.

*ALARM BLARE*

"It won't be long now..."

The sick one?

"Min won't come for you. How does it feel to be left for dead?"

"*grunting* Speak English, bitch!"

*ALARM BLARE*

*METAL SCRAPING*

*DARK BELL BONG*

One of the gates open, the End Game Collapse has begun as Nurse comes around the shack and what she witnesses through the cloth covering her is not something she expected. The disrespectful human was on the hook and being watched by the sick human, only she looked a bit...different. Her hair was loose and shrouded her face, though her eyes glowed white under such curtain. Her arms dangled limply at her sides, hands bent like claws with nails to match. Her posture was slightly hunched yet that was probably because she was standing on her toes.

The sky rumbles with the thunderous approach of the Entity, aiming to claim it's first snack and earning the sick human's attention to see Nurse. The slight turn in her direction gives a better view of her face. White orbs surrounded by darkness that seemed to drain down her cheeks. As if...crying?

"Poor sick child..."

The human doesn't blink.

"You look so unwell."

She looks at the hooked human.

"They use me...Call me a freak...A liability...Yet they bring about their own end."

Slowly she steps away. Heading towards the opened gate or where she perceives it to be.

"*grunting* Hey! Come back here!"

The sacrificed human is ignored.

"They need to learn...Learn that they won't get away with such things anymore."

Her tone is ominous yet somber, almost remorseful. Nurse only watches this odd human walk away. Now as odd as this is, the fact that the collapse is still happening means the trial is not completely over with. Even as the Entity returns to snatch up the other hooked human, the burning veins along the ground persist. Further curiosity has the Nurse following the remaining human. She pays the Nurse no mind, as if not believing her to exist. Arriving at the gate, the human pauses and stares at the site of the campfire. Her only promise of safety in an otherwise deadly world. The instinct to stop her comes to the Nurse but she restrains herself to witness any further oddities. Bit by bit, she gradually steps towards her freedom. She approaches the escape boundary, only for The Entity to spawn the same spikes that usually block vaults for Survivors and stop the Killers from leaving the Trial grounds. She is understandably confused and attacks the spikes with her claws to no avail. Poor thing. She's become so sick that she isn't recognized as human anymore. Something gets her attention, whispers on the wind speaking to her and telling her things she doesn't like. She roars out in frustrated anguish.

[She has learned a harsh lesson.]

"Master?"

[Monsters can not leave to the campfire of humans. Her only chance of leaving here alive is the hatch. But she has no time to look for it. She will not survive. I leave her fate to you, Toriel.]

Such a cruel thing. But so true. There is no saving this one. She's too sick to be saved. The only way out now would be painful. Yet perhaps...there is still some mercy to be given to this child.

"Young one..."

Nurse's soft voice gets her attention.

"There is no escape."

The poor girl looks completely defeated. She even drags herself over to Nurse.

"If you mean to kill me...please...make it quick."

Pity. An emotion Nurse believed she had forgotten. None of the other humans brought that feeling out in her or her fellow monsters. She puts her hands on the girl's shoulder apologetically.

"You poor thing. So much suffering is hidden in those eyes."

"Not sure how you can see that or anything else with that case over your head, but you wouldn't be good at what you do if you couldn't."

"Call it something akin to mother's intuition."

That got somewhat of a small smile to breach her gloom.

"Sorry."

"Sorry?"

"Yeah. For how I acted and junk. Just thought I'd say sorry before you...you know."

No need to make this difficult, human.

"Thank you, child."

She appears ready to speak further but Nurse makes the call to end it now. Her hands swiftly grasp the human's throat and she forces her to the ground. Naturally, the girl is reluctant to be strangled and grips at Nurse's wrists in an effort to pry them off. This struggle does little to lessen the pressure on her windpipe. With the life fading from her form she claws at Nurse's face. Her sharps nails snag a bit of the cloth and tear a small opening, showing off the intense red eyes hidden inside.

*CRACK*

The flailing ceases. Limbs fall to the wayside. Head lulls back and eyes empty of light. The human is dead.

"Rest now, child..."

Nurse gently strokes the cheek of the human in solace.

"Now you can rest."

With the last human in the trial now dead, the world begins to be consumed by the realm's fog. Time for the world to be reset for the next trial. Nurse reaches up and feels the hole, touching her face for the first time in unknown ages. It won't last though. This will be reset along with the realm. A fleeting glance with her own eyes before losing such clarity again.

[SURVIVOR'S FOREST]

Cold. Everything feels cold. Everything is quiet. Rather odd for the campfire to be so dead. Suddenly there's feeling. Poking. Sharp poking on the back of my head.

*CAW*

...Okay. That's not normal. Forcing my eyes to open, I see not the light of the fire or faces of those who will most likely piss me off. Only darkness and trees as a crow flutter off my back to gawk at me.

"I didn't realize you things double as alarm clocks."

The bird rears back like it will peck my eye out, only to turn and fly upward while cawing.

"Was it something I said?"

Oh well. Time to stop kissing the dirt and find the fire. I could use some cheering up. David's always good at lifting my spirit. Scrapping myself off the ground hurts. I'm sore and feel dizzy. But I can't stay here because of that. Even if my neck is killing me. Did she really have to snap it? I guess I should be grateful that she did make it quick. Shaking off the stiffness in my joints, I lumber through the woods unsure of how to get to camp but know it's where I'm going. Such a strange feeling. Stranger still is the crow seems to be following me. What do you want with me now Entity?

"I don't know why you didn't put me back at camp, but the least you could do was drop me off closer."

The bird ignores me yet continues to linger. Jackass. Either way, as long as it doesn't cause trouble then I don't mind the company. At some point in my tireless stroll, it takes perch atop my head and I groan.

"Having fun?"

It ruffles its plumage before sitting.

"*sigh* Just don't crap in my hair, okay?"

*CAW*

"I'll take that as a maybe."

I'm not sure how long I've been walking. The trees never seem to end. Yet...I don't feel the fatigue of it.

*CAW*

"What?"

The bird takes flight and something tells me to follow. I run after this harbinger of death. Not sure if it's even leading me anywhere. But soon...I see auras. Auras shaped like people. I move to all fours for faster speed. The smell of smoke finally gets to me. It makes me move faster. By the time I can see light, my body tingles with the anticipation of the fire's warmth. But then...I hear the voices.

"Good! I'm glad she's gone! Fucking freak hooked me!"

Nea. I slow down.

"Do you know 'ow often I've wanted to do that to you?"

David. Never taking her shit.

"Fuck you!"

"Well...It's not like she didn't warn us that something like this could happen."

Dwight. Even his points are nervous wrecks.

"It didn't help that we were going against the Nurse. Once she found her, the damn monster would not stop chasing her for nothing and ignored us till the end."

Thanks, Adam. Maybe it's okay after all.

"And who's fault was that? If she hadn't have shouted than the Nurse would've never found her. At least, no so easily."

Fuck you, Min. Just fuck you.

"She did that because both of you were being attacked. Or did you forget that part? If she hadn't distracted the Nurse, then both of you would've been down after popping that second gen."

I've crept into the bushes and can see them now. No one looks pleased.

"A lot of good that did anyway. Two of us were still hooked. With one being by a fucking team member!"

Nea...Oh, how you know just what to say to make my blood boil.

"You pushed her into the Nurse! And you're seriously wondering why she went after you?"

"The bitch ran at us while being chased! She's lucky I didn't knock her ass out!"

"Fuck you!"

