#I’m actually terrified of falling into ice water and dying at sea so this is info I needed

[umikawa]

this was written at 3/4 am...so sorry if it’s bad..

Semi Eita x Gn reader. Best friends to lovers except I cant write best friends to lovers properly. 1.4K words

Warnings: fifth-grade humor of laughing at poop. Cursing, I think. The tiniest smudge of angst. The ocean?

“It’s cold.” His face was scrunched up, nose red from the harsh wind.

You don’t look at him, staring down at the flower in your hands. “It’s the ocean, what did you expect?”

“Hot weather with hot babes!” He shouted, shoving his hands in his pockets. “No offense.”

“Why would I be offended, you’re not looking so hot right now.”

He smirks, tilting his head at you. “You think I’m hot?”

“Yes.”

He blinks at your blunt answer. Even though he had expected it, it caught him off guard. Mouth agape and the reddening of his cheeks not coming from the cold winds.

He zips his jacket up to his chin, putting the hood over his head. “Whatever, let’s just go somewhere else.”

You smile at his back, following after him. “Okay.”

The ocean trip became a regular thing, complaints spewed from his mouth multiple times yet, he never bothered to change the date you two would go. Always opting for that January day, never before, and never after.

“Eita, I’ve been meaning to ask something.”

His fingers stop strumming his guitar, the slight echo of the strings filling his ears as you looked at him. “What’s up?”

“Why this day?” He perks a brow at you, confusion etched over his face. “Sorry, I mean- we take this trip every year on the same day and I’ve always wondered why.”

He blinks, rubbing his cheek. “I actually don’t know. I just figured it’d be routine to do it, almost like a holiday.”

“Anniversary?”

He looks at you, your head tilted and he can feel a smile making its way to your face. “Yeah, an anniversary.”

A seagull passes above you, waves crashing against the shore. A splat resonates through the empty beach, stifled laughter coming from him before he bursts into a fit.

It was childish sure, laughing uncontrollably at the sound of droppings splattering against the pavement. But, the way his eyes are screwed tightly, how his arm clutches his stomach, and tears prod at his eyes. It’s all perfect.

He finds himself coughing a second later, his laughter dying down as he struggles to catch his breath, fanning at his eyes to dry the tears that rolled down his cheeks.

“Eita are you okay?” You ask him, rubbing his back.

He nods, reaching behind you for a water bottle, chugging down every last drop, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down with every sip. “Yeah, sorry I got too ahead of myself.”

“It was a bit childish.”

“Well, I’m sorry for having the humor of a fifth-grader.”

“I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”

He blushed, yet another reoccurring thing that comes along with the trip, he always ends up blushing at something you’ve said.

“Shut up.”

And every time, he brushes it off as nothing despite the rapid beating in his chest.

-

“When are you gonna tell them.”

He jolts at the voice, looking to his left to see Tendou a little too close for comfort, staring at him like a fish out of water.

“What are you talking about?” He asks.

The red-head shoulders slumped, fingers rubbing his temple. “When are you gonna tell (Name)-Chan you’re in love with them?”

He blinks, the tips of his ears growing red. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Oh, so you don’t like them? I guess I should tell Kenjiro, he’s been wanting to ask them out.” He says, waving with two hands as he exited the room, leaving Semi alone with his thoughts.

-

“You’re acting weird.”

He jolts at your voice, sheepishly smiling as he rubbed his neck. “I don’t know what you mean! I’m perfectly fine.” You stare at him, letting the silence overcome the two of you, sweat building on his forehead at your stare. “So did Shirabu talk to you about anything?”

You tilt your head at him, “what do you mean? Why would he talk to me outside of volleyball?”

He nods, it’s not like that second-year cared about anything other than grades and setting to Ushijima. “Oh sorry, I just thought he’d ask you about something.”

“Oh, that’s what this is about.” He looks at you, expectant eyes waiting for a response. “He didn’t know how to confess to the person he liked so he asked me for help,” you looked around you, leaning closer to him. “But don’t tell him I told you, he threatened to serve a volleyball at my head.”

He couldn’t help but laugh, at the threat and himself. He couldn’t believe he’d gotten so hung up on something that didn’t even happen.

He freezes, Tendou’s words filling his mind.

“When are you gonna tell (Name)-Chan you’re in love with them?”

Shit.

-

“Ei, I think I’m stuck.”

He looks around for you, not seeing you but he can still hear your grunts. “Where are you?”

“I’m down here!” He sees your hand poke out from a hole in the sand, the color draining from his face before he runs to you.

He lays on his stomach, looking down at you. “How’d you even manage this?”

“I got bored so I dug a hole.” You say, staring at the crab that had unluckily dug its way into the hole. “Save him Ei, he must return to the sea.” You said, holding the grab above your head as if it were a deity.

He snorts, picking the crab up from your hands. “You’re such a weirdo.”

You glance up at him, his cheeks burning when you puff out your cheeks at him. “Whatever, just help me out.”

He props himself up on his elbows, smiling down at you. “No, I think I’ll let you stay down there.”

“But Eita!”

“No buts.” He said, wagging his finger in the air. “Though, I must say,” he starts, tapping his chin. “If you are quiet for a couple of minutes and let me talk I’ll get you out.”

The word deal falls from your mouth in a snap and his heart pounds in his chest.

He’s quiet though, no words are coming from him but his mind is a jumbled mess, words popping up in his head a mile a minute but he doesn’t speak.

He’s scared.

Scared of losing his best friend. Scared of losing the person he’d cry to at night when the nightmares wouldn’t stop coming. Scared of losing the one who baked him cookies the first night he stayed in the dorms away from his parents.

Terrified of losing you.

“Eita?”

He looks down at you, concern written all over your face and you look around, trying to get out yourself so you can hold him, tell him he’s fine even if you’re the reason why.

Time stops, and the ocean crashes against the sand.

“I love you.” He says, and time begins again.

Your head feels foggy, the three simple words he’d uttered occupying the space in your heart.

Semi Eita loves you.

“In what way?” You ask, clutching the hem of your, no his jacket, blurred eyes looking at him.

“In the, I want to kiss you really badly and take you out on dates, show you off to my friends and classmates, kind of way.”

“You didn’t have to make it rhyme.” You say, wiping under your eyes. “I love you too.”

He beams for what feels like the first time in forever, cheeks tingling at the heat that rushes, as well as the stretch of his smile.

The weight in his shoulders fades when you smile back at him, pushing yet another crab out of the hole, wincing when it pinches you. He laughs at you, reaching down for your hand, pressing a feather-light kiss to the finger the crab pinched, watching you turn your head away from him.

He grins, picking up the tiny shovel you used to dig the hole you were trapped in, “Now, let’s get you out of there.”

Bonus!

“Gee (Name), I don’t know how you do this so easily.” Semi groaned, fist-pounding against his thigh. “Damn it burns like hell.”

“Eita, it’s just face wash.”

He sits up, accidentally hitting his forehead against yours, “Sorry! I’m so sorry!” He exclaims, fingers hovering over the spot. “Does it hurt? Do you need ice?”

“Eita.”

“What?”

“Kiss it better?” You ask, innocently smiling at him.

He stills, heat rushing from under his shirt, to the tips of his ears. A snicker comes from behind you, Tendou and Shirabu sharing a knowing look before whipping out their phones.

“Oh, (Name)-chan, mind moving to the right a little bit?”

[thelittlesttimelord]

The Littlest Timelord: The Fall of the Eleventh Chapter 30

TITLE: The Littlest Timelord: The Fall of the Eleventh Chapter 30 PAIRING: No Pairing RATING: T CHAPTER: 30/? SUMMARY: Elise Smith is now a teenaged Timelord. In addition to losing the Ponds, the fields of Trenzalore are calling. But first they have to figure out exactly who Clara Oswald is.

[A/N - Wow. Chapter 30. I’m thinking this book might be closer to 40 chapters.]

There was a loud thudding noise as they stepped out into a passageway. The candles on the candelabra were blown out. Ice started gathering on the windows around them. Loud thudding echoed through the house.

“Okay, what is that?” Clara asked.

“It's a very loud noise. It's a very loud, very angry noise,” the Doctor said.

“What's making it?”

“I don't know. Are you making it?” The Doctor yelped and ran back to Clara and Elise as there were more bangs.

“Doctor?” Clara asked.

“Yes?”

“I may be a teeny, tiny bit terrified.”

“Yes?”

“But I'm still a grown-up.”

“Mainly, yes, and?”

“There's no need to actually hold my hand.”

The Doctor looked down at his hands.

“Um, Clara…?” Elise said.

“Yeah?”

“I'm not holding your hand,” the Doctor told her.

Clara and the Doctor screamed, running back into the living room.

Elise rolled her eyes and ran after them.

A black thing appeared, floating in mid-air.

“Has this happened before?” the Doctor asked.

“Never,” Palmer said.

“Camera. Camera!” The Doctor grabbed it from Palmer and he started taking pictures of it.

The black thing started cracking.

Clara turned around and saw what Emma was seeing. Something had appeared in front of her. It was a figure some woods. “Doctor!” Clara yelled.

The Doctor turned and started taking pictures.

“Help me!” the woman screamed.

Emma fell back into Palmer’s arms.

“Doctor.”

The words “Help Me” appeared on the wall by the staircase.

They evaporated as the Doctor approached them.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The Doctor and Elise followed Major Palmer down to his dark room.The Doctor asked her why she didn’t want to stay with the girls and she answered, “Because this isn’t the 1700’s. Besides, call it creative curiosity.”

Elise had no experience with developing pictures, preferring to stick to paints and charcoals. This body liked reading, but maybe she could get into photography.

“I had a little peek at your records, back at the Ministry. You've certainly seen a thing or two in your time. Disrupting U-boat operations across the North Sea, sabotaging railway lines across Europe. Operation Gibbon. The one with the carrier pigeons, brilliant. I do love a carrier pigeon,” the Doctor told him.

“I did my duty, but then so did thousands of others. Millions of others. I was just lucky enough to come back.”

“Yes, but how does that man, that war hero, end up here in a lonely old house, looking for ghosts?”

“Because I killed, and I caused to have killed. I sent young men and women to their deaths, but here I am, still alive and it does tend to haunt you. Living, after so much of the other thing.”

The Doctor’s eyes met Elise’s. She offered him a small smile and went back to looking at the pictures.

“You see, I was alone and unmarried and I didn't mind dying. I mean, not for that cause. It was a very, very fine cause, defeating the enemy.”

“And if you could contact them, what would you say?”

“Well, I'd very much like to thank them.”

The Doctor picked up a photograph and hung it up. A screaming face was in the background behind the Doctor’s head.

“Who do you think she is?” Palmer asked.

“Not what I thought she'd be,” the Doctor said.

“What did you think she'd be?”

“Fun. Can I borrow your camera?”

Palmer handed the Doctor his camera and they went back to the living room to pick up Clara.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“I've got this weird feeling it's looking at me. It doesn't like me,” Clara said as the approached the TARDIS.

“The TARDIS is like a cat. A bit slow to trust, but you'll get there in the end.”

Elise and the Doctor ran inside, but the door shut behind them. Elise opened the door when Clara knocked.

“Hey. You need a place to keep this,” she said, holding up her dripping wet umbrella.

“I've got one. Or I had one. I think I had one. Look around. See if you find it,” the Doctor told her, “Did I have one? Am I going mad?”

Clara started shaking the water off her umbrella.

“No, not in here. How do you expect her to like you? She's soaking wet. It's a health and safety nightmare.”

“Sexy! Behave!” Elise scolded. The umbrella stand appeared and Elise placed the umbrella in it.

“Thank you,” Clara said, “So, where are we going?”

“Nowhere. We're staying right here. Right here, on this exact spot, if I can work out how to do it,” the Doctor said.

Elise rolled her eyes and walked over to the console, flipping levers and pressing buttons.

“So, when are we going?”

The Doctor laughed and high-fived Clara. “Oh, that is good. That is top-notch.”

“And the answer is?”

“We're going always.”

“We're going always.”

The Doctor disappeared into an alcove. “Totally.”

“That's not actually a sentence.”

The Doctor came out with a bright orange spacesuit. “Well, it's got a verb in it. What do you think?”

“Color's a bit boisterous.”

“I think it brings out my eyes.”

“Makes my eyes hurt.”

The Doctor pouted, making Elise laugh.

“Still better than that green coat of yours,” Elise said.

“What have you got against that coat?”

Elise shrugged. “Just don’t like it.”

“Better than a fedora,” the Doctor muttered.

“Better than a stupid looking fez!”

The TARDIS took off and they landed far back in the past. Just as the Earth was starting to cool.

The Doctor went outside and came back in after taking a photograph. “Back off. Hot suit. Hot, hot, hot.”

Elise and Clara backed away from him.

“When are we?” Clara asked.

“About six billion years ago. It's a Tuesday, I think.”

Their next stop was a tropical jungle. A giant dragonfly flew past and the Doctor took a picture. Then it was the house in Victorian times, probably shortly after it was built.

Their last stop involved the Doctor putting on the suit again. “Back in a mo. Are you all right?” the Doctor asked Clara.

“Totally. Peachy keen.”

“Okay then. Well, don't press any buttons or pull any levers or make any funny faces. Actually, don't move. Stand completely still. Don't breathe. Well, you can breathe, but shallow breaths.” She gave him a thumbs up.

Clara and Elise watched the Doctor on the scanner.

Earth had been devastated and there was no life to be found.

The Doctor took a photo and came back inside. He noticed the look on Clara’s face. “Oh. What's wrong? Did the TARDIS say something to you?” He turned to the console. “Are you being mean?”

“No, it's not that. Have we just watched the entire life cycle of Earth, birth to death?”

“Yes.”

“And you're okay with that?”

“Yes.”

“How can you be?”

“The TARDIS, she's time. We… Wibbly vortex and so on.”

“That's not what I mean.”

“Okay, some help. Context?”

Clara shook her head.

“Cheat sheet? Something?”

“I mean, one minute you're in 1974 looking for ghosts, but all you have to do is open your eyes and talk to whoever's standing there. To you, I haven't been born yet, and to you I've been dead one hundred billion years. Is my body out there somewhere, in the ground?”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

The Doctor started to make his way back to the alcove to take off the suit. “But here we are, talking. So I am a ghost. To you, I'm a ghost. We're all ghosts to you. We must be nothing.”

“No. No. You're not that.”

“Then what are we? What can we possibly be?”

“You are the only mystery worth solving.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

They went back inside the house and the Doctor handed his roll of film to Major Palmer to develop. They turned the negatives into slides.

“Right, done. That's it. Gather round, gather round. Roll up, roll up.” The Doctor soniced the projector. “The Ghast of Caliburn House. Never changing, trapped in a moment of fear and torment. But, what if she's not? What if she's just trapped somewhere time runs more slowly than it does here? What if a second to her was a hundred thousand years to us? And what if somebody has a magic box. A blue box, probably. What if said somebody could take a snapshot of her, say, every few million years?”

