#anyways that all sounds bad but it's not at a level where it's dangerous or scary or anything. mostly just annoying lmao

[bumpscosity]

my posts are sporadic rn bc it's late and i haven't had uninterrupted sleep for the past 4 days

[mediumgayitalian]

“Oh, shoot, sorry. Go back to sleep. Sorry.”

Nico shifts, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. The light in the infirmary is low, and strangely soothing. It’s almost hard to keep his eyes open. But he manages, rubbing his knuckles under the curve of his eyesockets, and searches in the dark until he finds what woke him up.

Will stands a couple feet away from his bed, figure curled and shadowy, owlish eyes wide and almost unnaturally reflective in the dark.

“‘S’okay,” he mumbles. “Couldn’t really sleep anyway.”

“Oh.” There’s a shuffling sound, and suddenly Nico feels warmer where Will has stepped closer. “You in pain?“

“No. Just bad at sleeping.”

“Hey, me too.”

Surprise at Will’s easy admission and a little bit starstruck at the bright flash of Will’s grin, Nico doesn’t have the chance to beat himself up over being so flippantly open. His teeth seemed to glow as much as the whites of his eyes, which would be creepy, except it’s hard to feel anything but calm as a cool night breeze wafts the scent of lavender from the sill planters in every inch of the infirmary, and it’s hard to think of Will as anything but warm. Especially the hand he places, briefly, on the curve of Nico’s knee.

“Insomnia?”

“Something like that.”

“Still. Sorry for waking you up.”

Nico hums, fiddling with his skull ring. “Why were you up, anyway?”

“Oh, I won’t have time to sleep for another couple days.”

There’s a mellow cracking sound, and then all of Will’s knuckles begin to glow a soft, sunset yellow. Nico startles.

“Apollo thing,” Will explains. A smirk is now visible at the corner of his mouth, forcing a dimple on his right cheek. In his hands, almost hard to see under the glow, are three small vials of something Nico doesn’t recognize. “Getting meds and salves in order.”

Hesitantly, Nico drags his gaze away from the clinking glass bottles, forcing himself to meet Will’s eyes. They’re ridiculously bright. Is that an Apollo thing, too?

“Why does that mean you can’t sleep?”

Will gestures to the myriad of occupied beds outside the curtains Nico has pulled up. “Shitton of injured, man. I got way more people than I got stuff. I prepped for the Romans beforehand, obviously, but I didn’t have a good hand on their numbers and didn’t prep enough. I’m short on supplies. Haven’t slept since Gaea did.” At Nico’s look of alarm, he quickly assures, “But don’t worry, I had Cecil brew me something strong. It’s disgusting, so I think it might be his Coffee Redbull Matcha Heartstopper Special, With A Shot Of Crushed Caffeine Pills For Good Measure, but I’m not sure. Hands are only a little shakey, though, feel.”

In a mirror of a few days ago (fuck, Nico hopes he’s kidding; how long can people go without sleep?), he darts out and rests his hands under Nico’s. Sure enough, they’re trembling, although nothing nearly as bad as before.

“Dangerous levels of sleep deprivation aren’t as bad as delivering a baby, huh.”

Will shudders. “Don’t even joke.”

He looks so genuinely horrified that Nico can’t help but laugh. All they’ve seen, all they’ve suffered — and golden boy is gagging at the miracle of life. If Nico wasn’t so sure that he’d seen at least as many gory nightmares as Nico, if not more, he’d tease him for being squeamish.

…Actually.

“What kind of school nurse wannabe is squidged out by birth?”

“Nurse?” Will squawks, snatching his hands away (Nico finds his own hands, strangely and suddenly, cold). “I didn’t go to seven years of med school to be called a school nurse wannabe!”

Nico narrows his eyes. “You didn’t go to med school. You’re fifteen.”

“As I said.” He grins teasingly. “I didn’t go.”

It takes Nico a second, but when he gets it he cannot physically hold himself back from kicking him. Solace, weak from muffled laughter, stumbles sideways into a lamp.

“Ay! Be careful, you wanna kill the camp’s only brain surgeon?”

“If he’s being annoying,” Nico bites back. He can’t quite stop smiling, and he’s embarrassed about it, but thankfully the darkness hides his face. “There’s no way you’ve done brain surgery.”

The shitty cot Nico’s been coerced into camping on for the next three days creaks as Will perches on the edge of it.

“Have so. In the woods, two years ago, removed a brain tumour. Stressful as shit.” He flashes another sideways grin. “Couple dozen more medical emergencies under my belt, and I might actually be as qualified as a nurse in this country’s garbage medical system. Thank the gods for them, honestly. They do a shit lot more than a lot of doctors claim to.”

Sensing the topic change for what it is, Nico doesn’t press any further. “That what you wanna do?”

“Aw, man, I don’t even want to think about it. The idea of someone else running this infirmary gives me a stress ulcer. Y’all do a lot of stupid shit and frankly some of the procedures I have performed exist in no medical textbooks anywhere, medical or no.” He snorts. “Anyways.”

His hands are blazingly warm again, almost like sun through a maginifying glass, when they pat his shin twice. He stands, stretching — more bursts of light appearing along the length of his spine, lighting what his fading knuckles leave out.

“Try to sleep again, Neeks. You’ll need it.”

“Maybe I should be the one to say that to you,” Nico says. Will waves his hand dismissively, and in a fit of impulse Nico reaches out and grabs it, meeting his raised eyebrow with a stubborn set to his jaw. “I mean it, Will. No one’s awake right now. I just woke up. Why don’t you crash for an hour or so? I’ll wake you if anything happens.”

Will hesitates. “If anything happens, that’s on me. It — I can’t let it be on me.”

“Do you trust me?”

Stupid question. Of course Will doesn’t trust him, Nico let someone die in front of his eyes, Nico is the bringer of death and darkness, why would he —

“Yeah.” Will sighs. Nico looks up, startled, but the medic is eyeing one of the few spare cots, face screwed up in consideration. “You’ll wake me?”

“Immediately,” Nico assures hastily. He nods his head at the bunk next to him. “Sleep, man. You look like you need it.”

“Oh, well, just what I’ve always wanted to hear from you. You look stunning, by the way.”

Nico knows it’s a joke, but he flushes anyway. Thank Hades again for the dark infirmary, and the length of his hair.

“Whatever. Sleep or don’t.”

“I’m going, I’m going.”

In seconds he’s out of his flip-flops, slightly-scratchy blankets turned up and wrapped tightly around him all the way up to his neck.

“Thanks, Nico. I owe you.”

In the next breath, he’s out, all that’s visible of him the flutter of his light eyelashes and the tangled mop of blond hair. He snores, slightly, with every puffed exhale; a tiny, stuttered sound, not unlike a cat. It’s kind of cute, and Nico’s smiling before he realising.

“You don’t owe anybody shit.” He shakes his head fondly, leaning back onto his pillows to keep an eye out. “Goodnight, Will.”

[eldritch-spouse]

https://www.tumblr.com/eldritch-spouse/741884957599973376/httpswwwtumblrcomeldritch-spouse741700018004?source=share

I need to know in explicit detail the first time breg allowed this human to collect samples. Also need to know the embarrassing situations they are put in that their coworkers judge them

I honestly love this so much I'm kicking my feet and giggling ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[Fem reader. I kind of rushed this. Doodle at the end.]

TW: Heavy themes of abuse (including mentions of noncon, death and captivity); Dubious consent moments.

" Listen, we just need you to get in there. "

You blink. " ... This can't be serious. Is this a joke? "

The half-fiend woman, superior to you in professional rank, drags a hand across her blonde locks and grimaces. " Look, I know it sounds bad- "

" Of course it does! This was nowhere in the job description- "

Not that the job description was very uh, descriptive, anyway. But any straw will do, anything to cling to a modicum of your dignity as you get told what your next task will be.

She seems to switch through a few different corporate tactics to ease the blow. " Listen, please. We are short-staffed at the moment, and this has been affecting production a lot more than you can imagine. Specimen 197 is a big bread-winner here and we all know he's uncooperative with machinery, going as far as to ruin it constantly, which leads to more expenses- "

She's explaining this to you like you're a particularly slow toddler and you're not amused.

" We have also noted that M197 is clearly attached to you and a bond has been formed, which is why your presence is requested in certain situations, to reduce his stress levels during tasks. This... Is another one of those tasks. We just need you to get a few samples- " She points at the two canisters next to her. " And you can think of it as a way to improve your bond with the specimen even. "

" Ma'am, he's entering a rut. " You pause. " You want me to walk into a male breeder's cell while he's rutting and engage sexually with him? "

She gulps. " For- For strictly professional purposes- "

" I'm not doing this. "

...

" There's a significant monetary bonus if you manage to do it. "

A long, shameful, disgustingly filthy moment of silence unfolds where you internally debate how far you're willing to go for some much needed money.

Too far, apparently.

" ... I'll do it. "

" Great, that's wonderful, we- "

" No cameras in the room. "

She flinches. " But then how are we supposed to know if you're in danger? "

" No cameras, please. "

If you die you die. You don't want footage of you being possibly mauled by a breeder out there...

A begrudging glance is cast towards the canisters sitting innocently on the table.

Grabbing them, you prepare for the shitshow you signed yourself into.

We have him tied up, the techs had informed you, it'll make things easier.

Just hearing them gives you headaches.

Yes, of course, because forcibly restraining the already volatile lifeform will make it cease being hostile. Logical.

A long-suffering sigh exits your lips when you input the code to open 197's cell. It's a code you know by heart now. If not from the regular standard visits, then from the hurried string of numbers your coworkers would scream at you over the radio before getting launched around by a monster several times their size and weight.

It's hard to forget something like that. There are just some faces you never see again.

As soon as the heavily reinforced door hisses open, you're greeted by an immediate build-up of a snarl. As scary as the sound was when you first heart it, and continues to be on an instinctual level, you understand now that it's mostly born out of fear.

Nothing good ever happens when 197 is cuffed and he's right to be frightened.

The moment you step into view and the door slams shut behind you however, he visibly seems to shift gear instantly.

Sitting on the rather uncomfortable tiled ground, specimen 197 has his ankles spread and cuffed to the ground, his wrists joined behind him and his neck nearly choked to the wall. A muzzle prevents the breeder's jaw from elongating as it tends to do when he's threatened. His tail is likewise restrained in two areas. Those cuffs are the best things modern technology can offer, you haven't heard of a single solid monster type that can shatter them. They're likely also tampered with by some more magically-inclined individuals, but you've never been one to dabble in that.

He exhibits the signs you'd expect from any male entering a rut. Excessive sweating, goosebumps, a faster breathing rate, tension, restlessness and a dilated, humid slit. His skin flickers from time to time, signals somewhere between aggression and courtship displays. You would never have associated heat cycles with torture before starting your work here, but seeing the way these monsters are chemically forced into hypersexual, unhealthily exacerbated heats has shown you just how cruelly this biological process can be exploited.

Sometimes they die. A hormonal, frenzied, artificially accelerated metabolism like this is powerful, but it's also very fragile, in a way. Either they're able to maintain their required ridiculous nutrient intake, find a way to preserve as much energy as possible, or simply panic and end up dying from a mixture of stress and lack of sustenance.

Another sigh escapes your lips, you try to clear your head by placing the canisters on the ground.

The breeder in question, who was once nearly pitch black in his effort to intimidate the perceived threat, is now snow white, having registered you as his favorite, the "nice one". 197 shrinks in himself, then begins a litany of keening whines interspersed with specific chirps.

It might be a plea for attention from an already hormone-fried brain, it might also just be a desperate request to be released from his binds.

You're no paragon of morality, but unlike your coworkers, you understand that building a bond with anyone requires depositing some trust in them. And, even if 197 is rutting, you can only continue to build a connection with him if he has a modicum of comfort in this situation. Which is why you steel yourself before moving closer to the specimen in question and inputting the specific combination to unlock all of his cuffs.

The process is timed, giving workers about five or so minutes to leave the cell before the cuffs drop and the monster is freed. It prevents casualties, naturally.

197 tries to thump his tail in appreciation when he realizes what you're doing, quietly rumbling and trying to lean into the small brushes of your fingers as you work.

" There big guy, just give it a second... " You take a few steps back while you wait.

It feels like a small eternity before the restraints begin falling off one by one. First the tail ones, then the muzzle, the neck, the wrists... And the ankles. On that last click, the breeder shrugs everything away and stretches as he stands.

You've studied these monsters and their mannerisms, he's not stretching just to soothe his joints, he's displaying. The exaggerated curve of that spine says it all, you know exactly what reaction he's after. Though, already riled up as he is, you don't think it's a good idea to respond.

In a second, he's closed the distance between the two of you, this near suffocating hovering over your front, hands and arms twitching with the urge to touch you. 197 is not good with boundaries, which was very surprising to you, considering he absolutely detests it when 99% of people touch him.

The 1% being you.

He waits, visibly pained, for the signal.

" You can touch me now. "

And like a sudden wave, 197 nearly crashes onto you, his comparatively massive pale body blanketing over yours as his arms cage your upper body, lifting it along with him. You squealed the first few times, now you know to stay mostly still and lean to the right so he can shove his face in the crook of your neck without bonking his head against yours. Painful.

He takes a couple deep, shameless inhales of your scent. And, if you had to guess, you're probably a bit sweaty from anxiety. Not that he seems to care, 197 actually appears to slow down a little, enjoying the closeness and now familiar odor you possess. His tail coils around your legs and you pat his back when the telltale chirps and trills of elation make it past his throat.

" Yeah, I missed you too buddy. Take a breather. "

This close to the male, you have absolutely no choice but to drown in his musk. 197 can't help it, he's ruttting after all, those pheromones have to come out. Fortunately, as a human, you're not affected by them, though some of your monster coworkers have to wear specific masks when they enter rutting breeder cells. To you, it's just vaguely unpleasant and heavy.

197 would usually give you a bit of room by now, but he doesn't seem interested in that, instead shifting you around so he can smell other parts of your figure, particularly your hair. Your face warms from his excessive body heat and the sensation of being corralled, your protests silenced when a long blue muscle dips to trail from the base of your neck to your jaw and up the side of your face. The movement is quick, and your attempt to reflexively lean away is met with a tighter grasp as he repeats it.

197 has a habit of dulling his teeth to look more humanoid for your comfort, but not today, in the state he is, he likely forgot that detail altogether. This unfortunately means that you feel the scrape of those pointed daggers every time he amorously samples your skin.

" Alright okay, that's enough- "

You butt in when it feels like he's getting a bit too riled up too fast. It's not exactly counter-productive to your task, but letting him get more and more control over the situation will make it difficult to get the samples later. You can't wrangle a breeder in the throes of their rut, you have to do things before that critical stage.

However, the specimen isn't interested in listening to anything you have to say, responding instead to your tone with his own whine and starting to tug at your uniform. That does it. Thoroughly soaked in his drool, you grab onto the breeder's forearms hard.

" 197! " It's not a tone you like to use with any of the breeders here.

He eventually snaps out of his little trance, gulping, steadying himself before frowning and giving you the space you want.

In this barely minute-long episode, 197 has already kicked into high-gear. Breathing accelerated again, open-mouth panting, excessive drool production, somewhat puffed figure and the tips of his twin cocks already poking out of a pelvic pouch that can barely hold them back. He seems to shiver in his own overwhelming arousal, and though this species is known for having its eyes shielded behind a layer of skin on the face, you know he's fixed on you like a famished animal.