I've had enough listening and spring out of my hiding spot. The whole group just stares at me. Sure, I expected some but not all of them to be looking at me so...oddly.

"What? Are we not allowed to swear all of a sudden?"

David takes a cautious step towards me.

"Luv? Is that you?"

Such a question has me tilting my head in confusion.

"I don't think she knows."

"Poor kid."

Ash and Bill remark.

"Know what?"

"Why is she growling? Is she upset?"

Meg questions as if trying to understand the barks of a dog.

"Okay...I'm just gonna pretend you guys aren't high right now."

I move to join them but barbed spikes, the same that kept me from exiting the gate, now block me from entering the camp.

"What kind of bull is this?"

I touch the spikes and only now notice what they have been seeing this whole time. My hands...These aren't my normal hands. But I died...Why didn't I return to normal? Why am I still a monster? What the fuck is happening to me?!

[Oh, did the Entity forget to mention that if you are killed while in the False Killer state, you shall remain as such till you are brought out of it? So forgetful. Bad Entity, bad. Heheh...]

The ever increasing look of fear and panic on my face has the few good ones concerned, especially David.

"Hey, it's okay, Luv. Just calm down. Can you understand what I'm sayin'?"

This is absolute bullshit! The Entity did this on purpose! Making me suffer still for holding back!

Gripping my stressed-out head, I roar is growing frustration before fleeing back into the woods and away from the shame this affliction is giving me. Vaguely, I want to believe the voices I hear behind me are anything but negative. Damn it all! Why? Why am I like this? Why am I always the freak?

Lost in my private pity party panic I fail to take notice of many warnings that I'm not the only monster in these woods. After probably circling the same carved tree for like the sixth time, something trips me and I skid into the ground. Frankly, I am not having a good day.

"Oh my..."

And suddenly a random voice from the darkness.

"That was quite the tumble. Are you alright, darling?"

Darling? No one calls me that. ...Oh shit. No one I know calls me that. Stranger danger!

"Hmmm...Not much of a talker, are you?"

A figure steps forth and crouches in front of me. Their outfit is pretty basic but they certainly aren't. Just a simple plastic mask with a sort of melted face look that covers part of their face, like the phantom of the opera style while the other side is covered in oil black hair. A faint pink glow shimmers from that lone eye hole. Eerie yet enchanting. Black fabrics shroud their form to help give cover, pinkish-white glossy textures provide light balancing accents, and tendril strips of cloth writhe behind them like four ghostly snakes. They look the most basic, but they are not...The flesh I can see is not meat, but metal. They are a murder machine. A killer robot. And going off the voice...It's a dude.

"Well, no matter. It's better if you just listen than chatter."

That part gets me as I make myself sit up.

"Wait...You're not going to try to kill me?"

He sighs.

"No, darling. At least...Not right now."

Oh great. One of those type of killers. How much worse is this going to get?

"Tell me something, darling...How would you like to have a friend?"

Um...Not gonna lie, I'm blindsided.

"Huh?"

"A friend. You know what one is. Someone you can trust. Depend on. Someone that can help you when you're in need. Now...Wouldn't it be nice to have someone like that?"

Ah. I get it now. He's going to mock me and take pleasure in my empty pointless life before killing me.

"Dude, can you skip the whole belittling me thing and just kill me? I have no fucks to give anymore."

He seems slightly insulted yet remains composed.

"Belittling? No, darling, I wasn't doing anything like that."

"Sure you weren't."

"Really. I wasn't. I am merely extending a hand to someone lost."

"And does said hand hold a weapon in it?"

Now he's offended.

"Well, I never. So defensive when I've done nothing to incur such hostility."

Great...Now I feel bad for insulting a murder...The fuck is wrong with me?!

"No, you're right. I'm sorry I jumped to a conclusion like that. I'm not...myself."

He skims a metal hand under his hood to go through his hair coolly.

"No big deal, darling. I get it. Bad days happen to the best of us."

Okay...This guy is confusing me. Wait...I know him.

"I'm sorry, but are you the one known as...Ghost Face?"

He flinches before becoming way more chipper.

"Oh~? It seems my reputation precedes me."

"The others spoke about you once. But I know as much as the Entity drilled into my head. I merely guessed it was you. I do not know what any of the monsters look like that I haven't met."

That knocks him down a tiny bit yet seems unphased.

"I see. Well, if that's the case..."

He stands up and offers me his hand.

"Allow me to offer you a chance to change that."

It takes a moment to process that.

"You want me...to go with you?"

"A little slow on the uptake. Yeah. That's what I'm offering."

"...Why?"

He sighs. Getting fed up with me enough to quickly reach down and yank me to my feet by the throat.

"Geez. I never thought you'd be so dull in person. I'm offering you something big. Some behind the scene action and get to know the crew. You should feel lucky. Nah, honored."

To try to pry him off would be futile. But that doesn't mean I have to just take this crap.

"*snarl* Let go of me!"

He wags a single finger on his free hand.

"Now now, darling. You won't get anywhere being demanding. Try again with proper respect to your better."

I cringe.

"*growl* Let go of me...Please?"

He smirks.

"Much better."

He puts me down yet doesn't remove his hand.

"Now then, rewinding back a bit...How would you like to make a friend?"

I am not liking this day. In fact, I fucking hate it.

"Sure?"

"Great! The others will just love meeting you. Some are dying to get there hands on you."

And now I'm uncomfortable.

"...I need an adult."

"I am an adult."

"A different one."

"I'll take you to them."

"Can we not?"

His grip tightens and I change my tune.

"*gasp* Okay okay...We can go."

His grip lacks.

"There. Isn't it easier to just go along with things than fight the flow?"

I don't respond. I can't figure a way to do so around him. His personality...It's too mixed to grip. But he gets the point of my silence. Tugging to get me moving as he treks beside me.

"I will admit...You're not quite what I was expecting."

Now he's chatty.

"I've been keeping tabs on you. Taking notes. You're not like this when with the other humans."

...He's been what? No wonder Nurse knew. This guy must've heard and reported it to the others.

"Maybe it's because you're unsure. I am a stranger. You know nothing about me or my motives. For all you know, I could be taking you away to do ungodly things with your body."

That legitimately made me shiver hard. A sensation that makes him chuckle.

"Now there's a reaction. Heheh...So cute. No worries, darling. I have no need of you like that."

I sigh with hope.

"Can't say any of the others won't."

I'm dead. I have to be. Somewhere along the line I died and went to hell. Maybe a bear got me in my sleep or was hit with lightning. Now I'm being punished. Maybe I can make a deal with the devil with a contest or sorts?

"Did that freak you out or are you thinking of a way to attack?"

My thoughts are broken.

"Huh?"

"Ah. You were just lost. Makes sense."

"Um...You were just trying to scare me...right?"

He doesn't respond.

"Right?!"

His composure falters. Unable to keep a straight face.

"*laugh* I'm sorry...*snicker* You just make it so easy to fuck with you."

I am so not in the mood for this.

"That's not FUNNY!"

He may have predicted I was going to hit him. He may even been ready for it. Yet he wasn't prepared for the brunt force not being a hit...but a charge. I end up taking him for a short ride into a tree, the bang catches him off guard and the shock has him release me. This momentary freedom is enough to get some space and I use it to run. Of course, he's not pleased by this and gives chase.

"*digital distortion* GET BACK HERE, YOU BITCH!"

Seems the robot loses his shit when upset. Good to know. Perhaps I can use that.

"Don't blow a gasket, ghost-bot. Aren't you used to this by now?"

