#Zero Gravity Management

[swankifyed]

Just remembered that the Wicked movie will be split into two and Chu said "[so] we can tell the story of Wicked as it was meant to be told" and Schwartz said "It’s not just about overall length, it’s about the audience needing a breather after one of the great Act 1 closers of all time. We found it very difficult to get past Defying Gravity without a break.. That song is written specifically to bring a curtain down"

[biggaybunny]

The inherent conflict of being alive is that your cells just love water. Great stuff for cells. Excellent for transporting things around in, really helps counteract gravity and make that 3rd dimension fully accessible. You as an organism however, want atmosphere. It's got all those awesome gases, like oxygen. Those gases are great! But they're not very good at getting in the water. Lots more of them outside the water.

Now some organisms went ahead and said "well, our cells want to be in the water, we're made of cells, we're staying in the water". And I respect that! Gotta respect that. Lots of 'em stick to the surface, get a little bit of the good gases, but keep themselves nice and watered up (wet) to keep their cells happy. Some make do with whatever cool gases have managed to dissolve into the water, thanks to a process known as "churning that shit up" that happens on the water's surface. Doesn't work out great for them, but you know, they made their decision and they committed to it. You gotta respect that.

Now some organisms, especially a lot of old ones, were afraid of commitment. They hung out at the water's edge, breathing all the gases and shit, but still needed to make sure they could stay wet. Like, their plan was to leave the water, but stay wet. Not a great move, if you ask me. Usually it works, but only until it doesn't. You ever seen dried up moss? Ask it how it's "stay wet but not in water" plan went. It can't answer you. It fucked up. That's what you get for not committing.

Now trees though, trees had the other idea. Trees and some other plants were like, no problem. I'm gonna take my water with me and never ever let it go. They developed specialized cells and shit. They got whole layers dedicated to keeping the water the fuck in. They got other cells dedicated to hunting down any water in a square fuckometer and taking it for themselves. That's hustle. That's a game plan. Some plants got so good at it they saw these dry-ass stretches of land that saw rain less often than you saw your mother smile as a child and were like "okay but is the amount of water not literally zero? Yeah? We're good."

The moving orgisms tried to copy trees, naturally. Making hard outer layers to trap the water in for their cells. But it was pretty weak. They kept going on about needing holes for the moisture to leave, and wet surfaces for their eyeballs. Then some of us got stupid and decided maybe we only needed like a half-decent layer protecting our water. "Semi-permeable" they marketed it as. Oh it's fine they said. We'll live somewhere wet, they said. Yeah how'd that work out for that moss again.

And now I get a headache if I go like 3 hours without drinking a glass of water. I should've been a pine tree.

[chaos-in-deepspace]

L&DS Zayne: Heartwarming Encounter | 18+

This was written right after I listened to Zayne's Affinity 125. Y'all let me tell you a secret...I don't write these things. I get possessed. When I tell you I wrote this in an hour and a half...I don't even recall writing it. I just listened to the audio, opened a doc, blacked out, then suddenly I came to and there was an entire fic written.

♡(ᓀ‸ᓂ)♡ Pairings: Zayne x Reader ♡(ᓀ‸ᓂ)♡ Warnings: Public settings, Zayne freezing, Submissive Zayne, Multiple Orgasms, Unsafe Sex, Creampie, Riding, Almost Caught. I'm not sorry Dr. Greyson ♡(ᓀ‸ᓂ)♡ Synopsis: Zayne's Evol had been acting up, and being the benevolent partner you were, helped him and cuddled against a couch. However, nothing could remain innocent when it came to the two of you, especially not when you were in his office. ♡(ᓀ‸ᓂ)♡ Word Count: 3.8k

Disclaimer: This is an original fan work for “Love and Deepspace”. Do not repost on other platforms or plagiarize. All characters shown in this fic is 18+.

Blog Information | Masterlist

Zayne

Heartwarming Encounter

You were a mix of emotions when you saw Zayne originally. First you felt a hint of anger, then it faded to almost disappointment and worry. You had always told him that if his Evol was acting up, to let you know. He didn’t even realize that you had been visiting him at his office until he came inside to see you relaxing with your feet propped on his desk.

You weren’t surprised in the least when the doctor dragged you to the couch with him. His arms wrapped securely around your waist as he pressed his face into your neck, spooning you from behind. His hands ran under your shirt as he tried warming them.

You were grateful that you had somewhat trained him to not be afraid of touching you when this happened. A few months back he would’ve told you not to touch him, that you’d both end up freezing. He had gotten over that quickly once you figured out that resonating would help him a lot.

The ice had melted at this point and you two were left there, relaxing on the couch as the stress of his day melted away…literally. Your stomach was wet from the melted ice and his fingers pressed into the skin there as though trying to massage it slightly. You let out a small hum of acknowledgement, realizing that he was only doing that to get your attention.

“Thank you,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to the back of your neck after a few more seconds of stagnating silence. You let out another hum and spun around in his grasp, cupping his face and staring at those breathtaking hazel eyes that always made you weak.

“So were you planning on contacting me this time?” you murmured, your grazing his bottom lip as you zeroed in on it. Zayne’s mouth twitched slightly into a small smirk as he looked down at you.

“If you weren’t already here, I could’ve handled it myse-ow,” he winced as you pinched his lip and glared at him.

“Zayne,” your voice was stern. How this man managed to take care of literally everyone in Linkon City except for himself managed to always rile you up. It was a miracle he wasn’t dead yet with these antics.

He let out a sigh once you released your grasp. “I know, my apologies,” he murmured, leaning in and placing a chaste kiss on your lips. You tried following him, but he backed away too much. Before you could even pout, you felt your center of gravity shifting. 

Zayne sat up on the couch with you straddling his lap. You let out a small huff of amusement at this, now freely being able to lean down and capture him into a proper kiss. You gently nibbled on his lower lip, begging for entrance that he managed to deny you, much to your own frustration.

He parted from you, peppering kisses down your neck with small nips. The wet smacking noise of his kisses sent a flush on your face, the sound echoing in his small office as he managed to leave small marks all over you.

You shift in your spot, feeling something underneath you. You chuckle at knowing just how easy it was. “You know, Doctor, I think your heart rate might be going a bit crazy. You alright?” you teased him, tugging at his hair to detach him from your neck before you were covered in hickies.

“As a person’s body temperature decreases, their heart rate increases,” Zayne began, almost like this was an afterthought. “Yes, my heart is beating more quickly compared to before, but it’s not because of the cold.”

You let out a hum, rolling your hips. “Oh, then is the increased heart rate because of this?” you said, repeating the motion as Zayne audibly groaned at the sensation. “You know, this is rather naughty. Especially since we’re still in your office,” you commented.

“It’s alright, the door is locked. No one will walk in on us,” he said, his lips finding yours once more as he deepened the kiss this time. His tongue ghosted over yours as he moaned unabashedly into your mouth. You could feel yourself getting aroused, the throbbing between your legs intensifying with need for the man in front of you.

Still, you had to tease him. You tugged the hair at the nape of his neck, making him groan from the rough treatment as his head snapped back. “Are you telling me you were freezing to death, saw me in your office, and immediately locked the door so you could bang me after you felt better?”

Zayne let out an amused huff. “It never hurts to be prepared when it comes to you,” he admitted and you rolled your eyes. 

You felt his kisses back on your neck, pressing down and nipping on the skin as if his life depended on it. Perhaps today he was feeling extra possessive as he was intent on leaving as many marks as possible. His hands gripped your thighs tight enough that they might have bruises in the following days.

You mumbled his name, getting his attention back on you as you locked lips with him again, leaning closer so your chest pressed against his own. He was certainly getting warmer as your hands played with his tie, tugging it so he’d be forced down to your height.

You began rolling your hips over his clothed cock again, loving the small whimpers coming from him as he bucked into you, trying to chase a high. You chuckled, knowing that if you really wanted to you could have him spilling in his slacks in minutes. Still, you wanted more of a show, However, something needed to be dealt with first.

“Zayne, you’re being too loud,” you whisper. “We’re still at the hospital. If someone walks by the door, they’ll be able to hear all those pretty moans.” You both hated and loved the idea of that. On one hand, his noises were for you and you alone. On the other, it would be nice if some of the nurses learned to back off.

“Once we get started, you won’t be any better,” he reminded you. You let out an annoyed groan in response.

“This isn’t about me.” You didn’t want to admit it, but you were pouting ever so slightly. “If you’re not quiet, Zayne, I’ll need to gag that pretty little mouth of yours.”

“If I’m not mistaken, all the mouth gags are at the apartment,” Zayne said and you scoffed at the idea.

“Zayne, sweetheart, anything can be a gag.” You informed the good doctor, “In fact, you happen to have a very pretty one right here.” Your hand went to the silky material of his tie, the green fabric would look perfect around his mouth. 

You watched his ears turn red, the most noticeable place when he began blushing. You chuckled as you worked the tie off him and wrapped both ends around your hands, showing it off as you wiggled your eyebrows. “Now be a good boy and open wide for me, honey,” you said as you brought it down to his mouth.

He opened his mouth slightly, but you gripped his jaw and forced it wide enough to place the tie inside. You wrapped it securely around his head and leaned forward, pressing a quick kiss to his lip. “Good boy,” you muttered. “That comfortable for you?” You waited to see him nod before continuing, “Good, then be quiet for me.”

“Gonna warm you up, okay?” you whispered close to his ear, your finger going down and unbuttoning his shirt to allow your hand to run across the expanse of his chest. You trailed down, feeling the soft hair that led down to his cock, until your hand pressed on his straining erection through his pants.

Zayne’s hips rolled into your hand, almost pleading for friction and you heard a slight whimper from beyond the gag. You smirked, pressing down a bit more before showing some mercy. You unzipped him, pushing his pants down his waist until you could see the wet mark on his underwear. You licked your lip, one finger pressing on the tip so you could feel just how wet he had gotten.

“Fuck Zayne, just from a little grinding?” you teased, watching the man glare at you. You shrugged, finally taking his cock out. You didn’t bother with formalities, your wrist twisted just right as your thumb slid over his frenulum. You knew the fastest way to get your doctor to cum, your hand sliding easily with the lubrication his cock provided you.

With how worked up he was, the wet squelching sound wasn’t too surprising as you easily worked him up. His face flushed as he tipped his head back, looking at the ceiling for a moment before those piercing eyes were back on you. You shivered under his gaze as it locked onto you while you fucked his cock with your tight fist.

You felt him pulsing in your hand, his hips bucking up to meet you every time. You hadn't even done much, leaving his balls alone this time around as you mainly focused on the head and shaft. Yet itt twitched and leaked pre-cum to the point where you thought he might’ve already orgasmed.

Still, you knew his tells, and from how vocal he was getting from behind the tie gag, he was close. You suddenly let go of his cock, watching as it hit his stomach. A small, sticky and transparent trail of his pre stuck to his abs and you looked over at your hand. You licked some of the substance off, rolling your eyes back in a dramatic show as you groaned.

“Baby, you taste so good,” you groaned. “Wish you could taste it.” His cock twitched at your debauched words. It was then you realized something. He might’ve been a good boy for you, but whenever you ruined an orgasm he never just sat back. You also happened to have only gagged him. Everything else about him was free, including his hands that had previously been on your thighs.

One hand goes over to the gag, easily untying it and letting the fabric pool around his neck as he looks at you. “Is that so?” his voice was husky as he grabbed your messy hand, bringing it to his mouth. His tongue licked a strip up your palm, tasting the saltiness of his own pre without breaking eye contact with you. “Perhaps I should give you a taste of your own medicine. I am your doctor, after all.”

You let out a small gasp as he lifted your legs up, pushing your pants down. When you seemed to fight him in taking them off, all he had to do was cast one stern look. You stopped resisting and instead helped him take off your pants, leaving your underwear on. Without bothering to take the fabric off, he simply opted to push it to the side. He plunged two fingers inside your heat, unconcerned with working you open with just one first.

Your entire body lurched forward, your hands grasping his shoulders as he mercilessly pumped his digits into you. “F-Fuck, Zayne, slow down,” you whimpered out, feeling your legs shaking already from the brutal pace. Your front rubbed up against him as you tried rolling your hips in time with his thrusting. 

You let out an actual yelp when you heard a loud slap sound echo in the room, followed by a stinging sensation on your ass. You glared down at Zayne. “H-hey, do you want to be caught?” you grumbled, but your voice turned back into moans as he managed to find that sweet spot inside of you that always had you turning to mush in his hands.

“You were the one who started this, were you not?” he reminded you, the hand that slapped your ass earlier gripped onto the flesh there and gave it a squeeze. You let out another whimper, feeling your peak growing tantalizingly close but this wasn’t how you wanted to cum.

You grabbed his wrist and stopped him from further finger-fucking you into a whimpering mess. He looked at you curiously, noticing the strong flush covering your cheeks. “W-wait, why don’t you just fuck me already. It would feel better.”

“And what have you done to deserve it?” he asked and you huffed.

“Did you want a list? We can start off with me unthawing your ass,” you snapped back. He smirked at your quick comeback, loving it when you got a bit feisty. While he was amazing at taming brats, sometimes he liked the fight, especially when you got fucked dumb from his cock soon after your witty remarks were made.

“Is that so?” he mumbled. He took his fingers out of you and pressed them to your lips. You didn’t hesitate to part them, licking the digits and groaning at your own taste. He slid his fingers deeper into your mouth. As soon as you were almost gagging, you felt him sheathe his entire cock into you in one thrust.

Thankfully he had somewhat gagged you or else the scream you let out would have alerted the entire security team at the hospital. Zayne was huge. It normally took plenty of prep time and sometimes lube before you could take him. It seemed he really was done with your bratty attitude as his hips began thrusting up into you, not bothering to let you get used to his size. The stretch stung a bit. Thankfully you two fucked often enough that your body seemed to almost remember, loosening up slightly as he pounded into you.

He took his hand out of your mouth, dragging you down for a kiss as you began matching his thrusts.  Your hands grasped his biceps, nearly tearing the fabric around them. You let out a gasp as his hand slapped your ass again, jostling you forward on his lap. His hands then found your thighs, using them as leverage as he worked your body in time with his own.

Your orgasm was approaching faster than you anticipated. You could feel your front rubbing against him and the familiar coil inside your stomach. Still, you wanted to see him come undone before you. With your new resolve, you managed to adjust yourself enough so that both of your arms were in front of you.

You then pushed him down, making him let out a startled gasp as his back collided with the plush couch. “Not so fast, Zayne.” You chuckled as you began riding him, rolling your hips at a breakneck speed as you tried to get him to cum before you. “I was in charge first, yeah?” you chuckled.

Zayne let out a groan. His hands squeezed your thighs, but let you control the pace otherwise. You felt far too good on top of him and judging by how you had edged him earlier, it was only a matter of time before he came.

“Come on, my love. Cum for me. Fill me up,” you said between broken moans, your hands resting on his chest for support. You forgot how much effort it took to ride him like this, but you weren’t about to quit. Not when you could feel his cock twitching inside you and saw how his blush spread down his exposed chest.

“You’ll be the death of me,” he groaned out, bucking his hips up into you a few times. He then let out the most beautiful groan known to man as he pumped his seed inside of you. Feeling his warm release was the final straw as your legs clamped down around his hips, your entire body clenching as you hit your peak.

You let out a few whimpers as you rode out your own orgasm, feeling his stomach tighten under your grasp as you did so. You felt amazing as you panted out his name, looking down at him with a dopey grin plastered on your face. “Fuck, you’re amazing,” you murmured, your hips rolling leisurely on him.

Zayne grunted, sitting back up with you still in his lap. His cock nestled perfectly inside of you as you felt it softening. “I feel like that should be my line, Snowflake,” Zayne said, pressing soft kisses along your jawline.

You looked down and noticed that some of his release was dripping out of you and onto his lap and you chuckled. “Damn…think we can get the cleaning crew to mop up this mess?” you joked. Before Zayne could say anything you both froze. There was a knock on the door and you both slowly turned. The doorknob jiggled a bit as whomever was out there attempted to open it.

Zayne bit back a groan, feeling how you clenched around him in what he assumed was fear of being caught. His hands went to your waist as he leaned close. “Don’t say a word. He’ll go away soon,” he whispered, pressing a kiss behind your ear after.