Although your cheeks are moments from setting aflame, this isn't exactly a new sight for you. 197 has gotten aroused in your vicinity several times, you've actually lost count. It'd be nonsensical of you to get irritated over such, given that these males are forced into hypersexuality by the concoctions introduced in their organisms. That paired with his fondness for you probably makes it hard for 197 to not get erections constantly. A hug can set him off, even simple closure paired with your scent is enough to do it.

Well. No time to waste.

While he's mildly disoriented, you grab one of the canisters and move towards a corner of the room with a seemingly randomly arranged pile of fabrics. This, as confusing as it may be to some, is a breeder's nest. And in this species of monsters, the males tend to be the ones who arrange spaces for coupling. 197 has expressed clear discontentment with the fabrics given to him during times of rut to fulfill his instinctual needs, but no one here is ever acting with the specimen's best interests in mind. Besides, he piped down when one of the techs had the bright idea of giving him a jacket you forgot in the workplace. It's right there in fact, the gray hue contrating with a mostly white and pale color scheme.

The nest itself is big, if it fits 197 then it definitely fits you too. And, knowing exactly what you're doing, you let him observe you take a step into it and sit down on the middle, empty canister beside you.

Oh boy.

You can practically hear the popcorn crackles in his brain.

The monster trills loudly, proudly, your supposed acceptance of what have amounted to months of unsubtle courtship from his part being finally rewarded. It's a dangerous moment, you're perfectly aware of such, but it's also necessary to get this over with.

197 drops to a creepily nimble crawl across the floor, rapidly posing over your seated form with blue-tinted cheeks and rabid need. Before you can get so much as a word in, he's dropping some of his weight on you, showering you in hasty licks and clumsy kisses again, this time unable to help himself from nipping at your clothes. The coverings visibly bother him, and the male growls quietly before his instincts tug at him again and he's trying to slot himself between your clothed legs. It takes some yelping, and fussy movement from his part, but you eventually rationalize that stressing him out can lead to a violent response right now.

Might as well let him get away with some embarrassing acts.

Hormone-muddled as he is, 197 has only enough of a mind to hold onto you and press two hot lengths against the front of your body. He's already full-mast, the heat and weight of those things dragging across you when he automatically moves his hips is utterly filthy. He groans, probably the first kind of decent friction he's been getting since he entered this phase of his cycle, the softness and smell of his favorite human getting the monster to leak already, lost in his desperate search for a modicum of relief. As gross and ridiculous as it is, at least he's not tugging at your clothes yet.

You can sense his frustration, the frantic way 197 mechanically bucks against you, the pressure he puts in every thrust, the way his claws puncture into your lab coat and he whines low, this noise that turns into a pleased sort of snarl. Overwhelmed, you shiver beneath his figure, glad there are no cameras to see you fluster and shamefully let a rutting monster grind at you.

You dare say you can get into this.

There's something so appealing about having a monster yearn for you so madly that he's driven to this senseless and primitive display, that even so much as humping you could have them blissed out. Your legs quake around his and you feel your pussy throb in response to the muted friction from his lightly barbed cocks. It's not the first time you've wondered about how it would feel... You've always been a monsterfucker at heart, and 197 is a brutally gorgeous specimen. He's always imploring for even a single touch from you, if you spread yourself out you have absolutely no doubt he would ram those alarming inches into you like a wild beast.

Yeah, maybe your coworkers would call you a sickfuck, but it's not like anyone who works here is moderately normal...

It's a secret. One that you're vaguely paranoid might not be so secret anymore, now that you've been entrusted with this.

In your horny little stupor, you make the critical mistake of forgetting that breeders quickly detect arousal in others. And you are probably making a wet spot in your pants as of now.

With a sudden snort of an inhale, he rises like a man possessed to start ripping at the sides of your lab coat, forcefully trying to rip it off even as he's unable to stop rocking his hips. He knows how to unbutton things just fine, but you bet he can't be fucked to think much in this state.

" Hey- Hey, easy, slow down. " You grab onto his wrists, being ignored.

Okay. Time to think this out while you still can. He's going to rip through your clothes if you let him, and that's not just needless damage, it'll put him in control. But being aggressive about getting him to stop isn't ideal with this type of monster, you need something that distracts him too much to realize he's not exactly holding the leash here. Eventually, an idea graces your mind, though it makes you grimace a little.

Already blazing with shame, you carefully edge a hand between you and, with some hesitation, grab one of the twin members pushed against you.

Instant reaction.

The monster halts, as desired, and looks at you almost oddly, but hopefully. The trick is not giving him enough time to think, so you quickly get a feel for what you're working with, and start stroking him generously.

It's not the frenzied, rushed jerking he inflicts on himself when his own libido becomes bothersome, the fisting of a large hand with little focus and care. You handle him as pleasurably as you can manage, using both hands on him and attentively reading his face. 197 pants openly again, glancing vapidly at your small hands while they work him and he fucks into the motions, strings of thick drool falling from his teeth.

" Good...? Yeah? " You ask, gulping.

He falters and gasps, trying to articulate something. " Please. " Gets dragged out, his dick pulsing in your grasp.

You don't quite know what he's begging for, but you assume he's enjoying himself. Watching the neglected length bob uselessly, you take the opportunity to remove your own lab coat, switching hands quickly when necessary. The shirt comes off too, leaving you in your bra and pants.

By the time you glance back at him, the breeder's skin has shifted entirely to black, and he's hypnotized by the new parts of your body revealed to him, the mounds on your chest breeder females don't have but that he somehow finds pleasing to the eye regardless.

You make a lifting motion, trying to get his attention. " Knees. Come on, knees. Let me show you something. "

It takes a hot second, but he computes the request and does as told out of genuine curiosity. You're about to show an already decidedly horny monster the wonders of oral sex, which is likely not the brightest of ideas, but no one's here to judge your poor decisions.

197's girths hover far too close to your face while he waits a tad impatiently. Studying the things you'll be pleasing soon, you nearly pale a couple shades, knowing it'll take some prayer not to end up hurting your jaw. The male has lived in captivity since the day he hatched, you've enjoyed showing him some of the nicer things in life from time to time, this is just another one of them.

Carefully grabbing onto the left one, you glance at 197 as you deliberately slip your tongue out, so he doesn't just assume you're going to try biting his genitals. He tenses, because of course he would, but you take your time, stopping the moment only his tip is inside your mouth. The breeder is a tad confused and quaking slightly with ambiguous anticipation.

Then you suck.

And it clicks instantly.

God, just this little of his length is already forcing you to open wider than you've ever had to with previous partners, still, you strain to take a few more inches down and focus on that part.

The male exhales tremulously, experiencing the feeling for the first time ever, you're certain. 197 has to straighten slightly as the first intense waves of pleasure course through him, and bless the big dorky monster, he has no idea what to do with himself or his arms. As your jaw adjusts, a tad uncomfortably, you start truly gouging how much of him you can handle. Not that much honestly, but it's to be expected. It's already more than enough to please him, if the increasingly louder growled trills are any indication.

Oh, you bet this is the closest thing to heaven for him. His favorite human, with a mouth warmer than he could have ever expected, lips much softer than any of his species', no apex predator teeth to get in the way, and a tongue that although flat and short, can still chase after those wonderfully sensitive spots.

He has exactly zero idea how to react beyond making bestial noises and drooling on his own chest like a vapid animal. The way his cock pulses in your mouth is a tad bothersome to the rhythm you're trying to keep, but you figure you don't have to show-off to someone who's never had oral before, he's already blown away.

Humorously, 197's hands land on your shoulders, and that's the only way he can apparently steady himself while he's sucked off. His spare cock oozes precum that smears onto your bare chest and you half-heartedly pump it when you pop off his other dick.

" Is this okay, hm? " Needless question, really.

The breeder doesn't even make an effort to reply, whining at the loss of friction and edging forward until both his members nudge against your cheek and lips, begging without words to have that bliss again.

Feeling vaguely in control, enough to be playful, you lean away from the one closest to you and take the right one into your mouth, sucking it as far in as you physically can before switching to the other one, all just so you can hear 197 gasp and grunt out moans. His desperation causes him to buck, and as you gag, a little lightbulb fizzles above his head.

Oh.

Oh no.

The next time you try to pull away, his hands rise from your shoulders to the sides of your head. Each dark finger nearly curves over the perimeter of your skull, and you freeze instantly, not wanting him to tighten his grasp by any means. Everything is fine so long as he only holds onto your head this way, gently.

He's the one moving this time, apparently marveling at the sight of his length disappearing past your somewhat swollen, drooled lips. Except, as expected, he's going faster and deeper than you'd like, getting into it enough to trigger harsh flutters in the back of your throat. Your gagging and subsequent reflexive jerks are met with warning rumbles and one of his hands caging you in place by the back of head.

He learns fast, needless to say.

The more he drives into you, the less you can control your saliva, creating gross pops and slurps as you have little choice but to huff through your nose. Merciless, not even the odd cough around his dick will stop him now that he's nearing orgasm, or so you're willing to guess by his franticness.

Eventually, he makes the mistake of shoving his cock far enough that your jaw strains and your stomach flips, a grossly loud hurl being his response. The horrid noise finally jolts him to a still, giving you enough space to pull away and catch some much needed breath, controlling your belly before anything unfortunate happens.

" Fucking Hell! " You groan hoarsely, irritated. " You're hung like a horse, be careful... "

The rutting male's fried brain only understands that you sound wounded, a concerned chirp followed by soothing sloppy laps to your jaw being his response.

Not an ideal development at all, and yet, progress.

197 is usually very violent with the breeders they tired to pair him for mating. Which is to be expected, being the golden goose of the facility comes at a cost- The rush of hormones in his machine of a metabolism doesn't just contribute to more virility than his male peers, it also causes bursts of hyper aggression not easily controlled. And the only socialization this one usually gets is fights with other males who feel threatened by his presence, understand that they are being hurt by techs because they fail to live up to the standard 197 created, that they might be killed for such.

The females, likewise, fear him.

197 is bigger, louder, scarier. He has a reputation amongst the other breeders, and some of them were more likely to try fighting him off during their heats than accept getting sexual with him. This has led to 197 rejecting all breeders regardless of the context, which resulted in many of the paired females being immediately fatally attacked whenever a scheduled session was arranged. Sometimes he would simply slaughter them, other times he would actually instinctually attempt to mate, and end up ignoring cries of distress, nothing but rage and hormones in that brain causing him to end up killing them mid-coitus.

Shitshows, complete shitshows you've had the displeasure of partially witnessing in the past.

Which is why you're so incredibly shocked he stopped when he heard you nearly throw up. Then again, you're no breeder, and you like to think you've created as decent a connection with him as possible. It could be that.

When the monster thinks you've recovered enough, he attempts to get you to sit in the same position from before so things can resume, and if the way he's insistent on keeping a hold of your head is any indication, then he's learned he prefers to take control of this. And you won't be the fool that argues with him in this state.

After licking your lips a few times, hearing his impatient little huffs, you take one of those slicked cocks into your mouth again, letting him build the pace back up. On the one hand, you're glad you don't have to pretend to keep any composure, letting yourself drool as much as possible for the sake of making the process easier, and uncaring of the filthy noises that only seem to make his thighs quake. On the other, you need a solution so he doesn't just peirce past the back of your throat.

So, experimentally, the next time 197 pushes far enough to have your eyes rolling, you get a firm grasp of the base of his tail and tug.

The appendage lifts and his spine curves back in sudden shock. You doubt it's pain that has him straightening like a plank, after all, you know these beings can oftentimes carry their young by the tail, so if it can handle their body weight, then it can handle a yank from a human's hand. It's more so a sort of "freeze reaction", effective in getting the male to pull back even if he grunts in mild agitation.

It's only fair, in your eyes.

The moment you let go, 197 continues to fuck your face as he pleases, moaning and curving over you once more to find his own pleasure, until he drives in too much again and you repeat the gesture. Over and over, so he understands there are limits.

It seems to succeed in getting the message across. If he wants to keep getting sucked off by your hot little mouth, then he needs to be minimally considerate.

This goes on for a while, you're almost proud to feel him eventually actively hold back from going too far. Because that would halt the friction, and judging by the way his tongue lolls out in pleasure, 197 wants to come really bad.

He seems to have enjoyed your antics from before, because the male actively pulls out of your mouth with another lurid pop and positions his spare length against your lips, fucking into you a couple times before switching to the other one, doing this enough times that you honestly struggle to contain some laughter.

His throbbing increases and you know his peak approaches, quickly reaching beside you for the container as fingers race to open it. Your spare hand makes an extra effort to stroke the length 197 can't fit inside you and with as much vigor as possible, you complement his every motion.

The second you back away to breathe, strings of saliva still clinging from your lips to his dicks, offers the monster enough of a nasty view to trigger exactly what you need. 197 snarls at the top of his lungs, rapidly fisting both cocks before you. It's a decidedly disgustingly arousing display that has you staring heatedly, until the first rope of thick pearly cum lands on your cheek.

It jolts you into flustered movement, holding the canister up to the closest of his girths, you try to get as much as possible inside, unable to shield yourself from the rest of his load as it lands on your neck and tits, warm globs marking you in the throes of the specimen's ecstasy.

It's immensely relieving for him, the sighed, low and needy moans that rip out his throat evidence enough that 197 had been pent up for more than a while. And you... You're soaked in warm seed, observing his maddened jerking slow down.

This is your job now.

Personally collecting from the golden goose of the facility. All for a bonus.

Whatever, just don't think about it too much.

Giving into the guilty sense of pride you feel over making 197 stare at the ceiling in total bliss, you lean down to catch the trails dripping down those teal blue lengths, cleaning him. You don't have to, by any means, but you've already sunk so low today, what difference does it make if you let yourself go a little?

The specimen's legs tremble and he glances down at you with this utterly cum-drunk, infatuated smile. Dark, stained digits rise to comb through your hair in some kind of comforting gesture until you eventually pull away and allow the male to recover.

Now, two things.

You need to clean up somehow, you don't want his cum to dry on your skin.

There's also the matter of the second canister, you think while you grab one of the cloths in the breeder's nest to wipe your face and chest on. You probably won't be allowed to leave his cell until they're both full.

Reaching for the one already warm with 197's sample, you seal it tight, the small device in it emitting a faint green light and beeping quietly. The signal that one container has been filled is then sent to whichever tech is keeping track of this particularly... Unique task.

A pang of shame courses through you at the thought of one of your coworkers now knowing that you've made 197 orgasm.

Time to get the other one and hurry this up.

Unfortunately, as soon as you're about to set a foot outside of the nest, a huge black hand captures your leg, and you're possessively tugged back by a disgruntled breeder who barely gives you enough time to scream before he starts shredding the rest of your clothes...

Hours have passed. You're sure of it.

As far as anyone's concerned, your work has been accomplished. Both canisters are practically overflowing with untainted samples, sitting in the corner of the room so that nothing happens to them.

You're naked, sticky and likely to bruise in some areas from 197's lack of strength mediation, but you did it.

At any moment now, coworkers of yours will enter 197's cell, and you know it's going to be a total wreck. Between his likely immediate aggression, the damage they'll cause him and your less than sightly state, it'll be unpleasant.

But you can't bring yourself to care.

Not when a tireless tongue continues to groom your already exhausted form and 197's meaty cock lazily fucks globs of his hot cum back into your puffed pussy while he trills soothingly. His breathing has steadied and his heartbeat slows.

Any moment now, he might fall asleep inside you, enjoying a sweet moment of bliss before you're taken away again.

It's almost cruel.