It cycled through a few slides before it stopped on a black woman in a white coverall, running.

“She's not a ghost. But she's definitely a lost soul. Her name is Hila Tacorian. She's a pioneer, a time traveler, or at least she will be in a few hundred years.”

“Time travel's not possible. The paradoxes...” Palmer said.

“Resolve themselves, by and large,” the Doctor finished.

“How long has she been alone?” Emma asked.

“Well, time travel's a funny old thing. I mean, from her perspective, she crash landed well…” The Doctor checked his watch, “…three minutes ago.”

“Crash landed? Where?”

“She's in a pocket universe. A distorted echo of our own. They happen sometimes but never last for long.”

The Doctor blew up a blue balloon and a red one. “Our universe.” The Doctor gestured to the blue balloon. “Hila Tacorian's here, in a pocket universe.” The Doctor held up the red one. “You're a lantern, shining across the dimensions, guiding her home, back to the land of the living.” He brought the two balloons together and then deflated them.

“But what's she running from?” Clara asked.

The Doctor snapped his fingers. “Well, that's the best bit. We don't know yet. Shall we see?” He soniced to the next slide. “Oh…”

There was a large creature behind a tree.

“What is that?” Clara asked.

“I don't know. Still, not to worry,” the Doctor told her.

“So, what do we do?” Emma asked.

“Not we, you. You save Hila Tacorian because you are Emma Grayling. You are the lantern. The rest of us are just along for the ride, I'm afraid. We need some sturdy rope and a blue crystal from Metebelis Three. Plus some Kendal Mint Cake.”

Clara, the Doctor, and Elise ran back to the TARDIS.

[hellolittleogre]

Dusting off the archives

Since I like a lot of other fanfic writers are spending this time aggressively staring at different WIPs and NOT WRITING I thought I would dust off various WIPs which have stalled through the years. These are to a large extent morgue files, they will probably never be finished fic. I thought I’d share what I have written, plus synopsis or outline if I have it. I feel like they are like rings in the core of a glacier and different trends and tropes can be read in them. Some of them are also incredibly embarrassing.

Under the Cut: Avengers kid fic

Fandom: The Avengers

Paring: Clint Barton/ Phil Coulson 

Working Title: Uhhhhh.....Superspy Daddies  (not brilliant I admit)

Year written: 2012 (god help us all)

Synopsis: Clint meets Tasha when she ‘s a wee spy child and decides to adopt her. After a few years on the run they are caught up by SHIELD and recruited. There is something mysterious going on and they are assigned an alias as a family, with two dads and Natasha. Enter spy shenanigans and fake marriage and falling in love. Yay! Everything is safe and nothing hurts.

                                                       **

Natasha was seven when she met Clint. She can still remember the impact when she hit him, how she had launched herself into his body and sent them both tumbling.  They had ended up on the floor. Natasha with her knife to his throat and Clint with an arrow in his hand the point just pressing against her ribs.

It should have been easy, a clean-cut job of getting into the house, making the target and getting out again but something had been wrong, men positioned in places they shouldn’t and suddenly hostiles everywhere and a blond man with a bow taking out people with unerring accuracy.

She remembers the surprise in his face, how open it was.

“But you are just a child,” he had said in astonished and slightly accented Russian. It made her want to smile because she hadn’t been a child for a long time now.

“I am Black Widow,” she said simply, when she had planned to say nothing at all. The man stared at her.

“Ok, so, I’m going to lower my hand now, nice and easy, like this yeah?” The arrow was slowly removed from her ribs. “We have about ten minutes before my backup gets here so listen. You can kill me and go on doing what you are doing or I can get you out of here, somewhere safe and you can either come with me or go your way, but you don’t have to do this anymore.”

He is, possibly, the first person she can remember who has offered her something without asking anything of her. The idea intrigued her, that somebody could do something for you without wanting anything in return, that there could be actions without purpose or gain.

“You are not a pervert, are you?” She knows about those, they are easy, all soft words and soft hands right up to the point where they are not but then usually it is already too late. He actually laughed at that, a soft huff of air as if she had said something honestly funny.

“No, no perverts here m’am. Nobody but us chickens.” She does not understand that, it had been nobody but them and maybe a handful of dead men, no chickens at all. She frowns at him.

He sighed. “I’m Clint.”

She thought about it, the sharp edge of her knife resting against his throat, but. He has offered to do something for her without asking anything in return. He could have killed her but he didn’t. And he doesn’t want her to kill anyone, he doesn’t seem to want her to do anything. Maybe she can trust him.

“I’m Black Widow,” she says again. She doesn’t have to trust him much, or for long.

In the end they had gotten out through the air ducts. Crawled out a couple of yards behind the perimeter and Clint had then calmly walked her through the tail end of the increasingly panicked ranks of the mission, even snagging his own jacket and bow case from the back of a van. He had draped the jacked around her shoulders and pushed her lightly in the back. “Just keep your head down and walk, nice and easy.”

Natasha had to admire the audacity of it, she is not sure anymore but she believes at one point he even nodded to somebody he knew before getting her into the night. Quietly slipping away.

They go through Europe first, down through Ukraine and Romania to Serbia, Croatia and finally Italy. Clint makes Natasha cut her hair in the bathroom of a gas station. Says that maybe a man and a young boy might draw less attention. Hands her the scissors with an: I ain’t going to touch you, kiddo and closes the door. Her hair is now short and jagged and fiery red and she likes it. It takes her three months before she finally tells Clint her name is actually Natalia Romanova and he grins at her, delighted. “I’m Hawkeye,” he says.

Slowly as Natalia learns to trust him she tells Clint about the Red Room. She has a hard time remembering anything before that but she remembers training, learning and the experiments. 

They had been together for nearly a month when Clint accidentally cuts himself. Its straight across his palm and deep and painful as fuck.  Clint tries to stem the blood flow with a shirt and cursing under his breath. Natasha is strangely unperturbed, as if she can’t understand why he is making a fuss.

“Its not so bad, you just put band aid on it and it’s gone in the morning,” she says, shrugging her shoulders. Clint takes it that she meant, it will be gone in a sort of, it will still be there but at least it wont bother you fashion. As it turns out she means it quite literally.

The next night as they make camp she gives his bandage a suspicious look but says nothing. Clint is cleaning the wound with some water heated on the fire, it stings like a bitch but looks like it will heal nicely, looking up he sees Natasha across the fire, her face is white and her eyes are like saucers. Then she is by his side, prodding and poking at his hand with ungentle fingers.

“You are still hurt, why are you still hurt, why hasn’t it healed? Are you ill, what is wrong with you?” She is as animated as he has ever seen her, shaken up and honestly confused and terrified. It takes a while to calm her down to explain that when ordinary people get hurt it takes weeks and weeks for them to heal, and this is normal and it doesn’t mean that Clint is sick or dying. It is perhaps the first time Natasha lets on that she really cares. It is also the point when Clint realises how truly different she is, and the extent of those experiments. She takes out his knife and makes a shallow cut across the back of her hand and lets him watch as it fades into pink nothingness in a couple of hours.

In Croatia, Dubrovnik, Clint takes her to the beach, all blue water and fishing boats bobbing on the waves. It's the first time she has seen the sea. The water is so clear you can make out all the little fishes darting after each other along the shallows. After only half a day in the sun her skin was so burnt her back broke out in blisters and the heatstroke made her throw up on the bus back to the room they’re renting. Clint pets her hair and nods to the large woman across the aisle, who has been making sympathetic noises and has given them a plastic bag.

“Red hair, can’t stand the sun, any of them. Her mother was just the same, God rest her soul, always so sensitive.” The woman clucks in distress and finds a cough sweet in the horrifying depths of her handbag. Natalia swears she can still feel the taste of it in her nose even after she has thrown up twice.

 All she could do was lie on her stomach in their tiny room with an ice clamp wrapped in a wet towel on her back. She doesn’t cry in pain but she considers it, the possibility. There would be nobody here to punish her for it now. Cling gave her purple and yellow ice lollies, the first she’s ever had, until her mouth was skinned and raw from them. She peels afterwards and sits in the bathroom and gets Clint to peel strips of skin off her back showing her the longest ones. 

“This is so gross,” he tells her after he’s managed to peel a strip of skin all the way from her shoulder down to the small of her back. The new skin underneath the flaking was pink and tender and dotted with tiny freckles. It’s the closest to fun she has had in years.

Clint has never taken care of anyone in his life, not himself and much less anyone else. Things such as regular meals, bedtimes and food which is not pizza is pretty much new and foreign country to him.  It took him about a year to figure out that Natalia needed to go to school, because he could teach her English just fine (except maybe not words like corium and discombobulate) and some maths, as long as it had to do with geometry and seriously, he has been briefed on so many cities that they are probably good for geography for a while, but the rest of it? He has no idea. 

They stayed in Naples for six months, long enough for Clint to work out a way to get into the US and for Natalia to lose her accented English and learn a quite impressive smattering of Italian. Then, they are found. The same car stands parked on their street three days in a row, inconspicuously nestled under a great chestnut tree and Clint calmly tells Natasha to grab the overnight bag in the hall and they walk past is slowly and calmly, looking straight ahead like they were just heading for the park to enjoy the afternoon sunshine. The agents are Russian and in the end it turns ugly, they barely get away and leave corpses on their trail. They get on a plane to America a month ahead of schedule and it is a far too narrow escape. It’s only after this, after their narrow escape to relative safety that Natalia begins to have nightmares.

“Clint?”

“Yeah”

“Can you tell me a story?”

This is the third time the same night Natasha has woken from nightmares and Clint has resigned to sleeping on the floor by her bed instead of going back to his own. He has a lumpy pillow wedged under his head (in fact, he suspects it to be Natasha’s stuffed bear, Phillipov).

“A story, what about?”

There is a silence; it is long enough that he would have suspected that she had dropped off but for her calculated breathing. She is thinking about something, not sure how to phrase it.

“Angela has stories,” she says at last. Angela is Tasha’s friend from school, one of the few she has made. “I mean, her mom tells her stories about her, when she was little, what she said, when she was bad, you know. Could you, could you tell a story about me? When I was little?”

And Clint opens his mouth to say he can’t do that, he never knew her when she was little and lived in a facility where they trained her and filled her blood with god only knows what and then realises that’s not the point. Natasha knows this, but she wants a story. Not a lie, a story, about herself, when she was little, what she might have done. Clint exhales deeply and tries to think.

“Do you remember when we lived in Italy, in Naples? In that tiny apartment and your roll out bed?  Well, a couple of years before that we lived for a while in Rome, but you were so little, only four, you can’t possibly remember. We lived, you and me then, in this small apartment outside of Rome. The kitchen was tiny, but it had this huge fridge-freezer unit, this monster from the fifties in avocado green with a door thick like the safe to a bank vault and the freezer on top of it. It was like a fridge for a large Italian family with a grandma and a fat uncle with a moustache and not just for the two of us. Now it was summer and that apartment was always hot and you wanted gelato but I wouldn’t give you any because it was just before dinner and you couldn’t reach the freezer by yourself. So you had this trick of wedging a kitchen chair against the fridge, on its back legs and then climb up onto the back of the chair so you could open the freezer.”

Clint could actually see it before him, this small, determined version of Natasha, dragging the chair across the room and her bare feet soft against the linoleum floor.

“It used to make me so mad, y’know. You could fall down and split your skull, knock your teeth out, anything. And I caught you this one time, balanced on the chair with your head in the freezer and I got so mad and I yelled at you, and I said: You are driving me nuts, you’ve got to stop doing this. Do you want me to go crazy?”

And you said, without even looking away from the ice cream box: I don’t want you to go crazy. I want ice cream.”

There is silence and then Natasha laughs, it’s just a puff of amusement, there and gone again but its genuine. After a while he reaches up a hand and feels Nat stick her little paw in his. It is soft and slightly sticky, squeezing around his for a moment before she settles down.

“That’s a good story,” she says sleepily and after a while she falls asleep.  Clint is not so lucky but at least there are no more nightmares for tonight. After this she wants a lot of them, Clint tells her about fishing trips, about that time in the Natural History Museum when she thought she was lost in the room with all the gorillas, when Clint was standing right  next to her all the time.

Clint sweats the whole ten hour flight to America. Tasha curls up in her seat and pretends to sleep the whole way, the air hostess giving her a colouring book and nearly subconsciously petting her hair. There is just something about the short curls that people seem helpless to resist.

In the end it is only bad luck that Shield found them. A lot of bad luck at the same time but only chance in the end. Anyway that’s what Clint claims, Agent Coulson maintains that luck had nothing to do with it and it was the result of several years of hard work on his part and if anything it was lucky that Shield found them first and not the Russians. 

They have been living in the US for years now, slowly drifting across the north and the mid west, Clint picking up work where he can find it. They always have emergency bags packed but it was a while since they’ve had to use them. 

It was nearly five years since Clint found Natasha, or she found him, four years of Clint jumping from job to job and Nat from school to school but lately the time between moves become longer and longer. Clint had a job he actually likes, working as a bit of everything in a school for deaf kids. Natasha has friends to sit with her at the lunch table, has started playing soccer, and it turns out she is menace on the grass. They feel safe, five years have gone by and nothing has been seen or heard and maybe it has made them complacent. Maybe its just nice to belong somewhere. Tasha has friends on her soccer team and comes home grass stained and happy. She’s hit a growth spurt and reminds Clint of a foal with long gangly limbs.

It starts with a parent teacher visit, just a stupid mistake. It's Tasha’s homeroom teacher who gives Clint a considering look and remarks that he looks a bit young to have a daughter her age. And that’s all it takes to get the ball rolling, somebody looking just a little extra at the adoption papers and suddenly there is a social worker outside the door. Clint and Tasha are professional liars and it comes to nothing in the end but the notice is already logged into the system, leaving a minute paper trail for people who know where to look. And then Clint had gotten ill with the flu, enough to just not pay attention the nondescript car parked on their street for two days in a row. They are unprepared for it when Clint, kept awake by coughing, spots the stealthy movement on the street and there is no time, no time for anything other than getting out. The rain is pouring down and Tasha is still in her pyjamas, shoes held in one hand. As it turns out the location of their backup storage is compromised and Clint barely makes it out with one bag, containing a change for Natasha and barely enough cash to make it out of town. They don’t try to go to the second one, where Clint’s bow and arrows are stored. It hurts, that bow is as much a part of Clint as his arm, but if it is undetected they can come back for it and if it has been found it is not worth trying to get it back.  They make their way north on foot and hitchhike, avoiding gas stations and bus stops, suddenly nothing feels safe anymore, everywhere is strange and threatening. Clint’s flu had gotten worse and developed into a deep rattling cough that won’t let go and claws at his chest with dull teeth. There was no time to rest and the constant chill of their travel had made it into pneumonia.