"*digital distortion* I WILL GUT YOU LIKE A FISH!"

"You'd have to catch me first."

Granted, a clever guy like him probably knows these woods better than anyone and his costume is well suited to hiding in the darkness. Yet he does have a flaw. He's metal. Heavy heavy metal. While still of decent speed, he can't help his body mass and that is the key. Flesh be nimble, flesh be quick, flesh will adapt, flesh will strengthen, and flesh can overcome. All it takes is some careful maneuvering and just the right time to act. After all, he may have been watching me yet he doesn't know how I do things when pushed. He doesn't know what kind of beast I am!

"*digital distortion* DON'T THINK YOU CAN ESCAPE ME!"

The faint glint of a blade gets in my sight. From the right.

A slash comes down.

But it missed. Just barely though. I mistook his reach range and nearly took the blade of his tactical knife to the shoulder.

"*digital distortion* HOLD STILL, YOU WRETCH! YOU SHOULD FEEL HONORED TO FEEL MY KNIFE SLIDING THROUGH YOUR RIBCAGE!"

Now. Now's the time.

"Sorry. But the only taste of steel I desire is not that weapon!"

I lunge, but it's a false one. The shock is to take him by surprise and gauge his reaction time. But I should've attacked. I shouldn't test things and aim for max damage. Because that's what he does. He's fast. Too fast. His free hand grabs a fistful of my hair and uses it as the tether to swing me into tree after tree.

"*digital distortion* ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?! IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED?! THEN I'LL GRANT YOUR WISH AND BEAT YOU INTO COMPLIANCE!"

He doesn't joke about it either. The knife is put aside for now in favor of swinging me around and bashing me around the environment. Ground, rocks, bushes, trees. Nothing is off-limits to pummel my body into. In no time I'm coughing blood. The bright shimmering crimson is enough to get his attention. It shows his victory. Such a show calms him, reverting him to his relative ease as he holds my still form.

"*sigh* Oh dear...Look at you, darling. This is on you. All I wanted was to show you off. But no...You just had to be difficult."

I don't recall giving willing consent to any of this, so...fuck you.

"I suppose what's done is done. But I can't show up with you looking like this. Just...Hold still a sec."

The cold feel of his thumb smear blood from my face.

"Huh?"

His confusing musing tone has me look meekly up at him.

"Hmmm...Shame. I guess there's a time limit for that."

The only thing his words make me think of is my Anomaly State. So I move my hand enough to see it. Sure enough, I don't see the claws that were there moments before.

[Just as there are ways to trigger this False Killer state, there are ways to prevent and reverse you back to normal. Killers can also use pain to revert you to normal, with enough damage from clashing with a real Killer you will be back to being just another piece of meat waiting to be hooked.]

So he must have hurt me so bad that it reverted me to normal. Good. I'll let him believe there's a time limit. Jerk ain't getting any info out of me. Though I'll be real, I'm not gonna hold out very well if torture is used.

"Oh well. Human you will just have to do."

He tosses me up over his shoulder and resumes the action of taking me somewhere. For what? Fuck if I know.

"You're not going to stab me, are you?"

"*cough* Shouldn't I ask you that?"

"Just checking, darling. All's fun and game till someone gabs s shape object in your back."

"*cough* You are by far...the most confusing individual I have ever met."

"Do try not to talk. You're getting blood all over me."

Whatever. It's your fault I'm spitting blood. My annoyed monologue aside, I decided to just enjoy the ride. I ache too much to try wiggling free and even if I did I wouldn't get very far in this current state. Maybe a small nap would be nice. What's the worst that could happen? He kills me? Good. Then I'll pop my ass back at camp since I'm not all monster any longer. Just a short nap. Just for a...little...while.

...

[What do you think you are doing, Mettaton?]

This voice has Ghost Face pause.

"Oh...um...Nothing?"

[Do not lie. The Entity does not take lies well.]

"M-Master, I assure you, I have no ill intent here."

[Oh? Do tell then.]

"This human can become one of us, right? I figure...Perhaps we can, I don't know, make her more okay with becoming a killer."

[Hmmm...This one is rather reluctant to embrace her gifts.]

"Then am I allowed to continue?"

[Very well. Just do not be foolish. Your pride will blind you if you let your ego get the better of you.]

That made him flinch. It knew? Of course, it knew. The Entity is literally everywhere! It's always listening and watching. Best not fuck this up.

"Yes. Of course, Master."

Great. Now he had to be careful. The Entity didn't care about what the monsters did outside of trials so long as they didn't affect things leading up to trials. If they wanted to mess with the humans, it was okay. Often encouraged. Though this was a bit of hard one to gauge. It's a human but also a monster. If handled wrong, she could tell the other humans things that would give them a massive advantage in terms of strategy. And such a thing would be bad. Very bad indeed. So his plan to present the odd human as a "See? I deserve this more than Legion!" ploy will have to be reworked into a more "Hey guys, we need to make her like us more than them." type deal. Yet based on what he's seen and heard, that most likely won't be as hard of a thing to do than the other might think.

With this in mind, he continues onward. A location set in his thoughts, the forest around him giving way to emptiness and fog. Such a sight is normal for killers to see when traversing the realms. But he found it a little odd she did not react to this. A slight shimmying had him picking up on the sound of her shallow breathes. She nodded off. Rather a nice spot of luck. Less hassle while traveling. But perhaps he was a bit too rough in his anger. Oh well. No point crying over some possible internal hemorrhaging. The fog begins to thicken and wooden shack faintly hides within. This shack both exists in every realm and doesn't at the same time. But in this spot, in particular, was its own space. A place where the monsters would gather for meetings and other stuff. The only differences this shack had from the others was the lack of chests and the addition of bone piles used to practice hexes.

Entering the shack, he easily could tell it was empty. Not a sound could be heard before or after he descended the stairs to the basement. It would be a few more trials till their next meeting and she wasn't going back in one either, as no human was ever selected more than once a "day" to allow their soul to recover. Still, he had no clue if it was his time to kill and the risk of her being found in the open by one of the others would be too annoying to deal with. Thankfully, the lockers were the perfect place to stash a body. Though to be safe, he jams a bone in the handles to keep her from opening it and running away.

"There. Sleep tight, darling."

(SOME TIME LATER)

Muffled murmuring tempts my mushy brain to wake from soft slumber. Such sounds, most likely from others around the fire after I died. Fuck'em. I'm too tired.

*CLANG-CLANG*

My eyes shoot open. That wasn't a sound made at camp. In fact, I can see I'm in a container of sorts. Fuck! I need to heal! I start the process of healing with Self-Care. Damn it! Why is it so slow?!

lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...

I can't tell if that's just the Terror Radius going off like crazy or the pounding of my own heart about to explode in panic.

*CLANK*

I'm only healed enough to be maybe 30%, thanks the power of sleep, but that's not enough to get me to be fully healed.

"Rise and shine, darling. You've slept long enough."

The doors are flung open and Ghost Face snatches me by the hair as I try to scamper past. A rather harsh tug upwards has me roaring and snarling at the robo-fucker. Yet my flailing stops when the force of multiple auras comes down on my soul and I shiver at the many sets of eyes now on me.

"See? I wasn't lying. Our new member is right here."

They...They're here...All of them...All of them are here...All 16 monsters...I...I have no words.

"Say hello, darling. You don't want to be rude."

"what the fuck, shit-face?!"

Legion pushes his way through and part of me almost feels relieved to see him.

"i told you she's my plaything."

There goes that feeling and in record time.