[quack-quack-snacks]

Time Will Tell - Chapter 20

My Time Will Tell Masterlist

My Cha Hyun-su Masterlist

My Navigation and Masterlist

The Time Will Tell Glossary

Warnings: Blood and injuries Word Count: 2,575

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“It will only be for a little while, okay? I’ll be back before you know it,” you promised, placing a kiss on Yeong-su and Su-yeong’s foreheads as they started to worry about you and the new plan you made. 

“Please, don’t get hurt,” Su-yeong begged you and you nodded with a smile, promising her you would come back safe and sound. 

You walked over to Jin-ok who was watching the scene between the three of you and placed your hands on her shoulders. “Please, take care of them while I’m gone. I’ll be back soon,” you pulled her into a hug and whispered your next words. “But if I don’t come back, don’t let them fall into despair. They deserve a good life.”

She nodded at you when you pulled away and you smiled. With a quick grab of your bag, holding just the bare essentials you had - including your soiled sweatpants after you changed into your work pants - you walked out of the nursery and started heading in the direction of the stairs. 

You hadn’t told Eun-hyuk you would be joining Hyun-su. Hell, you hadn’t even told Hyun-su you would be joining Hyun-su, but you were joining him no matter what. You didn’t expect him to stay with you anyways, you just needed to go to the 12th floor and grab the things you needed before heading back down. 

Because you hadn’t told either of them, Hyun-su had already started ascending the stairs and Eun-hyuk had already returned to the surveillance room when you reached the staircase entrance. You knew he would see you on the cameras and scold you when you got back but you didn’t care. You slipped through the doors as quietly as you could and started running up the stairs. You could see the messy mop of hair that belonged to Hyun-su just reaching the third level. 

“Hyun-su!” You called out and you could see the flinch it caused him to make. You felt bad but kept ascending. “Hyun-su, it’s me!” You said again, hoping to ease his fears. You got up to where he was pretty quickly - especially with him descending to reach you faster as well - and saw him standing there with a confused and concerned expression on his face. 

He said your name in a whisper, looking at you like you weren’t real. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be up here, it’s dangerous!” He said, trying to lead you back downstairs. 

“Cha Hyun-su, I am not going back downstairs. I need to get some stuff from my apartment so I am coming with you.”

He looked even more confused then. “Why didn’t you just tell me what you needed when I asked?”

You smiled lightly. “I don’t want you to worry about my stuff. You have enough things with those lists everyone’s been giving you,” you said the last sentence bitterly. “I’d prefer if you weren’t doing this at all but I know that won’t happen.”

You saw the light blush that started to creep up his neck but decided not to mention it. “I would’ve gotten them for you,” he tried one more time; this time, less confident in his words. 

“I know you would’ve. That’s why I turned your offer down,” you told him gently, slightly teasing but not wanting to scare him off. “Now come on, let’s go get the things everyone ‘needed’,” you told him as you held up air quotes with your fingers. 

He nodded reluctantly and looked at the list given to him by the residents. “The first room is 613.”

“Okay,” you agreed. “What do they need?” You asked and held out your hand for the paper. He gave it to you without any protests and you read it, your face getting more annoyed as you read through each item. “This is fucking ridiculous,” you cursed under your breath. You kept your walking at an even pace despite your anger and allowed him to continue taking the lead. “Sending you up here to get tarot cards of all things.”

He stayed silent and you decided to not say anything else about it. He probably had been thinking the same thing anyways. The two of you continued walking up the stairs in silence until you got to the 6th floor. 

After a lot of protesting from the boy, Hyun-su finally agreed to let you go with him and not just wait outside the staircase’s doors. You helped him enter the code to the door of the first apartment and search the rooms for everything they asked for. Luckily, the list only had three rooms to check on it. The rooms just had a lot of stuff you had to retrieve from it. 

You reached the door to the 12th floor and stopped in your tracks. Hyun-su stopped after a few steps, realizing you weren’t following him, and turned around. His face was confused, wondering why you were stopped on a floor they didn’t need to stop at. 

You smiled at him, albeit a little sadly. “I just need to grab some stuff from my room. You go ahead without me, yeah? I’ll catch up in a bit.”

It was then he realized the floor you stopped in front of was the 12th floor. Your floor. You walked over to the door when he didn’t respond and opened it, prepared to go in alone until the door opened wider without your help. Looking over your shoulder, you saw Hyun-su there with a determined look on his face. “I’ll come with you.”

“But what about-?”

“I’m not leaving you alone,” he interrupted you to promise. 

You held the intense eye contact between you, both determined and unwilling to back down, but you couldn’t help the way you melted under his caring gaze. After a few more moments of staring, his gaze unwavering while yours started to falter under its intensity, you looked away and sighed. “Fine. Let’s go then; don’t want to waste any more time,” you conceded. 

He smiled a little as you turned your back to him and reached for the door. His smile dropped though and he rushed forward when your hand touched the door knob. “Wait!” He said loudly before clearing his throat and trying again. “I should go first, just in case something’s in there.”

You frowned. “If something is in there I don’t want you going first just to end up getting hurt. That’s awful.”

His stare was blank as he watched you, unrevealing of the storm of emotions whirling within it: confusion; relief; protectiveness; anxiety; but more of all, a growing affection he couldn’t quite seem to control. That last one made him more and more nervous regarding his monster. Whether he wanted to recognize it or not, he was falling for you and it was a hell of a dive. His desire - previously only being his want deep down to give back all the hurt he received to everyone who wronged him in his life, as well as his slight resentment towards anyone who was happier than him - started to include you in it.

He desired you.

Not in the resentment part, but in the way that he wanted you by his side forever. 

He wanted you by his side as he killed everyone, taking back what he deserved.

He hadn’t even realized his eyes turned black and he lost all control until it was already too late. 

You watched as the darkness unfurled from his pupil and covered the whites of his eyes, leaving them as a pair of bottomless pits that you could get lost in. The small gasp of shock you let out was almost unconscious, as was the step back when he took a step closer to you. Your hand was still on the doorknob, trapped under his from when he grabbed it to stop you from opening the door. A manic grin placed itself upon his lips, showing more of his monster’s side than his human’s. 

You didn‘t realize how you were being backed into the door until your back hit it with a soft thump. You would’ve hit your head on it too but Hyun-su’s hand was already covering it and protecting you; it made you blush a bit. 

“Um… Hyun-su?” You asked hesitantly. His eyes were still fully black and his smile manic but you couldn’t bring yourself to fear any part of him. Eun-hyuk would call you stupid, no doubt, but you just couldn’t be afraid of him. Not him. Never him. 

Not when he always looked at you so softly. 

Not when he always asked you if you needed anything before his trips.

Not when the few times he’d ever touched you he acted like you were made of glass. 

Not him. 

“I’ve been waiting to meet you,” he giggled, his hand protecting the back of your head sliding down your neck and shoulder to your waist. You gasped when his burning touch met you there but you must have been Rhianna because you liked the way it hurt and stilled your body in fear that one move and he would pull away. (Love The Way You Lie by Eminem ft. Rhianna)

“What do you mean?” You asked. You had a suspicion of what he meant but you weren’t sure. 

“The last thought he thinks about before he falls asleep… I have to say, the memories he holds pale in comparison to how you look in person,” he complimented and you felt your cheeks burn. He lifted the hand holding yours on the doorknob and brought it to your face, brushing a knuckle down the slope of your cheekbone. His eyes followed the path of his fingers as he did. Or… at least you thought they did. It was hard to tell when they were just a black void. “So pretty…”

You cleared your throat, trying unsuccessfully to cool the heated skin on your face before speaking. “Wha- I don’t understand,” you confessed. 

He laughed and buried his face in your neck as he answered; his words vibrated against your skin with each word. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

He then completely disconnected from you and you watched his eyes start to fade back to their natural brown. His face immediately formed one of concern as he looked at you. 

“Are you okay-?”

“Are you okay-?”

The two of you spoke at the same time. You lightly chuckled but he didn’t seem to find it amusing as he continued to watch you with worry. 

“I’m okay,” you promised when his glare wouldn’t abate. “Are you okay, though? You look a bit shaken up.”

He nodded, his eyes lingering on your flushed face before going to the door behind you. “Yeah. Let’s go,” he then looked at you, a hint of amusement in his eyes but mostly remaining serious. “And let me go first.”

You rolled your eyes with a fond smile while he opened the door. The spear which you hadn’t even realized he set down at some point was back in his hands and gripped tightly. He was ready for anything and promised himself he wouldn’t let anything happen to you. 

The door opened with a soft creak and you cringed. Hyun-su stepped out first, looking back and forth in each direction of the hallway before deciding it was clear. He shot you a glance over his shoulder to make sure you were following before stepping through the door. 

You crept around behind the messy-haired boy, cursing yourself for not bringing some sort of weapon. If anything were to happen you would have to rely entirely on Hyun-su.

‘Fuck,’ you thought to yourself with a frown. ‘I’m no better than anyone downstairs.’

After that thought, you were determined to not be a damsel and looked around for something, anything, to protect yourself with. Your eyes brightened when they landed on a glass case with an axe inside. The case said ‘BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY’ and you thought this was emergency enough for you to take it. 

The only downside was you couldn’t figure out how to break it and you didn’t want to slow Hyun-su down any more than you already had. So, with an intrusive thought you didn’t think about nearly as much as you should have, you sent your non-dominant fist flying into the glass. It hurt like hell but you held your breath to keep from making any excess noise as the glass broke; luckily, the sound of it shattering was much quieter than you expected it to be, but that could’ve been because you were in the staircase for 12 flights of stairs and each of them made your voice echo loudly no matter your volume. Your knuckles were bloody, shards of the shattered glass had cut them. Damn, you were stupid sometimes.

Hyun-su whipped his head around at the noise so fast you would’ve thought he might have given himself whiplash if you were looking at him. Instead, you were reaching your non-dominant hand through the broken glass to grab the axe and pull it out. The bigger pieces of glass still connected to the case grazed your skin even more when you pulled the weapon through and the blood dripped down your fingers and onto the handle before falling to the ground. You didn’t notice Hyun-su was right next to you until you saw his hands enter your peripheral and ever so gently grab the axe from your hands. He placed it on the ground, leaning it against the wall beside his spear. After that, he wrapped a hand around the wrist of your injured hand and pulled it closer to him. 

“Why would you do that?” He asked softly, lightly scolding you but mainly worried and confused. 

“I don’t want to be a burden, so I’m choosing not to be one,” you said with a determined tone. He raised his gaze from your hand to look at you scrutinizingly. 

“You’re not a burden. Why would you think that?”

You sighed, trying to shove the guilt down for making him worry. You were so stupid, why didn’t you just use something else to break the glass? “If a monster comes and attacks, I would be useless and just have to depend on you to protect me. I don’t want to use you like that.”

He smiled gently, squeezing your wrist lightly. “It’s not using me if I offer it,” he tried to reassure you but you still frowned. He leaned down and grabbed both weapons in one hand while the other still held your wrist. When he stood back up, he turned to you with a look in his eyes that looked almost fond, but you pushed that thought away, not wanting to get your hopes up. “Come on, let’s go find your apartment.”

You followed behind him quietly, his hand still lightly wrapped around your wrist to keep you close as he led you down the hallway. He kept his eyes and ears peeled for any monsters but there weren’t any, luckily. Before you knew it, the two of you made it to the apartment and you entered the code quickly to get in. 

0717. It was the date of your parent’s wedding. You let out a shaky sigh just thinking about your parents but entered the apartment quickly nonetheless. Hyun-su followed close behind you and closed the door as quietly as he could. 

[tripleglitchwriting]

Kinesthesis (Part 2)

Jazz/Prowl/HumanReader first contact AU

Part 1

Warnings: Kind of robogore

An idiot would go toward the burning pieces of metal that just fell out of the sky. Of course, you were already halfway there, being the most outstanding idiot ever born. Curse the empathy that boiled in your heart for the people trapped in an imaginary crashed plane. You hoped it was imaginary at least. Really you just hoped this was all some very realistic nightmare.

As you got closer, the smoke in the sky died down. Whatever was up there had probably crashed somewhere else by now. Probably somewhere halfway around the globe if you had to guess.

It was both strange and reliving to see there was no fire burning around the crash site. Though, it was hard to tell what crashed even without a blazing inferno blocking your view. Whatever it was it was metal, white, and… leaking something? It was a strange bright blue liquid, like radioactive cool-aid or something. Oh god, was this thing radioactive?

Well, if it was you were screwed anyway. Might as well figure out what happened before you had heart palpitations or whatever radiation poisoning does to the human body. However, as you got closer, three things became evident.

1. It was definitely not a plane crash.

2. There were actually two giant metal things, not one.

3. Holy shit that’s a giant hand.

It would’ve been smart to run then. You didn’t. The whole ‘most outstanding idiot ever born’ thing became apparent when it finally clicked that the giant metal hand was attached to a giant metal body. Two giant metal bodies. They were pretty far apart, and as a result that blue liquid pooled somewhere in the middle of them.

It was almost hypnotizing how bright it was. You almost forgot how terrified you were. It was so enrapturing you nearly jumped out of your skin when one of the robots (?) made a sputtering noise. It seemed to just be some kind of mechanism that failed in one of them, since more liquid came spraying out. They were both “bleeding” pretty bad, actually. They weren’t alive though. Right? You didn’t see how they could be.

Still, if it wasn’t a plane crash, where the hell did these things come from anyway? Other than the sky.

Hah. Giant robots from the sky. Definitely more entertaining than camping. They didn’t pose any immediate danger, you supposed, maybe if you fixed them up you could prove once and for all your skill in mechanics was all you need. Technically you were sent out here to build something with little resources, why not take advantage of this unexpected opportunity? Your mother would have her mind blown when she saw what you’d done.

On the exhausting jog back to the campsite in order to get your tools, the events you witnessed kept playing back in your mind. Things appearing out of nowhere, black smoke covering the sky, random explosions happening. You were probably in shock, all things considered. There had to be some long lasting mental impacts of all that. But as you arrived at your destination and grabbed everything you could carry, it looked like you’d just have to have trauma and fix up the sky robots.

—————————

The world skidded to a halt. Darkness draped over Prowl like a veil over a mourning widow. Though he wasn’t exactly conscious, so the concept of darkness was lost on him. When the bot was fading out, he didn’t expect to wake up again. Which is why he was so surprised when he did.

Prowl’s energon levels were still incredibly low. Most of his senses were offline. But, despite being close to death, his condition wasn’t getting worse. Had the rest of the Autobots found him? Had the Deceptions found him?

Luckily, it wasn’t long before his optics came back online. His vision was considerably worse than before, with him only being able to make out blurry shapes, light, and colors, but it was better than the black abyss. The ringing in his audials was replaced with a sharp high pitched screaming sound followed by silence. Silence was nice. He liked silence. Why did he feel like it shouldn’t be silent?

Trying his best to run back through his memory to deduce what had happened, Prowl quickly came to the realization he had no idea where Jazz was. Usually he’d be thrilled that Jazz had finally shut his mouth for a bit, but in this situation it only made his spark sink.

He tried to turn his helm to look to the side. After an agonizing second, he succeeded! He couldn’t make out much of anything, but at least he could accomplish slight movement. Though, when he did finally process the blur of shapes ahead of him, he couldn’t quite tell if the moving figure he saw was real or not.

Either way it looked like they were still in the same place they crashed on, so being found by a fellow cybertronian was most likely out of the question.

Any sensors he had to detect foreign creatures were completely offline, so he just had to hope hallucinations were normal when faced with life threatening injuries. He did find the weird warbling noise it made concerning though. Did hallucinations make noise?