They end up in a motel, where everything within the range of the little electric heater is stuffy and fever-hot and everything outside of it cold and damp. Clint lies propped up on the two slim pillows, Natasha is sitting at the foot of the bed, cleaning out her gear, her face cool and efficient. They both know Clint can’t go much further without rest and proper care, they both know they can't turn to a hospital and there is not enough money for any under the table dealings, even if they had the contacts in this part of the country.

It's only logical that she should go on alone, she has a much better chance to get away. How she is going to make it in the long run neither of them mentions.

“You have a quarter?” she asks “I just wanted something from the vending machine.”

Clint nods towards his bags and when she comes back she packs everything in her bag neatly, all her gear cleaned, three knives on her, one in her sleeve, one in her shoe and one at the small of her back. She puts the blankets over Clint. Go to sleep, she tells him. When he wakes up Tasha is curled up next to him and Shield breaks down the door.

They are being debriefed by Hill and Coulson, and a team of junior agents, even Fury is there, scowling behind the eye patch. Howard and Tony Stark is their target, it is just a scouting mission, there has been some untoward suspected HYDRA activity in Stark Industries.

The pale manila folder lands with a dull sound in front of Clint. It contains, in addition to information on the targets, the cover stories for the job.  Natasha squints down at the pages.

“I will be Clint’s adopted daughter and we are living with his brother, my uncle Phil?” Coulson, first name Agent, inclines his head slightly.

 “We felt it was best your handler was with you on site,” he says mildly.

Natasha gives him a slanted eyebrow of disbelief and snorts into her folder “yah, because a grown single man living with his brother and a young girl is not weird, at all,” she says in Russian and rolls her eyes at Clint. He tries not to laugh and hopes not too many at the table can understand. Judging by the twitch in Fury’s eye, he should be so lucky.

Just before the elevator closes Hill shows up and smacks a new folder into his chest.

“Your updated covers,” she explains, “ as I understood there were complaints about the last ones.” She gives Nat a nasty look. Clint opens the folder and starts scanning the content. There are papers, degrees even, official adoption papers and also…

“Hang on, we are married now? How is that better??”

They arrived back at the house at five in the morning, Clint practically carrying a half asleep Natasha and Phil felt so tired as if he was moving through molasses. He managed to change his clothes and brush his teeth before sitting down on the sofa and completely running out of energy. Mechanically turning on the tv and finding antiques roadshow on and just sitting there with the flickering light over him.

After a while Barton came down and slumped beside him, head leaning back and his eyes closed. 

“She’s brushed her teeth and she’s in bed now, I think actually asleep.  I hope to hell there will be no nightmares because I don’t know if I have the energy to even get out of this couch.”

“I’ll get it,”Phil says even though he feels like his spine has been boiled to the consistency of a wet noodle and all he wants to do is sleep for a week. Clint makes an exhausted noise beside him and slumps back against the couch, after a little while his head tips over onto Phil’s shoulder. He can feel the soft hair against his jaw and neck. Clint’s breath skates moist and warm over his neck and collarbone. It’s the best thing he has felt in ages and parts of him wishes he really could lean over and cover Clint’s mouth with his own and pull him close. Instead he leans back, promising himself it will only be for a second and then he promptly falls asleep.

Clint wakes up with the most awful crick in the neck. He is still on the sofa, squashed onto his side and his face plastered to Phil’s shoulder. He might even have drooled a bit on his t-shirt. At some point during the night they had managed to wedge themselves into the sofa, Phil mostly on his back and Clint, well, mostly on top of him. He tries to move his legs and find them stuck under something. Something turns out to be Nattie, curled up like a ball at the end of the sofa and her head pillowed on what might be Phil’s hip. Everything hurts like a motherfucker. Its not the discomfort that’s woken him though, it was the soft sound of the front door. Peeling his face slowly from Phil’s shoulder he raises his head to find Steve, Tony and Pepper awkwardly standing in the doorway staring at their slightly inappropriate family re-enactment of the Gordian Knot.

“Sorry Mr C,” Pepper says “the door was open.”

He really, really hopes he had the sense to take off the leather suit before he fell asleep last night.

[karaliswrites]

