#anyway i split the difference and spelled it like the rock

[puppetwoman17]

Magic Billy headcanon coming through!

You know all those comics where magic is taken away from its users? And most of them are really weak or get constant headaches?

Yeah, I decided to crank it up cause Billy full on dies. As in he will drop to the floor and his body becomes a husk. There’s not even a little memory twitch from his fingers. The boy is GONE.

Now, I’m thinking this could be because when someone is chosen to be the Champion, their soul is automatically turned into magic. They’re still a person, but they’re kind of like a puppet. This could be a thing before they’re born, like a destiny sort of thing, or immediately when they speak Shazam’s name the first time.

Whichever ones the case doesn’t matter tho, cause Billy knows it. He feels how different his soul is. This isn’t a commonly known thing tho. No one in the magic community knows this because the details are hush hush.

So imagine, someone(maybe Waller, maybe Luthor, cause apparently anyone can just waltz into the rock 🙄), finds a way to take magic away, whether it’s by subjugation of the rock or some kind of magic suction spell. Doctor Fate wilts in his seat, not able to talk as much. Zatanna, Giovanni, Constantine, Xanadu, Specter, what have you, they all hold their heads and do their best to keep standing up—

Billy falls to the floor. He’s not blinking. He’s not breathing. He’s not speaking. He’s not moving. The boy’s just gone.

Diana falls to the floor to cradle his head in her lap, feeling for a pulse, lightly slapping him to wake him up.

Clark is motionless standing up. He says slowly and with dreading horror:I can’t hear his heartbeat.

This jumps the heroes into a frenzy. The magic users go through the books they have on the Champion; his duties, research on the RoE, etc. There’s nothing on this. Nothing at all.

The rest of the League put him in the medbay immediately, trying to see if there’s anything normal that they can do. But without a heartbeat, their options are limited.

Some time later, they decide to split. A larger team will do what they can to bring Magic back, and the rest will stay at the Watchtower. The magic users already suspect that this has something to do with Magic anyway, so it’s a win win.

It takes a couple days, but magic is returned to its users and the worlds at large. Billy jolts awake in his bed to a bunch of hysterical heroes and his first words are: how’s the Rock?

Yeah, the JL is not happy. They want an explanation. Surprisingly, the magic users do too.

Billy tells them with hesitant eyes, about his soul, about how he is essentially nothing without magic. He is magic, as closely related to the center of it(RoE) as anything else.

Unfortunately, this only seems to aggravate his friends. Now he’s apparently convinced them that he’s a puppet for forces beyond their reach and a slave to the system, which is pretty funny cause he’s already a slave to the foster system and he is, in fact, one of those “forces behind their reach”.

Even the magic users are uneasy about this, which says a lot cause whenever Billy tells the league something hair-raising, they just nod their heads.

Billy is not left alone for the next few weeks. It’s torture.

[alexalily]

I'm starting a playthrough of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and will be chronicling my adventures here! If you follow me on twitter, you may recall that I did a twitter thread of that playthrough and I'm also doing a thread for this one as well. This Tumblr thread(?) is going to be probably mostly the same as what I post on twitter but this'll be in longer posts and I might go into greater detail on things, who could say.

Anyway! Here's my character!

In Kingmaker, I played as a Feyspeaker Druid and generally liked it but I wanted to try something different so now I'm a Witch of the Veil! Character creation was A Process here because I haven't played Pathfinder itself (outside of Kingmaker) and so I'm largely unfamiliar with it (although I am relatively familiar with D&D which is extremely similar). This caused a lot of issues for me because, while I think the amount of explanations PathWrath has in the creation process is better than it was in Kingmaker, it's still A Lot of information and is very overwhelming. It's a whole lot of "This spells does A Thing" but not much of an explanation of what that Thing functionally means or does. Hopefully I have picked a good set of spells and feats and such! If it sucks I'll drop the difficulty down because I think these Pathfinder games have set a very high bar for difficulty options. I genuinely love how granular all the difficulty options are!! More games need to have menus that look like these ones!!

So! My lil Tiefling enters the world of Pathfinder and is immediately mortally wounded and carried into a festival on a stretcher. A dragon in the shape of a milf heals me and tells me to enjoy the party but before I can enjoy a giant demon locust attacked, split a big ol' hole in the ground, and I fell into some old tunnels.

And that was where I met my first two party members! Anevia is a ranger who is some sort of commander of the city guard type character and she has a wife who is also a commander of a different type of city guard and I'm hoping to have a "we saw you from across the bar and like your vibes" sort of situation with them. Seelah is a paladin who hasn't done much yet but has Very Good Vibes!

After I helped Seelah get Anevia out from under a large rock, we ran into a woman named Camellia who has a magic rapier and is absolutely up to no good and I cannot wait to find out what that is. Then we met two more people to round out the party: a half-lizard half-satyr man named Lann and a sorta-cat-like spider-woman named Wenduag. Wenduag seems like she is regularly up to no good, perhaps in a more threatening way than Cemallia, and Lann has some Bad Vibes cause he's the joke-y jokes dude but is criminally unfunny. They lead us to an underground village of animal people called Mongrels and are going to help us reach the surface to see if the entire town has been burned down yet or not.

And then I save and quit except the game crashed lmao i really hope my save is intact because character creation took me almost two out of the three hours I played for!!

Future posts will probably be more of me complaining about how complex Pathfinder is or how the good/lawful/neutral/evil/chaotic alignment system is Hot Garbage or just whatever game design-y thoughts I can think of but I'll maybe include some plot-y recap posts like this in the future if people are interested in that. Also I will keep the posts tagged with #Alexa Plays Path Wrath so you can mute it or whathaveyou.

[discipulusmaleficus]

close call :)

@desertfragments - you should be dead 17 times over

"You. Wanted to know why I'm staying here, yes?"

A pause that drags on for several moments too long. "Too bad," he says, and then. "--Uh, no. It really isn't very interesting, though."

"I mean, I was born as an accursed and afflicted being so as to punish my mother for the hubris tainting our lineage. That's all accurate." More or less. "In fact. In fact, I mightn't have lasted out the week if my parents -- uh, no, if Mel weren't such accomplished mage herself. Not very good at breathing, and such. Been stapled together, so to speak, but. You know. M'body's determined to sabotage our efforts." He takes a slow, deliberate breath, ow, spins a ring with an empty setting around his finger.

"You know! People sometimes think, uh, we were better at enchanting things in ancient times, and there are certainly some lost techniques, but, uh, mostly, it's just that anything that still works after so long needs to be of legendary quality. Channeling magic through something all the time tends to, um, wear it down, gradually. People are more durable, they just tend to repair themselves, but, ah, rocks will eventually--" Where the hell was he? Right.

"Anyway. One morning, it's been a long day and I'm standing there wondering why it's taking me so fucking long to walk anywhere, because I should have been able to make it here and dig up a fucking grave by now, and I haven’t even been in the sun. And I have something" -- somethings, really -- "that helps improve, uh, muscular endurance, strength, in general -- 's one works sort of like a battery, but of course there's only so many times anything can be charged and cleansed and uncharged -- uh, crystal's going cloudy, anyway. And I have several hundred dollars which I really need for materials to deliver on my next commission, but I've got to track down a replacement for that instead, and -- well, it takes nearly a week and I let the asshole fleece me on it just because I'm sick and tired."

"But! But, when I switch it out, it doesn't really help? Any more than the failing one? Wearing both doesn’t really help. And I did check it before buying, and everything does seem in order, and I still have a goddamn seance to get ready for, somehow, and I say to myself, fuck this, I'll try a more potent solution. Sometimes you need to upgrade. And I do have an idea already. Mostly used for artificially animated entities, but, you know, what's the difference?"

He absentmindedly prods his bicep (?) where the remnants of the spell are scratched into his flesh. "So I sit down and, uh, I implement that, and I don’t really know if it will change much, if at all. And then I go to stand up, and I hear a crack. Which is. My femur, I think. And my collarbone, and -- three and a half of the rings that help direct the associated energies. Have broken. And my flesh is splitting around the inscription like I tried to write Unspeakable Runes on ordinary paper.”

“So, you know, it was more powerful. Just. Didn't help me much. Wouldn’t hold, either. Need to make some adjustments.”

"While after that, tried getting up again and, um. Wasn't really happening." And simply breathing was getting more laborious. And he was pretty sure, at the time, that nobody was going to be looking for him, or knowing which abandoned building to look in if they did, or bothering do anything about it if they saw him. Inhale, exhale. "Don't remember who picked me up. Unconscious."

"Fucking embarrassing," he adds, and finally sets about eviscerating the raccoon he's dragged into the yard.

[neon-lights-stardust-nights]

Alright, I'm info-dumping. No more sitting here vibrating alone.

DESPITE NOT HAVING A NAME, my KH s/i has such a wealth of backstory already. Funnily enuogh, the two people who ended up fused together to make faer do have names, which is weirdly fitting anyway. Because (dum da da dum!) fae is an amnesiac!

Fae was originally two different guys back when keyblades were more common, but not just like fucking everywhere. I’m playing fast and loose with KH lore here, so forgive me a little, okay? They both had keyblades, and when they were preteens, they were both human. The two love birds hit a snag though, because one of them got turned into a cat! How isn’t exactly important, nor have I fully decided yet.

The one who became a cat is named Isao, and the one who stayed a human was Mijo. Despite becoming a humanly intelligent cat—Isao could still wield a keyblade! So training pressed on, and they both continued toward becoming masters. Eventually though, darkness came to consume the world they lived in. Isao was a powerful sorcerer by then, referencing himself as The Best Cat Magician (though there wasn’t exactly many others to compete with…) Mijo, in contrast, rocked amazing physical capabilities. Artful dodger, hard hitter, basically good at anything that didn’t involve casting a spell himself.

When everything went down, Isao’s magic was helpful, but Isao was inherently a glass canon. Though Isao maybe could’ve been helpful, Mijo insisted on protecting him from like… ALL the heartless that were swarming the place. This went as well as expected. After a long battle, with Isao hiding away and watching, Mijo fell to the heartless. In that split second where he lost his heart though, Isao got a weird urge. He knew he needed to make it into the swarm before a heartless formed, something he’d only be quick enough to do with his magic. What to do after, he wasn’t sure—Isao only knew he needed to get in there.

So: he did! And in a moment, his purpose was revealed to him. Sacrificing himself, he used his heart to tether Mijo’s heart back to him. Now carrying a heart twisted into an anchor along with his own, Mijo had the amazing strength of all his physical skills, and all of Isao’s magic. The combined effort in one super-creature was enough to stop the heartless. It didn’t save the world, however. Everyone had either been devoured by the darkness, or had fled. Without Isao by his side, Mijo was officially alone.

Small side tangent, but this is where some of the more bakeneko-y visual aspects come in! Isao had two tails, and when he gives Mijo his heart, Mijo gets an energy outline sort of like a Dragon Ball character powering up. The outline gives Mijo fake kitty ears, but it also gives him two tails with flames at their ends! I know that’s usually more nekomata than bakeneko, but I can light up my tails in the headspace, so I like giving my s/is firey tails anyway…

Tangent over. Mijo was maybe one of the strongest things around. Not alive, not everywhere, not THE strongest: but Mijo was surely up there now. Driven by grief and rage over the sacrifice of his boyfriend, he wandered from world to world and faught… Anything, actually. It wasn’t just heartless—Mijo would battle anything that challenged him in a dissociative fog. Mijo eventually happened upon Xehanort in some form (undecided) and he recognized three things. Firstly, that is a keyblade wielder with two hearts (and thus) two keyblades. Two, that’s a really powerful keyblade wielder that I could use to my advantage. But then three, this bitch is going to be a hazard to my plans if I don’t act.

See, Mijo was hard to persuade. Mijo didn’t really take in words or anything so well anymore, and his voice had gone rotten to disuse. So, Xehanort avoided Mijo and shadowed him for a brief time. Long enough to study him enough to get a gist for what’s going on. He didn’t know the literal, whole story—but he could recognize the darkness in Mijo’s heart, along with the shield and tether that was Isao’s heart. It didn’t take him long to put together that some great trauma must have caused this (and thus, this dissociative state that made current Mijo so damn dangerous.) His approach was that if he could remove the trauma, he could make Mijo a proper pawn.

It isn’t like surgery though—he couldn’t just cut Mijo open and take out this emotional tumor. So, he pit Mijo against powerful heartless after powerful heartless, until Mijo was finally worn down enough. When all was said and done, Mijo was battered and beaten. He was so… Tired. Xehanort took full advantage of this. He gave Mijo a little villain speech, but Mijo was barely paying attention. The last thing Mijo ever heard or saw was Xehanort leaning over him and telling him goodnight.

That’s also the last thing current-day s/i remembers.

Fae doesn’t remember faers name, faers past, faers anything. Xehanort wiped Mijo and Isao’s past off the face of the Earth with that, because there was no one left from their world of origin TO remember them. All fae has to faers name is the ability to wield two keyblades, and a love for summoning magic…

And a mystery to unravel…

ANYWAY FAE NEEDS A NAME.

[kitty-is-writing]

✍🏻 WIP snippet ✍🏻

Been working on Forgotten Magic today and thought I'd share a little bit of Soris and his first lesson in magic weaving.

Soris looked around. He had expected something different, from both Blaise and Ember’s descriptions of Isati lands. Rivers of lava, smoke filling the air, fires springing up all over the place, that kind of thing. Instead, this small part seemed much like any other rocky crag on a mountainside. Ember was standing far too near the edge, pointing down and asking Blaise questions about the places they could see below. Soris wondered if the lower parts of the land were more like he’d pictured, but he wasn’t interested enough to go hang over the edge of a cliff.

“Ah, here she is. Okay kiddos, I’d like you to meet an old friend of mine.” Soris looked over in time to see a streak of blue fire swirl its way to the ground, and turn into a short, slim woman with nearly black skin and greyish-blue hair.

The woman gave them a playful wave. “Hiya, I’m Tanwen. Nice to meet you both.” She looked at Blaise before speaking again. “How are we working this, then? Are we teaching the two together, or do you want to split?”

Blaise grinned and winked at her. “Well, me and Ember were going to go play with some of the kaifa up top. She thinks she’s ready for some more advanced work, and Soris is looking to figure out some kolnis basics. You mind sticking around here and giving him a crash course?”

“Sure thing, old pal. Mind you don’t toss any of it too far, I don’t fancy picking up molten rock today.” She smiled as they left, and turned to Soris. “So, Soris, you want to learn more about kolnis?”

Soris nodded. “I’ve no idea if I’ll be able to do anything with it, but I’d like to learn more about it. Maybe I can help Ember out with the theory, even if I don’t get the practical down.”

“Aw, young love is so sweet. Well, it’s easier to use kolnis if you’re born with a spark like we are, but not impossible to learn if you weren’t. Since you’re wanting to do this out of curiosity and kindness, rather then greed or hunger for power, I think we can find a way to make it work. Think fast, human.” She suddenly threw a piece of glowing rock towards him, and he barely managed to get a shield up in time. “Not bad. I was kinda hoping you’d catch it, but at least you didn’t get hit. I’ll toss you another one, and I want you to try and grab it. When you do, hold onto it for a bit and tell me what you feel.”

The second one came towards him a little slower, and he was able to catch it. There was a gentle warmth there, as if it had been in the sun for some hours, but the fierce heat suggested by the yellowish orange glow was missing. “It’s not as hot as I was expecting,” he said. “I can’t feel any magic in it, either. Not that I’m familiar with, anyway. How did you…?”

His unfinished question was answered when Tanwen pulled a small bag of pebbles out of her pocket, each of them glowing brightly. “These are from our lands, boyo. Each has a little bit of spark inside, left behind by those who have passed over.” She must have seen something in his expression, because she smiled before continuing. “It’s nothing sacred, just a bit of leftover energy gifted back to the world. The part of the spark that made the person is long gone, so don’t you stress about treading on anyone’s beliefs here. We use these to teach our young ones how to use the spark, and help wake up their own. Figured it’d be appropriate here.”

“Great. So what do I do with it?”

“Well, you can play with it for a bit and see what you get out of it. I’ve got a bunch here, so if that one doesn’t work for you we can try another. Have a go at casting some spells, but don’t use your own energy. Try and draw from the spark in the stone.”

Soris tried a few simple flame spells, which all worked as expected, but nothing seemed to come from the pebble in his hand. “I’m not getting much from this one.”

Tanwen nodded. “Yeah, I could tell. Come here a second.” She lightly pressed two fingers on either side of his head, just in front of his ears. “Your own energy is strong, and it’s overriding the spark. I’ll damp it down for now. Try again, and let the stone talk to you this time.”

He attempted one of the spells a second time, an easy one that would create a small flame on a fingertip, but where he would expect magic to flow and complete the spell, there was only a cool, tingling sensation. Instead, soft whispers seemed to come from the stone he held, and he allowed that presence to guide his own intent. The flame lit slowly, differently to how it usually went, and burned with a bright, almost white light rather than the soft orangish yellow he expected.

“There you go. That's a good bright spark there,” Tanwen said. “Now, how's that energy feel? Different to your usual spells?”

“It's… I don't know how to describe it. There's a kind of independence behind it, I guess? Like I'm guiding the magic into doing the spell itself, rather than using it to power my spell.” It sounded stupid when he said it aloud, but Tanwen just smiled and nodded again. “That made sense to you?”

“Yep. Most of my experience is with kolnis, but I've played around with a few other energies before. The risnat you're used to is tough to work with, since you've got to do it all yourself. Most others will help you out along the way, but risnat’s an awkward bastard. Kinda like the dragons it came from. Try a few more spells, ignore the pushy risnat and listen to the sparks.”

[andstuffsketches]

[redraw/color of a page from Witch Hat Atelier. There are two inset panels of Agate, lying in bed, expression uncertain. Between them is a panel of Coco in Agate’s imagination, smiling at the camera, lit from behind]

you know how it is

[forthehpfanboys]

Gold Strings & Red Picks- PT 1

Pair: Ron Weasley x Reader; he/him.

Summary: The Weasley's invented a band! Having a band, means you need a band manager; someone to help find venues, gigs and sponsors. After finding one, Ron seems to be hopeless drawn toward them.

Warnings: flirting, swearing, bickering, sexual tension??, Punk Pining Ron but also Smug Ron, naming a guitar ‘Cherry Popper’, dm me if I missed any.

Notes: I plan on having some chapters kinda spicy. I made an entire gif for this and yes it is Rupert playing 👀 and god is this self indulgent. Hope you guys like it!

~DO NOT REPOST ANYWERE~

-

It was a Friday morning when you quit the Static Dragons and posted the news on every piece of social media you had. It didn’t take long for you to edit your bios to state you were looking for a new band, and it managed to catch someone's eye just as quickly. It was Monday evening when you got a dm on Instagram from a user called ddchrmrs-official. The user basically sent you a paragraph about how he was the lead singer of a band he and his siblings threw together and they were looking for a new manager. You agreed to meet with them and talk about the potential of the band and he agreed, using more than a few explanation marks after his reply. He even sent you a few of their songs once he deemed you worthy enough.

So, you found a dining hall, an equal distance from your house and theirs, and with the lead singer's approval, Fred, you booked it for Tuesday afternoon. Fred even made a post explaining the good news- why he was acting like one of the Weird Sisters followed him back, you weren’t sure. You couldn’t help but be excited too. The songs were good- more punk-rock than you assumed from the band's name. Something about the name Daydream Charmers gave off a softer, boyband type.

The day of the band meeting couldn’t have gone much worse. You missed your morning alarm, you couldn’t find your laptop charger and the clothes you picked out the night before ended up covered in stains from breakfast. GPS even gave you the fastest route and you still managed to be 10 minutes late, but you managed to find the right hall. It was a bit different compared to the pristine image shown on the website.

The roof looked like it was caving under an invisible weight and the actual size of the hall looked like a small barn. The walls were made of red and black bricks, most of which seemed to be chipped, broken or bending, like it was being crushed. The door frame was slanting, the door’s white paint was chipping, the sidewalk was splitting at almost every corner. You were desperately hoping the building was enchanted so it was bigger (and nicer looking) on the inside.

You parked your car on the pebble covered asphalt, right next to an equally old and rusty blue car. You had no idea how four people, a sound system, a bass, an electric guitar and a full drum set fit inside of the small wagon, but figured they managed to spell the inside bigger. You weren’t bothered by it- how could you be? You felt your wand hit your laptop inside the bag as you threw it over your shoulder after climbing out of the car. Shutting the door, you hurried up the broken concrete, shoving your keys in your pocket.

You chewed on your lip, adjusting the collar of your shirt as you approached the door. A smile pulled at your lips at the refreshing sound of genuine laughter and bickering. You had an internal battle of whether you should knock or just barge in. It sounded like they were having their fun and you didn’t want to interrupt anything. Soon enough, the laughter was dying down and someone was strumming a bass quietly, practicing a few chords from one of the songs Fred gave you. You raised a fist to knock on the door and the silence that followed was close to defining. Soft footsteps followed the silence and you swore you could hear soft breathing behind the door before it was yanked open.

“Hey! You made it! We were worried you got lost on your way here.”

You weren’t expecting to be face to chest with an individual. Their band's logo was printed across the front, red letters with a gold outline that clashed drastically with the bright orange fabric of the tight shirt. You tilted your head up, meeting cocoa brown eyes and a crisp white smile. His ginger hair was spread across his shoulders, his ear lobes were pierced with two shiny black flat stud earrings and the little white nostril piercing on the left side of his nose was reflecting the sunlight.

“Fred?” You asked, matching his smile. You could tell he had fun, you could sense it. His arm raised, inadvertently showing off his muscles, and rested against the door frame. 

“The one and only.” He grinned, clearly just joking. Before he could say anything else, he was rudely interrupted by a foreign voice behind him. Fred’s smile dropped into a frown like he was suddenly slapped across the face.

“Is it the pizza guy?” The voice asked from somewhere behind him, excitement clearer than crystal. Fred looked over his shoulder to respond.