Apparently now was not the time to find out, because another definitely not hallucinated noise reached him. The creaking of metal, the groaning of someone in pain, the voice of a friend. Jazz.

“P- p- pr- — -at hap—ned? St- — -sis en—ed e- ea—-ly. E- e- ner- g—n sta— b— le.” Prowl tried to respond, but whatever came out didn’t even begin to resemble a voice. Another high pitched screech assaulted his sensors. A glitch probably. Hopefully.

However, if he did understand what Jazz was saying, they were both experiencing the same thing. They were alive and not leaking energon anymore. There were no mechanical life signs on this planet when they first reached it before the battle, maybe the Arc had faulty scanners…? How could they be even slightly repaired while on a planet with no sentient life?

…unless?

———

Prowl always overthought things. That’s was Jazz made fun of him for anyway. The guy had backup plans for his backup plans, complete with an additional plan C, D, and E just for good measure. But now, missing an arm, most of his energon, and any sort of communication with the outside world, he wished he had those plans.

When Jazz came back online he immediately mustered up the strength to try and contact Prowl, but all he got was a garbled choking sound in response. Strange they were both awake in the first place, Jazz thought, why exit stasis in a state like this? He wasn’t losing anymore energon, had somebody patched him up?

Even with his newfound conciseness, his optics were still out of order. And he was pretty much immobile. Oh, but look, his pain receptors were coming back online. Very helpful. Luckily it didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. Usually getting a limb removed would hurt a lot more. He would know, this isn’t even the third time he’s lost that arm!

Even with his prior experience with pain and such, he’d be the first to admit the next thing he felt was strange. There was a small but warm touch on his still-attached arm. From what he had no idea, but at least it didn’t feel threatening. It was soft. Probably because they were on an organic planet. That would mean whatever was touching him had to be alive. And it was making noise! Really it was unlike anything he’d ever heard. It was smooth and rounded, no bite to it at all. He wished Prowl would talk like that once and awhile.

Scrap, Prowl. He never actually responded.

“D- do y- — -u rea- m- -e? G- gi— me a s- s- s- ign ‘ere P- r- — -ler!”

“S— -ill f- f- unc— ti- ning.” Jazz instinctually tried to ex-vent in relief, but it mostly came out as hacking coughs.

“H-haha! B- b- arl—y.”

“Y- ‘re o- ne to -alk.” During their brief ‘conversation’, both bots heard something strange from somewhere around them. It was a mix of the screeching Prowl heard and the soft noise Jazz heard. Now it was clear enough for both of them to hear. Actually, it was even clearer to Jazz. Almost like… a language.

“D- do y—u h- — -ar t- th- -t?”

“T- h’s is n- n- n- no ti- m -e to wo- -r- y a- bou- c- cre- t- ure c- ca- — -ls.”

“I- it’s m- mo’e t- th- han a c- ca- — -l. It… I- I t- thi- nk it’s t- tal—in’.”

“I- Imposs- ible.”

“Hello? Is ————— there? Anyone there at all? Please, there’s s————g wrong here, these- these ——t metal robots appeared out of the sky and, and I know it s—-nds crazy, I —ow, but if you c— hear me, please get he— — fast as you can. Please.” Jazz definitely heard a voice from those distant noises.

“I- it IS a l—angu—ge!”

“W- wh — t in t- he P- Pi - t are y- yo - u t—king ab- — -t?”

“Wait, who said that? Who’s there?”

“D- do—‘t y- yo-u h- h- ear i- it P- Pro- — -ler?!” Despite his damaged systems, something managed to come through unscathed. Something Prowl never bothered to implement.

“I- it- ‘s a- an a- ani- mal, Ja- — -z. Y- you- r p- pro- ces- sor…. dam- m- m- aged.”

“It can’t be… you? You, are you talking?” The voice asked.

“My p—cess—or -s f- in- e.” He said to Prowl, quickly turning his attention to this strange new person. “D- di- — -ou s- sav- -us, l- lit- le g- guy?”

“It is you… a- are you talking to me?”

“I- ‘s ‘ere an- n- yon- -e el- -s- -e a- a roun- d?”

“W- wh- o a- re y- yo u tal-“

“It’s just me… and the other robot.” The voice paused. “I can’t do this. I- I’ve gotten in over my head. This is insane! This is insane. I need to go.”

“W- — -ait!” Jazz shouted louder than he thought he could. “W- we n- n- ne — d h- hel —p. Y- yo- u stop- pe — th- the e’erg- gon, r- rig- ht?”

“J- Jaz-z, you’ —e hu- rt. P- pl- eas-“ Prowl attempted to cut in.

“Well, I did try and patch up the holes, I got the liquid to stop, but you- you’re alive, and- and talking to me! Mostly.”

“T- th- at’s w- wh- y we n- nee- d h- he — p. Ple- — -se h- he-lp u- us.”

“I can see that you’re hurt, but I don’t even know what you are, even if I tried I don’t know if I could… fix anything.” Again, the voice contemplated. “But I can make an attempt… if it means saving lives.”

“T- th- ank y- you.” After Jazz stopped talking and the noises Prowl heard subsided, his mind was left spinning after what he’d just witnessed. Well, ‘witness’ was a bit of an overstatement considering he could hardly see, but that didn’t staunch his flow of worry for Jazz. Talking to himself- or that noise- there had to be something wrong with his head. He couldn’t lose Jazz now. Not like this.

Not too long after it had gone silent, he felt a strange sensation on his torso. It was soft and warm, two things he disliked, but this touch was different. It was small and tender, almost afraid.

“I’m going to start with you, okay?”

More of those noises.

“T- th- at’s P- Pro - l. P- P- ro- — -l. Pro- wl.”

“Prowl?”

“Y- ye- s.”

“Alright then Prowl, you’re first.” He didn’t have the energy to keep asking Jazz who he was talking to. They both needed to conserve energy. For Prowl that was getting harder with the pitter patter he was feeling. “So… can you talk, Prowl?”

“H- he -an… jus’ w- wo-‘t.”

“W- wh- t? Y- ou- ta — lkin- g a- bo- ut me?”

“—ou r- re- eall- y c- ca- — -t un- d- der—and t- th-em?”

“A- are you talking to, um, him? I- you know I’ll stop… um, interrupting.”

“Y- yo- ‘re da- da- dama - g- ed!” While Jazz fully believed he was completely fine mentally, it was weird Prowl couldn’t hear what the little voice was saying. It could be something with languages, even if they didn’t detect any sentient life on the planet doesn’t mean there was none, so maybe- wait. Wait… oh. Oh Prowl, that stubborn idiot.

“D- d- id y- yo- u t- tak- e Jack- ie’s u- uni- v- — -sal t- tran-ator t- hing— y?”

“W- wh- at? N- no. N- not i- if h- e m- mad- e i-it. Ja—z yo-u n- nee- t-o r-res… t.” Of course Prowl didn’t take it. Even Ratchet took it! But that stubborn ass didn’t.

“I- d- id. I- it a- acti- va- ted o- on i- it’s o- own. I- I c- can un- erstan- d t- the c- calls. Y- yo- u c- can’t.”

“T- th- at isn’t-“

“C- ca- n i- it, t- t- tin c- an. Li- list—n. The- y s- sai-d they— hel- lp u- us. L- let t- the- m.”

“I’m… going to get to work.” Prowl, in fatigued frustration, didn’t reply. He was mostly focused on the small weight on his chassis. It was crawling up to his helm.

He was unable to move- to stop it, scrap, he could be killed right here and now and-

It stopped. Right in front of a terrible gash just near his neck cabling. Whatever was on him slowly put its weight down, slowly getting closer. His already overworked spark began to beat faster.

And yet, he could feel the wound being… sealed. It had been kind of sealed prior, but this time it was being properly healed, not haphazardly patched. If this kept up, he might even get full use of his voice box back sooner rather than later. While Prowl’s trust was thin, and he would prefer if no strange creatures jumped on his body, he didn’t have any other choice.

Hopefully Jazz knew what he was talking about. This was Prowl’s rock bottom… and he could hardly see the way up.

[peachesofteal]

Sugar

Quickest little fic for V-day. Same pairing as Cupcakes and Banana Pudding. References events from Tin Coffee.

Joel Miller/female reader Part of the Sweet series - 1.1k words - AO3 Warnings: 18+ Minors DNI, Joel is bad at feelings, little bit of jealousy, brief mentions of violence, explicit sex, oral sex - female receiving, praise kink, creampie, come eating. Joel doesn't love you.

Joel Miller does not love you. He doesn’t love the way your voice sounds when you laugh, doesn’t love how your eyes squint in the early hours of the morning, when you’re still waking up. He doesn’t love the little sounds you make when he pulls your body beneath his in bed, doesn’t love watching you work, fingers flying over small pieces of metal and scraps to fix machines big and small. He doesn’t care that he sleeps soundly when you’re curled up against him, doesn’t care that he watches the road in the afternoons, eyes tracking every single one of your steps when you get back from your usual scavenging runs. He doesn’t love how you say his name, doesn’t love the way your smile lights your face when you beat him in ratscrew, doesn’t care that you go out of your way to pick through junk, looking for items specifically for him.

Joel Miller does not love you. Love only leads to loss.  

Because he doesn’t love you, Joel didn’t feel scared when he looked across the meadow that day and saw you struggling beneath a Runner. He didn’t feel sick as he watched you fight, your head shaking frantically away from its teeth. He didn’t feel panicked as he ran, and his fingers were not unsteady while he tried to reload his gun. He didn’t feel worried afterwards either, when he held your face in his hands and you stared up at him, confused and mumbling nonsense. Or when you passed out, the dead weight of your body in his arms uncomfortable and wrong on the walk back to camp. Joel certainly did not yell at a five-year-old kid for putting your life in danger. He did not get down on eye level with the kid and sternly tell him he needs to be more careful.

“You gotta help take care of her, Grey. You have to be smart. No runnin’ off, or she’ll just come after ya. You hear me?” The kid had nodded, fat tears rolling down his cheeks, terror still all over his face. Joel definitely did not reluctantly let him crawl onto the bed next to you, his little hand clutching yours, whispering in your ear even though you were still unconscious. Joel didn’t feel relieved when you finally woke up, and he didn’t feel angry with you either, for almost getting bit. He definitely did not soften immediately when you held your thumb to his pulse, right beneath the watchband, the roaring of the blood in his ears quieting enough that he could turn and press his mouth to yours.

Joel does not care that you don’t like the new woman in camp, Kate, or Katie, or whatever. He does not care that you watch her like a hawk when she reaches out to affectionately punch him in the bicep. He does not care that you turned your chin over your shoulder, trying to make it look like you were watching something off in the distance, when he knew you were studying him in your peripheral. It didn’t make him feel good, didn’t make him feel wanted. He does not care that you seemed to be jealous.

Because he doesn’t care, he doesn’t feel the need to reassure you, but he rolled you onto your stomach that night anyway, pulling one of your knees out to the side so you were open for him, the soft of your ass pressing into his pelvis. He couldn’t stop running his hands over you, kneading into your skin, leaning over you, pressing his lips to your spine, your shoulder, your ear. He teased shudders from your body and soft moans from your lips until you were ready, your hips lifting to push against his swollen cock.

“Joel.” You had murmured into the pillow, hand stretching backwards. He kissed your palm before putting it back down by your side, and then you gasped when he slid two fingers into where you were already wet for him.

“Hold still baby.” He’d said as he stretched you, swirling the pads of his fingers up to your clit, making your hips jump with each touch. He gripped your hip in his other hand, holding you firm until you stopped moving. “That’s it.” He didn’t care that his body burned for you, the need he felt whenever he saw you aching in his bones, sizzling under his skin until he had you naked beneath him, taking his cock, crying out his name. You hissed when he thrusted deep, mumbling something about slow, easy. “I’ve got you sweetheart.” He murmured into your hair, patting your ass affectionately while he speared you open, grinding against you until you were making soft mewling sounds against the pillow. “You’re doing so good.” You’re too good, too sweet, like the soft spun sugar, and he doesn’t think about how much he loves it.

“Joel. Fuck.” You choked as he moved inside of you, arm supporting his weight just next to your head so he could watch your face, drag his lips over the curve of your cheek and kiss you when you milked his cock with your orgasm. Your legs tried to snap closed around him, banding around his knees and thighs until his hips were stuttering and he was coming, the stubble of his jaw scratching into your shoulder.  

He had turned you on your back afterwards, tracing his nose through your soft, damp curls, a hand pressed firmly on your belly to keep you still. He worked his tongue against your clit in short strokes, and you were still so wet, his come and yours easing the entrance of his fingers, your back bowing against the mattress when he stroked up against your walls, touching on the spot that made your legs shake. Soft, desperate sounds escaped from your mouth when he pushed you over the edge, and he replaced his fingers with his tongue, savoring the taste of bitter earth and salt, the taste of him inside of you, until you were squirming and gasping for air.

Joel Miller does not love you. He didn’t stay awake that night, face turned towards yours, thumb tracing the scar on your chin with the lightest touch he can manage. He didn’t think about his dreams, his fantasies, or this reality that was turning into both. He didn’t care to understand it, didn’t want to know how it happened, how he got you, got the real cupcakes, got you in his arms almost every night. He didn’t think about any of it, because he does not love you.

[asherashedwings]

ive been ripping apart your dandys world hc lore so like. how dya think the twisteds would react to the non twisted versions of themselves. like do you think it would just be like how it is in game and theyd just attack, being angry at the fact theyve been cloned or do you think theyd calm down somewhat. like how you said twisted goob looks for comfort in hugs, either goob or scraps gives him one. or like twisted goob or scraps getting excited seeing the non twisted counterpart its their sibling + from what i've played [im really bad tho lol] they dont seem to spawn on the same floors as each other. twisted pebble playfully chasing pebble rather than being a threat becuz theyre just doggys playing. i imagine with how boxten is a music box, his twisted variant's music is off key and just kinda sounds really bad. but when boxten is extracting, the winding key or whatever it's called spins, making his music play, reminding twisted boxten of the past. but with how you said shrimpo was cloned wrong, being ruder than he used to be is reflected through all the twisteds. like when their in their slightly calmed state if shrimpo comes around he can break the peace. anyways sorry for the long ass ask i do nawt know what i was cooking

I'm not entirely sure. The idea with the twisteds in my AU is that the mains are the only ones that still have their minds. They're aware of their surrounding and maintain that level of consciousness even when corrupted. So I do imagine that scenario with the Pebble's could be possible lol. The thing is the twisted side characters aren't so lucky. They've been reduced to only being creatures of instinct, with hardly any recollection of who they or the people around them are. All they know is they're in pain and these unfamiliar faces could be dangerous. So in most cases they lash out. Goob is just a unique case, where he'd much prefer comfort. But even then, in his twisted state, he's still attacking somewhat. Just not being aware of it. It is possible that they could be somewhat brought back to their senses, and I imagine all the scenarios you presented to be plausible. I mean, that's what Twisted Astro is trying to do in this lore. He's trying to restore the twisteds; calm them down and remind them of who they once were, so maybe, just maybe, this all can be repaired.

[midnightshard06]

Nine-Tailed Travel Guide Pt. 1

Part one of the stuff I'm cooking up for the Nine-tailed travel guide event thing going on. Of course we're doing my og au, good old Chaos Uncontrolled! In this part? Nine encounters Super...