"look what you did. she's all banged up and bloody. this is why you don't mess with other people's property."

...Excuse me?

"She's not yours, squirt. You haven't completed the Trials of Obsession. So till you do, darling here is fair game."

I want to punch them both even if the result is brutal stabbings. Wait...What are the Trials of Obsession?

"Both of you cease your foolishness."

Wraith steps up and slaps Ghost Face's hand, making him let me go.

"The lamb is one of us. Show her the same as we give each other."

They look at each other and then me.

"sounds fair."

Legion punches my shoulder and I hiss at him.

"welcome to the club, meat."

"Funny. I didn't think there was a way for you to beat meat."

There's this weird silence, mostly because I feel dumb for making a random masturbation pun in a room full of killers, and the looks aimed at me don't help. But then he snickers.

"heheh...fucking hell, meat...that was almost good enough not to be pissed off at you for...almost."

I shrug.

"Fair enough."

A low disappointed groan gets attention.

"IS THIS THE STANDARDS OF THE ENTITY NOW? PATHETIC."

Huh...Another skeleton? Neat. Wraith pulls me aside.

"Lamb, this is your superior. Trapper. Show him respect."

Aka...Mr. Grumpy Bones. This guy is tall. Wearing nothing more than dark red work boots, dark black with red trim overalls, and a twisted soulless scared mask that barely hides the glow of his red eyes. Hooks and metal shrapnel stab at his bare-bones. A thick brutal cleaver is held in his right hand while bear traps hang from his waist. No wonder he's agitated. That shit has to hurt. I bow my head.

"My apologies, Sir."

This calms him a bit. Though not much.

"*SCOFF* AT LEAST IT HAS MANNERS."

"It does help that the darling actually responds to us. Those other sacks of meat just ignore anything we say."

"Yeah, about that...I don't think they understand what any of you are saying. Like, at all."

I just had to chime in.

"Really?"

"They told me you guys couldn't talk and they had no clue what I was saying when I was a killer. So...I guess there's a language barrier of sorts."

"Huh...Explains a lot. Seems we have a new advantage! The meat thinks we're mindless beasts."

Well...Fuck. I messed that up.

"Maybe this faker is worth more than first thought."

This voice comes from an unamused, what looks like, a fish woman wearing a rabbit mask. The fuck? Her whole everything is confusing my brain. A thick torn sarafan that's black on the top while dull blue on the bottom, customized with pillaged soldier utility belts, dark pants, and she's barefoot. On top of that her skin is dark blue scales, odd fins stand out where her ears would be, the bottom of the mask doesn't cover her lower jaw so you can see a few scars, her long bright red hair is made dull with a black veil, one eye is blacked out while the other shimmers with gold, her teeth are like a shark's, her hands and feet are webbed. Her weapons? Small throwing hatches tucked on her waist and a traditional ax with a large heavy head. She is basically what you'd get if the creature from the black lagoon banged a lumberjack. She is the Huntress.

"So what? The bitch is still meat. I'm not going to see her as anything else."

So speaks up a rather odd sight. A ghost, kind of small but not really, wearing an old brown fedora and red with dull green strips sweater. I'd saw this fella wasn't all that spooky if he didn't have that bladed glove on his right hand or the strange way his ectoplasm causes his appearance to be mottled or the eerie death stare given by his cold dull eyes. This is Nightmare. And he is as messed up as his name.

"hAG like. Look yums."

As said, this is the Hag. A wild-looking thing she is. Their body is emaciated, dried skin deformed by insatiable hunger and lightly hinted with faint dirty white fuzz. She kind of looks like a dog mixed with a cat in some ways. The body is clearly dog but the face is a cat, yet has both pointy cat and flop dog ears. Her front paws are armed with fingers made into solid claws, perfect for rendering flesh. Her grey hair resembles a feathery mane and has a wreath of thorns worked into it. All that's left is the sky blue and yellow striped tunic that has seen much better days. She is simple. But oftentimes the deadliest things are.

"Bet that one there would make some mighty fine pudding."

Not sure I understand what Hillbilly means by that. But judging by some of their faces, eating humans isn't that big of a stretch. Hillbilly is a sad-looking thing. Less scary and more like concerned for its health. This light blue-furred rabbit-like monster has a red nose and a tuft of fur sprouting from the top of his head. He wears a dull dirty torn yellow short-sleeved shirt with a single vertical red stripe in the middle covers their twisted crooked skin, and dull red torn disheveled jeans. Almost looks like the rags of the unwanted farmhand. A brutal cattle hammer in one hand deals a sharp blow to the skull as the most effective manner of slaughter and in the other a hulking and motorized chainsaw of terrifying strength. Grinds through flesh, bone, and soul.

"Mmmm...Pudding."

This hulking brute is the Cannibal. The name says it all. An orange cat-like monster wearing a terrifying mask of dried human skin, with what looks like an M or something close to one etched on the forehead, stretched and stitched together. Tall with a bit of a gut who wears filthy pinkish-peach colored workman's clothes, a yellow bloodstained butcher's apron covers a dress shirt and dark slacks. He also has this dress tie that seems out of place yet nice and a strange charm bracelet on his left wrist. His weapons are similar to Hillbilly, a classic sledgehammer and aggressive looking chainsaw.

"*hack* If anything...She'll make for good practice. *cough*"

Now this one...This one disturbs me. The Clown. I hate clowns. And this guy is the sickest looking joke of them all. A bloated pig of a man, except he's no pig, this man is definitely some kind of goat. Tall with broad shoulders, a bulky body, a golden blond mane/beard, two large floppy ears, and two large curved horns. Eyes like coal with a small blue sheen. Face painted in a miserable smile. Wearing the attire of a much smaller ringmaster. Classic tailcoat with button-up shirt pushed far beyond its stretching point. Dirty purple with gold accents, large bow, buttons, a trick golden flower of some kind on the lapel, and suspenders with a comically big key ring holding severed human fingers. An oversize butterfly knife shaped like a bird's feather in one hand and bottle of brew in the other. I don't like this one. He scares me.

"❄☟☜☼☜ 🕈✋☹☹ 👌☜ ☠⚐ 🕯🏱☼✌👍❄✋👍☜🕯 ⚐☠ ❄☟☜ ☟🕆💣✌☠ ❄✋☹☹ ✌☞❄☜☼ ✋ ☟✌✞☜ 🏱☜☼💧⚐☠✌☹☹✡ ☼✌☠ ✌ ❄☟☼⚐🕆☝☟ ☜✠✌💣✋☠✌❄✋⚐☠📬 ✋ 🕈✋☹☹ 🕆☠👎☜☼💧❄✌☠👎 🕈☟✌❄ 💣✌😐☜💧 ❄☟✋💧 ⚐☠☜ ❄✋👍😐📬" (THERE WILL BE NO 'PRACTICE' ON THE HUMAN TILL AFTER I HAVE PERSONALLY RAN A THROUGH EXAMINATION. I WILL UNDERSTAND WHAT MAKES THIS ONE TICK.)

I suspect this one to be the brains of the group. The Doctor. Yet another skeleton but not quite. The bones that I can see appear to be more fused, solid even and melded with wiring in a super painful way. His face is the most excruciating. The straps, hooks, wires, and electrodes being used to contort his skull to the point there's some fracturing of the bone. Donned in a sleeveless doctor's coat that has seen better days and normal dress-wear underneath. The implement of punishment in his hand is one I fail to comprehend. It's like a metal stick but the tip is pointed like a stake and the midsection is spiked while crackling with electrical power. Yeah...Me no like that either.