“No, Ron. That’s not for another twelve minutes.” He rolled his eyes after looking back at you and letting out a loud sigh. “I’m sorry about him. His appetite is larger than Big Ben and it literally never stops. Anyway, I hope you like pizza! I tried to message you about it.” He pulled his phone out of his front pocket, unlocking it and scrolling through his messages and swiping right on notifications he didn’t care for.

“I was using my phone for GPS. Must’ve missed the messages.” Your hands slid into your front pockets, your weight shifting between your feet as embarrassment began to settle in. Maybe this wasn’t the best first impression. Before you could think about it too long, a low whistle was resonating from beside Fred.

Without warning, Fred was being nudged aside by a slightly shorter ginger, his piercing blue eyes staring into yours. They didn’t stay there very long though. They slowly dragged down your body, taking in your form, and his head tilted in appreciation.

“Oh.. I’m not gonna complain about the pizza when Merlin delivered us a cutie.” He gave you a dizzying side smile. “What’s your name, sweetheart? Surely, it’s something as handsome as you are.” Just as quickly as he appeared, Fred was pushing him back, faking a gag while driving the unnamed individual back with Fred’s hand against his forehead. 

“Ew! Ron, down! Seriously? Keep your yap shut! He’s our new band manager and I’d actually like to keep this one, thank you.” Fred groaned, a sneer pulling at his lips. He blocked the smaller ginger from the door with his body before turning back to you with a sigh. “I’m sorry. He’s usually not like this. Usually he’s moping about his ex-” You could see Ron jumping behind Fred to get another look at you. The reaction had you snorting into your hands.

“Fred. Fred, move, mate. I wanna see ‘im again!” The ginger whined, tugging at his older brother's t-shirt. He was dodging around Fred’s constant moving hands to get one more peek at you.

Fred let out a groan, his head falling backwards in agony before letting out a loud “George, please help!”

“Wait! Wait, wait!” Ron’s voice matched the panicked hand trying to hold onto the door frame before it was hilariously slapped off the wood and was dragged into the mystery hidden behind the lead singer. His begs and pleas began to echo and soften which you thought caused you to giggle a bit. 

“I’m sorry. We’ll put a muzzle on him or something. Come on in, I’ll introduce you to everyone.” Fred shifted out of the door way, allowing you to enter the hall. It was bigger on the inside than the outside, that much had you relieved. Fred shut the door behind you with a satisfying click and let you soak the place in while he sat himself down on a velvet red coach. It was dimly lit, about half the lights were on, and the walls were painted a light tan, which easily could’ve been mistaken for white, if white wasn’t used for the tiling. 

Next to Fred on the couch, was a girl with long, slightly darker, ginger hair. Her hair went well past her shoulders, and a bright orange base sat on top of her crossed legs. She had gone back to laying a few chords once you entered, just relaxing as her two brothers basically wrestled each other.

“Ginny, this is (Y/n).” Fred spoke up, pointing from his sister to you, then back to her. (Y/n), this is the youngest Weasley in the family, Ginevra.” Fred smirked, but it turned into a pained expression when she landed a hard slap to his chest.

“Except if you call me that, I will break your legs. It’s Gin or Ginny, nothing else. It’s nice to finally meet you, (Y/n). Fred hasn’t shut up about you.” She smiled at you, reaching a tattoo covered hand out to shake yours. 

“Really?” You couldn’t help but grin. You shook her hand proudly, knowing it was probably your reputation that kept the oldest Weasley in the band chatting up a storm. “It’s nice to meet you too, Gin.” You gave her a cheeky grin before turning to the other side of the hall, noting another Fred standing in front of Ron, who was sitting in a chair quiet grumpily. 

The double picked up a deep red guitar covered in stickers and shoved it into Ron’s lap, causing the younger to gasp out a wheeze. It was obvious he had chewed Ron out for his behavior, but nevertheless, he gave his unplugged electric guitar a few strums, which seemed to satisfy Fred 2 because soon enough he was storming back to the couch, shaking his head the entire walk there.

He sat himself down on the arm of the couch, right next to his doppelganger. His arms crossed back over his chest once again. Fred 2 had the same length hair, different piercings though. He only had one set of black earrings, but had an industrial across his left ear. He had a straight line of freckles across his cheek bones and right across his nose. The spots went down his neck and across his forehead. 

“He’s bloody useless.” He grumbled out, his snake bite moving to the right as his tongue ran across it. “Oh, hi!” Fred 2 scooted over to the edge of the arm rest, reaching his hand out to shake yours. “You must be the band manager! I’m George, Fred’s twin bro-”

“Younger twin. I’m the oldest.” Fred interrupted, smirking again as he pointed a thumb to himself. His smirk dropped when he was smacked in the chest again- by both George and Ginny. 

“I’m his twin brother. Ignore him, he has a God complex.” George rolled his eyes, smiling at you while he shook your hand. He pulled his hand away before scooting back to rest his back against the back of the couch. You could tell he wasn’t comfortable, but  he seemed dedicated to the spot. “I’m sorry you had to meet Ron the way you did. Usually he’s tamer than that.”

You couldn’t help but let out a laugh, your gaze turned down to your shoes. Your cheeks were beginning to heat up as his flirting rebounded through your head again.

“Nah, he wasn’t that bad.”

“I wasn’t?” Ron’s sudden voice behind you had nearly jumped out of your skin. You spun around, your backpack strings nearly catching on one of Ginny’s bass strings. You swallowed down a squeak. “Georgie was trying to convince me I was being inconsiderate and rude and that mum would smack me if she saw.” He was still holding the guitar by the neck, and that was when you noticed the bright gold strings with a red pick trapped between them.

“Well, it’s not like you were asking about my shoe size… “ Your eyes landed on the hands holding the black neck of the instrument and you couldn’t help but gawk at them. Rings covered his finger knuckles, veins popped out from beneath his skin. “Wow.” You didn’t mean to verbally gawk over the hands, so you had to force your gaze down to the instrument and ignore the urge to stare at the pale, freckle covered skin that was making your mouth dry. 

You shook your head, looking at the shiny strings. You had you stop yourself from reaching out and caressing the polished neck, the textures strings and hidden pick. It was clearly loved and carefully taken care of.

“Beauty, isn't she?” Ron grinned, showing off the red body drowning in decals- most of which were bright orange Quidditch themed or terrible chess puns. You almost forgot to check if they were a muggle band, but this told you enough. “My best friend got it for me, he’s a blessing. Mum didn’t approve, of course, said we all had better purposes, but dad said rock on.” 

“She really is. I’m guessing you named her?” The second the question fell from your lips, the three sharing a spot on the couch groaned in agony, but Ron was grinning in pride.

“Of course I have! Her name is Cherry Popper and she’s the love of my life. Unless,” Ron was taking a step closer to you, a twinkle in his eyes as he continued speaking, “you plan on cha-” His flirting was cut off suddenly.

“And that’s enough of that! Please sit down and, for the love of Merlin’s beard, rename the damn thing!” Ginny cried out, almost knocking her own instrument straight into the tiled floor. She ran a hand through her hair, her free hand holding the bass hard enough to make her knuckles pure white.

“I mean, come on! Name it something classic like ‘Bertha’ or ‘Jasmine’, or, and here’s my personal favorite, don’t name it at all!” Fred waved his hands while he spoke, counting the names on his fingers before doing jazz hands at ‘don’t name it at all’.

“Fred, that’s hypocritical. You named your mic.” George spoke up, pulling two white marble drumsticks from his jeans pockets and began to spin one between his fingers. 

“That was a joke.” Fred stuck his tongue out at his twin. “At least I don’t do it seriously. And leave Echo out of this.” Fred ripped the non spinning drumstick from George’s hand, holding it out of his twins reach.

“Shut up and give me Crystal back!”

“No, if you wanna talk about terrible names, we can talk about the band's name! Merlin, Fred, were you sky high when you made it?” Ron shot back, his arms crossing over his chest, one still holding the guitar.

Knowing this kind of fight could go for a good while, you slipped past him, patting Ron on the shoulder while you walked past while a pained gasp rented the silence that flooded the hall. You set your backpack on the white table, opening the zipper and pulling out your laptop. You sat down, pulling the laptop onto your lap before opening the notepad application.

“I made the name! And dammit, I think it was clever! It even has a unique backstory! At our school, we had a um- small business and it was quite successful. By ‘we’, I mean George and I and by successful, I mean we run an online joke shop. I thought it fit the shop pretty well.” Fred held a look of pride- a smirk was, once again, drawn across his lips as his eyes twinkled.

“Mate, it’s horrible.” Ginny spoke up, not even bothering to throw the truth as a curve-ball causing two of her older brothers to nod in agreement. She copied Fred’s movement by yanking the drumstick from his hand, but handed it to George, smiling at him. 

“Why couldn’t it have been something cool? You named your shop something cool. Why’d you give the band something’ shitty?” Ron rolled his eyes, leaning his back against the door, the guitar balancing on his sneakers and leaning against his ripped jean covered legs. His attention didn’t stay with his siblings for long. Soon it was shifting over to you, like he was naturally drawn toward you. He grinned at you, sticking his tongue out. The little gold ball stamped into the middle of his tongue had your full attention.

You swallowed thickly. The ball and his guitar strings were the exact same color and reflected the same light. You felt butterflies fill your stomach from the simple action and noticed, almost suddenly, the ginger was actually quite attractive and funny. You sucked on your tongue, hoping the blush across your cheeks didn’t give too much away. Ron looked back at his brothers, his side grin screaming he basically saw your body temperature rise.

“I was led to believe you all loved the name, but no! I’m starting to think you guys are just trying to embarrass me in front of the (Y/n), but since you think it’s so easy, come up with a new one.” Fred cried out, crossing his arms over the printed long sleeve t-shirt, and was pouting like a child now, sinking lower into the couch.

“It makes us sound like a cheesy boy-band going after 12 year olds.” Ginny scoffed, propping her bass up against the couch. She looked over at her slightly older brother, nodding her head in Fred’s direction.

“It does. We could’ve been Fire Wicks.” Ron pointed at Ginny and the teaming up began. “Or like Solar Skips.”

“Or The Red Bloods.” Gin nodded, pointing back at Ron while her other hand pulled out her phone. The game was ‘Who-Cares-If-It’s-Bad-Let’s-Prove-Fred-Wrong’ and you could tell it was for shits and giggles. You were going to pitch in an idea, but someone beat you to it.

“Or FireBolt Bitters.” Spoke up George, who was now gazing up at the ceiling, shaking his head in mock shame, but you could see the edges of his smile growing at the corners.

“Ooh, I love that one!” Ron leaned over, stretching his arm as far as it could to give  George a high five, before turning to look at you. He grinned at your confused expression. “Are you writing these down?” He pointed at your computer before giving you a wink. The butterflies came back, doubled in strength, and you couldn’t help but laugh. You shook your head no, laughing louder when he waved his hands in a panicked manner. “Write them down, mate!”

You rolled your eyes, typing random shit down just to please the younger one. Your eyes trailed across the dumplings, noting three quarters of them were smiling. Fred’s crabby expression made it was clear he didn’t get picked on very often.

“Charlie texted saying ‘The Copper Horntails’ would’ve been better.” Ginny said, looking up from her phone. She dropped the phone onto her lap, wincing a tad when the device collided with the instrument on her lap. She quickly forgot the pain and leaned back, enjoying her brother's pain.

“You asked Charlie?!” Fred squealed loudly, his hands holding his head. Right beside Fred, George had begun to tap his sticks together, improvising a beat to go with the arguing.

“You know what? That’s a great idea! Let’s ask Percy next-” yelled Ron over Ginny’s laughter and Fred’s agonizing scream. His smirk only grew when Fred tossed his head back. 

“Ok, damn! I get it! But I already made t-shirts so deal with it.”

“Fred, we have magic. We can always change the print.” George piped up, tapping the white wooden sticks against his thighs in some random pattern, his head nodding to a beat. He shrugged his shoulders, not focusing on his words all that much,

“George!” This time it was Fred’s turn to smack George in his chest. He glared at him before leaning over to whisper in his twin's ear. It was something you couldn’t make out, but you figured they were debating over your status. You rolled your eyes, reaching behind you.

With a clear of your throat, you gained their attention before pulling out your wand from your backpack. While waving it, you locked eyes with Ron, playfully chewing on your lip to try to hide your smile.

“But-” Fred scrambled to grab his phone. You knew he was going to pull up one of your profiles to show none of them mentioned magic or wizarding or anything.

“The quidditch stickers were a dead give away.” You pointed to Ron’s guitar with the tip of your wand before putting it back in your bag. “That, and the tiny blue car that somehow carried four band members, and all of their equipment even though, that should’ve been impossible. I do enjoy Firebolt Bitters, though.”

Your own smile grew when the siblings broke out into loud snorts and sniggers, save for Fred’s. Ron walked over to you, and you were sure his cheeks were hurting from how hard he was smiling. He laid his arm across your shoulders, pulling you into his side as he faced his band members.

“I like this one.”

A smile stretches across your face as your cheeks get warmer. Out of everything to come out of today, this was something even the strongest and most willed seer’s couldn’t have predicted. It wasn’t even half past noon and you’d already started to develop a crush on a punk guitarist who shares a band with his siblings. You were clueless on how you were going to do your managing and keep it strictly platonic when he grinned at you like you were everything he wanted.

[noctilucid]

DannyMay Day 15: Nature

**References my Day 4 (Stars) drabble, but stands alone.**

"Circle up everybody!" Ms. Teslaff barked, rapping her walking stick on a boulder embedded in the trail.  "This camping trip is required by the state to be educational.  Therefore, you will be given a group assignment designed to meet municipal standards."  Mr. Lancer opened his messenger bag and started passing around packets and paper bags.  A ripple of complaints and muttered curses spread out through the group.  "You will be assigned a partner, and together you will search for and identify these plants.  Bring back a leaf for each plant in the packet to receive full credit."  

Paulina grimaced and looked down at her shoes for the tenth time that day.  She had thought they'd stay close to the cabins for this trip, and her usual cute flats would have served her just fine on the broad, packed paths cut by hundreds of students' feet in the years before.  But here she was, hiking in them.  The mud was bad enough, but all the uneven terrain was putting creases in the material every time she had to put her weight on the balls of her feet.  And now she was expected to go on a scavenger hunt?  What was she, five?  

"Paulina," Mr. Lancer said with a tired drawl as he read the names written on the brown paper bag on the top of his stack, "you will be partnered with Sam Manson."  He handed her the bag and a packet before moving on to the next group.  

Uhg, perfecto.  I'm with Creepy Manson.  They did this on purpose, didn't they?  Paulina cut her eyes at Sam as she stomped over in her combat boots, looking equally thrilled.  

"How many plants do we have to find?" Sam sighed, taking the packet from her.  She flipped through the pages.  "Well, at least these are all pretty distinctive."  

"I'm sure you're disappointed none of them can lay eggs in my face," Paulina returned with an edge.  She still hadn't forgiven Sam for that incident at the aquarium all those years ago.  

Sam narrowed her eyes, not looking up from the paper.  "Spores."

"What?"

"Plants don't lay eggs.  Some of them have spores."  She folded back a few pages and held up a picture of a fern they were supposed to locate.  "This one can lay spores in your face."  

Paulina raised her hand and waved at the teachers.  "Miss Teslaff, I want a different partner!  I don't want Sam to murder me and bury my body in the woods.  I'm too pretty to die."  

"No changing groups!"  

Paulina huffed and crossed her arms.  "Tough break," Dash said to her as he and Valarie headed off on one of the forks in the path.  

"Good luck!" Kwan chimed in, who was paired with Tucker.  "Hey, you got a plant identifying app on that thing…?"

"Do I ever!"  

Danny put a reassuring hand on Sam's shoulder as he followed Mikey uphill.  "Try not to be too hard on her?"  

"No promises," Sam grumbled.  

Soon the path had cleared out except for the two of them and two pairs of band nerds peering over their packets together.  

"Come on, let's get this over with," Sam said at length, grabbing Paulina by the wrist and hauling her off in a random direction.  

"Ow!  Hey, get off of me!"  

Sam did let go, and then scuffled up a tumble of boulders to a trail on higher ground.  Paulina let out a dramatic and frustrated groan before following her up much more slowly.  By the time she caught back up, Sam was standing in the shade of a tree growing out of a split in the rock, studying the packet again.  

"Oriental Thuja?" she said, forehead creased.  "Why would they even put that on here?  It's not native to this area."  

"So we won't be able to find it?" How much is this stupid assignment worth anyway?

"No, it could be here, but it's invasive."

Paulina rolled her eyes.  "Don't tell me you're going to be sacrimonious about plants now too."  

"Oh, of course," Sam returned.  "Because you only like nature if it's pretty and flatters you.  You can't be bothered to learn about something complicated like an ecosystem."  She headed down the trail at a brisk walk, grabbing a sapling and using it as a hand-hold as she swung herself down another steep portion.  

"Would you stop doing that?" Paulina yelled after her, but Sam didn't slow down.  "¡Joder!" she swore under her breath.  Somehow, she was going to make Sam regret this by the end of the day.  She just had to figure out how.  

***

A brooding 45 minutes later, and Sam had found five of the plants they were looking for with little help from Paulina.  

"Next is the purple coned larch…" Sam said, more to the paper held in front of her face than to Paulina.  "We should probably go uphill to look for it…"  Paulina died a little more inside.  No more climbing hills!

"Oh, is that one of the ones that's going to lay spores in my face?" Paulina sniped as Sam strode on ahead for the hundredth time.  "I guess you would end up with some weird kinks after being possessed by an ugly plant ghost."  

"You're the one who brought up the face eggs," Sam said, nonchalant, and notably not slowing down.  "I think that says more about you than about me."  

Paulina clenched her fists.  "Ugh!  You're such a freak, you know that?"

"Aaaand personal attacks mean you have no convincing arguments left in your arsenal!  Looks like it's Sam two, Paulina zero for the day so far."  Sam was steadily moving out of range, and Paulina was forced to follow if she wanted to continue the argument.  She was busy trying to think of a better jab while watching where she put her feet, but Sam beat her to the punch.  "It's kind of sad that you're still hung up on this actually.  Move on already."

Paulina gritted her teeth as the angle of the slope forced her to grab a muddy point of rock to haul herself up with.  "Would it kill you to apologize?  ¡Dios mío!”

"For what?"

"For harassing me with a starfish, Miss Don't-Be-Cruel-To-Animals!"  She stood up and tried to wipe her hand clean on a tree trunk.  "And I mean a real apology, not that stupid letter the teacher made you write."  

"Oh, yeah, to be clear, I didn't mean that apology letter."  

"It was clear," Paulina said, quiet and venomous.    

"I hope you shredded it or something.  I'm kind of embarrassed to have my name on the bottom of it."  

"I threw it in the fireplace as soon as I got home that day."  

"Well, that's a relief," Sam said with a performative grin.  "And no, after what you did to Danny, you'd better believe I'd eat a hot dog before I'd apologize to you."  

"I only went out with Danny to get under your skin!"

"Exactly."

Paulina's hands spasmed between gestures as she tried to collect herself.  "Did you ever think that maybe, if you weren't such a self-absorbed piece of shit, maybe your friends wouldn't get hurt as much?"

Sam's face went blank for a telling second before she focused back on the paper.  Paulina was a little surprised that jab had worked, actually, but she wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.  She couldn't think of anything to follow up with, so she decided to allow the silence to be her victory.

And she's back to climbing again.  Someone kill me…

They had almost reached the summit of the hill they were on— Paulina was debating to herself whether it was tall enough to be considered a mountain— when Sam finally found what she was looking for.  The tree she was examining was scrawny and gnarled, squeezing its roots into the veins of available soil, and it was barely taller than they were.  

"I think this is it.  The needles look the same," Sam said, holding up the page for comparison.  "It would help if the picture wasn't in black and white, though."

Paulina cast a glance over the diagram and the plant in front of them.  "No, it doesn't have the little cones," she grumbled.  I swear to god, if we have to climb any higher…

"This one's pretty young.  I don't think it's old enough to have fruited before.  They take a couple of years to get established."  

"Well how can you tell if this is the right one?  There's a thousand different Christmas trees on this hill, and they all look the same."  Paulina shook her head.  "You know, whatever.  Let's just take a branch and go—"  She sputtered to a stop as Sam pushed the packet and paper bag full of samples into her hands.  Paulina adjusted the materials in her hands and watched as Sam stooped down, fished in her combat boot with two fingers, and pulled out something long and thin.  She pulled off the makeshift cap, revealing the stubby tip of a well-used oil pencil.  

Kneeling in front of the tree, Sam drew some intricate shape on the trunk with the dark blue pigment, then murmured something Paulina didn't catch.  In the shadow of the trees branches, Paulina saw the symbol glow faintly green, and the same light snaked up the tree along the ridges in the bark until it reached the closest branch.  With a quiver, the end of the branch put out fresh needles and then a tiny purple cone.  

"See?" Sam said, breaking off the end of the branch.  "Perfect match."

Paulina gaped like a fish. "You— Holy shit, you—"  Magic.  That was honest to god magic!  Paulina felt lightheaded.  She had been… dabbling.  Combing the internet and old bookstores.  At first, she had hoped to find a spell that could summon a ghost, or anything else she could use to get Phantom's attention.  But as the weeks had stretched into months, she had become desperate to find any scrap of genuine magic.  And here it was.  

"Are you— is that Wicca?" she finally managed.

Sam shook her head.  "Semitic Neopaganism.  There's a difference."  

Paulina paused to think on it.  Could I learn Jewish magic if I'm not Jewish?  Would it even work for me?  She chewed on her lip.  What am I saying?  There's no way Manson would teach me anything in the first place.  Then Sam started speaking softly, and Paulina had to shake out of her thoughts to catch it.

"I did think about apologizing," Sam said.  "Properly.  I was… kind of a mess in fifth grade.  Um.  And sixth and seventh too, actually."  Her eyes remained focused on the pine sprig in her hand as she spoke, slowly rotating it between her fingers.  "I've never liked you.  But that didn't make it right for me to pick on you."  She stood up and took back their paper bag, tucking the sample inside.  "But then you pulled Danny into it.  So, I'll never apologize."  She finally looked up and met Paulina's gaze.  "And neither will you."  Paulina opened her mouth to retort, only to realize that Sam was an image of perfect calm.  It was not an accusation, not a barb, just a statement.  And Paulina had no idea how to respond.  "We're both petty bitches," Sam continued. "It's in our natures.  So… let's just move on."  She extended a hand to Paulina.  "Deal?"  