First(You're here) > Prev(N/A) > Next

Well so far so good. Nine looked around at the healthy looking foliage as he walked down a worn dirt path. This place seemed nice enough so far, but he was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. He’d try to be… optimistic for now though. At least all the greenery was nice, much different from what he was used to in New Yoke or the Grim. He was snapped back to the present by the sound of a shout and something solid hitting the ground. The voice didn’t seem familiar but he found himself rushing forward to see what it was anyway. 

He ducked behind a bush off the path, hoping to remain unseen for now. In front of him were three people, two of which he recognized. The Tails and Shadow of this universe. The third was a golden hedgehog with upturned quills. If Nine looked closely enough though the hedgehog had the same shoes that Sonics typically had, so maybe this was this universe’s Sonic.

“I think that’s a point to me.” The golden hedgehog grinned smugly, showing off sharp teeth.

“Super there’s no points here.” Tails sighed, adjusting some sort of device in his lap that Nine hadn’t noticed at first. “It’s training.”

The newly identified Super, so he wasn’t Sonic then, crossed his arms and sighed. “You’re no fun.”

By this point Shadow had pushed himself back to his feet and was brushing dirt off himself. “You need to stay focused if you’re going to make progress.” He gave Super a look that Nine couldn’t place. “You are… improving though.” The compliment almost looked like it physically pained Shadow to give.

“I can back that up too!” Tails jumped in excitedly, turning his device around so the screen could be seen. “I’ve been monitoring your chaos energy levels and you’ve been keeping them pretty steady. Even when you were actively using it.”

Nine looked at the screen in interest. It was hard to see from his position but there was a lot of information there. Based on what Tails was explaining it must all have to do with this… Super. As Nine tried to move a bit closer to see the screen better he made the mistake of stepping on and snapping a twig.

Immediately the golden hedgehog was turned around and facing him. Nine felt oddly terrified, though he had no idea why. Him finally noticing the odd red spiral eyes that Super had didn’t help. “You expecting company?” Super eyes darted to Shadow briefly.

Shadow shook his head, eyes now also focused in Nine’s direction. “No. Even if I was either we wouldn’t have noticed or it would have been obvious.”

With a nod Super was gone. Nine was instantly on alert, metal tails spreading out to form a loose shield around himself. Maybe it was a bad idea to turn his back to the other two but his biggest concern was the one he didn’t know the location of. Maybe he’d misjudged this universe, maybe these three were evil and he’d just caught them in an odd downtime, maybe- “Boo.” Nine whirled around at the sudden other voice. Faint, golden light glinted off his metal tails as he pointed them at the other. Super looked hostile at first but after a moment his expression changed into one of confusion. He glanced over to where Tails was and then back to Nine. “What?” He asked, confusion clear in his voice.

“Don’t come any closer.” Nine growled, metal tails shifting slightly to hopefully emphasize their potential danger. Super eyed them more in interest than fear. 

“Who the heck are you supposed to be?” Super’s body language was mostly reading as relaxed at the moment, but Nine knew better than to trust that. It was easy to tell that if Nine made one wrong move Super would be on him in an instant. He was treading on thin ice here and he had no idea where it was safe to step. Nor did he know what the consequence for misstepping was.

Maybe he should try to be honest? At least with his name. It was possible the trio he’d stumbled across were evil but… well he didn’t see much of a way out of this. He felt a lot like a mouse cornered by a cat right now, and the way Super was watching every twitch of his body didn’t help. “Nine.” He said evenly, watching Super just as intently.

“Nine huh…” Super frowned. “So what are you doing here Nine?” He folded his hands behind his back as he began to circle around. Nine turned to make sure Super was always in his line of sight. It felt… dangerous to let him out of his sight right now. Should he just say why he was here? Would that stop Super from doing… whatever it was he would do? Maybe though if Nine was quick enough he could run and just head to the next universe. An involuntary shudder ran down his spine as Super’s eyes narrowed. “No answer huh?” Super’s voice was just a bit sharper. Suddenly Super stopped, his expression softened, and it felt like all the tension in the air abruptly vanished. Nine was left reeling at the sudden lack of apparent danger and stumbled as he stopped moving. Now Super just looked away from him, frowning. Oddly his expression changed as if he was having some sort of conversation, but there were no words.

Nine kept his guard up, even if he felt relatively safe at the moment, as he watched Super eventually groan and look back at Nine. Instead of saying anything though gold quickly gave way to an all too familiar blue, and odd red spiral eyes faded back to normal green ones. Sonic stretched out and shook himself. “Sorry about him.” Sonic had an apologetic smile now. “He’s… still learning social stuff.” His ears perked up as he laughed briefly, Nine failed to see what was funny. “Hope he didn’t scare you too bad.” 

Before Nine could respond Tails and Shadow were there. Tails practically instantly locked eyes with Nine. It was weird to see a mirror of yourself sure, but the novelty had worn off for Nine a while ago. “Do you mind?” Nine asked impatiently, feeling more confident now that Super was… gone? He wasn’t sure how that worked exactly. At the very least the fear that had started clouding his mind earlier was gone now that Super was out of sight.

“Oh!” Tails rubbed the back of his head in clear embarrassment as he looked away. “Sorry.”

“So what’s going on here?” Shadow crossed his arms and cast a glance over the whole group.

“Well from what I could get from watching what was going on… and what Super is ranting about currently.” Sonic winced. “Nine here showed up, but something about him really set Super off. He’s… not making much sense right now actually. Something about weird energies or something.” He shrugged.

“I meant who he was and why he was here.” Shadow gestured at Nine.

Well Nine was pretty sure these guys weren’t out to get him at this point. “I’ve been… universe hopping.” He started. No need to give them the whole truth. If he told them he was looking for a place to stay they might try and convince him to stay here, which wasn’t happening. However he was curious about the whole… Super thing, so he probably would stay for a couple days just to satisfy his curiosity. He just hoped he didn’t have to encounter Super alone like that again. 

“So our universe is just the latest stop huh?” Sonic nodded. “Cool.”

“You don’t seem too surprised by this.” Nine tilted his head slightly. 

“Well I mean we have some experience with different worlds. Like the Sol dimension where Blaze comes from.” Sonic hummed. “Though I’m getting the feeling you don’t mean something like that.”

“Not quite.” Nine confirmed. 

Sonic shrugged. “Eh, weirder things have happened.”

“That’s really fascinating.” Tails hummed. “It’s amazing you were able to make something that allowed you to do that in the first place.”

“If we’re done here.” Shadow cleared his throat. “You two can take the other fox back with you.”

“Aw come on Shads. We’re not annoying you are we?” Sonic grinned.

“The only reason I tolerate you coming over so often at the moment is because I made the terrible decision of agreeing to train Super.” Shadow huffed. “This-” He gestured to Nine. “-lies well outside of that agreement.”

Sonic sighed, but nodded. “Right right. We’ll get out of your quills for now. As long as you’re ok with coming with us Nine?” He looked over at Nine.

Well he wouldn’t be able to figure out whatever was going on with Super without them, so as much as he would like to just head to the next universe he sighed and nodded. “That’s fine for now. Just don’t expect me to hang around too long.”

“No worries.” Sonic grinned. “We’ll give ya a place to stay as long as you’re here. Sound good?” He held out a hand.

Some part of Nine felt like sticking around would be a bad idea. That it would be far better to just reject the offer and leave. It would be easy, he was confident they wouldn’t stop him. It was hard to ignore the part of him that was just… curious though. Tentatively he took the offered hand. It was only a couple of days. What could go wrong?

[littlenahsstuff]

Liar

Amanda Young x Reader

Warnings: blood, gore, angst, betrayal, choking, sad with a happy ending, slow, mentions of character death, self harm, blades, anxiety, longer fic, pov shifts kinda, also it’s mainly Amanda’s pov just cuz

Summary: you find out Amanda is a serial killer the hard way, by falling into a trap she made. You survive but does your relationship?

A/n: suggestions are welcome as long as they’re nice, also not proofread

Amanda missed another one of your dates because of her job, which, you don’t know anything about. You were hoping she was just some high level agent if you were being honest. It would explain the natural muscles and bad-assery that was your girlfriend. That’s also why she keeps getting cuts and bruises you tell yourself.

You at least knew that they weren’t from self harm, they were too scattered to be from that and you can somehow tell when Amanda hides self harm scars. It’s like a sixth sense, telling when she’s in danger.

You got the feeling more than you’d like too, but it was a little different when it was caused by Amanda herself. She seems more satisfied with herself sadly.

You just want your precious girl to be happy and safe, even if it’s only been a couple of months she’s your entire world. It just kinda happened but at this point in your life Amanda was the only person you talked to other than the occasional phone call from an old friend once a year. You were just floating right now with Amanda being your rock to tie you down and you, hers.

You convinced her to go on anxiety medication. Well, she refused to get a prescription (she can’t go to the doctors after Dr. Gordon) so she kinda shares your prescription both well aware that’s not a good idea but it does seem to help her and you would do anything for her.

The downside is you aren’t taking your prescribed amount and your next appointment to try and up the dosage, so one pill does the trick for both of you when you split it in half, is months away. You yourself are falling, you can feel it. You keep telling yourself that you gotta just wait it out and take it one day at a time for Amanda.

Right now you’re driving home from work in the rainy city. Your apartment is not Amanda’s yet but what little free time she has away from work is spent there so it might as well be.

A particular bolt of lightning hits a little too close for your liking and the booming thunder after it chills you to your bone. You don’t feel so good.

You try to just focus on what’s ahead while steadying your breathing. Traffic is light on the outskirts of the city, the small complex is right on the town line in a small patch of woods next to one of the parks.

You hate outside dark, outside dark is open and anything could surround you on all sides. You run up to your floor and flick on the lights but to no avail the darkness still remains. Your stomach is tight as a knot at this point, really wishing the owner allowed candles or that you had remembered to buy more batteries for the flashlight.

You grumbled to yourself, thinking you should just go to bed early. So feeling your way through the pitch black apartment, you stumbled a total of three times and now have a stubbed toe. It was a great fucking night that’s for sure.

Your bed offered little to no relief on your aching post-work back but the exhaustion was taking over rapidly. You shuffled a little to get comfy but then heard a creak of a floorboard.

“Hello?” You called out. Nobody answers, why would they. “Mands is that you? Come on you know how scared I get babes. Not the time to do this shit,” no response and yet another creak. You were still though, it couldn’t have been the bed which never makes much sound anyways. You sat up now and try to train your eyes to the darkness, no moonlight was there to help.

You frantically open the drawer to your dresser and procure a weapon Mandy gifted you for protection, boy were you great full now. You couldn’t tell where the thing or person was so you waved it about hoping it would get them.

Your eyes started to adjust and you saw a figure in the corner, once it realized you could see it, it lunged forward at you, sticking you with what you assume was an anesthetic by the lightheaded feeling making it hard for you to push them off. Your screams were muffled with a hand, you tried to bite them but it felt like you were swimming in syrup. Eventually everything just stopped as you lulled backwards.

The figure swooped you over their shoulder and took you out of your apartment, stuffing you in the trunk of a car pulled of to the back of the building.

Amanda’s POV:

She really did feel awful that she had to cancel another date, she knew that whenever she did you just stayed at work later in hopes to distract yourself. She knew you understood but if you knew what was really happening she’s not sure the understanding would still apply.

John called her in with a special request, no details were given about this person and she wasn’t even the one to kidnap them. All she had to do was come up with a new trap. She thought it was like a test to see if her engineering skills have gotten better as well as her “moral” compass. John always was better at tinkering than her and John had found out about her previous unwinnable games so this was most likely just a checkin to see if she would deter again from the purpose.

She blames herself, if she didn’t get all trigger happy with the traps she wouldn’t be missing another date night. She triple-checked to make sure this game was beatable but not too easy, John doesn’t like it when they are too hard orrrr to easy. It was a comfortable in between but definitely still very much challenging. Whoever plays it would have to give up a lot of blood to live if they aren’t careful. It was a solo game, that’s all that was required for this one.

She really hoped that this would be done quick. So while the trap might have been beatable, the timer was set to go off probably fifteen minutes before it should. Good luck to whoever plays this, she hopes they’re pretty bad or else the guilt will eat at her for the rest of the month. Sometimes John picked stupid targets that didn’t do anything bad necessarily as much as he believes it with his “solid” ideals. Maybe after John dies she can hand everything over to mark and move far away from this hell city with you. As much as she wants to, she needs to take care of John for the time being. He’s practically her father at this point.

With the trap finally finished she hands it over to Mark who’s been oddly quiet in the corner. He had a smug expression nobody liked, he was up to something.

“Hope you didn’t make this one unbeatable,” he laughs. He never cared if they were or not before so she’s a little put off, assuming he’s just teasing her for her screw up with John.

“Yeah, yeah,” she mutters and turns around to pick up her stuff. She just wants to get home to you so bad.

“Hold up,” Mark stops her, “John wants you to watch live with him. She groans in response.

“Fine let’s get this over with,” and with that they leave.

It was the same old set up, a rusty building. She definitely didn’t like the idea of having to get a tetnus shot. She hates needles, preferring to sedate people using chloroform or with blunt force to the back of the head.

She split ways with mark, her going to the observing room where John was already.

“Hello Amanda,” he croaked smugly.

“What is with you and Mark, you guys act like you just got the president?”

“They certainly are important but no, they are not the president. I can’t wait to see your work on them, I’m sure after our talk this trap will be exemplary?” He tilts his head upwards. She awkwardly laughs, his questioning gaze makes her slightly uncomfortable.

“Should be,” she mutters.

“Well then let’s begin.” She turns on the cameras to see marks back covering the kidnapped. She yawns but when he moves away it cuts off with a choke. She really hopes her eyes are deceiving her, she still can’t see much of the face but everything else looks exactly like what you were wearing this morning. They really need better cameras but money is tight in the Jigsaw business.

“So, I didn’t ask before but what’s the name of this one?” She starts to panic, please don’t say your name, please.

“I thought you’d recognize Y/n?”

Everything shatters, she doesn’t know what you could have possibly done to deserve this so she assumes it’s her fault for going against orders.

“John please, you and I both know she doesn’t deserve this. She isn’t cruel I would know she tells me everything, I put a tracker on her all she does is go to work!” She’s pleading for your life right now.

“I know, this is for you though. Even if she has done nothing she lacks the understanding you and I have of our message. The only way to understand is through this method. If she doesn’t make it out than she’s not worth it anyways, she didn’t fight hard enough for you.” His explanation makes sense but what happens when you don’t. She already knows you’d fight for her as hard as you could, she doesn’t need proof of that. And honestly she was content on hiding this part of her life from you forever.

Oh god, you must have been so scared, your about to be terrified when you wake up. She’s torn, she could get you and risk everything, Mark would kill both of you anyways and John might let it happen too. She has to painfully wait it out.

“I can see your worried, rightfully so, this is good. I promise. We do good for the world, and I’m doing good for you.” She wants to strangle him but she just breaks down sobbing. She sees you moving on the monitor in the corner of her eye and her breath hitches; you’re awake.

Mark had left the room and made no attempt at sticking around. He probably went home like the two of you should have.

She didn’t want to watch but she needed to see how you progressed. There was a collar on you’re neck that squeeze a millimeter tighter every five minutes, which originally would have killed you in an hour but she adjusted it so it gave you forty-five minutes. It’s incredible how cruel life can be. She threatened somebody’s life more just to get to you but now she might not get to you because it’s you who might die.

There was no audio but she could see all of the panic by the way you tensed, she would hate herself forever. You were not completely an idiot, thankfully. You checked all around you immediately and then found an envelope eventually in your pocket. The next thing you found was the tape recorder taped on the underside of an old table.