"Allow m-m-me to assist you, Doctor. If t-t-that's alright?"

The lady with the stutter is known as the Pig, though that seems to stem from her mask and not the kind of monster she is. The visible skin looks to be yellow and scaly, possibly reptilian? A rotting pig's head with runlets of blood trickling from its eye holes and nostrils, topped with long black messy hair though yellow spikes seem to poke through it. Her posture is somewhat hunched over. The attire is that a long, maybe white at some point but now red, bloody coat and dark pants. A razor-sharp blade, attached to a mechanical contraption on her right wrist can be concealed or extended at will. And under the coat, are tucked away death helmets known as Reverse Bear Traps what when used will pry the victim's jaw apart.

"Yeah. Let's CUT her APART! Bit by BIT!"

Spirit seems to be more unstable than most. She appears to be some sort of cat but her grey flesh doesn't look real, like plastic or some other synthetic material, as if she were a doll possessed. Her pink hair is wild and windswept, dancing in the dark. She lacks much in the form of noticeable lady bits which is good since shredded bloody pink bandages are all that's covering her chest and lower half. Her body is a mess. Cuts large and small, gashes, limbs completely severed, all sprinkled with shards of glass forced in places as if trying to escape. Large golden jingle bells dangle under each fluffy ear. Her milky eyes hold a small hint of emerald color. She is a sad sight to look at but not one without danger. The tip of a single-edged straight katana protrudes from the base of her right hand, in a swift motion, heads would roll from an unseen blow.

"Sacrifice! The Entity demands sacrifices! This dearie will appease the hunger!"

Well someone looks like they came from a time of blind god worship that didn't go so well. Meet the Plague, a spider monster with periwinkle or lavender skin that is being degraded by disease, five eyes, six arms, and two legs. A sacred crown worn to hide the affliction that slowly took this possibly ordained priestess, twin pigtails stick out the back along with the flow of her black locks. Imperial red and ruby robes woven from the finest silks, probably crafted for her to display her status. Golden chains, necklaces, and even sharp claw fingermail adorn her in accents. Her weapon is one unseen before and yet fitting of her look. A profane censer, an ancient-looking incense burner held aloft by a long heavy chain exudes the sweetest fragrances to mask the decay around her.

So many faces. So many means of death. Yet...One is missing Where is the one known as...?

".........."

A faint whisper pulls my attention before being actually pulled by an overly strong hand and I wince at the knowing bruise forming in such a grip on my upper arm. This has eyes pulled to watch as one of the Entity's most relentless monsters interact with me, the odd human. This is the Shape, a fire monster. An expressionless white latex Halloween mask covers his head but the hair has burned away to be topped by his orange flames. Everyday dark navy almost black workman overalls contain a living furnace of hell's own fire. An oversized kitchen knife with devastatingly sharp edges is all that is needed to end a life. His eyes. He has the blackest eyes. The devil's eyes. And the inferno shines within them. Yet...Why don't I feel in danger?

"Um...Hello."

He tilts his head.

"Would you kindly let go of my arm? Please? It hurts."

There's this silence and damn if it's awkward. But slowly, that bone-shattering hold loosens and I'm allowed to lightly cover the area. It's so weird. This feeling on my skin.

"So warm..."

Absentminded thought is absentminded.

"Thank you."

He merely stares down at me. Such a tall guy. Hell, everyone is bigger than me except Hag, Pig, Nurse, and Legion. The hand that once did warm proceeds to pat my head and I feel dumb enough to giggle.

"awww...how cute."

Legion mocks me but I choose to ignore him and pay attention to Shape.

"Sound's like someone's jealous."

Ghost Face teases.

"what?"

"With no effort at all, he already holds more favor than you and you saw her first."

Legion sneers and Ghost Face piles on.

"I suppose nothing you did was all that grand if something as simple as a head pat holds more weight."

"*snarls* fuck you."

"Oooh. I'm shaking. Such biting words."

"i'll show you biting!"

Legion storms over as Shape continues test touch me curiously, like what one does at a petting zoo, and the sudden movement of Legion has me unconsciously move closer to the man of flame. He suddenly slams me on a wall, his arm braced against my throat while his free hand grabs my face.

"who do you think you are?"

"*grunt* The hell is your problem?"

I should probably put up a struggle. But I'm in no mood. Besides, he's not even pressing as hard as he could. So I don't try to push him back.

"don't forget your place here, meat. and don't forget who you belong to."

I shake his hand off in annoyance.

"Dude, I'm gonna be real with you. I am in no position to piss anyone in this room off. That said, I am in no mood to deal with this kind of crap. So take this power play you're doing and shove up."

His sockets widen.

"What's wrong, Legion? Can't control a human?"

Huntress remarks.

"And to think he wants to claim obsession rights. What a joke."

Nurse cuts deep with that one. Legion gets more annoyed.

"if you think you'll get away with embarrassing me, you're wrong."

"Hey, man, we were cool till you did this. You're the guy doing dumb shit because of peer pressure."

The snickers and whispers in the background aren't helping him. It becomes too much.

"*sharp roar*"

I didn't feel the initial strike. I most likely wouldn't have known till feeling something else entirely. But then there's a twist in my side that brings more pain than can be ignored. Now I'm clawing at his arm for release.

"*growl* this is what you get. this is what you get for thinking you're...!"

"That's enough. Your point has been made."

Wraith and Shape each put a hand on Legion's shoulders.

"......"

"i am calm! she..."

"Did nothing and you know that."

"............"

Legion's eyes shift to look at the floor as if he's been scolded into realization.

"......."

"i'm not going to apologize."

"You don't have to."

A slow tug is made and his blade is removed, making me gasp louder than intended. Though instead of backing off, he leans in to my side and whispers.

"never forget who you belong to. who's name was craved on your chest. remember that. you are mine."

Feeling my limits being pressed after everything this questionable day has done, I'm not about to just take this. The second he gives me any slack, I grab his hoodie and get in his face, but keep my voice low.

"I know."

There's a slight growl to my words but it's not from any hostility. It's from pain and the struggle to keep standing when I should be on the ground. My words rattle him, making him shove me and in my current state I give in to my bodies will to fall. Just peachy. Stuck in an enclosed space with a ton of monsters and I'm in the dying state. Easy picking for any of them.

"💧☟☜ ☼☜💧✋💧❄☜👎 ❄☟☜ 👎✡✋☠☝ 💧❄✌❄☜📬 ☞✌💧👍✋☠✌❄✋☠☝📬" (SHE RESISTED THE DYING STATE. FASCINATING.)

"The lamb is...quirky."

"*grumble* This lamb is bleeding out. Not deaf."

My annoyance is noted but ignored. Shape scoops me up onto his shoulder. Oddly, even though my wound is still open, bleeding stops when picked up by a monster. It's a momentary fix to not dying.

"*strained* Thanks, big guy."

A slight nod was the reply. At least so far, one of them I'd consider possibly decent outside of trial.

"SO..."

Trapper's voice chimes in.

"WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH IT?"

Wow. Really dude? Am I so beneath you that you don't see me as a person? Whatever. He does make a good point. What are they going to do? Other than killing me.

"✌💧 💣☜☠❄✋⚐☠☜👎 👌☜☞⚐☼☜📪 ✋ 🕈⚐🕆☹👎 ☹✋😐☜ ❄⚐ 💧❄🕆👎✡ ☟☜☼ 🕈☟✋☹☜ ❄☟☜ ⚐🏱🏱⚐☼❄🕆☠✋❄✡ ✋💧 ☝✋✞☜☠📬" (AS MENTIONED BEFORE, I WOULD LIKE TO STUDY HER WHILE THE OPPORTUNITY IS GIVEN.)

