#being a vessel for someone else’s opinions. barely even themselves

[cherrysnax]

oh yeah we were also wondering why we flock to media with dead kids that haunt the narrative both figuratively and literally and uh :) yeah we know why

[iamnightduchess]

Hi Queen ❤

I love your headcanons so much and I don’t know if you’ve ever done one of these, but I’d really like to imagine what it would be like if Mikasa and Reiner fell in love after the end of the manga, what this discovery would be like and how they would deal with this!

(Forgive me for my lousy english hahaha)

Hello dear, thank you for the Ask! 💖 It really helps me to envision a more ideal post-ending universe because the potential ending right now does not look promising that both of them will somehow survive (together) because I am foreseeing one of them voluntarily dies to save another person. I hope i'm wrong! 😢 I've only done a tiny snippet of ReiKasa in this Post-Rumbling HC AU. But, here's what I envision how it could possibly be IF they survive & they happen:

Reiner x Mikasa (ReiKasa) Post-Rumbling AU (Gen) Headcanon #16

Before we delve into Post-Rumbling period, it's interesting to observe the tiny moments where the seeds of trust and possibly, love between these two former enemies turned allies might have possibly begun sprouting.

The Rumbling

We've seen the way Reiner had implied on the plane in ch.133, how Eren might want to be stopped by someone. Reiner was using himself as a pretext; an example. If HE was the one with the FT & somehow finding himself unable to control it, he'd want to be stopped by someone he knows is capable of doing so (someone more powerful & stronger than he is) When he said that sentence, he was gazing at Mikasa.

There are 2 implications here, i) He is indirectly admitting in front of everyone that Mikasa is his weakness, like a failsafe. The one he knows who can take him down if he's the one with this enormous power & he's losing control, ii) Because to him, ever since they were younger, Eren is her family & a sensitive subject to her. Him voicing out his opinion and indirectly hinting that Eren is beyond the path of no return will hurt Mikasa's feelings & emotional state.

During the Paths Intermission, the moment Eren basically told the alliance to go fuck themselves, that he will keep moving forward for his freedom, while the alliance members are free to fight him if that is what they want; Reiner was horrified to know that Eren basically confirmed his deduction & how much pain and devastation Mikasa would be in upon receiving the awful truth from Eren himself. Even after pleading to Eren to let her share the burden of his sins, which as direct as it could have been to "I don't want to be so far from you. I want to be with you through both light & darkness inside of you. Please come back to us." Mikasa still believed that the previous Eren that she knew is still there somewhere, which is no longer the case.

The shock-induced tears in Mikasa's eyes - seeing her in pain, hurts Reiner too. He'd knew how heartbroken she would be.

In Ch.135, when everyone was on the verge of dying as they're losing the battle with the raised forms of past titan shifters, Mikasa reached her breaking point & Reiner felt helpless, because he was at his last limit & Mikasa was planning to make herself the primary target just to buy the rest a little bit more time.

There's this woman who's fighting towards an expected death in front of him - any man would be an idiot for not seeing how foolish yet selfless and brave this last female warrior of Paradis was. She's always been a fearless woman who has their backs and protects their fronts. He has never stopped respecting this woman. This might have been the starting point for that seed to have sprouted inside Reiner.

If Annie's timely rescue never came and they truly met their end there, the only regret Reiner has was he couldn't do anything else but watch this woman's final moments without being able to do anything to support her before his own ensuing end.

When Levi, Jean and Connie all collectively & firmly agrees that killing Eren is the only thing that stands between the world's survival, Reiner was silent the whole time. He believed he has no right to say anything, but he saw the vulnerable look on her face the moment Jean reiterated their ultimatum: "We need to kill Eren."

Reiner did what he does best: he took charge. When Reiner told her, "You go help Armin." He was indirectly telling her, "You do what you can. I will shoulder your burden with Jean. Let me be the strength for you to do what needs to be done." This was Reiner's way of telling her, he will carry her burden for her and shelter her from an unbearable pain. Just like how she told Eren much earlier in Paths. Reiner's indirectly telling Mikasa that she's important to him too.

This was the moment that the seed had sprouted within her heart. She realized that Reiner's communicating to her in the way only she would understand. How much she feels for Eren, Reiner feels for her in the same way because you can't give a reason why you care for or love someone. You just do. It just happened without signs. Annie, however, was able to catch that short but impactful interchange between them.

Post-Rumbling

They barely survive the last stand against Eren's final form but they did with Ymir's divine intervention in Humanity's New Dawn.

Reiner sustains extremely heavy injuries on his physical body. Mikasa is emotionally & psychologically affected by Eren's true death.

The remaining humanity struggles to rebuild from the ashes of destruction. It was beyond devastation. The world is almost completely annihilated but hope is a powerful energy. Hope persists.

Reiner sees her grieving - like a pair of wheels suspended in motion - trapped while the rest of the world moves around her. She refuses to eat, she barely sleeps but when she does, she would toss and turn around restlessly. Annie tells him in passing that when Mikasa sleeps, her body contorts and freezes simultaneously like she's in a lot of pain.

Seeing her drifting through the days like a soulless vessel pains him a lot. No one could humanly survived what she had to go through without serious ramifications towards her emotional and psychological state. Mikasa becomes withdrawn and sullen.

Yet, he retains his distance like he always does & watch silently from the sides as Annie, Armin & Jean tried to reach out to her to no avail. Reiner himself is haunted by his failed attempt to hold the Founder's original form down that, in a way, had forced Mikasa to do what needs to be done. He feels responsible that he couldn't prevent her from having to go through those painful yet pivotal moments of securing humanity's survival. The day the alliance managed to save the world, well, the world that she built for Eren inside her heart was destroyed in return.