The offered hand was stiff and formal, as if this were a business meeting rather than two sweaty girls talking on a hiking trail, but Paulina saw an earnestness in it.  Slowly, she reached out and slid her own palm into Sam's.  

"Deal."  She watched Sam for a moment, her unwavering gaze, the ridiculous purple contacts, the stillness which had come over her, like a stone come to rest.  Not sophisticated or refined, as Paulina sought to be, but… very Sam.  Very self-assured, in a way Paulina pretended not to admire.  "We don't like each other."

"Naturally."  Sam released her hand and turned to head back down the slope.  

"But we… don't hate each other either.  We just... are.  Now."  

Paulina saw the little quirk of a smile enter Sam's lips.  "Yeah."  

"And maybe… we can talk about magic sometimes?"  She shook her head, slightly embarrassed. "Like, over text, so nobody gets the wrong idea?"

Sam chuckled.  "Yeah.  That sounds fun."  

A smile crept over Paulina's face in spite of her attempt to hide it.  Oh, what does it matter?  Sam's not looking at me anyway.  She gave herself a moment to squeal silently in her head.  Real magic!  She'd found someone who knew real magic!  She shook her head again.  Of course it would be Manson.  Of course.  

She picked up her pace, in spite of her sore feet, in spite of the damage she was doing to her shoes, to catch up to Sam.  It was easier going downhill.  "What do we still have to find?"  

Sam extended the packet to her, pointing to one of the plants.  "Just two left, lady fern and honeysuckle.  They both like to grow near water, so I saved them for last.  We can head down and check the creek on our way back."  Oh thank god, we're almost done.  Paulina leaned in to get a better look at the fern diagram.  "You know, there's a spell I've been working on that uses ferns.  Maybe we should grab a couple extra?"  

Paulina squealed out loud this time, and clapped a hand over her mouth.  "Sorry," she mumbled through her fingers.  "Solemn.  Solemn goth witch."  She folded her hands in front of her and tried to look composed.  Sam laughed.  

"Nah, you don't have the wardrobe for that.  Go on, be as pink as you'd like."  She stepped down a bank of tree roots and held a branch back for Paulina to follow in her wake.  Paulina paused in surprise before accepting the gesture.

This will take some getting used to.  

[wisteria-lodge]

snake primary (lion model?) + snake secondary (rapid fire bird model)

I am pretty sure I am a snake/snake sorting, with my primary (burned snake) as a rock solid certainty. I am not doing so well on figuring out how models work, and if I have them. It makes me doubt my secondary sometimes. Let me give you a few examples:

Last autumn, I was making a lot of soup from scratch. I started with recipes, but pretty soon I was just throwing things together.

Definitely sounds like an improvisational secondary.

(I'm a Badger secondary, and my baker friends make fun of me, because I treat recipes like spells I follow them so exactly. I only recently learned that the reason you put put in salt in water is to make it boil faster. I'd been doing it, but I might as well have been putting it in there to banish the bad spirits.)

But I always made sure I had some kind of home-made broth to hand, and some kind of soup magic stuff (heavy cream, milk, cream cheese, etc.)

This could be rapid-fire bird (or a rapid-fire bird model.) You feel comfortable improvising, but only because you already know a lot about soup.

I only went back to recipes when I wanted something new or specific. Then I went and posted a kind of improv instruction for soup making (take some meat, any meat, sear it and and pair with some veggies, any veggies, etc.).

So far, I'm agreeing with you. Improvisational secondary, maybe some kind of bird model to give extra structure and support.

I train new colleagues. When I start with a new group, I like to have all the prep-work done so I can concentrate on the social aspects and not get bogged down finding the right worksheets, or shit like that. I plan my first few words, and if there is no better opening, I use them and go from there. I have a general structure of what I want to teach them, what methods to use and in what order. It is adapted from experience, and the more rigid guidelines we are given by our client. I am constantly tweaking it when I'm not training. If I feel my group needs something different, I will abandon the plan, let them guide me on a detour, and bring them back when it feels right. Somehow, it still works out 95% of the time, especially now that I have found my confidence and know it works^^

This sounds exactly like how I teach. And for me, what is going on is the bird model prepwork making me comfortable enough to just vanish into my Courtier Badger. I've only recently been learning that I can... relax on the prep, a little. That sometimes too much prep gets me in my head, and sabotages me a little. Like I can just trust myself in the moment, and things work out just fine.

I have found the shc system a week ago, and I have been obsessed ever since. I got curious because a friend mentioned it. They were really into it, and I like sorting people if the system makes sense. I dug in, got hooked, and finally found words to describe everything I had figured out so painfully about myself in the last few years. Especially my snake primary was such a surprise and relief, let me tell you.

It's a good system. And it's... uniquely able to talk about certain kinds of things.

I am thinking there is at least some sort of bird model here, giving my improv some structure?

Took the words out of my mouth.

I was flirting with rapid fire bird as a secondary, but now I have put it into words, not a chance. I like my (contained) chaos too much^^

So far, I don't have too much to add. It's all very well laid out, and well understood. I do like the dramatic structure that happens when someone writes in convinced their a Lion and I start going into why they're actually a Snake but hey. This is nice. This is mellow.

Let's talk about badger secondary model instead. Just to get the elephant out of the room: I hate hard work, it feels slow, dull, and like there should be a better method somewhere. But I know that sometimes, you just have to do it if you want to build a reputation, or you know you need to rely on the goodwill of your community in the future.

This is so like... Rapid-fire bird processing Badger. Just the grudging respect of SURE badger secondary can be a useful tool I GUESS.

I feel awkward keeping shallow contact with my colleagues, I forget if they have kids, and I have been experimenting with discreetly taking notes on what they value.

This is so Bird.

It's not very successful because I can never remember them when it's necessary, so I nod and figure it out by asking "knowing seeming" questions, anyway.

This is so Snake.

What does resonate with me is the part of "becoming what they need" making myself into the tool I need, making myself seem reliable by being relatable. I mostly start a one-on-one conversation by mirroring the other person's mood.

Courtier Badger and Snake secondary can look very, very similar - especially from the outside. This right here could be a description of either.

It is only recently, and only with people I know well, that I have found the seductive power of railroading them instead. I can now cut short a friends whining by summarising what they're saying in a blunt and charming manner, and make them smile instead. Not always, but now I know it works, I use it more and more often.

... but this could only be Snake. Doing this sort of thing consciously and on purpose is so huge and so key. Courtier Badgers do have to believe it, and so they have a way of vanishing that Snake secondaries don't.

And I think I am exaggerating my "go and figure shc out, and be loud and open about it on tumblr" part, because it's what feels right at the moment, but also because the friend who got me into it is a burned lion secondary. They like me charging in, taking it for myself, and they admire anyone who can be honest and vulnerable in public.

Very Double Snake. Using a specific approach, specifically for your friend. Also you say your primary is burned... but I'm not getting burned primary from you. But you're also not really writing about your primary, so.

I guess I am making myself appealing, not just relatable like before.

What a perfect way of describing the difference between Snake and Badger secondaries.

Huh. Fading badger performance as snake gets confident? With another badger performance for work that I do grudgingly.

Performance is right. Just a shallow thing you wear over the top, that barely seems there anymore. You work like Bird, not a Badger.

Now lion. Well, lion is... difficult and easy at the same time? I have to take charge, be the boss, and make split-second, straightforward right-and-wrong decisions when I am leading my group: Call out anyone who doesn't play by the rules (though I usually don't care much if it is not annoying). Decide on, and hand out, the appropriate punishment for someone being late, again. Deal with brewing conflict in a head-on manner. But that is something I am still learning, and I am not very good at it.

Some of this is primary stuff - WHAT you do "be the boss, hand out punishments" versus HOW you do it. It's sounds to me like you're building a Lion primary model over your Snake primary, which is normal. Snakes with safe people almost always model something else. (And I already know you've got a friend that's a Lion primary... Snakes do like to match their People.)

It's possible that you're also building a Lion secondary model, or that one of your Snake secondary masks looks a little like a typical lion secondary, but my take is that most of this is coming from a primary model.

I tend to let conflicts slide, trusting they will work it out among themselves.

I feel that this speaks to the water-like nature of the Snake secondary, and a desire to always go around the problem.

or at least be professional about it and not bring it into the training. Definitely a lion performance here, and one I get frustrated with fast because I am not very good at it.

I have my lion moments, like I described with my way of being open and vulnerable about shc here on tumblr. But I wouldn't do it if it didn't feel right, or more specifically like something I need to heal and get better. I know I need to be vulnerable to heal, and it's relatively safe here, in the anonymity of my internet persona.

Hmm. Interesting. I'm not getting Lion from you... if this is a healing exercise, maybe you're practicing existing in your Neutral state?

I have to write it all out, and some of it just happen to come out as advice for other people's asks. It would be nice if I get some recognition for it in the community, and I love the fact that my friends reads it and tells me they like it.

My take on that sort of thing is going to be annoyingly Badger, so I apologize in advance. For me it's all about consistency. Lay a foundation and then build, one brick at a time.

Now that I have written it all out, I think it's probably the most snake way of arguing myself out of any secondary model I could come up with^^ I guess I don't have one, or if I do, I am dismantling it because I need things to be simple for a while. I am tempted to post this on my own blog, but I know it will get a bigger audience with you.

Yeah, no Lion secondary here.

and maybe help someone in a similar situation. So I will be patient, and I thank you for inviting us all to use you as a sounding board for our own shc issues. I have to stop going through your likes, I'm ruining my obsessive fangirl/shc vibes tumblr with beautiful rl-things and creative human interactions^^

I do what I can. I hope I help. :)

Thankyou, @sevilemar for the submission.

[miakwat]

would it be possible to elaborate on those aus you are thinking about mayhaps 👉👈

I haven't thought too in depth about this, so I probably still have to workshop what I've written down still

("But Mika, you said you've been thinking about-" I've been thinking about two specific things over and over again)

OK, so typically when I see AUs surrounding Kai working under Chen for the entirety of the tournament they usually have Chen take him in after Ray and Maya are kidnapped by Krux. (I've only seen one where it follows canon up until that point.)

(I'm going to try getting a rough idea of how my version of this AU would work? Will probably workshop this a bit later)

(Also, I'm putting everything under the cut for once so I don't clog up people's feeds.)

-In between s3 and s4 Chen (or at least his followers) found Kai when he was at his absolute worst. He was fighting in the Slither Pit, drowning his emotions out in alcohol, and suffering from survivals guilt.

-Chen decides that now would be a great time to try and get one of ninjago's protectors onto his side (and on top of his current state, the emotional ones were already easy to target).

-He sends Skylor to the Slither Pit to try and gain his trust, and after a week or so of sharing drinks and banter, she's successful in doing so.

-Skylor is also able to get a bit more information on Kai, like how he has a fear of being weak and his repressed jealousy towards Lloyd (he didn't outright say that last part, but it was heavily implied).

-In his state, Kai is somewhat easy to manipulate. Skylor's made his days a little brighter, but he still feels horrible and wishes he could've done something during their last battle.

-This is when Skylor brings the possibility of Zane being alive up, and after a bit more discussion, Skylor tells Kai to meet her at the docks the next day.

-This is where he meets Clouse, and is told about Zane being stuck in Chen's custody. Clouse offers a place among Chen's ranks in exchange

-He immediately reacts with anger and attempts to attack Clouse with his fire, but Skylor counters with her own fire.

-Skylor tries to reason with Kai while he's in his shocked state. She tries negotiating with him, offering things like the power of the Anacondrai and Zane's safety. All the while Clouse might be casting a spell to sort of sway Kai and guarantee that he will stay with Chen throughout the tournament? Maybe?

-Normally, this type of spell wouldn't work when somebody's at their peak mental and physical health, but Kai? Kai's basically at rock bottom. Zane's dead, his friends split up and left him alone, and somebody he trusted led him to, well, this.

-Kai's swayed, but the spell is only meant to tempt. So he's not completely under Clouse's control, but whenever he seems like he's going to betray Chen they bring Clouse in to set Kai straight.

-Kai asks to see Zane as a way for him to be %100 sure they weren't bluffing about him being rebuilt. Of course, Zane doesn't recognize Kai but Clouse reassures him that with time he'll regain his memories.

-This happens a lot due to how devoted to his family Kai is.

-Kai is forced to get an Anacondrai tattoo.

-When Chen's cultists over in Ninjago catch wind of Lloyd getting back in contact with Jay (and was also heading to where Cole was located), they sent Kai back right away so they wouldn't get suspicious of his absence (they of course had Skylor watch over him to make sure he didn't slip up).

-Lloyd finds Kai at the park by Zane's statue, and their interaction is relatively less "it should've been me" "gah stop being so selfish" and more "are we even a team anymore if theres bad blood between a good portion of us?" "wdym of course we are".

The whole Clouse manipulation thing is a little self indulgent, but I think it'd make for some good angst? Like maybe after everythings done and the spell finally wears off Kai has to deal with the thoughts Clouse had shoved into his head?

Anyways I might try getting into what happens during the tournament at a different point in time, but for now I'll leave it at that! (I'm sorry if none of this makes sense or if anything seems ooc. Also, if you have anything specific you'd like to see expanded upon maybe send in an ask? 👉👈)

[jilyyall]

The Art of Charming Muggles

Lily would be lying if she claimed to have forgotten to tell her parents about her boyfriend or his impending visit. Really, she was just too nervous at the thought of introducing a boy to her parents for the first time. She should have known James Potter would have no trouble charming his way into her parents' good graces. He fit perfectly in every aspect of her life; why should this be any different?

Rated T for pure fluff. Word count: 13k+ fanfiction.net / AO3

The antique grandfather clock – just about the only item of any significant value in the Evans house – chimed three o'clock in the afternoon. With something of a determined expression on her face, Lily sighed and stood up from her writing desk, skirting the trunk set in the center of the room, and headed out of her bedroom to search out her parents.

She was not altogether surprised to find them downstairs in the living room, her father in his favourite stuffed blue rocking chair, his nose buried in the morning's newspaper and her mother intently watching Happy Ever After on the television against the far wall while pretending to read a book on the couch.

"Mum, Dad?" Lily waited, hands clasped in front of her, until they both looked up at her. Her father laid the paper down in his lap and her mother looked away from the television with a distracted smile.

"Yes, darling?"

"Well, I was wondering if… I know that Christmas holidays are usually all about being together as a family, but I was wondering if you wouldn't mind terribly if I invited over a friend from school. Just for a little visit." She bit her lip when her parents glanced at each other. Her father shrugged and her mother beamed at her.

"Of course not, darling," she said warmly. "We would love to meet your friends."

"Yes, just let us know when you'll be having guests so we can prepare for them," her father said.

"Oh, right. Thank you." Lily waited until her parents had returned to their previous hobbies, then dropped her hands to her sides and tilted her head back in agony. "See, the thing is," she said once she had mostly composed herself, "I may have forgotten to mention to you that I already invited someone over."

Her parents shared another look before her mother leveled the 'mum' eyes on her. "When are they coming?"

"Er – in about an hour? We agreed on four o'clock," Lily said.

"And when did this conversation take place?" Her mother asked.

"On the train home," Lily admitted with a pitiful pleading look.

"A week ago?"

"Yes, Mum. I'm sorry."

"Ah, well, all's fine," her father said easily, leaning forward to lay a hand on his wife's knee. "You were already planning on making that corned beef with cabbage dish you make so well, weren't you, dear?"

"Yes," her mother said. "I do hope there's enough."

"Does your friend have a large appetite, Lily?" Her father asked. "I hope she likes corned beef. Do you know?"

"Er." Lily looked away from her father's innocent expression and grimaced, steeling herself to ruin his optimism. "I'm sure corned beef will be fine. I've never actually seen James turn his nose up at anything."

"James? Who's James?" her father demanded immediately, looking accusingly at his wife.

"A boy, clearly, I don't know," her mother said, rolling her eyes.

"Yes, James is a boy," Lily said.

"Is he a special boy?" Mr. Evans questioned.

"Well," Lily said lightly, "he certainly thinks so."

"Is he special to you, Lily?" Mr. Evans clarified, giving his daughter his no-nonsense look.

Lily's smile was soft and slow and very fond. She nodded. "Yes, he is."

When she managed to look up from her bare toes on the beige carpet, Lily found her parents in the middle of what looked to be a silent conversation. She watched them for a moment – all locked gazes and twitching lips and barely moving eyebrows – and saw, for a moment, herself and James silently debating the best way to get a derailed Prefects' meeting back on track, or wordlessly making fun of Sirius any time he claimed to be uninterested in all things romantic while simultaneously tracking Marlene's every movement with his eyes. Blinking, she focused back on her parents as her father sighed and shrugged.

"Well, we knew this would happen eventually." He set his paper to the side and made to stand.

Lily frowned. "What?"

"You're seventeen, you go to boarding school in a world that's completely different to ours," her mother said, also standing. "We've been waiting for you to come home with a boy on your arm."

"You could have given us more warning, though," her father said as he began to sweep from the room.

"I'm sorry," Lily said, terribly confused. "Wait, where are you going?"

"We've got to start on dinner," her mother explained, patting Lily's shoulder as she moved past her. "You never did answer, but I'm assuming James has a rather larger appetite than you?"

"Well, yes. He is very active, after all," Lily said with a bemused smile. "Captain of our House Quidditch team, actually."

Her mother paused a moment, a terrified look on her face before she rushed out of the room and into the kitchen.

"Dear, he's an athlete!" Lily heard her mother call out "We'll need more than corned beef!"

Her father swore from the kitchen, then shouted, "We've got loads of potatoes! You could whip up some colcannon to go with it!"

Eyebrows furrowed, completely taken aback, Lily followed her parents into the kitchen. Her father had his head in the cupboard while her mother was pulling out pots and pans.

"But we've got potatoes, cabbage, and carrots with the corned beef," her mother worried aloud. "Do we really need a second potato dish?"

"Does the boy have something against potatoes?" her father said, surfacing from the cupboard with a large sack of potatoes in hands to see Lily standing there watching in confusion. He lifted an eyebrow. "Well?"

"Oh." Lily cleared her throat and shook her head. "No, James likes potatoes as much as the next person. But I don't think you really need to make a side dish. He's really very easy to please."

"We can't just serve the boy corned beef! It would be rude," her mother insisted. "He's a teenaged boy with an appetite. And he's an athlete!"

"But…" Lily trailed off when her father began scrubbing the potatoes anyway. She sighed. "Colcannon will be great."

"What about dessert, dear?" her father asked.

Lily decided to take her leave when her mother swore loudly. Still reeling a bit at their unexpected reaction – she had thought they would be upset to learn about James, not frantic to feed him – she made her way up the stairs. When the door at the top of the stairs opened and Petunia stuck her long neck round the door, blond hair in curlers, Lily paused.

Petunia's blue eyes went a bit cool when they found Lily, but she still spoke to her, which Lily took as a victory. "What's all the commotion about downstairs?"

"We've got a dinner guest coming tonight," Lily said with a small shrug. "My boyfriend, James. Mum and Dad have decided to add colcannon to the menu."

"In that case, I'm glad I've got a date with Vernon tonight," Petunia said with a haughty little sniff.

Lily frowned. "But you love colcannon."

"I meant not having to sit through a meal with another freak," Petunia said, nose upturned as she retreated back into her room and snapped the door shut in Lily's face.

Pursing her lips, annoyed and unwilling to let it consume her, Lily took a deep breath through her nose and walked down the hall to her own bedroom. She had about forty-five minutes before James was due to arrive and nothing really to do; she figured she may as well change out of her loungewear and fix her hair.

She started to plug in her mother's curling iron when she saw her wand lying on her bedside table. She reached over to pick it up then, after a moment's deliberation, abandoned the Muggle method and reached for the book of beauty charms her friend Mary had gifted her for Christmas.

After several minutes of flipping though the pages, Lily found a spell she felt confident enough to attempt in front of her vanity mirror. The result was quite pretty, she thought, with her auburn hair falling in loose waves around her shoulders. She would have to remember to thank Mary properly for the gift.

A movement outside her window distracted her from admiring her wandwork. She looked up, startled to see a tall boy with long, long legs and messy black hair walking down the street toward her house – it couldn't be four already. She checked her watch and grinned when she saw that he was early – only by seven minutes, but James Potter was never seven minutes early to anything that wasn't Quidditch related.

She ran down the stairs, past the kitchen where she ignored her parents' startled questions, and out the front door. He was in front of her neighbour's house when she flew off the porch steps and into her own snow-covered garden. The wide grin that split his face when he looked up to find her running toward him made her laugh giddily.

He caught her effortlessly when she launched herself at him, his arms wrapping around her waist and holding her to him. He kissed her hair, her temple, her cheek, the tip of her nose, and finally her lips, and was smiling when he pulled back to look at her, eyes soft and twinkling like they always did whenever he was feeling particularly fond of her which was very often.

"Merlin, I missed you, Evans," he breathed, then kissed her again briefly.

"I missed you, too," she told him, burying her face in his neck as he held her, feet dangling off the ground.

"I can see that," he said, and the teasing note in his voice was so familiar and had been so missed that she couldn't even think of what he could be teasing her about. "In such a rush to kiss me you forgot shoes?"

She frowned, then quite suddenly became aware of her freezing toes. She had changed out of her loungewear into a nice pair of jeans and a deep violet jumper and apparently, in all the excitement of testing beauty charms and reuniting with her boyfriend, had forgotten to slip on her boots by the front door. Maybe later – when they were back at school and James undoubtedly told all of their friends about this – she would be embarrassed, but this evening she was too happy to see him.

"Cold!" She yelped and tried to climb him.