“Doctor Li, are you in there?” You recognized the voice as Doctor Greyson, making the situation even worse. You went to Greyson on days Zayne couldn’t see you. The thought of being caught by him…oh wait. Why should you care?

You bit your lip, rolling your hips against Zayne’s sensitive cock. The man, not expecting you to move like that, let out a grunt and his hands squeezed you tighter. The noise was audible enough to the person outside apparently as midway through knocking again it stopped. You were silent for a moment before you heard Greyson leaving the door in a rush.

You snickered, knowing the man probably realized something was going on behind the closed doors. Zayne, however, was not amused as he pinched your thigh, making you gasp.

“Are you proud of yourself?” he asked and you continued laughing at his question.

“I mean…kinda? Got him to leave, and I bet if anyone needs to speak with you tonight, he’ll tell them you’re busy,” you said with a shrug. You ground your hips back down onto him and Zayne hissed, his sensitive cock not knowing if it wanted you to continue or stop.

You did it one more time and he whimpered, making everything seem worth it. “Zayne, I can feel you twitching inside me,” you teased and he grunted.

“Then perhaps you should take responsibility for once,” he said, almost gritting his teeth. You did adore the man, and the thought of not letting him finish was a bit too cruel. Still wanting to spoil the ever loving hell out of him you raised your hips and then sat back down, watching how his eyes rolled back. You decided one more round would be fine.

You could see Zayne was panting underneath you as you wrapped your arms around his shoulders, lifting yourself until the tip was almost sliding out then slamming back down. This got a loud moan from the two of you, and at this point there was nothing you’d be able to do if someone overheard. Lying would get you guys nowhere when the obscene sounds of skin-on-skin slapping and the wet squelching of where you were joined would tip off anyone nearby.

Zayne began thrusting up into you, and without you even realizing it his hands were on your hips as he controlled the pace. You’re too far gone though, your entire body buzzing as you felt that familiar coil already forming. You wanted to cum so badly and if Zayne was going to help speed up the process then so be it.

Your hands dug into his shoulders as you let out moan after moan, so loud that Zayne had to lean forward to capture your lips with his own to stop the noises from escaping. You were drinking up his own moans as well, feeling how your legs were shaking with your impending orgasm.

When his lips detached he went to your neck, pressing a few more kisses before he placed one on your shoulder. Suddenly you felt teeth and yelped, knowing the bastard bit you. You groaned in frustration, knowing you wouldn’t be able to hide that one with some of your shirts. 

You manage to push him back down, but this time he wasn't letting up as he continued fucking into you. “B-behave,” you groaned out, pressing small kisses and nips of your own on him. Zayne had a good rule to not leave marks in noticeable places since he had a reputation, but if he was going to play dirty then so would you.

You press kisses along his jaw until you happily sucked a dark purple mark right above where not even a turtle neck would be able to hide it. Zayne knew exactly what you did, but judging by how his cock was twitching so deliciously inside of you, you had a feeling it only spurred him on.

“C-close, cum with me,” he said between his teeth, trying his damndest to be quiet. Knowing that ship had sailed and sunk long ago, you chuckled as you leaned down to kiss him. It was sloppy and most of it was tongue and teeth as you tried finding some sort of rhythm, but the sensations were too much.

Your hands grasped at him, one tugging his hair and the other pressing between your bodies. Your thighs quivered as you came, squeezing down hard on Zayne’s length. He gave a few more thrusts before spilling inside of you for the second time that evening.

This time you felt lightheaded, resting your forehead against Zayne’s as you tried catching your breath. His condition didn’t seem to be any better as he panted, his breath ghosting over you. You gave him a shaky smile and kissed his nose.

“Damn…I think the entire hospital heard us,” you murmured, relaxing on his chest. Zayne’s arms wrapped securely around you as he pressed his nose into your hair.

“Mhm, perhaps,” he said, following it with a yawn. “However most of the department is gone for the evening. This wing is normally empty at this time of night,” he said and you huffed.

“Except for Greyson,” you said and you felt him tense under you.

“Can we not discuss that right now, I’d rather forget it ever happened,” Zayne confessed and you shook your head. You pressed a small kiss on his chest and looked up. Your hands gently playing with the muscles there as your eyes swam with affection.

“Fine, I guess that’s acceptable…however, we should probably clean up and head home. If we’re here by morning the entire hospital will know we were up to no good,” you said and Zayne shook his head.

“Just a few more moments, please.” And how could you ever deny this man when he asked so sweetly?

So anyways...I think I made this one very gender neutral in a sense when it came to the sex? I don't recall really stating too many body specific words in here.

[ckret2]

Chapter 50 of by this point human Bill Cipher is almost relieved to be imprisoned in the Mystery Shack again: Bill tells Mabel about his adventures, and Ford and Dipper tell Fiddleford about theirs.

But first Bill's gonna die for a bit.

"Guys! You're okay!" Mabel flung her arms around Dipper and squeezed him. "We were worried you were floating around and broke your legs when the gravity came back."

"N—no, we were fine," Dipper said. 

Mabel let go of Dipper to hug Ford next—and then drew back, looked him up and down, and looked at Bill. "What happened to your clothes?"

Bill said, "We fell in the lake."

"Ha!"

"Tate was kind enough to loan us dry clothes," Ford said.

"You look like big dorks." She turned to Bill last, took in his dirty haggard appearance, and said, "And you look awful. Where have you guys been the last two days?"

"Thanks for asking! I've been in..." Bill glanced at Stan. "Am I allowed to say the name of the place I've been?"

Stan shook his head. "Not in front of the kids, you don't."

Bill sighed. "Agony. I've been in agony."

"Aww!" She hugged Bill last. "I like your stupid Fishmas sweater."

"Consider it yours as soon as I can change." He wriggled out of her embrace to point at his feet. "Check out the shoes, though!"

Mabel cracked up. "Omigosh, fish slippers! Fi— Fishlers? Fishppers?"

"Fishoes?"

"Fishoes!"

Soos said, "What did happen out there?" He was in the kitchen, cleaning and reorganizing after zero gravity had tossed everything out of order. "Did you heroically save Gravity Falls from imminent multidimensional devastation?"

Ford said, "No. Aside from the effects on gravity, it... turned out to be a benign phenomenon."

"Oh," Soos said. "Like... what Bill said?"

Ford grimaced. He managed to just nod instead of saying afraid so.

Again, he expected Bill to gloat; again, Bill said nothing. He didn't even look at Ford.

"It wasn't an eclipse, though," Dipper muttered, shooting a dark look at Bill. "It would've been an eclipse if it had gotten between us and gravity. It was basically the opposite."

"What do you want from me." The question was more sighed than spoken. "It was called an eclipse when I was growing up, I dunno what to tell you."

Ford, Dipper, and Mabel all looked straight at Bill at the mention of his childhood; but he didn't say anything more. He just trudged to the kitchen and leaned tiredly on the doorframe, watching Soos work. "Grab me something from the fridge."

"Sure thing, dawg." Soos opened the door. "What do you want?"

Bill was silent for a moment. Slowly, like a spirit medium channeling a faint message from the other side, he said, "I think... the body wants a vegetable. Gimme some guacamole."

"Sorry, dude, we had the last of it with dinner."

"Fine. Just give me an avocado and salsa, I'll make do."

"You got it."

"Two avocados."

Soos started rummaging through the jumbled mess in the fridge. "So if everything was okay, what took you guys so long to get back?"

"Yeah, I've been wanting to ask," Stan said. (He hadn't been able to in the car; when everyone realized Bill had passed out as soon as he'd sat down, they'd fallen into an awkward silence.) "Was the demon making trouble or what?"

Dipper and Ford exchanged a glance; who wanted to share the embarrassing news? Ford said, "Actually, under the circumstances, he was... well behaved." Ford resisted the urge to add the modifier "tolerably." It seemed mean-spirited. Bill had constantly complained, sure, but in retrospect could Ford say the complaints were unjustified?

"Then what took you so long?"

Now Ford felt Bill's gaze on him, watching him sharply. Ford understood now. This was why Bill hadn't mentioned saving them. He was holding it in reserve—offering a deal. If Ford and Dipper didn't embarrass him, he wouldn't embarrass them. If they mentioned his breakdown, he could cut in, claim it was natural for him to be in shock after performing such a difficult, heroic deed.

It wasn't blackmail, per se. Revealing the truth wouldn't cost anybody anything but a bit of momentary self-consciousness. But wasn't that just like Bill—only passing up an opportunity to boast so he could use it to shield his ego.

"It was Bill's fault," Dipper said quickly. Ford's heart leaped into his throat. "Because—we had to climb up and down the tunnel to Gravity Peak, and he only brought dress shoes and dumb fish slippers. We kept having to slow down."

Ford felt the pressure of Bill's gaze slide off of his face as he turned away, staring back into the kitchen. Bill said, "Yep. Guess I should have brought my hiking shoes—oh, wait."

Stan said, "You could've got some better shoes when we were at the mall! You're the one who wanted those dumb dress shoes."

"In my defense, I didn't think you paranoiacs would ever let me wander around in the great outdoors—much less force me to." He leaned more heavily against the doorway with a groan, muttering, "My legs are still jelly. Worthless human body."

Dipper glanced at Ford, as if checking with him to see if he'd made the right decision. Ford gave him a tiny nod of approval. After the day they'd had, humiliating Bill just for the sake of humiliation wouldn't have served any justice; it would have just been mean.

For the past three decades, Ford had always felt that Bill deserved the strongest possible punishment, both for his prior atrocities and to prevent future ones; but, he wanted to deal with Bill swiftly and efficiently. No gloating, no torture—just one quick shot. Sure, he got some grim satisfaction from knowing Bill was unhappy—knowing that Bill's vile intentions were being thwarted—and if anyone decided to treat Bill cruelly for cruelty's sake, he couldn't say they were wrong for it... but the thought of committing it himself made him uneasy.

He tried to remember if he'd felt that way when Bill had first arrived.

"I found the salsa!" Soos called from the fridge. "Somehow it all floated onto the highest shelf? Which kind do you want?"

"That one with a picture of a sobbing baby on it."

"Extra spicy it is!"

When Soos handed over the salsa and avocados, Bill said, "Hey, Hick Junior said his father was making announcements about staying inside and low to the ground? You didn't happen to have anything to do with that, did you?"

"Oh—yeah, I called Old Man McGucket and said I had a hot anonymous tip about what was going on," Soos said. "You said it was this whole public safety thing, so I figured the whole town should probably know? He's the local respected science guy now, I thought he'd know what to do with that kind of important information."

Bill grunted. "Terrific, he gets credit for my help. But you'd all be giving me heck if I'd said nothing and half the town broke their necks, so... whatever, net zero. Here." Bill took off the Monster-Mon backpack and swung it over to Soos. "Your reward. Good job."

"Whoa, haha, this is heavy. What's in here, a bag of rocks?"

"No, just one." Bill pushed off the doorway, wheeled unsteadily around, and trudged toward the stairs.

Soos unzipped the bag. A drugged geodite blinked sleepily up at him. He gasped. "Dude! A real Monster-Mon! Is this my call to epic adventure with a lovable animal sidekick?"

Ford grimaced, remembering watching Bill feed a geodite cold medicine. "Ah."

"I think I'll name you... Rocky," Soos said.

"That—really shouldn't be here. Its natural environment is caves, I don't know if it's safe for it to be out here—for it or us." They had been known to bite.

"Aww." Soos cradled the backpack like a swaddled baby. "Do you think it would be okay if I made it a fake cave to live in?" He gasped. "I could make an exhibit for him! I'll say he's a living meteorite! People love aliens."

"I'm not sure that..." Ford sighed. Well, none of them were going back to the cave today. "Maybe you should put it in the cellar where it's darker."

"Great idea!" Soos carried the geodite through the living room. "Hey, I've already got a mattress down there. You're gonna love it, lil dude..."

Ford hoped Soos didn't get attached to that thing. He shot a glower at Bill.

Bill was already on the stairs. "Now everybody leave me alone. Except you." He pointed at Mabel. "I don't want to do anything but lay on the floor and talk about whatever Mabel wants to talk about for the next three hours."

"Cartoons and boy bands."

"Yes," Bill sighed in relief, already preparing to turn 95% of his brain off. "Wow, yes, that's exactly what I want to talk about. I can't wait." He grabbed the handrail as he climbed heavily, leaning against it for balance as he dragged himself upstairs.

Before Mabel could follow him, Ford put a hand on her shoulder. "Oh, before you go—there's something I wanted to tell you and Dipper." Voice low, he said, "You remember when you told me that Bill had mentioned Edward Bishop Bishop?"

"Yeah? When we were drawing our houses."

"Something Bill said while we were out shook a memory loose. It reminded me of a book I read as an undergraduate—Flatworld, written by Edward Bishop Bishop."

"Aww," Mabel said. "Not an artist?"

"No, although he did illustrate the book," Ford said. "It's a novella that combines Victorian social commentary with a primer on higher-dimensional mathematics by using an allegory about sentient shapes living in a two-dimensional world."

"That's what you were talking about in the boat, right?" Dipper asked. "When Bill said something about..." He scrunched his face, trying to remember, "'Up in the sky'...?"

"Upward-but-not-skyward," Ford said, "to describe something that isn't higher than us in the third dimension, but rather, in a higher dimension relative to us."

"How do you know about it?" Dipper asked. "The first time it came up, you said the name Edward Bishop Bishop was familiar, but..."

Ford sighed in irritation, "I read it as an undergraduate—in a haze of sleep-deprived exhaustion just before finals week—to get extra credit in a course on the history of mathematics. I immediately forgot ninety percent of it—which I'm sure is why I never thought of it in relation to Bill. If only I'd remembered the book thirty years ago, when it might have done me some good..."

"It's okay," Mabel said. "I forget almost everything I've read for class basically as soon as I've taken the test. I think it's pretty good that you remember anything about Flatworld at all!"

Ford smiled awkwardly. He was afraid that might say more about Mabel's study habits than about his. "Thank you, Mabel."

"And you did have a lot on your mind thirty years ago," Dipper said. "Like, Bill. Literally. On your mind."

Mabel added, "Doing creepy possession things!"

"I suppose that's true, too." What would he have done if he had remembered the book during that frenetic, delirious period when Bill and Ford had wrestled for control over his body? He'd been in no fit shape to go to the library. "I did think about it a couple of times in the multiverse—when I was visiting Exwhylia, for instance—but at the time I'd brushed it off as a lucky coincidence that I'd read a book that invented a society of shapes. It wouldn't be the first time science fiction predicted science fact. But now that Bill's mentioned it twice, I'd say it's less likely a coincidence and more likely that Edward Bishop Bishop was another of his 'students.'"

"Is there a way for us to find out?" Dipper asked. "If he was Bill's student, would he have left behind any... hints? Coded messages?"

"Like secret society conspiracy things?" Mabel asked.

"Yeah!"

"I suppose it's possible," Ford said. "If Flatworld happens to feature a one-eyed yellow triangle sharing the secrets of the universe, we'll know for sure. But, there's only one way to find out: now that I do remember the book, we can pick up a copy for research."

"That's great," Dipper said. "If Bill told the author about his home dimension... there's no telling how much we can learn about him by reading it."

"So it's basically a math textbook disguised as a story?" Mabel groaned. "That's just like doing word problems! The most confusing kind of math problems. Why does Bill keep making me have homework this summer?"

"You know what he's like," Dipper said, elbowing her with a grin. "Dastardly villain."

"Pure evil."

Ford huffed. "If it helps, as I recall the book teaches you about math concepts, but it doesn't make you do any math."

She let out a longer, more theatrical groan. "Fine. But if there's a cousin Throckmorton I'm throwing the book away."

"I dunno, sounds kinda neat," Dipper said. "It might give me a leg up when we start geometry."

"I don't remember the details of what it covers, but I bet it could," Ford agreed. "I have to visit Fiddleford this evening to return the equipment he loaned us, and... discuss the events of the last couple of days. If the library's still open when we're done I can go by and see if they have a copy of Flatworld."

"Can I come along?" Dipper asked.

"Of course. Just give me a moment to..." He looked down at himself, "change into something a little less ridiculous."

Dipper tried not to laugh. "Okay. I'll wait here. Mabel, do you want to...?"

"No thanks!" She pointed upstairs. "I've got a captive audience to teach about boy bands. I'm going to make him listen to Sev'ral Timez's entire discography."