Ocean Eyes

I haven’t read this far in the manga so I’m pretty sure these spoilers are inaccurate 

~~~~~ They’re walking together, in the dead of night, when Armin first notices it.  He had glanced over at his best friend, who walked beside him, and had seen his lantern tremble in his grip.  His brow furrows and he subconsciously reaches a hand out, placing it over the brunet’s, who’s quick gaze jumps to him as if he’s been startled.  “Eren,” he says gently, feeling his hand tremble beneath his fingers.  “You’re shaking . . . .”

Emerald eyes turn away and he bites his lip.  “Are you scared?” he decides to ask and his response is immediate.  “What?!  No, of course I’m not scared!” he says loudly and Armin’s heart aches.  “Eren, your hands are shaking.”

“I’m . . . I’m just cold,” he replies, but Armin knows he’s lying.  “My hands are cold.”

“Oh,” he mumbles, deciding not to push him too hard.  “I’m so afraid I haven’t been able to stop trembling,” he says and green eyes glance to him, seeming almost blue in the dark.  “See?” he asks, holding his hand out for the brunet to see and they watch the way his fingers quiver in fear.  “Eren, aren’t you ever scared of the titans?”

He doesn’t answer and Armin swallows nervously.  “I think it’s normal.  The first time I fought a titan, I was so scared I couldn’t even move.”  

He looks to his best friend, feeling his eyes begin to water, but he blinks away the tears.  “That was when you — and our comrades —” he adds, feeling his heart twist uncomfortably at the memory.  “Got devoured.  But Eren, you . . .” he turns to him then, his chest tightening.  “You saved me from getting eaten.  Why did you do that?”

He feels a familiar pang of insecurity, but pushes it down as emerald eyes flit over his face.  “Why wouldn’t I?” he asks as if he’s shocked Armin could think such a thing.  He looks at Eren in mild surprise, feeling something twist in his chest.  “You’re my best friend.  I couldn’t let you die.” 

He smiles smally and tucks his hair behind his ear, feeling his face begin to heat.  “And if I had let you get eaten by another one of those monsters . . . I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.  Losing you would’ve been hard enough.  But to know it was my fault . . . .”

He nods even though Eren’s staring rather intently at the ground because he knows exactly how that feels.  “I felt the same way,” he says and when green eyes dart to him, he wishes he hadn’t said anything.  “At Trost.  I thought it was my fault.  If I had gotten to you in time, I . . . .”

He has to cut off because even though Eren’s here, alive and breathing, right next to him, he can’t shake the image of him getting eaten from his mind.  And as much as he’s tried to forget the pain and the feeling of his soul being torn from his body when that happened, he can’t.  And he knows if it happens again, he won’t be able to survive.  He never wants to feel that pain ever again. “Armin,” Eren says strongly, reminding him again that he’s here — alive.  “It wasn’t your fault.”

He grimaces, wishing he could believe him.  He decides to speak, hoping it will untie the knot that’s formed in his throat.  “How were you even able to rescue me?  You were . . . severely injured.”

The image of Eren laying seemingly dead on a rooftop, his head bleeding profusely, his leg severed at the knee comes back to mind, but Armin shakes it away.  Eren hesitates for a moment and when Armin looks, he thinks he sees a shadow of something he might recognize.  “It was . . . you.”

“Me?” he asks, unsure of how he manages to speak without stuttering, his cheeks igniting into flames.  “Yeah.  Your eyes.”

“My eyes?” 

 He thinks he sounds a bit like a broken record, repeating Eren’s words back at him as if somehow that’ll help them sink in.  “When we were younger . . . and you showed me that book . . . you were talking about the sea, lands of ice and fire.  You were so full of wonder at everything in the outside world.  There was a sort of glow in your eyes.  Whenever you talked about your dreams, I always noticed it.  It was . . . beautiful,” he says, smiling softly to himself and Armin feels his heart racing in his chest.  “I wanted to see you like that for the rest of time.  I wanted to see you happy, to take you to the ocean.  I wanted all of your dreams to come true.  And that’s what drove me forward.  I couldn’t let you die without making your dreams a reality.  You deserve the world, Armin.  And I couldn’t live knowing I hadn’t given it to you.”

His lungs are having extreme difficulty processing oxygen suddenly.  His isn’t sure what to make of the feelings swirling around in his chest or the nauseating churn in his stomach.  Emerald eyes meet ocean before he turns away, breaking the contact.  “Thank you,” Eren suddenly speaks and Armin asks, “For what?”

“For calming me down.  You always seem to be able to do that.”

Palpitations distract him too much to say anything.  It seems that what he’s feeling is getting worse with every word that falls from Eren’s lips.  His gaze fixes on the brunet beside him and he takes a moment of silent admiration, left completely breathless at the sheer beauty that is everything Eren.  “Pretty soon we’ll get to see the ocean together,” he brings up suddenly and Armin manages a tiny smile, averting his eyes with a blush.  “Yeah,” he says distantly and feels like eyes are burning into the back of his skull.  Hesitantly, he checks over his shoulder to notice Mikasa giving him a look he’s never seen before.  Not really a knowing look but definitely something similar.  She gives a small nod to her side and somehow Armin takes that as message.  He turns to Eren and lets out a quick breath.  “I’m gonna check up on Mikasa, okay?” he asks and the boy nods, something flashing through emerald eyes so fast Armin isn’t sure he’s seen it.  “Okay.”

Armin doesn’t know why Mikasa wants to talk to him and it makes his stomach turn with unease and anxiety.  He doesn’t know why.  It’s just Mikasa.  He turns around and falls into step beside her and they both slow their pace so Eren’s out of earshot.  “How are you holding up?” she asks and he shrugs.  “Fine. Scared, but fine.”

They walk in silence for a moment before Mikasa takes a breath.  “Armin, when are you going to do something about it?”

He feels his heart sink and he swallows nervously, hoping she doesn’t notice.  He decides to feign ignorance.  “Do something about what?”

She gives him a look and he knows she can see right through him.  “Armin, I’m not blind.  Neither are you.”

Armin lets out a sigh, wondering how this conversation was important at the moment.  Shouldn’t they be focused on the mission?  On staying alive?  Shouldn’t Mikasa’s priority be protecting the others instead of helping him address the familiar flutter of his heart?  “We both know he cares for you,” she says, breaking Armin’s train of thought, grey eyes watching the way the wings of freedom sway as Eren does.  Armin follows her gaze and lets out a gentle sigh.  “I don’t know . . . .”

“Armin, one of you needs to say something.  And we all know it won’t be Eren.  He’s still too oblivious to realize what he means to you.”

Armin lets his eyes run over the back of Eren’s figure, feeling suddenly terrified.  “But Mikasa, I can't just tell him.”

“Why not?”

It’s a simple question.  But for some reason, Armin doesn’t know what to say.  He looks at her, ocean eyes darting between grey before turning away with no response.  “Are you afraid of how he’ll react?  Because I can guarantee you he feels the sa—”

“What if he doesn’t?”

The absolute fear in his voice is obvious and Mikasa stares at him with the same blatant stare that screams ‘are you serious?’.  “I overheard some of your conversation.  Did you hear any of the things he was saying?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“You were what got him up again after slamming into that roof.  You empower him.  He does everything you say and puts full faith in you.  He’s entrusted you with his life, his dreams, his freedom — everything.”

Armin bites his lip and finds the ground to be extremely fascinating all of a sudden.  “His happiness.  His love.”

His heart suddenly leaps and he turns to her, his cheeks reddening.  She smiles softly.  “It’s cute that you still get so worked up about him despite how long you’ve had feelings for him.”

“Don’t be so loud,” he says even though Mikasa isn’t speaking particularly loudly, but more because he desperately wants to change the subject.  “He might hear.”

“Look, Armin, all I’m saying is one day it may come down to life and death.  We never know when that day will come.  Maybe today, maybe tomorrow.  But when it happens, Eren has his powers, so he’ll be able to survive.  But what about you?  What if one day you’re a little too careless, a little too slow, and you get killed?  Imagine how he would feel.”

His heart aches at the thought.  He knows what it feels like to have the only person you really care about die before your eyes.  He never wants Eren to go through that.  “And if you were gone, you would have never said the things that needed to be.  You both need this, and right now only you can change it.  So tell him.  Before it’s too late.”

Of course he can’t deny her point.  So he doesn’t try to, turning to stare at the ground, wondering if maybe he actually should.  Of course, he’s always wanted to tell Eren, but every time he’s gotten close, his heart twists and his throat closes off and he can’t speak.  And he doesn’t want to start, not be able to finish, and not end up getting to the most important part.  But he wants to.  Needs to.  The words have been dying to be spoken and he’s the only one who can help them escape.

---

It’s a few days later, and Armin’s had a small brush with death.  He had gotten a little too close to Eren’s titan form and one of the ones he had knocked out nearly fell right on top of him.  He would’ve been crushed to death.  And it’s this experience that really gets Armin thinking.  He’s been considering what Mikasa suggested, and trying desperately to find the courage somewhere within him, but he never really thought about actually doing it.  But after that, he thinks maybe he really should.  He tosses and turns in bed, the very premise making anxiety settle deep in his gut.  It torments him, keeps him awake with the fear of what might be to come, of what he’ll say.  He does this for hours, turning over and over under the sheets and it’s as if they’re strangling him — he shoves them this way and that but they always come back again in an even more uncomfortable way than the last.  Out of frustration, he throws the covers off of him and sits up in bed, his eyes already accustomed to the dark.  He isn’t sure where he’s going, but he gets up and walks, his feet bringing him down the stairs to the dungeon.  He supposes it’s more of a basement that happens to have holding cells, but he likes to think of it that way.  A dungeon.  A prision.  A place not at all fit for the most amazing person he’s ever known.

Before he knows it, he’s stood in front of his cell, grasping the cold iron bars and wondering why he’s here.  He presses his face through a space between the rods and stops to watch him sleep.  Outside of this moment, Armin might’ve thought that to be a bit disturbing, a bit unsettling.  But here, seeing the way Eren’s shoulder rises and falls with his breathing, he’s again overwhelmed with something like relief.  Relief that he’s alive.  That he’s still with him after everything.  He shifts his weight and jumps slightly as Eren turns onto his other side, now facing the blond.  He takes a moment to examine every aspect of his face and recognize the things he loves about it.  The imperfections, the unique characteristics that make him Eren.  He loves the way chocolate hair is falling over his face, the slight twitch of his lashes against his cheek.  But then those lashes lift to reveal stunning green eyes.  He’s caught off guard, they both are, but Eren has to rub the sleep out of his eyes before the oddity of the situation hits him.  “Armin?” he asks and he offers a small smile.  “Hey,” he breathes, now regretting this decision.  If he had approached him in the lunch hall, in passing, he could’ve shrugged it off if things got too difficult to say.  But it was pretty hard to come up with an excuse for why he was here, alone, in the dungeon in the middle of night except for the reason he’s actually here.  He has nowhere else to turn to.  He has to do this now.  He was in too deep, no turning back. 

“What are you doing here?” Eren asks, standing up and approaching him.  It’s usually a simple question, but Armin feels like his heart is going to pound out of his chest and he’s finding it hard to speak.  “I um . . . couldn’t sleep,” he starts, deciding maybe he can work his way up to it and, in the meantime, work up the courage to actually follow through.  “Me neither,” the brunet breathes with a lopsided grin and something flutters in Armin’s stomach.  “I uh . . . .”

His voice is wavering.  He clears his throat, fingers trembling against the metal of the iron bars separating them.  “Can I . . . can I come in?” he asks, meeting emerald eyes.  He can see an obvious spark of concern there and he understands.  He’s acting strangely, but given the importance of the situation, Armin thinks it’s normal.  But Eren isn’t aware of that just yet.  “Yeah, there’s keys by the stairs,” he says with a nod towards the rack.  Armin walks over and grabs the set of keys, trying not to let them fumble too much in his fingers.  He brings them to the lock on the door of Eren’s cell and turns, pulling it open with a small creak.  Armin steps inside and shuts the door behind him more out of need for some sort of comfort than anything else.  To focus on doing something normal in the hopes that maybe this will just be a normal conversation.  Just like always.  He’d like to believe that but he knows it isn’t true.  Eren gestures to his small cot and Armin hesitantly walks over, sitting down on the uncomfortable surface.  Eren takes a seat beside him and Armin licks his lips.  “You would think they’d keep this place under higher security,” he smiles, placing the keys on Eren’s pillow and out of the way.  He chuckles.  “Yeah, you would think.”

A heavy silence falls over them and to Armin it’s absolutely suffocating.  But then Eren clears his throat and his heart sinks.  “So, what’s going on?” he asks and Armin tries to play it off, more out of desperation since he knows it won’t work.  “There’s nothing going on.”

“Armin, I’ve known you my entire life.  Something's bothering you,” Eren tells him and green eyes are looking at him in a way that holds so much intensity he has to turn away.  He sighs and part of him realizes just how much he wants to get this off his chest.  He fidgets with his fingers and swallows nervously.  “I uh . . . I’ve been thinking,” he starts but isn’t sure where to go.  His face is already starting to heat up and he feels his palms begin to sweat.  “Yeah?”

“I um . . . well there’s something . . . I just . . . .  Have you ever felt . . . weird?” he asks and Eren’s brow furrows.  “Weird?”

“Yeah.”

“How so?”

Armin takes a moment to think about it, tucking a piece of blond hair behind his ear.  “It feels like . . . you’re drowning.  But it isn’t scary.  Well, at least not completely.  It’s more . . . warm and comforting really.  And . . . every time you think of this one person . . . ,” he swallows, not daring to meet Eren’s eyes.  “You sink even deeper.”

There’s another silence and Armin feels like either his entire world is about to fall apart or he is.  “I’m . . . not sure I understand?” Eren asks questioningly and Armin can’t help letting out a laugh, perhaps to relieve the nerves that have built up.  Eren giggles along with him for a moment before they both fall silent again.  “Yeah, I uh . . . I don’t—I mean . . . .  You um . . . I wanted to, uh—you know—I . . . . .  I’ve had a few encounters with death . . . .”

He looks up at emerald eyes and feels a sudden spark of fear, letting out a sort of strangled noise before turning away and burying his face in his hands.  He giggles nervously and grips blond hair in frustration.  Nothing he says is turning out exactly as he wants and it’s making him sound a bit out of his mind.  So he takes a deep breath and sits back up.  “And all of this, everything that’s going on, has really put things into perspective.”

Eren’s giving him his full attention and despite how absolutely terrified he is, how much he’s blushing and trembling, he manages to find it somewhere within him to keep going.  “I’ve um . . . I’ve had a lot of time to think things over.  And . . . and there’s . . . th-there’s something I . . . wanted to tell you . . . .”

Eren inches closer though whether or not this is intentional, Armin doesn’t know.  But it makes his heart beat a bit faster than it already is.  “I uh . . . when I . . . watched you die, I . . . couldn’t control myself.  I couldn’t move.  I was . . . just . . . screaming.  That’s what I remember at least.  Seeing you, losing you . . . and the pain.”

He shakes his head, feeling a dull ache in his chest of something he’s felt before and never wants to feel again.  “I’ll never forget the pain.”

Fingers slip over his own and he’s startled, flinching slightly despite himself.  Eren runs a soothing thumb over the back of his hand and Armin closes his eyes, letting out a shaky breath.  “And . . . it made me realize that . . . well I g-guess I knew but it made me realize . . . h-how important you are to me and uh . . . .”

He wants to disappear.  To go back in time and erase this entire moment. Because it’s time for him to finally say what he needs to, but he doesn’t want to do it.  The fear of rejection and possible hatred plague his mind and his stomach twists in anxiety, but he tries to push it down.  “I . . . there’s something I wanted to t-tell you and . . . at Trost I regretted never s-saying it so um . . . that’s why I want to say I-I . . . .”

There’s something about the total silence surrounding them, the way Eren is staring at him, that makes his heart palpitate with worry.  But he closes his eyes and Eren draws patterns gently on his hand and suddenly he finds his voice.  He looks up and straight into emerald eyes.  “I love you,” he says and as soon as he does, he flushes, his eyes widening before he turns away.  “I . . . r-really do.”

Eren’s silent for a moment and Armin glances to him, seeing an analytical look on his face, as if he’s trying to figure something out.  “I love you too,” he says and the ease with which he says it makes Armin think Eren isn’t sure which type of love he’s referring to and isn’t letting himself jump to conclusions.  This is both a good and bad sign.  Though Armin hopes he’s assuming the love is platonic because he doesn’t want to put himself in danger of having his heart ripped in two (which it definitely wouldn’t be) instead of because he doesn’t want anything to do with it if it isn’t.  “I uh . . . I d-don’t . . . .  I mean of course I love you as a friend but I—“

He cuts off, seeing something flash through emerald eyes and even though he can tell he knows, he decides to finish his sentence.  “I’m . . . I’m in love with you.”

Eren takes a moment of silence to stare in seeming disbelief at the ground.  Armin feels his heart crack.  “Oh god, Eren, I’m so sorry, I just ruined everything, didn’t I?  I knew I should’ve kept my mouth shut, but Mikasa thought you felt the same and I didn’t want to regret not telling you.  I’m so sorry I never should’ve said—”