She had no idea what it said or how helpful the hints would be. She always debriefed John on how to disable the traps because his favorite thing was to record those tapes, so she let him. Her stomach jolted when she remembered your device cut into your neck as well. It wouldn’t draw blood until the thirty minute mark but blood loss was an added motivator to get the player to hurry up. She could tell you wanted to throw up when you heard something specific on the tape. Most likely that you would need to mutilate yourself more to find the key hidden inside your body. She had no idea where mark put it but she did know that your entire body had to be cut so you wouldn’t be able to tell exactly where it was put in your body just by looking.

You were then most likely searching for something sharp to preform the painful process of self-mutilation. She knew that the key would be put somewhere easily accessible at least given the time limit. You found a knife behind a pipe and you stared at it.

You hesitated, now what not the time for contemplation, Y/n.

She saw you sit on the ground and feel around for any foreign objects under your skin, when you paused and then continued to feel a specific spot right over your heart she went whiter than she had been.

“I didn’t tell him to put it there,” John muttered. He wasn’t worried for you but maybe a little for Amanda’s sanity. He thought she would be handling this better, he had to remind himself that this was in her best interests. He needed to make sure you were perfect for his little girl.

She just stared blankly at the screen. It had been 25 minutes already, you had just enough time to gauge the key out but you were looking worse for wear and had to be very careful with the cutting. You now had your shirt off and we’re biting down on it as the blade sliced your skin where the cut already was. You were shaking, barely managing to get the key.

By the time you got it out it was only 2 minutes left which you used to unlock the death collar. You threw it with whatever might you had left to the other side of the room.

When the timer was finally up the collar snapped tightly together. You where bleeding everywhere, but still stood back up to greet Billy the Puppet as he wheeled in to the now open door. Again she had no idea what he was saying to you but you looked right at the camera and ran out the door. She could hear your footsteps come closer to her room.

You burst in with a newfound strength and yelled as well as you could with a sliced neck,

“Amanda are you okay, oh my god I was- are you hurt? Oh-“ you stopped and looked around her, John was still there but what really confused you was that she looked not only completely fine, but that there were monitors with the room you were just in on them.

“Before you go allow me to explain,” John spoke up, “you my dear have been chosen to help revive humanity. What that was, was a test. You passed and now appreciate life. Amanda here did not know about you, however, she did make the trap. If you join us then, you too, can spread an appreciation for life.” Your eye twitched and you looked back and forth and back and forth and then collapsed.

Amanda ran to catch you, this was from blood loss and probably you finding out she was a serial killer as well as working with the man who now not only gave her trauma but you too.

You knew how fucked up that ordeal made her, you know how badly her nightmares still are. What you didn’t know was that even though she’s mentioned feeling more alive and slightly grateful that she herself would become the thing that she feared.

“She passed. I’m gonna patch her up, she just needs time,” Amanda sniffled, tears finally poured down her face. You were still here, she would never let you go again. She dragged you out of there and back to her room where all her medical supplies were, and she started to patch you up, kissing each stitch despite it getting her bloody too.

When she was done she laid you to rest and started to come up with things to say to beg you to stay when you inevitably break up with her. She doesn’t know if she can let you go but she realizes it’s ultimately your decision. She’s already hurt you so much.

Twenty minutes go by when you awake to Amanda holding your hand. Your eyes aren’t open but you desperately wish that none of that was real. The aching and stinging pain coursing through you was a dead giveaway that this was real. You peeled your eyes open to a greatfully dim room, Amanda’s room.

“Your awake,” she states.

“Were you gonna tell me if the Jigsaw killer didn’t put me in that situation?” You asked. She didn’t want to lie anymore

“No… but I wanted to forget about it myself. I just wanted to spread the message until John- the Jigsaw Killer died. I was gonna runaway with you so we could live happily. I would never miss a date night again and yeah, you wouldn’t have known about that but I couldn’t lose you. I never wanted this at all, I just didn’t want you to leave me. I will never ever hurt you again. I technically owe John my life and in the process of repaying him he treated me like a daughter more than anyone before. I know you know I’m sick but it’s so much worse than that, I care about you both so much. I would have gotten you out of there but the man who put you in there, Mark, would have killed you anyways. I know I am a sick person, I will never pay enough for this but please don’t leave me, please! You are the only thing that makes me feel normal and sane. You can leave when your better if you must. But if you are willing, we can work together, the idea is insane but you and I are proof that it works. I want to live life again and live it with you please.”

You look at her and your eyes gloss over, you have no idea what the hell to do but as much as you hate it she’s all you’ve got too. Everything is screaming at you to just run away to the hospital and get their asses arrested. Everything.

Except your heart.

You fought to live for her, you could have waited for death rather than living through this trauma but you fought to see her again and when that puppet told you she was here you had the exact same look of horror still plastered on Amanda’s face. He’s right and you know it, you want to live more. Maybe you’re more fucked up than originally thought.

“Okay” you say

She tilts her head afraid to ask you to continue so you do for her.

“I can’t leave you, but I don’t want to be a part of this idea for awhile,” you wince, “I need time to think that over but I know that after everything I still just wanna be held by you. I’ll stay…” you pause, “I don’t forgive you right now but if you ever lie to me again I will leave faster than that stupid puppet can wheel into a room. I know you wouldn’t hurt me on purpose, but it’s going to take a bit till I can trust you again.”

She finally lets go of a breath she’s been holding in since she met you. You’re gonna stay with her even though you know everything and went through it.

You’re staying.

“Yes, now come on into the bed I’ve had an insanely long day.”

“Anything for you”, she replies, kissing you softer than ever before.

[ewingstan]

What do I do with this.

I'm not gonna claim that the text is endorsing this or anything. It did construct a situation where leaving someone on an empty world was the best choice with Monokeros, and we can analyze what that writing choice means, but I don't see this conversation being something we're meant to nod our heads along to. I can't see someone writing "we're gonna disappear people on this list" and "its fine if you're especially violent vigilantes we'll put you in our especially-violent-vigilante support network" and not mean for it to be read as awful. Otherwise it would use words that sound less bad on the face of it. Maybe I'll hear that WB has spent the last few years arguing on reddit that this was actually totally moral and cool but with the text in front of me, with the language used, I cannot see a reading where any of this is meant to be seen as okay.

But more to the point I don't see how we got here? Worm did an amazing job of making every choice Taylor made believable and understandable in the context of what choices she's already made and how she's been changed by her experiences. I do not understand what has prompted Victoria to suggest this and every other member of breakthrough (and every major hero team) to go along with it. I can see why its accepted on a systemic level, its not too different from the birdcage and most of the villains sent there were given sham trials at most anyway. But literally no one on the team is pushing back on this. Two members of breakthrough were just in prison—three, if you count Damsel. Its not clear that she's even given up on the top-tier villain persona even if she's not making moves to pursue it, why is she going along with this. Several of them have done things that at least approach getting put on a list like that. You're living in a world where Riley and Valkyrie and Legend are load-bearing pillars that people rely on, and suddenly disappearing powerful capes that are currently a problem is the only option we can think of? Is the whole "the city is the place of renewed chances" thing really being abandoned so thoroughly?

Kenzie had just told Swansong how much it hurt for her to go to prison, how much it felt like breaking a promise to not leave her alone even though they kept in contact. They were just having a conversation about how much Chris meant to them, how much his deal is a result of horrific circumstances that its the group's original goal to try to work through constructively and come out a better person with. Chris would almost have to be on a list like this, right? Apparent shadow-leader of a cape dictatorship? Sveta would've been on a list like that as Garotte, if it wasn't apparent how much she hated what she was doing. Sveta had spent the last chapter yelling at Carol for her views on criminal rights. Why is there such a huge disconnect here that the text isn't seemingly doing anything with.

Its not even that I can't see a version of this beat working for the story. The track just hasn't been laid for it. The prison break story set up "hey there's a lot of really dangerous capes and knowing where they are can let people try to break them out" thing well, but that does not automatically translate to "everyone will be on board for Secret Prison Colonies" given all the strong character and thematic reasons for the opposite reaction. Why isn't this the result of a more gradual slide or a series of moral compromises? Why is this something that's being described in jump cuts?

[agent-toast]

@irregularityregularity, my friend, you have made a terrible mistake.

alt text: ok so theres this guy who is you and ur a secret agent and you have a handler in your earpiece who guides you and you solve puzzles in vr like an escape room and there are danger things like bombs and trapped shelves that will kill you if you activate them and you die but you can respawn and there is a big danger weapon in space called the death engine pointing at earth which is going to kill all the agents of ur agency which is bad and the person behind it is commander solaris and you defeat her and stop the death engine from engineing and in the process you accidentally fake ur death and then it turns out the person behind solaris is the head of the bad company thing called dr zor (ur agency company is called the enhanced operatives division/EOD btw) so then in the second game you find out that this annoying howlian actor called john juniper who calls himself the greatest actor ever, is actually working for zoraxis and your handler is like 'but but i liked that guy' so anyway zoraxis thinks you're dead right so john juniper thinks you're some other agent, he tries to kill you to stop you from finding out his top secret evil plan but you survive (well i assume you survive) and he realises 'oh shit this is the agent who supposedly died on the death engine' and he calls you agent phoenix because you 'came back from the dead' so he even more tries to kill you but eventually you find out that john juniper, along with an inventor of traps and stuff called the fabricator, is impersonating heads of state with a 'mimic mask' that lets you look and sound like the person you want to impersonate. they use the mask to steal the nuclear launch codes that all the heads of state have, so that they can launch some nukes and make the whole world know that zoraxis is in control of everyone now. they also kidnapped the real heads of state and, john impersonated the heads and made statements saying that they were friendly to zoraxis and wanted to work with them. (before, the real heads did not like zoraxis.) you manage to take the suitcase that holds the nuclear launch codes but john juniper sleeping gases you and takes it back, and kidnaps you and impersonates your handler :D you manage to escape, and because you put a tracking device on the suitcase, you find out where john juniper is conducting the final part of the plan, zOraXiS dEfEnsE (name of level i think). john is pretending to hold a peace summit with all the heads of state to show that zoraxis is in league with the heads, but in actuality he's being a drama queen and wants to show the whole world (its being broadcast) the moment he launches the nukes and takes over the world. you ride an elevator with nice music to the 'peace summit' and almost get killed by gunshots (this is part of the plot), the elevator stops working, then you use external power from some danger blades from zoraxis that were going to slice the ropes of your elevator to make it start again. you reach john juniper who's standing on a very thin platform in the middle of a hole (im assuming that's the place where the nukes are but idk). john juniper's like ahah you can't stop me but you turn on a lever that splits the platform in two, causing john to almost fall into the hole, but he just barely hangs on. dr zor's voice appears! and they say 'ahahah mr juniper u were never running the show' and electrocute him using the mimic mask that he's wearing. he falls off the platform and probably dies? idk? then dr zor launches the countdown for the nukes and you have five minutes to figure out how to stop the nukes using the modified briefcase. it kinda looks like a bunch of random puzzles. you solve it, but when you press the stop button, there's low power, so it doesn't work. so you use the external power you got from the elevator and plug it into the suitcase, ignoring what your handler says about the elevator being about to fall without power. you press the button woo and fall to your death.

maybe.

the third game is even harder to sum up than the first and second so i'll shorten it

dr prism is agency inventor and missing

she actually works for zoraxis because the agency rejected her idea to use robots as agents instead of humans

oh yeah i forgot you have telekinesis and she's the one who made ur telekinetic implant, using an ore called kinesium.

she made the robots using the kinesium and other stuff and now they're gonna kill you because prism wants to show the agency that robot agents are better than human agents and she knows you're very skilled, so killing the great agent phoenix will show the agency that the robot agents are better.

long story short you chase prism, die a lot, the robots get knocked out by zor and die, prism is angry at zor because zor used her, you guys find out zor wants to mine a million kinesium because heated and blown up kinesium messes with the telekinetic implants in agents' heads. if there's a loooot of kinesium, that means the agents will all die, and the radius of the explosion will be big enough to kill all the agents. you and prism go and stop zor in a volcano where all the kinesium is stored. you use your telekinesis to contain the blast, which really messes hard with your head and you black out. your handler and prism get worried about you and while you're out, prism carries you to a nearby beach then leaves because she says she can't face the agency rn. your handler reveals his distrust of chickens. one robot agent is actually alive and he's a good robot. the end. my god that was long

[alairroux]

And another chapter! This time some comfort for those tired loves. Also a mysterious appearance?

Chapter III

"Chill in the bones"

After quite an emotional night, came a short rest. There was no use in trying to fall asleep when the sun decided to peek through the blinds in less than an hour after they came back home. Long talks can be pretty therapeutic when they’re with the right person. Right now, however, the warm morning was filling the air with early sounds of the city waking up. People going to work, cars starting, kids walking to school or to just spend their days with their parents. The flat quickly filled with the pitter-patter of the Dogpool’s paws. So she was also awake. Alice went over to the kettle as it started whistling, signalizing that the water was already ready and boiling. She turned it off and poured it over some instant coffee. Yes, many would call it not real coffee, but she enjoyed it enough to risk being excluded by the coffee community. 

“Hey, you nasty thing. Hungry?”

She chuckled, of course it was said in a very affectionate tone. As much as many people laughed at Mary Puppins, she also stole hearts of money, and Solace was one of her victims unfortunately. She reached into the cabinet to pull out the cans with dog food. Taking two and crouching down, to be more to the dog’s level.

“Chicken or beef. for you, madam?”

When Mary came closer to the beef tin, she just nodded her head. Taking the bowl and putting food on it, making sure to spread the wet food nicely, then she set it down for Lady Puppins to enjoy it to her fullest. She also filled the water bowl, just to be sure it’s fresh water. Yesterday it was Wade’s watch, so it all should be clean and fresh, as he’s absolutely obsessed with this dog, but being cautious shouldn't do any harm. 

Alice took her coffee and went to sit out on the balcony. Ever since moving into this flat, this was definitely her favorite place. Not that the one where they lived at first, and where Althea was still living was bad, just, got quite crowded. Her income was definitely helpful with that, and they could move here. It wasn’t much either. Two rooms, bathroom, kitchen connected with dining room that also served as living room, small corridor to leave their shoes at and a balcony. Not much, but definitely enough for them four, if counting the dog. Surprisingly enough, Laura wanted to stay with blind Al. But the offer of moving here was always open and Alice wouldn't mind sharing her room or moving to the living room. She was usually the first one up anyway. 

For now, however, she was just sitting down on the balcony, first rays of sun reaching the countless plants that were there. Most of them were just random leaves and twigs picked up during a walk that turned into a full blown garden. Two or three different kinds of ivy could really crowd a small space. There was also the white morning glory that butterflies and bees loved, filling the air with flutter of delicate wings and buzz of busy bugs. To think that for her it was just a little garden, a side hobby to fill her mind with something from time to time, and for them it was a big part of their world. Place to eat at and rest, place of peace among the loud and dangerous city. 

In the meantime, Wade got woken up by the lack of a dog by his side, and Logan clearing his throat in the bathroom. It sounded like he was either dying or choking someone there. He slowly pulled himself up from the bed and stretched, fixing his sweatpants and pulling on a random shirt. Not that he had to, as far as he knew, neither Logan or Alice minded when he was walking around in just pants, but sometimes he had sparks of decency in himself and decided to not go around half naked for the day. 

