#Dunking on her for no reason other than to be a bit of a troll. And then she starts being all huffy. its soo funny

[xxzapvanityxx]

i love all of my close friends but oh my goooodnessss i love my lilith

[video-gh0st]

So back in June I watched all the Ghostbusters films cause it was the anniversary of the original movie and I thought I'd do a quick bullet point review since it's been a bit since I watched them all together.

Ghostbusters (1984)

It's still a classic. Has memorable moments that will live on.

Fun scenes. Going after Slimer is always silly and chaotic.

Peter Venkman is a rough. I actually had a person tell me that Venkman is the reason why they never watched the first movie, and I don't blame them.

Wish there was a bit more build up to the confrontation with Gozer. Would be neat if they kept uncovering clues rather than just the moment they figured it out in the jail cell.

Ghostbusters II (1989)

I don't know why people dunk on this movie, it's great!

You can tell the cast and crew are having more fun and things are a bit more fleshed out.

Venkman actually has some good character growth and is not a total creep!

I actually like the build up to the climax on this one. Throughout the movie, there's a focus on the slime buildup in the city and the flow of the story feels good.

Some fun light scares.

I kinda don't like the whole "the ghosts just stop showing up" thing. It's a trope specifically for this franchise that's not really explained. Just "yeah nothing happened between the movies and people think, we're frauds again! Gotta do it all over again!"

Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016)

This movie gets a lot of undeserved hate thrown towards it for being the female lead reboot. A bunch of misogynist trolls threw a fit and never gave it a shot the moment it was announced.

The cast was great tbh. Everyone seemed to gel with one another.

Chris Hemsworth plays a himbo and we see him with his shirt off.

I really like the main antagonist in this movie. I think his character could have been fleshed out a bit more, but still fun idea.

The gear looks really cool in this movie.

Some scenes do keep going a bit too long and has like not good Saturday Night Live skit energy. I think they relied a bit too much on improv.

How the fuck is Chris Hemsworth the funniest motherfucker alive and why is he so cute?

There's a teeny tiny bit a queerness in this story, but I also feel like there's themes of found family going on here too and I like that.

Chris Hemsworth plays a himbo and we see him with his shirt off.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

Trailers do this movie a disservice by making it feel like it's going for a Stranger Things feel, kinda relying a bit too much on nostalgia or even doing the "wow kids these days." It just felt like they didn't have any confidence on the movie itself when marketing this tbh.

The tone is a bit more serious, but honestly I'm fine with it. Still has some funny moments, but it's leaning more into the horror part a bit more.

Watching Phoebe learn more about her grandfather is honestly fun. And this movie does a great job with handing things off to a new generation in a way that doesn't feel like it's disingenuous.

Literally cried at the end. Honestly that ending felt wonderful and it felt like a good tribute to Harold Ramis.

I don't know why, but my first watch of this last year wasn't as good as the second watch this year. I don't know what happened. But I remember the first time I watched this and felt like it was just ok but not my favorite. Maybe it was just a bit of frustration that the sequel to Answer the Call got cancelled before it could even get into full production.

I appreciate the movie using some practical effects. There are just certain elements that you can't mess with in Ghostbusters movie and they nailed it.

Muncher is my least favorite ghost tbh. Idk, there are people who love Muncher and I do like the tardigrade inspired design, but idk, they didn't appeal to me like the other ghosts did.

[davekat-sucks]

The reason they don't talk about it is because most of the fandom doesn't even want to acknowledge that Equius exists. They'd rather if he was just a bad fucking dream. Still others posit that he is literally their sexual abuser or something along those lines, made manifest in fiction. Thats what Equius is. Your rapist ex.

Thats what people genuinely believe about him. Yep. The dead horse.

Not Gamzee. The guy who canonically "sexually coerced a minor" (teenage Vriska) as a 40 year old guy, in Homestuck 2. This was a developement Hussie approved, OK'd and then shipped for public consumption. Gamzee "sexually coercing" Vriska is ACTUAL, HUSSIE-APPROVED CANON.

He definitely has no friends outside Nepeta. It was never fully explored. But yes I think she definitely would've made a difference in Equius if she was allowed to do that.

At the very least, her death, and him letting down Nepeta as a moirail and a friend, started something in Equius.

Despite him being adamant about the hemocaste and the supposed rules he and others must live by, at least he could see that what he did was wrong.

He understood that he hurt Nepeta, which he would never ever want to happen. He admitted his sins, and when confronted with Fefetasprite, he admitted to himself and others that he believes that he doesn't deserve forgiveness.

I'd say, that all that, coming from the most racist, stick-in-the-mud bastard, asshole character, is definitely something, and I think it should be noticed.

So yes, I think Nepeta tried what she could do so that Equius wouldn't be such a fucking piece a shit loser. With the best way possible. By being a light-hearted, loyal, lovely, silly friend who doesnt take things too seriously, and also tells Equius off when he's being a bastard.

I think Hussie also mentioned at one point, that Aradia was not under the influence of the heart-chip when she made the move. Almost immadiately after, the comic explains QUADRANT VACCILATION to the readers. Troll sure are alien and weird!

Yeah and the thing about Vriska... Aradia just simply doesn't give a shit anymore. On the pirate ship Vriska actually makes it a point to apologize to Aradia. But Aradia says not to think anything of it, because the wounds of the past doesnt fucking matter to her.

Because Aradia is INFINITELY more interested in "watching this whole place break apart :)" than be pissed because Vriska murdered her and crippled Tavros or whatever.

I genuinely think that she HONESTLY doesnt give a goddamn about SHITTY DICKHEAD BLUEBLOODS. And you know what? Absolutely fucking amazing for her! Hell yes, fuck haters, they dont fucking matter. Got bigger fish to fry.

And honestly? She wouldve had every right to COMPLETELY DESTROY Equius here, Sollux was right there too. Yet neither of them, nor Hussie decided to chew out or dunk on Equius. Eridan gets plenty of that.

But for some reason Equius seemingly only suffers, as much as he deserves. No more, no less.

No, instead of tearing into Equius, Aradia just says "im sorry, itwas a mistake for us to get involved :(" I think quite politely.

You'd think a dead horse, a complete joke of a fucking character, Equius, would deserve to get fucked with the painstick a little bit harder than that.

But no, Aradia is just like "sorry, it was a mistake", no telling him that he's a disgusting blueblood snob or whatever else. Neither does Sollux go for that either. If you remember, right before Aradiabot explodes on the meteor hideout, Sollux complains that "since she (aradia) became Equius' smoochbot they barely had any time to talk".

Which I guess means, that as fucked up as their relationship was I guess at least Sollux respected whatever Aradia had going on to not try to get involved in it, because Hussie couldve given him some choice lines regarding Equius. But he didnt.

Fitting for the Heir of Void to be left unnoticed by the fandom and the nu-fandom thinking he is nothing without Nepeta at his side. Probably for the best for him, because they probably would have spun him as some non-binary or trans because he had crossdressed as a maid in that Ministrife that one time. Though maybe not because he is mostly depicted as a muscular sweaty type. The modern fanbase don't like that body type. You have to be fat fat not muscle fat. Strange double-standards that Equius does not receive the harsh end compared to Eridan. I can only think that he did not get too much shit is probably because he is a highblood and Aradia is a lowblood. So him making out with Aradiabot (she is still a rusty as a ghost) and keeping her is all within his right compared to Eridan killing Feferi (who is the next Heiress). But that all ties in the hemocaste system that he would have to get over with. That and Equius is a part of Hussie in terms of liking horses. Not a full self insert, but like "Hey, I made this OC based on my weird interests in this one animal. So he is like a part of me in some way!" - Hussie

[late-to-the-fandom]

I posted 2,812 times in 2022

That's 2,812 more posts than 2021!

312 posts created (11%)

2,500 posts reblogged (89%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@shipping-through-eternity

@velvethopewrites

@zmwrites

@akindplace

@writingpotato07

I tagged 474 of my posts in 2022

#renathal x maw walker - 169 posts

#my writing - 157 posts

#writing games - 140 posts

#ask games - 126 posts

#fanfiction - 68 posts

#prince renathal - 53 posts

#tag games - 47 posts

#spotify - 29 posts

#writing - 29 posts

#31 days of halloween playlist - 29 posts

Longest Tag: 118 characters

#i'd give anything to be a mage irl so i could just conjure up some mana thing and never have to think about food again

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

I hope its ok to send asks, but for some reason i don't quite think the op of the xymox and painsmith post is coming to the discussion in good faith. They just seem needlessly mean about it. for some reason ppl find it hard to get their head around the fact that not everyone likes conventionally attractive characters. I really am not a fan of such dunking on people over fictional characters paraded around as humor. Especially ones that barely have any content as is.

Like yeah xymox is a bit out of there, but there's a lot of people who like robots like A LOT.

So I’m not the OP of that post, and I’m also terrible at reading context and intentions. All I can say is I for one didn’t take it as demeaning, just funny and I certainly hope my comments didn’t sound demeaning to anyone who finds either of those beings attractive. I knew the Painsmith had stans, but Xymox was a new one on me.

But I will also say that as someone who is almost always in the same boat of “finding the random dude with no art attached to them attractive” I feel the pain of that situation. I’ve spent many a sleepless night trolling the far corners of the internet for Grandmaster Vole art and was sadly disappointed 😂

20 notes - Posted October 20, 2022

#4

Glad we mapped this out

21 notes - Posted November 15, 2022

#3

Heads Up 7 Up

Tagged by the ever sweet @writingpotato07

Tagging: @velvethopewrites @shipping-through-eternity @diaryofomellas @mousterian-writes @kyofsonder @lady-grace-pens and open tag

7 lines from Eternity which should be posted in two weeks (as the writing god allows).

Renathal, hovering restlessly by the door, did his best to swallow his rising panic. If she was truly ended, surely the healers would display more concern?

As it was, the Sin'Dorei was pulling several large books from his bag and laying them on the bedside table one at a time, while the other, smaller creature hoisted itself onto the bed and sat comfortably on the edge. It hadn't stopped talking the entire way to the room, a fact the other healer endured with an expression of longsuffering. Neither seemed in any rush to even glance at the Maw Walker’s unnaturally still figure.

After minutes that stretched like eternity, Renathal could contain himself no longer.

‘I certainly don't mean to tell you how to do your work, but...  do you intend to heal her anytime soon?’

25 notes - Posted October 8, 2022

#2

Incorrect Quotes!

Tagged by the ever sweet @writingpotato07

Rules: use this quote generator & list as many quotes as you like using characters from your WIPs, then tag as many people as quotes you listed.

Tagging: @crunchypuff125, @scourge-lover, @velvethopewrites

Pretty sure each of these is a direct quote from my Renathal/Maw Walker series. It’s actually spooky how dead on this is.

Maw Walker: What’s up? I’m back.  Renathal: I literally saw you die. You died. You were dead  Maw Walker: Death is a social construct.

----

Renathal: Truth or dare?  Maw Walker: Truth.  Renathal: How many hours have you slept this week?  Maw Walker:  Maw Walker: Dare.  Renathal: Go to sleep.  Maw Walker: I don't like this game.

----

Renathal: Are you ready to commit?  Maw Walker: Like, a crime or a relationship?

----

41 notes - Posted October 3, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

131 notes - Posted October 6, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

No surprises here 😂

[ditheringluminary]

oops, sorry, i sent a full ask initially, but it seems to have cut off for some reason? the prospitians are a rogue of light, knight of doom, maid of life, page of rage, & bard of space. dersites are a thief of void, prince of hope, seer of breath, witch of blood, & mage of time. i know theres a few tricky ones in there! a bit of story context, the witch & thief are sorta vying for control during the game, both trying to use the seer’s powers for their own gain. thoughts? thanks a lot

Well you have a time and space player, but one is a bard and the other is a mage. I'm not sure if having something to initiate the scratch is something expressly "beneficial" for someone, but i can already feel like itll be a tad more difficult than normal. Still, there's always a shot!

Rogue of Light: Your session's greatest resource will be Light. Knowledge, luck, and fortune! Or... a lack thereof. Basically your session will be relying pretty heavily on luck in some way, or relying on the discovery and information the players collect.

Knight of Doom: Your session doesn't have enough Doom. I've gotten this one before, and its kinda tricky! Given that you have a Maid of Life, that means that something related to Life will harm your session, and so this player makes more sense. Gotta have someone to offset whatever tyrant is on its way.

Maid of Life: As said above, something related to Life will harm your session. This was seen in canon with Jane, as the Condesce was the negative force of Life that invaded the session (remember the condesce is just post scratch Meenah, a Life player). You could experience something like that, or something like trickster mode could suddenly dunk up your session (as it was seen to be very lifey, completing janes quest of reviving her planet).

Page of Rage: Your session's end reward will be Rage! How weird! I guess this would be taking the "Truth" aspect of Rage, where all that knowledge and fortune from the Rogue of Light will culminate into some big discovery. At the end of the session, you'll suddenly understand everything! Of course, if you ARE just leading to another session (like how the trolls did when Bec noir arrived), then its possible that all you win is the confusion and negative emotions from Rage, as you are continuing onward and havent really "won" yet.

Bard of Space: Your session's greatest challenge will be Space. Something "passive" and dormant is likely waiting to gank all your lives. Ready to greatly impact physical space and make things just a general hassle. This can take the form of things being destroyed to keep from travelling to places, or just restricting mobility in other ways. Either that, or the session is simply plagued with loneliness, as Space often inflicts.

Thief of Void: Your session will have nothing taken from it! Normally i'd substitute "mystery" for Void, and really i could by saying the Rogue of Light shows that you'll """take""" mystery with discovery, but thats stupid! Your session will mostly remain intact. Not to say victory is immediate, but just that you wont have one aspect stolen from you selfishly.

Prince of Hope: Your session has too much Hope. A common aspect for a session that seems like its just SET to win. I see this less as a foretelling of a future threat, and just that your players will get through pretty much all of their session breezing through it, before having that happiness and stride shoved back in their face. Could also connect with the Page of Rage. You have Hope/delusion destroyed by the Prince and have it replaced with the end reward of Rage and truth.

Seer of Breath: Your players will try to win through Breath. Given your information, this is representative of the player themselves! The Thief and Witch trying to control the Seer's Breath powers of Impact to win is foretold in their own classpect! Even if this isnt how everyone on the team tries to win directly, it seems to take center stage and as such is the point to focus on. The Seer foretells their own strife and strategy.

Witch of Blood: Your players want to win Blood. They want bonds and togetherness. Seen in the Bard of Space, loneliness may plague your session. The players want to change/dispel this loneliness and be closer together.

Mage of Time: Your session's theme will be Time. Countdowns, things constantly on the verge of destruction or already being destroyed, and possibly deaths all throughout (though the last one is sort of nullified with the Knight of Doom). Basically you'll know a lot about Time, sure, but at a pretty bad cost of having to EXPERIENCE all of its effects. All of em.

Warnings: A Seer being able to see the impact things have on the game is a pretty powerful thing (whether or not thats the power you were mentioning, im just speculating :B). I think if either the Witch or Thief had it it wouldn't end well. Aside from... controlling people being bad Thieves are notoriously dangerous (no offense thieves) and often have morally-gray plans. Witches are less bad, but they have an issue with the general boundaries/consent of others for the sake of breaking the rules (fef keeping sea creatures in cages "for their own good", for example). A Bard of Space is likely to fail making the genesis frog, especially with a Knight of Doom as their right hand man (most of the Doom bound are fated to suffer from failure, and especially at pivotal moments). 

Goodies: Don't need to worry so much about doomed timelines affecting you, as the Mage should have enough knowledge to assure no one's time travelling willy nilly. The Prince of Hope and the Page of Rage seem to have an equilibrium going on, where the Prince destroys the excess Hope and the Page fills it with Rage/truth. Just make sure to not do too much of that, either. Being lucky has shown to be especially advantageous in Homestuck, so a Rogue of Light spreading that around is especially fortunate!

Your session checks out! Don't count on the frog breeding working out first time (but really who DOES its never that easy is it) and just watch out for whatever Space thing is going to hit the players, be it loneliness or a real physical force.

[loquaciousquark]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E73 (Aug. 6, 2019)

Gooooooood evening good evening good evening all! @eponymous-rose is off packing for a cross-country move (as if THAT’S an excuse), so here I am isntead to lay waste to all you love. 

Tonight’s preroll: Sam’s costume from the liveshow getting dunked in acid.

Tonight’s guests: Laura Bailey & Sam Riegel, in a fully human and normal tshirt and jeans. Everyone oohs and ahs over Laura’s adorable live show outfit; Sam waits eagerly for equal attention. And waits, and waits...

Tonight’s announcements: Huge thanks to everyone who came out to the live show in Indy last weekend (I was there! It was great!). Laura talks about everyone singing the theme on the intro. Sam sent his entire costume back with Dani so he wouldn’t get stopped in the airport. Poor Dani! Season 3 of Between the Sheets, featuring Amanda Palmer, is up for Twitch subs now and will be up on YT on Wednesday. CR is headed to Austin, TX, for a live show on Sept. 23! Everyone talks about how Doty will definitely, definitely be in this show: The Adventures of the Darrington Brigade, ft. the return of Sam as Taryon. Sam says he already has something in mind for his costume; everyone else will be playing new characters. Laura’s got an idea for a backup character for Jester, but BWF advises her not to use this for the live show since Jester will def be dead in less than 20 episodes. Go to critrole.com/events for more.

Episode 73: Uthodurn, which is not spelled at all like I thought

CR Stats! Nott dealt 124 damage this episode, only 23 of which was friendly fire. Sam: “You know, he just needs to get out of the fucking way.” Nott rolled her 50th nat 20, resulting in a 43 stealth check. Laura and Sam quietly talk about Sam’s tendency to touch everyone else’s dice as opposed to his “playing fairly.” Sam also laments he’s lost his dustbuster in the studio somewhere after the last bit. Jester is tied with Beau at 9 for the most HDYWTDTs. Jester also played her 50th prank this episode: creating the ballpeen hammer as an offering to the Allhammer.

Laura thinks part of Jester’s new anger in battle is part of losing Yasha, especially when she disappeared right in front of her and Jester wasn’t able to help her at all. “Jester mammoth-raged.” Laura raves about being a mammoth & talks about needing to work on her elephant noise. Both Laura and Sam fail miserably at making the noise.

Sam slowly drinks a shot. It’s... a thing.

We have a close-up of Sam’s nail polish, which was done for the live show. He doesn’t own nail polish remover, it turns out.

Nott will talk to Cad about the explosive arrow whenever Cad brings it up. First, Cad was invisible & therefore at fault because he couldn’t be seen; the second part of the blame goes to Laura Bailey, who leaned over and told Sam right before his turn he had to kill this thing right now. The explosive arrow was the best thing he had; Sam accepts one part of the blame for forgetting it would be fire. Sam & Laura agree the bolt should have had some thunder/force damage associated with it because of the concussive blast. (Hilariously, my father presented this precise argument to me with GREAT VIGOR right after this episode aired.)

Jester’s call to the Traveler was just in the heat of the moment. All of her power comes from him, so Jester calls out to him (and Laura thinks it cool) when she gets a big oomph. Sam wonders aloud if her powers genuinely come from the Traveler or not. Laura: “I mean...as far as she knows.” Sam’s also distracted that the question card had a straight-up name on it rather than a username.

Sam considers the outcome of the election a win, since he’s one of the bi-Presidents of D&D Beyond until further notice. “It doesn’t matter how you get there, as long as you get there.” Laura asks if he thinks about it being a hollow win when he goes to sleep. Sam: “Do I look like the kind of person to have thoughts as I’m falling asleep?”

Nott’s usage of the pistol’s single shot was pure pettiness. Sam thought Nott had a shot because she’s acrobatic & fast & has some tricks, and he just didn’t want Beau to win. Making loud noises & drawing attention didn’t even cross my mind.

Jester was very proud of Fjord making those strength checks, but she wasn’t surprised. “He’s very strong, even though he looks like he’s not.” Laura thinks it’s funny and poetic that Travis rolled so well after ditching his sword/powers.

Travis has three sets of dice. Liam has a bunch of sets, but they’re all red (says Laura, offended). Laura only used purple dice at the live show because of how she was dressed.

Cosplay of the Week: a great Scanlan cosplay with Ioun’s third eye by @cxptaingrayson.

Sam realizes something that’s been holding back the Nott-Fjord relationship is that Nott has always been a little suspicious of Fjord. Now that he’s “talking like a real weirdo” and is still brave, braver than before, she can trust him more.

Laura’s asked about Jester’s conflict between healing & DPS. Laura: “Do you think Jester asked to be a fucking healer?” When they were deciding their characters, Laura was originally going to be a warlock with the Traveler as her patron; then Travis was like, warlock! What a cool class! Can I have it? And Laura said sure, she’ll be a cleric, that sounds cool. “And now he got rid of his fucking patron! Who knows if he’s going to be a warlock anymore? What a waste of a warlock!” She likes being a cleric--but even from Jester’s very first inception she’s always been a healer who hates healing. Brian: “She’s a battle Mercy.” She’s not regretful she healed Beau; the reason Laura didn’t immediately heal her is that she thought from Matt’s face that the remorhaz was very close to death, closer than it actually was. She confirms Jester is Chaotic Neutral.

Brian tells Laura he texted Travis to tell him Laura accused him of stealing the warlock class. Laura: “YOU DID NOT!” Brian: “You said it on the air!!”

Travis, via text to BWF, apparently in all caps: “I WAS CHANGING RONIN. YES I STOLE WARLOCK.”

Nott’s teasing of a powerless Fjord is 100% just because she thinks it’s funny. Sam: “There’s not really a deep reason to it. They tease each other all the time. Why would that change just because he tossed his sword in the lava?”

Laura needs to do research on other animals she can become since she enjoyed the mammoth (and giant eagle) so much. Sam keeps a list of flying creatures Laura can turn into because Laura struggles looking it up and often keys it into her D&D Beyond app before she’s even started. BWF: “This is uncharacteristically unselfish.” Sam: “Well, Laura is--I love her. Laura is pure harp music and I would do anything for her.”

Their environments are just getting better and better for Nott in terms of how goblins are seen. She’s given up the mask now, but it’s nice to have people look and not scream.

Both Sam & Laura pause to fan over the design of Uthodurn. It’s way cooler than either the Empire or Dynasty to them right now.

Laura points out that Nott has been fairly outgoing lately; it’s been a while since anyone said “you’re a goblin, stone her!” She’s beginning to come out of her shell as she gets used to her body (not that she likes it in any way), but it’s a development from Veth’s original shyness. She’s also drunk a lot; Sam says this will continue until he gets more Laura Bailey speeches.

BWF still has Laura’s copy of Game of Thrones, which he borrowed in 2011. Laura doesn’t listen to books on tape because she likes the inflections in her own head.

Fanart of the Week: a cool grouping of portraits of the M9 by @dylanbydoodles.

They apparently threw an election party after the D&D Beyond President reveal. Sam talks about convincing the Lyft driver on the way back that it was a swinger’s party in the most ridiculous way possible. Poor Indianapolis.

Nott & Veth’s relationship is getting very complicated. Sam says they’re beginning to blend a little together, but he’s now coming to realize there’s a part of Nott deep down that is deeply scared of going back to Veth & losing her rogue abilities, her adventuring; she wants to be herself again for sure, since her body is definitely wrong, but she’s beginning to fear the loss of some of what Nott is now.

BWF sincerely thanks Sam for the effort and thought he puts into his character. Sam sincerely thanks him. It’s a lovely moment.

Jester’s slip about Fjord’s powers was deliberate on Laura’s part but accidental on Jester’s. Everyone’s a little worried about Fjord without powers, even though he proved himself in the remorhaz fight. She thinks the slipup happened because Jester wasn’t on guard--because Fjord had done so well in the fight, she’d forgotten.

So far, Nott’s choice to leave the family behind in Nicodranus is worth it; no one’s died and they’re making headway on their goals.

BWF: “The Mighty Nein: no one’s died-ish.”

Apparently Matt owns the building they’re filming in? I missed part of this and genuinely can’t tell if it’s a joke.

BWF talks about how Liam, Matt, & Travis have all been genuinely mad at him before. Matt and Travis were mad; Liam was just disappointed.

How did Sam lose the election? He doesn’t think it’s because of him or anything he did. He thinks there’s a demographic shift in America; the electoral college hurt him; both he and Liam ran the campaigns they wanted. Liam’s was serious issues & serious passion, while Sam farted around for three months. BWF asked Adam Bradford at D&D Beyond, who’s the General Manager, about the results; apparently the pie chart was VASTLY in favor of Liam with only the tiniest sliver for Sam. Laura thinks it’s because Sam’s done nothing but troll Sam for five years and this was their chance to troll him back. Sam: “To that I say: good job.”

Dani & Max both voted for Sam. Laura didn’t vote. BWF voted for Liam. Chris forgot there was a vote. Zach voted for Liam.

Sam talks about the game they play, the app for D&D Beyond, and how the whole campaign allowed him to shine a spotlight on himself. “I didn’t get as many votes as Liam, but I got a lot of attention.”

Everyone loved this last live show. Laura legit loved wearing her dress; Travis & Liam looked great. Tal looked normal. Brian marvels at his own tattoos. He and Tal went through a lot of ideas before they committed to the bag situation--he sent it to Jaimie Alexander before the show happened so she could vet it. Ha! “Her response was 25 crying emojis and ‘please send this to my boyfriend.’“

Reminder: Mica Burton, Overwatch League host (and daughter of Levar Burton), will be guest-starring on Critical Role this coming Thursday.

And we’re out! Is it Thursday yet?

[quirkless-and-embarrassed]

Bakugo Katsuki

I felt like doing a character meme!

Favorite thing about him:

His odd code of ethics. I really hated him up until I realized, “huh, here’s a guy who passionately resents being saved…and who also refuses to save others.” I think it was his way of showing respect.