His rambling is cut short by a swift kiss pressed to his lips.  Armin’s eyes widen in shock and for a moment, he doesn’t know what to do.  Eren pulls away, looking into his eyes and Armin’s heart is beating but now it’s with a much better feeling.  Eren’s lips meet his again, softer this time, and he kisses back tenderly, his hand coming up to tangle in chocolate hair.  He knew he’d always wanted to kiss Eren, but never in his wildest dreams had he expected it to be like this.  Their lips move together as if they were made for each other and it’s like they’ve done this a million times before.  Armin’s immediately addicted to Eren’s kiss and wonders why on earth he hadn’t confessed sooner.  But when they pull away, even though Armin wants to continue, he figures Eren has something to say.  And he does.  “I love you too,” he says with that smile and Armin’s stomach flips.  “Is that what you were so worked up about?” he jokes with a giggle and Armin shoves him playfully.  He chuckles and leans back to take him in his arms again, giving him another soft kiss.  “I was scared you wouldn’t feel the same.”

“I was too scared to tell you I did.” 

He smiles at the blond.  “Good thing you said it for me.”

“You have to make it up to me for that.  I’ve been through emotional hell over the past couple days worrying about this.”

“How about I make up for lost time?” he asks and Armin thinks it’s interesting that they’re both exactly the same.  They can just kiss now.  Ocean eyes dart between green and he can’t help a tiny smirk.  “You have a lot of time to make up for,” he says and Eren is quick to kiss him again, this time a bit more certain.  He wraps his arms around his neck, pulling him closer, subconsciously leaning into the touch of a hand to his cheek.  Each kiss gets more passionate than the last, and soon Eren’s tongue is slipping into his mouth, but he’s not complaining.  He lets out a breathless noise as Eren kisses him harder and he suddenly can’t think anymore.  They fall back onto the cot and Eren breaks away for a moment to give him that same smile.  “This good enough for lost time?” he asks and Armin grabs the front of his shirt.  “Are you fucking kidding me?” he replies with a smirk, pulling him back down for another kiss.  The kisses continue, trailing from lips to necks and even lower, across chests and stomachs and Armin is thanking every god he can think of that he confessed.  And as hips move, moans echo in the emptiness of the dungeon, and names rip from their throats, Armin vaguely makes a mental note to thank Mikasa later. 

[ick25]

Rockman.EXE Episodes 26 and 27. Special Summer Review!

Stand back! Iceman is gonna explode!

It’s summer everyone! This is a special review, we have reached season 2 of the first saga of Rockman.EXE! Today I am gonna review two episodes since not only are they beach episodes, but because these two episodes were never aired in America. That’s right, these are two of the four skipped episodes that were never dubbed, so in America, after Rockman’s revival, we skip to episode 28. 

Why were these episodes never shown in America? Let’s find out!

Spooky.

We open the first skipped episode in an airport where Netto seems ready to travel somewhere all by himself, with his parents and friends seeing him off.

“So what you’re saying is that if I’m losing in a Net Battle I activate the instant win button, right?”

Netto is ready to leave until his useless mom tells him something before leaving.

Playing the “favoritism card”, aren’t we? It’s bad enough that she sucks as a mom, but now she worries about his Navi more than her own son? And also, WHO LETS THEIR ELEVEN YEAR OLD TRAVEL ABROAD ALL BY HIMSELF?!

Netto’s plane leaves, and his friends let us know that he has won some kind of trip for winning second place in the N-1 tournament, right before Dekao shows everyone his swimming trousers.

Just... why?

In the plane, we see that just like with cellphones, PETs have to be turned off before take off. Netto turns on his PET and and sees the sun outside the window, he and Rockman then share a cute moment.

Aww.

The title card appears, and Netto arrives at his first destination, Uki Yuugi (Placent game) beach at the Southern Islands, where he is surprised to find that Meiru-chan and the others are there too!

I like their shared reactions. Wait, why does Rockman call Yaito “sama”?

Yaito explains, with a view of her very own comercial plane, that she was planning to take everyone to Jyawaii and decided to stop at the southern islands on the way, where she just happens to have her own summer mansion.

At the summer “house”, the PETs seem to be conected to eachother as we can see that the Navis, including Rush, are all enjoying a cyber version of the beach, each wearing a typical beach item.

Rockman looks so cute with goggles!

Everyone except for Iceman who, since he is an ice Navi, doesn’t go well with the cyber sun.

We then cut to Netto and the others playing in the ocean, until suddenly, a mechanical shark leaps out of the water over Netto’s head. It turns out to be Masa-san who is there for some reason, but why is the robotic shark huge in the next shot?

Also, does the aquarium know that Masa-san has their shark?

Netto invites Masa-san to play with them, Yaito and Meiru say that they are gonna rest at the summer house, but not before Yaito warns Netto about a Ghost Ship.

Whats with the pose? If a ghost appears to me like that, I would be really confused.

They all end up laughing about it, except for Dekao who is still spooked, and soon after we see the guys riding on a banana boat pulled by Masa’s robot shark. However, fog comes in and a giant ship appears.

The ship crashes into them and casts a net capturing Masa and Tohru while leaving Netto and Dekao in the middle of the ocean.

Back in the summer house, (where Meiru and Yaito seemed to have been playing UNO) they wonder what happend to the boys. Luckily, Yaito has access to a satelite camera where they quickly spot Dekao and Netto. Yaito decides to take action, with Meiru carrying all the PETs running after her.

And we get the reused footage of Yaito sitting in a couch and being transported to her very own submarine. This time the cloths are different, and I like how Meiru put a seat belt on the PETs.

To the Yaito sub! or how it’s called, to the “Yaito Mako”!

Netto and Dekao are paddling their way searching for the ship until they encounter the Yaito Mako that scares them to death, only to wake up inside it in the next shot.

They tell them about what happend and we see Rockman’s reaction to this.

“I wasn’t present when you first talked about it!”

We cut to and back from commercials with a new animation secuence with Rush being chased by a Mettool.

Our heroes catch up with the ghost ship under water, Yaito’s submarine then shoots inflatible bags at it forcing the ship to surface.

The group boards the ship, with Dekao clearly scared out of his wits, and of course, they decide to split up to search for the missing Tohru and Masa-san.

Dekao encounters the “ghost”, who anyone that played the second game know that it is a Null virus, and runs past Netto.

Shortly after, Yaito and Meiru-chan encounter the ghost as well.

What happend to calling her Yaito-sama?

Netto encounters the ghost and finds out that Meiru-chan has been captured in a net.

Netto tries to fight it off but his attacks go through it. The ghost leaves taking Meiru with it. Netto searches for everyone with Rockman hiding inside his PET.

They hear a bang coming from a door and after it falls over, giving both of them a heart attack, a freezing Tohru comes out.

He tells Netto that he was brought into the freezer along with the fish and that the ghost ship isn’t really haunted.

The two of them break into the ships control room where they encounter the ghost from before, Tohru tells Netto to plug-in to the wheel’s computer while he distracts it.

I think its safe to say that it isn’t a ghost, Rockman. And how does Tohru know this? Wasn’t he locked in the freezer until now?

Rockman starts deleting all of the aqua viruses, but an Octo virus absorbs all of the remaining viruses to transform into a bigger version of itself, blowing Rockman away with one attack. This causes the PET to activate the instant win program and Rockman gets the Heat Guts Style.

Which shouldn’t be the case since the Heat Style is suppoused to give him fire based attacks and the Octo virus is an aqua type. He defeats the virus and their friends roll out of a closet where the ghost kept them in a net.

They run up to deck where they find Masa-san who seems to be very good friends with the Null virus, I mean, ghost.

Masa says that he can understand the ghost because they are both “men of the sea” and explains that the ship’s A.I was infected with a virus, and since it is a fishing ship, it caught Masa and Tohru by mistake and Ibo ambushed them thinking that they wanted to steal the fish.

Oh, right, the ghost’s name is Ibo. The ship is returning underwater for some reason and Masa-san says good bye to his new friend before leaving with everyone.

In the next scene we see that everything went back to normal since Netto and friends are playing in the ocean again like nothing ever happen.

Iceman seems to be dying and nobody cares. XD 

Right after this, we cut over to Miyuki’s shop where she and Saloma are trying to close a suitcase thats blows up, followed by Saloma being embarrassed of her bikini bottom that lands on her head.

Turns out they are being called over by Commander Beef to solve a mystery about viruses becoming stronger.

And the episode ends with Commander Beef wondering about the problem and having an hallucination of Ibo where they go fishing together.

My thoughts.

This episode was weird, but that doesn’t explain why it was never dubbed, I guess it was because they spend a lot of time in the real world, running around in a ghost ship and playing on the beach, that we barely get any cyberworld action. So it was pretty boring for an anime that is suppoused to be action packed. And they never aknowlege that Ibo is in a fact a virus.

This episode introduces Rockman’s fear of ghosts that will become a little running gag in future seasons.

The next episode opens with a music video where a Hatsune Miku inspired character name Aki-chan is singing one of the weirdest and cheesiest songs I have ever read the lyrics from.

I also made a parody of this song in a short video I made with MMD, with Miku instead of Aki. Just so you know.

Tohru tells Netto that Aki-chan is the pop idol of Jyawaii aka Hawaii.

The Navis explain that they can’t touch her because her data is different from theirs. Which is noticeble considering that she is actually CGI, just seeing them together in the same shot is weird.

They complement how cute she is, even Rockman, but Roll has no problem with this since she also thinks Aki is cute.

“But if she even thinks of coming close to Rockman she wont be looking so cute anymore”

After talking more about Aki-chan, and also Masa-san complementing her fish shaped button, Yaito and Meiru appear to reveal their new outfits and poses.

The title card appears and it is explained that there is a contest coming up called  “The Real Aki-chan” where girls dress up as Aki and have to sing her songs, Netto finally realizes that Meiru and Yaito plan to enter the contest as well, but he doesn’t get scolded for his reaction since they suddenly hear someone screaming.

It is a terrified Mariko-sensei who is landing on a parachute, Masa tries to catch her, but is nowhere near and Mariko lands on her own.

Jesus Christ, Yaito! Can’t you just send her an e-mail like a normal person?!

And if Mariko-sensei hasn’t suffered enough, the wind blows the parachute away sending her flying again with Masa running after her.

This funny scene is followed by a shot of Miyuki and Saloma sun bathing in a boat before seeing Mariko-sensei pass by. They talk about not finding any clues regarding the powered up viruses and are interrupted by the Commander’s voice coming from a camera, who critizes their outfits or something.

Aren’t you supposed to be chasing Mariko-sensei who flew by just a minute ago?

For some reason we cut to Madoi who we see in some kind of photo shooting dressed as Aki-chan too, but then takes it off to reveal a full shot of herself in a bikini.

I burned my eyes taking this shot so you guys better leave me a good comment after this review.

Madoi is in a set she made because she is annoyed that everyone is at the southern islands except for her, and after this we also see Hinouken who looks like he is in Jyawaii hoping to find Netto so he can finally get his revenge, but it turns out he is just working at a construction site.

We cut back to Jyawaii where Netto and friends are walking around along with Mariko-sensei who seems to have gotten over the whole parachute incident and is looking foward to take part in the Aki-chan contest too.

I guess no one wants to tell her that she is a little too old  to be in the contest.

Suddenly, a giant trash cleaning machine appears and kidnaps Meiru, Yaito and Mariko-sensei.

The boys give chase to the machine. Netto, with Rockman’s help, takes a shortcut where he lands on top of the machine and activates its breaks. Unfortunately, it is the wrong one since there were different girls inside, they tell the boys how there were rumors that all the girls who entered the contest are getting kidnapped, which is confirm when they go talk to the manager of the contest.

The man is also the Manager of Aki-chan herself who is in a computer near them, she tells everyone about how sad she is for the contest being canceled if they dont stop whoever is kidnapping the participants. With this we notice that Iceman has a huge crush on Aki-chan as he promises that they will save the contest to make her happy again. 

Netto comes up with a plan to find the missing girls, and in the next scene we get this.

That’s it, I am blind now. I like the Navis reaction to this, though.

Iceman doesn’t agree with this plan since he thinks it is an insult to Aki-chan and that it will never work. Too bad for him a machine doesn’t see the difference and it catches them with the exact same animations from before.

After Iceman yells about them being the ENEMIES of Aki-chan, the machine takes them to an undergroud path where it dumps them in a warehouse, they slide down a shoot and Netto SOMEHOW manages to tie a wire as he falls.

The timing was so perfect I had to include that last shot! XD

They walk around and quickly find the missing girls with Meiru, Yaito and Mariko-sensei giving them a concert. Because they just had too much fate in them to even worry about being kidnapped.

Why the heck are the manager and his assistant there too?! Probably to make Iceman appear in Netto’s PET after saying that Aki-chan has gone missing. Looks like a lot happend while they were dressing up as Aki.

Was Netto’s plan for everyone to climb up that tiny wire? I know he is not a genious, but seriously!

After this fail, the cooling system of the warehouse starts to activate, luckily, Saloma and Miyuki suddenly appear to get them out.

“I think a better question here is, why are YOU dressed like that?”

Outside, Netto talks to the manager since they all find Aki-chan’s situation and the kidnapping very suspitious, so they agree to let Netto plug-in Rockman into the system to find the server where Aki-chan is stored in case of emergencies, because Aki isnt actually missing, they just lost contact with her.

Rockman types in the cheesy password, “A-R-A-I-N-B-O-W”, and various signs pop up to guide Rockman.

But Rockman is suddenly stopped by a Spooky virus. For some reason the anti-virus program isn’t working so Dekao and Tohru decide to plug-in their Navis to go help Rockman. Gutsman and Iceman coming to help distracts the virus, giving Rockman the chance to cover... whatever things it has for ears.

This confirms Rockman’s theory about Aki’s song being whats causing all the trouble.

I’m not sure how that would work if Aki wasn’t the one infected by a virus, but this turns out to be the case after Rockman, Iceman and Gutsman find a portal that transports them to the server where Aki is, only to find that her appearence have changed to an evil looking queen.

Much for Iceman’s dismay, Aki reveals that she was the one who kidnapped the girls because she is the REAL Aki-chan.

 The dark Aki sends a couple of Shadow viruses to attack them, the viruses have the ability to transform into various weapons, including a cannon, and soon they over power Gutsman and Iceman.

To make matters worse, the Shadow viruses use Aki-chan as a hostage. 

Rockman is unable to fight back until Netto realizes something suspitious about one of Aki’s buttons. After seeing Aki-chan shed a tear, Rockman gets motivated and Netto sends him a Sword to cut off the button revealing that a LV.3 Shadow virus was the one controlling her.

Netto activates the Style Change as the three viruses merge together to create a giant cannon. Rockman and the cannon’s attack collide, but Rockman’s power literally cuts through deleting the viruses.

In the next scene we get a sad looking Aki-chan worried that she can no longer be an idol after what she did, but thanks to Meiru-chan and everyone else cheering her up, she finally thanks them and vows to do her best.

What are you talking about, Rockman? What song?

 And the episode ends with everyone dressed as Aki-chan singing to their hearts content at the contest.

Tohru, you know you don’t have to dress like that, right? Also, those creepy men in the background. o-o

So what do I think of this one?

Despite my initial thoughts, Aki-chan is not a parody of Hatsune Miku. In fact, the vocaloid Hatsune Miku debuted in 2007 while this episode aired in 2002, maybe it was ahead of its time, maybe Aki-chan inspired Miku’s creation, or maybe it was an idea that wasn’t still very popular in and outside of Japan. Who knows?

This episode introduces Aki-chan who will appear in future episodes of this season, though her songs are changed for the dub to something less corny since they already changed most of the musical score of the show to a futuristic high tech beat.

This episode was probably skipped because of Madoi’s bikini scene and seeing Netto, Dekao and Tohru cross dressing. I can’t say that its also because of the girls dressed as Aki-chan because we see them dress like this again in another episode for a short moment.

The Shadow viruses looked tough in this episode, but if you play the game you’ll notice that their only weakness are sword chips, thats why Rockman was able to free Aki from the virus’s control and defeat all three of them in the end.

Speaking of viruses, since the second season is based on the events from BN2 the episodes will start to feature viruses from the second game, such as the Null and Octo virus in the previous episode and the shadow viruses in this one.

It was a fun episode, weird but charming, it’s not exactly important to the plot unless they aknowlege how the new viruses are smarter and stronger than the previous ones in future episodes.

[ccandlehead-blog]

Carthay Task 01 Part 1- Dig a Little Deeper

BASIC INFORMATION.

What is your character’s full name?: Katie Yangcho How is it pronounced?: K AI -t ee Young-ch aw Is there a meaning behind it?: When she was named there was no thought out meaning. But the name Katie means Pure or Clear in Gaelic and Yangcho means Candle in Korean Does your character have any nicknames?: Candlehead and sometimes Cupcake When and where were they born?: Carthay California on August 15th 1999 What’s their zodiac sign and what traits do they most relate to?: She’s a leo and the traits she most relates too are energetic, possessive, straight forward, impatient, and loyal. What’s their nationality?: Half American, half Korean What’s their occupation?: Sophomore student at Carthay University(Undeclared major) What gender do they identify themselves as?: Cis-Female

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE.