James laughed loudly, then hooked one arm behind her knees and shifted his other up her back so that he was cradling her in his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck and tilted her face up to his. Holding her as if she weighed no more than his prized broomstick, he brought his lips down on hers again in a much longer kiss that felt to Lily like a serious effort to make up for a week apart. When he pulled away and straightened up, she buried her face in his warm, thick coat collar.

"Hey, Evans, those folks who've been watching us snog wouldn't happen to be your parents, would they?" James asked conversationally as he began carrying her back to her house.

Lily lifted her face from his neck and turned her head to find her parents standing on the front porch watching them approach. They were speaking quietly to each other and Lily had no idea what they might be saying, whether they were upset or not. She brought her mouth close to James's ear and spoke quietly, her breath undoubtedly tickling him. "Yes, those are my parents, so be on your best behavior from now on."

"You want me to behave, you stop that right now before it's a lost cause." She could hear the smile in his voice, but also the legitimate warning.

They had a tough enough time keeping their hands to themselves at school where they saw each other every day and had ample amounts of time to themselves. After a week apart it would be very difficult to keep their interactions parent-friendly. Lily chuckled in his ear, had the satisfaction of feeling his arms tense under her, and obliged by moving her mouth away from his ear to rest her forehead against his neck as he began to climb the steps to the front porch.

Her parents had stopped chatting by then and were smiling at them. Lily recognized their show smiles – they weren't sure what to think of or how to act around the boy they had just watched kiss their daughter as if they had been apart for months instead of days, the only boy she had ever brought home, the boy who had lifted her into his arms so naturally it seemed he must have always had his hands on her, but didn't want to appear rude to him. Lily locked eyes with her father and watched his eyebrows lift almost imperceptibly.

"I forgot to put on boots." She lifted one foot to wiggle her bare toes at her parents in explanation. "So James, being the gentleman that he is, gave me a lift."

James was grinning at her explanation. She couldn't see it, but she knew it was there when her mother visibly – to her eyes, anyway, if not to James's – melted a bit. Even when Lily hadn't particularly liked James less than two years ago, the sight of that grin, the pure, unadulterated joy it brought to his face, had done things to her.

"Mr. and Mrs. Evans, lovely to meet you," James said and Lily had to fight the urge to turn her head so she could kiss that now audible grin right off his handsome face. She settled instead for tightening her arms around his neck and titling her head so that her mouth was once more buried in his coat collar, almost as if she were kissing his neck. "I would shake your hands," he continued as if he weren't at all affected, but Lily felt his grip on her tighten, "but I might drop your daughter if I did, and I don't think we want that."

"It's nice to meet you, James." Her father stepped aside and gestured for James to go inside.

Once everyone was inside, Lily's parents and James stood in the crowded foyer for an awkward moment. Suddenly uncomfortable, Lily leapt out of his arms and landed on her feet smoothly.

Her parents looked for a moment at Lily, who stood very close to James with his arm now around her waist. Lily looked quickly at James, who met her gaze and then grinned broadly at her parents.

"Thanks so much for having me over," he said as he gripped her father's hand in a firm handshake.

"Of course!" her mother said. "Any friend of Lily's is welcome any time!"

James looked at Lily, one eyebrow arching up at the word 'friend.' She rolled her eyes quickly – her parents just didn't want to say the word boyfriend – and his lips twitched up at the corners. When she looked at her parents, she found them watching her and James with puzzled, if a bit surprised, expressions on their faces and realized that she and James had just been caught having a silent conversation the likes of which she caught her parents having earlier.

"Well, let's move this to the living room, shall we?" Mrs. Evans suggested and began herding everyone out of the foyer.

Mr. Evans bypassed his favoured chair and took a seat on the far end of the couch, and Mrs. Evans sat on the near end.

Lily sat against the arm of the loveseat opposite the couch and James settled himself right next to her, throwing his arm warmly over her shoulders as if they were lounging in front of the fire in the Gryffindor Common Room with their friends instead of visiting with her parents. She caught her father's narrow-eyed gaze on them and considered for a moment signaling for James to give her some space, but thought better of it. Not only would James get his feelings hurt – try as he might to hide it – but she would be lying if she said she hadn't missed sitting like this the past week; their relationship was an incredibly affectionate one and her parents either could deal with it or not. She met her father's gaze, pulled her feet up under her, and leaned into James's side. She wasn't going to pretend their relationship was something it wasn't just for his peace of mind.

"So," her mother said, nudging her husband to stop his glaring. "James, Lily tells us you play Quidditch."

"Yes, ma'am. Brilliant sport. Do you know much about it?" James asked and Lily knew he was eager to launch into details about his favourite pastime – well, maybe his second favourite pastime now that Lily let him kiss her and more just about whenever he wanted.

"I'm afraid not. I haven't really got a good head for sports," her mother said. "But we know there are three balls."

"The Quaffle, Bludger, and Snitch," her father supplied.

"Yes, that's right! There are two Bludgers, though," James said gently as if he were correcting a timid first year's Transfiguration essay.

"Those are the violent ones, right?" her father asked.

"Yes! They try to knock you right off your broom. Had my arm broken in three places by one earlier in the year, right Lily?"

"I think it was four," she said, smiling when her mother gasped in abject horror. "Not to worry, Mum. Madam Pomfrey is a miracle worker and had him back in order by dinner."

"I'm a Chaser," James said to her father in response to a question she missed. "I only handle the Quaffle directly, trying to get it in the other team's goals and score points, but the Beaters are always hitting the Bludgers after the other team's Chasers to knock the Quaffle loose or get the Chasers off track or even sometimes to knock a Chaser off their broom."

"Have you ever been knocked off your broom?" Mr. Evans asked.

"Not since my first game back in second year." James laughed and shook his head, glancing over at Lily. "Do you remember that?"

"Yes, you landed yourself an extended stay in the Hospital Wing," Lily said, closing her eyes and sighing as if recalling a particularly pleasant memory. "Such a peaceful few days."

"Rude," he said on a chuckle.

"Really, though. Sirius skived off all of his lessons to sit with you in the Hospital Wing the entire time and Remus and Peter, with neither of you to distract them, actually sat and took notes all day. I have never experienced such peaceful lessons at Hogwarts," Lily insisted.

"Sounds boring to me," James said, smiling when Lily rolled her eyes at him. He turned his attention back to her parents. "After spending three days in the Hospital Wing, I decided to avoid getting knocked off my broom as best I could."

"Quite right," Mrs. Evans said just as the timer went off in the kitchen. "Oh, my timer! I'll be right back. Come help me, dear."

She stood and pulled her husband to his feet, leading him toward the door, where they paused to look back at Lily and James, who seemed not at all affected to find themselves suddenly alone.

"Come on, I'll show you around," Lily said to James as they both stood. "I know you're really curious about all these Muggle objects."

James grabbed Lily's hand and used it to pull her close to him as they toured the living room.

"Bit of a… hands-on fellow, isn't he?" Mr. Evans muttered to his wife as they watched their daughter lead James around the living room, pausing to explain whenever he seemed particularly interested in something: the lamp, for one; the blank screen of the television; the photos on the wall that he prodded curiously.

"He doesn't seem to be the only one," Mrs. Evans quipped when Lily laughed and slid her arm around his waist to tug him away from the digital clock. "Come, let's leave them be."

He hesitated when his wife laid a hand on his arm. "You think we should?"

Mrs. Evans looked at him with a fond smile and shook her head. "I think they probably get much more privacy up at school. A few minutes alone here won't change a thing."

"You know Muggle photos don't move, James!" Lily laughed and took his wand out of his hand when he pretended to consider trying to make them move. "I also know you've seen Muggle photos before; I've seen Sirius's collection of pin-up models, so there's no way you haven't."

"You know that stealing a wizard's wand is serious business, Lily!" James mocked her, but made no move to take his wand back.

Until just a couple weeks ago, Lily hadn't understood it, having never seen a wand or known much about them until she was eleven, but she had been told by a few of her friends that it was a big deal, a big show of trust for someone to allow another to use their wand.

She hadn't thought anything of it the first time she had reached for James's wand because hers was stowed away in her bag at her feet. She had cast a spell – something mundane: a warming charm, probably – and handed it back to him as if it were nothing. To her, it had been nothing. But she had noticed the wide eyes of those around them afterwards and the depth of passion in James's.

A few days later, he had used her wand to clean up a spill at the breakfast table for no reason, he had said, other than because he wanted to. His wand was sitting right next to him on the table. Several people had gasped as if they'd just been privy to some lascivious act and James had smirked and given her wand back.

When she asked him about it later when they were alone in his dormitory, the curtains drawn around his four-poster, he had kissed her.

"It's a big deal," he had said quietly.

"Yeah, I get that. But why?" She had rolled her eyes, but hadn't been annoyed enough by his evasiveness to reject him when he had clasped her hand in his and brought their joined hands to rest on his bare chest.

"You got your wand at Ollivander's, right?" he had asked and shrugged when she nodded. "Did he say something along the lines of the wand chooses the wizard when you went in?"

"Witch. He said witch."

Smiling fondly, James had rolled his eyes at the correction. "Okay. Witch. Well, he wasn't just being an eccentric old man, even though he is that. The wand literally chooses the wizard. Or witch. It's sort of a sentient thing. A wand has a conscience. It has loyalty. It's loyal to its owner. Most wands don't work properly for someone if their loyalty is to someone else."

"How do you get a wand's loyalty?" she had asked.

"You win it. In a duel." He had said it so simply, so matter-of-factly. "Or it chooses you."

"But your wand worked fine for me. And mine for you."

"Sometimes… if the relationship between two people is strong enough… that could come through. The wand could, essentially, choose to have two masters."

"Oh." She had said. And then, "Oh."

They had looked at each other.

"It's a big deal," he had repeated.

And then he had stroked his fingers through her hair softly and she understood. It was so simple, really. He loved her. She loved him. It wasn't some silly, fleeting first love. It was real and their wands sensed it and shared their loyalties.

Standing in her parents' living room, Lily twirled James's wand between her fingers. He smiled at her, remembering the same conversation as she. She knew now that he liked it when she used his wand, and that he liked using hers as well. He reveled in the fact that both of their wands worked the same for each of them. It was a sort of confirmation for him that she was really with him long term. She would be lying if she said she didn't like it as well.

Still, having no use for his wand at the moment, she handed it over and watched him pocket it.

"I'm assuming Muggle houses have bedrooms, or are they all just living areas and kitchens?" he asked, desire winking in his hazel eyes.

Her parents hadn't said anything to her about James only being allowed downstairs – they hadn't had a chance – but she knew they wouldn't approve of him being up in her room. Lily narrowed her eyes at him, looked over her shoulder, and listened to make sure her parents weren't coming to check on them any time soon. She took his hand and shot him a grin she had picked up from him. It said Rules? What rules?

She didn't have to tell him to tread lightly or to skip the fourth step from the top as she led him up the stairs – the boy was a natural at sneaking around and was obviously watching where she placed her feet because she didn't hear a sound behind her on any of the creakier steps.

She rushed him past Petunia's bedroom and into hers, shutting the door stealthily behind them. She expected his hands on her instantly when the door closed but when she turned to him he was surveying her room with great interest. Her nerves surprised her until she realized that this was the first time he had ever been in her room; she had been in his dormitory countless times since they had started dating, but the spell keeping boys out of the girls' dormitories was just about the only school 'rule' he and his friends had yet to get around.

"Is it all that you dreamed of?" She leaned back against the door and watched him walk the perimeter of the room.

"Well, you're not naked on the bed, so no." He flashed her a grin and then stopped in front of her vanity to pick up her wand. He turned to her with a frown and one arched brow. "You left the house without your wand?"

She bit her lip and ducked her head, knowing he was right to be troubled. It wasn't safe for her to be unarmed in this day and age, especially not outside of her house. Hell, she probably shouldn't put her wand down when she was inside, either, since there was no protective enchantment around her parents' house to keep out unwanted visitors. The lack of protection for her parents when she wasn't around was something that bothered her more each day.

He was still frowning at her when she lifted her gaze to him, so she shrugged. "I forgot."

"You forgot your wand," he repeated blankly.

"In my haste to get my hands and mouth on you? Yes. Or have you forgotten my enthusiastic welcome? Here, let me remind you."

She launched off the door and jumped into his arms, kissing him soundly. James laughed and wrapped his arms around her, one hand sliding to her bum and the other pressing into her lower back when she twined her legs around his waist.

"Nice diversion." He smirked at her, then sighed and shook his head. "Look, I know you don't need a lecture on safety – especially not from me – but please don't leave your wand behind again. I couldn't bear it if anything happened to you."

"I won't." The tips of their noses brushed and she felt his dubious frown on her lips, saw it in his furrowed brow. "I won't. I sometimes get a bit complacent when I'm home, that's all. But I promise I won't leave the house without it again."

He wasn't satisfied by that, she knew, would only be satisfied if she never had her wand out of arm's reach. He never left his wand out of sight and Lily had a tendency to stow hers away in her bag when she didn't know she would need it. It was an argument they had had before and she knew he had the right of it given the war they would be joining as soon as they left school. It was just that she didn't like to worry her parents and if they saw her constantly carrying her wand around, they would be suspicious.

To appease him, she reached behind her and took her wand out of his hand on her lower back. She shoved her wand under the elastic hair band on her wrist and pulled her jumper sleeve down over it. It wasn't the most secure spot for it, but it would suffice until she could find a more suitable place to stow it since her pockets were not as roomy as his. "Better?"

"Much," he said, and then his mouth was hungry on hers. The hand on her bum squeezed and Lily laughed, ripping her mouth from his in the process.

He took the opportunity to lie her down on her bed and cover her body with his. His mouth ravished her neck and one of his hands slid under her jumper while the other slid up her thigh. Alarm bells rang in her mind, but it still took her a few seconds to push him away.

"We can't." She frowned when he tried to lean in and kiss her again, putting a hand against his face to keep him at bay. "I mean it. I want to, but we can't. I need my parents to like you and if they think we've shagged in my bedroom while they're downstairs making dinner, they'll hate you."

"You're right. I know." He let his head hang, neck arched dramatically, so that his forehead rested against her shoulder. His lips brushed the side of her neck when he whispered, "I just missed you so much."

Lily shivered and brought a hand up to comb through his messy hair, the other arm wrapping around his back to hug him. Her legs spread open a bit wider, forming a more secure cradle for his hips to drop into. He groaned his desire and she felt the insistent evidence of how badly he wanted her. She smiled. "I love you."

"Love you, too." He rolled off of her to lie next to her, and pulled her into his side.

She gave him – and herself – a minute to enjoy a good cuddle and then struggled against his hold to sit up. "We should go back downstairs. Or at least open the door."

James let her go with a slight frown and sat up when she swung to her feet over the edge of the bed. "Is it strange for me to say that I can't wait to go back to school?"

"No. Let's not pretend that you haven't always loved school." Lily smirked at him over her shoulder. "And I know it's not just the freedom and the boys. You genuinely love classes, mister Transfiguration prodigy."

"Not so loud!" He winked at her. "You'll damage my reputation."

Lily's hand had just closed around the doorknob when she heard her mother call her name. She looked, wide-eyed, at James. "Shit."

He stood leisurely from the bed even as Lily threw the door open and rushed to the top of the stairs where she saw her mother halfway up the stairs looking up at her with pursed lips and one arched brow.

"Come introduce James to your sister before she leaves," Mrs. Evans said curtly and turned on her heel to head back downstairs.

Disappointed in herself for already having screwed up her parents' perception of James, Lily looked over her shoulder intending to have to call out for him, only to find him standing right behind her. She jolted, forced a smile for him, and turned to lead him away.

"Hey, it's okay." He laid a hand on her shoulder as he followed her. "We can fix this."

She didn't see what he could possibly do or say to convince her parents that they hadn't gone upstairs to fool around. They had, after all, gone upstairs to snog a bit even if James had gotten sidetracked at first. She supposed it could have been worse, though. It could have been her father that came up the stairs to get her. Her parents could have burst into her bedroom. She and James could have been doing much more than kissing on her bed when her parents burst in.

After allowing herself to worry over her parents' reaction for the maybe thirty seconds it took to walk down the stairs, Lily rolled her eyes at herself. So what if her parents thought she had taken James upstairs to have a shag? She and James were adults, and her parents could get over their preoccupation with the state of her nonexistent virginity.

On the landing, Lily turned to plant a kiss on James's cheek and allowed him to slip his hand into hers. "We didn't do anything wrong." She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Now come meet my dreadful sister."

Petunia was standing near the front door, one hand on the knob, glaring at Lily when she and James rounded the corner. "Mum and Dad said I couldn't leave without meeting him."

"How dare they expect you to be polite!" Lily rolled her eyes.

Petunia ignored her sister, her blue eyes sweeping past her to settle on James. Lily watched her face, reading her reaction: the pinched mouth was likely in response to his messy hair; the narrowed, roving gaze a quick take on his exceptional height. She liked to think that the fleeting, almost indiscernible widening of the eyes before Petunia settled a disapproving glare on her features was a moment of awe at his defined jaw, handsome face, and – Lily glanced back at him to see his trademark easygoing grin – friendliest smile.

"Nice to meet you, Petunia," James said loudly as if she had actually bothered to introduce herself. He brushed past Lily, giving her hand a quick squeeze before releasing to offer her sister a handshake. "I'm James Potter."

"Pleasure." Her voice was cold and stiff and the downward turn of her mouth did nothing to hide her distinct displeasure, and she backed away from him.

When Petunia didn't accept his handshake, James let his hand drop to his side casually as if nothing had transpired. He took a step back, noting the way that Petunia was all but flat against the door.

"I've met him, Mum," Petunia announced. "Now I'm leaving. I'll be back late. Don't wait up."

Without another word, Petunia opened the door and fled. James turned to Lily, eyebrows raised, and then his gaze flicked past her and he smiled. "Must be a sister thing. Lily used to hate me too."

Lily rolled her eyes, but looked over to find her parents standing behind her in the kitchen doorway. She moved closer to swat at him playfully. "I did not. I just thought you were a prat."

"Well, I'm a prat who's going to help you do some extra-curricular research tonight, aren't I?" James retorted, flashing a book she hadn't noticed him carrying.

She read the title quickly. Charms of Defence and Deterrence. Despite her confusion, she nodded.

"We were talking just a few moments ago about which protective charms would work best on a Muggle household, so we just went to get this textbook from her room," James explained, seeing the curious expressions on her parents' faces.

For a moment, she was speechless. Was the boy a Legilimens or something? She wouldn't put it past him; he and his too-smart-for-their-own-good best friends had managed the extremely difficult and very illegal Animagus transformation back in fifth year. He could probably manage Legilimency. But no, she realized it wasn't much of a surprise that he would use this time to work on coming up with a way to ensure her safety when they were apart, to ease his mind a bit now that he knew she was likely to walk around unarmed even here.

"Protective charms?" Her father said, his narrowed gaze flicking between James's innocent face and the book in his hand. Her mother cocked her head in wonder as well. "Why would we need protective charms?"

James looked at Lily, silently questioning whether or not she had told her parents anything about the social climate in the wizarding world. She hadn't. He shrugged, shaking his head in a bemused sort of way.

"Why wouldn't you?" He looked genuinely confused and Lily found herself thankful that his years of troublemaking had given him the ability to convincingly talk his way out of just about any situation. "All magical families have protective charms over their homes. It's just an additional precaution."

"It's a bit like investing in a really good lock, Dad," Lily added. "Except free. And more effective."

"Besides," James added brightly, "it's good practice for us, learning how to protect a home. It will come in handy when we've got our own place."

Her parents' eyes widened and Lily froze. When her father scowled at James, Lily turned to look at him and saw that he looked perfectly complacent, like he was aware of what he had implied and had done so intentionally. He smiled at her and Lily leveled her most intimidating glare on him, but her stupid courageous boyfriend was not easily intimidated, not even by her.

They had only talked about moving in together once, and it hadn't been a particularly long or detailed conversation. Rather, they had been lying in his bed one lazy afternoon, laughing about something or other with the rest of the boys, when Sirius had dropped the emotional equivalent of a nuclear bomb on James.

"Keep on like that and I won't invite you to my place over Christmas," he had warned them all as they laughed at his expense.

"My parents' place," James had corrected him distractedly as he took the opportunity to slide his hand under Lily's shirt while she was busy laughing.

"Actually, I've been sneaking out to Muggle London on Hogsmeade weekends to look at flats and I've found one I really like and so I rented it." He had said it casually, like it wasn't a big deal.

James's hand had frozen – his whole body had – and Lily would have sworn his heart had stopped for a moment. When the room went completely silent, it became clear to her that Sirius getting his own place was a very big deal. At least, judging by the concerned looks Remus and Peter were shooting James, Sirius not telling James that he was getting his own place was a big deal. The two were practically inseparable and she had to admit it was difficult for her to think of a time Sirius had kept something important from James before.

"You just… got a flat?" Peter had said slowly. "Just like that? Just went out and got a flat?"

"No, I just said that I've been going out and looking every time we've been to Hogsmeade this year." She couldn't see him over the mess of James's hair, but she had practically heard him rolling his eyes.

"But did you at least tell anyone you were leaving Hogsmeade?" Remus had asked. "Or that you were looking into getting your own place?"

"No." Sirius had said, and Remus and Peter had continued questioning him, growing more and more frustrated with his simple answers as time went on. Before long, they had all three been practically shouting at one another.

The three of them had never complained about her inclusion in their group, had never moaned about her always being around, at least to her knowledge. They had never treated her like an unwanted, unnecessary fifth wheel and had acted from the day she and James had gotten together as though it was always meant to be the five of them – and maybe it was – but she had still felt as though this particular conversation wasn't for her to participate in, so she had simply lain there next to James, his hand frozen on her ribcage, and waited for him to come round.

"Come on, Prongs. Don't act like that." Sirius had rolled his eyes and chucked his pillow at them. "I'll still be over at your place all the time. You know I can't feed myself and your mum and dad would worry incessantly if I tried."

But it wasn't about his mum and dad, Lily had realized. It was about James feeling like his best friend was abandoning him, like his brother was up and leaving without a backward glance. The two of them, from the very first moment they had met on the Hogwarts Express, had been practically co-dependent. James had three best friends, but if he had to choose only one, it was no secret to anyone who he would pick.