Related, another of my favorite things about him is also how well he can take criticism…sometimes. I have a lot of respect for the way he accepted Yaoyorozu’s criticism after the first Deku v Kacchan battle instead of becoming defensive and lashing out.

Least favorite thing about him:

…probably Bakugo’s relationship with All Might. Pick pretty much any other important adult and you get something more interesting than the kinda stale dynamic between these two.

Favorite line:

He has a lot of funny ones.

“Whyyy?!” (ch249)

*on reflex* “Outta my way, nerd!!” <— Midoriya is not actually in the way (ch209)

BROTP:

I think Kirishima and Uraraka are pretty standard fare lol, and just the bakusquad dynamics in general are great (especially when Kaminari and Mina repeatedly dunked the santa hat on his head).

I would love to see Bakugo and Tamaki Amajiki interact. I feel like Bakugo would be like, very discomforted by Amajiki’s lack of confidence in a “I don’t want to see that, don’t make those pathetic faces where I have to see them” type way and destroy Amajiki’s self-esteem in like 0.5 seconds. And also, Amajiki would smack down Bakugo just as fast in a fight, and Bakugo would be furious that someone so strong could be so weak mentally. But hey, given time and Kirishima to play mediator, I’d be really curious to see these two reach a detente where they like…idk, cook together with Mirio, Kirishima, and Eri, and Bakugo grouses about the weird things Amajiki eats for his quirk but Amajiki knows better than to believe him.

I got a kick out of Bakugo’s dynamic with Endeavor’s sidekick Burnin’ during the internship arc. I loved how she felt the need to hype the wonder trio up by provoking and challenging them, and ofc Bakugo ate it up 100% and returned it at 150% (tbh their dynamic reminded me a bit of Mitsuki), but ultimately she acknowledged it wasn’t really necessary and she really respected him for that…but she kept doing it anyways, presumably because it was fun. I’d love to see Burnin’ show Bakugo a little bit of that affection and for Bakugo to be like. Totally appalled. He would not be prepared to know somebody likes him.

Okay but also, I’ve been really happy to see Horikoshi establish that Bakugo does, in fact, respect Best Jeanist. Even back when I hated Bakugo, I was struck by just how…gentle the scenes of Jeanist combing Bakugo’s hair were, and c’mon Bakugo does not let just anybody (…or anybody at all) treat him gently. IJeanist told Bakugo what he needed to hear so that even if Bakugo wasn’t ready to understand it now, he’s a smart kid with a hero’s heart, he would hang onto it and eventually figure it out. I really want Jeanist to see how Bakugo’s grown and also how he’s learned from what Jeanist told him!

I also like to think Bakugo would have like…a hilariously one-sided rivalry with Hawks, where like Bakugo is like, Hawks set the record for opening an agency and getting into the top ten the fastest?!!! SO WHAT, I’m gonna do it faster and I’m gonna be number one!!! Got it spoonbill!! So Bakugo tries to act super intimidating and shit whenever Hawks is around to disguise his sense of inferiority, but Hawks sees straight through it and is just, a troll.

One more. Bakugo interning with Mirko would be lit.

One more for real. Bakugo and Monoma having a hate-brotp is amazing. Bakugo will reach age seventy and he’ll still be shitting on Monoma.

ONE LAST ONE. Bakugo + Hatsume = max destruction and I’m so here for it. I want these two so badly.

OTP Rarepairs: (I ship basically everything)

Kacchako is probably my favorite, but I also love todobaku, kiribaku, and bakudeku. …and any threesome combinations that involve kacchako.

Camie/Bakugo seems like a lot of fun. I like how she made him laugh with her Todoroki illusion, I like how sweet and clueless and flirty she seems, I think Bakugo would be mortified to realize he was crushing on her and immaturely be extra rude to her, but Camie is accustomed to illusions and intuitively sees through it.

I can’t decide on a particular pair, but Bakugo has such a relentless, single-minded focus on being a “hero” that developing feelings for a “villain” would challenge in him an interesting way. I’m not getting a strong vibe for Bakugo and any of the LoV characters, though after Shigaraki bungled the recruitment attempt, it would be hilarious to see a follow-up attempt to woo. Now I’m curious…gonna see what ao3 has.

NOTP:

Not really. Depends on execution.

Random headcanon:

Hm. The only thing that really comes to mind is that the incident where Kacchan fell of the bridge and Deku tried to help him up is only important in hindsight. Given space, Kacchan would have nursed his pride and the incident would have blown over; but because Deku didn’t understand, he insisted on dogging along after Kacchan and trying his very best to stay friends, and Kacchan just as insistently pushed Deku away, growing angrier in the process but too immature to verbalize why Deku’s tenacious bond to him threatened him so much.

Oh! And credit to my friend for this one, but one of the reasons why Bakugo didn’t participate in the dorm king contest was that his room is covered in All Might posters. Can you imagine how much it would have pissed him off if everybody saw how similar his room is to Deku’s?

Unpopular opinion:

How unpopular is it to think that his development isn’t that great…? His relationship with All Might doesn’t move me, so I can’t really appreciate his pivotal moments.

I was okay with his hero name being “Kacchan,” but now that he’s apparently decided on one in 252, I really don’t want it to be Kacchan because I don’t feel like he’s had enough development so far to get him to make that decision.

I want his hero name to reflect something about the theme of hands, since they’re the site of his quirk and also a powerful symbol for reaching out to people, connecting, holding on, letting go, and agency in general.

Song I associate with him:

Destiny by Neffex, All Time Low by Jon Bellion, On My Own by Ashes Remain

Favorite picture of him:

Ch87 – The wobble of his mouth when All Might saves him at Kamino was pretty cute.

I’ve also done these questions for Todoroki, Uraraka, Endeavor, Amajiki, Sir Nighteye, and Shinsou!

[evil-overlord-scriptology]

But I Don’t Want to be a Sensei! Pt 4 (ARCHIVED)

Chapters 14 & 15

Chapter 14: Round 2 with Peach-boy

I nudged Naruto's side with the toe of my sandal. He didn't even twitch. Squatting down I poked the brat's cheek with a rigid finger, “Hey, dumbass...” I said loudly, knowing that a knucklehead like Naruto would react if I called him names. He still didn't move. “Obito Mini-me. Brat. Idiot. Dumb blonde. Dead last. Coward.” When the brat didn't react at all I stood back up with a sigh and turned to the others standing in the doorway.

 “Well either he's dead or out like a light post.” I told them, scratching the back of my head. Hinata gasped a little, her hands going to her mouth as she no doubt thought that her precious 'Naruto-kun' was dead.

 Tsunami looked as equally worried as the little Hyuuga heiress, “You don't think he overdid it in training, do you? He was looking pretty exhausted last night.

 “Hn. He was passed out in the forest yesterday morning.” Sasuke commented thoughtfully.

 I groaned and hung my head, I really didn't need this at the moment, “Fine, Sasuke will be on guard duty today and Hinata will train.” I said defeated. I hated it when people screwed up my schedule! “Hinata you know the rules. If anyone suspicious shows up, head for the bridge and warn everyone.”

 “H-Hai.”

 Sasuke frowned, “But that was the rotation yesterday.” I glared at him. Like I didn't know that already, idiot.

 “Hinata still needs to train in her stealth and since Naruto is stealing your rest day, you can take his spot on guard duty. Don't complain, Duckass, true shinobi don't protest orders.” Like I predicted, Sasuke snapped his jaw shut and didn't make another sound.

 Really, it was insulting how predictable that kid was.

 “Look, if it makes you feel better, I'll go with you that way you can relax at the bridge.” Everyone but Inari gave me strange looks. I returned their gaze with an unamused look, “Stop staring like calves at a new gate. I'm bored.” I snapped, perhaps just a little too defensively. By Sasuke's sudden smug look I was guessing he knew why I really was going.

 I was worried about the brat.

 With good reason though. There was no such thing as a jounin who didn't have a sixth sense for danger; and I felt more jittery than when Obito accidentally released those rabid squirrels in the house.

 I mentally shuddered at the memory.

 I moved past the miniature crowd and lead them outside. Turning to Tsunami I began issuing orders, “When Naruto wakes up, just tell him to practice his taijutsu; you also have permission to send him on any errands you have. Hinata, I want you to try and sneak up on as many woodland creatures as you can. If you catch five animals in a row then join Sasuke and I on the bridge. Duckass, Grandpa Dunk, let's go.” I turned on my heel and immediately started for the bridge without waiting for the two idiot males catch up to me.

 “Geez, for a woman you walk pretty fast.” Tazuna panted when he and my cousin finally caught up. It was really pathetic that we were almost to the bridge by that point.

 I gave the old drunk an unimpressed look, “Not all women are geishas or civilians who don't have anywhere important to be. The success of a mission could rely on fast feet, I could possibly save a life that would otherwise be lost if I arrive quicker than my enemies anticipate.”

 Tazuna pulled a face, “Hey kid, are all shinobi like this one or is it just her?” He asked Sasuke.

 Sasuke just shrugged and didn't comment. He practically had to jog to keep up with us adults; I couldn't tell if he wasn't answering because he didn't want to or because he was too focused on not falling behind. I was guessing it was a little bit of both.

 “Tazuna, how long do you have before the bridge is finished?” I asked the old man. Now wasn't the time for fun and games. That sense of dread I had been feeling all morning was getting worse the closer we got to the bridge.

 Grandpa Drunk shrugged, “Depends. If I have a full roster of workers, it should only be a few weeks. But with Gatou controlling everything and scaring the people, I keep losing my workers. Just yesterday I had one of my foremen quiet! I don't even have half of a roster now, it could take months with the amount of workers I got.”

 Grimacing, I halted at the entrance to the bridge, “That's what I feared.” I muttered.

 Tazuna gaped at his unconscious employees littering the bridge. I could tell by their chakra levels that the men were still alive, but only just. “What tha-?!” Tazuna exclaimed, his face twitching in horror. I glanced at him then at Sasuke. Sasuke looked back at me, his eyes gleaming with an odd shine of excitement. He was ready.

 A sudden mist blew in from the ocean. I snarled in frustration and stepped in front of Tazuna, “Stay behind me.” I said sharply. Tazuna didn't say anything, but he didn't move.

 That stupid creepy chuckle drifted out from the fog, “Sorry to keep you waiting, Uchiha. I see you still got that brat with you, but what happened with the other two? Did they run off?” I heard a slight clicking behind me, but didn't glance towards my cousin. I knew he wasn't doing something stupid. Of all my genin I trusted Sasuke the most in a fight, even if he had bouts of cowardice when I least expected it.

 Peaches chuckled again, “Oh look, he's shaking again. Pathetic.” The nuke-nin laughed mockingly.

 There was a small intake of air from Sasuke and I felt Zabuza's chakra spike as water clones surrounded the three of us. I tensed and palmed a kunai, ready to throw it at the clone's head that was in front of me if he so much as blinked in a way I didn't like.

 Sasuke scoffed, “I'm trembling with... excitement.”

 The Zabuza water clones seemed surprised at the admission and I only rolled my eyes. Why couldn't the need for dramatics skip Sasuke? It skipped Itachi and me, why not one more generation?! I had enough drama from Naruto, I didn't need Sasuke filling in for that little brat too.

 Speaking of brats...

 I glanced at my cousin out of the corner of my eye, “Play nice.” I said teasingly. That was all the permission Sasuke needed. He twirled the kunai in his hand around a finger so that the blade was pointing at the clone in front of him. With a delightful smirk that reminded me a little too much of Obito's sadistic grin, my baby cousin pounced at the water clones.

 While Peach-boy's clones were busy trying to defeat an Uchiha brat, I ran through the signs for a summoning and slammed my hand to the bridge's surface, “Kuchiyose no Jutsu!” I heard Zabuza growl angrily as a swarm of normal sized hawks flew up from the seal, spiraling into a twister of feathers and harsh cries that surrounded me like a moving wall. I held up my right arm and one of the hawks detached itself from it's flock. “Fly to Hyuuga Hinata and inform her to come as back up.” The hawk dipped its head at my command and took off to the sky, flying out of sight before turning in the direction of Hinata. No need to tell our enemies where an ally was after all. The rest of the hawks dispersed among the cables of the bridge, their sharp yellow eyes watching.

 While I was busy with my summonings, Sasuke finished up his little spar with the water clones. He looked about as cocky as a true Uchiha when he returned to his spot beside me. I mentally whimpered and hoped that I didn't get an arrogant little brat who thought he was God's gift to man. If so, I was going to beat that out of him and suffer Itachi's wrath with a smile on my face.

 “Ooooo, the brat's improving.” Peach-boy said from my right. All three of us turned to see the man with horrible fashion sense giving us a leer. At least I thought it was a leer, it was kind of hard to tell when the lower half of his face was bandaged up. His ally stood beside him, still wearing that false hunter-nin mask. “Looks like you've got competition... Haku.” Zabuza continued.

 “So it seems.” The boy, Haku, murmured quietly.

 Trolling time.

 “Oi oi. Peachy's ally, or whatever the hell your name is, are you a boy or a girl? Because honestly, you're a very androgynous individual.” I asked, intentionally playing the ignorant idiot. Tazuna and Sasuke were giving me looks that could only be described as 'way to ruin the suspense, dummy'.

 Haku and Zabuza exchanged looks and I took my chance to continue, “You know what? It doesn't matter anyway, I think I'll just call you Zabuza's Bitch.” I said with a smirk. Both nuke-nins snapped their heads around to glare at me–well I assume Haku glared, it was hard to tell with the mask–while I cackled in delight of pissing my enemy off.

 “Take care of the brat. I'll take the bitch.” Zabuza growled.

 Haku turned his gaze on Sasuke, “Right.” The kid murmured again. Then he moved. Startled I opened my mouth to shout a warning to Sasuke, but Zabuza was on me before I could utter a single syllable.

 I back flipped away from Tazuna, distancing myself from the client and the man trying to kill him. At the moment Zabuza seemed pretty focused on me, so I didn't have to worry. I smirked as I kicked Kubikiribōchō away from me. “Don't tell me I struck a nerve.” I cooed as I deflected another swing with my kunai. Zabuza snarled like an angry animal and charged at me again. I snorted and ducked under his swing. If I had know pissing Peaches off would make him attack like a predictable wild animal, I would have done it a long time ago.

 Kicking off the ground, I gave myself enough time to spare a glance at Sasuke. My eyes widened as I saw Haku performing hand signs with only one hand. That wasn't something you saw everyday. I wonder if the sharingan could somehow pick it up.

 Before I could activate my sharingan to see if I could, Zabuza attacked again, “You're opponent is me! Let's leave the kids to their game.”

 I shot Zabuza a nasty glare, “Oh, go drown in your own water ninjutsu! I didn't come all this way with a bunch of brats and a drunk old man to hear you blowing steam, ya old windbag.” I snapped, getting irritated. I knew Zabuza wasn't taking this fight seriously. He was just trying to keep me from Sasuke and Haku's fight.

 Peachy paused, “A bunch of brats, eh?” He quoted, sounding oddly interested. “So you don't think that those genin are worth anything either.”

 “Oh I think they're worth a lot of things, I just like calling them brats. They're my brats and I'm the only one allowed to call them that and get away with it.” I snapped back and flung my kunai at Peachy-boy's head to emphasize my point. He easily ducked under the kunai and charged at me, his sword back and ready for a strong strike to my legs. I leaped into the air over his blade and put my hands down on Zabuza's back, flipping over him to land between him and the kids.

 I smirked, “Ya know, some people would think you were compensating for something with that big blade of yours.” I commented sweetly.

 “You're letting that big mouth get away again, Uchiha.” Peachy growled.

 I shrugged, “Well at least I'm not trying to prank you as well as fight you like my brother does. That's just annoying.” I said coolly. From the look in Zabuza's eyes, he thought my inappropriate remarks were a hell of a lot more annoying.

 “Argh!” Both of us whipped around to see Sasuke kicking Haku away.

 Sasuke stood in his spot, smirking, “Seems you're not as fast as you think you are.” He said, idly spinning his kunai around his index finger. Cocky little git, I was definitely beating that arrogance out of his system.

 Zabuza glared at his ally, “Haku. Stop messing around and letting a brat beat you, get on with it!” He ordered.

 The masked boy stood back up easily, “Yes.” He responded in an almost robotic voice.

 Frowning I turned my back on Zabuza to watch what the masked brat was doing. Icy blue strands of chakra haloed Haku and he bowed his head, “I'm sorry it's come to this.” The boy said softly and made a strange sign. The temperature dropped drastically and I uttered a curse under my breath as I automatically regulated my chakra to keep myself warm. Of course our newest enemy would have some kind of tie to cold weather. It wouldn't be hell if he didn't.

 Stupid karma demons and their stupid agenda against me.

 The water around Sasuke and Haku suddenly leaped up into the air to form flat frozen surfaces. Haku stepped into the mirrors, senbon needles in his hands. Meanwhile I gaped in surprise, it was not cold enough to form ice like that. Even the most powerful shinobi with water nature had a hard time creating ice even in temperatures where it was easy to form. That only meant one thing.

 Kekke Genkai.

 Peaches chuckled behind me, “Seems you figured it out.”

 Growling I ran for the ice mirrors, but Peach-boy flash stepped in front of me. “If you're going to fight, you will fight me.” He snapped.

 I glared at him. “Bastard.” I spat out.

 The peachy nuke-nin chuckled creepily, “Oh? Out of your witty comments? I'm crushed.” I could practically taste the sarcasm in the air.

 “You have three seconds to step aside before I really crush you.”

 “How cute. You think you can defeat me. You weren't able to before, what makes you think you can now that we're surrounded by even more water than before?” My eyes widened a fraction and I flung my kunai at the water clone that I thought was Zabuza and leaping away before the real Zabuza could cut me down. He didn't look all that happy when he turned to face me. He scoffed when he saw my sharingan, “That again? Are all the Uchiha so weak that they rely on that silly Kekke Genkai of theirs? How pathetic.”

 Sasuke yelped and I looked over Peaches shoulder to see Haku raining senbon down on my cousin like a vengeful thunderstorm. Anger washed over me, hot and heady, when I landed my gaze back on Zabuza. “Two seconds to move.”

 Peaches sneered.

 “One.”

 He didn't move.

 I held my right arm above my head and brought my left to my mouth. Curling my index and thumb around my tongue I whistled loudly, using a small wind ninjutsu to amplify the sound. My hawk summons, having been sitting on the sidelines forgotten, all took flight. They flew in circles like a roiling thundercloud of brown and black, using my upraised arm as the pivot point.

 “Last chance to move.” I said. Zabuza stubbornly stayed where he was. My mouth twisted in an ugly grimace and I lowered my right arm to point at the Mist nuke-nin. The hawks gave one last turn before following my finger and shooting straight towards Peach-boy.

 He smirked.

 My eyes widened.

 “Hha!” I felt water douse my back and I spun around to see Hinata standing in a puddle of water, formerly a water clone, panting slightly. She gave me a shaky grin, “I-I'm sorry Y-Yanagi-sensei. I c-came as fast as I c-c-c-could.” She stuttered slightly, a blush forming on her cheeks. I didn't blame her, Hinata had suddenly become the center of attention after pulling a stunt like that. Even Haku stopped torturing my poor cousin to stare at her.

 I grinned, “Hey, I'm not complaining. You just saved me from being skewered like a roast pig.” I joked before turning serious, “Guard Tazuna, don't leave his side for any reason.” I ordered. Hinata gave a firm nod and leaped sideways until she was in front of Tazuna, in a Gentle Fist stance. When I turned to face Zabuza again, he did not look amused.

 “Oh... did she ruin your little scheme?” I asked innocently, pressing an index finger to the corner of my mouth like a slut trying to act cute.

 That did it, I could practically hear Peachy's patience snap. He snarled and charged at me, “Shut up!”

 I laughed as I jumped away from him, “Looks like you underestimated my brats, Peach-boy. Sasuke and Hinata are clan kids and having been training with their families since they could hold a kunai right.” I ducked under Peachy's swing and shot my left leg out for a round house kick. Zabuza launched into the air to avoid my leg and I pulled back before he could land on it. “Sasuke is the best in his class and no one can defeat Hinata in taijutsu. She's a Hyuuga after all, it's in her blood.” I taunted as I back flipped away from the Kubikiribōchō.

 Skidding to a halt a few feet away from Peaches I smirked, “And what have you got? A coward with a nice Kekke Genkai. Well, I've got two brats with Kekke Genkai and neither of them are cowards!”

 Zabuza's face twisted unpleasantly, “Haku, stop goofing around and kill that pest!” He barked out, his gaze darting over his shoulder to where the ice mirrors stood. Haku didn't respond, but only started throwing more senbons at Sasuke at a more rapid pace than before; I tried not to flinch when I heard Sasuke cry out. Peachy looked back at me, his gaze deadlier than before, “That big mouth of yours is going to get your brats killed, Uchiha.”

 I only smiled, “I'm confident they can handle one little brat, even one as powerful as yours. Besides, you forgot something.” Peach-boy stiffened as it dawned on him that Naruto had yet to appear. My smile twisted into a sneer, “You know, I think my last student deserves to be called the 'Stupidly Brave Shinobi of Konoha' more than I do. After all, not many genin are brave enough to fight someone like you, Peach-boy, let alone get the better of you.”

 As if planned there was a puff of smoke to the right of Haku's mirrors. Naruto's voice drifted from the white billowing vapors, “I resent that, Frizzy-sensei! Call me the 'Fearless Shinobi of Konoha'! That's right, Uzumaki Naruto is here!” My eye only twitched a little at the nickname. I'd let it slide this one time.

 Peach-boy blinked slowly at Naruto then looked at me, “You think some brat like him can do anything?”

 I shrugged, “Why not? It was a dead-last like Naruto who helped turn the last shinobi war back in Konoha's favor.” I responded coolly. I should know, Obito was the idiot I was talking about. “I feel Naruto can do the same with this little spat we have. Dead-last shinobi have a tendency to surprise people.” Naruto took a second to gawk at me, not use to my free praise. All I could say was he had better back up my claims or I was going to murder the little sucker.

 Naruto got a really big grin on his face, “You know how the hero always shows up at the last minute and kicks butt? Well that's what I'm going to do, right now! So don't you worry sensei, you can just sit back and watch me beat these guys!”

 I facepalmed.

 The blonde idiot ignored me, “Alright, you're history!” He formed a sign, “Shadow Clone Jutsu!” But before Naruto could form a single clone, Zabuza twisted around and threw a handful of shuriken at him. Like with the Demon Brothers, Naruto's first reaction was the freeze in fear.

 “Move Naruto!” I yelled, my heart in my throat as I watched the throwing stars head for my frozen student. I wouldn't be able to get there in time to stop them, not even my hawks surrounding the bridge would be able to grab the shuriken in time.

 Out of no where, senbon needles collided with the shuriken and knocked them off course. I jerked in surprise and twisted to stare at Haku half leaning out of his mirrors, still in the position of someone who had just thrown something. Zabuza narrowed his eyes at his ally.

 Now that he was out of danger, I felt it safe to yell at Naruto, “You imbecile! This is a real battle not a stupid spar; a shinobi's lifestyle is deception, not a damn talent show! Always keep your enemy guessing, be unpredictable so they can't figure out how to defeat you. So get your head outta your ass and think before someone makes a dartboard out of you!”

 Naruto turned about as red as Hinata did when Naruto got within ten feet of her. He started yelling apologies, but I ignored him to glance at Haku. Everyone else seemed to think that Haku had thrown senbon at Naruto at the same time Zabuza did and their attacks ended up colliding; but I knew better. One look at my cousin-turned-porcupine told me that Haku did not miss his targets. Which could only mean... he meant to throw those shuriken off track.

 The question was why.

 Peach-boy seemed to be thinking the same thing I was, “Haku, what are you doing?” Peachy demanded. His tone was dangerous and angry, he was pissed at Haku for disturbing his attack. In Zabuza's state of mind at the moment, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if he attacked his own ally out of anger.

 One could only hope.

 Haku straightened out of his position and dipped his head towards Peaches, “Zabuza-sama, let me fight this boy in my own way... please.” The brat rasped. Mildly I wondered if all Kiri nins had that smoker rasp, or if it was just these two idiots.

 Naruto glared at the masked boy, “Bring. It. On.” He challenged before I could tell him to not be stupid. I suppressed the urge to hang my head in defeat at the stupidity of the blonde brat and wondered if he knew how powerful Haku was. Sasuke was hardly a match for the nuke-nin, what chance did Naruto have against him?!

 Zabuza chuckled, “As usual you're too soft, Haku. Fine, if that is what you wish.” Soft? What part of that masked brat was...

 I glanced at Sasuke. He was injured but not too bad, nothing that would cause any lasting damage. So either Haku was very sadistic and liked to play with his enemies; or he was soft as Zabuza said and wasn't trying to hurt Sasuke, just stall him. Still, knowing Naruto, he'd piss Haku off enough that the nuke-nin would tear him to shreds. I started to take a step forward to intervene before things got worse, but Peaches blocked my path.

 “Don't even think about it.” Oddly enough, Peachy sounded amused. “You know what will happen if you take on Haku. I'll go after the bridge builder and that little girl.” I stiffened and looked to the left where Tazuna and Hinata stood. There was no way that I would be able to end Haku and protect those two at the same time. Against a long sword like the Kubikiribōchō, Hinata's taijutsu was useless; and without me guiding my hawk summons they couldn't do shit but sit there and look pretty. I supposed I could summon a larger hawk to deal with Zabuza while I took out Haku, but that would cut down on my chakra and possibly put me in a dangerous position.

 Damn.

 Zabuza seemed to know I was in a bind, he smirked underneath those bandages, “Relax, Uchiha. Lets see how our students do... one on one.” I gave him an Uchiha Glare, but he wasn't even paying attention to me. I didn't dare attack, he might not be looking at me, but I know the Peach Bastard was still prepared to fight me. Only an idiot would think otherwise.

 Apparently Sasuke was an idiot.