What’s their eye color?: Dark brown Do they wear glasses or contacts?: Nope Hair color?: Brown Have they ever dyed their hair or wanted to?: She hasn’t dyed her hair before but she does want to dye her hair green someday! Height?: 5’ 3’’ Body build?: Thin but recently she feels like she’s been gaining weight Do they have any birthmarks?: None Do they have any piercings or tattoos?: She has a lope piercing on each ear and a helix piercing on each ear. If not, do they want to get some?: She doesn’t have any tattoos and doesn’t want to get any because she’s afraid of needles Do they have a healthy life style?: NO this girl does not have a healthy life style at all. The most exercise she does is running around town and dancing. She hates eating healthy and would rather sit around playing games or watching tv then exercise. How easy do they get sick?: She’s average. She doesn’t get sick easily but also will catch colds or the flu if it goes around Any marks on their body(injuries, … )?: Surprisingly no What’s their personal style/how do they like to dress?: Her personal style is cute and girly. Katie loves cute girly clothes especially if it’s pink. She loves cute skirts, blouses and of course her favorite pink jacket. She also rather likes hats and hair accessories. What is their favorite and least favorite feature about themselves?: Katie actually really loves her nose, she think it’s an adorable feature on her. She hates her height because she feels like it gets in the way more then it helps.

PERSONALITY.

Positive traits?: Loyal, humorous, affectionate and playful Negative traits?: Codependent, selfish, judgmental and ditzy What do they consider to be the best and the worst part of their personality?: She thinks that her best trait is how fun she is! She thinks managing to throw great parties and make sure everyone is happy is a wonderful trait to have. She thinks her worst trait is her clinginess, she thinks she’s way too clingy to her friends and worries that one day it’ll cost her, her friends. But she also doesn’t know how not to be clingy. Are they more extroverted or introverted?: She’s very extroverted, she’s a rather friendly person and loves socializing Any talents?: Does playing a video game for 72 hours straight count? But for real she has a great eye for detail and an amazing talent at creating parties! What are their fears?: Loneliness, bugs and needles Do they have any phobias?: Autophobia-Fear of abandonment and Thalassophobia-Fear of the sea/deep water What is their soft spot?: Sweets of course! Katie will do almost anything for sweets especially cake and ice cream. List 3 pet-peeves they can’t stand?: Fart+burping jokes Katie can’t stand those kinds of jokes, gooey/slimy textures it just really bothers her senses and also the sound of metal grinding against metal really hurts her ears.

EDUCATION.

How far did they go in school? Are they still studying?: She graduated high school and is now a sophomore in college Do/Did they like school?: She’s not really a fan of school but knows it, occasionally, gets her parents attention so she stays in school What type of student are/were they?: Katie is the super spacey kind of student that never seems to pay attention and procrastinates on all her work but always manages to pass at the end of the day. What is/was their favorite subject?: Her favorite subject is theater tech, she’s not much of an actor but she enjoys setting up plays And their least favorite?: Math, duh! But she also doesn’t like science What were they/would they have been voted as “most likely to…” in the yearbook?: Most likely to throw the best graduation party She did

FAMILY.

Who are your character’s parents?: Jae Yangcho(father) and Cecilia Yangcho-Tracey(mother) How would your character describe them?: They’re there? Honestly when asked about her parents Katie is never really sure what to say about them. She really doesn’t know them all that well. Usually she’ll just describe them as busy. Do they have any siblings?: Yes she has five older siblings, three sisters named Lexie, Duri, and Merle and two brothers named Fletcher and Hye Are they close with their family?: No. Katie is much younger then all her siblings all of whom have moved out now. When they were around they didn’t notice her unless it was to complain about something she was doing or make fun of her. Her parents aren’t home much and when they are they avoid interacting with her to the best of their abilities. The entire family is rather distant from each others.

ROMANCE & SEXUALITY.

What’s their romantic and sexual orientation?: Katie is homoromantic and asexual both things she has not fully realized yet. Are they seeing anyone right now?: Nope! She’s single and ready to mingle! Not really, she’s mostly confused rn. Have they ever been in an relationship?: Yes she’s been in three previous relationships though she now avoids all three of her exes. Have they ever been in love?: Not yet How easy do they fall for someone?: She doesn’t fall extremely easily but it’s also not hard for her to fall for someone. She gets crushes on people after she gets to see their personality. She likes looking at people sure but for her it’s a lot about personality that counts. In their view, why didn’t any past relationships work out?: She honestly isn’t sure why. She just thinks that she and her ex boyfriends didn’t click. The real reason is she’s gay. What do they look for in someone?: She looks for confident, accepting, fun loving people. She wants someone she can have fun with and be herself around. Do they believe in love at first sight? Or fate?: She believes in love at first sight for other people but not for herself. As for fate, she’s never really thought about fate before. So she’s honestly not sure and doesn’t really care. What’s their views on romance?: Katie LOVES romance. She loves love and everything that has to do with it. She thinks falling in love is one of the most beautiful things that can happen to a person. Recently she’s become a bit scared about romance because she’s concerned she won’t ever find her special someone. Did they have their first time already?: She has not had her first time yet and is honestly terrified of ever actually sleeping with someone. How was it in their point of view?: N/A What is their view on sex?: Katie is asexual and not interested in sex. She doesn’t mind hearing about sex from others but is highly uncomfortable with the idea of sex for herself. She mostly just avoids sex as a topic about herself and tries to play herself off as cool about it. What are their turn ons and turn offs?: Turn on, genuine love and affection. Turn off, being ignored. Were they ever cheated on or have they cheated on someone?: Katie has not been cheated on before and wouldn’t cheat on someone else. Romance is very important to her and she sees cheating as an extreme breach of trust. Do they want to get married in the future?: Absolutely but so far she hasn’t found anyone she’d actually like to marry. She has a pinterest board for her dream wedding and wedding ideas though. Have kids?: Maybe but she hasn’t put much thought into having kids except she has thought that she would adopt if she had kids.

QUIRKS.

Are they right or left handed?: Right handed What’s a word that’s always on their lips?: Annoying, this is Katie’s go to insult and the word she uses most when irritated by someone or something. Is there a saying they keep on repeating?: I’m going to do something amazing, just wait and see. Do they curse?: Occasionally. Mostly when she’s really annoyed or if she thinks the situation calls for it. What’s their worst habit?: Following what others say without question. Katie is horrible about doing what others say but never thinking for herself or questioning it. This has resulted in a lack of personal identity for herself and in going against what she feels is right and wrong Do they drink or smoke? How frequently?: Katie drinks but only at parties or when she’s with her friends. She’s not a fan of alcohol but if her friends are drinking she’ll join them. She’s never smoked and doesn’t want too because she can’t stand the smell. Are they an early bird or a night owl?: Night owl, Katie is a total night owl. She hates mornings and hates being up for them. She’d much rather stay up all night partying or playing video games. How tidy is their room?: It’s decently tidy. It has clothes and her things laying around everywhere but there’s no food containers or trash or dirty dishes laying around. She cleans her room every few weeks. How long to they usually take getting ready in the morning?: It takes her between an hour and a half to two hours not including just the time she needs to wake up. Katie is the slowest about waking up and takes forever to get dressed, take a shower, put on her makeup and in general prepare for the day. She does cut off time by skipping breakfast though

FAVORITES.

What’s their favorite color?: Green! Though she has a soft spot for pink her favorite color is actually green Favorite movie?: Clueless and Happy Death Day Music Genre?: Horror and romantic comedy Food?: Ice Cream Cake Book?: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and P.S. I Love You by Jenny Han Favorite non-alcoholic drink?: Chocolate Milkshake with pink sprinkles mixed in and whipped cream! Ice Cream Flavor?: Mint Chocolate Chip or Birthday Cake Indoors or outdoors?: Indoors, Katie is honestly horrible about going outside. She spends most of her days locked up inside.

[shadowdianne]

glad I asked prompt was: set in season 1, Emma sees Mayor Mills sneaking off somewhere, and she follows a little later. Emma is suspicious of what she's up to, and arrives at the stables. She comes in to see Mayor Mills galloping around on a horse, looking all young and free. She watches, and thinks a lot. Mayor Mills doesn't see her and gets down and cares for her horse. Maybe she could see Emma and she could tell a non magic version of Daniel, and Cora's parenting. I'm writing my own version.

There you have! Thank you for the prompt ;) I’ll be keenly watching in order to not miss your story then! I hope you like my tiny version of it. 

Emma drummed her fingers against the steeringwheel, narrowing her eyes as she stared at Storybrooke’s stables standing aheadof the road. The grey-hued sky silhouetted its form and as she hummed toherself she could feel the first of many minuscule droplets of water hittingthe windscreen and reflecting the timid sunrays that did reached both her bugand Regina’s car.

Car she had been staring at for almost half anhour now after she had decided to follow the brunette back when she had seenher exiting her office with clouded eyes and pursed lips.

A part of Emma had doubted the second she hadfollowed the brunette with her eyes, seeing the woman entering into her car anddriving away with barely a glance at her back. Another part, the one who hadgrabbed her key cars and jumped into her own bug all but forgetting she hadgone all the way down to the town hall to actually ask for a date with the woman,hadn’t really minded when she followed Regina through Storybrooke’s streetscarefully trying not to get caught.

As Regina had left the town at her back,however, Emma had started to get worried and her worry had turned into confusionwhen the brunette had stopped in front of the stables. A quaint place Emma hadalready visited once or twice albeit not feeling it really welcoming.

Looking at the hour, the blonde bit down herlips and took a deep breath, not sure if it was time already for her to turnback to the safety of the town in where the possibility of the brunette findingher and trying to kill her were less than here. Curiosity, however, had broughther this far and so, without thinking it twice, she muttered a quick “fuck it”that was swallowed up by her bug before she clasped her keys with her righthand and walked out of the car.

The cold weather of fall hit her as she tooktwo steps towards the structure, hands quickly transforming into fists into herjacket’s pockets as she took one look at if before biting her bottom lip. Shehadn’t seen anyone but a puny caretaker last time she had needed to do herrounds so close to the forest’s line and a part of her wondered if that hadbeen the reason why Regina had decided to visit the small place; a way ofchecking on it. Extricating her right hand from her pocket she run it throughher tresses, not really knowing what to do.

A grunt was what decided it for her. Just asshe was about to turn towards the car and pretend she hadn’t followed Regina toStorybrooke’s stables, a whine floated towards her, brought to her by the windthat surrounded the place and made the leaves of the surrounding trees shiver andmutter around Emma as the blonde glanced around her, trying to see where thesound was coming from.

Realizing that more than the wooden buildingthe plain that stood behind it was also part of the stables, she took severalmore steps into that direction until the sight of a galloping horse around the plainmade her frown.

And if her mind had wondered already all thereasons possible for Regina to have  hadleft in the middle of the day only to drive to the stables what she found wassomething she hadn’t truly thought about because in the middle of the yard,quickly approaching while stirring an animal Emma truly felt terrified for the unmistakablefigure of the mayor stood against the greying sky, its shilouette black andbrown in a riding ensemble that became more clear as she came closer.

The sight of Regina riding the animal was whatmade Emma halt, the cold wind hitting her mercilessly as she found herselfstaring, unable to say anything. She, Emma admitted, eyes squinted, didn’t looklike the woman she had met before and for a second she could almost picture herin the book Henry didn’t stop talking about, saddle and all. The idea, despite everythingRegina had accused her on doing and their ongoing feud, made her smile.

And as she walked back to the front façade ofthe building, bug’s on sight, she couldn’t but think how the brunette didn’tseem like the cold mayor she had previously encountered before but rather…someone younger.

Emma’s skin prickled at the thought and as sheheard the grunt of the horse getting nearer, she squared her shoulders, herboots crunching the fallen leaves that created a sea of maroons, reds andyellows around her. She had still time, she reflected, to go back to the carbut, somehow, that didn’t feel like an option.

                                                              -.-

“So, this is where you come whenever you don’tfeel like sending me out of town?

Regina didn’t startle as Emma walked inside thestructure, her hands caressing the horse’s mane. She, however, sent the blondea murderous look once she turned towards her, the shadows casted by the quicklydying light outside running down her clothing which, Emma confirmed as shetried her best not to stare, was definetely different than the power suits shehad come to associate with the brunette.

“I guess asking why you are not working is awaste of time, Miss Swan.”

Emma could feel vague rage she always feltclose to Regina clouding her sight as she pointed at the older woman, notletting her flustered state shown as she kept on taking into the image ofRegina’s riding pants.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

Regina sighed deeply, her knuckles protruding asshe glanced briefly at the horse she had been riding.

“I don’t need to explain myself, Sheriff. I’myour superior.”

Emma narrowed her eyes and shrugged, the usualfire returning to her chest. Much more manageable, she thought while taking onedespondent step towards Regina, that the thoughts that had entered into herhead after seeing Regina riding.

“Then I don’t need to tell you how I need to domy rounds, madam mayor. I just happened to be near.”

Regina almost growled at her, approaching heras she tensed her upper body. Emma could feel her own body shagging in responseand for that she frowned inwardly, not having really expected her mood to swayso rapidly.

“Do what you please then.”

The words were void of any fire and Emmaconsidered leaving it like that, turning and leaving, pretending to have notseen Regina seeming carefree, happy, and not an ounce of the woman she now hadin front of her.

She, however, didn’t stop and so she spoke again,unsure.

“I never would have considered you the type wholikes to ride.” A ghost of a teasing smile found its way at the end of herwords and she could see Regina smiling slightly at them, suddenly relaxed andmore like the woman she had momentarily looked like during the first minutesthey had known each other.

“There is a type.”

There was a strange inflection on the “p”,brown eyes shining as the rumbling of the rain grew stronger above their heads,the smell of pasture clouding Emma’s thoughts as she, instead of halting, kepton speaking.

Her next words, however, fell flat.

“The ones whose horses were bought by theirmothers, yes.”

The heat had returned but this time conceleadby the ice-cold stare Regina directed at her, her elbows and cheeks anglespainted in black as Emma felt the same tingling she had felt before on the tipsof her fingers, making them twitch.

“Weren’t you leaving, sheriff?”

Regina hummed, still staring at her in the waythat made Emma always think that the brunette was constantly playing a game ofchess. Sucking on her breath and gritting her teeth, the blonde kept her ownstare, doubt ebbing again as she channeled on her own anger at Regina’s spite.The brunette’s eyes were still dark, stormy, and for a moment Emma felt her whole-bodytensing, sensing a fight that quickly left Regina’s posture as the horse at thestable pawed the hay-covered floor before neighing softly.

Turning towards the animal, Regina rose both ofher hands and caressed the animal’s skin in soothing movements, her shouldersraising slightly as Emma kept on staring, hands on her pockets and not knowingwhat to do. Her throat, she realized when she swallowed as Regina kept onlooking at the animal, felt raw and as seconds transformed into minutes shefelt a wave of tiredness washing over her.

Sufficient, she realized once Regina steeledher back once again, turning towards her with fire on her eyes, to not want tokeep fighting. For now, at least.

“There was a boy who taught me how to ride.”Regina’s voice reached her and Emma blinked, not sure why the brunette suddenlyshared that kind of story with her. The older woman seemed as surprised as shewas and for a second she rose her chin, pursing her lips into a thin line. Hervoice was steady when she spoke again but Emma could hear the echo of somethingelse entirely shimmering just below the surface. A detail she swallowed just asquickly as Regina kept on talking, lips devoid of makeup and disheveled hairthat framed far too shinning pupils. “He died.”

Emma swallowed, seeing that there was more tothe story, details that Regina was obviously hiding from her. Which, shethought as she took a big gulp of air, changing the weight of her body to thetips of her feet, was understandable.

“My mother didn’t buy me the pony, Miss Swan.”Regina’s anger was still there, burning yet controlled just on the brunette’schest, coiling on the back of her gaze when Emma stared back at her. “She didn’tlike him or how much time I spent riding nor me and she was sure I remembered that every single day. But I adored him and everything she hated.”

Emma could see the tension growing inside ofthe brunette, clawing up her insides but she remained silent. She wasn’t surethat the brunette was talking to her anymore.

“Until I didn’t have it in me.” Thewhispered admission was soft enough for Emma to pretend she hadn’t listened butshe did and for a moment the two women fell silent as the neigh of the horsesfilled the air, the creaking of the wind outside only growing as minutespassed. The scent of ozone filled the air and, for a moment, Emma could feelthe hair at the back of her neck standing, reacting to the electricity thatseemed to have started to fill the air around them as the already dim light allbut disappeared from outside.