"He's already had a pretty bad day. Don't torture him even more."

Mabel blew a raspberry. "He'll love it." She bounded up the stairs.

Ford headed to his and Stan's guest room. Dipper took off his backpack, dropped it in the living room, and stuck his hands in his pockets—then pulled one out in surprise.

The enchanted friendship bracelets. They were still in his pocket. Bill hadn't had them on since Dipper's out-of-body experience that morning.

Dipper stared at them uneasily; then hung them in their usual place on the entryway coat rack and resumed waiting for Ford.

####

It was a rare opportunity that Bill was allowed in the kids' room; but with Ford and Dipper out of the house, the one person most likely to complain wasn't around. So after having extracted a strict promise for him to behave himself, Mabel had let him in, for ease of gossip and CD-switching.

But even if Dipper had been in the room, he wouldn't have found much worth complaining about. Once Bill had finished his snack (he'd eaten the avocados like pears, skin and all, and drank down the salsa like a chunky smoothie), he'd laid down on the floor, and since then had remained a dead lump. Face buried in his crossed arms, curled up in the oversized Fishmas sweater and a set of loose stolen-from-Soos sweats to replace the towel skirt, he might as well have been a pile of laundry that had sprouted curly golden hair. Mabel had put Sev'ral Timez's first album on the boombox, sat herself on Bill's back, and started brushing out his damp, knotted curls without asking as she talked about each track.

To her delight, Bill started insisting they skip past the slow, emotional love ballads, saying he preferred the bouncier dancier tracks; she thought the fact that he was displaying a preference rather than begging to turn the band off was a good sign. He was actually listening to the music. Possibly even liking it! Maybe she'd manage to convert him into a fan. She recounted her experiences with the band's cloned members and Bill threw in the polite "Mhm" and "Uh-huh?" where appropriate without lifting his head from the floor or opening his eyes. She'd thought he might have had something to throw in about the cloning thing, that seemed like the kind of conspiracy nonsense he might have a hand in; but if he knew anything, he wasn't up to sharing it.

When she'd wrangled his hair into some semblance of order, she got to work on his fingernails. His arm was like a dead weight in her hands, loose and unresisting but not helping, either. He shifted his head over to rest on his other arm and otherwise didn't move.

"Your fingernail polish is destroyed," Mabel said. On three fingers the paint had been all but completely scraped off. When he'd left a couple of days ago, it had just been lightly chipped. She started stripping the remainder with nail polish remover.

"Is it?" Bill mumbled. "Mmh. Yeah, probably from clawing in the dirt."

"Pfff. What did you do the last couple of days?"

Bill slowly sucked in a breath so deep that Mabel felt his back lift her a little higher off the ground; and then he just as slowly let it back out. "Do not," he said, "get me started."

He got started.

He began with a tirade about the contempt that both Ford and Dipper had shown him and his far superior subject matter expertise for the last two days; and then about being hauled out and exposed during totality after repeating over and over how dangerous it was and how much he would prefer to not do that—Ford had even admitted he'd dragged Bill out into open air just because he knew how much he didn't want that!—and from there Bill looped back to listing a whole litany of gripes against what he perceived as egregious and undeserved disrespect from Ford over the last couple of weeks—"Youmight have lied to me about that glass pyramid, but at least you didn't laugh in my face about it!"

(Mabel thought Ford pretty much had the right to be as disrespectful to Bill as he wanted, after everything Bill had put him through. Lying about a silly imaginary cult was less mean than lying about taking over the universe. But part of being a good friend, she knew well, was lending a sympathetic ear to your friend's venting without suggesting that said friend might be in the wrong. She had a Color Critters episode about being honest with your friends she could show him later.)

Bill seemed to gain strength as he aired his grievances, bolstered by Mabel's encouraging "mhm" "uh-huh" noises. By the time she'd finished repainting his first hand (she'd picked a glittery purple polish she thought would complement all the yellow he wore), he was sitting upright and Mabel had to sit in front of him to start on his other hand.

"—and my stupid feet hurt," Bill griped. "Since Stanford made me traipse halfway through the mountain barefoot because he wouldn't let us go back down before the gravity returned and I don't even own shoes for spelunking. And my knees hurt, and my back hurts, and I could have killed for a walking stick but do think they'd have allowed me one if I asked? Because I don't think so! I tripped over—I don't know, a hundred roots."

"Worst hiking trip ever." Mabel finished painting his second hand, and started looking through her miniature sticker sheets for some fun stickers to put on Bill's first hand now that it was dry.

"Worst in the history of your planet! Even the Donner party had a better hike! At least some of them got something to eat," Bill said. "All I got for two days was a handful of cereal and Stanford's liquid meat in a toothpaste tube."

Mabel stuck out her tongue.

"And Stanford walks too fast. And your brother kept trying to squeeze through gaps between trees I couldn't get through. And Stanford kept fiddling with his—stupid—useless antique Civil War lantern he's so proud of, and he's just lucky that I thought to bring a way to find a light source even though I didn't even need one, because I knew he would bring that stupid Civil War lantern..." Bill's complaints petered out.

And then, voice oddly quiet, he said, "And I saw my corpse." 

Mabel looked up from carefully placing a yellow butterfly on Bill's middle fingernail. There was a dark look in his eyes. "Oh," she said. "Oh, Bill. I'm so sorry."

This wasn't just a bad camping trip. This was serious. She had to treat it seriously.

She ejected the current CD from the boombox, put in another Sev'ral Timez album, and skipped to track 4: "This goes out to anyone having a bad day. Ladies, this one's for you. 'Girl, today has been—straight whack. You don't know how you're gonna—bounce back. But any time you're down, I'll always be around; I'll drive your heart back to Happy Town'..." Oh yeah. That was the exact energy Mabel was trying to channel.

"And I didn't feel anything when I touched it." Bill was staring down at his hands like he barely recognized them. "No energy, no connection—nothing. What if there isn't a connection anymore? What if I'm just a human now?"

Did that weigh on Bill? Clearly, enough that he'd decided to endure imprisonment in the Mystery Shack rather than kill his body to see if there was still a triangle inside.

But he'd never talked about it before now; she'd thought maybe he just didn't worry about it.

But that was dumb. Of course he worried about it. He was just like her. When something scared him, he just pushed it down and hoped that if he ignored it enough, everything would be okay! Until he couldn't pretend anymore.

And she'd never heard him sound this scared before.

She took his hands and hoped that would help.

He squeezed her hands so hard it hurt. His still-wet nail polish smeared on her hand. "What if I'm really gonna grow old and die in this rotting meat doll, what if I never go home again—? There's so much I haven't done, I was going to throw an eternal party, it would have been beautiful, everyone would have loved me, but now— and now—" He let out a choked noise, head bowing over their joined hands, posture broken. Hot tears landed on the backs of Mabel's hands. "And I didn't even get to, just, die and be done with it, I have to know I'm dead, I have to know everything I was going to do..."

"Hey—come here." Mabel tentatively wrapped her arms around Bill's neck and shoulders, compressing his bouncy curls. She half expected him to pull away.

Instead, he buried his face against her shoulder and hugged her back like she was the only thing keeping him from drowning.

After spending the last two days suppressing his grief and fear so hard his body couldn't function through it—after spending over a month suppressing his grief and fear—finally, finally, he peeled the tape off his cracked shell to let it leak out. He couldn't hold it together anymore. He'd barely put himself back together long enough to get on his feet and make it to the shack. This was the only place it was safe to fall apart. He muffled his sobs in Mabel's sweater.

And Mabel—who was used to being comforted by adults but who had never been called upon herself to comfort anybody but her brother and the occasional friend—had no idea how she was supposed to comfort a zillion-year-old almost-definitely-adult alien through an existential crisis.

Not for the first time, she wondered whether she might have gotten in over her head.

She pushed the worry down. Everything would be okay. Bill needed her—she could feel him trembling—and he didn't have anybody else in the world he could trust. And if she didn't know what else to do, at the least she could keep hugging him.

Voice so tight it almost squeezed out as a whisper, Bill said, "I was going to make a utopia here, but now I'm just gonna die here."

"I'm so sorry." How do you comfort someone processing the fear of mortality? She'd never processed it herself, she was thirteen, it was just another scary future thing she'd deal with when she had to. The best she knew how to do was be nice. "But... I'm here, okay? For—for anything you need." (Anything that wasn't evil, anyway—but now was not the appropriate time to make Bill feel like her support was conditional.)

"Tell me I won't die."

"You won't die! You're never, ever gonna die." Mabel hugged him tighter. "I'll fistfight Death. I'll—break his bony kneecaps."

"Thanks."

"I'll swing at the reaper with a baseball bat."

Bill laughed feebly. "With nails in it?"

"Yeah! And barbed wire! Connected to a battery!"

"Oh, we're taking Death down. Nobody's dying ever again."

"Everybody lives forever!" Mabel laughed; but it quickly petered out. "But... I'm not gonna let you die. You're my friend, and I won't let anything happen to you."

Bill's trembling had stopped, and his embrace was less death-grippy. "I owe you one, Shooting Star." From Bill, "thanks" sounded hollow, but "I owe you one" really sounded like a thank you.

"Hey. If I tell you a secret, do you promise not to do anything evil with it?"

"Sure. Promise."

Mabel doubted it, but that was as good as she was gonna get. "I've always thought you're still a triangle on the inside. You've got those creepy cat eyes that see the future and stuff! If you were just a normal human, wouldn't you have normal human eyes?"

Bill made a noncommittal noise.

"Plus, if you'd really been turned into a human on the inside, then being in a human body wouldn't feel so bad—right? It'd just feel normal."

Bill was silent for a moment. Voice hoarse, he whispered, "I hope you're right."

####

Fiddleford answered the door himself. "Stanford, Dipper, come in! I was just cleaning up." He had a broom, and the great hall's floor behind him was sparkling with broken glass. Ford was relieved to see Fiddleford had put on shoes. Unfortunately, they were fuzzy slippers. "Pardon the mess!"

"Think nothing of it. The shack's been turned upside-down, too." Ford stepped around a broken chair. "Don't you have anyone to help you clean, though?"

"Oh, I do, I do! I built me a Janitorial Executive Drone to tidy up," Fiddleford said. "I'm just cleaning up the mess JED left."

Ford and Dipper looked around at the shattered glass, broken furniture, scorch marks around the fireplace, and torn curtains. Dipper asked, "Did... JED make this place any cleaner?"

"Not at all!"

Ford and Dipper caught Fiddleford up on their scientific findings of the last couple days. Ford was almost embarrassed to admit they hadn't found any noteworthy quantities of micro-rips, as if he were confessing to a personal academic embarrassment—even after Fiddleford pointed out that it had been his own theory, not Ford's. (All the same, Ford hated to be so wrong, even by association. Being wrong felt like a moral failing.)

In return, Fiddleford told them what he'd been up to. He'd confirmed with them NASA fellas that the odd gravity effects weren't detected anywhere but Gravity Falls. At their behest, he'd set up some sensors around town, and when gravity suddenly reversed, the measurements they'd taken had allowed him to make a very loose model of the shape of the force that caused it. He showed Ford and Dipper the model on a computer in his lab, black screen with sharp glowing green lines forming an armature in the shape of a force. It looked like an enormous flying sausage that tapered down at one end. Too little detail to tell exactly what it was; but it certainly could have been an axolotl.

It was turning to look at the cliff where they'd stood.

Fiddleford wasn't pleased to find out the information he'd passed on from Soos had originally come from Bill; but he'd suspected it and already done all his soul-searching before reluctantly sharing his advice with the masses and hoping it wouldn't come back to bite him. "He didn't bother to warn us that gravity would actually disappear today, though," Fiddleford said indignantly. "So he could crow about being right and still get to see some folks get hurt, I reckon."

"Actually, this time I don't think he was hiding it. I kinda think he just made a mistake?" Dipper said.

Ford nodded. "Dipper's right. Bill was incredibly alarmed this morning when it became clear our estimates were wrong. It only made more trouble for him."

"I suppose," Fiddleford said grudgingly; then gave them a sharp look. "This mornin'? You took him camping?"

Ford and Dipper winced. Ford mumbled, "Not for fun."

"Stanford Pines—!"

It took a minute of hooting and hollering before Ford could calm Fiddleford down enough to explain the circumstances: that they'd only brought Bill because of just how much he explicitly did not want to be brought; that it had been a thoroughly unpleasant experience for everyone and Ford had never expected it to be otherwise; and that Bill had proven useful—Ford decided not to share the details—but he hadn't forgotten that Bill always made himself useful before he betrayed someone. If a man helped a little old lady cross a street, opened her door for her, put up her groceries, and then knocked her out and burgled her house, only one of those actions mattered.

(Dipper fell silent rather than help reassure Fiddleford. Ford supposed that was because he'd objected to bringing Bill, too.)

Fiddleford grudgingly admitted that under the circumstances, bringing Bill had been logical. "But that's just the thing—sometimes your logic don't account for the fact that you've got human emotions, too."

"Ah, yes, those human emotions. One of my worst flaws," Ford joked.

Fiddleford didn't laugh. "I mean it, Stanford. The most logical plan in the world don't mean nothing if he talks you into throwing it aside."

Ford thought of all the times he'd let his temper get the best of him over the last couple of days. Could he really say he'd made the logical decision when he'd made it out of anger? "Yes. I... see what you mean."

"Just be careful," Fiddleford said. "I saw you under that demon's oppression for months and never thought it was anything worse than how you always got around finals week—heck, for all I saw, I reckon he coulda started possessing you without me noticing—and I don't want that to happen again!"

Dipper winced. Ford found somewhere other than Fiddleford's face to look.

"What?"

"He... did. Possess me." (Dipper didn't pipe up with his experience. Ford didn't blame him.)

"He what? When?!"

"Remember toward the end of the project? When I started pulling all-nighters to finish the calculations...?"

Fiddleford smacked his forehead and sank down into the nearest chair.

Ford winced again. "I should have told you." During their talks over the past year, he'd been very reluctant to mention Bill or the fallout at the end of the portal project. They both had. "But—I assumed you'd guessed by now. What did you think was happening?"

"Frankly? I thought you'd started taking something illicit."

Ford snorted. "I—all right." He'd done stupider things during finals week.

"If he was possessin' you, why didn't you ask for help? I could've found somebody who knows how to do exorcisms. Did he not let you? Or—or did I miss you trying to tell me...?"

Ford shook his head. "No, I didn't want an exorcism." He wasn't sure Bill was the kind of "demon" that responded to exorcisms anyway. "At the time, I thought... that he was helping me."

Dipper reluctantly piped up, "He... possessed me once too. I didn't know that's what he was doing until too late, but... Even after you know he's a bad guy, he's really good at making you think he's just helping."

Fiddleford didn't immediately say anything to that. Ford couldn't meet his gaze.

Finally, Fiddleford said, voice low and worried, "Just tell me you won't let him get into your head again. Either one'a you."

Dipper shook his head. "Definitely not."

Ford said, "As he is now with all his powers gone, I don't think he can enter my head. Anyway, I had a metal plate surgically installed—"

"I didn't mean that way."

Right. "I won't. I promise."

Fiddleford nodded. "Didja really get a metal plate installed?"

Ford knocked on it demonstratively.

"Hmm." Fiddleford stroked his beard thoughtfully. He pointed at a contraption in the corner that looked like a ten foot tall tuning fork with electricity arcing between its tips. "Try not to get within five feet of that thing."

Ford eyed it nervously.

####

Fiddleford insisted Ford and Dipper stay for dinner. It was the first proper meal they'd had after two days of tubes mushy meat and mushy vegetables; so they tried not to show their disappointment when they received mushy meat and mushy vegetables. Fiddleford's automatic meatloaf-and-mashed-potatoes maker did its job more competently than JED did its, but Ford suspected that was partially because it didn't have legs to let it go get in trouble.

As they drove back into town, a stoplight turned red at the intersection with Main Street. Ford glanced down Main toward the library and asked, "Do you still want to stop by the library?"

Dipper, who'd nearly nodded off, blinked sleepily. "Huh?"

"To pick up Flatworld?"

Dipper yawned. "Honestly, I kinda just wanna go home and sleep."

"I hear that." He'd almost drowned today. He was exhausted. "Perhaps this weekend."

"Aren't you going to that concert with Mabel?"