 While Haku was talking to Naruto, a kunai came flying out of the ice prison that held Sasuke. Haku easily dodged the knife and looked at my cousin, “Don't think I forgot about you, not for an instant.” The masked nuke-nin tilted his head a little, “Some warriors accept defeat gracefully, they know when they are beaten...” Oh great, know I was going to have two idiots who couldn't think straight, “Others do not. So be it, let us finish our battle then.”

 I couldn't help but groan quietly as Haku reentered his mirrors. Zabuza actually snorted and gave me an amused look as if we weren't enemies fighting to the death but two people just watching our students spar. I shot him a brief glare and looked away. I refused to think Peaches was anyone else but my enemy.

 It was torture having to watch my cousin practically being torn to shreds by multiple attacks coming from all the mirrors. With my sharingan I could pick up the real Haku and how he jumped from mirror to mirror to keep the element of surprise. The little pest was fast, even with my sharingan I could just barely pick up his movements as he flashed between the mirrors. But I still didn't know how the mirrors worked.

 “Sasuke, Naruto think! You have to attack the mirrors from the inside and outside at the same time to figure out how they work!” I yelled. Naruto's face brightened with an idea and there was a poof and...

 He was gone.

 It was only when Sasuke started yelling did I realize where he went. My eye twitched and I glanced at Zabuza. The nuke-nin looked like he was on the verge of laughing, I was almost tempted to tell him that I was disowning Naruto as my student after a stunt like that.

 “Katon: Phoenix Sage Jutsu!” Sasuke yelled out and there was a brief glow of orange that surrounded the multiple mirrors at various angles, but none of them melted.

 I could hear the amusement in Haku's voice when he said, “You'll need more firepower than that to melt this ice.” I stiffened slightly. More firepower? I could easily do that, but...

 Peaches smirked at me, easily reading my mind, “If you melt the mirrors you'll incinerate your students. Doesn't that defeat the purpose?” He asked. I shot him a nasty look and mildly wondered why he hadn't attacked yet. Peach-boy didn't have a problem earlier, was he just stalling then to get to this point and showcase his student? He had been hired to take out my client, not show off his student's prowess.

 Once again my suspicions of his involvement with the Mist Rebels surfaced. I eyed the man, trying to figure out his game. I doubted that he was ever fighting me seriously. All he had done was send water clones and swing that big ass sword around. Zabuza had been part of the Seven Swordsmen of Kirigakure, he had gotten the position by being a master of kenjutsu. So far Zabuza had been attacking as if the Kubikiribōchō was just a piece of metal to be swung around and not a great sword.

 Of course it was always possible that he was downplaying his abilities to keep the element of surprise; I had been doing the same by only dodging Zabuza's sword and tossing kunai around when I got the opening. But it just didn't fit Peachy's personality to use deception when he had the opportunity to strike. I glanced at the ice prison as Haku bounded from mirror to mirror, raining senbon down on Sasuke and Naruto. Haku was the same. I knew that that jutsu was meant to trap and destroy an opponent. The positioning of the mirrors and the pure speed of Haku proved that point easily enough. So why weren't my students dead yet? From what I had gathered on Haku, I knew he wasn't the sick twisted kind of shinobi that enjoyed toying with their victims. Not even Zabuza was that way. Zabuza's way of killing was quick, painless, and silent; leaving any survivors baffled and frightened of the Demon of the Mist.

 Naruto's yelling stopped my musing, “I won't quit! Not ever, I'm going to survive and become Hokage because that is my dream!” I didn't know if I should be proud that he still wasn't giving up even after that downpour of needles or still embarrassed that he had gotten himself into that mess.

 What Haku responded with surprised me, “I didn't want to be a shinobi, it's painful. I don't want to kill you, but if you come closer I will have no choice.” What? “I will kill the kindness in my own heart and fully embrace the shinobi way. This bridge will the battlefield where our dreams collide. I will fight for my dream, just as you fight for yours. Please do not blame me, I fight for someone who is precious to me. I live for him and I will face death for him so that his dream will become reality. That is my dream, and for the sake of that dream, if I must I will act as a shinobi and take your lives!”

 I bowed my head and glanced at the silent Zabuza. It was obvious that Haku was referring to Peach-boy, but why? What did Zabuza do that made the kid so loyal to him? And furthermore, just what was Zabuza's dream? The more I listened to Haku, the more reluctant I was to kill the kid, but if he got in the way of my mission then I would cut him and Zabuza down.

 Peaches shot me a haughty glance, “Tell me Uchiha, does that wimpy village of yours still avoid the most important rule of being a shinobi?” He asked as if he were genuinely curious.

 I only started at him in silence. It was a loaded question, so I saw no need in wasting my breath with an answer that was already obvious.

 Peach-boy cackled like a madman, “I wonder what your precious little Hokage will say when you come back with two bodies instead of three live genin... if you survive that is.” I heard Tazuna inhale sharply as it dawned on him just how outnumbered the genin truly were. I glanced out of the corner of my eye to see how Hinata was holding up to the news of her possible death.

 Not too well.

 Zabuza followed my gaze, “She's going to faint.” He observed in a tone that could only be amusement. He looked back at me, “How is it that you ended up with three incompetent brats? You're supposed to be an A-class kunoichi, and yet here you are... babysitting.”

 “Hn.” I grunted. That insult was so pathetic I knew I would lose brain cells just by answering it. One would think that the Bloody Mist would pencil in a trash talk class right after their academy students learned how to gut a helpless victim. At least so they wouldn't kill their opponents from the lame insults flying around.

 Unless... that was their stupid plan all along.

 The damn man didn't shut up though, “Falling back on the Uchiha customary response? How unlike you.” Great now he was adding sarcasm to the list. My eye twitched and I came close to planting my fist in his stupid, bandaged face if only to shut him up; but I somehow refrained... for now. “It must goad you that your precious Hokage would dump a bunch of brats on you. It's such a waste of your skills, chasing after three brats like you're their nanny while shinobi weaker than you take over your missions.” Peachy continued on, not even bothering to see if he was really insulting me or not.

 Finally I got fed up, “Your insults are pathetic. Even my pacifist cousin can talk trash better than you.” I deadpanned. Peachy didn't even have the decency to look offended. He only smirked at me from underneath his bandages.

 I reached into my weapons pouch and brought out a fan. Snapping it open I began lightly fanning myself like a geisha would. I even fluttered my eyelashes at Peaches, “Let's get this over with, ne? I want to leave by dusk.” I simpered like a primping airhead and reactivated my sharingan, having had deactivated it once I realized I would never figure out Haku's jutsu with my eyes.

 Zabuza jerked his gaze away from my sharingan and he reached back into his own kunai pouch. As he charged at me, I made a sweeping motion with my arm so that my fan cut through the air like a blade. When he came into my range, I thumbed the little lever on the handle and fourteen senbon needles shot out of the fan's ribs. Unfortunately due to the large curve of the fan's edge, only five senbons were heading directly at Peaches. He easily knocked them away with his two bladed kunai and jumped back.

 I snapped the fan shut and pointed it at him, “Lesson number one of kunoichi tactics: Everything can be a weapon.” I depressed another button on the bamboo frame of the fan and a three inch blade shot out of the little slot that was embedded into the fan, just to prove my point. Zabuza did not looked very pleased with my Fan of Wonders–as Obito called it.

 In fact, I could swear he was pouting.

 “This won't be like last time, Peach-boy.” I promised him, my smirk melting away to be replaced with the expressionless mask every shinobi seemed to have.

 The bandaged nuke-nin seemed to have stolen my smirk, “You're correct, because this time even if you do defeat me, you have no chance against Haku. When I found him he was just a street rat, but I trained him in the most advanced techniques. I taught him everything I know, and with that Kekke Genkai of his, soon he was able to take on dangerous enemies. Even outnumbered and in total darkness, he could strike with perfect accuracy. He cared nothing for his own life, or the lives of others. Haku became a unique fighting machine, a shinobi. In the end even he surpassed me, with that Kekke Genkai of his nothing can defeat it! I've created a tool that can destroy anyone who stands in my way, unlike those useless brats that follow you around like little lost puppies!”

 I grimaced in disgust at the man before me. Then I glanced over his shoulder at the prison of ice mirrors where the shouts of pain from Naruto and Sasuke were still originating. When I head heard Haku's speech I was ready to put an end to the battle peacefully, just to save the kid the pain of losing his precious person. Now I was ready to roast the fool who dared take advantage of loyalty like that.

 Zabuza laughed as he looked back at the ice mirrors with a crazed look in his eyes, “You think those punks can defeat Haku? He's the ultimate battle tool of destruction!”

 “Would ya shut up already? Geez you sound worse than my uncle when he's talking about Itachi!” I snapped, getting irritated with this 'Haku is so great! You can never defeat him!' bullshit. Was Zabuza Haku's fangirl or senpai?!

 Zabuza didn't understand the reference, so he wasn't offended. Though I had now doubt he would be throwing a temper tantrum if he knew how Fugaku was when he was bragging about my cousin. “Fine, but there is one more thing you should know.” I raised an eyebrow and decided to humor him, not that he needed any encouragement, “Did you really think our last battle was just win or lose? Haku had been watching the whole time, watching every move your made with that sharingan of yours. Haku can see a move once and immediately devise a counterattack; it's one of his... gifts. I've been waiting to see the look on your pretty face when you realize that your sharingan has become worthless!”

 I kept my face blank just to annoy him.

 Zabuza held up two fingers, “Suiton: Hidden Mist Jutsu!”

 Deja vu, anyone?

 The thin mist that had already layered the air thickened to the point of no visibility. I cursed, my sharingan eyes darting to pick up the slighted movement in the mist; but all I could see was Hinata and Tazuna fidgeting around, looking left and right for a thin spot in the thick mist. I pinned Hinata with a look. She was twitching nervously and shaking in fear, “Hinata, stay with Tazuna. Don't leave his side for any reason.” I ordered her in a sharp tone. The Hyuuga girl seemed to get over her fear at the order and nodded firmly before shifting from an offensive to a defensive taijutsu stance. I had noticed over the weeks that she seemed to lose her cowardice when given a direct order. Hopefully she would stand by it even if I went down.

 Shuriken came out of no where and I easily batted them away with my closed fan. I took a cautious step in the direction the throwing stars had come from but stopped and twisted around when I felt Zabuza's chakra behind me. I blinked when I saw that his eyes were closed. Was he trying to prevent looking into my sharingan or was it another reason entirely? I frowned when he started to speak.

 “Next time you see me, will be the last time you see anything.” Okay, for Peach-boy, that wasn't a half bad attempt to be intimidating; but still... even goofy Shisui still beat him by a mile. Of course, goofy Shisui happened to be pretty terrifying when someone did the impossible and actually pissed him off, but that was irrelevant. “Without your sharingan, you're nothing.” Zabuza rasped and then disappeared again before I could attack. I twitched in annoyance. If this was just going to be a hit-and-run tactic I was going to murder someone.

 Preferably Peaches; but I would take Tazuna for putting me in this mess in the first place too.

 Fine. If he wanted to play this game, then I would just pull and Uchiha Tactic straight from the Book of Bullshit and own his sorry ass before he could sneeze. I ran through the appropriate hand signs and slammed my palms together with a loud clap, “Fūton: Gale Palm!” In a large ejection of wind oriented chakra, I managed to disperse most of the mist thinning it out enough that I could see Zabuza's faint outline several paces to my right. I turned to face the outline and began a new set of hand signs, “Katon: Great Fireball Jutsu!” I shouted and sent a steady stream of fire at Zabuza.

 I grinned when Zabuza had to leap out of the mist and into my sight, just like I wanted, “I'm sorry, I didn't catch that last part. You left to quickly. Something about me being without my sharingan...?” I said teasingly. Boy, did Peaches look pissed off.

 Somehow that set off a monologue of how Peach-boy had figured out the secret behind the sharingan. I almost started nodding off when he started explaining the piercing eye and the hypnotic eye and how I had used them in battle. Seriously, what was with this guy and explaining things to invisible audiences? Was he so enamored with his own smoker voice that he liked making long winded speeches over obvious things?!

 That would explain a lot of things, actually.

 After he finished lecturing me about things I had grown up knowing, he started talking about his 'ultimate plan to win the day'. Finally I gave up pretending to listen and groaned loudly, “Oh. My. Kami. SHUT UP! At least try to make it harder on me by not explaining your stupid little plan. Dear Lord, do I need to give you the 'a shinobi's lifestyle is deception' lecture I gave Naruto too?!”

 There was a beat of silence when even Haku stopped fighting Naruto and Sasuke, before Zabuza's annoying raspy voice spoke again, “Fine. I just won't give you a sporting chance.” If that was what he called a 'sporting chance' I would gladly go without, if only to keep my ears from bleeding.

 In the back of my mind I wondered who could out talk the other: the Hokage or Peaches.

 The fighting between the three boys resumed with vigor, but something was different about it. I could hear Sasuke using the fireball jutsu as well, which was strange. Didn't he already try to melt the ice and figure out that it didn't work? What could those two idiots possibly be up to? I risked a glance in their direction, hoping that it might shed some light on their plan.

 “Pay attention to your own fight!” Zabuza roared and I snapped my head around with a gasp just in time to feel his foot connect with my jawline. There was a dull crunch and I tasted the sharp coppery twang of blood flooding my mouth; seconds later a wave of pain bloomed from my jaw, momentarily causing my mind to blank. I landed in a heap on the ground, my jaw throbbing painfully. I reached up to cradle it and winced when my hand grazed against the bruising area. The bone was cracked at the very least.

 High killer intent brought my head up and my eyes widened when I saw Zabuza descending from the air, the Kubikiribōchō raised over his head and positioned to bisect me at the waist. Scrambling, I twisted to the side and got my feet under me just as the long blade dug into the ground almost three inches deep. I winced and tried not to imagine what would have happened to be had I been any slower.

 I was really starting to regret pissing Peaches off.

 The Kiri nuke-nin yanked his big ass sword out of the ground and turned towards me, a deranged look in his eyes. “Seems I finally succeeded in shutting up the Uchiha with the runaway mouth. Now to make it permanent.” I couldn't help but roll my eyes at the lame trash talk. This guy was truly pathetic when it came to being intimidating. I was starting to think that awkward Iruka could be more terrifying than this guy. The chunnin might be terrifying to kids, but he was just a socially awkward wimp when it came to adults.

 Peachy disappeared.

 I stiffened and looked around, trying to discern any chakra signal with either my sharingan or my sensory abilities. I swallowed a mouthful of blood, trying not to gag at the overbearing taste of copper, and ran through my options. While the wind jutsu had momentarily cleared the mist, it was back in full force, once again hindering my line of vision. Sight was out, I could deal with that. Peaches was a master of the silent killing technique; he could enter a crowd full of people, kill one person, and be gone before that person even hit the ground–all the while not making a smidgen of noise. That mean I could not hear Zabuza's attacks either and if I did it was probably a distraction. Still I could manage without hearing too.

 That left my sensing abilities and scent. I wasn't a tracker and I was no where near as good at olfactory perception as Kakashi or the Inuzuka clan, but I still had a sharp nose. However, the problem with that was my sense of smell was being overridden by the smell of my blood still filling my mouth. My chances of predicting Peaches next attack were starting to slim down. My chakra sensing abilities weren't the best, it was mostly just raw talent, but I still should be able to pick out Zabuza's large chakra source in the thick mist he had created. It would be like trying to pick out the early morning sun in a thick fog, but it was still doable. Unless Peach-boy suppressed his chakra, I should be able to sense him.

 I closed my eyes and concentrated on spanning my awareness about the bridge. I could feel the chakra of the three boys flitting around inside the ice prison, which appeared to be a thin dome of Haku's chakra, and I could pick out Hinata's still relatively high chakra reserves right in front of Tazuna's stunted civilian level chakra. Wait.

 Hinata.

 Damn it! I had a Hyuuga with me the whole time and I was too caught up in my ego to even think about asking her for help. There wasn't anything that could hide from the Byakugan! And now, I couldn't talk because of my cracked jawbone. Growling deep in my throat I was about to shunshin to Hinata and signal what I needed in my rusty genin hand signs, when the object I was looking for appeared.

 Right where I didn't want it.

  Chapter 15: Not Everything is Black and White

Hinata screamed.

 I gasped as a sheering pain ripped across my chest; blood from my mouth dripped down my chin and joined the splatter of blood already on the ground. I was extremely lucky to have been able to shunshin right where I needed to be in order to take the blow meant for Hinata and Tazuna.

 I reached up to cradle my wound, trying to stop the blood flow, and glared at Zabuza with slow spinning red eyes. Unfortunately he didn't meet my gaze, “Too bad, Uchiha, you let concern for those brats cloud your mind and adding further to the fog that already hinders your sharingan. You're eyes are sharp, but not sharp enough to read my moves.”

 Kami above, why did I have to be injured and listen to Peach Bastard's shitty insults?

 Peach-boy cackled in a cliché villainous pitch, furthering my annoyance with the man. Did Kirigakure hand pamphlets out on how to be a lame antagonist?! “Come on, Uchiha, I want this to be fun!” Can anyone say psychopath? “I want to enjoy myself while I extract my revenge! As for those pest... don't worry. They're at Haku's mercy, no they're breathing their last breaths right now.” Peaches twisted Kubikiribōchō so that the sharp edge of the blade was facing up and he reached behind him into his weapons pouch. I didn't move. “Relax. You'll have plenty of time to weep out an apology when you see them in the next life.”

 Where the hell did he get the assumption I was tense in anyway?

 He started cackling again. My eyes narrowed slightly as he seemed to dissolve back into the mist surrounding us. Peachy's crazed laughter drifted so that it sounded like it was coming from all around us. There was a moment of silence after Zabuza's awful guffawing faded away filled only with my labored breath. Damn this stupid wound, I was going to be in pain every time I got dressed for a month! Not to mention my bruising jaw; I'm not going to be able to eat solid foods for a long time. Plus when Obito sees it, there would be hell to pay.

 Exactly who would pay... that was the question.

 Because I was going to make damn sure that Peaches didn't leave this bridge alive.

 Hinata whimpered behind me and I glanced over my shoulder to see her staring intensively at the ice prison. “N-Naruto-kun... Sasuke-san...” She whispered and took an instinctive step towards the place where her team was fighting for their lives. Hinata stopped and her breath started to shorten with panic, in another moment she would start hyperventilating and I couldn't do shit about it. The one time I wanted to comfort my student and my damn jaw was locked up from the pain.

 Luckily Tazuna stepped in, “Don't worry, Hinata-chan. I have faith that the boys will pull through. That blonde kid... I thought he was just some goofy little brat with the maturity of a two year old. And the one with the attitude, I didn't think he cared about anyone! But I see now that I was wrong. All of you aren't what I expected and, by golly, I know Naruto and Sasuke will beat that masked pest to a pulp!”

 My sharingan eyes darted to Tazuna to convey my silent thanks. The old man smirked at me and reached out to place a hand on Hinata's shoulder. The Hyuuga heiress was looking more confident than she had been, she stood straighter and held the kunai in a tight, firm grip.

 I returned my gaze forward again and I was surprised to see Zabuza's outline among the fog. Maybe he hadn't disappeared as completely as I had thought. Peach-boy laughed sardonically, “You think those punks can defeat Haku? No one has ever stopped his secret jutsu.” Zabuza reached up for Kubikiribōchō and I clinched my fists, wishing that I hadn't lost my grip on my fan when Peaches landed that damn round house kick on my face. I was down to the senbons I had carved out of twigs earlier that week. Against the Kubikiribōchō, they wouldn't do squat. Mentally I ran through my other options.

 When I realized my opponent was Zabuza, I had raided my pack until I managed to dig up my old, worn, and very out-of-date copy of Konoha's Bingo Book. While the brats were out training, I had been cooped up in the room I shared with Hinata, pouring over Zabuza's page. What I had read made me frustrated and ecstatic at the same time. Peach-boy's stats were solid straight across–practically invincible–except for one little detail. Zabuza was below average in genjutsu. As an Uchiha, I was fairly good at genjutsu, but I wasn't the best. Furthermore, Zabuza would be avoiding looking into my eyes which hindered my chance of catching only him in a genjutsu. My best chance was casting an area of effect genjutsu, but that would also endanger my team and Tazuna.

 My other option was that I could also use my hawk summonings that still perched around the bridge, waiting for me to order them around. The downside to that option was that I had to focus my attention on directing the hawks, those small summons couldn't fight by themselves very well as they would attack anyone who wasn't me. I would have to concentrate on making sure none of the hawks went after Team 7. That meant that Zabuza, or even Haku, could bypass me and go for the bridge builder. I supposed I could create a shadow clone to handle the hawks, but I was already low on chakra and that would only eat away at my stores even more. I knew that if this fight was prolonged any longer I would suffer from chakra exhaustion again or worse.

 I needed to end this now.

 My hands rose and I started going through the hand signs for my signature technique, water ninjutsu be damned, when a spike of chakra made me freeze in utter fear. Hot, cold, anger, red... red... red. That chakra...

 vvv FLASHBACK vvv

 “Stay with your cousin, Itachi. I'll be right back.” Mikoto-oba called as she dashed off. I stared wide eyed and frightened as my aunt left. Alarms had awoken me in the middle of the night calling for an extreme state of emergency. Obito-nii was in my room only seconds after the alarm started wailing and dragged me to the Main Branch house, telling me to stay with Mikoto. When I tried to tell him that I was a genin now and I could help with whatever the crisis was, Obito had gotten uncharacteristically serious and ordered me to stay in the house.

 Now the bells were calling for all shinobi ranked above chūnin, retired or otherwise, and Mikoto had left me in charge of my cousins while she ran to respond to the summons.

 Itachi and I sat on the porch, watching ghostly red ribbons float through the sky, and keeping an ear trained on any changes in the constant alarm. Sasuke thankfully was being relatively quite, I wasn't having to try and listen over a brat's soft crying. Itachi seemed surprisingly responsible with his little brother, so I left Itachi was baby duty. I didn't like kids that much; the only kid I liked was Itachi and that was because he was more like an adult anyway.

 My heart dropped when I heard the alarm pick up in tempo and changed to a higher pitch. That was the call for all civilians and lower ranked shinobi to evacuate to the Monument. Whatever was happening in the village it must be bad if it was a village-wide evacuation. I stood, “Come on Itachi, we've gotta-” I cut myself off when I saw my cousin already heading for the compound gates. I didn't even have it in me to be angry at him for leaving me behind.

 I had only gotten five feet when there was a thunderous crash that shook the ground. Itachi and I stumbled, trying to regain our footing and still move fast enough to get to the shelter. Then I felt it. A tangible anger, so hot and violent that I felt sick to my stomach. Sasuke, who had been quietly whimpering until now, shrieked in fear, his small face turning a dark red. I was scared, I wanted to run away and hide, to give into to whatever was attacking. It was the predator and I was the cornered prey, I stood no chance against that anger; that raw, potent Killer Intent.

 Something firm but small tugged at my wrist. I jolted out of my frozen state and stared down at my little cousin. Itachi looked as calm and impassive as he always did, as if he couldn't even feel the Killer Intent infused in the very air–no, it was the air. I was breathing in that powerful anger with every breath until it became my whole being. I wanted to hide. I wanted-

 “Yanagi-itoko, we have to get to the shelter,” Itachi spoke, cutting off my thoughts. To anyone else he might sound bored and indifferent, but I could hear the small lilt of concern in his voice. That seemed to wake me up. I was frozen like a deer downwind of the wolf and here my six year old cousin wasn't even bothered about the attack. He was trying to comfort me! What was worse, I actually needed to be comforted. It angered me, I was weak. A child barely in the academy was more rational than I, the Rookie of the Year, was!

 I promised myself I would never freeze again.

 vvv FLASHBACK OVER vvv

 I concentrated on my sensory ability, trying to determine what would make Naruto lose control. I doggedly ignored the hotredredredthatnightfearmustrun chakra that was the Kyuubi's and instead on the chakra points all over the bridge. Zabuza was a little ahead of me, his chakra thick and languid like honey; there was the smooth, silky feel of Hinata's chakra behind me beside the stunted civilian amount that was Tazuna's. Haku's, hard and sharp like ice yet surprisingly warm, was darting all over the place as he tried to dodge Naruto's crazed strikes. Sasuke's chakra was muted, almost to the point of...

 I snapped my head around and stared as the ice mirrors shattered and Haku came flying out, laid out flat by Naruto. In between the broken shards of the still hanging mirrors I could see a dark lump in the center, not moving.

 ...of death.

 It wasn't the first time I had seen death, and certainly not the last. I wasn't even bothered all that much by it. Except... I was. There was a difference between seeing a teammate die in the course of a battle, when you didn't have time to think or even notice that they had just died; and seeing the body of a child, your own cousin, crumpled on the ground like a thrown away doll.

 Suddenly all the horrible things I had said to him, all the unkind actions and unfriendly glares, all came rushing in like a tidal wave. Like a tsunami. Obito was right, I was a horrible sensei. I had gotten one of my students killed on their first C-rank mission. It didn't matter that it had been updated to an A-rank. I had in essence killed my own student; I had signed his death warrant the moment I didn't withdraw from the mission when it was clear that it was out of Team 7's capabilities. I felt sick, both physically and emotionally. I felt like I was drowning with no life line to pull myself out. I... needed an outlet, I needed to rid myself of all the pent up guilt and anger at myself.

 “Awww... are you going to cry?”

 I found my outlet.

 Slowly I turned to stare at Zabuza, That Bastard, all my emotions draining away and leaving nothing behind. I didn't take joy in seeing him jolt in surprise at my flat gaze, or the way he when white under his tan skin when my Killer Intent washed over him. All I cared about was beating the shit out of that bastard for putting my cousin in the position that killed him. I raised my hands slowly and, almost in a trance, I ran through the hand signs, never breaking gaze with that bastard. I stared straight into his soul and found it... lacking.