"Besides," Sirius had said loudly, sounding as close to desperate as Lily had ever heard him, "you'll be getting a place with Red, yeah? When we're out? You'll be moving in with her, and then we'll all stop in at your parents' together and, honestly, it'll be more like we've got three homes between us. My place, your place, and your parents' place."

He had said it so matter-of-factly, like he and James had discussed it, like he knew that James and Lily were going to move in together after school. But James had grown even stiffer beside her and Lily knew that it was his first time hearing about that part of the plan as well. He had slowly turned his head to look at her, and she had seen the moment that it dawned on him that that was actually exactly what he wanted.

His eyes had turned to molten caramel and he had kissed her sweetly but not quickly, and whispered, "What do you think?"

"I think…" She had paused for a moment, kissed him again to buy some time. "I think it sounds like Sirius has our lives all planned out for us."

"Yeah?" James had said quietly, and it was more a question of her approval of Sirius's plan than anything else, she knew.

"Yeah," she had said.

James had smiled at her, and then threw Sirius's pillow back across the room, whacking him in the face none-too-gently with it. "Sneak out of Hogsmeade without telling any of us again, and I'll write you up, idiot."

That was almost a month ago and they hadn't discussed it since, so Lily hadn't realized that James seemed to have been actually planning for that future. She wasn't surprised, exactly, but she wasn't sure why on earth he had decided to announce his plans to her parents the first time he met them.

"You're not going to… set the house on fire, will you?" Her mother asked after a moment and Lily was both grateful to her for attempting to break the tension and humiliated.

"No, Mum!" she exclaimed, and knew instantly by the sudden increase in temperature that her face was blazing. "It was once, and I was twelve, and I fixed it, didn't I?"

"Actually, that Ministry fellow fixed it for you and threatened to expel you if you didn't stop doing magic away from school," her father said.

"I have to hear this story," James practically shouted, rocking forward on the balls of his feet.

"I'll tell you later," Lily said immediately, relief coursing through her when a timer started beeping in the kitchen.

"Oh, that's the potatoes!" her mother said.

"We're going to start looking through this," Lily said, taking the textbook from James and holding it up.

Her father watched them as Lily led James by the hand back into the living room, and she knew he hadn't forgotten that she had snuck James up to her bedroom or that James had announced their intention to live together after school. When Lily turned to face James in front of the sofa, expecting him to still have that lighthearted, eager look about him and for him to badger her for the story of the time she had accidentally set the house a little bit on fire, she was surprised to see concern in his eyes.

"You haven't told them?" James asked, leaning forward and bending over so that he could speak quietly enough that her parents wouldn't be able to hear if they were still listening in from the hallway. "Don't you think they ought to know?"

"That we're going to live together?" she whispered. "James, I didn't even know that. We've only talked about it once."

"Not that. You didn't even tell them you had a boyfriend until right before I got here." He rolled his eyes. "Our other… after graduation plans."

"What, that we're going to be unemployed volunteer soldiers fighting a war against horrible odds?" Lily frowned up at him when he took the book from her and set it aside on the coffee table. "It's a bit more complicated having to explain things to my Muggle parents than it is for you to explain to your parents who have known about all of the shit out there since before you were born."

She wanted to shield them from the worry, save them countless sleepless nights alone in this house while they wondered who or what was out there, imagined the horrors their youngest daughter might be facing, feared they may never see her again. If she could save them from that with a few little lies, then she would.

"You can't protect them from everything, Lily," James reminded her softly.

Sometimes, it scared her how well he knew her. She sighed and turned away from him to kneel on the floor in front of the spellbook on the table. "No, but I can shield their house."

When she shook her wand from her sleeve and made the pages of the book flutter open to the section on protective enchantments, James let the topic drop and sat himself on the edge of the sofa behind her, his long legs on either side of her body blocking her in as he read over her shoulder. After a few moments of silence broken only by the occasional rustle of turning pages, James waved his wand and a piece of parchment and her favourite self-inking quill flew down the stairs from her bedroom.

She pointed out a few spells that seemed promising and James diligently jotted them down in his frustratingly tidy scrawl.

"I haven't ever heard of this one," Lily said, pointing to a spot on the page. James set down the quill and slid off the couch to sit beside her and leaned in close over her shoulder to see what she was looking at.

"The Fidelius Charm? It's really old magic," he told her, still staring down at the book. "One of the oldest known spells, even. Extremely powerful and almost impossible to cast. Only really talented Charms Masters can achieve it. Dumbledore, likely. Possibly Flitwick. An area – a home, usually – is completely concealed and the secret of its location is given to one person only, and that is the one person who can share the secret with others. Even once you've been let in on the secret by the Secret Keeper, you can't speak of it to anyone who doesn't know. It's beyond our skillset, I'm afraid, and it's a bit too comprehensive for our needs."

"You think my parents would be too safe?" Lily's eyebrows drew together as she stared at him.

James, recognizing the tone of voice that warned of approaching anger, looked up and rolled his eyes. "Calm down. I wasn't saying they don't deserve the best protective enchantments out there. It's just that comprehensive and best are not one and the same. No one would know your parents lived here. Anyone who hadn't been told the secret wouldn't even be able to see the house. Your parents couldn't be Secret Keepers because they're Muggles, so if we were able to pull off casting Fidelius, you would probably want to be the Secret Keeper. They wouldn't be able to have guests over because you would have to meet them first and give them the secret and then they would watch a house seemingly materialize out of nowhere. It wouldn't be practical."

"Okay, okay, you're right. Sorry." Lily sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. "I just … now that you've got the idea in my head … I really want to find something I can do for them now."

"I know, and I think we have," James told her.

Lily lifted her head and squinted suspiciously at him. "Do you have another, better book of spells over there, Potter? We're supposed to be sharing."

"No, I don't." James laughed and shoved her hand away when she started to jokingly pat him down. He pointed down at the book they had been sharing. "Look on the next page. Salvio Hexia and Protego Totalum."

Lily read the descriptions quickly. "Salvio Hexia to protect against basic hexes. Protego Totalum to create a protective shield around a dwelling. It's a good start."

Her parents wouldn't understand why they needed protection from magic, but she just wouldn't tell them exactly what they were being shielded from. Besides, for all they knew, she and James were only practicing for when they had their own place. She rolled her eyes at the thought and kept reading.

James jotted something down and she stared at him in horror.

"Repello Muggletum?" she questioned. "The Fidelius Charm is too much, but a barrier to keep Muggles away from my Muggle parents' Muggle home in a Muggle neighbourhood? Really?"

He laughed and shook his head. "No, of course not. But we can use the spell as a sort of base idea. Perhaps not a barrier against Muggles, but against people with ill will? Something to play with."

"Can you do that?" She asked, cocking her head. "Can you change a spell?"

"Sure." James shrugged. "How do you think new spells are created? You just take the useful bits of other spells and take away what you don't need, add what you do, and there you have it. It will take time to craft this one into what we need because we would have to define exactly what ill will entails and what exactly would happen to anyone who fits the bill."

"You sound like you've done it before," Lily said suspiciously.

"You think it was easy making the Maruder's Map?" James said with a small laugh. "Took us a whole year to get the first draft and then there were constant alterations that had to be made, new enchantments we had to add, some of which didn't exist so we had to create them."

She looked at him for a moment, full of wonder. Here was this boy, this tall, beautiful, athletic, intelligent, funny, popular, well-liked boy, and he spent countless hours researching and inventing spells with his three best friends so they could create a map of a school they were unlikely to ever set foot in again after they graduated. They were all just a bunch of reckless swotty idiots.

When she didn't say anything, James looked over at her and seemed very much confused by the soft look on her face. She kissed him slowly, one hand on the rug to prop herself up, the other caressing the side of his face. When she opened her eyes, he had a goofy, somewhat dazed grin on his face.

"What was that for?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Because I love you."

And she did. She loved him so much it startled her sometimes. They were only seventeen, but she still felt as though she had wasted all this time not wanting to fancy him, wanting her wanker of a best friend to be worthy of her time, time she could have been spending with James, loving James. They had the rest of their lives together, though, she had to remind herself. Countless days of James being smarter than he had any right to be, of him knowing things she didn't have to say, of the warm, comfortable, dizzying feeling she got from just sitting next to him. Millions of kisses and hours, days, years, a lifetime of curling up against his long frame, his arms around her.

But it wasn't the time for such thoughts, so she slid her hand from his face and shifted her weight to lean into his side as she turned back to the book they were sharing. He swung his arm across her shoulders, pressed his lips to the side of her head, and they continued to read.

They worked in silence for quite a while and by the time they got through the entire section of the book that would be useful to them, they had pretended at least a dozen times not to notice her parents walking past the entryway. Lily flipped the book closed and sighed, rubbing her eyes. Next to her, James stretched dramatically, his back and neck arching, arms and legs splaying, and yawned loudly. She laughed when he suddenly jumped to standing, fully of energy, and held a hand down for her.

"Shall we?" he asked.

They would cast the spells that they didn't feel the need to change, they had decided, and take their time working on the others. Those enchantments wouldn't be ready to go until after graduation, they figured, but in the meantime it would give Lily some peace of mind to know that her parents were safer, at least, than most Muggles.

She swiped her wand from the table, took his hand, and let him pull her up. She led him to the door to the back garden, then paused, looking at him worriedly. "Do you think it's okay to do this? What if the Muggles see?"

"Muggles never notice magic," James said dismissively, and sighed when she shot him a disapproving look. "Have they ever noticed the Knight's Bus? The magic that they do see they always find a perfectly Muggle explanation for. The pyramids of Egypt? Stonehenge? All magic. If they see us out there casting protective enchantments, all they're going to see is a couple of teenagers walking circles around a house. If anything, they'll think we're looking to break in."

"Maybe if it was just you, but they won't think I'm breaking in to my own house," Lily said, but he had a point. Muggles did often explain away the unexplainable. Besides, it was growing dark out and it was a bitter cold evening and snow was beginning to fall again. No one would be outside anyway. She opened the door and led him outside.

"Here, why don't you go that way and I'll work my way this way," James suggested, and they began pacing away from each other.

"Salvio Hexia. Protego Totalum. Protego Horibilis. Fianto Duri." With each step she took, she muttered another incantation and a quick, dull, shimmer of light appeared in front of her, the shield taking shape.

She reached the hedge at the side of the house, looked over her shoulder and saw that James was no longer in sight. He had either jumped the hedge or magicked his way through. She sighed, decided that there was no way she was risking jumping over the waist-high prickly hedge, and tapped it with the tip of her wand. It disappeared and she quickly stepped through, waving her wand over her shoulder so that it appeared again.

"Salvio Hexia. Protego Totalum. Protego Horibilis. Fianto Duri."

She met him at the front door. James, with his longer legs, had finished his half of the house first and waited for her there instead of continuing on and meeting her. It was a wise call on his part; she probably would have been disappointed to have taken less responsibility over her parents' safety than he had. It surprised her, protective as she was wont to be, that she wasn't dissatisfied with only having done half of the work. James was a brilliant wizard, after all, and she would be hard-pressed to think of someone she trusted more.

"I feel better now," Lily confided in him. "Now that I know they're fairly well protected."

"So do I," James told her, drawing her near to him. His concern, she knew, was mostly for her next week or so here, but she also knew that he was the type of person who would have been worried over her parents' safety even if she weren't there.

The door opened and light flooded them just as he leaned in to kiss her. Without pulling away from one another, they turned to look at her father, who blinked awkwardly out at them.

"Oh," he said. "There you are."

"We were just finishing up with our enchantments," James explained as he slid his hands from Lily's waist languidly and took a few steps back from their embrace.

"I see," Lily's father said and he seemed to contemplate something for a moment before he settled on his decision. "And do all enchantments end with a kiss?"

Lily laughed, pleased that her father actually seemed to be trying to make light of the situation. She wondered if James stating that they would be living together after Hogwarts had said something of his commitment to their relationship and had made her parents like him, or at least not think of him as some strange boy who was only after one thing.

"Only the best ones, sir." James said with an easy grin. Lily rolled her eyes and gave him a small sideways shove, but she knew her grin matched his when he slung his arm across her shoulders and pulled her closer.

It wasn't until she felt the warmth radiating off of him that she realized she was freezing her tits off. She had remembered her boots this time, but neither of them had bundled up nearly well enough, and it was only getting colder the later it got.

Her father seemed to realize this at the same time she did and gestured for them to come inside. Lily wrapped her hand around James's and dragged him inside behind her.

"Dinner's ready," her father mentioned as he closed the door behind them.

"Oh, is that why you were looking for us?" Lily asked mildly. She noticed her mother standing at the foot of the staircase, looking as though she had just come back down the stairs. Lily wondered if she had gone upstairs expecting to find James and Lily in her bedroom again.

"Yes, come along into the dining room," her mother said, gesturing awkwardly down the hall.

Lily paused briefly to kick off her boots, and then she and James followed her parents to the dining room. Her mother had plated everything on nice serving dishes: her corned beef, the delectable colcannon, a colourful fresh salad, and a pitcher of water. She sat down across the table from her father, and James took the seat next to her.

While her mother served up everyone's plates, something she did every time they had guests over, her father resumed asking James about Quidditch.

"Usually a match will last a couple hours," James told him with a shrug. "Course, there are the ones that take up the entire day. It's why we only play on weekends; it could take too long if we were to play after lessons. And then there are the rare quick games that only take a few minutes."

"A few minutes?" Her father asked, pausing a moment to thank his wife when she set a plate down in front of him. "How does that work?"

"The game always ends when the seeker catches the snitch," Lily said.

"So, if it's a slow snitch and a quick seeker, they could catch it in the first couple minutes," James added. "Doesn't happen often because you usually want to score as many points as possible before you end the match to rack up your points for the Quidditch cup. That and it's dead boring if it's over before it really begins."

He pulled a dreadful, tortured look, and Lily laughed at him, reaching over to pat his knee under the table. "I remember you nearly cried when Martin caught the snitch in the first five minutes of the game against Hufflepuff last year."

James threw his head back and groaned like he was having the life sucked out of him. "I told him not to catch the snitch until we had a good lead over them." He leaned back when Lily's mother set an overflowing plate before him, smiled up at her. "Thank you."

"It's not like it affected our standings. Hufflepuff has never been an actual contender for the cup." Lily rolled her eyes when he stared at her in horror. "You're so dramatic. Thanks, Mum."

"I am not being dramatic," James insisted. "It wasn't about Hufflepuff. It was about getting more points on the leaderboard! We only went up by one-fifty when we could have gone up by at least three hundred and put a decent gap between Slytherin and us. Instead, we dropped below them and needed to wallop them in the final!"

"Which we did," Lily reminded him. "And won."

"Yes, but that's not the point!" James said, gesticulating wildly now as he was wont to do when he grew impassioned. "The point is that instead of focusing on catching the snitch in the final, Martin had to focus on stopping Regulus from catching the snitch and keep track of the score so he didn't mess up and end the game before we had enough points to win the cup."

"But we did win the cup," Lily said.

"I know! But we could easily have won the game and still lost the cup and it would have been all Martin's fault."

"But we won both, James," Lily said.

James made a strangled sound in his throat and his shoulders hunched over as if he were in immeasurable pain. When he pressed his fingertips against his eyelids and knocked his glasses askew, Lily smirked. Across the table, her father looked on with amusement as her mother grew more and more confused.

"Love," James finally said in a strained voice. "I'm aware that you're actively trying to frustrate me, but it's working a little too well. Can you please stop?"

Lily laughed and reached over to pat his thigh. When she leaned into him and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek, he gave her a warning look. Not in front of your parents, you impossible girl, she practically heard him say.

"So sorry, dear," Lily said innocently, giving his leg another little taunting squeeze under the table before she pulled away and picked up her fork. "Let's dig in, yeah?"

"Yes, this looks amazing, thank you so much," James said, picking up his fork as well.

"You are very welcome," her mum said, looking delighted when James began eating with great enthusiasm.

For a while, there was little conversation besides small pleasantries. Then, when everyone had nearly cleared their plates, James spoke up again.

"Mr. and Mrs. Evans," he said, nudging Lily's foot under the table and sparing her a slight wink, "I would love it if you would tell me how Lily set the house on fire."

"You…!" Lily choked and kicked him in the shin.

"Ow!" he complained, reaching down to massage his leg.

"Lily!" her mother chided while her father tried to pretend he wasn't laughing.

"I told you I would tell you later!" Lily said, ignoring her parents as she glared at her boyfriend.

"You were never actually going to tell me, though! I know your tricks! You would only distract me every time I brought it up until I forgot all about it if I waited for you to tell me!" he accused. "You know plenty of my embarrassing moments! Hell, you've witnessed most of them!"

"That is beside the point!" she protested. "I've never asked you to relive any of those moments!"

James scoffed and leveled an incredulous stare at her. "Are you going to look me in the eye and pretend that you didn't actively make fun of me for weeks after Peter's spell backfired in Transfiguration and I ended up completely bald for a few hours back in fourth year?"

Lily bit her lip, unsuccessfully trying to hide her giggle. She had in fact teased him horrendously for what was probably closer to a couple months, but she simply couldn't help herself. As much as she had tried to convince herself that his hair was stupid for years, she'd been forced to admit to herself even back then that he just wasn't Potter without the hair. She had taken perhaps a bit too much pleasure in those few hours he had looked truly awkward. Even now that she loved him, the memory still made her feel almost giddy.

"I was trying to levitate a pillow onto my bed. I was making my bed, you see, magically. My entire bed caught fire rather abruptly and when I tried to put it out it just spread even quicker," she said in a very quiet rush.

"Scared us half to death," her father added.

"Scared us even more when the Ministry fellow just appeared in the middle of her room and set it all to rights," her mother said.

"And then the fellow scared Lily to tears, saying that if she ever did magic outside of school again, she'd be expelled forever and have her wand snapped in half," her father said.

James was smirking when he turned to her, but he quickly adopted a more stoic expression when he saw the warning glare Lily was sending him. He cleared his throat and tried to cover the amused twitch of his lips by speaking.

"You know, they don't really do that," he said in what he clearly meant to be a conversational tone. In truth, his voice was a little on the high, tremulous side as he repressed laughter. "Expel you and snap your wand. Not unless you do something really awful like purposely expose a bunch of unsuspecting muggles to magic. They just threaten muggleborns with it because you can't have a bunch of kids running around waving their wands all freely in the muggle world."

"I bet you got to do magic all the time when you were away from school, even before you turned seventeen," Lily grumbled at him.

"I never said it was fair." He reached for her hand on the table, twined their fingers together and stroked his thumb along the back of her hand. "And I'm sure it was terrifying to be threatened that way your first summer back from school."

"Did you ever set anything on fire?" Mr. Evans asked, looking at James.

"Oh, loads of times," James said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"He means by accident," Lily told him.

"Oh, well. In that case…" There was an amused twinkle in his eyes when he winked at her. "Maybe once or twice."

Her parents looked a bit concerned at that – was the boy a pyromaniac? But Lily and James were exchanging very amused glances like it was nothing that he'd just casually admitted to starting fires on purpose. Perhaps it wasn't a big deal in their world.

Lily laughed quietly; she remembered many a time James and his friends had caused explosions and mild fires in classes as either pranks or distractions, but he hadn't done anything like that since fifth year. Besides, a small fire in the back of the Charms classroom was nothing for Professor Flitwick to fix.

Mrs. Evans stood and began to gather the dishes from the table. "I'll just clear this up before pudding, shall I?"

James stood quickly. "No, don't trouble yourself. I'll clear this up."

Mrs. Evans started to protest, but Lily shook her head with a small smile. "We'll take care of it, Mum."

James and Lily made quick work of cleaning up the dishes in the dining room, charming them into neat little stacks and sending them gliding gently through the air to the kitchen, where they charmed them to wash and dry themselves. Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Evans served up four dishes of a scrumptious pudding, smiling softly as they listened to their daughter giggle as James struggled to make sense of the dish organization in the cabinets. If nothing else, at least they could see that the boy made Lily happy.

They came back in both glowing happily, James following closely behind Lily as if he couldn't bear to be more than a few inches from her. Not now that their time together tonight was drawing to a close. They both knew that after dessert came goodbye, and there was no guarantee yet that they would see each other again before they headed back to school.

Mrs. Evans sat a dish of pudding in front of Lily and a substantially larger serving in front of James as they took their seats again. It was all James could do to wait until Lily's parents both had their forks in hand before he dug in. He acted as if he'd never tasted anything so delightful in his life. If Lily didn't know that he ate just about every dessert with as much gusto, she might have thought he was just kissing up to her mother.

"A fan of a good pudding, eh?" Mr. Evans said with a slight chuckle.

James grinned unabashedly and nodded. As eagerly as he tended to devour his dessert, he never did so with a lack of basic table manners, so Lily's parents found his enthusiasm endearing rather than repulsive.

"James usually eats pretty healthy because of Quidditch," Lily told her parents. "But about once a week he'll lose control over a whole platter of treacle tarts."

"A whole platter?" Mrs. Evans said. "Shall I get you a second serving?"

"I really shouldn't, thanks." James grinned over his empty plate. "But you should see me in Honeydukes."

"The sweet shoppe in Hogsmeade," Lily explained when her parents looked intrigued. "I swear, he buys about a ton of sweets every time we go down there."

"And what is a magical sweet shoppe like?" Mr. Evans asked.

"Oh, Dad, don't get him started." Lily rolled her eyes good-naturedly even as James brought his finger to her lips and playfully shushed her.

"Mr. Evans, sir, you have never seen such wonder," James began before launching into a longwinded, incredibly detailed description of the inside of Honeydukes and all the sweets they offered there.

Lily watched him fondly for a moment before her mother caught her attention.

"Did Petunia tell you that she expects Vernon to propose soon?" her mother said quietly so as not to disturb the boys. Lily thought she probably could have shouted it and her father wouldn't have even blinked from James's compelling descriptions.

"Petunia doesn't tell me anything, Mum," Lily said with a small frown.

"She thinks he's doing it tonight," her mother continued in a tone that wasn't quite full of sarcasm, but was clearly forced enthusiasm.