"Was that this Saturday?" He'd lost track. Mabel had won four tickets from some radio contest to see Phrancisco in Portland and had asked Ford if he'd like to come. "I'm undecided. I'd like to go—I've been a fan of Invisible Plastic Yellow since they formed." He was the one who'd told Mabel about the band after their Portland trip and gotten her their albums. He'd had a phase when he'd really gotten into cutting-edge underground new wave music. It had made him feel conventionally cool, which not many things did. Now, all his musical tastes were three decades behind. He hadn't even known Phrancisco had a solo career until Mabel came home with tickets.

"But she's bringing her friends, and whoever has the fourth ticket needs to chaperone; and I'm afraid an old man escorting around three young girls would look... odd. It may be more appropriate for one of the other girls' parents to go." But he did want to see Phrancisco. "Perhaps I'll wait and see whether Mabel talks me into it."

"Better pack your bag now, then."

Ford laughed. He had a point. "If I do go to Portland, maybe I can stop by a bookstore to pick up Flatworld. If it tells us anything useful about Bill, I suspect we'll want a household copy for reference."

He was eager to reread it. He'd forgotten so much of it since college. He only recalled the vague, overarching plot: something about a third-dimensional sphere teaching a second-dimensional square about realities with higher and lower dimensions—from zero dimensions up to four—and a stuffy society based on what geometric shape you were... but that was it. He probably never even would have remembered the phrase "up but not north" if Bill hadn't referenced it. He wondered how much it could have helped him if he'd reread it sooner.

Dipper yawned again. "Sounds good."

The light turned green; and Ford drove past the library and headed on home.

####

(After going full tilt for two months, we finally get a breather lol. I hope y'all enjoyed, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts!)

[shibaraki]

TURNING PAGE ┊ MIDORIYA IZUKU

tags: GN reader, quirk accident (dubcon <- just to be safe), pining, friends to lovers, a tiny bit of angst, so much fluff, requited feelings, confessions of love

wc: 1.3K

Deku got hit with a quirk mid battle. You have long since learnt that assuming the worst before receiving more information isn’t helpful. Injuries and accidents are an inevitability in your line of work— if you started panicking every time a friend got hurt you’d send yourself to an early grave.

Love drunk, they called it. A quirk that inebriated it’s victims with overwhelming feelings of affection and lowered their inhibitions to a resounding zero. It was harmless, if not a little embarrassing, and it explained why the nurse you spoke to had steam coming out of her ears.

Getting Izuku back to his apartment was the hardest part. You couldn’t make it two minutes without him stopping to express his admiration. Always some innocuous thing; how the beech tree foliage dappled the sunlight, or a flock of birds danced in synchrony, or an elderly woman with a small dog travelled in her walker.

When he caught sight of Bakugo’s victorious snarl plastered across a billboard you had to fight tooth and nail to take his devices away, lest he start wailing down the phone about how proud he is.

That particular moment spiralled into an incoherent rant about what the word ‘best friend’ means to him and why it felt redundant— lacking, in a sense. “It’s not enough,” he slurred, a myriad of tears bubbling at his waterline that he valiantly tries to blink away. “I just care about them so much”.

You had almost lost your footing as he slung an arm around your shoulder, nose squished up against your temple and oblivious to the heat prickling over your cheeks. You count your blessings. At least it hadn’t been a sex quirk. Izuku loves hard and he feels with his whole body. You’re not sure you could handle him at lust. To get a taste of that would be irreversible; no doubt hurtful. This is difficult enough.

When you make it to his apartment Izuku seems to realise that if he releases the tension keeping him upright you’ll have to hold him at the waist and take his weight. Your abdomen clenches— his lips brush over the shell of your ear, muttering quiet praises, and a shiver rolls through you. You wished he would shut up and you wished he wouldn’t; your eyes, your laugh, your intelligence, your hands, the way your hips move, how you dance when you think nobody is looking, the smile you save for him, your courage and wit— you’ve heard enough.

It hurts.

You manage to get him to his bedroom. He's drunk, fumbling like he’d forgotten how to put one foot in front of the other. You press your lips thin and try not to laugh as he struggles with the apparent loss of dexterity.

Izuku laughs as you drop him unceremoniously onto his bed and the sound is incredible. Soft, drunken, wholehearted fits of giggles. Pink splotches bloom up his neck and cheeks, his body pliant in honeyed repose. Mossy curls stark against the cotton sheets. Izuku holds out his arms and makes childish grabby motions with his fingers.

“C’mere,” he murmurs with a tone too intimate for your heart. A voice meant for lovers. Thoughts zip through your mind a mile a minute. What on earth do you do with your hands when everything you’ve ever wanted is right in front of you? You’re shaken by the gravity of it.

Your conscience whispers that this isn’t real. The quirk will wear off in a few hours. Izuku will stutter through a red faced apology and return to a normal you’ll never be wholly satisfied with.

The silence draws longer than intended. Your tongue sits heavy behind your teeth. You don’t know what to do with yourself, but Izuku is merciless. He pushes up onto his hands with a dissatisfied hum and scoots to the edge of the bed. A fragile breath is caught in your chest when you feel his palm smooth up your calf, cupping the back of your knee, his thumb stroking back and forth.

Izuku presses the flat of his throat against your midsection, his chin between your ribs. He looks up, detailing the subtleties in your face, eyes squinted and hazy; you aren’t sure what to do with the wonder in them, how unashamed he's being. You’ve seen it somewhere before. Stupid man. It’s a look saved for art museums or a full moon or the love of your life. Not— not you.

“You’re so unfair,” you tell him.

Thick in his mouth, he asks, “Did I do something wrong?”

Innate as breathing, your hands find his cheeks, seeking to reassure him before you realise what you’re doing, and he pins you in place with the most benevolent little noise.

Curse the quirk database. There had been next to no information about the quirk beyond its surface effects. You had no way to know whether the quirk conjured feelings of love, twisted them or amplified that which already existed.

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” you affirmed, emphasised by the squashing of his cheeks. It forces his full lips into a pout. Izuku watches you, wide eyed and fraught. You exhale shakily and his head moves with the motion. “I promise”.

“But you look so sad,” he replies nasally. His fingers curled into your thigh, the other hand coming up to wrap around your wrist. Your eyes sting and you can’t help but to laugh at his swollen jutted mouth.

He responds well— practically glittering, sitting up straighter as though you had breathed new life into him. “I love it when you laugh,” he professed. “I love—”

“So you’ve said”.

Izuku frowns deeply. The strength behind his grip increases and it forces your knee to bend, bracing on the mattress beside his hip. It knocks you off balance, hands sliding down to his shoulders as you right yourself. “Izuku—?”

“You don’t believe me,” he mutters, more to himself than to you. The world tilts on its axis and suddenly you are laid on your back, trapped by firm muscle. A leg slots between yours, locking in place; thick arms snake around your shoulders and bring you into his embrace.

Izuku holds you in the crook of his body and you fit like a missing half.

The collar of his shirt slips forward. Your eyes skim the shadows leading to his chest— sparse dark hair between his pecs, muscle pushed together to form a soft cleavage. You’re swathed in heat and the smell of his shampoo. Blood rushes loud in your ears as his adam’s apple bobs and he dips to nuzzle your cheeks together.

“Oh”. A mumble breaks the silence whilst you try to regain your bearings. “You think it’s the quirk, right?”

“It is the quirk, Izuku”.

“Silly. That’s silly. I always feel like this when I’m with you,” he vowed tipsily. Your heart aches and you want to cry.

“Then let’s sleep,” you lift your head, ignoring his small complaint, and meet his gaze. “Sleep for a few hours and tell me again”.

Something flits across his expression; brief and quick, leaving as swiftly as it came, mellowing into contentment. Face smooshed into the pillow, Izuku smiles happily, readjusting his hips to align with yours.

You do not sleep. You stay awake listening to his shallow breathing, the snuffling noises he makes, laughing quietly to yourself whenever his muscles jolt. You count every eyelash, every freckle, memorise the pattern of his scars— the faint lines that are only ever visible in summer when his skin has a little more colour. You soak in how his chest moves against yours, how his arms tighten if you try to pull away.

When he begins to stir, you close your eyes and brace for the impact. What comes next is this:

The tentative press of his lips to your forehead. A gentle whisper of your name. You peer up at him and his sheepish smile widens, entirely unchanged from the hours before.

“I really love it when you laugh,” he blurted, flushing from head to toe.

Hope flares in your chest, spirit buoyed. “So you’ve said,” you breathe.

[bits-and-babs]

𝐃𝐎𝐍'𝐓 𝐇𝐀𝐕𝐄 𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐁𝐎𝐃𝐘 𝐖𝐀𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐎𝐍 𝐘𝐎𝐔

pairing: johnny soap mactavish x medic!reader (stitch)

summary: a night of drinking with 141 pushes you to the brink of your friendship with soap.

warnings: [ 1k words ] pathetic levels of mutual pining, yearning, alcohol and drinking, (f) masturbation, reader fantasising about sex with soap.

notes: i had so much fun writing this <33

Soap leans back dangerously on the stool at the bar as he laughs, a deep rumble that rattles his ribcage. The legs of the seat teeter precariously on the edge of a broken floor tile, threatening to slip into the grout grooves and knock him from his pedestal. He’s like sunshine, glowing with the grin plastered on his face as he guffaws at something Ghost had grumbled across the bar.

Even in your drunken stupor, you manage to place your palm on his lower back, curbing gravity’s inevitable pull by easing him back into an upright position. He chuckles weakly, still struggling over Simon’s ridiculous comment as he blinks back humorous tears.

“Cheers, Bonnie,” he grins, the ocean in his eyes swimming with the whiskey The Captain had been plying you both with all evening. It knocks you seasick, the way the corners of his eyes crinkled, weathered by emotional storms. They creased for you, now, his wide grin carving out crevices that would last a lifetime simply because he offered you a smile. “Always lookin’ after us, aren’t ye?”

“Y-Yeah, don’t go expecting me to catch you in the field. My job’s to treat injuries, not prevent them,” you murmur, heart cracking against your chest as it flooded your cheeks with blood, heating the skin beneath his gaze.

“Mhm- it’d mean y’d have less work,” he pointed out with a pert raise of his brows, picking up his glass of whiskey and swirling it around so that the ice tnk’d against it. Johnny doesn’t break eye contact, basking you in the warmth of his gaze that could only be rivalled by the sunshine on the beaches his salt-water eyes reminded you of.

Did other people bathe in that everglow? Did the golden rays of his affection colour the cheeks of other girls, or was that look of adoration reserved only for you? You dread to think of the possibility that you were misreading Johnny’s tender gaze, that what you had hoped were exclusive expressions of enchantment had, in fact, been handed out as frequently as the insults that Soap consistently levelled at the members of task force 141. Or even worse, there was a single ‘lass’ back home, waiting in the cobbled streets of Glasgow to receive his embrace.

Genesis: the split on his forehead that went straight to the bone. No bullets were fired; instead, Soap’s skull connected with Ghost’s knee during a football game with the rest of 141. Inexplicably, he and Simon had been on the same team, yet Johnny still managed to end up hurt. He’d smiled at you, and the sight had wormed its way into your bones, the sound of his accented voice all hushed and husky ringing in your ears. ‘Bet yer not used to fixin’ daftys like me.’

You’d assured him he wasn’t the first and certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Swallowing thickly, your fingers trail up the ridges of his spine through the thin material of his t-shirt. His back is muscular, leaking the heat of far too many whiskeys for so early in the evening. You’re sure you can feel his vertebrae ripple beneath your touch, his eyes zeroed in on your lips like he was aiming his sniper rifle at a target.

“It’s not work if it’s you,” you whisper, feeling the rest of the bar, the team, wash away in those ocean-blue irises. Soap hums softly, the weight of his hand resting on the top of your thigh beneath the sticky countertop of the bar. He seems to calculate the distance between you; the logistics of the shot.

You can’t breathe.

Defibrillator, chest compressions, mouth to mouth.

“Yer too kind, Stitch,” he murmured softly, giving your thigh a squeeze before withdrawing his touch almost as quickly as he’d offered it. Instead, he wraps his fingers around the glass containing the rest of his amber whiskey, the condensation clinging to the sides of the glass dribbling down the length of his fingers to the knuckles.

Code blue.

☆ ☆ ☆

Breathless, your back arches from the cot’s mattress as you sink your fingers into the dripping head at the apex of your thighs. You can’t help the moan that spills over from your lips as you feel how wet Soap’s single touch had made you, the burn of his palm still simmering in the flesh of your thigh.

You’d barely made it back to the barracks. Stumbling over your own feet, you’d whimpered in frustration when tearing off your clothes, needing to rub your throbbing clit to ease the pulsing need Soap had instilled in you with his fucking smiles.

They’re a nuclear weapon, so bright it hurts your eyes.

Alcohol made it so much worse. Your mind runs away with itself, imagining Soap had tripped into your bed alongside you. He’d be rubbing at your swollen clit with his thumb, sinking his fingers deep inside you while praising you for how well you received him.

‘Steamin’ Jesus, Bonnie,’ he would groan, kissing across your sternum while searching for that mind-numbing spot inside you that had your toes cramping as they curled, ‘so fuckin’ wet for me. Can ye take another? C’mon, that’s it-‘

You wail softly, rocking your hips up to meet the thrust of your fingers as you imagine the sensation of his lips on your neck, the scratch of his stubble against your pulse point.

“‘M gonna cum, Johnny,” you wheeze aloud, urging the ghost touch to keep going. Your fingers sink deeper, the ridges of your fingerprints scraping something cataclysmic when you curl them just right.

A long, anguished whine ricochets off the walls of your dorm as you drench your fingers with your cum, eyes squeezing so tight that you can almost see the ghost of Soap’s silhouette behind your eyelids, praising you for your devastating orgasm. It’s so slow, utterly debilitating as it obliterates every inch of your drunken limbs with a white-hot ecstasy.

Your lungs rattle with the force of your inhales, bleached knuckles gripping the bedsheets in a desperate attempt to brace against the explosive orgasm. Soap’s touch still simmers beneath your thigh muscles, buried into the sinews despite the trembles that wracked them.

Did he feel the same? Had your palm burned into his vertebrae, or did he imagine the touch of a girl from home, whispering her name when he came?

You dread to think. 

join the taglist here:

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[moosh2727]

I FINALLY GOT ACCESS TO ISSUE 71 OMG

this took forever but finally i get to see him!! spoilers ahead :3

first of all, amazing cover. jet and the gang look amazing just in that one snippet

extreme gear dodgeball... thats interesting, reminds me of the multiplayer modes in riders zg that was not racing but fun!

HOW DARE YOU MAKE MY BOY ANGRY wave helping jet focus is nice like in zero gravity 💚

the rouges being in shock is always so funny, im glad to see wave and storm join in on the fun 💚

WOAHHH LOL dang sonic's going hard!!

i now headcannon wave has a mindfullness youtube video she makes jet begrudgingly watch LOL 💚

i love seeing them using their gear more, it fuels my autism 💚💚💚

THIS IS SO FREAKING FUNNY I LOVE IT, AND HOW DARE SHE CRASH IN JETS GEAR!! anyway love him /p 💚

AMAZING I WANNA SEE HIM ANGRYYY, BEAT THEM UP JET!!! 💚100 gonna use this part for art ref because it looks so good

the silence is so loud in this picture i love it, i wonder what jets gonna do? 😊

oh my gosh this is so heartbreaking actually what the heck- ALSO WAVE TELLING JET TO RUN IS SO ON POINT

the story telling via art is on point, theres not much words needed to convey the emotions the characters are feeling

THEY HAVE A NEW ROOM, I REPEAT THEY HAVE A KITCHEEEEEEEEN, storm being the cook fits so well i love it.

the food (curry im guessing) fits their background and double points for looking extra yummy.

jet's first sentence fits him so well, im really glad they're doing good depiction with him and everything relating to them, considering the idw special where jewel broke her wing SUCKED because of idw ppl not thinking about where jet lives on the ship, so they made it SUPER inacurate.

it makes me happy to see storm contributing and not being a stupid fat joke like in free riders. we need to appreciate this silly guy who got brain damage from amy hitting him many times, and he still manages to fulfil jets orders.

storm doing this with his eyes is as good as his eyes in free riders, but way better than his weird blink in the zero gravity black hole cutscene

jet being ahead of the game and i love it!!! NEW MISSION LETS GOOO!!!!!! 💚💚💚💚

these riders designs are really helping me in the future with my own oc 🫶

OMG THE WIFE OF THE TRAIN CONDUCTOR FROM MURDER OF SONIC THE HEDGEHOG!!!

ouch my heart

oh gosh thats so sweet but sad ugh

jet has become more thoughtful! i just hope he doesn't lose his edge, but even if he does i'll love him anyway /p 💚

i love how much talented ppl are in this community, im so glad for more jet content via idw and fan creations. jet needs all the praise and love. 💚

Overall i loved this idw issue, i can always make the excuse " use more jet content!" but they did a really good job with expressing all the characters fairly. (still, i still want more jet tho :P)

i waited so long for this issue its crazy, idk why it took so long to come out digitally since i don't have the money to buy them in person.

knowing more rooms, might create an accurate layout of their blimp soon!

anyway, i got a gaming pc and not a stupid mac earlier this week, meaning that i can finally play free riders yayy!!!