 Zabuza's death wouldn't bring back Sasuke, but it would sure make me feel a hell of a lot better.

 I could only hope.

 Demonic Illusion: Shackling Stakes Jutsu. I thought, since my injured jaw prevented me from saying the jutsu. Zabuza's eyes bugged out when he felt the imaginary genjutsu stakes driving into his body, pinning him where he stood. I dropped the last hand sign and started another jutsu. I kept my eyes on Zabuza the whole time, letting him see my cold indifference to him. I wanted that bastard to know that I wasn't killing him because he was my enemy or because I hated him.

 I was killing Zabuza just because I fucking felt like it.

 Katon: Great Fireball Jutsu. I didn't channel too much of my chakra into the fire. I didn't want to incinerate Zabuza on the spot. That wasn't good enough, I wanted to slowly roast him alive. I wanted him to die a slow agonizing death, covered in third degree, maybe even fourth degree if I was feeling merciful, burns for even thinking of harming my baby cousin. I took a deep breath and brought my fingers up to my mouth. I watched dispassionately as Zabuza tried to evade the oncoming fire, I didn't feel the pleasure of watching my prey squirm before I killed them. All I could think was 'how dare you.'

 I noticed Haku too late.

 vvv 3rd POV~ Hinata vvv

 Hinata was frightened. She stood there shaking on spot as she watched the plume of red chakra spiraling out of the mirrors. With her Byakugan activated, she had seen all that had happened. She saw the spike of chakra in Sasuke's eyes and saw the glint of red–the sign of the sharingan. Hinata saw him fall, saw his chakra sputter like a candle before dying out. She saw Naruto lose control, she didn't need her kekke genkai for that. That violent red chakra was clear from even the distance between the boys and Hinata.

 Hinata saw Yanagi-sensei freeze up when she spotted Sasuke's body. Afterwards, Hinata saw Sensei take on a whole new personality. Hinata shivered, with her Byakugan activated there was no missing that cold look in Yanagi's eyes. There was a saying in Konoha: 'The four things any Konoha nin fears are an angry Aburame, a focused Inuzuka, a motivated Nara, and a bereft Uchiha.'  Until now, Hinata had never realized why.

 The Hyuuga heiress clung to her kunai as if it were a religious symbol, she wasn't ready for this. When she had graduated as a genin, she knew there would be death and fighting, but... not like this. She hadn't expected to see her first death so soon, and definitely not her own teammate! Hinata would happily go back to doing D-ranked missions if she survived.

 She hoped she survived.

 But that hope was dwindling into an unattainable dream. If Sasuke, the strongest genin of their class, couldn't survive, then what hope did she have?! Yanagi-sensei had promised she would protect them with her life when they first fought Zabuza, but she had failed. Yanagi had broken her promise. There was no guarantee that Sensei would protect Hinata if Zabuza came after her, Yanagi didn't even protect her own cousin.

 A sentimental fool, that's what Yanagi-sensei called Hinata. Was this what she meant? Sasuke had ran to protect Naruto from being hurt, Hinata saw that, and in turn the Uchiha boy had gotten killed. “If you live past your Chunnin Exam I'll be amazed” That's what Yanagi-sensei had said, had she been right? Were emotions really a hindrance to a shinobi? From the way Yanagi-sensei was going after Zabuza, it seemed like she was right. Emotions were an obstacle to a shinobi, they got in the way of the fight and clouded the mind. Hinata remembered that there was a rule about emotions, Rule 25: A shinobi must never show their feelings. It was one of the only rules she actually knew by heart because it was the rule most shinobi strove to achieve.

 But... did Hinata have what it took to get rid of her emotions?

 Movement behind Yanagi-sensei alerted Hinata and she opened her mouth to call out a warning, not even thinking about it, but she was too late.

 vvv Normal POV vvv

 I stumbled back a step, caught off guard by the sudden body in front of me, cutting of the steam of fire to only a small fireball barely bigger than a cat. Time seemed to slow as I watched the small jet of fire fly from my mouth and connect with Haku's chest perfectly. Surprisingly, he didn't go flying back from the force of the fire. It should have sent him back twenty feet minimum, but he didn't budge a single inch. I stared straight into the kid's brown eyes for the first time, his mask was gone– probably Naruto's doing– as my ninjutsu hit him.

 He looked... peaceful.

 It was Sasuke all over again.

 I had killed many people in my career as a kunoichi, I've even enjoyed it at times. Many of those kills had been children, kids who had gotten in my way; but I never liked admitting to those kills. I always felt ill when I watched the light go out in their young eyes. But... it was necessary for Konohagakure to keep going, so I swallowed my disgust and soldiered on. I didn't look back and reflect upon my kills, I didn't find pride in the high number. I knew that if I did I would never be able to live with myself again. Haku though... he did it willingly. He jumped in front of my fireball to protect the bastard he found precious to him.

 Haku, a Kiri nuke-nin, had the Will of Fire.

 And I almost killed him.

 Almost.

 There was still a chance to save the boy.

 The question was: would I take it?

 He was my enemy, he killed my cousin.

 But he was only a boy... barely older than Team 7. If I let him die, it would be just another Sasuke. A death of a child saving someone precious to him.

 No, I would not let that happen.

 My decision made, I wrapped my arms around Haku and leaped back away from a shell shocked Zabuza. Once the demonic illusion fell, the bastard would no doubt come after me, regardless that Haku was now in my possession. I knew the Peach bastard didn't care for Haku, his sordid little speech of Haku being the ultimate tool was enough evidence for that. I needed enough time to try and heal the kid, at least enough that I could leave him to destroy Zabuza if he attacked.

 I laid Haku down gently and ran a diagnostic jutsu to check how injured the boy truly was. Deep second degree burns across the chest, as well as minor second degree on the right arm and shoulder; but fortunately no internal bleeding or ruptured organs. Not as bad as I thought then. I sighed and allowed my eyes to close a brief moment; I was glad that I had intended to slowly roast Zabuza alive, it had probably saved the kid's life. Haku would need help beyond my capabilities, but I should be able to heal him enough so he would last until I got a medical nin.

 Reaching into my pack I withdrew a kunai, intending to use it to cut open Haku's haori and shirt. Zabuza, however, jumped to the wrong conclusion. “Get away from him!” The Demon of the Mist shouted. It surprised me how desperate he sounded.

 Was... his speech about Haku just a ruse?

 No, I shook my head, I couldn't think like that. It was bad enough that I was healing the boy. I couldn't start going soft on Zabuza. He needed to die, otherwise Tazuna would always be in danger. Haku... once I healed him I would take him prisoner and turn him over to T&I when Team 7 returned to Konoha. This kid was a gold mine of information about the Mist Rebels, and being partners with the infamous Demon of the Mist and one of the rare Kiri nins to have a Kekke Genkai meant he probably had a high bounty.

 I stubbornly ignored the disgust I felt.

 I fingered the pinstriped collar of Haku's bodysuit to determine the patterned stitch. Luckily it was a downward weave, which would make slicing through the fabric much easier for me. I raised the kunai to Haku's neck...

 ...and hissed when a shuriken embedded itself in the back of my hand.

 Zabuza was charging towards me when I looked up to see who had thrown the shuriken. I was shocked that he was even able to move; Demonic Illusion: Shackling Stakes was a powerful paralyzing genjutsu. Only the most powerful were able to move under it, and even then it wasn't without struggle. So how the hell was Zabuza moving as if he was never under the genjutsu?! Genjutsu was supposed to be the nuke-nin's weakness! No time to think about it, Zabuza was already swinging his sword, trying to behead me. I barely managed to duck under the Kubikiribōchō and rolled away from Haku. Zabuza snarled at me and placed himself between the boy and I. His blade raised in a defensive position.

 Interesting.

 So Peaches didn't attack Tazuna, even though he had the perfect opening... again. Zabuza had had the element of surprise. I hadn't known that Shackling Stakes had ended, which meant he should have assassinated Tazuna, and possibly Hinata, before I knew what had happened. But he didn't. Zabuza came to the rescue of his fallen comrade, had even warned me by shouting. And when he had managed to separate us, instead of going for Tazuna or me like one would expect him too, Peaches continued to guard Haku from me. He totally ignored the bridge builder who stood behind him. It was a perfect opportunity to attack, there would be no way I could reach Tazuna in time, both Zabuza and I knew that. And yet, there wasn't a twitch from Peach-boy to indicate he meant to attack.

 Only defend.

 “Yanagi-sensei!” Someone landed beside me. I jolted and looked down at Naruto in surprise. I hadn't even thought of him since he smashed that ice prison to pieces. I was too focused on making Zabuza pay for Sasuke's death, and then saving Haku's life, to even think about the other two genin.

 Naruto was staring at me, “Sensei, what happened to you?!” That's right, the blonde didn't see me get my ass handed to me by Zabuza. He was too busy with the Ice Princess.

 I grunted and pointedly looked at Zabuza, trying to convey my meaning since my jaw was still out of commission. Unfortunately, the Kyuubi brat was too dense to get my meaning. He squinted at me, “Hey, I asked you a question!” I was really really tempted to kick him off the bridge. I was trying to think and-

 “HEY, WHAT DID YOU DO TO HAKU?!”

 That did it, as soon as this fight was over, I was murdering Naruto.

 Zabuza growled at Naruto's demand, but didn't take his narrow eyes off me. The man was finally serious about the fight. This wasn't some little show anymore where we threw a few half assed attempts of trying to kill each other. We were fighting for our students now, and that meant there was no holding back. In the shinobi world, students were considered the last straw. If someone went after a student, they had better prepare to fight for their lives against the master.

 Zabuza was guarding his one and only dying student.

 I still had two students to protect. No matter how much I wanted to strangle one at the moment.

 Tazuna be damned, this was no longer about a bridge builder and some petty shipping company. It was personal now. It became personal the minute Sasuke died, and I sure as hell wasn't letting my cousin and student go without being avenged. Even if I didn't kill Sasuke's true killer, I would damn sure take out the master. If it was the last thing I did, then so be it.

 “What the hell are you doing?!”

 There was a beat of silence before Zabuza and I turned to look at the new speaker. There were very few brave, or stupid depending on how you looked at it, souls who would willingly speak when two jounin level ninjas were releasing large amounts of Killer Intent. It was a well known fact that shinobi weren't mentally stable, and in the height of battle one could easily turn on some idiot who opened his big mouth. I deadpanned when I spied the little midget standing in front of a large crowd of thugs, all leering as if they were something special. Honestly, quantity did not equal quality. Every shinobi knew that, but it seemed that civilians forgot that little fact constantly.

 I could already tell where this was going.

 The midget piped up again, “You're supposed to be attacking the bridge builder, not playing ninja with a whore.” My flat expression turned to one that screamed, 'do you have a death wish?!' Zabuza wasn't even injured and here the idiot was mouthing off to an A-class nuke-nin. What an arrogant little dwarf. I didn't think it was possible, but I had finally found someone more arrogant than the entire Uchiha clan and Zabuza combined.

 Zabuza did not look amused, “Gatou,” Boy talk about loathing, I could feel just how much Zabuza hated the man by the levels of contempt in his voice, “what is all this? Why are you here and who are these thugs you brought with you?”

 This Gatou tapped his cane against the ground. “Well, you see there's been a change of plans.” Called it! But still, this guy was an Idiot, with a capital 'i'. Betraying a nuke-nin who was already pissed off... how did the little dwarf become one of the richest men in the world? “According to the new plan, you die of this bridge... Za-bu-za.” Oi! That was my plan, the little bastard.

 Peaches didn't look all that surprised, “What.” It wasn't even a question. More like a 'Really? You're actually trying that shit?' statement. If I wasn't still burning with adrenaline and anger I would find this whole thing hilarious.

 Gatou leered, as if he thought he was something special. “That's right. You're too expensive, so I decided to take you off the payroll.” See Zabuza? That's what you get when you're greedy. Your rat bastard employer pulls the most cliché move in history on you. “Of course, even these thugs with me cost something, so if you could slaughter a few of them before they take you down, I'd appreciate it.”

 Seriously, how was this guy still alive? Betraying a nuke-nin was one thing, but asking said nuke-nin to kill a few of his hired thugs who were standing right behind him before they 'killed' Zabuza was just asking for it. All it took was one of the thugs to stab the midget bastard in the back and then they could go loot his no-doubt richly furnished home for payment. They'd probably get a lot more money that way.

 But of course, male egos would prevent them all from thinking clearly and they would just battle to the death.

 Delightful.

 Gatou went even further and started adding mockery to the list, “Think you can manage that, Demon of the Mist?” The midget chuckled condescendingly. “Look at you, you look about a demonic as a wet kitten.” Apparently Gatou had never faced a wet kitten before. Especially when they're called 'Tora'.

 I turned to look at Zabuza. Of the both of us, I was the one who was more injured. In fact, Zabuza didn't even have a scratch on him. The only thing to his disadvantage was that he was mentally fatigued from the genjutsu I had cast on him. But like all good ninja, Peaches didn't show signs that the genjutsu had bothered him. I could tell Zabuza wasn't going to last much longer under the insults and blood would soon spill, but he didn't move. He thought I still meant harm to Haku.

 Even if I did, I would be willing to call a truce if only long enough to shut Gatou's damn mouth.

 I struggled to a stand, feeling slightly dizzy which meant that the blood loss was finally getting to me. This fight would be over for me soon, but I still had enough chakra in me to at least heal Haku so his life was no longer in danger, maybe even a little more. I swayed a little as I walked towards Zabuza. The man tensed and tightened his grip on the hilt of Kubikiribōchō. I stopped just out of reach of the big ass sword and forced myself to speak, “Heal...Haku.” I manged to push past my aching jaw, though it was so garbled that even I barely understood it. I really hoped Peach-boy got my meaning, because it was obvious that I couldn't explain in depth. Damn man, why couldn't he break my ribs or something?!

 The Kiri nuke-nin stood there for a moment, I could see in his eyes that he wanted to trust me but didn't dare. Not that I blamed him, until recently we were ready to kill each other. But like every experienced shinobi, we both knew that situations could change in an instant and enemies could become close allies in the blink of an eye. The problem was if those allies would return to enemies once the fighting was done. If I did, which I wouldn't dare, then I would be in the perfect position to off Haku without any intervention from Zabuza.

 By pure luck, Haku whimpered quietly at Zabuza's feet. A small reminder of how close to death the kid was. I couldn't wait around for Peaches to decide, Haku might be dead by the time Zabuza made up his damn mind.

 Unfortunately our conversation drew attention from that grub Gatou, “Ha! So that little brat is dying, eh? Serves him right for trying to break my arm! Do us all a favor, dear, and kill the runt for me, would you? I'll pay you handsomely for your troubles!” The little man asked me. I shivered in disgust and shot the midget a dark look over my shoulder. I hadn't noticed that his left arm was in a cast until now. My respect for Haku rose several notches. Too bad Ice Princess didn't slay the cretin when he had the chance.

 Zabuza narrowed his eyes at Gatou and I mentally laughed at the midget's stupidity. Insulting a man was one thing, but insulting his student when the kid was on the doorstep of death was something else entirely. Peach-boy looked at me with murder in his eyes, but I knew it wasn't directed at me. “You're in luck, Uchiha, our fight is over now” Zabuza rasped. My mouth twitched into a brief smile, but I let if fall when even that hurt. Peach-boy raised his voice so the rest of the people on the bridge could hear him, “since I am no longer in Gatou's employ, Tazuna is safe.”

 Gatou twitched, obviously infuriated that his little display of audacity was backfiring on him. Did he honestly expect that Zabuza would still go after Tazuna after he cut Peach-boy's pay? That was just arrogant in the extreme. And I was an expert on arrogance.

 I was an Uchiha after all. The trait for arrogance was in our blood just as much as the Sharingan was.

 Quietly I knelt beside Haku again and nicked a small cut in his collar before ripping the shirt open. I grimaced when I saw my handiwork. The skin across his thin chest was warped and yellowish. White bubbles dotted the skin like small snow capped mountains; some were as round as coins and others barely bigger than the head of a pin. The burn continued up Haku's neck, fading to a pale rosy pink as it curved up his jaw line and half way to his right eye, looking no more superficial than a sunburn. Haku's upper right arm was a glossy vivid red with sparse clear blisters running along the inside of his arm. Further down the arm, just below the elbow, the burn faded into the same rosy red color that marred the poor boy's cheek. It was honestly a surprise that Haku was still alive at all. The shock alone from the jutsu should have sent him into cardiac arrest.

 I felt Zabuza's heavy gaze on my back and looked up to meet the nuke-nin's glare, “You harm one hair on his head and I will end you.” Zabuza said and for the first time since I clashed with him, I felt intimidated by the Demon of the Mist.

 Wordlessly I nodded and activated the Mystic Palm Technique. I wasn't nearly as good as Rin was, but she taught me the basics of medical ninjutsu. That would be enough to keep Haku alive. He would be horribly scarred for the rest of his days, but it was better that he be hideous than dead. Besides, those who truly loved the boy wouldn't care what he looked like.

 vvv 3rd POV vvv

 Naruto didn't understand at all what was happening. One minute Yanagi-sensei and that peach guy were glaring at each other with the intent to kill, then the weird short guy with the weird hair showed up and started insulting Zabuza and all of a sudden Zabuza and Frizzy-sensei were friends! It was all so confusing and Naruto couldn't keep up. He wanted to scream and make them explain, but Yanagi-sensei would probably knock him upside the head again. And she hit hard!

 Yanagi-sensei was kneeling down beside Haku. She was... healing him. Naruto frowned at his sensei. He remembered what she said to him when she refused to give anything to that sick boy, “I don't see the point in wasting resources to a lost cause when there are more likely cases around that can live.” Naruto didn't know how Haku had gotten hurt, but it looked bad. Almost like Haku-san wouldn't live, even Naruto would admit to that no matter how much he didn't want to. So why was Yanagi-sensei healing a lost cause?! Sasuke! If Yanagi was willing to heal Haku, then shouldn't she try to heal Sasuke too? Naruto looked over to where the body of Sasuke laid, why wouldn't Yanagi heal Sasuke? He was her cousin, and Haku was the enemy; so shouldn't she focus on Sasuke and not Haku? Naruto wanted Haku to live, sure, but he wanted Sasuke to live more!

 “Yanagi-sensei, what about S-Sasuke?” Naruto asked. He wanted to yell, but he could barely even bring his voice above a low mumble. He didn't like the way Yanagi's shoulders stiffened, Naruto's sensei was normally more reserved than that. Naruto could hardly ever figure out what Frizzy-sensei was thinking unless she was mad, so for her to act out of character didn't bode well for Sasuke.

 Zabuza hefted his large sword up onto his shoulder and looked at Naruto. The nuke-nin's voice was surprisingly soft when he spoke, “Kid... your teammate is dead.”

 “Then why...?” Naruto started to ask as he turned wide eyes on his sensei's back. Why was she healing Sasuke's killer?! His blue eyes turned up to Zabuza, wordlessly demanding answers.

 Zabuza only looked away, unable to meet the kid's gaze. Death normally didn't bother him, he enjoyed killing and enjoyed seeing the survivors' fear when he took credit for his kills. But... there was something in that blonde kid's eyes that made him almost feel ashamed of it all.

 The short midget laughed harshly, “Look at you! So soft! Awwww, are you going to cry?”

 Naruto couldn't take it any more. He spun around and leveled a harsh glare at the scruffy little rat, “Shut up!” The Kyuubi container roared. He couldn't stand it! Not anymore! If Yanagi-sensei was going to be a coward then fine, Naruto would take care of those thugs by himself! Screw the shinobi code or whatever bullshit Yanagi spouted at him, Naruto would just follow his own code then!

 Naruto charged forward before Zabuza or Yanagi could stop him.

 vvv Normal POV vvv

 I tried to grab Naruto as he shot off, but I wasn't in a good position. He had been standing behind me and I wasn't at my best so my reaction time was off. I twisted awkwardly and landed on my stomach, my arm stretched out before me. I didn't even come close to grabbing the blonde. Grimacing I pushed myself off the ground and was preparing to run after my hot headed student, when a blur of grey shot past me. I fell back in surprise.

 “You heal Haku, I'll get the brat!” Zabuza ordered over his shoulder. I blinked after him; it was common that enemies would temporarily call a truce to deal with a mutual foe, but it was always an uneasy truce. The way Zabuza was acting... it was like we had been allies for a long time. And that, I did not understand.

 “S-sensei!” I turned to see Hinata and Tazuna coming forward, Hinata's lavender eyes landed on Haku and she swallowed audibly. Even Tazuna looked horrified at the warped mess that was Haku, and I was sure he had seen many nasty injuries during his career in construction.

 No time to think about that. I couldn't deal with those two, not while I was dealing with Haku. In quick succession I ordered Hinata to retreat and continue guarding Tazuna–even if Zabuza said he would no longer go after the bridge builder that didn't mean he would stop any thug going after my client–through basic genin hand signals. There was a chance she didn't know even one of them; the Academy never really went into depth with hand signals, which was stupid in my opinion. It was inevitable that one day all shinobi faced a situation where silence was the difference between life and death. It was at those times that hand signals were an essential tool to a ninja. I would be damned if another one of my students died because I didn't teach them something basic and easy In the back of my mind I added teaching Naruto and Hinata all the levels of hand signals to the growing list of things I should have done.

 Luckily, Hinata seemed to understand me. She nodded a bit shakily and backed up, pawing at Tazuna's sleeve. The old man stood frozen, his eyes on the boy that was slowly dying. I ignored them both as I activated the Mystic Palm Technique again and spread my palms out just inches above Haku's chest. Green chakra seeped into the affected area and I mentally twisted it so that the chakra spread through the skin, going no deeper than the burns. I was in my own little bubble, completely ignoring all that went around me as I laboriously worked to save my cousin's murderer.

 vvv 3rd POV~ Naruto vvv

 A heavy hand landed on Naruto's shoulder before he could get within two meters of the first thug. Furious the blonde kid spun around, expecting to see his cowardly sensei, but was surprised to see the no-brow nuke-nin Zabuza. A small twinge of fear shot through him and he wondered if Zabuza was going to take him out. Naruto could barely hold his own against Haku, he knew there was no chance he could even make Zabuza sweat. Sure there had been that time before, when Yanagi-sensei was captured, but that was with Sasuke. Sasuke was gone now, and Naruto honestly couldn't think of any way he might stand against Zabuza on his own. All his plans included Sasuke.

 Whap!

 “Ouch! HEY!” Naruto yelped and glared up at Zabuza, the person responsible for smacking Naruto upside the head.

 “Stupid. What do you think one little pest like you can do against them?” Zabuza grouched as he grabbed the blonde by his hideously orange jumpsuit and dragged him back a few steps. “You're nothing but target practice to those bastards.”

 Naruto didn't want to hear it, “Shut up! This is all your fault! If you... If he hadn't... Then...” He didn't know what to say, all he knew was this whole mess, from Sasuke to that creepy short guy, was somehow Zabuza's fault.

 Zabuza's answer wasn't helping matters, “Haku is nothing but a tool to me, just like your friend was nothing but a tool to your sensei. You shouldn't linger over his death, it makes you soft. A true shinobi-”

 The blonde growled, “You shut the hell up! I don't give a damn was a true shinobi does. Haku thought the world of you, you were one of his precious people and Sasuke...” Naruto trailed off for a moment, unable to push away the image of Sasuke dying in his arms.

 “Aniki... he's going to be mad at me. He made me promise to... try and surpass him. But...”

 Naruto shook his head fiercely to clear the image of a senbon-riddled Sasuke, his friend, “Sasuke died because of me! And Haku is dying because of you!” Naruto finished with a shout, pointing a rigid finger at the silent Zabuza, “You and Haku were together for years, doesn't that mean anything?!”

 Zabuza's eyes didn't change from their cold flat gaze, “You don't understand the way of shinobi, you're still just a child who knows nothing. I merely used Haku as Gatou used me. He is nothing but a broken tool now, one that will never be the same. A broken tool is a useless one.”

 The anger roiling inside Naruto's gut boiled down to utter disgust. He couldn't understand how someone as loyal as Haku could get mixed up with a rat bastard like Zabuza, “If you really mean that, then you're a bigger rat than I thought. You're worse than Gatou!”

 Zabuza simply watched the kid.

 “Yanagi-sensei said that she wouldn't waste resources on a lost cause, but she's over there right now trying to heal Haku for you; and you say you don't care about him! Haku wanted me to kill him when I defeated him, he didn't want to dishonor you, damn it! He thought the world of you, so much that he was willing to die for you! While he was sacrificing everything for you, you never felt anything for him? What does that mean for me, huh?” Naruto's voice started dying down as the grief he had felt for both Haku and Sasuke began overwhelming his anger, “If I become strong, does that mean I become as cold hearted as you are? Haku almost thew his life away... and for what?! For you and your dream? He never had a dream of his own, but you don't care, you just tossed him aside like he was nothing...” Thick tears began streaming down Naruto's cheeks. “It's just... so wrong...”

 The Kiri nuke-nin looked away, unable to face the genin. “You talk too much...” He muttered under his breath. Naruto looked up, surprised at the tired tone in Zabuza's voice. The blonde kid was nearly shocked to see tears gathering in the nuke-nin's eyes. “Haku was always too soft for this life, and curse you I refuse to let him throw away his life on one as worthless as I.”

 Naruto stared at the man in silence, unable to even think of what to say. He had never meant to actually change Zabuza's mind or anything. He just wanted Zabuza to see how wrong the shinobi way was.

 The man seemed to be smirking under the bandages covering his mask, “What, cat got your tongue, gaki? Or are you so surprised to discover that I'm human? Even shinobi are human, no matter how much we try to escape that fact. That's what your sensei was trying to teach you... but we always fail. Or at least... I have.” Zabuza reached back and wrapped his fingers around Kubikiribōchō's hilt, “Stay back, kid.  This fight is between me and Gatou.”