The storm was getting nearer.

Clearing her throat as it became apparent thatRegina wasn’t going to continue, Emma glanced at her, the memory of her riding superimposingitself to the image she had had of her until now. It felt strange, shereflected, how little she suddenly didn’t want to fight as opposed as righteousshe had felt less than two hours ago.

Just as the first thunder growled at some pointstill far away from the two of them, Regina’s whole posture changed once again.Hardening her features, the older woman crossed her arms in front of her, theglow on her eyes all but disappearing as she chased Emma’s gaze with her own.

“I’m sorry.” Emma replied at the end, a whisperthat almost didn’t reach Regina.  Herwords made the brunette smile sadly but scoff just as quick.

“Don’t be. You should still be doing yourrounds, sheriff.”

And, as she turned back to the horse Emma knewthe moment had passed.

[toycarousel]

The Violet Lagoon (Cronkri SFW Intrigue)

Beneath the readmore is a FarmerHuman!Kankri X Wizard!Cronus script that was sent to me quite a while ago! It’s very well-written, and I have the author, Miriage to thank for it~!!! : D

Warnings: Mild cursing, nudity, embarrassment, bathing, sudden noises (animals in a forest type-deal).

The Violet Lagoon: 

(The hot sun shines down on a solitary traveler named KANKRI VANTAS. His footsteps cause dead leaves to crunch from beneath him and the heat does nothing to help his already sour/bitter mood. Still, he persists through the forest with a goal in mind.)

KANKRI: Should be…. almost there by now. I mean, that’s what Porrim said at least. ‘Three days journey into the Forbidden Woods then keep walking till you come across a lagoon the shade of violet and the wizard’s house is only a day’s journey from there.’ Right? I-I think that’s what she meant under that blasted dark cloak of hers. No, I mean I know that’s what she meant.

(He looks around, nervously. A bird caws from above and Kankri can’t help but give a yelp.)

KANKRI: …I hope that’s what she meant. Oh, why didn’t I listen to Karkat and just send a falcon to this wizard person! No…Why did I ever let Meenah talk me into this! (Imitating Meenah) ‘It’s not like the wizard will listen to a coward like you Kankri! I doubt you’ll even make it to his house without being eaten Kankri! Just go back to the fields where you belong Kankri!’ (He groans) She’s right though, there is no guarantee that he’ll even listen to me let alone help us! He might just curse us into sea creatures instead! Or he’ll make us all his eternal slaves! Or he’ll just block out the sun and we’ll have rain until we sacrifice to him! Or he’ll…He’ll-! 

(Kankri sighs)

KANKRI: No. Get a grip Kankri. This isn’t just to prove to Meenah you can do more than work a sickle in a field! This is for the sake of the village! Hundreds of lives are at stake! The fate of our continued survival is at stake! Our privileges as working people who need to exist are at stake! And if this Violet Sea Wizard can’t see that then I’ll just make him see or my name isn’t Kankri Vant-Ack!

(During his self-confidence building “self-speech” Kankri’s foot catches on an uprooted tree root and he suddenly finds himself tumbling downhill. He grunts and moans as his body crashes into dirt, stone, and miscellaneous twigs. More than one “Ouch!” and “Argh!” escapes out of him. Sometimes even a “Shit!” passes through his lips. Finally he stops tumbling and rolls to a painful stop.)

Kankri:….Ow…Fuck that hurt. (He picks himself up.) As if this day couldn’t become anymore unbearable. (Sighing, he tries in vain to brush the dirt and mud that caked his clothes after his fall.) …. Porrim’s going to throw a fit when she sees the state her clothes are in. I told her it was unnecessary for her to make me new clothes for this reason. Oh I’ll never hear the end of it when I see her again-

(A wolf cry suddenly cuts off Kankri’s mumbling. With a terrified gasp, Kankri’s body stiffens. He breathes heavily for a few seconds, still out of breath from his fall yet also listening out for any other wood “creatures.”)

Kankri: If I ever see her again…. Or Karkat…Or even Meenah! Oh gods I’m going to die out here aren’t I? I’m going to die and no ones even going to know that I’m dead! I’m going to die looking for a sea wizard who I don’t even know exists! I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to-wait! Is that?

(Kankri’s eyes widen and he quickly picks himself up and runs, as best he could, to what he spotted. A grin breaks out on his face.)

Kankri (Still running):…. ‘A lagoon the shade of violet’….’A lagoon the shade of violet! Porrim was right! Oh gods and goddesses above I did it! I actually did it! I found the wizard! Well, kind of. I found the lagoon, but I’m also there! I can’t believe it! I’m almost there!

(Kankri stops running and he plops down in front of the lagoon. He can’t help but marvel the color of the water. It truly is a violet body of water.)

Kankri (amazed): How beautiful…. I never expected a forest as-as terrifying as this to have such hidden loveliness. Almost makes me wish I brought my paints with me. (He draws closer and dips his hand in the water.) It’s so cold and it feels so…nice somehow. Could this be the wizard’s doing?

(Kankri removes his hand and looks around. The sun is still beating down on him, his clothes are soiled, and he’s sweating horribly but he can’t help but feel proud of himself.)

Kankri: I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to rest here a little. I mean, I have a full day’s walking ahead of me until I find the wizard’s home so I might as well take a moment to regain my breath. (He wipes some sweat off his brow, relishing in the coolness that his water soaked hand offers him.)

(He looks at the water.)

Kankri: It is quite hot today though…. and it would be unbecoming of me to present myself to such a magical being in such a state as I am in now. So I suppose…It wouldn’t hurt if I just took a moment to…. cleanse myself.

(He looks around again, even though he knows he is alone in the woods. Cautiously he pulls off his shirt, folds it neatly, and places it on top of a nearby rock. He stops however, pausing at his pants.)

Kankri (quietly): There’s no one here Kankri. This is nothing like bathing behind the barns where anyone passing by can see you. This is just you and you alone. (He takes a deep breath) Okay.

(He slips off his pants and underwear. Naked, he carefully walks into the waters.)

Kankri (Sighing): C-cold. So cold. If only we could get water this cold back at home. Might as well enjoy it while I can.

(He continues walking in until he’s partly submerged. Gulping in some air, he dunks his head under the water with a splash. He emerges and shakes his hair out.)

Kankri: Ah. That’s better.

(There are splashing sounds as Kankri washes away the dirt from his past few days of walking. Distractedly, he hums slightly to himself, enjoying the way the ice cold water cools his body temperature down. He sighs contentedly, wading back to more shallow water.)

(However… He fails to hear/notice footsteps approaching.)

???: Hey! Who’s there?

(With a gasp, Kankri turns around his eyes going wide. He’s met with the equally surprised gaze of a figure wearing a violet cloak. The stranger’s breath hitches as he gazes at the naked figure in front of him, any words dying in his mouth as his eyes travel up and down Kankri’s exposed body.)

??? (Chuckles nervously): Uh…. Hi there stranger?

(With an embarrassed cry Kankri stumbles back into the water, falling down with a splash. He raises himself to sitting position, covering himself with the violet waters and his hands as best he could, his face blushing.)

Kankri (Embarrassed): I-uh-well I um….

(Birds chirp in the distant as the stranger continues to stare at Kankri. There’s a long, long pause between the two as the stranger stares and stares and stares at Kankri. Eventually, Kankri’s embarrassment and the stranger’s stare triggers something in Kankri.)

Kankri (Angrily): Excuse me but if you would be so kind as to turn around that would be highly appreciated! In fact, I find it quite triggering that you find my embarrassment so entertaining! S-so if you would oh so kindly leave then I would very much-!

???: Whoa whoa hey take it easy chief! I ain’t laughing or anything it’s just…. It’s just been a while since I had any visitors who were well, human. Usually it’s just me and the crows. And the wolves. And the occasional rogue wind spirit or dragon.

(Kankri refuses to look at him, still stewing in his humiliation. The stranger laughs nervously.)

Cronus: Gosh, well…. I guess I’m supposed introduce myself or somefin? My name’s Cronus and I guess I live around here. What’s your name chief?

(Kankri remains silent, refusing to speak.)

Cronus: Come on, you can tell me. I don’t bite.

Kankri: …..Kankri. My name is Kankri.

Cronus: Nice name ya got there Kan. So uh, why are ya naked in my waters? Wait, better question is why are you even in these woods anyway? Humans don’t usually come to these parts just to skinny dip.

Kankri (snapping): For your information Cronus, I do not make it a habit of mine to explore dark forests in my birthday suit. I am actually on an important task to find someone and I was simply just…. taking a rest.

Cronus: In my waters?

Kankri (angrily): I was taking a bath!

Cronus (Realizing he overstepped some boundaries): Oh. Sorry for interrupting then. I mean, didn’t mean to uh, what did you call it again? ‘Trigger’ you? I’ll leave if you want me to.

(Cronus begins to leave but as he turns around another wolf cry can be heard in the distant. Kankri gasps in fright.)

Kankri: No wait! (Cronus stops, confused at the change in tone in Kankri’s voice) I…. I apologize for snapping at you. It’s just you should be aware that this…situation for me is quite embarrassing and it’s just…. I just…. Never expected someone else to be here.

Cronus: So you want me to stay?

(Kankri pauses)

Kankri: No? Yes? It’s been sometime since I’ve last seen someone and this isn’t how I’d picture my encounter with another to go. Nor is this the setting in which I pictured my encounter to go.

Cronus: The setting? Wait don’t tell me, are you scared or something?

Kankri (Quietly): Or something.

Cronus: Ah.

(Cronus looks at Kankri. Despite his earlier harsh tone, the young male in front of him doesn’t exactly look like the picture of evil. Walking towards the edge of the water, Cronus sits down and pointedly stares at a tree in the distant and not at the naked man in his waters.)

Cronus: How about this? Is this acceptable to you Kankri?

Kankri: I suppose it will be fine for now. But you must realize that when I choose to exit from these waters that you must turn away. I’m not exactly a fan of people witnessing my indecency and just because you are not looking at me does not make this any less shameful for me.

Cronus (chuckling): You got it chief. Oh I think I said this before but these aren’t just ‘waters.’ These are my waters.

Kankri: I beg your pardon?

Cronus: My waters. This ain’t exactly like the other lagoons in the forest if you haven’t noticed. Not all scummy and icky with dead stuff floating in it and shit. I claimed this beauty centuries ago so I make sure to keep it nice, clean, and cold. Not to mention violet.

Kankri: Centuries? Wait, what do you mean by ‘centuries?’

Cronus: I mean that a long, long, long time ago I decided that this place would be where I go to when I’m tired. It’s not just humans who need ‘baths’ Kan. Magical beings need to recharge too.

Kankri (Confused): Magical beings? Recharge? Wait…. (Kankri’s eyes widen) Violet waters? Y-you don’t mean to tell me that you…. that you’re… (Kankri pauses in shock) Are you the Violet Sea Wizard?!

Cronus (In a tone of annoyance): Is that what the humans are calling me these days? Geez, what a long title. Seriously can’t they just call me by my name? It’s like two words shorter than that tongue twister of a title. And what’s with this ‘sea’ nonsense. Does this lagoon look like a large expanse of salt water to ya?

Kankri: Oh gods and goddess, you are aren’t you? I uh…oh fuck! (Splashing can be heard as Kankri tries to cover himself more) I am so sorry I disrespected you and your waters sir Violet Sea Wizard! I didn’t know and-Oh gods you’re going to kill me aren’t you? Or curse me? I am so sorry I’ll just- If you give me a second to-!

(Kankri moves to get up only to find the water pulling him back down. He falls with a yelp.)

Cronus: Whoa hey chief I ain’t mad! Like I said, it’s been a long time since I had any human visitors so I’m not gonna kill you for just taking a dip in my waters. Besides, it’s not like you knew I was the ‘Violet Wizard’ or whatever so no harm done.

Kankri (bemoaning his predicament): I still can’t believe I…. In your waters no less…

Cronus (chuckling): Hey if it helps, you have nothing to be ashamed of. If anything I should be stuttering over you. You have a really nice body after all.

Kankri (blushing): I don’t know whether to apologize more or hit you over the head.

Cronus: Just trying to lighten the mood here. (He smiles) So I guess, that important ‘task’ of yours of finding ‘someone’…. That’s me ain’t it?

Kankri: Yes, you would be correct Cronus.

Cronus: So…. now what? Mission accomplished? You get to go back home a hero or do you have a message for me or somefin?

Kankri: I do actually. Have a message I mean. (Kankri takes a deep breath) You see Cronus…. my village is currently in midst of a horrible drought. The wells have dried up, the river is now a stream, and our soil is so dry is feels like sand. We are almost at our wits end so we were hoping that you would maybe possibly…. help us. I-I know that you are quite busy, but the lives of hundreds are on the line here. Men, women, and children who all deserve to live could be dying as we speak. They deserve to live and…. and I…. I am begging you…Please save my village Cronus.

Cronus: I see. That does sound like a pretty big problem Kankri. (Cronus pauses for a few seconds before he speaks in a cheerful voice) Okay, I’ll help.

Kankri: I know this is coming out of the blue for you Cronus but please- Wait (Kankri looks at him surprised)….What?

Cronus: I said I’ll help. It sounds like you guys don’t have a lot of options and I don’t like the idea of people dying without water. (Cronus shudders at the thought.)

Kankri (amazed): You will? You’ll really help us?!

Cronus (nodding): Yup.

Kankri: T-thank you…. Thank you so much Cronus! (Happiness bubbles into Kankri’s voice as he speaks) Oh you have no idea what this means to us and to me! Our village is saved! Of course we’ll also repay you once we can harvest again. My farm grows the best cherries and once we have water we can-!

Cronus: No, that’s all right Kan. I actually get all my energy from my waters so I wouldn’t want you to waste all your hard work on someone who can’t appreciate it as much.

Kankri (a little disappointed): Oh. Well, I still feel like I should repay you someway. A-are you sure there is nothing you want?

Cronus (hesitantly): Well…If I was being truthful. I kinda wanna talk more with this human who showed up naked in my waters. (Cronus grins) And I kinda wanna get to know him better.

Kankri (surprised): Really?….That’s all you want? You’ll save my entire village in exchange for getting to know me better?

Cronus: Yeah. I wanna know more about you Kan. I mean here you are, this brave guy who just waltzed into the Forbidden Woods, bathed in my waters, and yelled at me just so he could tell me to save his home town.

Kankri (blushing): Well…if that’s really all you desire….Then fine. I accept your terms Cronus.

Cronus: Great! So uh, (Cronus looks to his feet and notices Kankri’s clothes) Wait, Kankri are these your clothes?

Kankri: Yes. Though I do suppose at this point it’s more accurate to call them the remains of my clothes.

Cronus: They sure look torn up. Don’t know how much longer you’ll be able to wear them. (He examines them then looks back at Kankri) Hey I know, why don’t we go back to my house and I can lend you some of my clothes. It’s the least I could do after I…. y’know….saw. Here you can wear my cloak for now and I’ll uh, won’t look.

(Taking off his cloak, Cronus covers his eyes and extends the article of clothing out to Kankri. There’s a splashing noise as Kankri approaches Cronus and quickly takes the cloak. There’s a flurry of movement as Kankri wraps the violet garment around his body and hugs it close.)

Kankri: Thanks Cronus. You can look now.

Cronus: (uncovering his eyes) You’re welcome Kan. (He stands up and scoops up Kankri’s clothes) Here, maybe I can use some of my magic to fix your clothes once we’re back home. Come on, watch your step and follow me.

(Extending his arm out to Kankri, Cronus grins nervously down at the other. Kankri takes his arm, careful to hold the cloak against his body. They walk in silence for a few steps, leaves crunching underfoot.)

Kankri: Cronus?

Cronus: Yeah?

Kankri: Thanks…again

Cronus: No problem. (He chuckles) You know Kankri, usually people just send a falcon to ask me questions but I have to admit I enjoy this…‘one on one’ contact more.

Kankri: Oh now you tell me about the falcon.

[intoanotherether]

Autobiographical Accounts of the Misplacement of Coherent Reality

The color of the sun is green. It glitches out into pixels every few minutes due to the slow processing capabilities of the sky’s hardware. A Ford Escape drives beside me on the highway with two men in the front. The one in the passenger side wears a black shirt, no. A red shirt, no. A purple shirt. No, it’s a white shirt. Actually, let me start over. It’s not a shirt; it’s a suit. I watch him pull a piece of paper and a feather quill out. He dips the tip of the quill into a bottle of motor oil and begins to write, taking a sip from the bottle every few seconds. He packs it all away into a briefcase and leans forward, staring straight at me through the driver’s side window. In a matter of seconds, he vanishes into nothing. The man who is driving begins to apply makeup in the rearview mirror. I notice the back left wheel is missing. I continue to drive myself to the Olympics. Oh, Wait. The Olympics aren’t this year. Thinking hard about a new destination, I crash my car in a head on collision with a hearse. I black out, but wake up unscathed minutes later inside of my totaled car. In front of me, the hearse is running and appears not to have taken any damage from the accident I caused. A salary man in a suit carrying a briefcase climbs out of the backseat window of the hearse and onto the roof, where he begins to raise a family of four. I watch his eldest son graduate high school with honors, and the younger son end world hunger. His wife has no eyes, mouth, or nose. Her face is a smooth surface. I watch the salary man tie a noose around his neck and hang himself from a cloud. My car door has been impacted, and now has taken on the shape of a gate. I unhinge the gate and roll out into the rubble where I find his suicide note. It reads “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for who you are.”

Something is off, and I feel different. But I cannot seem to place exactly what it is.  I blame the uneasiness on my lack of sleep due to a recent fear that was sparked by a terrifying documentary about aphids that I had watched last weekend. As a gardener, I was absolutely mortified. I donated some life savings to a charity foundation that seeks to promote the pesticide industry. The sun felt so much brighter after my donation. I’m still smiling.

I realize that I still need a new destination. I want to make friends, so I decide to walk to the police station. I greet the officer at the front gate, and start small talk about criminals. They’re all so pathetic, I say. Complete morons. Contribute nothing to society. Free loaders. I’ve only ever sworn once, I say. It was just a bad situation, I contest. It was on the day I lost my mind, but thank goodness that I found it under my right pointer’s fingernail. I must have left it there when I went grocery shopping last. I’m against using plastic bags, so I usually carry my groceries home under my fingernails. It’s so environmentally efficient.