[foliosriot]

The Gravity Of You And I

pairing: noah sebastian x kirks!reader

summary: your best friends in bad omens are back from tour. but with their homecoming brings about someone amongst them that you haven’t seen in years.

warnings: lots of angst. may seem like unrequited love but it’s definitely requited. space/astronomy references because i fucking love space.

tags: @concretenoah @malice-ov-mercy @circle-with-me @somewhere-diamond @iknownothingpeople @cncohshit

masterlist

Bad Omens is back from tour. Your best friends are back from touring the world and playing music for hundreds of people, and you can’t express your excitement to see them in an acceptable way. It’s been a few months since you last saw any of the guys, including your brother, Bryan.

Speaking of your brother, he should be back any minute now. You’ve been anxiously awaiting his return from the moment he texted you a couple of hours ago to let you know the plane had landed. And besides one more text telling you he was on his way home from the airport, you haven’t heard from him.

You know Bryan is driving so he can’t just text you whenever he wants. But you continue to pace the length of your bedroom keeping an ear out for the sound of the front door to your apartment opening.

You don’t have to wait much longer before you hear the front door opening and closing. There’s a loud, heavy sigh that you can hear from down the hall. A small smile graces your face as you run out of your room.

Bryan has just barely set down all of his bags before you’re racing towards him. He yelps in surprise at your sudden appearance, but he manages to catch your weight as you barrel into him, your arms coiling around him that same moment.

As your older brother holds you, neither of you say anything. The past month or so has been super tough on you and your mental health. You hate being apart from Bryan, and however many months out of the year that he is away on tour with Bad Omens makes being by yourself that much more difficult.

A sour feeling overtakes your mind as you hug Bryan. You remember your bestest friend in the world abandoning you without any apparent reasoning, followed by zero contact. You hug Bryan tighter as it completely overwhelms you.

“I missed you,” you whisper.

“I missed you too,” Bryan whispers back.

“I’m really glad you’re home.”

“God, me too. You have no idea.”

You hesitantly separate from your brother and step back. He smiles down at you once you’ve both loosened your holds on one another. You return his contagious smile.

You then help Bryan lug all of his bags down the hall to his room. You sit on his bed as he unpacks. The two of you share stories about things that have happened since you last saw each other. Bryan tells you about some of the shows and different photos he got. And you tell him about your boring job and spending so much time by yourself at home.

After all of his things are put away he goes quiet. You tilt your head in confusion.

“You okay?” you ask him.

Bryan looks at you, his bottom lip anxiously tugged between his teeth.

“I’m gonna be heading over to the guys’ house tomorrow for some things,” he tells you slowly. “And I’m inviting you. They would be more than happy to see you, y’know.”

You stop breathing for a moment. You know who also lives in that house, besides Jolly, Jesse and Michael. And you’d rather not see him ever again.

“Noah won’t be home,” Bryan tells you carefully, as if he knew exactly what you were thinking. “I promise.”

You didn’t have to speak before Bryan was already soothing your nerves. Thankfully, you trust your brother more than anything, and you’re trusting him wholeheartedly that Noah is for sure not going to be home when you’re there tomorrow.

You look up at Bryan. The look in his eyes is hopeful, you think. As much as you want to decline his invitation, you know you can’t. Bad Omens are your friends and you love them dearly. So you give Bryan a nod, murmuring a quiet “I’ll go” added onto it. Your brother beams at you, and you can practically see the tension release from his shoulders.

The next day, as it is nearing noon, you follow Bryan outside to his car. You are all dressed and ready to see the guys but you can’t quite shake the anxiety or paranoia coursing through your veins. They are stifling each of your senses as Bryan drives.

But you wouldn’t let Bryan notice. You aren’t going to let him notice the slight trembling of your hands or the waver in your voice as you quietly sing along to the music playing. Bryan doesn’t need another thing to worry about regarding you. The least you can do is conceal your emotions, stamp them way down deep inside of you, until you’re back in the safety of your bedroom later in the day.

Then you begin recognizing the streets Bryan’s driving down and you notice the same things you always do when going down this familiar route — the bright yellow house on the corner; the 1968 Chevy Camaro that is still idling in that guy’s driveway after all these years; the house with the large porch and the beautiful bush of purple hydrangeas. When you see those flowers you know you’re only a block away.

And there it is, the thing you’ve been dreading seeing for the past 24 hours. Your friends’ house is completely unassuming as Bryan pulls up on the curb. You recognize the small handful of cars out front.

Bryan gets out of the car almost immediately. However, he pauses at the hood when he sees that you haven’t done the same. You had unbuckled your seatbelt and everything but the familiar cars and home in front of you have you hesitating. Your brother rounds the front of the car until he reaches the passenger side door. He gently pulls it open and kneels next to you on the pavement.

“Hey, you okay?”

You hear Bryan’s voice but do not respond. Your head is spinning as you continue taking in the view of this house you know so well, and yet feel like you’re a phantom coming back to haunt its place of death.

You swallow down a bite of fear. You slowly look to Bryan and nod.

“Yeah. I’m okay,” you tell him softly.

“I know you’re worried,” Bryan says gently. “But there’s nothing to get worked up about, okay? I promised Noah wouldn’t be here, and he’s not. He’s with Folio, but everyone else is inside.”

Bryan’s gentle and kind voice soothes your senses. You take a deep breath and slowly breathe out. Your shoulders relax, making Bryan give you an encouraging smile. You return it as you gingerly get out of the car.

Hesitantly, you follow behind Bryan as he makes his way to the front door. He knocks a few times before it’s swinging open. And your heart soars at the sight of Jolly smiling down at you.

Relief floods every single one of your veins when he pulls you into a warm hug. It feels like you haven’t seen him in centuries.

As soon as you are released from Jolly’s embrace, you’re pulled into another hug by Nicholas. You love his hugs more than anything, and you hate how much you’ve missed this.

Even though you’re able to spend time with your friends you still struggle against the anxiety eating away at you. It’s difficult for the few hours you hang out with them, but you know it’s worth it if it means seeing all of their smiling faces.

When you get up the following day you walk out of your room expecting to see Bryan already awake. But he isn’t in the living room or kitchen, and you check his bedroom to find it empty.

Where the hell could he be?

You shoot him a text asking him where he is before you go about your day.

After a half hour you’ve received no response from Bryan. So you send him yet another text, and you send one to Nicholas and Jolly just for the sake of your sanity. For peace of mind, right?

But after an hour you haven’t gotten a reply from any of the three men. You’re growing anxious, but you know Bryan would have let you know if something was going on. He would have told you if something was wrong and if he wouldn’t have his phone on him. At least, you think so.

You decide to ignore it for now, however. Your brother and your friends are grownups and can take care of themselves. Although, it doesn’t help you worry any less.

A couple hours later you’re still glaring down at the screen of your phone. None of your friends were answering you. Why weren’t they answering you?

Not even Bryan will text or call you back. That alone makes you see red.

After one more hour of sitting around and waiting for any response from your friends or your brother you take it upon yourself to figure out what the fuck is going on. With a last ditch effort at contacting Bryan, which ultimately — and unsurprisingly — goes unanswered, you snatch up your car keys and stomp outside. A string of colorful curses escapes your mouth as you drive.

When the familiar house finally comes into view from down the street, you are seething at the sight of your brother’s car out front. Adding onto that, you recognize each and every other car, including Nick’s motorcycle. You’re going to kill them all.

You haphazardly park on the curb and begin making your way to the front door. Until you’re stopped by Nick meeting you halfway.

“Folio! What the hell is going on?” you demand angrily. You fight the excitement you feel at seeing one of your best friends. The smile you want to let shine is bitten back. “Why are none of answering me?”

Nick gives you a small embarrassed smile.

“Look, I-I don’t think it’s a good time,” he replies hurriedly. He glances back at the front door he had closed shut on his way outside.

“What do you mean? Why not?”

“I-It’s just not, okay?” Nick begins fiddling with the chain around his neck. “We’re working on some new stuff a-and we just aren’t ready to share with anyone quite yet.”

“Oh, yeah? Then why is Bryan here?” you counter. “I bet Davis is, too.”

You see the panic glowing vibrantly in Nick’s eyes as he struggles to come up with a reasonable explanation. But you’re growing impatient and are fed up with receiving nothing from any of your friends. So you sidestep around Nick and make your way to the door.

Nick immediately follows and attempts to wedge himself between you and the door before you can reach for the handle. But you just shove past him and make it inside. However, you’re met with yet another obstacle.

“Nicholas, I swear to all things fucking holy, if you do not let me by and tell me what’s going on—“

“No. I’m sorry, but now’s not a good time, dude,” Nicholas tells you. “You need to leave.”

There’s an immediate difference you notice from your interaction with Nick and now Nicholas. Nick was panicking and anxious, like he was tasked with keeping a secret he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep for very long. Nicholas, on the other hand, is still anxious, but he seems resigned about it. He’s aware of the consequences of the same secret and he is remorseful about keeping it hidden.

You don’t like the implications of that at all.

“I’m not leaving until someone explains,” you snap. You can feel tears burning your throat as you watch Nicholas’s face fall.

“I promise one of us will explain, but right now, please let Folio take you home,” Nicholas offers, gesturing to Nick who is standing behind you.

You’re about to reply when you catch sight of someone peaking around the corner. You recognize the long hair in an instant.

“Jolly!”

You push past Nicholas and head to the kitchen, where you had seen Jolly disappear to. He steps back around the corner in an attempt to stop you, but you evade his touch as you push him away from you.

“What the fuck are you guys hiding from me? What could possibly be so—“

You stop in your tracks. The sight you’re met with leaves you speechless, and you hate the feeling of your racing heart picking up a greater speed from within your chest.

Standing around the kitchen there are five people, including Bryan, Matt, Davis, and Jesse. They all look to you with guilt alighting their faces, the worst being your brother who makes an obvious move to approach you. But you can’t take your eyes off of the fifth person.

Noah cut his hair. It’s much shorter than what it was since the last time you saw him. His tattooed arms and neck are exposed from the tank top he’s wearing, and you silently beat yourself up for gawking at the sight. He too is stunned by your presence, but is openly dragging his gaze up and down your body as you continue staring at him in disbelief.

You can feel Bryan’s presence at your side but you don’t bother to acknowledge him. You’re too busy fighting back the building pressure in your head at seeing Noah in person.

“Hey, Kirk,” Noah says, his voice breaking through the uncomfortable silence that was rapidly filling up the room. You hardly register the nickname.

“What the fuck is this?” you ask in a near whisper.

Noah takes a deep breath.

“There’s a lot to explain, but—“

“A lot to explain?” you repeat incredulously. “Like what? Like why you abandoned me?”

You watch Noah step away from the kitchen counter he had been leaning on, then start cautiously walking in your direction. The pace you take backwards is completely involuntary.

You can see Bryan beside you from the corner of your eye. You know Jolly, Nicholas, and Nick are standing not too far behind you. And yet, you still can’t fight the urge to take several more steps back.

Noah takes a long stride towards you again.

“Kirk, wait—“

“No. No, fuck you. You don’t get to call me that,” you quietly hiss, cutting him off. “After almost three years of no contact or explanation you do not get to call me that ever again.”

Your chest is heaving as you stare him down. The red hot anger flowing through your veins pairs nicely with the frigid cold despair encapsulating your heart. And you know for a fact that Noah can’t stand seeing these violent emotions clearly battling for dominance from the look in your eyes. That sends a spark of satisfaction down your spine. But only for a moment.

You can practically see his heart shattering inside his ribcage, and it takes everything in you not to let your impending tears fall. After all this time you’re not going to let him see you break. Never again.

And you’ll never admit to anyone just how much hearing him say that nickname is affecting you. That one word should not have so much power over you, especially since you haven’t been called that since you last him. However, you’re beginning to shake and tremble at just hearing it.

“Do not think you have the fucking right to ever call me that again.” You silently scold yourself for letting your voice crack with emotion. “I’m not the one who left and abandoned you without explaining first.”

You swallow the lump in your throat.

“You didn’t even call,” you say, your vocal cords failing you and breaking your words completely as they fall from your lips.

It’s more than obvious that Noah is struggling to keep his emotions at bay, as are you. But before either one of you can shed the first tear you turn on your heel and make your way back outside. None of your friends try to stop you, knowing that it would just make things worse.

You rush out of the house nearly blind. The tears obstructing your vision are burning your eyes, and the first one falls when you’re finally in the quiet of your car.

The only sound is your blood rushing in your ears. It’s deafening in the otherwise silence. Your head is swimming and making you dizzy as you sit still.

And after a few minutes of sitting silently by yourself you can’t choke back the anguished scream that rips through you. Within the confining space of your car the shrillness of your scream reverberates over and over. The sound is almost painful, the way it bounces off of the windows and comes diving back into your aching ears.

Your chest seizes and the scream cuts off. Your throat burns from the scream, but you swallow roughly and fight against the oncoming surge of tears. This is neither the time nor the place for sobbing uncontrollably. So you suck in a few deep breaths before you turn the key in the ignition and drive away.

You manage to make it home before fully breaking down. You’d barely made it inside the door when you began violently sobbing and shaking. It had taken much longer until you managed to pull yourself off the floor and down the hallway to your room.

After imagining the scenario of seeing Noah again, you didn’t anticipate reacting like that. Well, you were certain you would be angry and yell at him, definitely. But screaming and crying like a child because he called you that beloved nickname? You can’t say you had expected that one.

For the next several hours you sit alone in your room. You formed your bedsheets and blankets and pillows into a sort of cocoon, partially hoping you could disappear into their comfort forever.

It’s only mildly disappointing when that doesn’t happen.

Bad Omens is playing quietly from your phone when you hear the slamming of the front door, signaling Bryan coming home. Your heart picks up its pace when you hear his footsteps growing closer to your room. And then the sporadic muscle drops when he knocks. From the other side of the door you hear Bryan say your name.

“Can I come in?” your brother asks.

“Go away, Bryan!”

You swear you can hear his soft sigh. A few beats of silence pass before he speaks again.

“Will you at least let me explain?” Bryan requests. “Look, I’m sorry we didn’t tell you, okay? But there’s a reason we didn’t.”

Against your better judgement, you reluctantly turn off the music on your phone then slide off your bed and pad towards your bedroom door. You hesitate, resting your hand on the knob before quickly unlocking it and opening your room to your brother. Bryan had been leaning against the doorframe, and straightens up when he sees you.

He wordlessly follows you. You assume your previous position on your bed at the headboard, and Bryan gingerly sits on the other end of the mattress.

“Okay, I wanna start by saying—“

“Why did he leave like he did?”

Bryan is taken aback by your unexpectedly soft voice. It’s obvious he had been preparing for anger and resentment from you, but is appalled by the reserved, quiet demeanor coming from you.

It doesn’t take much for him to know who you’re referring to, either.

“I don’t know,” Bryan admits quietly. “When Bad Omens released Finding God, when they started taking off, Noah had talked about bringing you along with us on tour. He had said you could help with merch sales and other shit. But something happened, I guess. When he’d told me that you weren’t coming with I got fucking pissed at him. ‘Cause why offer to bring you along when he hadn’t even talked to you about it? Other than that, Noah didn’t tell me why he hadn’t talked to you about coming on tour.”

You hate how easy it is for you to believe Bryan. You hate how much you believe his words, because you can feel his own personal residual anger towards Noah. His anger and guilt feels honest and true.