 There was a brief pause, a small moment of silence, before Zabuza suddenly charged forward with the speed only a shinobi could achieve after years of training. Naruto watched the nuke-nin in awe and horror as he met with the numerous thugs of that Gatou guy and, like a wave breaking on a rocky shore, blood pieces of thugs went flying into the air. Arms, legs, torsos, heads, it didn't matter what it was; but some appendage would go into the air every time a thug thought he had a chance against Zabuza. Naruto suddenly knew how out of league he was, a simple genin, against someone like Zabuza; and he was immensely glad that Zabuza wasn't against Team 7 anymore.

 “Rah! Damn it, I'm not going to sit this battle out like a coward!” Naruto suddenly shouted and made a hand sign, “Kage bushin no Jutsu!” Three other Naruto's popped into existence, drawing the attention of a few thugs that Zabuza left alive to go after Gatou. Their eyes lit up at the sight of an easier target.

 One thug snickered as he took a step towards the genin, “Awww, look. A little brat thinks he has a chance against us. What'chya say, boys? Shall we teach him a lesson?” There was a collect of evil chuckles as each thug brought out their weapons and turned to face the boy.

 Naruto was not amused, “Don't underestimate me!” He snapped and two shadow clones charged forward. While the thugs were busy taking care of them, Naruto concentrated on the jutsu Yanagi-sensei had taught him. He had mastered it, but he didn't even have a fan to concentrate the chakra. Naruto doubted that the jutsu would work without a fan or something to concentrate his chakra, at least that was what Yanagi-sensei had told him. However this was a live or die situation and he didn't have a choice. “Fūton: Wind Blade!” Naruto shouted and prayed to kami that this worked.

 It didn't.

 The thugs laughed at him when nothing happened, “Look at him, you're a long way from home, little kid. What a pathetic-” The thugs' self proclaimed speaker was suddenly cut off when a hawk shot past Naruto's shoulder and slammed full speed into the man's face, its wings smacking the man upside his head. The thug's laughter turned into screams of pain as the hawk raked its curved talons down his face, carving deep bloody grooves in his cheeks, and pecked at his eyes with its sharp hooked beak. He reached up, trying to pull the bird off, but it only fell back for a moment before swooping back in and digging it's talons into the man's neck. The thug fell backwards and laid prone, dead, underneath the now calm hawk as it cleaned it's blood spattered feathers. The whole thing had only lasted a short moment.

 Naruto spun around, his blue eyes going wide as he saw Yanagi-sensei walking towards him. A swarm of hawks flew around her, a cacophony of shrieks and caws. The hawk that had clawed at the thug took flight and landed on Yanagi-sensei's shoulder, looking utterly smug with his perch of honor. The rest of the hawks spread out among the bridge work, each of their sharp yellow eyes seeming to pick a victim to claw the face off of.

 Even though the blonde really didn't like his sensei all that much, he was glad to see her. “Frizzy-sensei! How's Haku, did you heal him?” Naruto asked when his sensei stopped beside him.

  “I don't know,” The tall woman said blandly as she shrugged, “Taicho is healing him.”

 Naruto blinked at her, confused before looking over his shoulder at where Haku was. He was surprised to see another Yanagi still crouched over the older boy's body, green chakra pouring out of her hands and into Haku's chest. Naruto twisted to face the Yanagi beside him, “You're a shadow clone!” He exclaimed.

 Let be known that, shadow clone or not, Yanagi-sensei's hits still hurt. “Idiot. Of course I am.” She cracked her knuckles and made a strange hand sign that Naruto didn't recognize, “You take care of these buzzards, I'll take the rest of the stragglers that Peach-boy leaves.” The hawks seemed to respond to Yanagi-sensei's hand sign and like a storm cloud of feathers and sharp talons, all shot forward after any thug standing still.

 Naruto decided to ignore the horrible screams that were now rising from the masses.

 vvv Normal POV vvv

 Haku groaned quietly under my hands and I sighed in relief. That he was responding meant that Haku was out of danger. I could quit healing him if I had to and not worry about him dying regardless of my efforts. I was already dangerously low on chakra again after I had created that shadow clone to offer some protection and assistance to Naruto. I didn't really trust Zabuza to watch out for the blonde kid and there was no way in hell that I would let another student die on this mission, especially since the two more dangerous opponents were out of the fight. Naruto could handle civilian thugs easily one on one, but no one could survive being overwhelmed. Even by wussies like Gatou's so called bodyguards.

 “Otou...san...” Haku wheezed. I frowned at the boy as he lolled his head away from me, his eyelids fluttering uselessly. Who the hell was Haku talking- I looked behind my shoulder where the training dummies were getting their asses handed to them by Zabuza. Did Haku think of Zabuza like a father? That would explain his suicidal behavior when it came to protecting the kenjutsu master.

 The boy's eyes suddenly snapped open and he tried to sit up. I cut the healing chakra to pin him to the ground and gave him a wordless stern look in hopes to convey my meaning. Haku's chocolate brown eyes glared back at me. I noticed that his right eye was blood shot from capillaries that had burst when I hit him with the fire ball, and felt a twinge of guilt at the reminder that I had almost killed the kid. Had I not wanted Zabuza to suffer painfully, I would have killed Haku. Strange to think that my thirst for revenge had saved someones life.

 ...I was signing up for therapy when I got home after this.

 Haku looked away first. He looked strangely unhappy. I blinked down at my impromptu patient, confused as his change in mood. I had been expecting anger or... something other than sadness. “Let me die...” Haku rasped quietly.

 I raised an eyebrow and leveled a flat look at Haku. I wasn't going to let the kid die, not after going through everything to keep him alive. I was almost at the point of chakra exhaustion again, damn it! And this little brat had the gall to ask me to kill him. I got it that Zabuza basically raised the gaki only think of himself as a tool, but every human should have some self-preservation. And if this was Haku trying to get away without having to face the fact that he killed my cousin then I say he could go screw himself.

 Instead of answering, since I really couldn't anyway, I reached into my weapons pouch and brought out a roll of bandages Rin forced me to keep on my person at all times. Without meeting Haku's gaze, I gently lilted his head forward and began wrapping the slim bandages around his skull so that they covered his right eye. I didn't have the medical talent to heal capillary blood vessels, his eye would have to heal naturally, or at least until he got better help.

 The ice user reached up and grabbed my wrist with a surprisingly strong grip. I paused in my work and met Haku's single uncovered eye. “Kill me.” He hissed. By his grimace I guess that the boy's vocal cords had been damaged as well. With my free hand I activated the diagnostic jutsu and laid my palm against Haku's throat. Despite his pleading for me to kill him, Haku tensed when he felt my touch. I couldn't help but smile inwardly at that. Any good shinobi didn't like having their neck exposed, it was a sign of helplessness and defeat.

 Withdrawing my hand after scanning the damage, I went back to work wrapping Haku's eye up. It wasn't serious, something more like a sore throat than an internal burn. Haku's grip on my left wrist tightened almost to the point of breaking it. I glared at him, if he didn't let me go I was going to make him seriously regret it. There was only so much touching a jounin could take before their temper snapped.

 The boy quelled under my full glare and he released my wrist in a hurry. I might not be able to talk at the moment, but I could easily get my point across with glares.

 “I'm useless now...” Haku whispered after a moment of silence. I rolled my eyes and contemplated the consequences of knocking the Ice Princess out. Since Zabuza was a little busy at the moment he might never know, but there was always the risk of Haku tattling on me.

 Best not risk it.

 “Shutit.” I ground out, not even bothering to enunciate my words clearly. I hated the kid for killing my cousin, but it wasn't Haku that I wanted to kill in revenge. It was Zabuza for taking such an innocent child like Haku and twisting his rare loyalty into something ugly. But if it was that manner of thinking then I couldn't blame Zabuza either, I realized. It was Kirigakure for creating so many monsters like Zabuza, for teaching children that death wasn't just a part of life, it was something to enjoy.

 I loathed the Bloody Mist.

 Haku started begging, “Jounin-san... please.”

 I shook my head. I would not give in to his demands. I refused to kill the child, if only because I didn't want to see my work and efforts to keep him alive go to waste.

 “Frizzy-sensei! Haku!” Naruto's joyous yelp sounded from further down the bridge. I shifted to look at my blonde student bounding towards us. Behind him Zabuza followed at a more sedated pace, Kubikiribōchō on his shoulder gleaming red with blood and gore. My summonings were scattered among the dead, feasting upon their reward for helping me. I couldn't suppress the grimace at that. I had always been slightly revolted at the contract I held with my summons: that anytime I called them into battle they got the remains of any flesh left.

 My shadow clone was crouching even further back, close to the edge of the bridge where a small lump that no hawk touched laid; I was guessing it was the remains of Gatou. I had given her orders to get something with Gatou's writing for purposes I intended to use later.

 A soft scrap of someone's sandal against the rough ground brought my attention back to what was in front of me. Zabuza stared down at me passively, his face bandages splattered with the scarlet blood of his enemies. He glanced at Haku laying beside me, who looked away, then back at me, “I suppose you held up your end.”

 I wasn't going to try and ask what he would do if I hadn't.

 Instead I looked at Naruto where he knelt beside me and jabbering endlessly to the silent Haku. The kid had seemed to forget that the ice user had killed his teammate, but I wasn't going to point it out to him. I wasn't that cruel.

 Placing a hand on the ground, I slowly got to my feet carefully concealing any sign of struggle from Zabuza. We might be allies now, but until I could secure the alliance it would remain unsteady and must be treated as if it were a wild animal. I did not trust Zabuza in the slightest and I could only expect the same regard he had towards me.

 Besides, I didn't want that bastard's help.

 My shadow clone was coming back towards us. Our eyes met, her red against my black, and she nodded before turning to Naruto, “Hey, bratling, go find Hinata and make sure Tazuna is secure.” Naruto twisted around to stare at the shadow clone then at me standing beside her. I narrowed my eyes at him in a silent threat. Clone Yanagi was still his sensei, just as a copy of me. The brat had better get used to taking orders from my clones just as much as as he took orders from me.

 Naruto quickly scrambled to do my bidding, leaving Zabuza and Haku alone. I turned my back on the nuke-nin pair and brushed passed the shadow clone, dismissing her as I went. I had another matter to attend to, and it wasn't a pleasant one. I did not wish for either of my remaining students to be around as I stored Sasuke's body in a storage scroll like he was a common bounty.

 The area where Sasuke had died was further back on the bridge, away from where the fighting had taken place. My little cousin laid where Naruto had left him, senbon needles still sticking out of him like some sick attempt at a porcupine. He looked like he was still in pain, his pale face scrunched up and etched with fine red lines from stray needles grazing his skin. I stared down at Sasuke, feeling empty.

 Uchiha do not show sadness; they use their grief as a tool to fight. We were the strongest clan in Konoha, we must lead by example. That was what every Uchiha child was taught long before they even entered the Academy. Emotion was a liability and a hindrance. Tears are a sign of weakness. Something Kakashi-nii pounded into my head at an early age; further cementing Uchiha teachings. I never really bothered with it all though. My short temper was an emotion and one I readily applied to almost every situation I came across. I used it to my benefit though, instilling some small level of fear among those I could. On that small foundation I built my entire reputation. I was ruthless, vulgar, quick tempered, and more arrogant that most Uchihas on a good day; and I was proud of that.

 I wanted to feel sad that Sasuke was gone forever, but I couldn't. Regret, yes. Regret that I hadn't taught him more to keep him alive. Disappointment in myself for living up to Nii-san's prediction and being a horrible sensei. Anger that I wasn't tearing Zabuza and Haku apart right now for killing the boy. But no grief. I had seen too many children die already, what was one more?

 Even if he was my cousin.

 Slowly, I knelt by his body and pulled out a premade storage scroll used exactly for this purpose. I had no talent for fuinjutsu, so I relied on other people to make them for me. I mildly wondered if Nekobaa would be sad to know that one of her body storage scrolls was being used on her favorite little Uchiha and if she would be disappointed that Sasuke would never complete that Paw Encyclopedia she always talked about when I visited her.

 I unrolled the scroll and laid it down beside Sasuke's corpse. There was no time to ponder useless things. With a gentleness I knew Mikoto-oba would expect, I lifted her dead little boy and laid him on top of the seal's focus point. I sat back and studied him before absently pulling a senbon needle from his shoulder. I knew that his family would not appreciate seeing the weapons that killed him, I should pluck them before sealing Sasuke's body. I reached for the senbons in his neck, feeling that those were the most demeaning. After all, good shinobi didn't like having their neck exposed.

 There.

 I froze, not sure what the hell I was feeling. Not a heartbeat, Sasuke's heart had long stopped, that was sure of it. But... warmth. Chakra. Life. Like a small ember still clinging to the warmth of flame, determined not to burn out and become a lowly lump of coal. Steady, waiting for that extra push to turn back into a brilliant fire. There was still a chance to save my baby cousin. I was low on chakra, what I gave possibly couldn't help, but if might keep that ember flickering for just a while longer until someone could stroke it alive again.

 Screw it.

 I laid my palm flat against Sasuke's chest and pushed what remaining chakra I could spare into his coils. It wasn't much, but I felt his heart flutter beneath my fingers like a caged little bird. Good, then he no longer needed help, Sasuke could make it back to us on his own.

 Which was excellent, since I was passing out again.

[le-petitmort]

Part II – This thing is about to be a thing

In one-point-four seconds I came to the realization that I am quite literally…the dumbest motherfucker ever. First, I never got her digits. Second…I never got her digits. Disgraceful. Where was my situational awareness? It was akin to a scrawny defender putting pressure up court on the opposing team’s guard, not paying attention and running smack dab into a pick set by a seven foot chiseled like a bronze formed by the hands of Donatello, NBA center. Basketball metaphors…get used to them.

Anyway, it knocked the wind out of my sails. The reason being is that I had formulated this grandiose plan for her to make the first move beyond the first move. To engage the conversation. Open the forum. Get the small talk out the way. Allowing me to pitter patter and tiptoe my way past the threshold of awkwardness and straight to the glory road of getting to know her intimately.

By intimately, I’m not talking about straight to boom, boom, out go the lights carnal skullduggery complete with passionate wet kisses, heavy petting and cock to pussy communication. I was angling for dinner first. Not wine, dine and sixty-nine dinner either. I had it built up in my head that I was going to treat this one like a lady. Later on, I could whisper filthy invitations in her ear that would make her coo, as my hand deftly slid up her thigh towards paradise. Getting to that point would be the hard part. Or maybe not.

Maybe, I had put this particular pussy on a pedestal. Perhaps she was a cum guzzling cock whore who jumped bed to bed trolling for fat cock in the ocean of fuckery that is Brooklyn?

Mayhap, she was one of those chicks who secretly delved into her passionate side by stroking the kitty by the light of her iPhone to kinky images on tumblr. Trolling for virtual cock with selfie side boob action, a toothy smile of seduction and a user name like…say…wantonbabygirldreamsandtequilamemories.

Perchance, all that was completely off base and she was raised right by her parents. A pristine catholic girl with of heart and mind of gold, devout in her love of our lord and savior Jesus Christ who would be spending good Friday getting ashes thumbed on her forehead…or whatever it is Catholics do on that religious day. I’m agnostic so, I have zero idea and I highly doubt she’s Ms. Goodytwoshoes since I had already noted in passing that she likes a smoke and a cocktail in the evening. Plus, she wears those fancy stocking that scream “unwrap me Daddy and see the present beneath”.

Let’s get back on point. This is how much I’ve thought into her. The epitome of pussy on a pedestal syndrome. Now, we’ve had an actual conversation. Albeit, a very short conversation. Brevity is sometimes good…except when you don’t get the digits.

The face to face was going to have to happen. Overcoming my fear of ineptitude and delving into my inner rico suave. A little more toned down though, than an unbuttoned white shirt to the navel, smooth talking lothario schtick. But, more than simply me. Yep, this girl has me all sorts of fucked up.

You’re probably wondering, “what’s with all the self-loathing, dude?”. I admit it’s got to be a bit of a turn off so, here’s the back story. No, I am not a virgin who sprawls across the couch in my jockey’s eating flamin’ hot Cheetos whilst penning dirty poems to lewd images on tumblr under a username such as…bigdongdaddysearchingforhootchiecocksluts. I’m also not the kind of man who walks into a room, drawing in beautiful, leggy, big busted vixens like steel to a magnet. I’m somewhere in the middle.

A relationship failure who gets too wrapped up in his work. Which can come off as neglectful to a significant other. But, I’ve had a plan since I was eighteen that I’d be retired on a beach in Mexico by the time I was forty, with my gorgeous wife and two adorable children playing in the sand as I sip a corona and reminisce about all the good times.

You see, I like plans. I don’t like flying by the seat of my pants. Life is analytical. Meant to be linear with a point A, B, C and onward. Peaks and valleys are for the weak. Which is why, when I first spied my dream girl promenading down the crooked sidewalks of Williamsburg, I stopped the initial urge to go in for the kill and went with formulation of a process. Fucking up in love multiple times will do such things to a man.

The plan was off though, for now. I wasn’t going to be able to slap another ”call me, maybe” note on her morning coffee to pique interest. That was already done. Mutual admiration and quite possibly mutual eye fucking were already in play. She had said it herself! Not so much in those words. But, I’d been noticed. How had I not noticed her noticing me? I really am daft at this shit…or maybe I need a lightning bolt of confidence in my life?

Is this moment it? Is that all I needed was the knowledge that there was a connection from across the room that I hadn’t felt? Was there truly distant simpatico? Was kismet closer than the vacuum of my unsure, fearful mind? Do we already have a thing for each other?! Holy fuck. These are the questions whirring in my head at 5 AM. Just like the ceiling fan spinning full speed above my bed. I’m one hundred twenty miles an hour of jubilation and angst. As much as I pride myself on a linear lifestyle, I climb to the mountain summit and hurl myself into a canyon of doubt with every passing second spent thinking about her.

I can hear the city coming to life. The traffic beginning to snarl. The metal clank of bodega doors rolling open. A single bird stationed on it’s perch singing.

I should be ambling into my office, coffee cup in hand starting my so-called work day. Instead I’m counting the minutes before I jump in the shower, clean up and go finish business with my future paramour. Yes sir, I’m forcing myself to project a dose of swagger. Laying here, mean mugging like an NBA power forward who just euro-stepped his way to a thundering game-changing dunk. I’m a winner, baby! Shelve that pitiful shit, bruh. You da man! Get fuckin’ fired up!

Which is why I basically pimp walked my way to the coffee shop when the time came for action. Outfit: casual. A hoodie from my alma mater, jeans with a strategic knee rip, green Nike air force ones on my feet. I popped straight through the shop door towards the familiar blonde at the counter like I owned the place. Ya boy iz in da house! Woof, woof, woof!

“Large straight black and a skinny latte, please.” I winked, expecting she’d question why I was getting two drinks instead of one.

She went straight to brewing and giving me the inflated total. “Twelve even. Name, please.” Ok, babe, maybe you don’t understand that lives are about to change in mere minutes. A whole cosmic galaxy is about to open up. Astronomers like Neil Degrasse Tyson will be talking about the cavalcade of stars falling out of the sky because two lips met at an overpriced local coffee shop in Brooklyn. Guess I’m getting ahead of myself there.

“Stephen…with a P.” I responded.

Apprehension and giddiness course through me. Giddiness seems unmanly but, my excitement isn’t. I’m bouncing heel to toe as our drinks magically appear before me. I check my phone one last time. Knowing her punctuality, we are currently at T minus 2 minutes and counting. Ps. I am not a stalker…to reiterate.

I grab the steaming drinks and fly towards the door, nearly tumbling over a shorty with her nose buried her phone. No time for apologies, I must nail down a cozy table on the sidewalk. I want this first meeting to be something the entire five boroughs of New York stops in awe to witness.

But, there she is coming through the door just as I reach for it. The coffees are in one hand and I can feel them about to crash right into her. I swivel my wrist, going for the save. No fucking way am I flinging a skinny latte across the object of my forever affections. Fuck no. Shit. There it goes. Whoa…steady as she goes. Eye widening panic! Boom goes the dynamite! My fingers grip the cups harder and safely held. Crisis averted.

Cool and casual like that. “Here you go Iona.” I handed over her drink with a smile.

“Iona?” She looked at me puzzled.

My eyes darted, alarmed. “Uh, yesterday…when you made your order here. Uh…you told the cashier your name was Iona?” Now it was time for my own quizzical. “Your name is Iona…right?”

She blew out a breath. The kind that shoots upward, blowing a dangling strand of her bangs from her rolling at being caught in a fib eyes. “That’s a thing I do. To sound exotic.” She gave a quick shake of the head and nodded to the counter. “I change it up every day. Glenda, Marion, Billie Jean...Iona. Whatever I’m feeling like that day.”

Her hand casually reached for a true introductory shake. “My real name is Tuesday…and I already know you’re Stephen…with a P.”

My smile was contemplatively wry. “Isn’t Tuesday an exotic enough name already? I mean…I’ve never met a Tuesday.”

“Yeah, well, a girl has to have many faces. One must stay intriguing and beguiling.”

“I’m intrigued and beguiled.” I shot back. Somehow feeling comfortable in my skin for a change.

The corners of her lips curved. “Mutual.”

Relaxation immediately struck. My entire being at ease. A wordless infinity.

“But, I’m sorry Stephen. Much as I’d like to sit down and get to know you, I have to be to work in five minutes. I’m all about a strict schedule.” Nice! She really is perfection.

“I completely understand that.”

Tuesday fished a hand into her oversized tote, withdrawing a business card which she handed over. “I neglected to leave you my number last night. I was a little jittery over it all…well...you know.” Our eyes locked. Mesmerizing. “Will you call me for dinner?” She questioned as if there was some sort of doubt.

“Absolutely.” I opened the door, leading her through. Two fingers steadied at the small of her back. Feeling a response as Tuesday’s back comfortably adjusted.

She turned to me on the street, one last parting moment.  Words breaking apart the sweetest lips I’d ever laid eyes on. “Thanks for latte. I like a man who gets me coffee in the morning…cliché, I know.”

“The pleasure was all mine.”

Tuesday paused, giving thought to one last message. “Just so you know…I don’t do personal calls or texts during the work day. So, don’t bother. I’m married to my career. I have a plan.”

I gave the thumbs up. Fucking perfection.

-bart 4.20.2019

[mmmmalo]

the king/father creates/births things while the queen serves only to impregnate (him with the idea for what he will create, like a muse, if you will)? idk i hate women being reduced to their reproductive function but this also seems misogynistic somehow. also does this make roxy's ability to create objects from nothing another "she's trans" joke?

I think the discomfort you’re apprehending is discussed somewhat when Crockertier!Jane tells Jake he will only exist to sire her children? Sexual objectification is probably a more familiar experience for women, but the unease in being subsumed by some sexual function isn’t necessarily gender exclusive… (the existence of domination play attests to that probably)

This subject is probably out of my depth, but I’m going to meander a bit and hopefully say a couple useful things.

First, some clarification: “birth” is the principle of separation and “pregnancy” is the principle of union. Thus birth-as-we-know-it is rendered equivalent to ejaculation, Breathing out, pooping – all of which involve separation from that which was once part of you. Likewise the image of a gestating fetus is equivalent to taut testicles, lungs full of air, a constipated colon – states in which the union is maintained. On this level, it’s apparent that any given body can participate in both halves of the dichotomy.

But as elaborated back in the Roxy-and-Dirk post, Sburb’s queens and kings are aligned with birth and pregnancy, respectively. As per Caliborn’s enchantment, this is treated a hat-switch, a reversal of expectations on who ejaculates and who gestates. “Birth” (which Caliborn likes) is coded as masculine, so that assigning this function to the queen is met as a reversal. While “pregnancy” (for which Caliborn fetishes his disgust) is coded as feminine, so that assigning this function to the king is met as a reversal.

The problem I’m facing is evaluating whether the birth/pregnancy dichotomy (aka separation/union, aka Breath/Blood) contains an intrinsic (ie inescapable?) gendered hierarchy, or if the gendered hierarchy is imported by characters (or us) onto what is actually a gender-neutral distinction. Though there could also be a broader point that binary systems are easily co-opted as mapping to the gender binary…? So that even if a distinction “ought to be” neutral, the matter remains that it has been /rendered/ gendered?

To avoid speaking too much in terms of generalities, I’m going to reorient this discussion around John Egbert via an ask concerning the ARG:

you gotta talk about it man come on

I read the ARG as a conspiracy theory that falls in line with the kids’ paranoid fantasies. In the same way that the very real trolls function as manifestations from the psyches of those around them, the world of Homestuck is, in general, shaped by the psychological profiles of its inhabitants.

I gather this partly from the nods to an irl conspiracy (eg declaring Obama to be a cross-dimensional immigrant), but mainly because the overwhelming paranoia that defines the narrative, the conviction that the world has degenerated and that every known authority is but a feeble puppet of a nebulous overlord. Comedians Laurel and Hardy are slowly corrupted and eventually infused with Evil, resulting in the birth of the Insane Clown Posse, which is to say ICP’s low-class status translates into degenerate art within the confines of the conspiracy. Albert Einstein is renounced as a fake, whose “insights” are mere scraps cast off from a feast of truth available to some unseen master. It’s all insurmountably stupid, but there is a unifying thread:

The idea is that the world is “fallen”, in two of the senses explored via John Egbert’s fear of heights (or rather, his fear of descent). 

1. John is literally afraid of heights, having fallen from the slime pogo. But John’s entry item is an apple because he experiences a pervasive sense that there is a perfect world of ideals from which he has been thrown down – a sort of intersection between the Fall of Man from the Garden of Eden and the heavenly Platonic Forms. This manifests partly in an obsession with authenticity, a subject that pervades Act 1 (x)(x). The Obama birth-certificate conspiracy attempts to frame Obama as “inauthentic”, and framing Einstein as a feeble peddler of inherited slivers of truth relies on the idea that there is a Godly figure with access to ALL the truth, a master presiding over the Pleroma. John is susceptible to this kind of thinking; after all, the paranoid idea of Betty Crocker as an Illuminati-tier omnipotent antagonist began as one of John’s funny delusions.