"Well, isn't that brilliant," Lily said, and her tone was dripping in sarcasm. "Congratulations to the happy couple."

"Lily, she's your sister," her mother reprimanded softly.

"She's a mannerless, trifling hag," Lily grumbled, and crossed her arms over her chest as she settled deeper into her seat.

James, still waxing poetic about all of the sweets her father had never seen before, slid his hand over her thigh beneath the table, giving her leg a warm, comforting squeeze. His gaze briefly slanted toward her when her father asked him a clarifying question, and she leaned in closer to him. Her mother let the conversation drop, instead rising to carry the dirty dessert dishes to the kitchen.

"I should probably be going," James said when Mrs. Evans walked back into the room, a regretful note to his voice when he looked at Lily. It was difficult for him to not be able to see her everyday, to just walk down a flight of stairs and find her seated in front of a roaring fire, or to wake up in his four-poster and find her next to him, her brilliant hair fanning across his pillow and over his biceps.

She frowned at him, feeling rather sad to have to say goodnight to him herself. Lily missed walking down the long corridors with him at night, pulling each other into a broom cupboard and losing herself in him like they were supposed to be stopping other students from doing. She wished he didn't have to go, that he could stay here with her. As much as she loved her parents, it was dreadfully boring to be home sometimes, completely separated from all the magic she had grown accustomed to. That, and any world in which James Potter was not constantly accessible to her was plain miserable.

The four of them gathered in the foyer, much like they had when James had first arrived. Only, this time James was pulling on his coat instead of hanging it on the rack and Lily was frowning, on the verge of pouting, instead of beaming and vibrating with excitement.

"Oh, I nearly forgot. When I told my parents I would be meeting you, they got very excited and a bit jealous and made me promise to invite Lily over for dinner," James said very suddenly, turning to level a hopeful look on her parents. "Lily's told me that in the Evans household, Christmas holidays are traditionally spent just with the family, but they'd really love to meet her. If you want to, that is."

He looked at her with wide, inviting eyes, one eyebrow quirked questioningly. Her heart skipped a beat and it was all she could do to hide just how badly she wanted to snog him senseless.

"You mean before we go back to school?" she asked, and bit her lip to keep from betraying her mischievous smirk when he nodded. James's parents had left out of the country on business early that morning and wouldn't be back until the night before the Hogwarts Express left. "Yes, I would absolutely love to have dinner with your parents."

"Is that alright with you, Mr. and Mrs. Evans?" James asked, turning his innocent gaze back to them.

Her parents looked at one another and Lily rolled her eyes. James caught her eye and gave her a warning look – don't mess this up, Evans. Instead of sending him an apologetic look, she rolled her eyes again, more dramatically so that she almost gave herself a headache. Suppressed laughter twinkled in his gaze and they both turned back to her parents before they were caught having another silent conversation. She nearly laughed when instead she and James caught her parents doing the very same.

It was almost funny that they actually thought they had a say in the matter. Lily was going to this "dinner with James's parents" whether they thought it was a good idea or not. Not that she thought they would have a problem with it, really. They had, after all, just hosted a dinner for James and Lily was certain that they approved of him wholeheartedly.

"That would be fine," Mr. Evans said after a moment, his conversation with his wife ending so suddenly that even Lily was a bit taken-aback. He looked at James, who had schooled his face into that uncanny innocent expression once more. "When did they want to have her over?"

"Oh, they didn't specify a day," James said. "They're really not busy, though, so any day would work, I'm sure."

"Tomorrow?" Lily suggested, her eagerness hidden behind wide, innocent eyes and a soft, easy smile. James smirked somewhat proudly and more than a little smugly.

"You've got to give them time to prepare, love. I'm sure tomorrow is far too soon." Mrs. Evans issued her daughter a gentle reprimand, a reminder to be a courteous guest as well as a reminder that she hadn't given her parents enough time to prepare for James to come over, an issue James was not at fault for.

"Really, it's fine," James assured her. "If tomorrow works for you, it will work for my parents as well."

Lily wanted to throw her fists in the air and scream in triumph or maybe do a hearty little jig about the foyer when her parents relented.

"Well, if it's really okay with your parents…" Lily's mother said.

"It is," James cut in eagerly. Lily clenched her teeth in a concentrated effort not to smile at him, and they both avoided meeting her parents' gazes.

"Then, fine. Tomorrow is fine," Mrs. Evans finished.

"Brilliant!" Beaming, James turned to Lily. "I'll pick you up for five?"

She wanted to frown at him and demand he come for her earlier, but he'd said dinner and if her parents weren't already suspicious they certainly would be if he offered to pick her up for dinner first thing in the morning. "That's perfect."

"Mum's going to be so excited." James's eyes twinkled with mischief as he gazed down at her before he forced himself to turn back to her parents. "It was a pleasure to meet you both. Thank you so much for having me over."

"It was lovely meeting you, James," Mrs. Evans said, charmed when he shook her hand warmly. "I hope you'll come for another visit before you go back to school."

"Oh, absolutely!" he said. "I'd love to!"

"Have a good night, James," Mr. Evans said, impressed by the firm handshake he received from the tall boy before him who was standing very close to his daughter. "Don't be a stranger."

"Thank you, sir. I'll bring some of the Fizzing Whizbees you were so curious about when I come for Lily tomorrow," James promised.

"Really? That would be fantastic!" Mr. Evans said enthusiastically.

For a moment, the four of them stood awkwardly in the foyer. Lily stared expectantly at her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Evans stared at James, and James pretended to study the wall clock over the coat rack. Mrs. Evans suddenly caught Lily's gaze – her eyes were steadily narrowing into a mild glare – and jolted in realization. She gripped her husband by the elbow and tugged him away.

"Come, dear, let's go straighten the dining room," she said in a much too chipper tone.

"We've already done that," Mr. Evans huffed, but allowed himself to be towed into the room.

James was already reaching for her, quietly chuckling, when Lily turned her body into him; he folded her into his arms, tightening his grip when he felt her rock up on the tips of her toes to press herself closer.

"You know, I actually would like to have dinner with your parents one day," she whispered into his ear.

"Yeah?" She felt his smirk against her neck. When he pulled away, his eyes were dancing with mirth. "Because you can't wait to have them tell you all my embarrassing stories you haven't witnessed first hand or because it's a big thing, meeting the parents?"

"Both," Lily said, and kissed him. Then, she laughed against his lips. "But mostly for the stories."

"I love you," he grinned and kissed her properly and they both were lightheaded and lighthearted and smiling when they pulled apart.

When he Disapparated with a loud crack right there in the foyer and she turned away still with that dreamy grin on her face, she didn't even notice her parents watching her glide her way to the stairs from the door to the living room, practically floating on that familiar weightless feeling he always brought to her life.

Mrs. Evans turned to her husband with an elated smile when Lily called a distracted good night over her shoulder from halfway up the stairs. "Our little girl's in love."

"Bloody wonderful," Mr. Evans grumbled, but he knew his wife wasn't fooled; in fact, her smile only widened.

That James Potter was a good boy, and it was clear their daughter wasn't the only one in love there. The way he'd hardly been able to take his eyes off her even when he'd been so patiently and masterfully explaining the details of Quidditch and magic sweets to him it was clear that none of the other great passions in his life even held a candle to Lily.

Mrs. Evans twirled away from him and into the kitchen to fix a cuppa, humming happily for their younger daughter. When he sat back down in his favoured blue recliner to wait for her, he was smiling too as he thought of the besotted expression on his not-so-little-anymore girl's face.

Well, he thought, she certainly picks them better than Petunia.

[megashadowdragon]

Warning: this theory contains HEAVY SPOILERS! If you’re not fully caught up with the manga, read at your own risk.

Since English isn’t my first language, I apologize in advance for any spelling/grammar mistakes. Also, this is my first time posting.

It’s practically obvious to everyone that we will get a Kaido flashback in this arc, whether he dies or not: of course, there will be a part about his time in the Rocks Pirates, but we will also get to know possibly one of the most important people for him: his wife.

Because, let’s face it, Oda hasn’t done much yet to give his personality some depth and not being just an arrogant, cruel, child-beating antagonist with a penchant for alcohol and an obsession for death, and a figure such a woman he loved could be a great opportunity for doing so.

Some might speculate that she’s actually dead and that’s why Kaido started drinking.

It could be true but, knowing Oda, he would never introduce a deceased character of that importance out of the blue, without some sort of foreshadowing: a well-kept grave located in a secret place where an important character stumbles upon in the Onigashima raid (on screen, obviously), a framed portrait on a desk or a wall, a name seemingly being thrown offhandedly in a conversation… but there is nothing in Wano which even remotely resembles one of those things.

Therefore, she must be alive.

(Also, there are already too much fundamental figures in various characters’ history who ended up dead in flashbacks, such as Bellemere, Rocinante, Russian and so on. Come on, Oda.)

Is she going to be someone new, at least?

Well, that’s a possibility, however in next arc(s) new characters will be introduced and One Piece has got more than a thousand of them already… quite a lot, aren’t they? Consequently, there is a very good chance for her to be someone who has been already introduced into the story.

Of course, there must have been some sort of foreshadowing when she had been introduced, too: she was the lover of a Yonko, after all. Has there been a woman with an unknown lover in the past arcs?

Yes, actually.

It was her:

And I believe that the mysterious man she fell in love with was none other than Kaido himself. But wait, there’s more: Gloriosa has also eaten a Devil Fruit. An extremely powerful one.

Don’t worry, I will explain everything on the way. Now, hold onto your seat, because this will be quite the long ride.

Kaido and Gloriosa comparison

Kaido of the Beasts, Governor General of the Beasts Pirates, one of the Four Emperors, the Strongest Being in the world and Gloriosa, a former Kuja ruler. These two may have little to nothing in common... or have they?

Probably the most striking difference between them is their respective height: while Kaido easily dwarfs normal humans, Gloriosa is shorter than Luffy; however, both of their heights are currently not canonically stated.

Unstated as both of their ages are, although it’s clear that both of them are past their younger days: in Gloriosa this is highlighted by her grey hair and wrinkled face, but it’s clear that Kaido is not that young any more, too, having crow’s feet under his eyes and forehead lines. It is likely that these two are quite close in age, actually.

A notably interesting fact is, canon heights and ages of the various characters, along with things such as their favourite food, are revealed in the SBS corner in manga volumes. And yet, not even one of these little pieces of information has been revealed for both Kaido and Gloriosa.

It’s very unlikely that nobody has ever sent these question to Oda, or that the latter forgot to answer them; given the importance of the two characters in the arc where they have appeared, there must be a very specific reason why Oda didn’t tell us a thing. More than that, when Gloriosa talked about her Love Sickness in chapter 522, there was no flashback; not even silhouettes.

With these things and questions on mind, let’s move on to their position. Kaido is now an Emperor of the Sea, and Gloriosa was an Empress of the Kuja. Also, while Gloriosa was an Empress Kaido held no particular position, except by maybe being a pirate captain; and now the tables have turned, Kaido being an Emperor and Gloriosa being a nobody. A neat little parallel, isn’t it?

Now, let’s get to their Haki usage and knowledge: Gloriosa seems to have some knowledge about how it works and the characteristics of the people who are able to use the various Colours: in fact, in chapter 521 she comments about Luffy’s Haki, surprised by how he willingly bowed his head to Hancock to help those who saved him instead of a boat to leave the island without a second thought. She is not a confirmed user of any form of Haki; however, in a place where pretty much every powerful warrior can use at least Observation and Armament, it is hinted she is a wielder of these two colours at least and, since she used to be an Empress, there is also a chance she can use Conqueror’s, too. Kaido is a confirmed Observation, Armament and Conqueror user, and also one of the very few people, as he himself stated in chapter 1010, who can make the latter colour flowing through their body and coat their weapon(s). In the very same chapter, he also recognized Zoro’s illusions while performing Ashura as a manifestation of Conqueror’s Haki, revealing his in-depth knowledge about the subject.

Last but certainly not least... their strength. Kaido one-shot Luffy in Gear Fourth despite the Emperor being so drunk he could not stand on his feet properly; also, he was able to clash against a fellow Yonko for days and tanked pretty much both all the Scabbard’s hits and the majority of the Supernova’s attacks on the rooftop. Moreover, how can his absolutely epic introduction not be taken into account? He fell from a Sky Island literally 10000 metres above the sea level and he ended up with... a strong headache. I’ll tell you what: Gloriosa fell from a great height, too! In addiction to it, she landed without suffering any serious consequences, as shown in chapter 517, where she landed on her feet seemingly undamaged after Hancock quite literally threw her out of the Kuja Castle. As Gloriosa herself said, she might have grown old, but she is still a Kuja warrior. Also, being a former ruler where strength is beauty, she undoubtedly was a force to be reckoned with in her prime.

That being said*... Maybe they’re not so different, after all, huh?*

Mythology references

One Piece has loads of references to Japanese myths and folklore, however Wano is especially loaded with these; and how could it not be? It is inspired by Japan, after all.

Moreover, since Kaido can transform into a dragon, there must be some kind of reference to Japanese myths and legends regarding these legendary creatures.

There’s one in particular, which might be the key to Kaido’s backstory: the story of the Enoshima Dragon.

According to this myth, in the mountains near the Koshigoe village lived a five-headed dragon, called Gozuryu, who terrorized the inhabitants over a period of some-thousand years by provoking countless natural disasters such as huge storms, floods and earthquakes, as well as eating their children. The villagers kept praying and praying, until something happened: in 31st May, 552 AD, during a bigger and more violent storm than the usual, the clouds split in two and a rock began to emerge from the sea. A beautiful woman descended from a ray of light where the clouds slit and sat foot on the island just created, making it her home. The dragon, who assisted to the whole thing, immediately fell in love with her and asked her to marry him.

The woman, who was perfectly aware of the dragon’s evil actions, was none other than the goddess Benzaiten herself.

Benzaiten on a white dragon

Now, there are two versions of how the story ends: in one, the goddess turned him down at first, and told the dragon she would have considered his proposal only if he helped the people he used to terrorise. Gozuryu accepted and the village prospered thanks to their dual protection; in the end, the goddess agreed to marry him and the couple lived happily until the dragon met his demise. In the other version, Benzaiten straight up refused Gozuryu’s proposal due to his evil actions; ashamed for his wrongdoings, the dragon promised the goddess he would have never disturbed the village again, and retired in the mountains where he died of guilt.

Anyway, regardless of how the story goes, when the dragon died he fused with the land of Kamakura, creating the Dragon’s Mouth hill (Japanese: Tatsu no kuchi yama) facing south, the direction of the island where his beloved lived. Needless to say, the island of the myth is Enoshima.

The comparison between Kaido and Gozuryu is immediate: both are extremely cruel towards children, with the former having no qualms beating them, even his own, and the latter eating them. Moreover, the Emperor, much like the five-headed dragon, terrorizes the inhabitants of the place near where he lives (Wano Country and Koshigoe Village respectively) turning the land into completely inhabitable wasteland in the process, and is capable of causing huge storms; his apparition in chapter 921 is also being accompanied by a thunderstorm. Note that, in Chapter 1003, Zoro states that fighting Kaido was like “facing a natural disaster”, much like the natural catastrophes Gozuryu caused.

Now, let’s talk about Benzaiten.

Goddess of water (especially rivers), eloquence, and good fortune, Benzaiten is considered one of the protector deities of Japan, where she’s one of the most beloved and revered gods: every major city has at least one place for her worship and countless temples and shrines dedicated to her cult are present in many other areas across the country, all located near water sources such as rivers, ponds, lakes or even in the sea. She is part of Japan’s Seven Lucky Gods, and she’s the only woman among them.

Benzaiten, however, is not originally Japanese: she is in fact a syncretic deity derived from the Hindu goddess Saraswati whose cult was brought to Japan by Buddhist monks who arrived in the VII century from China.

Due to her extreme complexity, only the most relevant facts to this theory will be reported.

She wasn’t very popular until the XI century, when her cult was fused with Ugajin’s, an obscure Japanese Kami of water, agriculture and good fortune, often represented as an old man with a snake body. Once this happened, her popularity skyrocketed as a goddess of water and by assonance ‘of everything that flows’: rivers, eloquence, knowledge, music, art and Haki. Even nowadays, Uga Benzaiten, the goddess with Ugajin on her head, is one of the most common Benzaiten representations.

Both lived in an island inhabited only by women: Gloriosa in Amazon Lily, and Benzaiten in Enoshima, since she was the sole inhabitant of said island and also a woman;

Benzaiten originated from an Indian goddess and Gloriosas, the flowers which Gloriosa was named after, grow in India too! Gloriosa superba is even Tamil Nadu’s national flower.

Due to being goddess of water, Benzaiten was naturally associated with animals connected with said element: snakes, turtles… and dragons. Especially the white ones, since this colour is linked with water in Japanese culture.

Snakes are a big part of Amazon Lily’s culture: almost every warrior on the island has her own Snake Weapon which can be used as a bow, the island’s dome is sculpted with snake motifs, the Perfume Yuda, Kuja Pirates’ flagship, is carried by two Yuda snakes, even Kuja, the name of the tribe, means ‘Nine snakes’

White snakes were considered to be Benzaiten’s main messengers and avatars and Gloriosa in Share the World opening appeared with a blue top and*...* a white snake.

Also, the traditional representation of the Black Warrior is a turtle intertwined with a snake, much like Kujas with their Snake Weapon. Due to these facts, I believe that Gloriosa has eaten the Mythical Zoan Kame Kame no Mi model: Genbu.

Timeline and character analysis – a PERSONAL take on what could have happened and when (and why)

For this section, other than time markings scattered throughout the story, Momonosuke’s (biological 8 – actual 28), Yamato’s (28), and Hancock’s (31) ages will also be taken into account for comparison.

It is known that the Rocks Pirates were defeated and subsequently disbanded 38 years before the current time. Also, Kaido was captured, and presumably sentenced to jail, eighteen times; given his reputation and danger, it’s pretty safe to assume that at least one of those nine prison ships he sunk was directed to Impel Down.

Impel Down is actually not that far from Amazon Lily: the journey takes one sailing week with an average ship, while Marine ones can make it in just four days, about half the time, because of the reserved currents. In my opinion, it makes sense thinking that Kaido has sunk a prison ship in the Paradise and somehow ended up in Amazon Lily.

Now, everyone here knows the supreme rule of the Island of Women:

NO. MEN. ALLOWED.

For any reasons.

So, by the laws of the island, he was imprisoned and, just like Luffy, was sentenced to death. But, like the latter pirate did, Kaido defeated/broke/knocked unconscious all the animal/things commonly used for executions on the island, therefore the Empress finally decided to take the matter into her own hands.

I believe the Kuja Empress at the time was Gloriosa. Why?

Well, it was stated that 33 years ago the remnants of the Rocks Pirates sent off to found their own crews, and probably Kaido arrived in Amazon Lily even earlier, between 38 and 33 years ago. As Hancock stated, Gloriosa is actually the former-former-former empress of Amazon Lily: this means that there were two Empresses between her and Hancock; since the latter is stated to have become Empress at the age of 18, 13 years ago, and given that the other two unnamed Empresses died of Love Sickness which probably is more likely to strike the unlucky rulers at a fairly young age, 20-25 years are more than enough for two Empresses to have reigned.

To estimate her actual force at the time, let’s analyse her name a bit.

Like all Kujas, Gloriosa is named after a flower (or a genus of those): Gloriosa is a genus of 12 flower species, widely spread in areas of the world such as Africa, the Arabic Peninsula and tropical parts of Asia. It can reach 3 metres in height and they display showy, vibrant-colored flowers with distinctively shaped petals, earning them the nickname of fire lily.

So, the question arises spontaneously: why is this short, wrinkly old woman named after one of the most beautiful (and tallest) flowers in the world? Given Oda’s attention even for the tiniest details, I highly doubt he chose this name randomly; at least, not for her.

Either she’s a grotesque parody of her own name… or it could be a foreshadow.

Gloriosa is also the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan word meaning ‘glorious’, if the subject it’s related to is feminine and singular. A truly fitting name for a ruler and the wife of a Yonko, isn’t it? And Kaido want his death to be… glorious.

Maybe Gloriosa in her prime was actually even more beautiful and stronger than the current Hancock, to the point where nobody had ever beaten her in combat.

Anyway, you know how the saying goes: if it’s one on one, always bet on Kaido.

Therefore, Gloriosa was defeated for the first time. By a man.

Hancock’s case probably gives us how Empresses fall ill with Love Sickness: it happens when a man catches them off guard by behaving in a totally and positively unexpected way, defying all the previous experiences the rulers have. Hancock fell in love with Luffy because he showed her kindness and didn’t judge her when she told him about her past; Gloriosa got Love Sickness because she fell in love with Kaido for his strength.

Because love… is always like a Dragon Twister hurricane!

How about Kaido?

It is common knowledge that he respects physical strength, even in his enemies.

That’s probably why he joined the Rocks Pirates in the first place: out of respect for Rocks D. Xebec, because he was actually the first person ever to defeat him in combat.

Just like Zoro with Kuina, or Douglas Bullet with Gol D. Roger (in the Stampede movie).

Gloriosa may have not defeated him in combat, but she surely gave him a very good run for his money, maybe she almost won. And he respected her for that, to the point where he actually accepted to leave Amazon Lily, even if he won. He stayed there for a little more, while a ship for him to sail the sea was being prepared, and lived peacefully (meaning: extensively touched and examined) with the Kujas.; what are the chances that one of his favourite (or least) foods is actually penne with Gorgonzola and Sea King’s meat, the island’s culinary speciality?

When he sat sail, he probably found out that the Empress snuck aboard his ship when he was far away from the island already. He thought of bringing her back, but, after listening to her reasons, he decided to let her stay with him because, let’s face it, Kaido is not Luffy, he actually appreciates the company of women.

The most beautiful woman in the world fell in love with him and contracted a mysterious illness which would have killed her if she didn’t go with him and follow him anywhere?

Oh no! /s

I’ll tell you what, I don’t think that Kaido was actually in love with her at first that much. He surely enjoyed spending passionate nights with her, and was amused by her curiosity due to Gloriosa knowing little to nothing about the external world.