“I thought he had talked to you,” Bryan goes on. “All of us thought he had talked to you about tour. And we were all excited. Like, having my little sister on tour with us? I was so stoked. So were you, I remember. The first week of that tour was sour and a little tense because of Noah. But we evened out, I guess.

“And then the way he never contacted you after that? After tour ended? He did that shit on his own. We all told him it was a bad idea but he wouldn’t listen. He’d said it would be better if he just stopped talking to you so ‘this wouldn’t happen again’. But that just left you watching his Twitch streams anonymously and following Bad Omens from a distance.”

The pity is evident in Bryan’s words. It’s no secret that you had been completely torn up over Noah cutting contact with you, and the fact that Bryan knows about watching Noah’s livestreams without knowing you were a viewer feels like a sword being driven through your heart.

The dam in your head is threatening to break.

“So when he came to us about finally wanting to see you, we were all in agreement that it was a good idea for the most part. I promise I was going to text and explain why none of us were responding to you, but Noah wanted to do it himself. Then you just showed up at the house and…”

You suddenly feel like you’ve made a horrible mistake. Noah was going to talk to you on his terms but you ruined it by showing up unannounced. Then you didn’t bother letting him explain because you hadn’t been prepared to see him in the first place. Tears are flooding your eyes.

“I know how you felt about Noah in the past,” Bryan nearly whispers. You almost break your neck at how fast you look at him. “I don’t know if you still feel the same anymore, or if you ever told him, but you didn’t deserve to go through that either way. He should’ve talked to you to begin with, and it’s his fault this all happened. I’m so sorry.”

And that’s what makes the dam finally break. Tears spill down your cheeks relentlessly and you can barely breathe now. Bryan watches you sputter and choke for only a moment before he’s at your side.

You let him pull you into his chest and rock you back and forth with his arms securely around your shaking frame. His hands soothingly glide up and down your spine as you sob.

Your brother holds you as you bawl into his chest. He says nothing while cradling you; he just keeps rocking you gently.

In this position, you feel utterly helpless. You feel it hooking its claws into you and tugging at your soul with the intention of ripping it right from your bones. And you give in to the feathery sensation exploding in your chest, hoping it makes these emotions disintegrate for good.

On top of the helplessness is something you have always disliked feeling: hatred.

You hate Bryan for being so protective over you. You hate your friends for being secretive. You hate Noah for ever coming into your life to begin with.

But most of all, you hate yourself — for falling for Noah, for letting your emotions get the best of you, for pretending you hate anyone at all.

Because that’s the kicker, isn’t it? You can’t stand the thought of hating anyone but yourself, not even Noah. After all, it isn’t Noah’s fault that you fell in love with him, or how he was there for you when almost no one else was. It’s your fault for being vulnerable and naïve to how he made you feel, thinking he would ever actually give a shit about you.

It was never Noah’s fault that you willingly fell into his addictive gravity. You did that all on your own.

You’re the one who became infatuated with him. You’re the one who wanted to know the inner machinations of his mind and understand his thought process more than anything. You are the one who saw him as so much more than a friend before he would ever give you the time of day.

You gave yourself wholly to Noah before he could — or would — ever see you in that same light. He was your brother’s best friend, someone to tease and joke with. But he was also someone you found yourself constantly confiding in and sharing the darkest parts of your soul to. And he did the same.

So maybe it wasn’t all in your head when you thought he could possibly ever reciprocate your feelings for him. Because that is certainly what it had felt like for the longest time before he up and left, leaving you behind.

You let yourself be cradled by Bryan for a long time. There’s nothing in your brain telling you to pull away, as much as you had expected it. No, instead, you let your brother hold you so delicately and lovingly until you’ve run out of tears. And even then, he holds you for a long time once you have drifted off to sleep in his arms.

It’s only a couple days later when Bryan approaches you.

You’re sat in your shared living room, scrolling through your phone on the couch. Your brother’s presence catches your attention and you look up from your phone to see him standing on the other end of the couch. There’s this weird look on his face that you notice right away.

“What’s up?” you say to him.

“Nothing. Just coming to tell you I’m heading out,” Bryan replies. “I’ll be back soon.”

You furrow your eyebrows. “Where are you going?” you ask him, a hint of suspicion creeping into your words.

“Oh, uh… Places.”

“Okay?” You elongate each syllable of the word as you carefully eye your brother. “You’re not being very casual about.. whatever this is, you know that, right?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“God, Bry, you’re so cryptic,” you joke with a small smile. “I think you need to stop hanging out with Bad Omens so much.”

Bryan purses his lips.

“Yeah, uh… Speaking of.”

At that, Bryan turns on his heel and hurries out of the living room. His abrupt exit takes you aback, and you immediately jump to your feet to chase after him.

Bryan is already halfway out the front door by the time you’re up. He slams it behind him as you are about to catch him, a soft apology buried under the sound of the door slamming shut. But you are so confused right now and you need to know what Bryan has planned.

So you pull the door open once more, irritated by the sound of Bryan’s retreating feet down the hallway. You ready yourself to run after your brother to get an answer out of him, but he’s already disappeared around the corner and you don’t have nearly enough patience to deal with it and—

Noah is standing a few feet from you. You’re stunned into silence, completely forgetting about Bryan. Your throat is beginning to burn with tears.

“What are you doing here?” you question him quietly.

“I need to talk to you,” he replies. Noah’s voice is gentle and it sends a shiver down your spine. His hands are stuffed into the pocket of his sweatshirt, but you can guarantee his fingers are fidgeting relentlessly.

You swallow thickly as you watch him closely. You’re beginning to realize why Bryan left in such a hurried manner; he had left so Noah could get you alone and talk. You suppose you’ll have to punch your brother when you see him again later.

Without saying a word you step back into your apartment and leave the door open. A silent invitation for Noah to enter. He is clearly taken aback but says nothing as he follows after you.

You aren’t completely sure why you let him inside, in all honesty. But now he’s standing in your living room, and you are standing as far away from him as you possibly can without it being deemed as weird. He doesn’t seem to notice, or, if he does, he makes no attempt at mentioning it.

Noah stands awkwardly on the other side of the room, his hands tucked away in the pockets of his sweatshirt and his shoulders tight and hunched slightly. He seems uneasy, and his face is a light shade of red as you remain in anxious silence.

“So…?” you quietly prompt.

Noah blinks a couple times. His mouth is agape as he stares at you. Then he’s licking his lips nervously and begins to speak.

“It’s been a long time, huh?”

It is more than obvious that being in your presence like this is causing him distress and anxiety. Like if he says the wrong thing you’ll kick him out. The fractured expression he gives you when you don’t react or respond sends a sharp pang straight into your heart, but you ignore it and keep your face neutral.

“Uh… On my way here I had gone over everything I wanted to say,” Noah continues, “but now I can’t remember a fucking thing. So that’s great.”

You’d forgotten how much you have missed Noah that the obvious sarcasm and dejectedness in his voice almost make you laugh. Then that tightness in your throat takes ahold of you once more, and you stay still.

Noah looks completely defeated from he stands. There’s a panicked gleam in his eyes and his toes are starting to tap from anxiety. Every part of your body is screaming at you to just cross the room and embrace him, to calm his nerves. But you fear you might shake your skeleton right out of your skin if you move.

“I-I’m sorry, I—“ Noah scratches at the back of his neck with one tattooed hand before slotting it back into his sweatshirt pocket. “Bryan suggested I do this and… This isn’t how I imagined this going.”

“This isn’t how I imagined this going either,” you murmur. Your voice wavers from the intensity of the tears you’re holding back.

The silence that settles between you is stifling. It has you holding your breath silently begging for your apartment building to suddenly collapse all around you. You can’t do this for much longer.

But Noah still hasn’t said anything else. He is looking at you earnestly, as if he is trying to communicate with you using only his eyes. It makes you pity him.

However, you know you can’t do this back and forth all day. You would much rather go lay in bed and ignore the outside world. Ignore Noah.

“Noah, I appreciate you coming and trying to talk,” you say, avoiding eye contact with him. “But I think it’s time you leave. There’s nothing more to be done.”

“Wait, what? What do you mean?” Noah voice strains with confusion and surprise.

“You need to leave, Noah. Thank you for stopping by.”

You turn around and begin heading to your bedroom. You’re secretly hoping Noah will just give up and leave like you asked. But you know better than to think like that.

“You know I’m in love with you, right?”

Noah’s words catch you off-guard. You freeze where you stand but make no attempt to look at him. Your heart is pounding out of your chest as you anxiously wait for him to go on.

“That’s why I—“ You hear him take a deep breath before continuing. “That’s why I didn’t want you on the tour with us. I didn’t want to ruin our friendship or anything, so I figured it would be best if you didn’t come with at all. I was afraid I would let it slip and you wouldn’t feel the same. Then you’d go home and forget about me and… Guess I did that exact thing anyways, didn’t I?”

Tears are gathering in your eyes as Noah speaks. You can feel your stomach sinking at his confession, and it makes you wonder if letting him in your apartment was truly a good idea. But it’s a little too late to reminisce about that decision you can’t take back.

You hesitantly turn to face Noah. There are tear stains trailing down his cheeks that disappear under the line of his jaw. Even from this distance, you can tell his eyes are bloodshot and puffy.

The moment both your gazes meet you could feel that forceful tug in your chest. You fight against the pull as much as you possibly can, but you know you will gravitate towards Noah eventually.

The gravity between you is simply inevitable.

“I’m sorry.” Your heart mimics the breaking of Noah’s voice. “For everything. I should’ve talked to you about tour, and I should’ve talked to you after tour was over. There’s a lot I should have done, and I wish I could erase all of it and try again. Do it properly so I never have to lose you. But I can’t, and I… I am so fucking sorry.”

He remains quiet after that. Tears are pouring from your eyes and you’re shaking uncontrollably. That powerful tug is begging you to close the distance between you and Noah.

And after all this time of fighting back against this gravity and the desire you feel to be with Noah for so many years, you finally give in to it. Your legs slowly shuffle you towards Noah. He has so many emotions intermingling on his face as you approach that it’s difficult to comprehend what he’s feeling.

You come to a stop right in front of him. Hesitation stirs in you, and you are able to bite it back as you give Noah a soft look.

“I wish we could turn back time to do it all over again, too,” you tell him. “But we can start over now, if you want.. Seb.”

It takes Noah a moment to process your words. Then he nods, the tension in his shoulders slowly slipping away and disappearing completely. He also seems delighted at hearing your nickname for him.

“I’m in love with you too,” you whisper. “But it really hurt when you never got back in touch with me. I thought I had done something wrong, or you just didn’t want to be friends anymore. So seeing you the other day after so long was really weird for me and I wish I had stayed to hear you out. And I’m sorry, for storming out and being stubborn.”

Noah seems, not only surprised, but relieved, when you tell him you’re in love with him. Then he smiles down at you.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just a stupid asshole who can’t express his feelings,” he tells you. “And don’t apologize for being stubborn or storming out the other day. It was sudden and unexpected. It’s okay, I promise.”

You return his smile.

“Okay.”

Noah hesitantly stretches out his arms in invitation for a hug. And you’re never going to fight against this gravity between you two ever again.

You fall into his chest and embrace him. Noah’s arms curl around you, holding you close for a moment before lifting you up. Your legs instinctively wrap around his hips.

Being pressed against Noah like this — chest to chest, tears staining your faces — feels right. It feels like galaxies colliding and solar systems stitching themselves together. Like foreign planets aligning and stars exploding into supernovas. It’s two celestial bodies finally merging after millennia of being separated.

It feels like home.

thank you for reading! hope you enjoyed! likes and reblogs are very much appreciated <3

[marlynnofmany]

Racetracking

“The good news,” announced the gravelly voice of Mimi the tentacle alien, “Is that this model defaults to zero-g when it breaks.” He led the way down the corridor with tentacle slaps instead of footsteps, which managed to sound exasperated.

I had the brief thought that he was louder than Mur and Wio when he walked, possibly because he spent so much time in the engine room where everything was noisy. But I put that thought aside. I had a pretty good idea what the bad news was.

“The bad news,” Mimi grumbled, “Is that the carrying cage that these high-paying customers insisted on is so broken that I can’t fix it. Even with the right tools.”

“So we have animals in zero-g,” I said.

Mimi waved a tentacle in a way that I privately found hilarious. “We just took off! Just! It’s like they’re trying to frame us for damages!”

I looked at him in alarm. “Are we sure they’re not?”

He made a dismissive motion, still walking. “That’s what the cameras in the storage holds are for. There’s proof that no one dropped it or whatever. And I think Captain Sunlight is already talking to them about it, which is a conversation I do not envy her.”

I winced. “Yeah. Which animals? It’s just one of the carriers, right?”

“The little ones. I dunno what they’re called. They were alive when I left, but they looked pretty upset.”

That didn’t narrow it down. As the ship’s resident animal expert, I’d had a look at each of the half-dozen life support chambers that passed for carriers among the rich folks. Each of them held a different type of little furry whatsit in wild colors. Each was sealed with its own supply of air and gravity — or at least it was supposed to be.

I couldn’t hear any distressed noises yet, but when Mimi poked the button for the door, it slid open to a chorus of muffled squeaks.

The six chambers were lined up in a row, on display in the center of the room, with nothing close enough to so much as touch them. Five held animals calmly nosing around the bottom.

One held a whirling tornado of blue fur.

I dashed over to peer through the glass, hands dancing uncertainly. I shouldn’t touch it, shouldn’t open it. But—!

…But.

I looked closer. “They’re running.” I dropped my hands and stared.

Mimi plopped down next to me. “Is that bad?”

“No, it’s just — Look at them! They’re doing this on purpose!” I started to smile as I realized why the squeaks sounded familiar. “They’ve made their own hamster wheel.”

“A what now?” Mimi wanted to know.

I gestured vaguely. “It’s an exercise thing for animals like this where I’m from. A wheel that they run inside of, and it keeps spinning. These guys—” I pointed at the chamber. “—Have created their own.”

“Uh-HUH.” Mimi tilted his head to watch the antics, which were slowing down as they noticed us. “That is a strange reaction to zero-gravity.”

“I’ve heard of mice that did that, actually,” I said as a memory surfaced. “It took them a while to make a game of it. I wonder if this isn’t the first time the carrier’s gravity has gone screwy.”

Mimi held a curl of tentacle thoughtfully to his face. “That is an interesting data point. The captain will want to know.” He lowered it. “And if you’re sure these things aren’t about to die of organ explosion or whatever, then we should go tell her.”

The blue furry things — which did honestly look a lot like mice — had settled down to some more even-tempered bumping around in there. None were limping as far as I could tell, and none had been knocked unconscious or worse.

“I think they’re okay,” I said, looking closely. “The food dispenser is closed, thankfully, so there aren’t any pellets or globs of water floating about. They just got a bit of excitement.”

Mimi levered himself off the floor. “They’re not the only ones,” he grumbled. “Annoying little meatsticks must be in cahoots with the rich jerks, trying to make our lives harder. Why would they even do that?”

I gave the chamber one last look, then stood and followed him toward the door. “I dunno, it looks like fun. Probably a lot of animals would enjoy that if they knew it was an option.”

Mimi stared at me with one large eye. “Animals from your planet.”

“Well, yeah. Probably others too.”

He made a wet-sounding snort of skepticism and led the way into the hall.

I followed, smiling. “Come on, it looks like fun. I was just thinking it would be neat to try in a zero-g room, though flat walls wouldn’t be as good as curved ones.”

“Your planet’s full of weirdos. You know that, right?”