He walked out of the room, guided to the kitchen by the smell of fresh coffee. He wasn’t really eager to drink his, but he wouldn’t mind a breakfast. Wade couldn’t really eat last night, ever since Alice went out and then Logan followed after her, he was worried about those two and what might happen to them. Yes, they were both good in fights and so on, yet, he didn’t want to lose anyone anymore. The scare from two years ago, when he went on almost suicide mission to save literally nine people, was still heavy on him. Now, there were a few more people worth fighting for, and for now there was no risk of really losing them, however it was still at the back of his mind. He noticed Alice on the balcony, but didn’t want to bother her. Mary Puppins was with her, enjoying the ear scratches so no use to be loud for nothing. 

Soon, Logan joined him in the kitchen, definitely preparing to make some food on his own, without asking anything. Rude. They had a policy of making shared breakfasts after all. 

“What are you doing?”

“Scrambled eggs.”

“Ugh, no. I’m not going to eat that. Let’s make some toast. Or grilled cheese.”

“I won’t be eating grilled cheese for the fourth time this week.”

“Technically it’s sunday, so some people believe it’s the new week so it cancels itself out.”

“I can cancel your life out. Scrambled eggs. And shut up.”

The sounds of their squabbling reached Alice and soon, they could feel her tired eyes judging them in that disappointed manner. It was worse than another person in the argument. 

“Fine, scrambled eggs. But toast tomorrow.”

“Deal.”

Silence again filled the flat. Or more like words silence, as in talks. The rest was still there. Barefoot steps on the tiles, clinking of dishes and utensils, sizzle of fried eggs, plates hitting each other, fridge opening and closing. Perfect morning. Wade hit the play button at the radio that was standing on the cupboard, filling the air with the chill sound of music. Everything was as warm and comfortable as possible. 

For a moment, Alice even managed to forget about the pain that was crowding in her mind, about the voices screaming over one another. She moved her eyes to look at Logan and Wade, no longer arguing but rather just chatting with each other quietly, not loud enough for her to hear it. Even Wolverine’s harsh demeanor melted a bit this morning, allowing him to slip a smile here and there for Wade’s constant yapping and joking. 

To think that if it wouldn’t be for her picking that building that they, for the right time and day, perfect moment of fates to intertwine, she would’ve probably never met them, even  more,  lived with them right now, and feel like she had family again. Maybe that’s what was meant for her? To be abandoned by people related by blood, to find those that were not related to her at all, and yet felt like home. She wouldn’t ever change it to something else.  Smile was present on her face, as she just continued to stare at them, catching every glance and gesture they shared. Were they happy about finding each other? That much she didn’t doubt at all. As much as they loved arguing, she already catched them quite a few times, snuggled up on the couch, asleep, with some niche rom-com playing in the background. If that wasn’t happiness, then what would be? She looked towards the ivy wrapping itself around the railing again, closing her eyes for a moment, letting the sun warm up her skin. The tiredness set in, filling her with that weird kind of cold. 

In the meantime, Logan was cooking and trying to listen to Wade’s rumbling about many different and unrelated things. It was difficult to keep the track through the topic changes and sudden jumps in whatever story he was actually telling. He took the scrambled eggs off from the pan, and put them on plates. 

“Pass the bacon.”

So it was time for the spoiled kind of breakfast, a very nice and rare change. However soon, the bacon was sizzling in the pan, as Logan turned to call Alice over, however he stopped himself when he noticed that she fell asleep. He could give her a few minutes before she’ll have to get here to eat. 

“You have a very soft spot for her. Almost like she’s your own.” Wade chimed in, noticing the small smile on Logan’s lips. 

“I just.. Sometimes I wonder if she’d do much better if she would’ve been given a chance at the school. You know, someone to guide her through whatever mess she has in head.”

“You’re worried about her headaches, aren’t ya? Same here. They got much worse it seems and we both know she’s just putting up a facade. We need to find and force some telepath to help her.”

“You’ve completely lost your mind, didn’t you?”

As another slowly heating up argument reached the kitchen, Alice was falling deeper into her slumber. The sun covered her in a warm blanket of golden rays, dancing on her skin, seeping through the red hair onto her neck and face, making sure she was warm and safe. That the child of stars was safe and sound. While her mind slowly slipped into an alternate reality, the plane of dream. However this one looked rather plain. 

She was walking through a seemingly never ending meadow. Short grass tickling her feet with its soft blades. Despite many different flowers being around, the buzz of bees seemed pretty distant, like it was just on the edge of her earshot. No butterflies either. Just grass, flowers and sky. No sun or moon either, no trees or animals. The sky had that pretty color, that weird kind of blue, almost purple with a bit of gray mixed in. It felt like rain. Like that was the color of raindrops, it almost carried that familiar earthy scent, the cold and warmth mixing in it. So pretty, but so unusual for a sky color, filling the air with blueish tint. Yet, it was a dream so was it really that weird? She stopped for a moment, just looking around, listening. Nothing new, just never ending meadow. For some reason she felt awake, like she wasn’t sleeping at all. She was aware of being in a dream, yet had no control over it. She counted her fingers, ten, every time there were just ten of them. After some time she sat down, her legs hurting from the walk already, from the neverending and never changing scenery. Suddenly she felt a cold shiver, starting from somewhere between her ribs, moving to her spine and neck. It was weird, cold, unpleasant, unfamiliar, but it didn’t feel like it was caused by wind. It came from within, followed by a gentle, smooth and warm woman's voice. 

“They’ll look for you, dear. They’ll hunt for your head…”

Suddenly this weird reality started to shake and collapse, as she was pulled awake.

[rhythmic-idealist]

One thing I love about the apocalypse as presented in BNHA is something that reminds me so resoundingly of something I love about the apocalypse as presented in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower: the class divide.

There’s a lot about the apocalypse of BNHA that sometimes makes me want to struggle with calling it an apocalypse. (Something the text itself essentially calls it, or else I wouldn’t even have arrived at the word.)

Commerce is still flowing. By the time he kills Yoichi AFO lives in a well furnished sleek upper class building and buys bottles of wine.

I’m working on a Shinomori fic that I’ve been hammering at for a very long time and I was rereading a passage where I made reference to grocery shopping, to buying cheap duvets at discount stores.

And when you read the AFOFA chapters there’s this moment where it feels like the entire world should be falling to shit. Where it feels like the only way it’s this bad for these street kids is if the basic organized structure of the world has totally stopped functioning.

But commerce is all still there and ticking. Someone is a real estate agent. Someone is selling wine and fine dining tables. The economy is in shambles, and the state of imports and exports in particular is probably tanking particularly hard.

But we’re watching this apocalypse event and we’re watching people build walls around it to avoid it. To someone the world is not ending.

And to those someones they will all write about the end of the world anyway, because that’s how afraid they were of what was happening outside the walls.

During the height of COVID I was not an essential worker, and I had just enough privilege to live inside my parents’ home and work from home part time. And I still felt everything around me. And to be clear it was still a world rocking event to me that has shaken my life and family in irrevocable, permanent ways.

I imagine managing to remain middle class during the dawn of quirks must have felt at least something like that.

In Parable of the Sower, Lauren Oya Olamina lives in a walled cul-de-sac. In my mind this is something close to the Hikage position, in childhood.

(I tend to imagine the fact that Hikage has a meta ability was discovered late, considering the fact that it isn’t visible on him aside from his behavior, and probably very little was known about psychic quirks at the time. This did not make the world easy, but it did things about which forms of rejection he and his family experienced and did things to temper the level of violence in those reactions, as opposed to if Hikage’s quirk had come with a tangible, visible lightning bolt.)

He isn’t the main point of this, so he can have all kinds of backstories and the post can still stand. This is abt the apocalypses. SOMEONE is in an Olamina position, out there.

Not the literal walls, but the relationship with the unease. The fact that Olamina’s walled cul-de-sac is not the kind of swanky upper class thing that it sounds like when I write it here, to those uninitiated with the book.

Yoichi and AFO are the people living outside the walls.

Olamina is afraid of dogs, and knows them only as a danger to shoot on sight— whereas Yoichi and AFO are living among the people addicted to the drug that encourages them to set fires, and among the abandoned, now-wild dogs.

Olamina lives among those things too, she lives in the apocalypse. Her personal relationship with commerce does very little to alienate her from that.

Everything that happens in those two books (Sower and Talents) happens and by god it is an apocalypse and when Olamina has lived a couple decades of it, and when Earthseed has made its way and grown, there are helicopters and universities available for her to step into. They’ve been there, the whole time.

This is not a comparison of the characters but it’s a comparison of the apocalypses, because that’s exactly how it went for AFO.

The apocalypse of Parable of the Sower (and Talents) is one born of climate change and skyrocketing economic disparity.

The apocalypse of BNHA asks a question about how a world that is afraid of kinds of power that exist outside of its established power structures reacts when the distribution of personal power is suddenly and enormously unseated.

Where they come from winds up different in fascinating ways. But I think they’re both about something we do already. They both present the mad scramble. They both present who the apocalypse happens to.

Hell, they ring closer to things I’ve read about older portrayals of zombies. I’ve always loved zombies as a story about autonomy loss and identity loss and transformation and all kinds of shit. But those who’ve studied its origins point out those origins as Fear Of The Mob.

I think in BNHA and Sower we explore that (from a perspective that seeks to challenge the fear, not validate/embody it) in a way that throws out the complicating factor of zombies: the parts where the zombies aren’t human anymore.

BNHA and Sower show worlds coping with a fear of the mob and a fear of becoming the mob in the apocalypse (becoming the zombies. What happens if the walls around the cul-de-sac crumble? What happens if I am forced out there?)

And Olamina’s fear is real. It isn’t a fear that indicts the people addicted to the fire-setting drug so much as it’s a fear that indicts power and money. Olamina’s separation from the world is not based on bigotry. Olamina is living in an apocalypse.

There are REASONS to not want to become the zombies. In Olamina’s world the zombies starve and commit atrocities, slave to their addictions. In Olamina’s world it is difficult work to remain in community.

In BNHA’s world, the fear of becoming the zombies in my metaphor needs to have two separate meanings.

Because one is a fear of an a-stereotypical body. One is ableist and lookist revulsion, othering. The zombies in this example are people who have meta abilities, because they have meta abilities.

And the other fear of becoming the zombies in BNHA’s apocalypse is the same fear as in Sower’s apocalypse: the fear of being lost outside the walls. The bite is being dragged from ability to live safely and well and in community.

People like Olamina and her parents are doing nothing wrong in their response to this fear.

But then you have people like the wealthiest people in both universes. I have always personally felt that…. that sometimes humanity experiences a burden. And yes, we all have the innate human right to thrive. But that doesn’t mean we all have the innate right to escape humanity’s general burden. It exists. My right to thrive doesn’t become a right to escape that burden not by making it cease to exist, but by saying it must solely be someone else’s burden, must be isolated from me. Because I have a human right to thrive.

Oh fuck, we need someone who does not have a human right to thrive— them. They’re not human. Or they did something to lose the human right to thrive. But most importantly and most passively: they’re supposed to be there.

When that burden gets heavier, some people enforce their right to thrive in the extreme by making sure to shove the burdened where those burdens cannot bite them. Cannot catch. Good vibes only. No dead weight. I am too good for dead weight. I have a right to carry no dead weight.

And this is where we get the apocalypse of BNHA leaving AFO and Yoichi’s mother to be eaten by rats. This is where we get UA refusing to take Izuku’s burdens as its own. Every lost child, in BNHA, is because there’s a way of segmenting some burdens as someone else’s to carry. That burden belongs to that mother. To that family.

We invented heroes so that we could glamorize someone carrying the burdens—or else shoving the burdens very far away from me. But I will be able to spend my life thinking the burdens are being carried. Because my real priority is being fulfilled: the burdens are very far from me.

There’s a line I wrote for that upcoming Hikage fic. “Walls kept everyone who is human in, and dangers out.”

[aita-blorbos]

AITA for snitching on my brother?

Listen, my 19 brothers (all 200M) and I (200M) don't have the best relationship. After my Dad (over 50000M) and his buddy (3000M) created us in their lab, our mum stole us and passed us off to various adoptive parents on different planets, so we didn't even grow up together. As a consequence, some of us had it easier than others. Me, I had a great adoptive father. He put me through college and encouraged me until I became the actual second best wizard ever. By 18, I was pretty much the philosopher-king of our planet. I even had a relationship with my bio Dad longer than the rest of my brothers did because we found each other through magic and then used it to hang out. (He's the first best wizard. No biggie.)

Anyway, things were going great for me. Eventually, our bio Dad hosted a big family reunion and I got to meet my brothers. I was ready to make friends, but man, some of them were assholes. Well, that was fine. I stayed friends with the brothers I liked. I had a lot on my hands anyway, since Dad had taken the liberty of making 1000 sons for me, and none of them were freaking potty trained.

Did I use magic to potty train them? Yes. Did I maybe get the potty-training magic from a strange voice in my head? Well... Okay, yes, but consider that 1000 sons = a lot of potty training if you take the traditional route. I think it was a reasonable choice at the time.

Anyway, my sons were doing great, and the brothers I got on with and I began to set up this big magical training program so we could all teach our sons to be better and safer wizards. Sounds great, right?

Well, the asshole contingent of my brothers decided to haul us in front of Dad and point their fingers at us. "Wizards are bad and dangerous" they claimed, while one of them stood around surrounded by his own freaking wizards. ("They're not wizards, they're enchanters," my ass.)

I thought our bio Dad would side with us, him being the greatest wizard of all time and his buddy (I swear those two have something going on) being the third greatest after me. But no! He told us we needed to stop doing magic. Literally the one thing I'm good at. The one thing he made me good at. I'm the second best wizard in the galaxy, and he wanted me to sit on my ass.

Well, I tried. I mostly stopped. But come on, those assholes were definitely up to something. I started using my wizardry to surveil my brothers, and oh boy. The shit I found out. At first, I just sat back and ate popcorn, watching them pratfall their way through life. It was funny, what can I say? And I still stuck by the bros who had my back.

But then one of my bros, L, (unfortunately one of the ones I got on with) had the worst thing possible happen to him: He decided he had found God. By which I mean, he decided our bio Dad was literally God.

Seriously, our Dad. Sure, Dad is like 20 feet tall and glows with golden light, but when the glowing giant immortal wizard tells you he's not a god, you believe him. Unless you're L.

Dad's attempts to re educate him were... Misguided. As I said, he's not a god. But he went so hard that L flipped right the other way around and started to believe that our dad wasn't God. He was Satan, apparently.

And so, L went to our other brother H, who had a mad case of "first-child, I carry the whole family" syndrome, and started trying to convince him that our dad was Satan.

I tried to warn H that L was crazy. H just went "Lol okay" and went back to chugging L's koolaid.

H and L were definitely going to do something stupid, like murderously stupid. I needed to warn Dad, and it was urgent. I started calling, but Dad wouldn't pick up.

So I called him the way we used to talk, using magic. And what do you know, he had basically put up some sort of magical barrier which meant I couldn't call him that way either. I was pretty pissed off to see he had blocked me on so many levels.

And this is where I may be the AH.

See, that voice in my head that helped me work out how to potty-train the kids using magic? Yeah, it spoke up again. It suggested I break through the barrier. I figured Dad built it for a good reason, but I *was* strong enough and I was trying to save his life. So I broke in.

And then the voice's magical demons flowed into Dad's lab, ruining the amazing magical teleporter which he and his buddy had been building in secret. Turns out, the voice in my head was an ACTUAL god, the Lord of Change... And Dad had known all along. It was why he told my brothers and I that we had to stop doing magic. But he never thought to actually explain that to ME, so how the hell was I supposed to know I had a god in my head? He told us gods didn't exist!

Anyway, gods are real, but I still maintain that my Dad isn't Satan. He's just a really bad father.