2. The biblical Fall is at times phrased as the corruption of humanity, and that sense carries into Homestuck. The other Heir, Equius, is revolted and titillated by that which he regards as base. His fetishization being lower class and other modes of degradation receives a visual complement in images of a falling ideal: the death-by-fall of man-horse Arthour, and Equius’s own descent through the caves of LOCAS (the circumstances of a lusus’s death and the features of a planet both bear relation to a player’s fantasies). John complicates the picture a little bit: he specifically has a fascination with “bad movies” (low status art), but also he regards the other side of the silver screen as a Pleroma of sorts, which simultaneously elevates the art.

But my goal is to demonstrate that all of this intersects with the original topic: the division of high/low is also projected onto masculine/feminine.

John wishes to undo his traumatic fall from the slime pogo, an event that has come to represent John’s fantasy of his own birth. As hinted at the start, the birth he imagines for himself is ejaculatory: Ghostbusters is “manbro bukkake theatre”, and John fancies himself a ghost busted directly from the loins of his heavenly Father. John seeks to re-merge with his image of God, a goal implicit in John’s attempts to reunite with Dad in a more familiar sense.

But implicit in John’s quest to give up the ghost and ascend to the Father is a rejection of the implicitly feminized earth and flesh, to which the self/soul is umbilically bound. This gendering is often shown via robots: 

Jake jokingly says that Dirk is “more machine than man” – this is a jab at Dirk’s terse demeanor, but placing machines in opposition to manhood potentially feminizes the machines, compromising Dirk’s desiring to be a paragon of dudeliness. The simultaneous masculinization of reason and dehuminizing jabs like Jake’s confuse and frustrate Dirk for a variety of reasons

The ghost of Aradia enters robotic husk to be reborn, imitating the insertion of the spirit into the body. She then finds that Equius has inserted something into her body against her will, and violently removes it and destroys it. “It” was a chip that controlled her feelings, but the intimate violation has tones of assault, and Aradia’s heart is effectively aborted.

There’s more examples, but this is just an aside to push the notion that the Fall (from high to low) entails the entry of spirit into body, which via the analogous entry of sperm into womb would seem to gender hierarchy itself. Masculine/feminine is entrenched as high/low by the metaphysics.

(Here’s a nice post that notes a gendering of the hemocaste system in Zebruh’s Friendsim route)

This leads me into thinking that John’s desire to merge with the image of the Father is connected to his love of pranking people, insofar as it becomes a assertion of domination/power (which is presumed to be the masculine position). The prankster’s gambit, at its purest, is a measure of Who’s On Top.

At the end of the Chaos Dunk scene (in which John symbolically enacts Rose’s rape fantasies), John pranks Rose by dumping a bucket full of gushers on her head. Buckets are receptacles, and thus occupy the balls/womb half of the divide. Evacuating the bucket all over Rose is a repetition of earlier symbolic assault, and the moment is embellished with a prankster’s gambit to emphasize the notion that there is an element of domination to the encounter.

The bucket prank is echoed in a  later conversation between John and Rose, beginning at page 2922. John asks repeatedly whether Rose “knows everything” now, says the beta kids “were in this adventure together” but with Rose’s occult knowledge, she is now “getting away from us”. John is not anxious that Rose is separating in a neutral way – his anxiety stems from the idea that she is rising above them. “Knowing everything” is a property of mastery, and John is confused by Rose being above him. At the end of 2922, John attempts to mock Rose’s words, but she tells him he’s being mean and he apologizes.

Rose herself expresses some anxieties about her position, saying elements of her wizard shtick have made her feel “ridiculous” or “embarrassed”. Her choice of words invokes the manifestation of Eridan, who mocks Rose’s “ludicrous poppycock” – she has an ongoing worry that her phallus (masculinized symbol of power) is fake.

This is why the scene culminates in an play scenario, in which John promises to sweep in like a noble knight and banish Rose’s encroaching grimdarkness, and Rose in turn pretends to swoon. The joke is an ironic acquiescence to the (gendered) hierarchy that is implicitly being challenged by Rose’s rise to power (or rather, that the kids perceive to have challenged). Past this, the conversation goes on to the subject of the Tumor, in a way that I have difficult tying into some sort of conclusion for the gendered aspects of the conversation.

This probably bears some relation to Rose’s insistence that John is the group’s leader…? But again, I’m at a loss. Let’s wrap this up.

On your last point: Roxy creating items from nothing actually throws a small wrench into things: in another essay on Gnosticism I was reading (Schuyler Brown’s “Begotten, Not Created”), “emanation” suggested that the creation was originally part of something (God, the One, etc), and emanation was thus framed as being in opposition to creation-from-nothing.

This brings me back to the problem of not knowing which portions of Homestuck’s metaphysics are particular to a given character’s psyche, which portions are universal, and which portions are loaded with both personal and universal meaning, or personal meaning that are /rendered/ universal. The motif of Roxy throwing a dead cat out of bucket seems to carry multiple meanings at once… in the sense we’ve noted, it would relate to the terror of stillbirth and miscarriage that follows Mom and Condy around. But reading “birth” as ejaculation, the cat could also be read as a disappointed acknowledgement that she cannot create life on her own…?

[abundantchewtoys]

HS Epi: Meat p19 reaction

I... don't really know what to expect anymore.

What could the wallet contain. A Dad note. A Terezi note. Or captchalogued people?

Odds are even we won't be seeing it right away. Though I'd dread to see Dirk's omniscient narrative voice take over narration of the post-victory scenes.

Still, Dirk should know better by now than to rely on his strong points this much. They're not evened out by a reliable moral compass all the time, and he's seen the results of that before. Guess with great knowledge comes great arrogance.

"Anyway, back to the B Plot." Ah yes, the B Plot. On Earth C. Featuring A2 trolls Karkat and Kanaya.

"Right about now, Jade should be wrapping up her political presentation to Roxy and Calliope" Ah, skipping right to the end of that, are we.

"Jade’s got this disarming combo of head-in-the-clouds flightiness and the kind of legit, down-to-earth cred that can only be earned by having done something like cutting open your own grandfather and stuffing him full of polyurethane foam." Ah yes, one of these definitely led to the other.

"neoliberal austerity measures" How often can we repeat the same 3 words?

"

Roxy groans upon hearing the phrase “neoliberal austerity measures” for no less than the third time in this presentation." Roxy the audience surrogate. Since it's our 3rd time too.

"JADE: as i outlined here in graph b-2 JADE: and here in figure a-6" It's a good thing timelines can only be scratched the once. A6 Alternia would have been a dreadful sight.

"JADE: and here!!! in this very spooky drawing i dictated to callie JADE: (great drawing by the way!!!) CALLIOPE: ^u^" Hah, Calliope's drawing skills have found another use! Political Powerpoints.

"JADE: the thing is that jane is an establishment leader JADE: shes looking at doing things the way our old universes did them JADE: shes pretty convinced that shes going to be able to replicate the capitalist hierarchies that earth had but in a more “responsible” way JADE: but none of that stuff actually worked!!!!!" That's a nice summary of the things that are wrong to Jane's approach, actually. Though it doesn't provide an answer to the underlying problem yet.

"ROXY: and u think karkat can do better? JADE: i think its worth it to give him a chance JADE: hes a leader of the people AND hes experienced firsthand what happens when establishment goes too far JADE: which i imagine you can sympathize with!" This really feels like a boardroom conference, with Jane trying to get a preliminary backing out of a captain of industry.

"Her graphs are floating around the living room in disarray." Hah, she's using her space powers for this in another mundane application. Though... not in any offical setting, it seems. Roxy and Calliope's home.

"CALLIOPE: i’m... CALLIOPE: going to get Us tea and snacks. woUld yoU like some, jade?" To be fair, Calliope's probably going to follow Roxy in her eventual decision, anyway. Her childhood fascination with trolls might have been abandoned for new interests, or she might trust her friend's judgment in matters political.

"Calliope excuses herself from the conversation, and flees to the kitchen, seemingly making no attempt to disguise the fact that she is in fact fleeing." What a cutey. Calliope might in fact be trying to flee anything reeking of negativity, associating it with black romance and such.

"Jade deflates as she watches her go, sensing that her presentation wasn’t the slam dunk she was hoping for." It's so easy forgetting that the narration is also at least in part steering the story at this point. >_<

"ROXY: well i gotta say ROXY: this has been a hella convincing argument all in all ROXY: buuuuut idk if i can help u out" Maybe they would actually like to stay neutral?

"She and Calliope live in a belfry above New Prospit. One end of their living room is an oriel window that looks out over a public park. The other disappears into an arcading hallway lit at the far end by a giant stained glass window that Calliope made herself. The corbels supporting it have windy, abstract shapes carved into them." Artsy! I didn't know what to picture for their living space, but actually Calliope taking to carapacian art-deco and giving it a cheruban twist really works!

"That’s what keeps Jade Harley flitting from couch to couch, relationship to relationship. She can’t stop thinking to herself that “home” comes awfully close to rhyming with “alone.”" Home Alone, huh?

"Home is John, who doesn’t call anymore. Home is when Rose and Kanaya welcome her in from a cold night and help her set lyrics to her sick basslines. Home is here, snorting at Roxy’s irreverent method of storytelling and admiring Callie’s art. Home is Dave and Karkat." This REALLY reminds me of the Tramp, as he had a home in every street he frequented.

"ROXY: im alls ABOUT the sowing of discord among my childhood friends" She's had quite her fill of the dramas. That's a valid reason to stay out of it. She'll just have to weight it against the downsides of not influencing the outcome of the election in any positive way.

"JADE: dirk got to you first ROXY: not even ROXY: i got no problem tellin dirk where to stick it lmao ROXY: but dirks not the one running JADE: you think hes NOT the one pulling the strings behind the scenes? ROXY: sure but give janey a lil credit" On the one hand I'm glad Roxy's got such a backbone, on the other hand, off course we know Dirk's still influencing the outcome at the moment. Also, uh, he's got no issues invading the lives of his friends personally, even after telling us off on the subject first.

"ROXY: but shes yknow JADE: ruthless? :B

Roxy frowns. Jade is being pretty unfair." I get the feeling Jade is less good at filtering her words lately. And I also get the feeling Dirk is starting to sow a little conflict.

"ROXY: shes gotta be miss perfect all the time for the billboards n press meetings ROXY: always wearin those power suits trying to look like a big bad bitch JADE: you mean like....... the condesce? ROXY: wow ouch JADE: im not just imagining it though, right??? JADE: you see it too JADE: not to dredge up something horrible from your history JADE: but her whole image is just kinda...... *woof* ROXY: is that what you guys think? ROXY: u and dave and karkat?" It's something they should have brought up via intermediary channels to Jane on beforehand. Not let fester until all they could think of to "stop" her was introduce a late-to-the-party candidate.

Jade might also be doubly upset with Jane for seemingly mirroring the Condesce, as they were both brainwashed by her.

"Roxy leans forward and stares Jade down, like she’s searching for something behind Jade’s eyes." That's the same thing she did with John! Guess she's trying to find out some of her secrets.

"Jade unwittingly responds in kind, looking for meaning behind Roxy’s gaze. But she comes up empty. And to be honest, so do I." That unfathomable personality might be your spanner in the works, Dirk. I can only hope she's secretly onto him. Her Void powers manifest the 'obscurity' different from Equius.

"In the spirit of full disclosure, Roxy’s the only one left I haven’t been able to crack. Her mind remains a total enigma to me, just like it always has." It's interesting, since they share so much in childhood upbringing, progeny, demeanor even at times...

"invisible, even to increasingly omniscient parties such as myself" *coughDocScratchcough* ... What would Reload Roxy be doing right now, assuming the session's timeline didn't stop when Caliborn's soul 'left' it?

"ROXY: but shes not betty crocker ROXY: and i luv her and i dont wanna hurt her feelings" N'aww.

"ROXY: and thats p much all there is to say on the matter" Second time the phrase's been used in the epilogues!

"CALLIOPE: oh, i’d rather stay Uninvolved, thank yoU." Passive player to the brink.

"CALLIOPE: i feel like interfering in both politics and a personal argUment between my friends woUld be impolite as well as kind of... stressfUl, to be honest. JADE: yeah JADE: sorry callie i probably shouldnt have put all that on you CALLIOPE: less apologizing, more snacking!" It's nice to see they're cutting her some slack. A horrible childhood, an early death, a spiel as a ghost... Oh, sure, she's one of the good guys and as such would have some responsibilities in the end, but it's nice for a change they don't expect too much from her. Maybe a bit too little for her own good, but still.

"Calliope claps her hands together. It’s a bright noise. Her tone of voice is bright too. All these years and she still can’t believe that she has so many friends. She smiles at Jade, and Jade smiles back. The tea tastes great. The cakes are even better. Callie’s an artist in everything she does." ^u^ Aww, that warms my heart at least.

"JADE: wow callie youre such an amazing hostess!" ... Well, she's a more excellent host than Doc Scratch, for sure!

"ROXY: psst not “her,” “them”" ... I see! Well, guess we'll be getting some more insight into the androgyn bodies of cherubs and how Calliope has updated her self image over all these years? Caliborn still had the giant eyelashes, so it stands to reason there were also other, more masculine traits to Calliope's body even when she still shared it with her brother.

"JADE: oh wow!" Oh, I figured Jade already knew about Calliope's preferred pronouns, but it seems not!

"CALLIOPE: bUt i did take comfort in “being a girl” for a very long time. this is something i’ve only recently decided." ... I just remembered how Calmasis also was this androgynous figure. ... I wonder if Calliope will be thinking about a name change.

So, I don't think Roxy's haircut is a sign she's genderfluid now too, but I imagine a lot of fanart has already been created for butch!Roxy by the time I read this.

"ROXY: m-me too actually" Oh. N-never mind then. That caught me unaware! I didn't see that in Roxy. For one, despite all the pink and the ponies, she didn't seem like she felt "trapped" in a role to me. Unlike Calliope, where I can see how she might have felt obliged to embrace everything not-Caliborn.

But this does shed a whole new light on Mom's overly childish and girlish bedroom in the lab. Like she was trying to compensate for something. Uhm... It might also be one of the main reasons behind her drinking problem. Her embracing girlish, adult woman habits but never feeling like they 'fit'.

Well well. Homestuck's main characters continue to be representation incarnate.

"Wait.

   What?" PFFFFFFFFFF. I love it. Dirk's reaction is gold. Guess this completely blindsided him too and didn't shed any more lights on the inner workings of her mind than he thought. So even if he knew she was holding something back after the "yea", and maybe encouraged her to keep speaking, he didn't know what to expect.

"Roxy? Seriously?

Like I said, fucking inscrutable." Dirk has NOT just had an "I knew it!" moment.

"I never would have guessed. Not that I’ve spent much time contemplating issues related to gender. I’m pretty secure in my expression of masculinity, and..." That's a suspiciously specific acknowledgement, though, Dirky boy. :P

"You know what? Fuck this. I don’t owe anyone an explanation of any sort on this topic. I’m confident with who I am, what I am, my gender, as well as my understanding of the concept. You want my honest opinion? It’s fucking fantastic. Good for them. Both of them, I mean, but also, both of them in a singular fashion, since each one can now individually be referred to by the conventionally plural word “them.”" Pffff, of all the things. I didn't think this would have Dirk fly off the handle in such a Dave-way, while still narrating, but I'm happy to see it. In an out-of-story sense, Dirk is currently the audience surrogate, showcasing what a "true fanboy"'s reaction could be like, if they were both shocked to the core but mature enough to get over their shock without throwing around accusations and tantrums.

But yeah, at least the aloofness is gone from his voice, for just this time.

"I’m ecstatic for this personal development they’ve embraced, for the people they are, the lack of gender they identify with, and the pronouns they prefer. I’ve got no problem with it whatsoever, and frankly, it’s fucking insulting anyone would ever imagine otherwise." I can picture him speaking through gritted teeth, it's glorious! 'This is good, this is fine. I am doing great!'

"ROXY: ahah hahaha hell of a way to come out" Ooh, so she's not even out to Jane or Rose yet!

"ROXY: what even is gender" That is SUCH a Roxy thing to say. Also, almost stoner like. Picture Gamzee going like (in his quirk): 'Have you ever really THOUGHT about gender, man? I mean, really THOUGHT about it.'

"Jade looks at where her hands are folded in her lap. Bites her lip. She has her own concerns about this, her own thoughts. Reasonable thoughts, I’d say." "ROXY: i mean that was all stuff from our old universe ROXY: whyd we even bring it here right? JADE: right" I think for Jade it's not something she'd discard so easily! I mean, it all depends on whether 'gender' is something antigonal to your self image, in the end, I guess. If it isn't hindering you... that's how you stay heteronormative in some or all elements.

"Calliope takes a teacake between two of her claws and eats it delicately, hyper-aware of the horrible gnashing and snapping her powerful jaw is capable of.

CALLIOPE: my ideas aboUt gend—

SHIT. Between two of /their/ claws." HAH. Oh my god. The narration cut off Calliope. ... Pffff, though it IS a good callout, since I've been using gendered pronouns still to refer to Calliope. Whoops!

"CALLIOPE: i sUppose i only thoUght of myself as a girl because my, Um... CALLIOPE: my brother took mascUlinity qUite serioUsly." A) Still not saying his name :P B) Using his preferred pronouns.

"CALLIOPE: by which i mean, he became very enthUsiastic aboUt all the things it sUpposedly meant to be a boy. CALLIOPE: cherUb existence is dichotomoUs, bUt not in the same way hUman biology is. CALLIOPE: i sUppose oUr view of hUman cUlture indirectly inflUenced alternia’s development, which in tUrn affected yoUrs, which is something i’ve had a lot of time to think aboUt since we came here." Oh right! Lord English & Doc Scratch helped shape Alternia's development, so in a lot of bad ways there was a focus on power and masculinity, which may have trickled down into Earth's because of who created our universe, and thus it might all have been a self fulfilling prophecy, what Caliborn's gender identity is concerned! Guess we were due another one of these loops. :P

"ROXY: so much of what earth c thinks what boys and girls “SHOULD” do comes straight from the imagination of a bunch of dumb teens ROXY: which is totally FUCKED JADE: sure" Yes, and so much of what Earth C "should" be like, as a victory state reward planet, and the epilogues by extension, exists only in the imagination of a bunch of dumb humans spread over this globe. :P I reek a callout. Not undeserved, mind.

"She probably would have loved being a “they” when she was a teen." (Referring to Jade.) I'll grant you that, Dirk. But I thought you were doing paraphrasing other people's thoughts for the course of this conversation?

"i liked the idea of dirk" He'll love to hear that. :P Well, you know, Karkat had the same thing, he loved the idea of Condesce as a powerful leader, if not always the result of that leadership.

"ROXY: and also literally no one else on the entire planet was alive at the time

ROXY: but we had some babies without even bein consulted about it anyway so w/e" Context!

"JADE: personally im a big fan!

And like that, Jade’s smiling again." Nothing like Dave & Karkat to lift her mood. :P

"The storm clouds pass so quickly in her world, you almost wouldn’t have thought there was anything wrong at all. Roxy and Calliope certainly didn’t notice.

But there is something wrong. And this time, they’ll notice." Uhhh, wrong with Jade? Or something wrong with Earth C in general? Besides Dirk taking over, I mean. Oh no! ... Calliope left the kettle on! :P

"JADE: i... JADE: i.........

Jade drops her tea. The cup hits the floor and shatters." ... Is she passing out?? Just like Rose??

... Oh no. This doesn't have anything to do with John going back, retconning the timeline, and some of their selves being killed right? It shouldn't influence them, since they're from a different timeline, but with the talk about canon and relevance and truth and shit...

Is Dave going to pass out next???

Did John accidentally change the Reload timeline to be the alpha one, and is the future adjusting to the changes??? Or is it due to something to do with Lord English' powers in killing a different 'real' version of them?

"She takes in a sharp breath. She’s not feeling well suddenly. She’s dizzy, feverish, seeing things beyond her field of vision. A blinding flash of light. A black, perfect circle, burning a hole in her eyes." Wow. Just like John, she gets a vision of the Black Hole! So, maybe it's more like she gets backlash from suddenly absorbing the memories of Reload Jade.

"She doesn’t look bad at all— Jade wears unconsciousness well, having spent the better part of her life napping." Aaaand we're back in sleeping beauty terrain.

"But she can’t hear her. Jade is somewhere else right now." Uhhhhh. I thought they didn't really dream in the dreambubbles post-victory no more?? Also, those were all destroyed by LE, anyway.

Dang. That's weird.

Are the B1 kids (adults) actually going to be gathering in the Furthest Ring in 'person'? But why, and how? ... There isn't anything like a 'dreambubble self' body that persists in the Furthest Ring that John could have woken up like how you could wake people up on Derse and Prospit. ... Now I'm reminded of an old fanart I made of a green moon circling the Green Sun, with green dream selves for all humans & trolls we knew at the time (B1 and A2). :P

[oh-no-an-opinion-blog]

I really liked Lanque’s Route in Friendsim, especially the “problematic” endings

Discourse and Spoilers, don’t read if you’re just looking for rage fuel. Or do. You control your own actions, and as long as you take responsibility for them everything will be Gucci. We good? We good.

Fight me if you want, but I’m putting it out there. I am happy to have a character who is trans, but who also has other elements to their personality even if they aren’t innocent. Yeah he’s got flaws, so does everyone else. Alternia is an alien planet with a culture is clearly different from ours, and that needs to be taken into account when considering what’s “problematic”. We’re talking about a planet of kids being raised by animals or by themselves on the streets into a classist society where they are allowed to murder each other for a physical trait that they can’t control somehow permissible but as soon as someone acts like an ass and tries to get some serious action it all goes to the fan? There’s a lot more “problematic” behavior we could be worrying about but we only hyper-focus it on Lanque because he’s canonically trans. Not every trans person is a good person, and characters who are trans shouldn’t be sheltered from some more tricky personalities to handle.

Idk man, I fuckin loved how V straight-up went out and said that you had to own up to looking at the problematic material. They called out the discourse, and after writing a route like the one they did for Marvus none of us should be surprised. The idea of it being Hussie is one I personally like, but even if it’s not I think it’s great that they don't hold back just because of what some fans think. They deal with characters like they’re actual people, meaning that some will be what others think is problematic. 

I’ve seen a lot of people upset at the fact that Lanque called out Lynera, and don't get me wrong that was hella uncalled for, but have y’all considered that maybe since we haven’t known Lynera for the last 2.43 sweeps (which is what, about 5 years? As long as a middle or high school career?) we don't know the kind of shit she’s been talking? It’s a bit unfair to judge yet, really. He doesn’t take her feelings into account, but then again was she taking his when she was saying shit?

Lanque is selfish, but dare I present the fact that he’s gotta sacrifice himself to the caverns when he goes off-planet? Maybe he’s projecting a bit when he is so crude calling out Lynera, holding on to the little bit of freedom he can still take before the trials. I dunno, food for thought.

If the issue is the sexual nature of this route I would like to remind people that the MC still has the ability to make choices for themselves, shown when they refuse the drugs even after Lanque tries to coerce them into it (good job protag I love you) and aren’t being forced to do it in a fashion similar to how Ardata controls them early on in the game. That, and after being denied Lanque doesn’t force the MC to do anything. Yeah he pokes fun, but he still stops. As for dancing, it's sexual, and the MC even states that they know what he wants and it might be more than they’re willing to give, but they go with it because it “feels good”. That’s kinda why people do things like this in the first place, isn’t it? And in the bedroom scene, again, the MC doesn’t say no because you as the player consented at the start to seeing the kind of material that the mature content warning covered such as sexual situations, language, and coercion. The decisions of the MC are executed based on the presumption that you followed the rules Ardata set when you first agreed to play through this version of the route(aka being of legal age to see mature content, being aware of the specific mature content contained, and knowing yourself well enough to know whether or not you could handle possibly problematic content). If you looked at the warnings and thought “I can’t handle some of these aspects” and yet continued on anyway, that’s on you. If you did it just to fuel your rage against Lanque, same deal. You could have played it safe, and even if you didn’t whether the MC and Lanque “pail” is up to you. You either consent by keeping your mouth shut like Lanque tells you too or you don’t by calling Bronya in to take care of the situation, which you get rewarded for by getting the good end. Even the Hiveswap team knows that there’ s only so far they can go reasonably, literally labeling the option as “Call in his mom. This has gotten problematic enough.” 

Yes, opting out of it does get you some grief, but it’s a reflection of the general crowd that wanted to see a “safe” character in a world that really doesn’t have them (not to mention the nicely added piece in there about bi erasure, especially since trolls have a default bi/pan sexuality but as soon as same-sex attraction is seen that concept is thrown out the window). They gave some people what they said they wanted, but not without a clear jab to say that they’re not doing it necessarily because they want to. And don’t worry folks! Us sinners who decided to go all the way and then get tossed aside got dunked on too (but hey alien coochie amirite). So teasing for both sides! Equality! Yay!

The team honestly had the right to pull this. We couldn’t even behave when we first learned his damn pronouns. TWO LETTERS threw everyone into an uproar. Let’s not forget that this is considered THE SECOND ROUND OF DISCOURSE and there will probably be more when he reappears in Hiveswap Act 2. They were damned either way they tried to go, so they did both. It’s a spiteful move, but the Homestuck fandom is one of the few places where that can be done thanks to the unique relationship between us as players and readers and community creators, and them as canon creators and the facilitators for the whole thing. 