“Oh, it’s been said before.”

~~~

Thanks to this post for inspiration! It was too good an idea to pass up.

Anyways, this is the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book. But you probably already knew that.

[ywpd-translations]

Ride 760: Kiji, flying

Pag 1

The MTB Emperor is taking part in the road racing Inter High!!

Pag 2

1: As expected!!

2: The groups from Kyushu, like Fukuoka or Kumamoto are in quiet places close to the course and the main office

3: and close to the water supplies too!!

4: Well, they're from here after all

5: On the other hand, we're towards the end where there's so much noise

6: And above everything, they clearly.... forgot

Pag 3

1: only our tent and they added it in a hurry, fou!!

Pag 4

1: Hmm, that could be

Is it because it's our debut? That's discrimination!!

2: It's handwritten!!

And it's even spelled wrong!!

3: In this kind of situations, you can't do anything even if you get so worked up about it, Ichifuji-kun

Isn't it enough that we have a roof?

Pag 5

2: Should I fix that writing with magic later?

3: Sonomoto-san!!

4: The place is a problem too!!

We're close to where they're holding the bicycles exhibition, so there's a lot of people passing by and they can see us since we have no tent

5: And when we're changing clothes? We use the bath towel like this, that's what they do on elementary schools' pools!! Fou!!

6: During MTB races you either do it in a car or in the wild

It's not like the management just conveniently forgot about us, either

Pag 6

1: But the truth is that we're being treated unequally....?

What about you, Kaida!? What do you think!?

Should we go tho the management tent and say a word to them now? Fou!!

3: I've never got any results in MTB and never participated in the Inter High, so for me it's sufficient enough that I'm able to participate in the road racing Inter High

4: Stuff like the tent aren't important

Ugh.....!! You're kidding, I have zero supporters in this situation!!

Pag 7

1: And isn't it nice to have good ventilation?

2: And also... if you have to say something to the management

Don't you think it would be more persuasive

3: if we first ran in the race

4: and brought results?

Pag 8

1: If we brought results.....!!

2: Fou!! (Yessir)

Now, if you're ready

3: Should we all go for a trial run?

Fou!!

Yeah!!

Yes!!

Pag 9

2: Excuse me! This is a pedestrians crossing!

Pag 10

4: Hello

Are you maybe? A kid from here?

How.....

5: do you stand on the bike like that?

Pag 11

1: Are you interested in bikes?

Even though your feet aren't connected to the ground, you're still in one place

2: Do you want to try?

4: I guess you won't be able to do it right away, but this is the theory

5: Bikes have a center

I'm standing there

6: A center?

7: It's different depending on the model, but a little before the saddle there's the center point of the bike

8: The technique is that you feel for it, find your balance, and then you find your stability if you properly position your body

Pag 12

1: It's called “standing”

Ohhhh...!!

2: Furthermore, if you can put your center of gravity firmly there

4: you can also let go of your hands while standing still, yon

Amazing.....!!

5: Amazing, amazing..!!

6: Yes yes, that's right, Kiji-san is amazing

Why does this guy looks so self-important

7: What's the heaviest thing on a bike?

Pag 13

1: Uh... uhm... the helmet?

3: It's your body

4: When riding a bike, the most important thing is to be conscious of where we put this “body”*, yon

Ah, when you're holding a bucket, if you're holding it with one hand you stagger, right?

(*NdT.: written as “heavy object”)

5: It's the same thing

6: “Weight” is power, yon

Ehh?

Pag 14

1: When you stop thinking “that's obvious”, “I know that”

2: That's when it's over for you

3: Discovery lies in common sense

4: The essential thing when handling a bike.... remember

5: is the “load” and the “unloading” to get ahead of it!!

Pag 15

1: Maybe it's faster if I show you?

2: Ah, that's good

Look at that fence

3: The movement of the “load”, and the “unloading”... and....

Use the same method as when you jump to take a picture at the beach

5: I'll jump over that fence!!

Pag 16

1: No, isn't it better to stop!? Onii-chan!!

2: You'll run into it!!

Just look, boy

3: Hayaaaa

That guy

4: is a guy who jumps over common sense!!

Yaaaaa

Pag 17

2: Don't miss all the multiple techniques he uses in an instant!!

Fou!!

He looks so self-important

3: First, he moves his body back and so he unload the weight from the front wheel

6: “Unloading”!!

Pag 18

1: He's really going to cras-

He's not!!

2: Then, he lowers his body's center of gravity for a moment

3: Then he stretches!!

And pulls the frame!!

5: He's not high enough!!

This is the moment when you jump when taking pictures!!

6: Pull up

7: your knees

The technique of skillfully using your “load” to jump over obstacles

Pag 19

1: is called “bunny hop”!!

Pag 20

1: There are people who have mastered the technique and can do it, but it's at most 30cm.... but Kiji-san

2: can jump 80cm!!

3: Who's that guy!

Did you see that just now

4: He jumped that fence with a road racer

His bike floated!?

The fence!?

5: I've never seen something like that

The jerseys' of the guys who are with him say “Gunma”....!!

6: It was ama.... amazing....

That.... if I practice... will I be able to do it too one day?

Of course

Pag 21

1: If you fall a lot, and skin your knees a lot, and eat a lot....

2: Okay?

3: Well now, since we're participating in the Inter High, come see us!!

4: I'll cheer for you...!!

Thank you!

5: The cyclists will soon gather at the starting line!!

[mahomadjicks]

Been seeing some posts about the Q and A the clash writing team did and man…

((WARNING: light rant below; mostly me rambling about worldbuilding aaaa))

I’m not fond of what the writing team wants to do, especially since it seems like they’re hyper-focusing on the kudos/street managers. It’s this section in particular that’s got me thinking and worried.

MAN does this phrase here have a lot of food for thought. Not just because of the horror fanfic i’m making, but now things clearly seem to be taking a large turn into the ‘Manager-focused plot’ I feared Clash would write themselves into.

Idk. The way i’m thinking about it, it’s a bit self destructive writing wise for suits to be in inherent ‘tiers’. (Grunt cogs have less personality/free will than managers, ete.)

If one of the goals is to show how COGs Inc exploits and mistreats their workers, isn’t it shooting yourself in the foot saying ‘COGs inc is a horrible company to ALL its workers’, but then turning to say ‘oh yeah, all those cogs aren’t as sentient compared to THESE ones’—

Like, in the case of ‘grunt’ cogs, wouldn’t these cogs be the ‘ground zero’ of the atrocities the company commits? Literally built for one purpose in life, in a cycle of being destroyed and rebuilt constantly without any say or agency. Being held under the thumb of a dubious company that in all technicality owns you, so you can’t really leave unless you’re fired?

If the grunt cogs were just as self preserving and sentient as the managers, then the message would be hammered in better. THEY’d be the ones constantly put under all the pressure for virtually nothing. Instead, the writing team has introduced the dilemma of ‘who is aware/deserving of company rights’.

If these (grunt) suits are inherently ‘lesser’ than their manager counterparts, then it changes the gravity of the situation from ‘discriminatory company practices’ to ‘changing a piece of machinery.’ No real loss, and its business as usual. The very problem i’d imagine the writing team wants to warn and help players to recognize in the story.

While not treated much better, it’s been shown/implied that manager cogs (specifically kudos/street and Litigation) get a lot more benefits and free time than anyone else besides bosses.

Removing personality/preservation from ‘grunt’ suits changes this element in the story from ‘They have higher positions, thus better work benefits,’ to ‘They get those benefits because they KNOW that they have them in the first place.’

In general, lot of the managers seem to have the luxury of being built without a specific company in mind, having childhoods, and ultimately CHOOSING to work at COGs Inc. Many seem to forget the whole reason the kudos/street managers were hired in the first place was in response to Atticus Wing’s death.

They weren’t randomly ‘dropped in’, and now the story needs to be changed to accommodate them. There already was an explicit reason, and it doesn’t seem to conflict with any manager lore after the fact. Why bend over backwards to force them into the story rewrites more?

I understand the managers are super popular, and have been a game changer in terms of story and gameplay, but I honestly feel they’re also blinding people in terms of prior lore and potential lore avenues. There’s no need to break the story/lore further to make the ‘special’ cogs even more ‘special’.

At the end of the day, I get the writing team wants to add more flavor, and I commend them for doing all this for free! Writing isn’t easy, and this isn’t me hating on them at all. I’m just not fond of this manager-centric mindset gripping people. I’m certainly looking forward to all the future content they wish to add, specifically rewrites in toon NPCS.

Anyway just had this in the back of my mind for a minute, feel free to throw in your two cents if ya like.

[sleepymccoy]

I'm trying to create like a dozen distinct characters, so enjoy my poll where I try to summarise everyone in my spaceship story. This is to help me check that they are actually all different and that I have a character for each rather than just sort of having dialogue

[autisticlancemcclain]

prev

“We have to go through…wait, Keith, is this right?” He flips the tablet over to Keith, zoomed in on a pair of coordinates. “This is, like, right next to a black hole. RIght right next to, worryingly next to. I don’t like how close this is. This pod is not really built for that, I don’t think.”

Keith doesn’t recognise the coordinates, so he can’t really say, but there’s a fair bit riding on this mission, so he doubts Kolivan has fucked this particular detail up. 

“Well, it’s either safe or no longer our problem.”

“I suppose.”

A little disappointed that Keith’s attempt at a joke didn’t do much to lighten Lance’s expression, he lets them lapse into silence, tilting his head back onto the seat and closing his eyes as the pod zooms forwards. 

They have a long journey ahead of them.

– – –

Keith jerks awake half-convinced he’s inside a rock tumbler. That’s how it sounds, anyway, with the ear-crushingly loud bangs and crashes coming from all around the pod, shaking the whole craft and sending Keith flying were it not for his tight grip on the ceiling handle. 

Lance has just barely beaten him to the pilot’s chair, settling in quickly and white-knuckling the yoke.

“What’s going on?” Keith shouts over the noise.

“I woke up twelve seconds before you did,” Lance grits out, jerking the yoke to the side and sending them spinning out of the way of an asteroid the size of a small house. 

“Fuck, it must be an asteroid storm, we’re gonna have to –”

“Keith, can it,” Lance barks. “Unless the next words out of your mouth are a magical solution, you need to keep them to yourself.”

Keith snaps his jaw shut. Even if he did have a magical solution, Lance can’t afford the distraction – not because he’s unskilled, but because the space in front of them is getting denser and denser, to the point where Keith can feel something wrong in the atmosphere, and asteroids are becoming unavoidable. Every second there’s a crash on the outside of the pod, shaking the whole thing and sending them careening into another atmosphere. Lance grits his teeth and tries to hold them steady, but after a point it’s impossible, and control is out of his hands.

“Strap into the crash zone!” Lance shouts. He unclips himself from the pilot’s chair, stumbling forward as an asteroid hits; Keith barely manages to dart out one arm not gripped onto the ceiling handle to catch him. “We’re not going to make it through this storm and it’s too late too –”

They’re both thrown to the side as a massive rock hurls into the pod, crushing the side concave sending the pod spinning like a top. Keith hits the ground hard, helmet bouncing off the floor so hard he sees stars, and he loses his grip on Lance as the paladin goes flying over him. The sound of crushing metal is deafening and painful, and it only compounds as more and more asteroids slam into the pod, throwing it back and forth like a rowboat in a hurricane. The pressure in the cab and all around them grows exponentially, until Keith feels like a compressed can; like his eyes are ready to pop out of his skull. He’s in so much pain he doesn’t even have the strength to be panicked.

Like a switch is turned the pressure suddenly lifts, and he’s weightless, slowly floating up in zero gravity; stomach swooping and limbs limp. The rapid change of atmosphere has him choking back vomit. Every couple of seconds the ruined pod shifts and shakes, from asteroids or gravitational forces Keith does not know, but in one particularly rough hit he’s slammed into the wall so hard his helmet cracks and for a moment everything goes dark. By the time he blinks himself awake, ears ringing and blinking slowly, sluggishly, the weightless, swoopy feeling in his stomach has returned, but not like when he’s in zero G – the same butterflies you get at the top of a rollercoaster, just as you begin to drop.

He registers the whistling sound of something falling at terminal velocity last.

The panic starts to set in, then. He scrambles to his feet, or tries to, but it’s hard; the pod is rattling every which way so there’s no solid ground to stand on, really, and he’s still dizzy and disoriented. He attempts a step forward and crashes to the ground, barely manages to catch himself. As he goes down he sees the rapidly approaching surface of something from the pod’s cracked windshield, and it’s green and grassy and flat and going to crush them to death.

“Lance?” Keith calls out, desperate and panicked. “Lance, where are you?” 

He whips his head around to look for him and almost passes out again. Bile climbs up his throat and he very nearly lets it spew out, breathing sharply through his nose and clamping his teeth to keep it down. The pod is small, and crushed, and he can’t see well over the protrusion of the cratered wall, and he can’t see Lance. 

“Lance! Answer me! Where are –”

The pod lurches sharply to the left without warning, throwing Keith to the ground again. This time he doesn’t bother getting back to his feet, instead grabbing one of the bent steel rods sticking out of the ruined pod wall to drag himself forward; tucked in close to the wall. FInally, to his great relief, as he crests the bend of the giant crater he sees a flash of blue armour; a cracked wrist guard shining with reflected light as Lance grips the steering yoke, back in the pilot’s seat, dragging it sharply upwards to try and lessen the impact of their crash. He’s struggling – Keith doesn’t know how far they’re falling from, or what level of gravitational force this random planet (if it even is a planet) has, but the speed they’re falling at is deadly. If they hit the ground the way they’re going, they’ll be crushed so fast they won’t even have time to realise they’re dying. At this point, Keith’s not even sure if anything can save them.

He sets his jaw. There’s no point in giving up.

As fast as he can go with the throbbing of his head, Keith half-crawls half-stumbles forward, using bent sections of wall and broken odds and ends to keep himself steady. He’s ready to throw up for the millionth time by the time he finally stands behind the pilot’s chair, hands gripping the arm rests, but he’s there and he’s conscious mostly and he’s capable enough.

“You good?” Lance grunts, barely audible over the sound of impending doom.

“Peachy,” Keith mutters back, planting his feet and leaning over to wrap both hands around Lance’s.

Without needing to say a word, they pull back at the same time, as hard as they can. The pod – or what’s left of it, Keith’s not sure they can accurately call this hunk of ruined metal a pod – creaks and groans with the effort, but with every second they hold their position with all the strength in their bodies, the nose of the craft inches up an up, getting closer and closer to parallel with the ground instead of perpendicular to it. 

“Incoming,” Lance warns, as the ground gets closer. “Brace yourself.”

“Grab me in three?” Keith asks.

Lance nods. “One…”

“Two…” Keith continues.

“Three!”

Milliseconds before they collide, Keith throws himself on top of Lance, curling against him. Lance whips the seat one eighty degrees so it’s facing away from the windshield and crash site rather than towards it, wrapping his arms around Keith’s torso and gripping tightly in lieu of a seatbelt.

The crash makes Keith black out again.

When he blinks back awake his ears are ringing, and everything looks and sounds like he’s underwater. His limbs are heavy and he feels like he’s been shrunk. His body’s telling him he’s been out for hours, but he knows, vaguely, that he hasn’t, because he’s not nearly well-rested enough. He inhales deeply through his nose, eyes fluttering shut, and tells himself he has five seconds.

One.

His limbs are all still there. Arm, arm, leg, leg. All are working, at least mostly. Good.

Two. 

His head throbs. Every pound of his heart amplifies in his head like a falling anvil in an ampitheatre. His body aches like it never has before.

Three.

The ringing in his ears hasn’t faded, but sound doesn’t sound so muted anymore. He thinks he can hear the groaning of buckling metal, and the roaring of engine flames.

Four.

There’s something sharp digging into his ankle. He can’t feel the pain of it yet, but he dreads the eventual fade of the adrenaline, the understanding that it is going to smart and it is going to smart badly.

One.

He exhales sharply and forces his eyes open, blinking rapidly to bring the blurry world into focus. He was right about the flames; he can see pieces of the engine strewn about the grass of the clearing, of some kind, that they’ve crashed in. The windshield is no longer a windshield so much as a gaping hole where the windshield once was. The nose of the craft is crushed into the strangely blue-ish dirt.

And Lance, under him, is unconscious.

“Lance,” Keith croaks, having intended his voice to be sharp and demanding but landing somewhere closer to weak and pleading. “Get up.”

He does not stir. Keith is comforted, somewhat, by the slight puffs of air fogging up his visor every few seconds, but Keith is pressed right against him and can’t really feel the movement of his chest. His head lolls back into the broken chair, hands resting limply on Keith’s back. There’s a trail of blood running down his temple.

With a heave of effort, Keith pushes himself upright, keeping his weight off Lance as best as he can. He presses the button on the side of his own helmet, relieved when his visor lights up with the info display. The second he gets the all-clear for breathable air, he places his hands on the base of Lance’s helmet, pulling it away from his head as gently as he can manage. It takes longer than he would like, but he’s terrified of pulling too hard and twisting Lance’s neck, especially if there’s a spinal injury. The second the helmet clears Lance’s hairline he tosses it to the side, letting it crack and clatter to the floor, and taps his cheeks rapidly.