He was understandably furious that I broke his experiment and let demons into his lab, but he yelled at me like he thought I did it on purpose. Plus, H was so mad that I snitched, he actually sent another brother (Mr. "They're not wizards") to burn down my planet. Like hell I was sticking around after that. After one last attempt to reach out to Dad, (which ended with my most gullible brother gaslighting me and then hitting me with a hammer) I went NC with pretty much my whole bio family.

I'm doing okay now. I actually ended up moving in with the Lord of Change for a while because at least he helped me potty train my kids and let me do wizardry in his spare room. Now I have my own planet and a sick wizard tower. It would be great if it weren't so dusty in here.

I still wonder if I was the asshole though. Don't get me wrong, I think the biggest assholes are my Dad, H, L, some other brothers I didn't mention, Mr. "They're not wizards", my oldest son who apparently can't keep the place clean, and a lot of my other sons who just kinda vanished one day. But maybe I could've done something else, like sending Dad a letter or warning my nicer brothers about H and L instead going straight to the top. So. AITA?

[centralperkchenford]

Chenford + Tim finding out Isabel revealed they were cops to Dara during the UC op hotel scene

I really liked this one!

The stakes are high, the water’s low, but this love is ours

Chenford + Tim finding out Isabel revealed they were cops to Dara during the UC op hotel scene

Lucy knew Isabel didn’t mean any harm when she blurted out to Dara that they were cops. She probably thought it was for the best and Dara would find out anyway. However Lucy was just a tiny bit annoyed that she had done it. What would have happened if Dara had blurted it to the guys after her? It would have put both their lives in danger. They could have been killed on the spot. And she had meant to question Isabel on exactly why she had blurted it out but everything had happened so fast so she never got the chance. Tim never found out either which was probably for the best. She didn’t want him getting mad at Isabel for a little mistake. A mistake that anyone could have made. But that little mistake had caught up with her.

And now here she was with a gun pointed at her head.

It had been a regular operation and Tim as always was her backup. A comforting thought to Lucy. But it still never got easier leaving him. Not being able to kiss him or hug him or just be physically close to him.

She knew he was right outside the warehouse she was currently in. He was ready to move if he thought something was wrong. The operation was suppose to be simple, but wasn’t that what they always say? Gabe Spencer and his goonies were supposedly bringing in guns from Mexico. She was acting as a girl who just wanted some extra cash, so she was the informer, telling the men how to get the guns in the US without being caught. And the thing was Lucy was so close to bringing this operation down. She just had a few more loose ends and then it would have been over. But then as she had been walking in the warehouse, someone had made her as a cop.

There was a fight and Lucy had surrendered with her hands in the air trying to calm down her breathing. She felt blood trickling down her cheek and she knew she probably had a black hair from where she had been hit in the midst of fists and chaos.

Tim was right outside. He will figure out something is wrong. It was the only comforting thought in Lucy’s head right now.

The man Gabe Spencer stared at her unrelentingly.

“You’re a cop.” He sneered and Lucy did her best to look confused.

“What are you talking about?” She said loudly. “I’m not a cop. Where’d you get that idea?”

Gabe Spencer laughed loudly. “I have a friend who had a run in with you and a blonde. She said the blonde revealed you were cops.”

Fuck. Lucy thought Fuck fuck fuck

“Well it wasn’t me.” She said trying to keep her voice level but she had a bad feeling about this. She knew Gabe didn’t believe her. There really was no way out of this situation. “I’m just what I told you I am- I’m just trying to make some extra cash.”

Gabe stared at her a smirk still on his face and she feels sick to her stomach. She hoped Tim was listening in. She hoped he was getting all the tactical stuff ready to come in a rescue her. She eyes the warehouse door warily, willing it to open.

“No I’m not mistaken.” Gabe said and he started to circle around her like a animal sniffing out its prey.

“Who is your friend?” Lucy asked still trying to sound like she had no idea what Gabe was talking about even though she knew exactly who he was talking about.

“Dara Tesca.” Gave replied. “Sweet girl. I thought she would take after her dad but..” he shrugged his shoulders. “She said you rescued her but she still thought it was weird.”

Lucy gulped. She replayed the moment in the motel room where Isabel had told Dara the truth. She had whipped around and stared at Isabel, who should have known that revealing they were cops was very dangerous.

“I don’t know a Dara Tesca.” She said weakly. “I’m telling you I am not a cop.”

Gabe just clicked his tongue and then pressed the gun to Lucy’s forehead. Lucy swallowed hard. This was it. This was the end. She had so many things left to do and say.

She never told Tim she loved him. She wouldn’t be able to tell Tim to not blame Isabel or himself. This wasn’t anyone’s fault but the man who pulled the trigger.

“I don’t believe you.” Said Gabe. “It’s just a shame when your little cop friends find your lifeless body we will be long go—”

The warehouse door crashed opened and there was shouting as Gabe’s men rose to the defense.

“Hands up! Weapons down now! You are surrounded!”

Lucy breathed a sigh of relief as the gun was lowered and she collapsed to the ground.

“Lucy!” She heard Tim’s voice from a distance but she was so weak she didn’t open her eyes.

She felt his large hands lift her up and then she was in his arms.

“Lucy.” He said into her hair. “You’re okay . I tried to get here as soon as I heard him say—”

Lucy opened her eyes a little blinking at him. “Tim I’m fine okay? It was scary but it’s over.”

She felt Tim nod and then he pulled away from her. His blue eyes shining with all sorts of emotion. Some she couldn’t name even if she tried.

“Why didn’t you tell me that Isabel revealed you were cops?”

Lucy shrugged her shoulders. “She made a mistake Tim. I didn’t want you freaking out on her. She thought she was doing the right thing.”

Tim sighed loudly and kissed the top of her head. “You still should have told me Luce.”

“What would that of done Tim? I never could have predicted this.”

Tim sighed again and muttered. “Okay. Let’s get you to the hospital.”

She tried to protest telling him she was fine and she just wanted to go home. But Tim was stubborn and she knew she wouldn’t win.

Once outside Tim ushered her toward a ambulance to get checked out.

“You will need a few stitches on your cheek and you are going to have an ugly black eye.” Said the paramedic. “But other than that you are going to be fine.” Lucy nodded at her. Tim was still standing there studying her.

“Luce are you you are okay?” He asked. “It’s okay to—”

“I’m fine okay? I just want to get stitched up and go home.” He nodded and squeezed her hand.

“Okay Lucy okay. I’ll see you at the hospital.” And he kissed her uninjured cheek, holding his lips there for a few seconds. When he pulled back he brushed some hair out of her eyes.

“Lucy.” He began. But she shook her head at him.

“Later Tim we will talk later.” She whispered to him. He nodded reluctant to let her go but he did.

She watched him as they loaded her up in the ambulance and he still had that worried look on his face.

I am fine. I am alive. That’s all that matters.

Lucy got to the hospital before Tim and was already settling into the bed they had ready for her. She just wanted to get out of there.

“Hey.” Came a soft voice from the end of her bed. Lucy looked up to see Isabel standing there tentatively as if she was afraid to come in.

“Hey!” Said Lucy. “What are you doing here?”

“Tim called me to read me the riot act. Lucy I am so sorry. I thought—”

Lucy cut her off before she could go any farther. “It’s okay Isabel. I don’t blame you. It was a mistake.”

“You could have been killed.” She whispered and she moved past the curtains so she was closer to the bed. “ I could have been the reason you died. Tim.. he’s so different. He’s so happy. I could have taken that from him

“That’s everyday on this job. Especially when I’m undercover. Tim understands this better than anyone I know.”

Isabel nodded but she still looked unconvinced.

“Look. Was I a little shocked you said that? Sure. But nobody could have predicted this. It happened and it’s over with. I’m fine.” She gestured to herself. “I’m still breathing and that’s all that matters.”

“Tim was really mad. I don’t think I have ever heard him that upset.”

Lucy sighed and shook her head. “Let me worry about Tim okay? He was just a little shaken up.”

Isabel shook her head vigorously. “You don’t understand Lucy. I have never heard him like what he was on the phone. He was angry and upset. He never sounded like that with me.”

“Isabel you know how he was when you went undercover.”

“Of course. He was scared. He waited with baited breath for me to get home. But it wasn’t the pure panic that I heard today.”

Lucy just stared at her not knowing what to say. She knew how hard it was for Tim when Isabel went undercover. He went through so much and still ended up losing her. It was the same with her, he kissed her a little longer every time she walked out the door.

“Hey Luce how are you—” Lucy looked up to see Tim, he wasn’t looking at her though. His eyes were on Isabel and he frowned.

“What are you doing here?” He snapped.

“Just came to see how Lucy was doing and to say sorry. I—”

“I said it was fine.” Said Lucy before she could go on. “Thanks for coming by Isabel.”

Isabel smiled at her and then looked at Tim her smile fading a little. “Tim I truly am sorry.”

Tim nodded stiffly at her and then headed over to Lucy’s side. “The nurse said they would be here in a minute.” He said quietly and he grabbed her hand like he needed it as a lifeline.

Lucy smiled at him gratefully and then nudged his arm a little. “She came to apologize Tim. The least you could do is hear her out.”

Tim sighed and turned his body turned Isabel who was standing awkwardly at the end of the bed.

“Isabel. You know the risks of undercover. How could you just reveal something so important. You both could have been killed!”

“I know. I was panicked. Like I just needed Dara to understand she was in danger. It was stupid and I am sorry.”

Tim sighed and rubbed his hand across his face. “It’s okay. I just was so scared. Like terrified.” And now he was talking more to Lucy than Isabel. “I was trying to get in there as soon as possible but—”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Isabel smile and walk away. Lucy reached out for Tim to come closer.

“You did your job Tim. And you got to me I knew you would.” She said and she reached out to cup his face. “You always do.”

“How do you always have so much faith in me?” He asked. “It’s like this unwavering belief that I will always be there.”

Lucy bit her lip and pulled back from Tim. “Because I love you.” She said softly. “And I put my faith in people I love.”

They had not said I love you yet but Lucy had known it was coming. She had felt it on the tip of her tongue for months.

Tim smiled at her and saw him blinked back the tears that were forming in his eyes.

“I love you too.” He whispered. “And I will always find you.”

“Always.” Lucy whispered back. “Always.”

[obsidiancreates]

Double Donnie

"So, fellow Donatello. I have a query for you."

"Sure." Donnie drops a bit of the "ooze", as they call mutagen in this dimension, into the chemical compound.

"Why bio-chemistry as your science of choice?" Donald leans hazardously close to Donnie's project. "Because I noticed that it holds you back from making some truly incredible tech otherwise by dividing your time and practice, and I can't figure out why anyone would ever do that to themselves."

"You do chemistry too, I've seen it."

"Yeah, as a side-science. Tech and machinery are clearly superior."

"Mm-hmm, sure. Now, back away, would you? There's a good chance this'll explode."

"I am used to explosions."

"This is a chemical explosion."

"Yes, so there will be the lack of my usual shards of metal, and, running screaming from flying pieces of shrapnel!"

"At least we relate on that experience." Donnie adds one more drop of ooze. The mixture bubbles, turns pink, turns red...

POP!

Donnie groans and thunks his head against the worktable.

"There there." One of the robotic arms of Donald's battle shell pats Donnie on the head. "This is simply what happens when you mess with an inferior branch of science."

Donnie lifts his head to scowl at Donald, one of those strange red representations of a bulging vein overlaying itself on his forehead and giving off a faint heartbeat sound. "You're telling me you're a mutant of combined turtle and human DNA made from a mysterious substance, and you didn't want to figure out how all of that worked?!"

"Never had the strong urge, no! Why would I, when I had robots to build!" Donald throws his arms out, and his various pieces of tech surround him in a blink! He smirks at Donnie.

"And I had DNA to test and compounds to make! Our passions went in opposite directions, that's all there is to it! ... Actually, thinking about it, it's very possible this was the multiverses way of balancing the universes, directing us into situations that fostered different passions in different fields. Not that I don't love robotics, of course, but I find myself in a lot more situations where my bio-chemistry comes in handy."

"And I, my beautiful beautiful tech."

"Fascinating. Even though our interests are nurtured from the time we're too young to know what situations we'd deal with, we both ended up with our interests perfectly suited to what we'd need most when we became heroes. This implies some level of existence of Fate, which, come to think of it, if further supported by the many consistencies across universes-"

"Sorry, the many?"

"There's a version of us that lives in the year 1987. We don't need to talk about them right now. Their Raph sounded a lot like me and I still don't know how I feel about that."

"You have a lot of feelings, so I'm not surprised that they become hard to differentiate from each other."

"Yeah, well, a complex mind breeds complex emotions."

"That is not the case."

"Anyway, if I wasn't passionate about bio-chemistry, I would never have been able to make retromutagen and stop the Kr- uh, the... other guys. If you didn't have your passion for tech, well, same story! Sort of."

"Let's not talk about that ever again actually."

"Sorry."

"Wait, is that what you're doing there? Creating a reversing agent to the oozequitos?"

"I'm hoping to. I just, feel bad for some of the people your Mikey told me about. Plus, it's pretty nice when the people who want to kill you aren't incredibly strong mutants."

"I don't know how much that'll matter here, honestly. Also, this seems dangerous to have around us. I'd rather not suddenly turn back into a regular turtle."

"Relax, it doesn't even work yet. I'm really having trouble adjusting to the laws of this universe. Did you know that your April took me to her high school the other day? No-one batted an eye!"

"Ah yes, your humans are much more likely to scream, and point, and shout about 'Oh no, horrible hideous monsters!'."

"Thank you for the reminder," Donnie grumbles. "That's another reason I pursued bio-chemistry. When I was young I hoped I could possibly find a way to turn my brothers and I human as well."

Donald tenses up, his face twisting into disgusted horror. "You... want to be human?!"

Donnie scoffs. "Um, yeah? Like I said, our dimension is a lot less friendly to us. We can't even go out in the daytime unless there's something bigger going on, like millions of rats swarming."

"... Has that happened to you?"

"More than once."

"Your dimension sounds like the worst place to ever exist. But aside from that, explain why you want to be human other than wanting life-essential sunlight and vitamin D intake."

"Well, to go to school sounds nice. Connecting with other scientists. Meeting people besides my brothers and humans we know because of kidnappings and their attempted vigilante careers. Generally having the same opportunities that a human does?"

"I see, I see. But you're stronger than a human in your dimension, right?"

"Yeah."

"And faster?"

"I suppose..."

"So what's the problem?"

"Wh- what's your problem?! You don't feel like a freak?!"

"Not really, no."

"How- we- we have shells! And our hands only have three fingers! And we're green!"

"I don't understand, now you're just pointing out the obvious. Ooooh, wait, you're listing things that make us different from humans."

"Yes!"

"I don't know if I'm equipped to handle this, actually, because I find your train of thought very hard to follow here. May I direct you to Mikey, or perhaps the cloaking brooch shop?"

"... The what?"

"Cloaking brooch. They're used by Yokai to disguise as humans and live amo-"

"YOU HAVE A WAY TO MAKE ME LOOK HUMAN?!" Donnie bolts out of the room.

Donald blinks after him, and then taps his forearm screen. "Angelo, I think Other Donnie may need one of your Doctor personas to pay him a visit. Yeah, yeah apparently he deeply hates himself for being a mutant. I know, I don't get it either. Anyway I think he's tearing the lair apart trying to find a cloaking brooch. No, I don't know if he's touching your kiiiii- oh, no, he is, he's going through the kitchen cupboards. Try not to kill him."