I take it I'm just being ignored as a living being as they contemplate among themselves on what to do with me. Oh well...Might as well try something crazy. I tap Shape and he looks at me. I say not a word. Merely motion to the stairs. I don't expect much. But I hope for some pity. He just stares at me and that unnerving stare has me shiver even when surrounded by his heat. Yet slowly he starts to make his way to leave. Sadly, this movement doesn't go unseen.

"hey, buddy, it's not nice to take what doesn't belong to you."

Oh my god, give me a fucking break! Shape looks at Legion, the others, then me, and then back to Legion.

".........."

"yeah, sure, whatever. just hand her over."

Wait what? Shape starts to hand me over to Legion and I hear internal glass shattering from my broken hope of escape.

"*strained* No...No, no, no, no, no! I thought we were cool, big guy! I thought we were cool!"

"don't whine. it won't make things better."

Now in Legion's grasp, I officially give up.

"*strained* Just...make it quick. Whatever it is."

"geez. killjoy much?"

I see a small opportunity and my brain says to take it before going completely dead.

"*strained* Kill Joy? I don't even know her."

It's a terrible joke. The kind that makes even people on laughing gas cringe. Yet...I feel him chuckle. He doesn't make the sound but his shoulders rock with mirth.

"☹☜☝✋⚐☠📬 👌☼✋☠☝ 💣☜ ❄☟☜ ☟🕆💣✌☠📬" (LEGION. BRING ME THE HUMAN.)

I sigh and shut my eyes. I don't want to see anything more than what I have to of this crap.

"yeah...no."

Say what now?

"☠⚐✍" (NO?)

"you heard me, doc."

"✡⚐🕆 ✋☠💧⚐☹☜☠❄ ☹✋❄❄☹☜ 💧☟✋❄📬 ✡⚐🕆 🕈✋☹☹ ⚐👌☜✡ ✡⚐🕆☼ 👌☜❄❄☜☼✏" (YOU INSOLENT LITTLE SHIT. YOU WILL OBEY YOUR BETTER!)

I open my eyes in time to see Legion flipping Doctor off.

"i think i've made myself clear. she's mine. if you want to do anything with her, you have to find her in the trials or...beg me for permission."

The rational part of me knows he's just asserting himself with this move. But the dumb hopeful part of me is thinking maybe this will be okay. A sudden jerk and he's sprinting up the stairs. This skeleton continues to amaze me. There's a commotion from the others, the few that bother to attempt chasing Legion, though once he boosts it becomes painfully clear that they're not going to keep up and stop. It's also clear that we're not anywhere anymore. My only guess is this is the space of the fog, the place between the realms the Entity made.

"*strained* I think you lost them."

He faintly looks over his empty shoulder yet keeps his fast pace.

"even if it seems that way, don't believe it. some of them..."

"*strained* Can teleport, become invisible, and hide their terror radius? Yeah, I know."

"heh...one minute you know nothing and the next you do. what changed?"

"*strained* The Entity mind raped me."

"...okay..."

Probably not the best choice of words on my end.

"*strained* Where are we going?"

He doesn't answer.

"*strained* Dude, give me a break. I've been stabbed multiple times, chased, beaten, abducted, and killed all in what feels like hours. The least you can do is tell me where you're going."

Again, he says nothing.

"*strained scoff* Typical. You don't see me. Just something to use. Damn it...Why do I always think the best of others when time and time again I'm proven wrong? You're no different than everyone else."

This has him skid to a dead stop.

"what did you say?"

Why do I suddenly feel like I'm gonna regret life even more? He tosses me off his shoulder and now I know I fucked up.

"i am nothing like them!"

He kicks me hard in the gut. My wound pours out more in response. I won't last long at this rate.

"*strained coughs* Ow...*sputter* real mature..."

"shut up!"

He proceeds to stomp his heel into my back repeatedly.

"you don't know a damn thing about me! don't fucking think for a second that you're better! you're no different than any other shitty human! you're not special! nobody cares about you! do you hear me?! nobody!"

It's getting so cold. The puddle forming around my body is outrageous. But karma is funny in a douchy way. He slips in the puddle while adjusting his stance and falls flat on his back...however...this makes his non-stomping foot kicks me point-blank in the face. Lights out instantaneously.

...

{bones? are you okay?}

{dumbass. the fuck were ya thinking?}

{i thought we were to keep her away from the others so we could inform her of the trial rights. not kill her. though great use of technique on brutality.}

Bones shakes his head. A fog clouded his judgment. Looking to the bloody body on the ground, he is fairly sure she's dead and the size of the puddle around her only makes it seem like he's right. Yet...she's still there and not fading into the darkness. Either she's resisting or there's still some time before she completely bleeds out. Going with the latter, he collects the girl and just barely feels the shallow breaths leaving her.

"*sigh* fuck my life."

{what happened?}

{he fucking snapped, genius. the fuck do ya think happened?}

He ignores the question to continue walking.

"boo."

{y-yes?}

"when we get back to base, i want you to take control and deal with the human when she wakes up."

{what?!}

{m-me? why me?}

{yeah, why ya putting the baby in charge for this?}

"simple. he won't do something stupid."

{like you did?}

"fuck you. chops, you'd do worse than me and you know it."

{meh.}

"and dead-eye...well...you'd kill her if the mood hit."

{you are not wrong.}

"it's settled. boo, you chat her up and get her on our side. it'll make getting those dumb rights easy."

{okay, bones. but, uh, are you sure you can't do it? she's never met me. what if she freaks out?}

{oh my god! grow a spine, you fucking pussy!}

{he has a point. you can not show uncertainty to humans. they will use it against you and we can never lose the fear we hold over them.}

{plus, scaring those bitches is fun as hell.}

{that too.}

That earns a snicker from the leader.

"just be yourself, boo. besides...i get the feeling her waking up to see me won't end well."

{yeah. ya fucked up.}

{big time.}

"alright, i get it! i don't need heckling from you dorks."

{dorks? us?}

{we aren't the moron that's stabbing our meal ticket to getting respect to death like a dumb fuck.}

"that! that shit right there is why you assholes don't get the body more often."

{if that's the case, why don't i get the body more?}

"shut up, boo!"

{o-okay.}

"and there's your answer."

{oh...ah man.}

Bones shakes his head. The fog slowly giving way to snow. Mount Ormond Resort begins to come into view as Bones starts to change. The color of his clothing altering to lighter blue hues, the binds of tape melting away, and a bow made with a long scarf tied around the waist looks like a target on his back. It's time for a new take on things. Perhaps Boo can salvage the plan. Here's hoping the human will take to him better than Bones.

[mummapaintstheblues]

A Series of Firsts

The First Night 1.3k

This is a sequel to my little drabbles. I hope you enjoy <3 All fluff because sometimes we all need a little squishy fluff to get us through the day.

As a medical professional, she had expected the tiredness, anticipated the exhaustion and everything that came with it. Sakura however, had presumed that her strong kunoichi mettle would make her impervious to the strain, or at least strong enough to withstand it tolerably. But this was an other worldly feeling, unlike anything she had ever experienced in or off the battlefield. It was as if every ounce of energy had been forced from her body.

They never said that creating new life would be an easy task.