I’m sick of flop/problematic/discourse culture. I’m sick of overused exclamation points!!! being used!!! to try and make a point more valid!!!! and right!!!! I’m sick of wig-snatching, tea-sipping, uwu-ing, social justice phrased-as-if-you’re-above-all-of-this bullshit being perpetuated as legitimate discussion. Yeah, I sound like a dick here and I’m being petty, and that’s the point. This isn’t so much satire as it is how I close I can get to posting something related to discourse. I’m not putting out a twenty-page analysis on how “bad” Lanque really is or isn’t until my hand is forced to give my evidence over and explain how I as someone who is over 18 with reasonably neutral views sees him not being that problematic compared to a lot of other content I’ve seen with similar themes and actions. I’ve played Dramatical Murder and Boyfriend to Death, and if you want problematic I dare you go play one of those games.

TL;DR Ardata warned you, everyone complaining about how problematic her party was is playing right into the hands of the team, and the only ones to blame here for the drama are ourselves.

If you get owned, fucking own it. And boy, we sure as hell did.

[sambashua]

11 questions tag~

i was tagged by @achuu-nice @s-lay-ing and @maetaamong for the 11 questions game where you answer 11 q’s then write 11 new q’s! a good time! (y’all this is 33 questions bear w me)

nom’s q’s

how are you? :D I’M GREATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT i hope you are too:D

sad ballads or happy upbeat songs? okay so like.. both so much.. but if i rlly had to choose i’d go for ballads bc i’m rlly a soft binch at heart (but red flavor will never not get me lit)

fave anime movie? maybe ponyo? or howl’s moving castle? i also really liked the girl who lept through time! (all credited to wonhankwan movie squad)

dogs or cats? bOTH i refuse to choose (but i got dos gatos)

do you keep stuffed animals in your room? no:( i have some on a shelf at my dad’s house tho? and i have mr. troll in my apt living room!

someone you miss? @atshinee :(

describe your phone case? iT’S GOT MOOMIN EATIN SOME CARROTS OR EGGS IT’S UP FOR DEBATE

favorite lore/myths? i’ve always been a percy jackson ho but i always thought persephone and that story was cool?? also the labyrinth 

eardbuds or headphones? earbuds bc headphones are real expensive

can I steal your heart? i actually don’t have one to steal bc you already took it nom:’(

favorite thing about your ult bias? uMMMMMMM prObABLy his smile♡ (i say smth different everytime but i feel like i neglect his visuals oops)

cloud’s q’s

Do you know a ksong by heart? (bc I don’t :x I can hum a trillion tho) haaaaaaa well i mean i can’t speak korean ofc but i can p much believably sing all of seventeen’s title tracks.. and i generally sing along to every song ever even if i don’t know it??? oH I LEARNED ALL THE WORDS TO IF IT IS YOU BY JUNG SEUNG HWAN BC I LOVE IT exhibit a b and  c for why!

When it comes to friendships, are you low or high maintenance? (As in your friends gotta talk everyday with you or you’ll feel like the friendship is dying OR if you can spend days without talking to them yet you still remain close) i like to think i’m a pretty low maintenance person! i’m easy-going by nature and i don’t mind silence at all and don’t even find it awkward usually. i have friends i don’t talk to for months on end and then we get together maybe once a year and we still remain close:) i like to think i’m easy to talk to so that could be part of it?

Do you have a secret that you will take to the grave? (Ofc I’m not asking you to reveal it)  ajhfdksl tbh i don’t think so??? i’m kind of a private person.. but if someone asked me smth specific i wouldn’t not tell them ? idk tho i used to be a bit of a pathological liar so~~~

Recommend me 5 songs (not necessarily kpop songs) i’ll rec some non kpop since i’m sure you would know anything i recced ajkdhfjdk

honey - kehlani

to build a home - the cinematic orchestra (aka chanhee’s all time favorite song which makes me really emo)

broken clocks - sza

waves - young the giant

window seat - thomston, wafia

bonus! flirt right back - backbear :)

What do you prefer?: first, second or third gen kpop songs? third gen! since that’s when i joined i’m really into it at this point! also i think the variety of music is sooo much wider than it used to be? i’m not super in tune w all the older groups but i think it’s insaneeee how many groups there are rn snd they all have a lot to offer!

What’s the cheeeeeeeeeesiest thing you’ve done? (one time a former friend of mine was telling me about a problem she had and at the end of our convo I kissed her in the forehead bYE) um legit cloud i am cheesy 25/8 catch me being a soft snuggly bean popping trash puns left and right every day of the week

If you were asked to participate in a variety show, which one of the following would you pick and why? (Pick two!): problematic men, master key, hello counselor, weekly idol, one fine day, law of the jungle i think i’d go on weekly idol! i would wanna go toe to toe w doni and coni bc they’re always so harsh to lil baby idols ahhaha i wanna take them on!

Your top 10 kpop songs of 2017? binchhhh i’ll just go by my top nine according to spotify and my number one for apple music:)

When You Love Someone - Day6

Heartbreaker - NCT 127

My First and Last - NCT DREAM (also dunk shot tho byeeee)

Baby Don’t Like It - NCT 127 (tbh don’t remember listening to it this much what)

BABE - Hyuna

Like This - Pentagon

A Supplementary Story: You Never Walk Alone - BTS

Rollin’ - Brave Girls !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Eclipse - LOONA (Kim Lip)

Wake Me Up - B.A.P

bonus! Coloring Book - Oh My Girl :)

Would you rather live in a huge mansion or a compact studio house? definitely a studio house! for sooo many reasons: 1) i hate walking 2) cleaning a large house is the worst 3) if i had the option to spend that much i’d just get a smaller house and spend money on more important things!

Tell me a fun childhood story (I’ll start! One time an aunt gave me money to buy ‘papas’ (potatoes) at the grocery store so bc I’m obedient af I went and asked the counter lady how many of em could I buy with the money I had so she went ‘uhh, not many tbh’ so i ended up getting like two and when I returned to my aunt’s house she laughed her ass off and said: I meant ‘papas fritas’ (potato chips) Not those! - and uh yeah this is funnier in Spanish but it proves that I’m such an innocent angel I mean wow) gIRL I WISH I COULDA SEEN THAT SPANISH EXCHANGE I DEFINITELY LAUGHED um????????? yo idk i can’t think of anything help uhhhh okay so when my sister and i were little our house was two stories so we’d take our stuffed animals and tie plastic bags to them and make them skydive ahahha but it wasn’t too satisfying for obvious reasons so we just attached this one stretchy pink scarf to them and make them bungee jump from the railing ajfdhgfdls classic

If you were offered to start a band, would you accept? yEAH if someone offered i would assume i had the talent and ability so.. yes.. even if i didn’t and someone offered i’d still say yes bye

kiki’s q’s

Link your favourite playlist here if you can and if you can’t write out the first 10 songs on it! (Not a question but shh) here she isssss okay wait so she’s not my go to playlist tbh but she has a mix of western and kpop so.. enjoy!

Is your current ult bias your first ult bias? If not who was your first? yes :) my first ever bias was joon but i didn’t even know what an ult was for a long time and by the time i found out i knew all along wonu was my boy

Who is your ult bias? jeon wonwoo ofc

Who is more likely to hog the aux cord, you or your ult? um me.. i’m kinda a hoe w music like i always play it.. when i drive my friends i am in charge of music bc duh it’s my car but then when they drive me they usually ask if i wanna play music ahahhaha MAYEB THEY’RE JSUT SAYING I HAVE GOOD TASTE THO???? 

Who is more likely to forget an important date, you or your ult? def wonwoo.. that boy couldn’t remember his own birthday if he didn’t pay attention.. for some reason i have a steel trao mind for dates?

Who is more likely to ask the other to pick them up after work, you or your ult? i like driving so i’d say maybe wonwoo? but i feel like he might be the type to want to offer to drive you.. who am i kidding that boy is always tired

Who is more likely to write the other a hand written note expressing themselves rather than just saying it, you or your ult? i think wonwoo.. i get the vibe that we’re both a bit emotionally inept and we would both have trouble expressing ourselves but he might find comfort w writing things down he’s a romantic binch he reads too much not to be

Who is more likely to cry when a dog dies in a movie, you or your ult? me bc dat ho doesn’t like dogs smh.. his only fault (jk he a mess)

Who is more likely to almost burn the house down while cooking, you or your ult? wonu? just bc i’m not that clumsy? he could do it tho

Who is more likely to start a pillow fight, you or your ult? neither of us we’re too tired

Who is more likely to ask the other to come over to cuddle with them so that they can fall asleep better, you or your ult? meeeeee i’m a cuddly bitch and he isn’t rip.. but he would do it for me he better

my questions:D

If you could travel anywhere, but were completely by yourself, where would you go?

What inspires you?

How many pets would you have in your ideal future? Any specific names or types in mind?

What are you opinions on fedoras

how many spoons can you balance on your face at once (picture or video proof preferred (i’m trying to get someone to do it pls anyone))

What is your favorite type of tree?

If you could convince one person to like kpop who would you convert?

What are three things you are normally associated with and/or what are three things you want to be associated with?

If you were in a kpop group what position would you hold (ie. leader, main vocal, moodmaker, etc) feel free to tag your mutuals and who they would be!

If you could have any wild animal as a tame pet what would it be?? (i’m ocelot loyal all the way)

What is your opinion on mint chocolate chip ice cream? (for maj)

i’m going to tag @yongpal-i !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (are you happy sister) @strawberryboo @everyonesabiaswrecker @kiheehyunie @indiepoptime @jungnoir @hwallsgrl @lipstick-chathao @yongceo @undinefin @kihqun @definitelythis @g-te @justsomekpopstuff (tagged you back:D) and @jeonwoooo if you guys want to try it out!!

[sacred-arrow]

If It Were Me Chapter 3: Towards the Western Land

Y'all. This is purely shit. Like a pink troll just came up to you, bent over and shit glitter EVERYWHERE. Yeah. That's what happened to this chapter. Tagging my girls because they are my rocks and my muses. @inunanna @lacyjaybird @keichanz @adorableears7 @kags09 @inukag-4ever Also, @gypsin @shardetector @grapefruitwannabe @artistefish @mmhinman @mustardyellowsunshine @kagomeforever and all the others that showed any interest in this syory. I hope y'all enjoy. My cell does not allow italics or bolding on this one. 😡 so it may be slightly confusing. I'm posting this via my cell, while I wait on help to arrive and jump start my car.... 😂 I'm a moron most days. Anyway, on with the chapter. ---IIWM--- Previously on If It Were Me: Kagome shook her head. “I know a mountain that holds the castle of the Lord Inu no Tashio. The people of the castle concealed it after his death, and rumor has it, it’s now abandoned.” Inuyasha’s ears perked up as he stood. “Take me to it.” She shook her head. “It’s too dangerous.” “So. I have some weird blood flinging power and you have your sacred arrows. We’ll be fine.” Kagome sighed. “Do you really think this is wise?” “I’m the son of the Lord of the West. You’re the Guardian of the Sacred Jewel. I think we got this.” He extended a clawed hand to her and she gratefully took it. “Fine. Let’s go. It’s a three day travel. I warn you, the terrain is tough for someone who is not used to this climate.” She stepped towards the West, Inuyasha following close behind her, hands shoved in his pockets. “Will you be okay, yer shoulder and all?” Kagome cocked her head to the side and smiled with a nod. “It keeps getting better each moment. Crazy how fast that medicine is working.” “Good. Then let’s do this.” He wanted to see the castle his father inhabited, and maybe learn a few things about his family and his demonic side that his father never told him. Plus, a few more days with Kagome wouldn’t be so bad, though hell would have to freeze over before he would admit to such a thing. The priestess in mind kept a steady pace ahead of him with a smile on her face. Kagome was happy he was staying a bit longer too, but he didn’t need to know that either, thus his ego would get to big. Giggling, she peered over her shoulder to see him looking at her. When their gazes locked, they both blushed and averted their eyes. It was going to be an interesting few days. Thus, their journey has just begun.   ---IIWM--- Towards the Western Lands Two days on the road with Kagome were a little more difficult than Inuyasha had imagined. Being a male, and only having an older brother, he had forgotten that women had very specific needs. Even though his mother was very much a woman, he didn't exactly take notice of her feminine hygiene. The duo had camped out near hot springs both of the previous days because Kagome was determined to smell her best while in the company of a man. Kagome had pinched his right, upper arm flab- or Bingo Wings, as some people liked to call it- when he huffed for the fourth time that morning. His arm still hurt so Inuyasha decided it was best not to argue with her. The half-demon honestly had no idea why she was so worried. He actually thought the pure priestess smelled great, like the forest and sunshine. How does sunshine have a smell, idiot? Inuyasha shook his head. If he had said that aloud, Kagome would either have accused him of being mental or a pervert. Clearing his throat with a cough into a closed fist, he settled on not saying a word as Kagome scouted for the perfect campsite. Kagome stopped mid-stride and pointed to a large tree off to the far side of the dirt road. “That looks like a nice spot, what do you think Inuyasha?” Sighing, the half-demon stretched his arms and laced his fingers behind his head. “We’re stopping again, wench?” Kagome shot him a glare over her shoulder causing him to shrink back slightly -a habit he developed dealing with his mother’s temper- and throw his hands up in mock defense as he nodded.  “Fine. It's fine.” Inuyasha had learned that Kagome had a temper that rivaled with his mother's. He walked to a nearby tree and sat down cross legged. Inuyasha noticed his uniform was beyond dirty and his hair had collect enough twigs and leaves to construct a fire pit. Kagome made her way towards him and set down her bow and quiver. Settling beside Inuyasha, she reached out and undid his hair tie. As a reflex, Inuyasha jumped away from her. “Oi, what are you doing?” “I am removing the various items that have collected in your hair for the past two days. The sun will be setting in about an hour. So you can go wash up first and I will clean your clothes. Maybe your father’s castle will have something for you to wear.” Giving her a look that screamed, should I trust you, Inuyasha saw her blue eyes light up as she smiled which caused his accusations to dissipate. Leaning back into her touch, he cast a golden glance over his shoulder.“Hey, are ya feeling any better?” Kagome’s smile widened. “I am.” Inuyasha arched a brow over the same narrowed eye he was assessing her with. Kagome sighed. “It’s sore, but there is no pain. The herbs are working wonders and it’s healing just fine. Now, just relax.” Still uncertain, he stared at her for a moment, before he shrugged and turned back to face the west. Kagome concentrated her power to see past his glamour where the target of her desire hid from normal human eyes. The miko was so careful with his ears and it amazed Inuyasha at her tenderness. He only had to growl once when she accidently ran her fingers over the soft fur. Giggling like a school-girl, Kagome regained her posture and continued removing the debris. She took the time to take in Inuyasha’s form. He had to be the most handsome man she’d ever met and since she spent fifty of her supposedly sixty-eight years of life pinned to a tree, that was the best she could ask for. At the moment the half demon was laid back and calm, however she knew that wasn’t exactly his personality. He had a foul mouth ninety percent of the time and honestly he had no idea how to talk to women, but he sure knew how to treat one. His mother must be an angel. Her thoughts cut short when Inuyasha leaned his head back to look at her. The glamour flickered, but when it was clear again, Kagome sighed. Those golden eyes. “Done wench? The bath sounded like an okay idea.” He muttered. “Oh!” Shaking off the mesmerizing trance his eyes put her in, Kagome pointed right. “Of course. Just go to the hot spring down the hill, and I will take your clothes to the river on our left.” “You want me to get naked and walk to the hot spring from here?” Kagome laughed. “Yes, or would you rather me walk with you, watch you strip, and then take your clothes?” Inuyasha grinned. “If ya wanted to see me naked, all ya had to do was ask.” Once his brain registered the words he had spoken, he immediately regretted them. Scare her off why don’t cha? Spending way too much damn time with Ryou. She didn’t know her face could get so hot. “I—well you see—wait—what?” Trying to play cool and save face, Inuyasha laughed, “I was kidding.” He stood and walked behind the tree. Quickly stripping, he wondered if he should give up his underwear. It dawned on Inuyasha that he probably should incase there wasn’t anything else at the castle. Did men even wear underwear in this era? “Here.” He flung the clothes around the tree. Before she could utter a single word, Inuyasha was already halfway to the hot spring. Laughing, Kagome gathered his clothes and headed to the river. Once she got there, she started separating his clothes out of the bundled up wad Inuyasha had rolled them in. A small thud sounded against the rocky shore and she spotted Inuyasha’s rosary. He had been wearing it from the time they left the village, since he wasn’t one hundred percent sure about his surroundings in her era, but he had just taken it off for whatever reason, and for that she was more than grateful. He was beautiful in any form, but who could pass up on those ears and molten orbs? Not sure what to do with the rosary, Kagome simply placed it around her slender neck. The cool beads felt nice against her skin. “Dog-boy sure has nice taste.” Kagome giggled when she recalled the moment she had demanded he sit next to her by the well. The look that crossed his face was priceless, no doubt he thought she was using the term because he was in fact half dog-demon. “Sit . I can’t believe how cliché that is.” Releasing the fang she was holding, Kagome began to wash his clothes, unaware of the red tint the rosary was suddenly surrounded in. ---IK--- The water was fucking hot. Inuyasha stood there for a moment; the temperature of the isolated spring even moreso hotter than that of a hot tub. He slowly waded in, letting his balls get acquainted with the temperature, before settling down. Finally all the aching muscles in his legs and feet gave into the relaxation and he sighed. “Oh yeah.” He dunked his head back and ran his fingers through his hair. Standing, he shook his head like a mad dog before tying it back so he could rest comfortably against a rock. Inuyasha figured Kagome would come for him before too long so he leaned against the boulder and let the calming steam surround him. It wasn’t so bad until thoughts of a certain raven haired beauty came to his vision in nothing but her birthday suit. His eyes snapped opened before he shook his head. “Oh no, not her.” He grumbled. He couldn’t be attracted to her. He would be gone in a few days, hopefully, so he could not, should not, would not get attached to her. Stop picturing her naked. “Inuyasha. I have your clothes laying out to dry.” Kagome’s voice drifted out from behind a tree and he could see her hand waving to him. “Uh, thanks. Can you throw me my underwear?” “Um, but you don’t have a fundoshi.” Inuyasha ran his palm down his face. “No, but I have underwear. The blue briefs are what my era calls a fundoshi.” How could I forget about fucking fundoshi? Kagome laughed. “Oh. These? Incoming!” The boxers made a flop on the rocks beside the hot spring. “I’ll be at the camp site. I took the liberty of gathering wood for a fire.” Before he could answer she shouted out. “And hurry up. It’s my turn.” He grinned. In a teasing voice he shouted back. “You could just join me.” Kagome was silent for a moment, but soon she appeared from behind the tree. “You don’t mind?” He gaped at her before burying himself deeper into the water. Hold up. I was only kidding. He thought, only no words would come out of his mouth. Moving closer, she motioned towards his briefs. “I’ll leave mine on too. The bandages are not in the way of my cleansing.” Inuyasha gulped, but nodded anyway and slipped on his briefs as she turned away to strip behind a rock. Kagome returned wearing the bandages that tightly supported her breasts and a koshimaki that she lifted and tied between her thighs. Inuyasha thought the thin material looked like a diaper the way she had wrapped herself up, but it was a little hard not to notice how the thin white material became see through once she waded into the water across from him. She sat down and gently began washing. Not once making eye contact with the handsome half-demon in front of her. Inuyasha had to tear his gaze away- it was like ripping a bandaid off of a hairy arm-, but once she began to clean her face and neck, he noticed his rosary against her porcelain skin. “Kagome, is that my charm?” Delicate hands stopped mid rinse as her eyes snapped open and she gasped. “Oh! I’m sorry! I forgot about it. I was- um washing your clothes and it had fallen out. I didn’t have anywhere to put it so I put it on so I wouldn’t lose it. I know how important it is to you.” She hastily shot out her excuse as she reached to take it off. Inuyasha was baffled for a moment before he let out a laugh. “Calm down. I was only curious. You can wear it. It's not like I have to have it right now. I’ll let ya know when I need it.” He didn’t know what possessed him to let her keep it on for the time being, but the words flew out of his mouth as if he was destined to say them. Kagome nodded and continued cleaning herself. A blush appeared on her cheeks and she kept her eyes cast downward. She was tempting, even for his age he knew how bad he had it for the beautiful woman. Maybe it was just lust, he was just lusting after her body. She was fit with her tight belly, decent size breasts, full hips and a round butt to top it off. Now that she was wearing something that was his, something very important to him- well, it didn’t help his case of blue balls. Lust. That was it. He was a man after all, but that didn’t stop the thoughts running through his head. Think of Sesshomaru naked. That worked, yeah- he was good. Kagome smiled. “Inuyasha?” He snapped his attention back to her. “Yeah?” She was making her way over to him and his breathing hitched. “Would you mind washing my back? I know we changed the dressing this morning, but I can still feel the hardened paste from the herbs Kaede sent with us.” He nodded and wet his hands. Careful of his claws, he slowly massaged the green paste from below the bandages on her arm and back. It was a little hard to get off, but he finally chipped the last of it away. She sunk below the surface as he moved his hands tenderly across her back. Kagome wasn’t sure how relationships acted in his time, but she thought he must be with someone at his age. “Are you married, Inuyasha?” That question stumped him and he retracted his hands quickly. “Say what now?” She turned to see a very confused look on his face. “Married. Do the wedding customs differ in your time? Many of the young adult villagers are married. Eighteen is considered an adult. We have villagers as young as eleven marry.” Inuyasha laughed. “No. They are very different. In my time, many people are still not married and some are a lot older than eighteen.” Her face twisted. “Seriously?” He nodded. “So you are not?” “No and I am not seeing anyone either.” That was a lie. He wasn’t sure what possessed him to say that. He had been seeing Haruka on and off for the past six months, but he honestly didn't consider it a steady relationship. “Oh.” Was all she seemed to have left to say. “Demons don’t marry in the way humans do. Half demons don’t either. Demons mate for life. My father mated my human mother and in doing so he was able to share his life span with her. Demons can live for centuries so now she can live as long as my father does. I’m half-demon so if I were to marry a human, I would share my life span with her, except we wouldn’t live as long as full blooded demons do. When two full blooded demons mate, nothing changes except their bond. Neither would have to share their life span to keep their mate alive. My half-brother mated a full blooded, wind demon-” “Brother?” “Sesshomaru-” “Sesshomaru is your brother?” Kagome seemed almost appauld. “Half-brother and I forgot he lived this era too. Have you ever met him?” “Only once, cold hearted bastard.” Kagome crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “He killed without mercy and left with no remorse.” Inuyasha halted all movement. “I didn’t do anything so put those veins back in yo7r forehead.” When she presented him with a small smile, he reached over to poke her in the cheek. “You can do better than that. Come on.” Kagome giggled and Inuyasha grinned as he continued to remove the remaining dried paste. “He ain't that way anymore. I mean he’s still a bastard, but he doesn’t kill now. Like I mentioned before he’s mated to a wind demoness named Kagura.” “That’s someone I’ve never met.” She placed her finger to her chin, as she thought to recall the name. “Nope, no wind demoness’ in my lifetime, but I have been passed out for fifty years.” Kagome laughed at her own joke. Inuyasha rolled his eyes with a snort as he rinsed off her back. “Done.” Kagome turned to him and smiled. “Thank you.” The half demon locked eyes with the priestess. She was missing fifty years of her life, but in his eyes it was like a blessing. He was glad he was able to meet her now and while she was still young. Does that make me a bad person for being happy she was pinned to the tree for fifty years so I could meet her by chance? Inuyasha shook his head when her voice interrupted his thoughts. “Let’s get back to camp. I am starving.” Nodding, they stood and walked back to camp after they gathered their clothes. Once they got settled around the fire, he noticed a dead rabbit lying by the rigged skewers she had set up next to the fire. “You killed it?” Kagome nodded once as she smiled wide. She looked so proud of herself. He watched her walk over to the fallen animal and pick it up. Pulling a knife from her quiver, she looked at him and crouched down before turning her back. “Oi, woman, what cha doin’?” Kagome glanced over her shoulder. “I have to skin it and gut it so I can cook it.” He walked over to her and looked at the animal. The priestess brought the knife down to skin it. “How do you cook food in your time?” “A stove mostly.” Her confused expression caused him to elaborate. “It’s a device used for cooking. You can cook on the top of it or inside of it. Really, it’s not as complicated as I make it sound.” Either she didn’t care, or she was too confused to care, and she turned away and finished her task. Soon she had the rabbit skewed and roasting over the heat of the fire. “Damn. It actually smells good I don't think I’ve ever had rabbit like this before.” “I'm glad you approve so far. Wait until you taste it. I use to cook quite often. Rabbit stew was my specialty. However, I had the tendency to cook enough for the whole village.” She rotated the rabbit. “I’m not used to cooking small proportions. So the village started to contribute once a week for me to cook the stew. Other nights we would eat rice balls and fish.” “That river that runs in front of the village must be a nice accommodation for you.” He tried to continue the small talk. “It is.” She pulled the rabbit up and took a small taste. “Perfect. Here taste.” Kagome pulled a small piece off the side and extended the offer to him. Inuyasha didn't  move at first, but then Kagome huffed and moved closer until she was directly beside him. A faint blush crossed their features as she offered him the bite once more, this time he accepted it as he opened wide. Kagome placed the piece in his mouth. When his tongue accidentally touched her thumb and pointer finger, Kagome jumped at the sensation. Inuyasha tried not to let her see him grin. The two ate in utter silence. So much for the small talk. Inuyasha thought. He finished his portion of the meal and stood to grab his clothes hanging from a nearby branch. The damp underwear was a little uncomfortable in his uniform, but he would have to make do. He did not want to know what a fundoshi was that men wore in this time. Soon, Kagome yawned and settled back against the trunk of a large tree. Inuyasha had decided in order to watch over the miko better, he would perch himself in the same tree so he could see farther distances and hear better from each direction. Kagome set her weapons in her lap and wrapped her arms around them loosely. “Goodnight, Inuyasha.” The half-demon grunted in response. Sleep was looming over him and he gave in to the temptations before he even realized Kagome had fallen asleep minutes before. His last thoughts were what a catch the pure priestess actually was. ---IK--- Kikyou was dreading looking for Kagome. She honestly did not want to kill her cousin, but now that she was awake, Naraku would do anything to get rid of her and whatever demon had come to grab her attention. She wasn’t even sure if Kagome was still alive, if the aura of the demon she had sensed was actually as powerful as she thought. In all honesty, Kagome could be dead already. Which would save me the trouble. Kikyou wasn’t sure what possessed her to hate her cousin so much. The pure priestess was a gentle soul, so full of life and love. Maybe Kikyou was jealous, as Kaede had always put it. “Ye really crossed the line Kikyou. Going after Onigumo the way you did.” The young girl had told her sister after Kagome had caught them kissing one afternoon. Of course Onigumo had denied the act, but he knew Kagome was no fool. “Ye are just jealous that Kagome finally found love and it had nothing to do with the sacred jewel.” Oh but it did, dear sister. The jewel was Onigumo’s target all along. When Kagome had found him that fateful day, he had no idea who she actually was, but after a few weeks with her, realization struck him. Kagome was the guardian of the Shikon no Tama and he wanted it, no he desired it. The whole falling in love and spending the rest of his life with Kagome was a lie. He never wanted the guardian, never wanted a life with her, he only wanted the jewel she protected. Or so he had told Kikyou. When Onigumo and Kikyou met, all he could do was fawn over her. Onigumo used Kagome, used her for his own selfish reasons and love had nothing to do with it. He had promised Kagome that he would love her forever, but only when she became a free woman. However, he swore to Kikyou that each day he was with her he loved her more than he could express. She believed him and that was her downfall. They advised a plan to get rid of Kagome so Kikyou could have everything she wanted; Onigumo, and the true love of a man. She didn’t need to possess the jewel anymore, but he did. Onigumo wanted to possess the power it held so he could reign supreme in all the lands. The only thing in their way was Kagome. He told Kikyou to kill her, to get the pink marble and they could finally be free and live together like man and wife. The older priestess had agreed to the whole thing and went to her cousin begging for forgiveness for the actions she had displayed with Onigumo. Kikyou’s apology was nothing but a ploy to get close to Kagome, but being the woman Kagome was, her heart far bigger than most, she forgave the older priestess. Kikyou took her chance to take the sacred pearl, but failed in the end. When Kikyou escaped empty handed, a thought struck her like a lightning bolt; she could give Onigumo the powers he wanted without the jewel. The priestess dabbled in black magic, mixing herbs and other various items until a large cloud of purple smoke rose from her mixing bowl. Kikyou poured the contents into a small tin, and went off to find Onigumo. He was resting under a tree when she approached him. Standing he reached a hand out to her. “Where is the jewel?” “I was unable to get it.” He had a scowl on his face. “You told me you would get the jewel, Kikyou. Do you not love me? Am I not worth this small task?” She nodded eagerly. “Of course, which is why I brought this.” She shifted her haori and brought forth the covered tin. “Drink this and I can give you the power of 1000 demons.” Onigumo snatched the silver tin up and downed the contents. Kikyou pulled a small blade from her haori and swiftly plunged it deep into his chest, directly into his heart. He let out a vigorous scream as she had begun to chant, a white ring surrounded them. Onigumo was on his knees, the deep, red blood dripping from his wound and her hands. The light disappeared and a swarm of demons came rushing forth from the sky. Kikyou fell back out of the way as Onigumo absorbed them into his body. “Onigumo, your body is restored.” Kikyou announced. She stood and walked to him. Placing her hand in the center of his back, she ran her fingers over a large spider-shaped scar. He stood there, adjusting to his new flesh. His eyes blood red, his hair grew far too long and the color of midnight, and his voice became ever so empty. “You know what I need?” The voice was deeper, colder, evil. "Yes, Onigumo.” “Call me Naraku.” He laughed and pulled her to him. Quickly she fell into his arms as he kissed her passionately. Naraku had pulled her to him, turning to press her against the tree. He gently pulled her hakamas down running his hands up her now bare thighs. Bracing Kikyou against the tree trunk, he brought her leg up to wrap around his narrowed waist. Once situated, he entered her, quickly thrusting into Kikyou’s warm body as she used his shoulders to steady her balance. Soon he had both her legs around him, pounding vigorously inside of her lithe body. Both gave a cry of pleasure as Naraku dropped her slowly to her feet and pulled free. It ended as quickly as it happened. That was also the night he had taken Kaede’s eye. The once young child had tried to protect Kagome from Naraku who had shaped himself into Kikyou’s form. Kaede knew something was wrong with the person before them and she attempted to shoot an arrow towards him. Naraku laughed at her attempt and shot forth a cluster of tentacles from his arm which Kaede desperately tried to dodge. Kaede cried out as they impaled her, tearing a gash into her shoulder and eye. Kikyou had been oblivious to his plan and her young sister had paid the price. “And all of it was for the stupid Shikon no Tama.” She muttered. Shaking her head the dead priestess kept walking to Kaede’s village. Kikyou needed to pay her sister a visit, and if Kagome was there, so be it. ---IK--- “Inuyasha? You awake?” Kagome’s voice came out a little louder than she meant for it to. Inuyasha woke with a start, falling from the tree branch he was resting on. “What the hell, wench?!” Kagome suppressed a laugh as he stood rubbing his sore backside. “It’s time to get going.” She nodded towards the mountains in the distance. “We should be there before dark.” Inuyasha grinned. “We can get there faster if you climb on.” He knelt down and waited for her to move. “Are you sure?” She cocked her head and placed her bow and quiver on her back. “Yes, now get on, we ain’t got all day.” She could tell he was getting a bit irritated, so she climbed on, minding his long hair and held on tight. “Alright. Hold on!” With that, he pushed off the ground with a powerful thrust causing the beautiful woman on his back to gasp. Oh I’m going to enjoy this. He gripped her thighs firmer as she held on to his shoulders a little tighter. Kagome squealed with delight as Inuyasha bounced off towards the West. She opened her cerulean blue eyes only to narrow them as the wind whipped her in the face. However, she was still able to experience the beauty around her. It was sight Kagome had never seen. From the height in which he was jumping to, the miko was able to get a whole new outlook on her homeland. The leaves were multiple shades of green and moved fluently with the gentle wind. The sunlight ricocheted off the water producing a sparkling diamond like effect. She was in awe. Kagome's left hand tightened on his left shoulder as her right arm extended up in the air as if giving the sky a high five. Taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, Kagome gave off an excited whoo-hoo as she threw her head back. Inuyasha almost missed his next landing, but as he glanced over his shoulder and witnessed the pure joy etched across her face, he smiled. The sun was hitting her just right, making her glow like one of her sacred arrows. When Kagome finally opened her eyes to look directly into his golden orbs- a mega-watt smile plastered across her face- he couldn't help think--- Kagome was the greatest, fucking woman he had ever met. He just wasn't sure what exactly how he was supposed to assess the feeling he was starting to get the past few days. A matching blush spread over the bridge of their noses and they both turned away. However, neither one released the grip they had beneath their fingers as if they truly didn't want to. The spark that had ignited between them was starting to grow and no one would be able to extinguish it. Ever. ---TBC---