After my confession, I am then immediately taken into custody. “That’s an act of sin,” the officer says. I am arrested for swearing. Inside the jail cell, I light a cigarette and put my phone on the charger. The cigarette is broken and a bright light is pouring out of the end as it burns. I don’t really smoke; I just enjoy the smell of what a fabulous Los Vegas nightlife might be like. In my heart, it’s what I really want. Sometimes when I’m alone, my mind wanders around the idea of flirting with suspicious men who are scared of commitment as I win big money on the penny slots on the strip, wearing sunglasses inside. This is my second biggest lustful thought, and I tend to repress it. My repressed thoughts usually manifest into anger. I become so angry that I yell at my garden. I’ll yell things like “squash, why is it that you never call me back!?” I just need something to yell about, even though I don’t really care too much. Squash is just very hard to stay in touch with sometimes. I always apologize after, and squash is so forgiving.

My cigarette goes out and I rip the filter in half to find Los Vegas. I shove the city into my pocket and make a mental note to dispose of it later. There is no trashcan in the jailcell, and I do not litter, never have. I throw away my dreams, just like any other respectable person would. Dreaming too much and suicide are very closely linked, and some even consider the idea that they may be completely the same thing. Everyone dreams though, as sad as that is. Sleep was invented so people could dream without it interfering with reality, and admittedly sometimes, I want to go to sleep early. Some want to sleep forever.

I am charged with two felonies at my hearing. What is the second one for? I ask. They say that I cut my bangs horribly, and will be forced to wear a plastic bag over my head. I insist for paper. I tell them to think about the environment. Global warming is a threat, endangering the lives of the glaciers enough already. Pedestrian litter like plastic bags could cause them to choke, and thus will affect the harvest of their meat for the ice industry. They agree. I use a 50% off coupon for my bail charge and I am sent home with a paper bag on my head. They say I must wear it for a total of twenty hours within the week. On the back of the bag printed in bold time new roman reads “We’re so sorry. We’re so sorry for who you are.”

There are no holes cut out on the bag for my eyes to see. As I put it on, I find a screen inside with a video on a constant loop. The loop playing is of a girl in my image wearing a white slip walking between the corners of a room with no windows or door in a 6x6 enclosure. I take the bag off so that I am able to watch a documentary about fiber optics installation. I put the bag back on and the loop has changed. The girl in my image is now laying down on the floor of the room, staring blank up at the ceiling. I find my physical body forced to the floor, unable sit back up. I say that I must water the garden. I manage to lift my arm so I can take the bag off. The zucchini is dying. I tend to the zucchini, nursing her with milk and sugar. I put the bag back on. The loop has changed again: the girl is now strapped down in a chair, and is having a knife pushed into her leg by an invisible force. I feel a sharp pain on the leg of my physical body, and I am deeply wounded. The wound heals at the beginning of each loop. As it plays over and over again, my body is in sync with every repeated puncture. I can’t take the pain, and shake my head until the bag falls off.  The bag hasn’t been on my head for even an hour.

I put the bag back on. The girl in my image is sitting in the 6x6 room dressed like an angel. She’s strapped tightly down into the chair from the previous loop. Her halo was only very recently spray painted gold; it’s still wet and dripping. There is a man behind her with a chainsaw. He is wearing a suit and has name tag on that reads “Hello, my name is Adam.” He runs the machine down on her shoulder, severing her arm. I panic, and shake my head so the bag falls off. My arm is on the other side of the room, and the man with the chainsaw is behind me. He switches the machine to “off” and pulls a briefcase out from the inside of his blazer. He opens it and retrieves a letter and reads what is written on it to me. I can’t understand what he is saying because his voice is censored. His mouth is moving but instead of speaking, different tones replace the fluctuation in his voice. In the middle of reading, he begins choking and falling to the ground slowly, his hand reaching into the back of his mouth as if something was lodged back there. He pulls a battery out and sets it on the counter. It’s a triple A battery, and it would just be a perfect replacement to the dead one in my sea salt heating lamp. If only this battery he pulled out wasn’t dead too. I was really close with my sea salt heating lamp, and we were even interested in each other at one point. All of a sudden, one day, it just wouldn’t turn on any more. I cried myself to sleep, thinking it was all my fault. I swear I never meant to take too much, and always gave back what I could in our relationship. And I could have bought a new battery for it, but even if it turned back on, I knew that it just wouldn’t be the same. What if one day it just so suddenly went out again, just like that? I wouldn’t be able to trust that it was going to stay lit for me. It is a painful thing to think about, but I did move on. I miss the gentle glow of its company on lonely nights. It’s been so much darker in my house since it died.

I stop reminiscing on those days and watch this man who is apparently named Adam begin to choke up gears and computer chips, making just the biggest mess. I run to the bathroom and dampen a towel, placing it on his forehead as he kneels over spitting up more wires and screws. As he recovers and stands up, he starts crying tears of oil. I fetch a bucket and start collecting them so that I am able to water my garden in the morning. He cleans up and takes a seat, where he pulls out a new arm from his pocket. There is a label above the elbow that reads “wash with like colors.” He motions me over, and glues it into my arm socket. It is fully functional, all except for the fact that I cannot hold my arm any higher than my head. He pulls out an electronic translator and shows it to me to read “will you please help me find a new battery?” Using the translator, I agree to help and in addition, invite him to a magic show happening inside of the five-star nuclear power plant a few blocks away from my apartment. He agrees and I show him to my car, a 2004 Dodge Neon. I’ve never really been on a date before, and never imaged that it would be with someone so incredibly handsome. I just can’t wait to sip on the finest nuclear waste as I watch a girl be sawed in half. The drinks are brewed right inside the very place itself, and served to you during shows. It’ll be just like the movies. I hope he doesn’t see me blushing.

After the wreck, my insurance company was happy to pay for all the damages. My car was delivered back to me in a package on my front step, and they had even filled the tank for me. Kind people work at my insurance company, and whenever I call, we have long conversations into the night. We often talk about unfulfilled fantasies, but sometimes we will have long drawn out arguments over how the weather really is. However, that’s rare, and we usually just agree to disagree. Clearly, it isn’t raining outside. I just can’t believe some people thrive off lies and deceit. I tell myself that I’m just too good for that, but then I remember that I have no one else that will care to listen to my lustful desire of someday becoming a grocery store clerk. It’s my number one most terrible thought. No one else knows how much I secretly love to run plastic bags through my fingers. It is such taboo, as I stand in solidarity with the glaciers. I try my hardest to keep true to my ethics, despite these forbidden, disgusting thoughts.

My car only has a driver side; there is only one row of seats, and can only fit two people. There are only two wheels, and the radio is only able to play static. I blast the static through the speakers on slow, quiet days. The trunk of my car is the size of a shoebox. In the trunk, I keep a gun loaded with my prescription sleeping pills. I shoot one into the back of my throat whenever I feel like dreaming.

We drive to the nearest drugstore for a new battery, which is located in the middle of a sulfur field off the side of the highway. It’s by where I had gotten into my crash. The hearse is still running where it was on the day of the accident. There is a small memorial on the roof for the salary man. His suit is folded up in front of the memorial on top of his briefcase, where I imagined he kept all of his most important documents. After observing the hearse situation, I see that the entire left side of the drug store is absent of a wall, and also functions as a drive-through window for those in a rush. The greeting card aisle is the first upon entry. I observe a middle aged man picking out an “I’m sorry” card. The man reaches his hand under his toupee, pulling out an ink pen to sign the card “To dearest Jeremy, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for who you are. Sincerely, Jeremy.” The battery section shares an aisle with the stained-glass section. Although it is beautiful, I am reluctant to buy the stained-glass piece that depicts two salary men fighting over whether or not the next investment should be in rosemary or basil. Personally, I would pick rosemary, as the rosemary industry as of recently has been successful, as opposed to the basil industry. Every basil store that I have passed lately has been under foreclosure. I’m a gardener, so I must pay attention to this kind of thing. The man with me who wears the nametag that reads “Adam” stares into the glass-stained piece with lust and jumps into the picture. He wants to start a business venture with them. The subject matter in the stained-glass piece changes to an image of Adam in my garden with the salary men. They are offering him a share of stock in their enterprise, and he becomes ecstatic. I know in my heart that it is what he truly has always aspired for. It was the dream he could never live. He just couldn’t pass it up. If I had jumped in too, I would have picked the share of stock right out of their hands. I know I was told not to by an omnipresent force, but I like to break the rules sometimes. Now that Adam has transcended, I am left alone in the drugstore. I feel grief and heartbreak. “We could have been something, Adam! I never told you, but I was in love with you! I have never before been so attracted to a man’s voice. I wanted you to censor out everything that I didn’t want to hear! You used me, Adam!” I shout into the stained-glass. I pick it up and throw it to the ground in tears. The shatter catches the attention of the cashier, who is applying his makeup in a mirror behind the beauty counter. He drags me into the backroom: a 6x6 enclosure with no windows or door, where he straps me down into an electric chair. I admire the tattoo on his neck of the Los Vegas strip. He takes a chainsaw out from the locker behind him. He revs up the machine, and runs it along his tongue. He begins to bleed out light from his tongue; it’s a blinding bright light that falls from his mouth and quickly floods the room. “This is what heaven looks like. And you, you look like an angel. Your time is up.” He presses a button on the wall and I am shocked by the electric chair until I am pronounced dead. My vision is black, and there is nothing. I take the bag off my head.

I hold the bag in my hands in my living room, and turn on the television to Local News Channel 5. There is breaking news. Just wonderful! I’ve been so bored sitting alone with this bag on my head. The newscaster announces that my twenty hours of wearing the paper bag are up, and displays an image of my gravestone. Congratulations, he says. You’ve made it to heaven. I sigh heavily with relief and wait for my letter of discharge from life in the mail.

Three days later, I find an envelope in my mailbox. The return address cannot be displayed here for the all intended purpose of protecting the safety of the sender. I excitedly open it up and take out the contents; it’s a postcard with an image of my own apartment on the back. It reads: “We’re so sorry. We’re so sorry for who you are.” I pin the letter up on the north wall of my room. I notice my gun is missing. I fall into my bed and beg for a dream.

[tamaramalara13]

Chaos's Assassin 2

“You know you’re not very good at hiding.” Lucas Nadir said. His eyes glued to the spot I was standing In.

“I know,” I said, stepping out of the shadows “I need to work on that. Plus, I prefer face to face confrontations.”

“Fair enough.” He replied, taking out a long machete and a cloth, and wiping the blood stains off the weapon.

“Hmm. So I guess you won’t let me kill you in peace then.”

“Not a chance.” He replied, throwing the cloth away and getting into a fighting stance.

I nodded and drew executioner, my sword. He was standard size, black with a silver hilt. I had got him when I had first come to Chaos’s planet. I smirked and waited for him to make a move. He complied. He ran towards me aiming a thrust towards my chest, I parried and threw one of my own. He slashed at my head but I managed to duck just in time. We kept at this for a while. Our weapons clashing together in arrays of sparks. He slashed at me, cutting into my chest, leaving me gasping at the gash of blood in my skin. Staining my top. Dripping like warm, sticky sauce down my chest.

I kept going, jumping over the table and couch. But I could feel my energy waning. My movements getting slow and murky, like moving through a swamp. Soon I knew I would be overthrown. I did something drastic and very desperate. He was good, I knew it. But I was good too. I hadn’t been planning to use my powers, but it seems I would have to execute plan B… well, to be honest, there hadn’t even been a plan A. I had been winging it. I’m pretty awesome at that.

I concentrated on the water in his blood and froze it, bringing his body temperature down below zero. Very much below zero. He froze on the spot. I then turned my attention to the water in his brain. I froze that too. Lets just say, Lucas Nadir was now a human icicle. I walked away. Job done.

“Kakés!” Chaos Called.

…

“Kakés Epilogés!” he was screaming now.

“What?” I yelled back.

“We have a meeting,” This time he was closer, “where are you?”

“Everywhere…” I whispered in his ear, sneaking up on him.

He screamed, his eyes bulging and his hands waving everywhere as the creator of all things terrifying, died. Just kidding!

I burst out laughing.

“I hate it when you do that.” he said, slightly ashamed, but having finally gained control of his wits.

“You scream like a little girl.” I choked out between laughs.

“Shut up.” he snapped back. Pouting like a child. His little tantrums no longer surprised me.

“Everytime.” i said, wiping tears of laughter from my eyes.

“Shut up.” he repeated. I simply chuckled.

“So what was it you wanted?” I asked him, still smirking from our little episode.

“You’re supposed to be at the debriefing.”

“What debriefing?” I asked him innocently.

“Very funny, I’m laughing my head off. Now go to that debriefing!”

“Fine.” I huffed.

Nightmares. I don’t normally get them anymore. Dunno why, just don’t. It’s been years since I last had a nightmare. 11,615 to be exact. They started when I came here and only stopped after I had been here for 385 year’s. Of course, I had had nightmares before I had come here. Only I don’t speak of them. Apparently today my brain had decided to torture me. It wasn’t as bad as I had feared. Only memories. And not even bad ones. Small things.

There was one of my mother and I. I was two and we were on a familiar beach. My mother had just remarried but he had stayed behind to play poker with his friends. Not that I was complaining. I sat on the beach making a sand castle whilst my mom sat down drinking blue tea, watching me. It was a happy memory, but painful as well.

The memory changed.

Next was the memory of myself and some old friends from an old school, Goode High. We were at an ice cream parlour just past 38th street. This memory was painstakingly hard to watch. We were all laughing at a joke my friend Luca had told about my other friend Roby. A moment that made my heart fill with reminiscent happiness.

Till it changed once again.

This time I was in Manhattan… Alone… I was seven years old… It was the day I had run away from a random boarding school I had been sent to… I didn’t understand how this was a happy memory, but for some reason… I felt happy… I felt… Elated…

Then I woke up.

No screaming don’t worry, simply silence… The worst kind… The kind  that seemed to engulf you on all sides… swallow you up… drown you…

For some reason the cafeteria was eerily silent, you could hear a pin drop. Well, actually you wouldn’t because we don’t keep pins here. Chaos likes playing with unnecessary sharp things. But don’t ask me why it was quiet. I’m always the one kept in the dark. Chaos hadn’t shown up, and the army was eating silently. Almost as If they knew something was going to happen. Strange people. And aliens. We’re not racist.

I sat down at my usual table and started eating my blue pancakes, they tasted like home…

“Omega!”

My head jerked up at the sound of my name. I turned to see a figure standing at the doorway… A blue figure… oh dam.

“Hah… hi Chaos…” i laughed nervously, rubbing the back of my neck.

“What did you do!” He shouted at me. I burst out laughing, unable to keep it in any longer.

“It’s not funny!” He whined. I just kept laughing.

“I can’t even…” i said gasping for breath. You would laugh too, the paint was dripping everywhere, leaving a trail of blue wherever he went. Of course I probably shouldn’t have use blue, everyone knows it’s my signature colour.

“What on planet 26 happened?” Jack shouted, taking charge. By now I was literally dying in my seat.

“I forgot… I set up… that… prank!” I said between breaths.  

Chaos smiled a sickly sweet smile and held out his arms as if offering a hug. My eyes widened. I turned and tried to make a dash for it but some members of the army were already forming a barricade around me. Trapping me inside. One of them being Rebecca. I pouted, widening my sea green eyes and puffing out my bottom lip, I was wearing my favourite shirt (my green one with the ugly cat printed on the front) and I had no intention of running it. Her smile simply widened as she shook her head. Her brown hair falling perfectly around her blue face. Did i mention she’s not human? No? Oh well. Now you know.

“I guess I deserve it…” i said to myself. Chaos came towards me, the blue paint still dripping wet. I knew I would look like a smurf after this. Then he hugged me. When he let go I knew I looked ridiculous without even having to look at myself. I couldn’t help it. I laughed right along with them.

“Omega! You’re back!” Yelled Lily as she ran up to me.

“Yup,” I replied, picking her up and holding her against my hip, “I guess I am.”

“Why is there blue behind your ear?” she asked, pinching the right side of my head.

“Ah, missed a spot.” I muttered, amusedly shaking my head.

“Your parents back yet?” I asked her as we walked through the streets towards her apartment building.

“No.” She said, pouting a bit.

“Where exactly did they go?”

“Some planet called Earth.”