The first night had been a blur of chemically induced sleep, groggily waking to gaze in awe at the baby face next to her hospital bed. Sakura fought the tiredness to keep her eyes open to stare at this miracle for just another second longer, but it would capture her again. When she woke Kakashi was sitting on the side of her bed, one hand gently brushing baby Maika’s sleeping rosy cheek.

That day had been an oddity, learning this new little person that she had created, taking in how soft and tiny she was. Kakashi frequently and proudly remarking at what a good and quiet baby she was to anyone who entered the room. Visitors had been restricted to medical staff only, just for the day, to give them all a chance to recover. To enjoy the happiness and unbridled love that enveloped the new little family.

But then the second night happened. And it was hell.

The quiet and beautiful baby Maika that had been gushed over during the day morphed into some kind of screeching demon overnight. Sakura would no sooner be dozing off for just ten seconds then a high pitched cry would call her to attention. By the time Kakashi arrived in the morning she was a veritable quivering mess of hormones and sleep deprivation. The first words falling from her lips being, “You were wrong. She. Is. Not. Quiet.”

That day in the hospital progressed much the same, except every person within a ten mile radius deemed it necessary to pop in unannounced. The tiny room only holding fifteen people at any one time, was at maximum capacity throughout the day. By early afternoon, right about the time Sakura was finding her first signs of struggle in feeding the baby, Kakashi put strict orders for no civilians to enter the room.

The third night had been the final straw.

Off to a good start, Kakashi exerting his authority and staying well after visiting hours, she’d at least managed a couple hours sleep before the doors were locked and he had to leave. And then all hell broke loose. There may have been an emergency down the hall or whatever, but the noise was chronic and demanding.

Beeping, crying, wailing. Gurneys being barrelled down the halls outside the room, doors slamming, people pacing back and forth. And while baby Maika slept through most of this well enough, Sakura had been one hundred percent unable to. When finally a brief reprieve from the bedlam occurred and her eyes closed, Maika gurgled to life with little grunts, insisting on being fed.

And the vicious cycle had then been repeated. On top of this, Kakashi’s order had put everybody off entering her room. So Sakura was left to veritably fend for herself, a brand new sleep deprived mother, hungry and very much alone. She was a crying mess by the first few rays of sunlight and Kakashi’s return. The crushing loneliness disappearing as soon as his arms enclosed around her.

“I’m here, we’ll do this together. Now get some rest.”

Without another word or unintelligible sob from Sakura, she fell asleep against his sturdy warmth. Drinking in that safety. And when she awoke, starving hungry, he was still there. Sitting next to her on the bed, Maika in the crook of one arm, reading from a scroll held in the other.

At the realization that no one had bothered to feed her during her stay, and the fact that Sakura had been too tired to realize it herself, Kakashi packed everything up and discharged his wife and daughter himself.

Sakura felt relief.

At home she would be able to rest. Wouldn’t she?

The strange feeling of being on her feet again passed relatively easily. The pain was very much under control for now. The nervousness at moving baby Maika from her hospital bed was still palpable. Kakashi feeling it too to some degree, but his ability to put Sakura at ease was still legendary, and he did just that. Making her feel safe the whole way.

Everything was ready and prepared for her at home. The nursery and all, and it was all pristine. There was a smell wafting in from the kitchen that promised baked goods and other treats, but Sakura was only interested in one thing. Sleep.  

She lay down, with some assistance from Kakashi, once they had both seen baby Maika placed safely in her bassinet. And then it happened again. No sooner had she closed her eyes than the little grunting and snuffling noises began from the bassinet. Kakashi finally hearing Maika for the first time, scratching his head with an almost permanent smile on his face.

“See. I told you.” Was all Sakura could manage.

He shifted the little bundle to her mother in what started the most gruelling night Sakura could remember. There had been not ten minutes of peace. Whether it be baby Maika being hungry, or needing to be changed, to her own mother turning up out of the blue to ‘help’. Though her assistance was limited to only messing up the kitchen in cooking something for them before hastily departing when the crying reached glass breaking decibels.

By ten o'clock that evening Sakura was back to a crying mess herself. It wasn’t rational, it was sleep deprivation and hormones, but knowing this didn’t help any. Kakashi enveloped her in his arms while the tiny terror that was Maika grunted and snuffled for more food. Sakura cried into his chest, great heaving sobs.

“After it took so long to get her here, after… everything… I promised I wouldn’t be upset when she cried… that I would…”

“Sakura. Hush now, this is all new to us.” He stroked her hair through the sobs while Maika’s grunts grew a little louder, “let’s feed her, and then you can leave her to me and sleep, alright? You’ll feel better after some sleep.”

Sakura was doubtful at this stage that she would ever get any sleep, but she relented to Kakashi’s soft strokes of her hair, and the calming warmth of his voice. In a zombie like state in their bed, she fed Maika, Kakashi lifting the baby from her arms, clicked off the lights and shut the door as they left.

And it was like Sakura had blinked and hours had passed. She woke somewhat refreshed, still in darkness, the light creeping only from under the door. Sakura threw herself out of the bed in a panic that came on all too suddenly, making her cold and numb and nauseous all at once.

Where was the baby? It was well past the time for her next feeding surely. Why hadn’t Kakashi woken her?

In a gallop she threw the door open, taking her strides to the lounge where she froze at the sight.

The lights dim, she could still see Kakashi’s languid figure lying on the sofa. She’d know that body anywhere. And nestled to his chest, sleeping silently, was baby Maika. Not squirming, or grunting, or wanting another feed. Just, quietly sleeping and soaking up the warmth and love of her father.

Sakura smiled, pulled the blanket on the side of the couch over top of them both a little. Before she retreated back to the bedroom to see how much more sleep she could tally up for herself, Sakura snapped a quick photo of the two. Feeling that warmth at being able to have everyone she loved most sleeping under one roof. And for once, all of them would be sleeping, so she was going to enjoy it because they were in it together.

[itsthejuggernautbitch]

Dissolve - Colossus/OC

Alright, y’all. Finally. I rewrote this intro so many times. Here’s the first section, with an ao3 link for readability. The section is under the cut.

(Side note: y’all have NO IDEA how hard it was for me to type you both instead of y’all.)

Negasonic was having a great fucking day, as she usually did on Friday’s, when she got the super fun call that some little mutant kid on the other side of the city decided to pitch a bitch fit and flood three city blocks. Fridays at the mansion were quiet - no one wants to do bad things on a Friday. It's Friday, for goodness sake. Go on a date, take your kids to the park, go to a bar. Do something that's not blatantly criminal.

From the sound of the call, it looked like the mutant kid had broken out of the Ice Box on transfer. And no, the kid couldn’t have flooded the streets with clean sink water, or water from the pond in the park. You know, something simple and not-disgusting. That would have been too easy. No, the kid thought it would be funny to flush out the sewers and influence every septic tank within a mile radius to simultaneously explode. Nevermind how the kid had even gotten his collar off. Apparently no one had been able to figure that one out yet.

It’s not like Negasonic was going on a date tonight or anything.

She was already nervous, but she definitely wasn’t going to meet Yukio now, not if she was going to have to wade through sewage on the heels of her eight-foot-tall Man-of-Steel mentor who just had to make it a priority to talk to the kid personally about personal responsibility. Can’t exactly have a fun date when you smell like literal shit, and some smells just don't come out after three consecutive showers.