[kootenaygoon]

So,

It’s easier to trust someone when they’re naked. 

I’ve been a nudist since I was a small child, and I never feel more comfortable than when I’m fully immersed in water, like a hippo, wearing nothing but sunglasses. When I heard that Nelson had a clothing optional beach called Red Sands, I packed up Paisley and the dogs and set out for an expedition. It was easier to find than I anticipated, and we bumbled upon it while trying to make sense of the Google directions. She scrolled through the old Star stories about the various city council hearings that had been held about Red Sands, and read to me out loud about how the community had opposed a condo project to maintain the integrity and privacy of the beach. (“They love to protest about everything here, eh?”) After parking just outside city limits we hiked down the train tracks through the forest, Muppet and Buster straining excitedly at the leashes, and then down a slope to a small crescent of sand with a vaguely pink hue.

There were only a few other people there, mostly older men, so we made a bit of a spectacle as we tried to wrangle our dogs and settle down for a picnic. Paisley took off her top for a bit, but eventually put it back on because she felt self-conscious. Then there was me, blissfully nude. I carried the dogs out to the edge of the water and threw them in, encouraging them to frantically doggy-paddle back. We quickly abandoned this game when it became apparent that Buster was alarmingly cold, shivering feverishly. Paisley cuddled him in her lap, chastising me for being too rough with them.

“Look how small he is,” she said. “He’s like a little potato.”

For a while it was quiet, and we enjoyed the tranquil scenery while Muppet dug her snout playfully into the sand. A little while later Scarlet Mary Rose, the burlesque performer I’d been bugging Paisley about, came out of the woods with a basket on her arm. She danced over to give me a hug, then excitedly introduced herself.

“I was actually telling Paisley about Boob camp,” I said. “I thought it would be a cool idea for her to join.”

“Oh, you should!”

“I don’t really have any dance experience,” Paisley said, shyly. “I’m not sure it’s my thing.”

“You know what? Why don’t you come to the first couple of classes for free, just try it,” Scarlet said. “If we haven’t hooked you by the third class, then you’re free to go. What do you think? You in?”

Paisley giggled nervously. “Okay.”

“Oh girl, you have no idea the adventure we’ve got in store for you.”

Eventually Scarlet found a spot across the beach. We worked our way through a six-pack of ciders, taking turns dunking in the lake as more and more people spilled on to the beach from the trees. Some were just hikers who would sit in their shorts for a few minutes, panting, then continue on their way. Others were clearly there to party, and sometimes came packing little stereos or their own bongo drums. Two dudes instantly stood out, Dru and Cy, and as we lay there on the beach I invented backstories about them for Paisley, whispering them as she giggled. 

They looked like one of those off-kilter movie pairs, like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito, or Jay and Silent Bob. Dru was a scrawny, bespectacled vagrant known to loudly perform 90s ballads and Cy was a nearly silent giant of a dude, well over six feet tall, with a long dreaded troll beard. They were the sort of characters who would seem over the top in fiction, but here they were right in front of us. Real people.

“Bro, thank you so much for doing this. It’s like a big help, man,” Dru said, as we drove him back into town with Cy at the end of the day. “I mean it’s kind of a long walk at night, you know? It gets a little sketchy sometimes.”

“What’re you guys getting up to tonight?”

“Oh, we’re on a kind of a limited budget, you know? But we’ll get some more beers, get up to our regular shenanigans.”

“So how long have you been a musician?”

He turned in his seat, delighted by my interest. “I’d say I’ve been taking it pretty seriously for seven or eight years now. And I have material for at least, like, three albums. Maybe more.”

Cy grunted, nodded knowingly at me in the rearview.

“Well I’m the reporter at the newspaper,” I told him. “And I’m the arts guy, so you should totally let me know if you’re ever doing a show or anything like that.”

“Oh dude, really? Oh, dude, that would be so amazing.”

“I’m always looking for new stories.”

Besides Dru and Cy, the most important person on the beach was the King of Red Sands. He was of indeterminate age, though I put him somewhere around 50. He wore nothing but large wrap-around sunglasses and a black baseball cap, its brim shading his clean-shaven face from view. He had clearly been a thin man at some point, but was now rocking a pregnant-looking paunch. That afternoon he clambered off his speedboat, which he had parked onshore, and shouted commands at his passengers as they tried to off-load the booze coolers and camping chairs. He gesticulated with a beer can clutched in his fist. I would later learn that various features of the beach — like a sculpted rock seat and a tiled art-piece — were thanks to him, and that he’d also completed some controversial and perhaps illegal clearing of small trees to make for better sunbathing spots. Though people called him the King of Red Sands, I don’t think he considered himself royalty. He just loved his surroundings fiercely, and over the decades had developed a sense of ownership over that little inlet that was deep-rooted in him. He would eventually tell me that he planned to be cremated, then he wanted his ashes spread at Red Sands. I told him that seemed like a pretty legit plan to me.

“What about you?” he asked. “You think you’ll stick around the Koots?”

Standing naked with him, shin-deep in the lake, there wasn’t any reason to pretend to be anyone other than myself. “I really struggle with feeling like I belong anywhere. I want to stick around long enough that I feel like this, here, is my home. I haven’t had that for a long time.”

He smiled, swigged his beer. “You’ve got a nice little family there.”

“Yeah, that’s my main thing. Making that work.”

“Don’t take that shit for granted.”

“Believe me, I don’t. Every day I remind myself how lucky I am.”

He sneered. “No, that’s too far. It’s not about luck. It’s about putting in the work, it’s about really letting yourself trust someone else, it’s about commitment. I’ve been married for 30 years now and I work at it, all the time.”

“Thirty years. Wow.”

“Best decision I ever made was shacking up with her. Amazing what a good woman can do for your mental health.”

I looked back at Paisley on our blanket, against a backdrop of trees. We’d been together for three years, but it still seemed hard to believe she was mine. Beside her I felt like a brute. She was highly sensitive, with quick access to a wellspring of deeply felt emotions, and could be moved to tears by a sad meme on Facebook. I called her my duck. She knew I loved her, loved her with the desperate conviction of someone convinced they’ve found their lifelong soul mate, but it was the rest of being in a relationship that just didn’t seem to be in my skill set. I was constantly saying the wrong thing, hurting her feelings or trampling her conversationally. We’d nearly broken up in Halifax then we’d nearly broken up in Victoria, now this felt like our last chance. If we couldn’t make it work here, we wouldn’t be able to make it anywhere. I waved at her, and she gestured that she was ready to go.

“Hey man,” the King of Red Sands said, “You want a beer?”

***

Thursday afternoon was the end of my week, and by August I’d established a pretty reliable routine of heading straight to Red Sands with the dogs the moment we put the paper to bed. Paisley usually declined to join, busy with her desserts or just couch-locked watching Workaholics. I didn’t have much of a social life, and didn’t feel like I needed one, but it was there I found myself routinely chatting with strangers and making new friends. Most of the time I kept Muppet and Buster leashed, walking them back and forth along the shore, but when there weren’t any other dogs around I would let them chase each other in circles and explore among the rocks. One evening we stayed until the sun began to set, huddled together on a towel. I was reading The Ever After of Aswhin Rao and drinking my last cider when a small posse of party kids came screaming down through the trees. Dru and Cy were in tow.

One pony-tailed dude with vivid black tattoos on his bare torso made a noisy spectacle of jumping out of his saggy jeans and running into the water, throwing himself down like a cresting whale. His friends kept yelling “Snapper! Snapper!” The rest of them began making camp at the opposite end of the beach. One of the women was in a uniform, like she’d just gotten off work, but the rest looked like jobless skids. Buster was unconscious against my thigh, but Muppet was curious about these newcomers and decided to amble in their direction. I watched, concerned, because Muppet routinely ended up in situations she couldn’t handle. She wasn’t good with other dogs, and half the time she wasn’t good with people either. I loved her desperately, but had no illusions about the fact that she was a needy, neurotic mess. As the kids started to welcome her, smiling, I looked back down at my book.

“No, Brutus, no!”

I looked up, and saw Brutus before Muppet did. A healthy-looking German Shepherd with no shortage of energy, he’d been bounding through the forest exploring while his owners marched ahead, but upon spotting Muppet’s tiny white figure through the trees he came sprinting down the beach with kamikaze abandon. Shit. Muppet tensed, spotting the danger, then came yipping in my direction with great haste as I struggled to my feet. Some of the kids were jumping up now, yelling at Brutus, as he cut off Muppet’s path diagonally and sent her tumbling. He continued past her then turned, ready for another go. Before that could happen I had Muppet up in my arms, tight to my chest, with Buster tucked beside her like a football. Somewhere behind me I’d dropped my cider, and now I looked ridiculous, naked and flustered with my trembling canine progeny scratching at my bare flesh.

“Dude, that’s my bad,” the pony-tailed guy said, dripping and clutching a leash. “Bad boy, you come here. Fucking come here.”

“It’s all good,” I said. “It happens.”

“Real killers you’ve got there.”

“That’s the joke people make, pretty much every day.”

“Fuck, and here I thought I was being original. Hey, you’re the reporter, right? You work for the newspaper?”

“Will Johnson,” I said.

“Snapper.”

“You’re one of those guys who just has the one name, like Madonna?”

“I’ve got other names but Snapper’s the only one that matters.”

By this point Dru had pulled out a guitar, and was screaming his way through a Nirvana song. Cy was taking a pull from a freshly cracked beer, and the two women were now disrobed and venturing into the shallows holding hands. Snapper promised to keep Brutus leashed, apologized again, then headed back to his spot while I did the same. Muppet was whining and upset, so I knew I had to get out of there soon. I started throwing things into my bag while keeping the dogs leashed to my ankle, and decided to smoke one last joint before heading back down the train tracks. The sky was orange now, and dark shadows were forming. Paisley was probably starting to wonder where I was. A few puffs in, one of the women with Snapper stood up and walked over. Maybe 25, with messily half-dreaded brown hair and matching nipple barbells, she was tattooed, brazenly nude and completely unashamed. She introduced herself as Blayne, and asked if Muppet was okay.

“Oh, I think she’s calmed down now. She’s got her Dad.”

“You don’t remember me, do you?” she said. “I can tell.”

I gaped for a moment. “I’m sorry…”

“In Fairview, like two months ago. You took a picture of me walking my dog.”

“In Fairview?”

“Yeah, it was in the paper. I was walking like this, kind of over by Selkirk College?” She struck a pose, mid-stride, with jazz hands. It made for an epic silhouette, and I shifted Muppet closer to my lap just in case my body betrayed me.

“Oh, shit, yeah. I remember that. Right,” I said. “Hi.”

“You told me you just moved here.”

“Yeah, with my partner Paisley,” I said, mentally congratulating myself for mentioning her. “We were in Victoria before this.”

“Oh, I love the island.”

“Yeah, the only thing about the Kootenays is I find it hard being away from the ocean, you know? But I really like the culture. I’m starting to meet people. It’s amazing how many artists and musicians are kicking around.”

“I was born n’ raised here, so I’m a little over it. You’ll get to know all the locals pretty quick and then things get old fast. Everybody knows everybody, everybody fights everybody, everybody fucks everybody. That’s Nelson,” she said. “Maybe it will be different for you guys, though.”

“Why do they call him Snapper?” I asked, looking over to where he was patting Brutus on the sand. The dude looked the part of a small-town drug dealer, like a real criminal, but I didn’t want to be a dick about it. He was scrawny, feral-looking.

“Oh, in high school he snapped some dude’s arm for kissing a girl he liked,” she said. “Or at least that’s the story.”

“Is it true?”

“How true is any story?”

The Kootenay Goon

[englishchinesetranslations]

When your maid keeps breaking your rice bowls, but she’s so beautiful you don’t want to sack her, what should you do? The 18th-century Qing scholar and politician Ji Yun solved this dilemma in Notes of the Thatched Abode of Close Observations: in his parable, the employer simply buys sturdier bowls made of iron, so his hot-but-clumsy serving-girl couldn’t break them.

After the Communists came to power in China in 1949, all workers were made similarly unsackable: private enterprise was abolished and workers were guaranteed employment and subsistence by the state. Under Mao, society was organised into danwei, administrative work units — and sometimes physically gated compounds — tasked with supplying accommodation, food, education and rudimentary healthcare in exchange for close political surveillance.

This material security was known as the “iron rice bowl”, after Ji Yun’s story: a social contract in which each worker could be sure of a position. But when Deng Xiaoping began the process of transforming China from a planned economy to a “socialist market economy” in 1978, that iron rice bowl was melted down for scrap in the country’s newly roaring manufacturing economy.

Since then, 850 million Chinese people have been lifted out of poverty. In the last 20 years, its annual GDP growth has remained above 6% — compared to 1.4% in the EU — and in some years has been as high as 14%. Today, China is less “iron rice bowl” than, as President Xi Jinping famously phrased it, “capitalism with Chinese characteristics”.

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But the price of becoming competitive has been, well, competition. Beijing implemented policy changes in the late 1980s to foster competition between schools and students; entrance exams have never been so difficult. Meanwhile, a good university place is key to “making it”, while top performers in the gaokao exam — their equivalent to A Levels —become local media celebrities.

Nor does the race end after young people reach adulthood. Much as in the West, young Chinese adults face rounds of unpaid internships and, in Beijing, rents even less affordable than those in London. Job opportunities have become scarcer and more dependent on personal connections, while the cost of living has outstripped earnings growth.

The winners in this (increasingly stratified and hereditary) race become multi-millionaire social media celebrities. The losers, well, lose. Indeed, some have embraced a self-conscious policy of averageness dubbed “Buddhist Youth” — someone who seeks to go with the flow, for example by eating the same food every day, or allowing their partner to make all the decisions. Some take this even further. “Sang culture” (“sang” means dejected or dispirited) is gaining popularity among Chinese millennials, with “Sang Tea” — a joke on the popular brand “Lucky Tea” — now selling beverages called “My Ex-Girlfriend Is Marrying Someone With Rich Parents Lemon Juice”.

It’s a bleak worldview that bears comparison with the rise of the Western “failson”. This is a style of millennial miserabilism that describes a young person who has opted out from society, not with countercultural optimism like the hippies of the Sixties, but bleak, internet-addicted apathy. Sardonically echoing President Xi’s exhortation to bring “positive energy” to all aspects of life, Sang Tea’s slogan “a cup of negative energy a day” resonates with those “failsons with Chinese characteristics” who have found that positive energy doesn’t always deliver positive results.

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China’s modernisation has also echoed the West’s “millennial burnout” in producing dropouts — albeit with Chinese characteristics. Some are fleeing to lower-pressure regional cities with hipster cultures, or checking out altogether in favour of life as a member of a mountainside commune. And along with the failsons and dropouts have come — as Qi Chen noted in these pages — “feminists with Chinese characteristics”.

So whether they inhabit Chinese state capitalism or the Western “free market” variety, it appears that millennials have some common traits. The escalating sense of competition, pervasive internet culture, consumer excess and dwindling opportunities that characterise millennial life in both worlds seem to produce relatively apolitical individuals trapped between shopping and pessimism, and ambivalent about relations between the sexes and commitments of family life.

Yet we’re used to thinking about ideology as the force that drives politics; people come up with ideas, they spread, they get implemented — that’s how the world changes. But watching China’s warp-speed economic development produce sociocultural changes that are, in many ways, similar to those which have transformed the West makes me wonder: is politics just how we rationalise things that are happening anyway?

Consider, for example, the seemingly grassroots Western social revolution of the Sixties, which sought to challenge traditional norms and obligations, as well as the duty to respect our elders. Since then, we’ve seen a steady shrinking in the size of households and rapid growth in single-person households. (In 2016, EU data showed that two-thirds of households were composed of only one or two people. Households of five or six people accounted for a mere 6.5% of Europeans.)

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No such organic challenge to traditional structures and duties occurred in China. Instead, it was imposed from the top down by Beijing, in the name of economic development. Social scientists were already reporting in 1984 on the concerted effort by the Chinese government to disrupt traditional family bonds in the interests of mass urbanisation and modernisation. It worked: in the last 20 years, the proportion of its population living in urban areas has gone from 20% to 50%. Meanwhile, between 1982 and 2010, multigenerational households have plummeted and single-couple and single-person households have seen rapid growth.

Similarly, some in the West blame changes such as declining interest in marriage and falling birth rates on feminism. But in China, feminism looks more like the byproduct of state-imposed changes in social structure that have redirected resources towards girls and lowered incentives to embrace traditional roles.

So do ideologies such as feminism cause economic shifts, or vice versa? It’s difficult to say. But a look at UK GDP against divorce rates over time suggests that periods of economic growth tend to coincide with spikes in the divorce rate. This is more difficult to track in China, as divorce was relatively difficult to obtain until 2003; but divorce rates have increased steadily since then, and nearly doubled between 2009 and 2019.

In this, China reflects a global shift that has seen marriage rates fall worldwide, while the birth rate is crashing in nearly every country around the globe. Whether social changes emerge organically or through the state, and whether growth causes or is caused by social changes, economic development seems difficult to separate from the attenuation of social and cultural structures.

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None of this is to imply a Eurocentric idea of “development” which assumes China must necessarily follow the same trajectory as the West. But watching similar trends play out in two cultures as ideologically distinct as Britain and China suggests that societies in both East and West do share some social characteristics, in as much as they share material conditions and cultural pressures. (If this is true, it implies the popular pastime of dunking on millennials for their attitude rather misses the bigger picture, as does dunking on the liquefying impact of social liberalism.)

The CCP certainly seems more willing than governments in the West to impose top-down measures designed to mitigate millennial disaffection and the weakening of social norms, for example in its recent announcement of measures to combat the “feminisation” of male youths. But it remains to be seen whether these will have the desired impact.

Beijing, after all, devotes considerable effort to imbuing Chinese youth with patriotic fervour and the will to strive and succeed. But the fact that “sang” culture exists at all suggests some forces can act even more powerfully on China’s youth than the massed pressure of its propaganda regime.

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In any case, it seems likely that as long as China embraces a market economy, it will face the question of how best to mitigate the impact that a market economy has on social structures. So far, the liquefying effect of the “capitalism” bit of Xi’s “capitalism with Chinese characteristics” seems to be mostly held in abeyance by the social policies that make up the “Chinese characteristics” part.

For though many of Xi’s measures seem monstrous from a Western standpoint, from a Chinese perspective they may appear reasonable trade-offs: certainly, while growth may be driving a new progressivism and hammering the country’s birth rate, support for the regime remains broadly high. So for now, the Faustian bargain of a growth-oriented economy still holds, and President Xi retains the Mandate of Heaven regardless of a few disaffected tea-drinkers and commune-dwellers.

But should mass material enrichment slow in earnest or even — as in the West — begin trickling back upwards, the regime may need to find other means of fostering solidarity among Chinese youth. The rest of the world should beware that moment: because in the absence of peaceful growth, the quickest route to national solidarity is warfare.