There was a specific moment when he actually fell in love with her.

Have you noticed that, despite being often shirtless, Kaido's back is never fully uncovered even in his dragon form? He always wears a coat, a shirt, or both.

That hints that Kaido has some kind of mark on his back he wants to hide from public view, just like the Gorgon Sisters. Something must have happened that made him show her said mark, maybe Gloriosa caught a glimpse and asked him to see it. Anyway, Kaido was reclutant at first, but she had the right to know, she was his wife after all.

So he showed it to her, in a way that, when it will be shown in the flashback, might be a callback to when Hancock showed Luffy the Celestial Dragon hoof.

That mark meant that for the world he had and would always have been something inhuman, a failed experiment, a monster; even Big Mom, who has the best spy network in the world, calls him a 'thing'. But Gloriosa didn’t judge him for said mark, nor she believed he was a monster. For Gloriosa, he was just Kaido, the man who she had fallen in love with.

That's when Kaido fell for her. And he fell hard, probably to the point of no return.

At some point, the two conceived a child, and that's when Kaido decided that it was time to move to Wano instead of travelling the world: the pirate life is dangerous for grown people let alone for a child, plus he was one of the most wanted men by the World Government, meaning the child was in danger simply by existing.

But how did Kaido know about Wano?

He probably heard something about the Continent Puller and the ‘country’ he formed about 600 years before but, since it was a closed nation, he probably didn’t know much more until he met someone who escaped from said island: Kurozumi Higurashi.

41 years ago, she told Orochi that she fled the country because of the persecutions against the Kurozumi clan, and because she knew nothing about the outside world, joining pirates was the easier choice. Also, in that way she could have found allies and power for the Kurozumi cause easier.

The Mane Mane no Mi allows the user to create a perfect copy of a person whose face has been touched. She transformed in a woman, who, judging by the color scheme in the anime, is heavily hinted to be Bakkin and a young Shiki, both known members of the Rocks Pirates, so Higurashi may have traveled with said crew for a while. There she met Kaido, who she sensed he could have been a great help for the Kurozumis: big, powerful, and stupid, easy to manipulate.

A closed off country not part of the World Government: a perfect nation for Kaido to reside to ensure the safety of his family (mainly his child, because Gloriosa was more than capable of defending herself) and to use as a base for his operations.

When Oden went with Whitebeard 29 years ago, there were no factories in Wano, but they were there when Toki arrived in Wano with Momonosuke, who was 3 at the time, and Hiyori; so Kaido must have arrived in Wano three years earlier at last.

Gloriosa may not have been the Kuja Empress anymore, but had everything a woman like her could ask for: she was one of the heads of a soon to be powerful army, plus a devoted, loving husband and a child.

Why did she leave it all behind?

I have already talked about the parallels between Gloriosa and turtles in the mythology section, but here’s another one: in Chinese culture, turtle (especially turtle egg) is a very serious insult regarding the morality of one’s mother; that’s why Genbu is called Black Warrior instead of Black Tortoise.

This also expands one of Wano’s most prominent themes: betrayal.

Gloriosa was forced to leave Wano and Yamato behind because she cheated on Kaido. But with who?

Well, the Beast Pirates follow a card games and decks naming theme, and currently there is none named Ace; also, when Oden faced Kaido, Jack was only 8, so my hypothesis is that the third Calamity before him was called Ace. He probably had a crush on Gloriosa and when she went to him for comfort while Kaido was away, probably out to recruit subordinates or captured, he couldn’t resist.

But Kaido caught the two in the act, and was absolutely furious.

He killed Ace, and his position remained vacant for quite some time, until Jack finally took his place in the Calamities; that's why, in Episode 972, there were only King and Queen along with the fodder.

However, Kaido couldn't bring himself to kill his wife personally, so he offered her a choice: be dispatched by the hands of King or Queen, or leave and never return.

Gloriosa chose the second option.

She packed her things and left, only to realize she had nowhere to go: Wano obviously was not an option, but she couldn't just go back to Amazon Lily, not after she betrayed Kujas by abandoning them while she was an Empress. Plus, as a pirate, she was wanted by the Marine. So she lived on the run, continuously assuming new identities and never staying in the same place for too long.

Also, Love Sickness certainly has played its role in weakening her, making her age faster and dramatically decreasing her height in the process.

Taking a look at Hancock’s bed, it’s decisiverly oversized for her: said bed could comfortably fit a laid Boa Hancock together with her Snake Weapon, which is way larger than the others, her sisters, the doctor and Gloriosa, and still have room left for someone else to stand on it.

It is very likely that this bed was the Empress’s for a long time, and, since that position is not inherited, it had to fit Kujas of all sizes. So Gloriosa could have been taller in her youth, maybe a little shorter than Kaido, but still enough to handle him.

Anyway, Gloriosa managed to survive through sheer willpower, the same that allows her to snap out of Hancock’s charm much faster than the others, until her feelings for Kaido eventually faded away, thus healing from said illness.

When she finally arrived to Sabaody Archipelago, at least fifteen years ago, she was unrecognisable. Coincidentally, Shakky's Rip-Off bar was searching for new waiters, and Gloriosa applied because she needed money. The former pirate immediately recognised her.

How is that possible? Feminine intuition!

In chapter 591, she correctly predicted that Hancock would became smitten with Luffy despite not seeing her for thirteen years and every evidence in Hancock's behaviour pointing out the contrary. (Also in the very same chapter Hancock asks Gloriosa how to have a proper marriage while surrounded by monkeys wearing Wano's typical hat. Let that sink in).

Shakky understood that Kaido had no interest in her anymore and let her stay with her and Rayleigh, until the Boa sisters arrived and Gloriosa could finally return to Amazon Lily with the excuse of bringing them back home.

On the other hand, Kaido was devastated, to say the least.

Can you blame him? His beloved wife was cheating on him with one of his most trusted subordinates. He needed to forget, to get rid of all those negative feelings overwhelming him: that's why he started drinking.

However, Kaido isn't stupid. Okay, he may not be as smart as Benn Beckman, the most intelligent person introduced in the East Blue arc, but he surely has some brains: you don't reach and mantain high positions within a crew without some smarts, let alone being an Emperor of the Sea. Kaido soon realised that he caught the two relatively easily. Too easily.

Almost if they wanted to get caught in the act.

While Kaido was drinking his sorrow away, someone else was toasting to a risky plan gone smoothly.

The Kurozumi clan.

Higurashi may have lured Kaido into Wano and the alliance with the Kurozumi, but she didn’t predict that he would have arrived with a wife and a child. Gloriosa probably had a great influence on Kaido, who was (and maybe is still) regarded as little more than a muscle head; and the Kurozumis were actually afraid that she may have been plotting something. This impression was confirmed by the Onibanshu who spied the two pirates: probably Gloriosa wasn't happy about the shogun and suggested her husband some ways to dethronate him.

She was a threat, and they needed to get rid of her as soon as possible.

They sensed that one of Kaido’s top subordinates had feelings for Gloriosa, and they decided to use this fact to their advantage. So Higurashi transformed using her Devil Fruit powers and seduced the crew’s Ace, in a time and a place where she was sure Kaido could see them, while someone else distracted Gloriosa. In the end, everything went according to plan.

However, when Kaido saw the old hag using her powers some time after, he understood everything. But he had no concrete proofs, and certainly wasn't in the position to kill someone so important to his pawn based only on simple suspects; so he waited, until the perfect moment arrived.

Meanwhile, Kaido kept drinking, to forget his actions and to numb his guilt. At first, a little quantity of alcohol did the trick, but eventually he needed more and more, slowly falling into addiction.

You know, Gloriosas’ beauty is only matched by their toxicity: as proud members of the Colchicaceae family, they contain colchicine, a powerful metabolic toxin; all parts of these plants can be fatal if eaten, even a simple touch can cause skin irritation. Due to this, Gloriosa superba has been used for centuries to commit suicide.

Just like colchicine corrodes the body, alcohol, together with shame, guilt and anger, slowly eroded Kaido’s soul, corrupting him from within.

While Kaido's original plan for Wano was simply to make the island his operational base, after all that happened he decided to destroy and utterly annihililate it, just like Orochi destroyed his happiness. The shogun was fine with his ally’s devastations and never suspected that Kaido knew. The latter made Orochi believe he wouldn’t touch the Flower Capital, just to completely erase it from the face of Earth once his army would have been powerful enough to fight an all-out war. Revenge is a dish best served cold and then smashed on the forehead.

The rest is history.

Surely Kaido will be defeated, but he will not be completely dealt with in this arc.

Yamato probably got their kind, selfless nature from Gloriosa. The latter would have never approved of the terms of Kaido’s promise to Oden, let alone all the hostages and atrocities done by her husband; since Oden began to dance naked in the streets 25 years ago, probably Gloriosa was already gone at that time.

Because of this, Yamato has little to no memories of their mother, so they will likely ask Kaido about her at the end of the battle. However, Kaido himself doesn’t know her whereabouts because he didn’t send spies after her; at first, because he didn’t care about her anymore. When he realised his mistake, he still didn’t search for her because otherwise it would have shown that she was still important to him. He is not naive, he knows there are spies in his ranks, even at high levels; therefore he wants to avoid attracting unwanted attentions to her.

Plus, Kaido doesn’t even want to know, because Gloriosa probably is dead or has found another person to be with; and he deep down knows that those news would definitely break him.

However, there’s one little detail: Gloriosa’s speech quirk-nyon. Even if her appearance has changed quite a bit, she surely did nyot change her way of talking. Luffy would probably understand Kaido is talking about her because of this, and will tell them that she’s alive and well in Amazon Lily.

It is a known fact that our protagonist either kills the villains’ dreams or changes them: Kaido will change his goal too. He wouldn’t want to die yet, he will probably want to meet Gloriosa again to apologize properly for what he had done to her.

Thus, he will survive the battle and somehow, after almost thirty years, Kaido and Gloriosa will meet again.

Will Gloriosa forgive him? Will she not?

Only Oda will tell.

Other references

Black Maria Many people actually believe she’s a Kuja, and I admit, they have pretty good reasons for thinking so. Let’s start by her name: other than being a card game, Black Maria is also a variety of bougainvillea, a clear reference to Kuja’s floral naming theme; there is also a flower named Spider Lily (Lycoris radiata) referencing her Devil Fruit powers and Amazon Lily alike. Black Maria has also flowers in her hair; the most prominent ones, colored in red, have also five petals, much like the one Gloriosa wears in her hair! She is also the owner of a brothel in Onigashima and, also due to her size, it’s heavily implied that she and Kaido have a… passionate relationship, as Oda would put it (However, Kaido probably views her as nothing more than a distraction). Of course, Kaido and his wife must have had their passionate moments, since they have a child. Moreover, Benzaiten is almost always represented playing a biwa, and, as shown in chapter 992, Black Maria can play it very well. She also has a remarkable singing voice, a feature which was one of the basic requisites to become a geisha. Geishas also were protected by Benzaiten. All in all, Black Maria is actually the biggest reference to Gloriosa... in a literal and figurative sense! Oh, one last thing: the men tied to her webs in Chapter 1005 can be a symbol for Kaido’s soul, unable to move on and perpetually being trapped in the memories and regrets of his relationship with Gloriosa together with his alcohol addiction.

Kaido’s flagship Currently, Kaido’s flagship is the only one among the four Emperors’ which has yet to be seen or named. Some speculate that it’s actually Onigashima, but, in my opinion, that’s not the case: why would he travel with his entire home, with the concrete risk of it being destroyed every time he faces an opponent? Also, Yamato is in there: they have explosive handcuffs which doesn’t allow them to leave the island, but what if someone with internal destruction haki actually removes them thus freeing Yamato and letting them escape? Also, what if Yamato actually gets severely wounded, or worse, killed by invaders? Kaido actually strikes me as an overprotective dad, thus he will never directly expose his child to external danger. The handcuffs will explode if and only if Yamato actually tries to leave Onigashima: if they stay there, nothing will happen. Plus, in chapter 997, when Kaido started lifting Onigashima someone said that the island had never trembled like that before. Kaido actually has his flagship, and the reason why it hasn’t been shown is its name. I’ve said before that Gloriosa means glorious in some languages, therefore there’s a big chance that the ship will have in its name also the Japanese word of the same meaning. Maybe it’s called ‘Glorious Dragon’ in Japanese, or something like that.

Yamato Now, this will touch one of the most controversial topics within the community right now, which is Yamato’s gender; I wish not to discuss about it under this post, because this isn’t the time nor the place (IMO it’s better to delay the discussion at the end of this arc, when Yamato will hopefully detach from the Kozuki Oden persona and find their own identity). Regardless of all this, Yamato was born as a female: and Kujas give birth to female babies only.

Kaido and Big Mom comparison: Although they were part of the same pirate crew for some time and both of them being now Emperors, there are a lot of things about their characters which mark these two as counterparts: first of all, Kaido is male and Big Mom is female. Big Mom belongs to the older generations of pirates, while Kaido belongs to the new one (together with Shanks). Kaido drinks a lot while Big Mom eats a lot. Big Mom has more than 80 children, while Kaido just one*. Lastly, Big Mom has had many unknown husbands, who she married and treated as equals only to discard them when their children are born, revealing she had zero feelings towards them. With the previous comparisons in mind, it would make perfect sense for Kaido to have had only one wife who has already appeared in the story and who he has loved dearly and maybe still does.

*In my opinion, Katakuri, Oven and Daifuku aren’t Kaido’s sons. Even if the physical resemblance is uncanny, there are two major arguments against this supposed paternity: first, the triplets don’t display any type of horns, which Yamato, the known child of Kaido, has. Secondly, the Yonko’s age: he is surely younger than 68, since this is Big Mom’s age and she considers him like a little brother; however, being heavily implied that Shakuyaku was part of the Rocks Pirates as well and she was considered a pirate, while Kaido was only an apprentice, it’s implicitly stated that he must be younger than her, too. She’s now 64, and this puts his maximum age at 63; given the triplet’s age, 48, Kaido may have had them when he was 15, which is an age when men usually have reached their sexual maturity, but he may be even younger than that, so draw your conclusion.

I admit, this turned out a lot longer than I actually expected. My sincerest kudos to you, dear reader, for reading all this time-consuming post – I hope you enjoyed it as much as I had fun writing it.

Please, let me know your thoughts, they are more than welcome!

TL;DR: Gloriosa is Kaido’s wife and Yamato’s mother, she has eaten the mythical variant of the Kame Kame fruit, Katakuri is not Kaido’s son and Gin will become Pirate King.

comments on reddit  :

kaido has been revealed to be 59 

I really want to know who yamatos mother was and I am willing to accept any theory for now

[basically-i-write-shit]

PLEASE tell me about the hq dnd au. I’m intrigued

I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE

ok but like genuinely I wrote a little oneshot of how I think it would go for tskym week like...three years ago and I'm disappointed it didn't get as much interest as i thought it would. I got really into D&D when I started listening to The Adventure Zone in 2018 (which, I think it's absolutely crazy that was 4 years ago btw) and I've been obsessed with the idea of the hq gang playing dnd for a while.

The premise of the fic is that the reader is experiencing the campaign, not the process of making it, but through a unique lens: we're watching the PCs instead of the characters playing at the table. Each character's PC is of course created with a class, race, and backstory that is different than their own with unique names- but, because it's still a Haikyuu fic, we're still watching the characters go through these situations.

So like, in my example fic, we read and comprehend that "Tsukishima" and "Yamaguchi" are the ones controlling the narrative, but their characters are the ones experiencing the sensations.

Ex:

The way I would work this is by essentially writing a fantasy Haikyuu fic that loosely follows D&D 5e rules/my small knowledge of how D&D works, and include cut scenes like provided in the example to show the "playing" D&D aspect of the fic. This would also be able to excuse any acts that the "Characters" (PCs with their names changed to reflect the person playing them) do that may seem OOC or weird choices for them to make by blaming it on a "bad roll" or "failed check." Essentially bailing the author out if people complain about a character's actions being "totally OOC for him" lol.

"But 12 people is a lot of people for a D&D party, isn't it?" The answer to that is yes. Having all of one team or multiple teams in one campaign together would be near impossible for an IRL game. Like, not gonna lie there. I would probably have the team split into two separate campaigns that occasionally overlap, with other characters from other teams simply being NPCs that the audience, looking at the story from an outsider's perspective, could potentially identify as another character. Great example would be, if the campaign follows Karasuno, seeing a childhood friend duo could imply either Kuroo and Kenma or Oikawa and Iwaizumi or one of the Miya twins and Aran, depending on the relationship of the duo.

I have a lot of feelings about potentially writing this one day, and the ideas are probably confusing if you haven't read the oneshot I did with the concept, but year. D&D AU.

Additionally:

In a Karasuno-centric version of this, Ennoshita is of course the DM.

They host at Tanaka or Daichi or Yamaguchi's houses the most, because they have a lot of space and their parents aren't home often enough for such a large group meet in.

Another way to shrink the group is to just have Narita and Kinoshita have their own separate campaign that Enno DMs on the side, but I like the idea of an even split for players.

Tanaka has played a dragonborn in every campaign he's ever played and has a custom dice set that looks like a dragon's hoard.

Akiteru DMed a mini campaign for Yamaguchi and Tsukki when they were in middle school, and Enno discovering their minis while studying at Yamaguchi's house is how they get their team campaign going.

Hinata, like everything else, is a complete newbie but somehow manages to rock everyone's shit still. Like, everyone's convinced his dice are loaded even after doing multiple float tests, but he just had great rolls. That is, until he needs to have a good roll in the middle of some important combat and he gets a 3 with a -2 add on and nearly beefs it.

Tsukki has healing spells, which he absolutely should not be allowed to have bc he refuses to use them on anyone anyway.

Tsukki and Daichi are very anti-roleplay. Meanwhile, Suga, Tanaka, and Hinata absolutely love it. Everyone else is neutral with a positive lean.

Yamaguchi is surprisingly the one that romances everyone he sees- surprising because of his general demeanor, but also because I genuinely think he either plays paladin, cleric, or monk. Very non-flirtatious beings, usually.

Yachi and Kiyoko are definitely in this somewhere. I can't decide if I want them actually playing or as NPCs somewhere in the story, but they're definitely there.

I like to think that the other teams also have their own campaigns going on, and sometimes they run into one another at a post-session dinner or something.

This could honestly fit into the highschool canon or in like a college AU.

[paperskinned-writing]

Took longer to get this out but here we are. Went through a couple reworks and since it's an in-between chapter(?) I kept it kinda short and to the point. Well, it's a bit longer than originally planned. Anyways, Kali x Ilia continued.

Enjoy.

Ilia hadn't meant to find the box obviously. The bed skirt was going to otherwise be eaten by the vacuum cleaner. It also was just close enough to the edge of the bed that, in spite of being under it, the vacuum still tapped it.

She wasn't really trying to look through the contents, even if the lid was crookedly placed atop. It was just all happenstance. Just mild curiosity over what she had bumped into.

Still, while Kali hadn't bothered to put it back in the closet since the last time she and Ghira used it, she found her maid fumbling through the boxes' delights. Some plugs, a couple blindfolds. A leash with a small bell. Differently shaped or sized toys. Eventually they all found themselves spread out on the bed. Amusingly, the maid was so wrapped up in her discovery that she neglected that her mistress had returned.

Well, not only returned, but had slipped in through the adjar doorway and was quietly watching from her comfy seat on the window sill. The view outward overlooking her prized garden. The view inward overlooking a petite figure handling some of her more intimate treasures.

She smiled a bit wider and cleared her throat softly. The sudden color palette swapping only made her quietly chuckle as the maid came to the realization without turning around. Ilia quickly slammed all the contents back into the box as fast as possible and tucked it back under. Completing her self-created task, she simply slumped her face into the bed as she sat on the floor. Not turning around to face the contents owner.

Kali wasn't mad at all. While the reaction was certainly cute, she was well aware that she could've done a better job hiding it at least. Unintentionally, she had set up her helper when she told her to clean up her room. But that was the fun part and she wasn't going to admit.

"See anything interesting?"

The little hands clenched her uniform's hem in her lap. Literal magenta on every inch of exposed skin.

"....sorry, Mistress," a smothered apology came across the room.

Kali tapped the lip of her grinning mouth. Not an evil grin, but certainly wicked.

"I didn't quite hear that one. You'll have to turn around if you want me to hear it," she said with feigned sternness.

The petite figure slowly shuffled around to face her, still sitting on the floor. Her head bowed, tears stinging her colorful cheeks.

"I'm sorry for prying, Mistress…. I-I'm not sure what I can say," she pouted.

"I don't know either," the feline laughed. "Since you were so enamored, I didn't stop you."

The magenta levels increased further yet.

"See anything interesting?"

Ilia slowly glanced up through her brow. Kali had shifted to a forward lean, one hand draped across her wide hips and the other propping up her chin. An intense focus gleamed across her eyes as she smirked.

Iliad hands unclenched from her dress and she twiddled her thumbs. Obviously trying to gauge the situation. She had been caught red-handed going through some rather private items. However, she wasn't being coddled like when she broke things. She was seemingly being handed a cryptic chance to get out of jail free.

"I-If you want to punish me, Mistress, I couldn't refuse…"

"Good answer."

.

.

.

"Kiss it."

Ilia complied with the purred order. Pressed into her cheek, a short but girthy dildo filled her peripheral. Kissing the tip, it began to slowly push it's way past her pouty lips.

"Lick it…"

She complied.

"More...yes. Yes. Wrap it...Gods that tongue!"

Face down, ass up.

The maid lay and obeyed as the feline grabbed a few items from the box. The maid had stripped and been handcuffed behind her back, her rear on display. Light sweat beading on her tan skin ran down her arched spine, exciting her more.

Kali pulled the toy away from her mouth and traced it up the girl's spine. The spittle trailed as it went, til it firmly and gently, was pushed into the maid's love tunnel. The slobber acting as lube as this newest intruder filled the tight space.

Being the third one so far, Ilia took it well with little whimpering. The first was rather thin. The second a tad longer and now this one was stretching her.