Negasonic almost felt bad for the kid. She’d gotten the Personal Responsibility speech a handful of times (mostly because she sometimes couldn't turn off the sarcastic tone in her voice), and while she loved her mentor dearly (not that she would ever say it out loud), Colossus tended to get a little preachy after the first few sonnets of poetic justice. She almost felt bad for the kid, before she remembered that she was going to be drudging through an ocean of shit to reach him because he just had to cause a scene. On a Friday.

Student and mentor stood at the edge of the poop lake, staring out into the street full of sewage was expressions of disgust that were oddly similar - the kind of similarity that only comes from lifelong familiarity. It was absolute bedlam; fire hydrants were gushing, manholes had been displaced from the sheer force of the gushing sewage, water was leaking out from under door frames. The unmistakable sound of scores of toilets flushing at the same time droned on under the honking of car alarms. Negasonic caught the sound of gentle retching coming from her mentor, who tried to hide the coughing behind his huge fist but failed. Poor guy could barely deal with the sight of blood, much less a lake of poop water.

“Can’t we get Wade to do this? He smells worse than this on a daily basis anyway,” Negasonic asked, hiding the smell-and-taste parts of her face behind her gloved hand. She practically had to yell to be heard.

“That is true, but unfortunately not. He - uh,” Colossus coughed again, wetly, then took a deeper breath than he really meant to, “he left for Japan on mission last night. Besides - this builds character.”

There was more of a question mark than a period on the end of that sentence. Even with all his teacherly conviction, Colossus didn’t really believe it.

“It’d be really helpful if one of us could fly…”

“Indeed,” Colossus replied, beckoning his student onward. “Come, Negasonic. The quicker we find the boy, the quicker we go home.”

It was, at that oddly opportune moment, a great time for a jet to drift in past the line of buildings. It hovered past the treetops and streetlamps and came to land in the little park quite near where they were standing. Technological marvel that it was, it hardly disturbed the grass as it landed, which was a blessing because it was disconcertingly close to the sewage. Negasonic was not often excited to see the X-Jet, but in this case, she would make an exception. Hopefully, it was someone coming to bail them out, because this whole situation was just… yikes.

The door of the jet came down, and Negasonic sent up a silent vibe of thank fuck to whatever deity may have been listening.

The cleanup crew stepped out - a handful of X-men whose powers didn’t translate well in combat but had mission-worthy uses. There were ten or so of them - just a small faction responsible for cleaning up the areas around the mishaps that tended to befall the X-men. They were usually sent to take care of the aftermath of large-scale disasters. And out of that cleanup crew came one of the very few people on Negasonic’s people-who-don’t-suck list (Wade and Colossus were both on it too, not that she’d ever tell them), Suraya Josephs, known as Metanite. If Negasonic actually wrote out her list of people-who-don’t-suck, Metanite would be at least pretty close to the top.

Negasonic was not easily intimidated. Her attitude came hand-in-hand with being an almost-adult teenager with too many responsibilities to handle. And yet, even Negasonic could admit that if Metanite were a complete stranger, she’d have to look the other way. Metanite’s defense form was a vaguely smudgy, jet-black humanoid with smoldering, empty eyes. She was difficult to look at, and consequently emanated a vibe of creeping terror.

But Metanite wasn’t a complete stranger, so Negasonic at least tried look. Tried being the operative word. Fuck, she looked creepy.

As the mutant woman stepped onto the grass, the overwhelming creeping dread set into Negasonic’s bones. Negasonic squirmed; she caught Colossus fidget out of the corner of her eye. It was the most gentle feeling of terror she’d ever experienced, like her heart might crawl out of her chest; it was a secondary effect of Metanite’s defense form, she’d been told, which made it difficult to assign the mutant woman to a team or a mentee. It was difficult for anyone to look at her before she disengaged.

Metanite caught the uncomfortable stares and looked down at her hands. “Oh, I’m sorry, you two! Let me fix that. The rest of the crew is used to it.”

The feeling of dread ebbed as Metanite shifted into a human form; her usual smiling self was left standing where the smudgy humanoid had been. She strode on over, surveying the sewage disaster with a measure of disgust.

“You know, from the air this looks like a giant brown lake appeared in the middle of the city. It’s stretching, like, four blocks now” she said, grimacing at the smell. “We got pulled off of another scene on the outskirts of Atlanta to come back and take care of this.”

Negasonic caught Colossus fidgeting again out of the corner of her eye, but she was pretty certain it wasn’t because the big man was still retching from the smell. She held her hand over her nose, trying not to breathe through her mouth. "What's going on in Atlanta?"

"We're not really sure, but there's several human limbs left lying around. We found teeth embedded in a tree. It's quite morbid. We're thinking some people with regeneration factors got in a fight."

Negasonic would've liked to see that, actually. Nevertheless, she'd really like to get the current mess out of the way. “So, do we need to go find the kid?”

Metanite shrugged. “I would suggest letting us get this cleaned up before you bother, unless you just really want to wade through this mess.”

Negasonic would rather have every single one of her fingernails peeled off with a cheese grater than have to walk in this mess. She assumed that her mentor probably felt the same way.

Colossus, finally, spoke up. He folded his arms over his chest. “The boy will not get far, not with everyone watching for him.”

“Yeah, you’ve got all of us here,” Metanite said. “If we see happen to see him, I’ll handle him.”

Negasonic, personally, would not want to have to be handled by Metanite. She felt a little bad for the kid now. “He’d have to be around here somewhere if this is still spreading.”

Colossus nodded. “He is near. We will be watching for him as well.”

“Well, you’re welcome to take the jet. We’ll be here for a while,” Metanite replied. She handed him the access card for the jet. “I’ll call you when we’ve got this under control.”

“I look forward to your call,” Colossus said, taking the card from her. He looked as though he wished he’d worded that differently as soon as he’d said it. If Metanite noticed, she didn’t show it. “I - we do. We look forward to your call. We will handle it.”

Negasonic fought back the ensuing snort. That was one of the least-subtle things she thought he'd ever said, and she'd seen him ignore his feelings for years now. Watching her mentor tiptoe around the woman he liked was excruciating, but she got a good laugh out of it. For such a business-minded man, he sure did get awkward quick.

Metanite grinned. “You always do. I’ll see you both in a little while.”

She headed off towards the group gathering at the edge of the mess. Some of her team looked human, some decidedly not. There were a couple of vibrantly-colored humanoids, a couple covered in fur, one with proboscis-like appendages attached to his head. They were all huddled together in a tight wad around a display screen, looking at something that Negasonic couldn’t see from her angle.

Metanite stopped abruptly and turned around before she reached the group. “By the way, you two, this is my last mission. I’ll be returning to the mansion as a teacher.”

She looked quite pointedly at Colossus before she turned around and ran off to join her team. Colossus followed her movements, mouth set in its usual hard line, but his eyes belied his hard face. He watched her retreating back with an almost doe-eyed stare, causing Negasonic to have to fight off another ensuing snort. Fuckin’ nerd. She - and the literally everyone else in the mansion - had been bothering him to say something for years, but he just wouldn't do it. Negasonic suspected it was because Metanite was pretty much never there, always off on some clean-up mission.

And yeah, Negasonic could understand being wary about it. It's hard to have a relationship when one person is almost never home. But Colossus is Colossus, and if anyone could deal with that like a real adult, it would be him. If he'd ever say anything.

Colossus pulled himself out of his reverie and clapped Negasonic on the shoulder, causing her knees to shake. “We will wait for them to take care of this. Come, let’s get away from the smell.”

At least, Negasonic surmised, maybe she wouldn’t have to bleach her entire body before her date tonight. Someone else could trudge through that mess.