“Lance? Lance, get up. Wake up. Get up now.” There’s not even so much as a twitch. Panic makes Keith’s breathing pick up. He’s blinking back flashes of Lance’s lax face, in the purple light of the castle, scratched to hell and neck bruised with fingerprints. He hopes to any god that is listening that it’s not that. He’s not sure the comms are working, and he sure as shit doesn’t have a pod. “Lance, it isn’t funny, get up!”

The urge to grab his shoulders and shake is overwhelming, He has to yank his hands away, forcing them under his thighs, leaning back and trying not to hyperventilate.

“Please,” he begs, voice cracking. “Please don’t leave me here by myself.”

He squeezes his eyes shut again. Okay. This is fine. Keith is going to count to five again, slower this time, and when he opens them again Lance will be awakeand smirking that fuckass smirk he does when he’s being a jackass and he knows it and is convinced he’s the funniest bitch around. He’s going to be fine. He’s breathing, anyways, so he’s alive, which means there’s nothing wrong, which means they will be fine and they’ll call the team somehow and –

“...K’th?”

Keith’s eyes fly open and he nearly cries with relief, throwing his arms around Lance’s shoulders and burying his head into his shoulder. “Oh, God, you’re alive!”

Lance goes stiff as a board. Keith stiffens, too, confused and alarmed at the strange reaction, suddenly hyperaware of his position; of the way he’s half sprawled in Lance’s lap, leaning bodily against him. He’s worried suddenly that his weight is hurting Lance and all but throws himself off in his haste put space between them. The abrupt weight on his ankle reminds rudely that hey, he just crashed into the actual ground from literal space, holy shit, and he nearly goes cross eyed with the pain.

A choked off grunt brings his attention back to Lance, who is in the process, for some dumbass reason, of standing up and crawling out of the broken window.

“Lance? What the fuck are you doing?”

Lance, of course, does not listen, because he is a mother fucker and Keith has the sudden and absurd urge to contact his brother by any means necessary to apologise. For, just. Everything.

Keith scrambles out after him, biting back a pained yell at the throbbing of his ankle. Lance is moving – fast, faster than Keith would expect, but there’s a clumsiness to the movements. Like he’s still half-out of it.

“Lance?”

Again, Lance doesn’t answer. He limps around to the side of the pod and Keith follows, at a loss. 

“Lance, fucking – stop that. You’re –” Lance shakes off his hand and continues carefully pulling back the shredded inner lining of the pod, dropping pieces of cracked polymer on the ground until the hold is big enough to lean through. He comes back out with an armful of steel boxes, dented and battered, etched with Galran and Altean labels, stacking them on a section of clearing that isn’t on fire or covered in debris.

Keith makes a noise of frustration. He’s torn between dragging Lance somewhere to make sure he’s okay and screaming at him. The anger and fear swirl violently in his stomach, clawing their way up his throat, and it burns worse than the vomit.

“Fine. Fine! Ignore me. I’m calling the team. You just stack your fucking boxes, jackass.”

He stomps back into the pod, sweeping aside the broken glass and metal shards and ignoring the slight sting of his ripped gloves. He grabs his and Lance’s discarded helmets and stomps back out to the clearing, climbing a random rock and relishing in the twinge of his ankle because it feels like a fuck you, somehow, and a fuck you is what he needs right now. He mentally flings it in Lance’s direction with great relish. Lance, because he is currently a massive rat bastard, does not pick up on Keith’s rancid vibes. Keith glares at him as he mashes the buttons he has memorised on his helmet display, dialling the Voltron line. 

It rings. And rings. And rings and rings and rings.

Keith frowns, some of the fury fading for confusion.

“Well, that’s not great.”

If the personal line is down, that means they’re either asleep or busy. He hopes asleep. He quickly dials up the business line, and when that doesn’t work, somewhat desperately, the distress line. It rings.

And rings.

And rings, and rings, and rings.

– – –

next

[litcityblues]

'Diplomatic Immunity' --A Review

I know it's actually May, but a new year means that I am continuing ahead on the Honorverse Saga and now I'm dipping back into the Vorkosigan Saga as well with the 13th Book in the Series, Diplomatic Immunity.

The book opens with Miles and Ekaterin on their honeymoon, wrapping up an extensive tour of various galactic sites before heading back to Barrayar just in time to open the replicators and welcome their two new children to the world. This being the Vorkosigan Saga and Miles being a (relatively) new Imperial Auditor, they naturally get diverted to deal with a diplomatic crisis in Quaddiespace.

Quaddies- if you are not familiar with the series are genetically modified humans who traded out their legs for a second set of arms so they could live and move more easily in a zero gravity work environment (Falling Free, which Is set 200 years before the start of the main series is sort of their origin story-- I'll get to that eventually, I promise.). Anyway, as it turns out, a convoy of Komarran Merchant ships is prevented from leaving Graf Station thanks to the somewhat reckless behavior of their Barrayaran military escorts, and to top that mess off, a Barrayaran security officer is missing, presumed murdered and another Ensign has deserted: for love.

Miles and Ekaterin arrive and Miles begins the process of untangling the diplomatic mess, only to be reunited with an old friend: his former Dendarii colleague, the Betan hermaphrodite Bel Thorne (last seen in Mirror Dance or possibly Memory I think-- no longer with the Dendarii, but still working with Imperial Security.) Bel is happy to see Miles, but hints that they would like to be released from Imperial Service so they can settle down with Nicol (a Quaddie musician Miles met earlier in the series while in Jackson's Whole-- in 'Labyrinth') and Bel tells Miles that there is something strange about the missing security officer, but they can't quite figure out what it is.

In short order, Miles discovers that he's in the middle of a plot by a renegade Cetagandan Ba to kidnap what turns out to be an entire cargo of embryos stolen directly from the Star Creche itself that it hijacked near Rho Ceta. Miles instantly realizes that this spells big trouble and a potential war between Barrayar and Cetaganda-- but before he can put a stop to it himself both he and Bel are infected with the same highly lethal bioweapons that was used to murder the missing Barrayarn security officer and nearly die, but manage to reach the nearest Cetagandan world just in time. They cure both him and Bel- though not without both suffering some permanent side effects and he returns the embryos to Cetaganda, averting a war and managing to make it home with Ekaterin in time to meet their new children.

I switched from snagging these on Audible to getting them off Kindle around about Memory I think and that was, oddly enough, the perfect time in the series to do that because as Miles transitions away from the Dendarii and into the role of Imperial Auditor-- I don't want to say the quality of the writing improves, because that's not true, it's always been good-- let's just say that the series matures with its character and the writing reflects that.

Diplomatic Immunity might be the first in the series that has so many callbacks to prior volumes. I don't think you have to read other books in the series to understand this-- McMaster Bujold has always been good at providing context for readers, even if it's only a sentence or two-- but it does add an extra dollop of charm as you get to meet characters from prior novels. I don't know if we're scheduled to see Bel Thorne again in future novels, but if not, then I think this is a nice, (relatively) happy ending for them and I like that. I also enjoyed the fact that this tied back to the events that happened in Cetaganda quite nicely as well-- for all the talk of the war with Cetaganda and how it hangs over a lot of the Barryaran experience, this is only the third time that Miles has tangled with them directly.

(Also, am I the only one who thought that Dubauer being called Dubauer was going to be a callback to Shards of Honor?)

I saw a recent Reddit post proclaiming McMaster Bujold as 'the most underrated writer' in SF/F and while the comments were quick to point out that she's got plenty of Hugos and Nebulas that would indicate that she's very rated and appreciated and has commercial success to boot, I would characterize her as perhaps 'the most discoverable' writer in SF/F? At 74, her output is not what it was at the height of her run in the late 80s, and early 90s and I know damn well that if I had found these books as a kid, I would have eaten them up instantly. Finding them now, in adulthood-- I can't tell you just how happy these books make me and how much I love these characters, and how I desperately wish someone who treasures these books would work up a screen adaptation because they are RIPE for the taking.

Overall: Excellent, enjoyable, delightful, charming, a great addition to the series and I ran right through this book because I just didn't want to put it down. My Grade: **** out of ****

[codenamesazanka]

SPINARAKI ROMCOM AU ERI AU????? give us a peek, pls??

I have to admit that it's mostly Spinaraki focus, and Eri's just there as more of a cute kid gimmick. But she is there, and does contributes to the plot! Later. You can prob even guess how - it's really is a stereotypical romcom.

*****

After getting Shigaraki off that crumbling battlefield - if that flat emptiness could even be called one anymore - with orders to the suddenly too affectionately-loyal Gigantomachia to watch their backs (hard to doubt the sincerity of that ReDestro guy’s kowtow, but can’t be too careful of any disagreeable followers)⸺

⸺after regrouping with Twice (original original) and coaxing him stand down and let their new allies the Liberation Army’s doctors treat Toga; then telling Dabi they won, now put away the fire⸺

⸺after tracking down Mr. Compress and un-marbling Eri and pleading with her (all huge, blotty eyes and wobbly mouth and dangerous trembling) to not cry, to calm down, it’s really not that much blood, hey stop looking at all the corpses, look no one in the League is dead, we all will be fine⸺

⸺and after being dragged into a medical van himself, Spinner finally lets himself leave survival mode.

Everything hits at once, and brutally: the exhaustion; the aching pain in every muscle, the really bad pain of his punctured arm; the echoey, weightless sensation of unreality as his mind wonders if they really had just cleared the level with zero deaths and all the rewards achieved, and more. The League + Eri: all alive. Gigantomachia: acknowledges Shigaraki as successor, just as the Doctor had demanded, and so All For One’s funding and resources: Shigaraki’s. An army of 100,000 people, along with some company that the ReDestro is apparently CEO of: Shigaraki’s as well.

Shigaraki won. They’ve won.

The moment Spinner swallows the painkillers they give him, all his senses shut down. Did he manage to properly lay down into his cot or are the medics now trying to drag him off the floor he fell face down onto? He has no idea. He’s already tumbling into darkness; then off he goes into dreamland.

･･･

Dreamland returns Spinner back to where he was just an hour ago:

On the edge of the crater; ground still unstable and giving way with every step Spinner takes. He hears and feels no crunch under his heel - the dirt and rock dissolve into dust, so fine and pale it fades into the infinite.

And Shigaraki is there.

Standing in this not-world of his unmaking, the only thing in existence. He’s bleeding and bruised and broken, white and red like exposed and fragmented bone, just as wrong and horrifying, just as elegantly jagged and breathtaking. The sight of his leader makes Spinner feel like his being is draining out of his body, leaving a hollow bigger and deeper than before. The sight of Shigaraki has Spinner feeling a light unfurling in his chest, searing through to place inside a heart tempered heavy and solid.

Even from a distance, Spinner can see the smile. It’s all teeth and wild joy, and when Shigaraki turns to face him, it grows even wider.

Can you see this, Spinner? I made it. All for us.

Spinner feels weightless. There’s no ground beneath him, there is nothing to hold him - he’s floating, he’s flying away from any feeling of gravity. All his life, whenever he climbs, he could always feel that pull, the force that threatens to drag him down. One slip, one spasm, one careless move, one freak accident where his quirk inexplicably fails because with his luck, why not, and he’ll be crashing into the ground, bones breaking, body torn apart, soul into hell.

In this world there is nothing like that.

Spinner reaches out his arm. The movement is slow like it has caution, but the act itself requires no will. His body moves on its own to reach for Shigaraki, to get closer. To grasp him in celebration - they won, the horizon they desired is here, the freedom to remake the world is theirs; to hold tight to staunch all wounds, to join the red of Spinner’s scarf with the red of Shigaraki’s blood; to simply be near, seeking out the small calm he’s come to associate with those moments he's alone with Shigaraki, just the two of them talking about games and stuff.

Shigaraki laughs and responds the same, hand out toward Spinner's. They touch, all five fingers matching each other, five points of connection that’s entirely without fear, without disgust, without the weight and stains that these hands have in the world - and Spinner doesn’t die.

He only feels renewed.

When Spinner wakes back up, groggy but so full of something big and light in his chest, it takes a few moments to realize that that wasn’t real life. That’s when all the memories of events of the past 24 hours flood his head.

He sits up immediately, the pain in his arm and his body just something he’s vaguely aware of because something more important occupying his head: “Where’s Shigaraki?”

A nurse tries to restrain Spinner when he tries to get off the bed; a Twice is there, telling him Shigaraki looks like shit! Shigaraki is totally fine!

I need to see him, Spinner thinks. I want—I want to see that smile again.

The thought makes him weak, enough for the nurse to successfully wrestle him back down to the bed; but that’s also when the heart monitor goes crazy, and then people are shouting about tachycardia or panic attacks and the room gets flooded with medical workers (and more Twices) attending to him.

･･･

Getting to Shigaraki’s room, it’s not a pretty sight. The boss is a mummy, out cold, and all the hands nowhere to be seen. But Shigaraki’s alive, he’s breathing, and there’s somehow a sense of victory even in his slumbering pose. 

Eri is also there, sitting curled up in a chair pushed up right against the bed, sniffling loudly every few seconds, eyes watery but no tears spilling. A Twice was also in the room at one point, if the heap of grayish-brown sludge on the floor is any indication. 

Spinner stepped over the puddle. “...What happened there?”

“They were arguing who the real one is and who should give me a piggyback ride,” Eri says, then curls up tighter into herself. “Then they slipped and fell while pushing each other.”

“Right.” Vaguely, Spinner recalls Twice’s backstory. Clones killing each other over who should be the main one, traumatizing Twice so much that he couldn’t use his quirk anymore. But now the clones are back. There are hundreds of them running around. This actually might develop into a problem–

–but one to be dealt with later. For now, after pulling a second chair up to the bed, Spinner takes a seat and joins Eri in watching over Shigaraki.

*****

[meddow]

To celebrate International Asexuality Day I’m going go give reasons why Una Chin-Riley/Number One is a glorious Ace icon.

Opening episode character introductions: Pike is making breakfast in bed for Marie, Spock is desperately hoping T’Pring will propose, Una has…found two random scientists, taken a ship out with like zero crew for like some random space thing, decided to do a quickie first contact on the side, and managed to wind up in an alien prison attempting to escape with a spoon. Getting bored while your friends are moping about their relationships/oncoming cruel fate and winding up on a crazy adventure, that is some iconic Ace behaviour right there.

She’s spent most of her life pretending to be human, which means trying to hide the fact she’s got super strength and her body puts on a lightshow whenever exposed to pathogens – so the classic Ace cliché of being more interested in cake than an partnered physical activity in which there is much sharing of body fluids is probably a superpower for her.

Una has a queer-coded storyline: It turns out she has been hiding who she is, has a whole episode in which she has to come out multiple times and deal with an array of reactions, is immediately arrested and put on trial by the quasi-military organisation she works for as soon they find out, and then is much happier when finally being able to be herself in the workplace and even sings a whole song about keeping secrets. Saying that, did you know that according to Stonewall’s Ace in the UK report 2023 that people of asexual orientation are significantly less likely to be out to family, neighbours and work colleagues than other sexual orientations for fear of a negative reaction. I’m certain Una being terrified of revealing she’s Illyrian and ultimately choosing to reveal herself cos she’s tired of living a lie likely resonates with many, many different people and groups. But just noting that the fear of coming out is also very central to many people’s experience of being Ace.     

Una/Neera can very much be read as that friendship which got messed up because it became a sexual relationship but the Ace person within it hadn’t figured out they were asexual yet – but then everything felt wrong and they couldn’t figure out why so reacted badly and the entire relationship went to shit, and it still hurts decades later.

Una knows how to invest in a friendship: and it’s making sure you win Enterprise Bingo together in the most spectacular/death risking fashion and also turning the gravity off during your life advice number in the musical episode so it is even more of A Moment.

Look, given there is so little Ace rep out there in media, I just think that having someone played by the ridiculously attractive Rebecca Romijn who has enough chemistry with other characters to be one half the fandom’s most popular het ship and one half of the fandom’s most popular femslash ship be Ace would be neat.

In conclusion:

(Inevitable disclaimer because it’s fandom: I’m not saying anyone is wrong about their view of Una and as a person who ships many Una ships, I love all her allo interpretations as well)