Around her hips, Kali wore a strap. The ribbons of leather sank into her flesh as she leaned over the smaller girl. Occasionally, she gently pressed the enormous tip between Ilia's thighs for a few strokes but it was much, much too big for the maid. At least for now.

It was the pride and joy of her collection. Literally a cast of her husband's member made into her own for those longer spells without him. The familiar large, veiny silhouette bobbed under its own weight as she pumped the other toy into Ilia. The little one certainly needed some training to get to the same level as herself. Luckily, the afternoon was all theirs.

As Kali buried the dildo in far enough to kiss the womb, it suddenly wasn't possible to retrieve. Mewling leaked from the girl's throat as she came hard and she clamped down in a vice grip. It was about a full minute before Kali could pull it out. And it came out with an audible pop. The feline lapped at the slightly agape entrance. Her tongue may not have been as long as Ilia's but it was rougher. Especially when used on a girl who just climaxed.

She probed as deep as she could while tasting everything. She pulled back and attacked the maid's rosebud too, startling the girl but she didn't resist the new experience. It was only another minute before she shrieked out again, clamping down on Kali's fingers this time as her backdoor was continuously serviced.

Proud of her handy work, Kali sat back again and found the fourth and larger toy. But when she pushed it in, she pushed the smallest one into the maid's winking asshole. Clearly Ilia had not explored back here herself as she struggled and shuffled around. Her mind caught between the pleasure of her front while her rear was trying to reject any intrusion. Gasping in between mewls and moans as she took her mistress's affections. Finally, the smaller of the two sank to the hilt where Kali left it. There was still more training in the front before she could really have fun with the slab between her thighs.

.

.

After toy six, Kali had decided it was time to reward herself for her patience.

She withdrew the dildo from Ilia's womb, tossing it casually to the side as she licked and teased the spasming maid clean again. Toy number three was nestled in the rear, earning a small shiver from the girl when she tapped her nails on its base.

.

.

Ilia was a sweaty mess on the covers. After so many orgasms, her legs had given out and Kali had taken advantage of her flexibility to drag her to the end of the bed to cuff each of her ankles to one of the bedposts. Her ass just barely hung off the edge leaving easy access for the feline. Her smooth tanned thighs taught while holding the splits.

The maid felt a slight panic as the next toy prodded her. While each of them were larger than the last, she could tell just from the broadness of this one, it was a bigger jump in size. She shivered as her mistress lightly rubbed it around her opening. The teasing was merely preparation for the task at hand.

Kali marveled at the sight of her member spreading Ilia's lower lips. It's girthy shape--a perfect copy of her husband's--bending slightly as she adjusted her hips to push it further into the gasping maid. Clenching and resisting, the pressure edged the feline closer to release as the insert of the strap-on ground deeper inside her own love tunnel.

Oh, Ghira!

Part of the fun of her beloved strap was her fantasizing what her massive husband must experience whenever he plowed her tanned ass. The subtle squirming of the woman beneath him as she tries to accommodate the meat stick filling whichever hole he pleased. However he desired.

She had to be a bit more lenient. Careful not to break her toy maid. Still, it excited her every time she broke in a new girl with this massive rod hung between her legs.

Hilted firmly at last, she pawed at the tan cheeks in front of her before testing her grip in the nook of Ilia's hip and thighs. Leaning over the restrained girl, Kali rocked her own hips side to side, gyrating them 'til the maid's squeals started to deafen her sensitive ears. Stirring the girls insides without withdrawing, she used her shaft to carve its shape into her. Sticky fluids from both of them slowly dripping to the floor as the grinding worked them both to screaming.

WUMPH.

Hips met ass meat in a sudden clash. Forcefully, Kali held her claws in their nooks and laid her naked chest on the girl's back to leverage herself better. Springing off the cuffed ankles, she rocked on her toes to pull back to just the head of the toy just to slam it back in. It was a slow, powerful fucking. The force of each blow sent shivers throughout the mistress's spine as the insert rattled inside her. The maid wheezed out every time she was filled up again, the toy seemingly so far in her gut she lost her breath. The small grind before Kali reeled back every time pushed the dildo in her ass further in, confusing and exciting Ilia's more feral needs. She lost track of time and place and solely waited for her mistress to fill her up again with her massive strap with every pump. To feel her hard nipples slide across her own sweaty back as they both approached blackout levels of ecstasy. The sticky dribble between their legs was now a stream that stained the side of the bedding and down to the floor. Wet slapping sounds filled the room on every stroke. The end drew closer for them both. They could feel it and it made them quiver.

Letting out a guttural roar that normally would have frightened the girl, Kali hilted herself one last time. Gnawing at the girl's neck and up to her blushed ear, she shook violently in her climax. The shivers translating through her hips, Ilia could only whimper and bite into the blanket in return. Her insides clamping and releasing over and over as she drifted in and out of consciousness. Kali slumped over her back as she struggled to breathe as well. Kissing the maid's reddened cheek and forehead, she couldn't help but let a wicked grin cross her face. It was too much fun.

.

.

.

Having cleaned and returned everything to its darkened container under the bed, the two snuggled it out on the sheets of the bed. The stained covers strewn on the floor, Kali stroked the curly ponytail as Ilia nuzzled her chest. Hands roamed both ways, groping and pinching softer bits of each other.

They were exhausted from their play but they knew they had to clean up the rest. The rest of the servants would probably check in soon and it'd be obvious what they were up to. And no one else knew about this. Yet.

[nitannichionne]

If He Was YOUR Fan Chapter 22: Mmmh, Monday (A Henry Cavill Fan Fic)

LONG BUT WORTH IT! 2200 words

CHAPTER 22: Mmmmonday

You awaken Sunday morning to a strong hand stroking the side of your body, firmly gliding over your arm which was on your pillow and down the side to your hip. You sigh in comfort, feeling an almost healing warmth at your back, hips aligned with yours, hard muscle covered by soft hair and skin that brushes your entire body.

“Mmmh,” Henry purrs, his lips brushing against your ear and starting a wave of goosebumps that travel down your neck and side.

You barely move, and you become aware of the hardness against your backside. You also become aware of his other arm, which is under you, his hand traveling up your belly to your ribcage, resting on your breast and cupping it. As his thumb circles and brushes your nipple, another wave goes through you, this time settling at the pit of your stomach. You instinctively arch your back and grind against him gently. His fingers travel up your inner thigh as he grinds against you and you feel his tongue lick your neck. You release a sigh of surrender as you feel him stroke and squeeze between your legs, your sex going from moist to wet. “Henry…?”

He whispers your name as his fingers gently begin to tease your clit and work your sex with different fingers, spreading the wetness over your labia. He squeezes the breast in his hand, grinding against you, his lips kissing, tongue tasting and teeth nipping at your cheeks, neck and shoulders. “Now?”

You nod and whimper, unable to speak, sensually under his morning spell. You feel his meatus push inside, and you exhale a moan. His hand rests at your hip as he works himself back and forth, every time moving a little deeper into you. Your moans are high pitched as he moves and you arch in acceptance. When he finally sinks home, you cry out softly as he embraces you tightly and keeps you in place, thrusting harder as he moans and purrs, making his need and desire known. When you start to move your hips he growls his excitement, and turns you on your stomach, lifting you so you are on your elbows and knees under him, and your body rocks with his hard thrusts move you and the bed…

The alarm goes off.

You groan and look at it. You have another hour. Why is it on?

Oh, yeah, Henry beat up Archer and you are now going to the gym earlier with him and being picked up by the house SUV from there. It really sucks, but what can you do?

You roll out of bed and head to the shower. Long day, you can see it already. And then you remember:

“Baby!” you cried out, leaning against the shower wall. He had been sucking your clit and fingering you until you screamed your surrender, your foot on tub ledge trembling. Your nipples were hard from his licking and sucking them, creating an erotic stream of desire that he pooled between your legs for him to taste. Just as you thought you couldn’t stand anymore, he came to his feet, almost sheltering you from the water but not the warmth created, and hooked your legs over his arms and braced you against the wall.  He moaned, the sound becoming a low note to the sound of the shower running. “Aah!” He was so hot, so hard, and oh, so…strong. Your arms wrapped around his body as your sex opened in utter submission, taking him in and yielding to him in need and hunger. He grunts and growls as he claims you yet again. “Henry…! Oh, ohhhhh….”

“Baby!” you cried out, leaning against the shower wall. He had been sucking your clit and fingering you until you screamed your surrender, your foot on tub ledge trembling. Your nipples were hard from his licking and sucking them, creating an erotic stream of desire that he pooled between your legs for him to taste. Just as you thought you couldn’t stand anymore, he came to his feet, almost sheltering you from the water but not the warmth created, and hooked your legs over his arms and braced you against the wall.  He moaned, the sound becoming a low note to the sound of the shower running. “Aah!” He was so hot, so hard, and oh, so…strong. Your arms wrapped around his body as your sex opened in utter submission, taking him in and yielding to him in need and hunger. He grunts and growls as he claims you yet again. “Henry…! Oh, ohhhhh….”

“Snap out of it,” You tell yourself as the water runs over you. This is part of what you were afraid of. His presence lingers. Whether he realizes it or not, he has claimed you-your place-all his territory now. That fight set boundaries. Oh, it’ll be called “an experiment” or “an exhibition,” but a few people know better. It would be one of the great secrets of this filming. You wonder how long it will be kept that way-Monday—or ten years from Monday?

You get out quickly and heave a sigh of relief at the fact you packed your backpack and leg pack last night. All you have to do is get dressed. You glance the fitness watch on your wrist. You have to move it. The weather is decent, so you don’t have to pack as heavily, but your weatherproof jacket is always with you anyway.

You are sipping coffee, and you hear a honk. You gulp the rest of your cup and head down the steps, seeing Henry in his truck. You scamper down the steps, and are relieved that there is still kibble out from last night, and jump in.

“Good morning,” Henry’s voice still sounds like he just got out of bed but his eyes are bright. He leans over and you kiss him.

“Hey,” you say softly. “Hi, Kal!” You chuckle as the dog straightens and looks like he’s smiling from the back seat.

“Down, boy,” he says teasingly. “You are absolutely terrible, you know.”

“What did I do?”

“You snuck him part of that turkey leg you roasted,” he chastises. “He’ll love you forever, now.”

“Every living being deserves a treat,” you smile.

“Where’s mine, then?”

You offer him part of a leftover pastry from the previous day.

“No, can’t. Working out.”

“No treat for you, then,” you sigh, taking a bite. “You’d burn it during your workout. I warmed it, so the bread is fluffy and flaky, the cheese—" You laugh as he snatches it and puts the whole thing in his mouth.

“Temptress,” he gets out between bites. “Utterly wrong.”

“As my best friends and I used to say, ‘I’ve been wrong before, I will be wrong again.’”

He rolls his eyes and shakes his head, chuckling and chewing the rest of the way in. “Sounds American.”

“Oh, it is.” You laugh and he laughs with you.

You reach the gym and start working out. You two basically train alone and see no point in changing it. Your goals are different-he is working on strength and endurance with bicycle and fight technique cardio while you are doing more body maintenance and definition with your job and well-him-as cardio. And he is cardio. You wonder if you are, and start thinking you should find out.

                                          “Stop that,” He says as he works on his biceps. “you’re distracting me.”

Your eyes widen innocently, though you are trying to suppress giddiness as he sets down his weights. “Stop what?” You walk by him and then around.

“You know.”

“Don’t look, then,” you say and bend over from the waist to pick up some dumbbells.

You rise slowly, more like a dance move than one of utility and wink. You can’t help it! You are reveling in the fact that he is also remembering how hot the last few days have been. You can’t seem to get it out of your mind, either.

“You are running a tab, love.”

“An account,” you smile. “due when?”

“DK, this weekend,” he smiles back, his eyes slowly roving your body. “it’ll be... great.”

You get goosebumps from head to toe. You turn and see Archer, Stuart and Stella come in. Archer goes to another area of the gym with a wave, but doesn’t look at anyone.

“Hey!” You try to ignore Archer’s hasty exit.

“Hey!” Stella greets.

“How’d the weekend go?”

Stuart slowly brings up the rear and heads in the same direction as Archer did, but not before glancing at Henry and then looking at you.

“Went okay,” Stella nods. “Hannah was there to lick his wounds.”

You nod. “So they’re together, now?”

“He took her back to their apartment in town,” she sighs with a shrug. “all alone.”

You aren’t sure how you feel about that, but it’s none of your business. You wish you knew if Hannah was sincere about Archer. He seems like a decent guy, even though he was a jealous jerk when you chose Henry over him.

You work out with Stella and once again, your plank workout draws his attention.

“You’re driving him crazy,” Stella whispers as you both do it. “He always watches you do this, but he’s outright staring!”

You look up and he licks his lips, making your body respond instantly, that hum in your veins, that sweet ache in a place only he touches. Not fair, you want to say, but you did sort of tease him. He’s just getting back at you. You feel touched everywhere his gaze goes and though it puts you in a state of heat, it’s warm, so warm.

You finally finish and walk by with Stella to the locker room to quickly shower and change.

“Hot and heavy?” Stella asks.

You only smile. She knows the answer, but you don’t want to kiss and tell. “Hannah and Archer were at the apartment, what about you and Stuart.”

“Close,” she shrugs. “but I—”

“Want to take your time.”

“Yeah.”

“I get that, I really do,” you say. For a split second, you wish you could have done that with Henry. You normally do it with other guys, but…your heart sinks at the idea that you may be what Archer said, a flavor of the week. But he pursued, he knew you, was your fan and he yours, right? Who makes your favorite coffee? You shake it off, and smile. “when it feels right, you know?”

“Yeah,” Stella nods with a grin. “Like you and Henry.”

You chuckle, not sure what to say.

She puts a hand on your shoulder as you pick up your backpack. “He is into you.” You give her a small smile. “Oh, my God.”

“What?”

“And you’re falling for him, aren’t you?”

You shake your head and chuckle. “Let’s go, Stella.”

News of the fight spreads like wildfire through the set. Henry and Archer keep to their “exhibitional experiment” story and they even joked about it, which makes you feel better. However, Henry gave a look when Archer almost sat between Hannah and you for lunch. He sat on the other side of Hannah, and you put your bag in the empty space so it didn’t look so conspicuous. Stella, being a friend, drops her bag on yours and sits next to you while Stuart sits on the other side of her. Again, you feel like fifth wheel and eat lunch quickly, opting to move on with your day. Lately you have been enjoying a strawberry acai mix you do at home, so you make it and shake it in your container, sipping it as you go.

You find a place not too far from set, but close enough. You are meditating, thinking of the past few days and nights, as well as what lies before you.”

“DK, this weekend, it’ll be great.”

You laugh at that, until you remember DK may not mean “don’t know:”

“Why do you have this book?” he asks, looking through it Sunday. “I thought you downloaded everything.”

”Oh, it’s the first sex book I ever used as reference for writing stories,” you reply simply, reaching for it. He extends his arm, making it out of reach. “Hey!”

“Worth the read?!” he laughs, turning on his stomach and tucking it under him.

“I think so!” you try to stick your hand under him but he leans to make it difficult. “Oh, damn, the edamame!” You move off him and head back to the kitchen.

DK is the publisher of that book, isn’t it?

When Henry drops you off, you breach the subject. “Henry, do you have my book?”

“What book?” he asks, smiling and looking straight ahead.

“My book!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he shakes his head as he stops at your house. You lean in for a kiss but he licks your lips first, then kisses you. “See you tomorrow.”

You race up the steps and into your place. The book is gone! And so is your Art of Kissing Book as well! He took them?!

Henry just about drives you crazy in bed now, but a book of ideas? In his hands? Your pulse leaps and your body tingles with awareness even though he isn’t there, but the words in your head keep playing:

DK? This weekend? It’ll be great?

Oh. My. Gosh.

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[p1nkwitch]

The actual conversation this time @nonbinaryeye

Almost there.

Your name is PETER LUK-

No, we are not doing this.

Peter sits in Oliver's land overseeing what he has to do, Annabelle was very specific about it, and the amount of time he would have before things get out of hand, once he uses the needles to scratch that thing, is counted.

Still he stalls, swinging his legs back and forth just appreciating the view from his spot. Peter feels truly nothing right now, not about his impending death or anything in particular. He is stalling because there is one thing left he has to do and he is wondering if he will do it.

From under his shirt he takes out the necklace with all of their wedding rings, he stares at it a little bit, before he dangles it over the edge of the building. The world is quiet and muffled, like it has never been before.

Peter thought that he knew forsaken well, being raised for it, but here it was even more intoxicating. He recalls vaguely Elias explain to him that because the amount of living creatures in the game is so small compared to the earth, and some of the things that live here are not developed enough to fear most of what their entities represent, they started to feed more from them while at the same time amping up their powers.

That plus their fight with the horrorterrors above made them more dangerous.The game was collapsing from the force of the supernatural things that followed them trying to survive by messing with it from the inside.

Finally what Annabelle said came to mind too, that they would be bringing them too in their trip to the new session. Peter thinks that it makes no sense. If they were getting so bad here, would it not make sense to drop them to die while they ran? Not that he would want to exist without forsaken by his side, god's no, he would rather burn on this planet than to do that, he wouldn't even know what to do.

Still those are all thoughts for those who like to overthink and speculate, he merely wants to see the place a little before death, his grip on the necklace slackens, but he doesn't drop it yet.

He cant.

Because there is one last thing he has to do before that.

FORSAKENTUNDRA started pestering WATCHERSCROWN and BEATINGHEART

FT: Hello

WC: THERE YOU ARE!! DO YOU KNOW HOW MAD I AM RIGHT NOW??

BH: Peter what the everloving hell!! Where were you?! How could no one find you!!!!

FT: Did Annabelle and Simon get there yet?

WC: DO NOT IGNORE ME PETER LUKAS OR SO HELP ME

BH: No, you three are the only ones missing , we haven't seen Simon since yesterday when he teleported out of the meeting. What is going on??

WC: You reached God Tier!!

FT: I did and no thanks to you, considering you pretty much left me for dead after your archivist killed me. Anyways, they will tell you, once they get there I'm supposed to start this whole thing.

FT: Hopefully it all ends soon.

BH: End what soon? Peter?? We did try to find you, but you were gone!

WC: Peter what did Annabelle tell you? Whatever she said is merely manipulation. You should know better, that's how she got all of us to play in the first place!

FT: She didn't lie, in fact she was right in what she told me.

FT: You are all so busy trying to stop it, but it's sort of pointless at this rate. The entities messed it all up beyond repair, maybe if we were quicker and didn't take so long it would be a different story, but as it stands.

FT: We are kind of doomed.

WC: You are not being funny.

FT: I wasn't trying to be.

BH: Peter even still there aren't any other choices to be done.

FT: There is, you should know it, that's your entire point after all. Be a guide and all that. What would have happened to you? If we won? Do you split up and I get my cat back and you go back to being a dusty old corpse in the basement of the institute?

FT: Ah If only, but it doesn't work like that does it? No, i'm stuck with the lesser and fake version of one regency bastard. Your only charm is that you remind me too much of my cat to want to get rid of you.

BH: …..

WC: Peter what the bloody hell is wrong with you-?!

FT: Not much. Anyways I just wanted to have the last word for once in our marriages.

FT: So shut the fuck up Jonah.

WC: !!!!

FT: You were the worst thing that could happen to me. Made me lonely? Sure, but not worth the effort, not worth the years of dealing with your brand of power, perhaps you think the same of me and that's.. that's actually right. Better even.

FT: You know, i actually thought that i loved you? In whatever capacity there was for us to have that. We fought, we split up, we made up and made out. Rinse and repeat.

FT: There were a few good things true, but now I realize that out of the two of us, you were always the one with the advantage, which was unfair. Let's say this is the last divorce, no papers no nothing, albeit it probably would be more akin to becoming a widow. Enjoy the new world.

WC: What the HELL?!

FT: Im throwing away the rings, i can't bring myself to care anymore.

WC: Peter I don't care what the hell is wrong with you, the moment I see you I'm breaking your spine on sight. What do you think you are playing at here huh? Oh look at you throwing a temper tantrum, if you could take your head out of that bloody fog of yours it would be delightful! But unfortunately you are the single handedly more dense human on this rock.

WC: Do i need to spell out to you, how much you are being an unreasonable ungrateful, dumpster fire of an avatar?!

BH: Elias

WC: Do i need to remind you who you are speaking with and what i will do once i find you? I'm going to shove so many memories of people into your thick head.

BH: ELIAS

WC: WHAT!?

FT: I hate you.

FT: No, that would mean I care about you still, no I don't care about you anymore i'm finally at the place i should be and i'm finally getting what i always dreamed off. You can both shove off to the new session once im done with this and fuck off to go and get another stupid idiot to serve you. I pray you have the decency to pick someone not from my family if they exist in the new earth.

FT: But i doubt it, you are a terrible creature and so am i, but i think that out of the two of us at the very least i was loyal, something you could never be. Do you know why I died by your archivist? I refused to answer what your plan about him was.

FT: You told me to help you while you were dying to reach your quest bed and I did, you wanted me to replace you and look after the institute I did. We made bets and games, but ultimately I always did what you asked. And I know you would never do the same, you just can't, because you don't want to.

FT: Im tired of this little stupid game between us, it has gone for too long and it has no winner. I'm tired of you. I have never mattered to you beyond what i could offer and that was fine, but then it wasnt and yes.

FT: I got jealous of your stupid sprite. That finally made me realize the truth, i dont matter and i never did. Not to you or anyone, so for that i shall thank you. You finally made me reach true loneliness.

FT: But still, even then that feeling has sort of faded away by now too, a lot of things faded away really. If you could be kind enough to do me one favour, it would be to tell Martin that it would all go to him once this is over, the forsaken will cling to him next if I'm gone. Maybe it just eats him, it would serve his boyfriend right for killing me first.

FT: I don't care about you Jonah, not anymore. Either of you. Please do not contact me ever again, albeit i wont be alive much longer for you to try to.

FORSAKENTUNDRA is offline.

WC: Peter come back here now! How- HOW DARE YOU??