One day, she mysteriously disappears without trace. A panicking Armin searches on his own but Annie tells Reiner that Mikasa's missing, nowhere to be found. Reiner and Armin later found her at the crater where Eren's last resting place had been. The exact same location where she had to slay him with her own two blades.

Mikasa says that she just feels lost and empty. Like there's a huge dark void inside her body that she can't escape from. She just sits there amongst the dust and debris, staring blankly at a makeshift, unmarked grave. She confides that she's terrified of falling asleep because she sees Eren's face in her nightmares.

Armin wants to console her but Annie holds him back as she notices Reiner already making his way forward and settles himself next to her. Armin understands what Annie was trying to do.

Reiner only tells Mikasa, "You don't have to do this alone...Lean on us." He offers his hand, despite knowing she wouldn't even touch him. "When you feel that you can no longer breathe, I'll breathe for you. If you feel like you're drifting, I will hold you."

It takes her a while but she accepts his hand and he holds it tight in his. Reassuring her that he is here to stay for as long as she needs him to be.

Little either of them know that it would possibly be forever.

It is Annie who helps to bridge these two together with Armin's help.

Ever since the day they talked, Mikasa slowly finds herself regaining an ounce of strength. Reiner talks a lot to her and offers his silent company as they go for walks together so she does not feel alone.

Reiner makes sure that he'll check in with Mikasa from time to time when he's not supporting the remaining forces with rebuilding, too frequent not to be noticed by everyone close to them in the survivor's settlement. However, none of them questions him about it. It is an understood, unspoken notion that Reiner cares a lot about Mikasa, and her for him eventhough she's being subtle about it. Armin could see Mikasa's eyes lit up whenever Reiner is nearby.

Mikasa shares a living space with Annie and Pieck. When her night terrors get too much that Mikasa thrashes around, screaming in pain despite being in a deep sleep, the two former shifters know that they couldn't possibly restrain the Ackerman girl physically on their own. They called for Armin, Jean and Reiner for help. When Armin and Jean hesitate to hold her down, it is Reiner who holds her tight even when Mikasa's unconsciously trying to struggle against him. They could see Reiner's face holding back his own physical pain from fighting against the immense resistance coming from her. But he'd never released his hold until she eventually wakes up and calms down. He stayed with her until the break of dawn.

After that night, however, Reiner seems to be pulling himself away from Mikasa as he couldn't get over his guilt and his helplessnesss as he also didn't want Mikasa to think that he's trying to take advantage of her vulnerability. The problem is, when he avoids Mikasa, she reverts back to the darkness she's slowly overcoming with Reiner's help and he's becoming miserable himself.

This frustrates Armin, Annie, Jean, Levi and even Pieck because it was fairly obvious to everyone but the two people in question that both Reiner and Mikasa are self-sabotaging and self-punishing themselves from pursuing something more than friendship despite their beating hearts calling out for each other.

Mikasa feels she's betraying her memories of Eren and she's afraid of moving on lest she would forget about him. Reiner feels he has no right to offer Mikasa anything more than friendship because she deserves someone better than him.

Mother's Intuition

Reiner's mother, Karina, finds herself naturally drawn to this young woman who seems to have her son's attention, even when he's trying very hard not to be obvious about it. She catches Reiner staring (longingly, she dare say) at the female warrior of Paradis from afar.

Apart from Mr. Leonhardt's daughter, she too, helps to bring her son and Mikasa closer. Karina has witnessed this woman's bravery and have heard from both Gabi and Reiner of her selflessness when she had saved both her son and her niece's lives. Through Reiner's story, Karina sympathizes with the pain this young woman is going through.

Reiner tells her that he feels helpless that he isn't able to help Mikasa and that she hasn't been eating well. Therefore, Karina brings her homemade meal and visits the young woman, wanting to get to know her better. Mikasa doesn't want to be impolite and relents to having the sudden company.

However, the moment Karina holds her hands to offer her comfort, Mikasa breaks down. She had lost 3 mothers/maternal figures in her life: her own, Carla & Hange. For some odd reason, she feels grateful to have an opportunity to be held by a mother again, even if it wasn't her own.

Karina finds herself growing fond of this young woman and deep inside believes that Mikasa and her son are meant for each other.

It is Karina who advises Reiner to fight for his own happiness and her mother's intuition tells her that his feelings isn't as one-sided as he thinks. Karina urges her son to tell Mikasa how he really feels and after all the years of fighting wars for Marley, Reiner needs to fight one last war: the one within his own heart and to win the heart of the one woman who had conquered his.

However, the relief entourage that arrives from Hizuru, led by Kiyomi Azumabito prevents him from telling Mikasa how he truly feels. He knows that she is destined to become the new empress of Hizuru and that her future would be brighter without him being in her way.

Mikasa tells him of her decision to ascend the imperial throne and Reiner feigns happiness for her decision, reassuring her that she will make a great empress and that she would have a better future there. Mikasa takes Reiner's words as him indirectly telling her to move on with her life without him in it.

Reluctantly, Mikasa leaves for Hizuru. Karina is upset that her son is still sacrificing himself & his own feelings even after being relieved of his Titan powers and its curse.

Karina tells him, "You've lived your life for me and for our family, Reiner. Now it's time for you to live for yourself."

Reiner thinks he's lost the only chance he still has left as Mikasa is already en route to the East Sea country. It is Armin who tells him that the Azumabito's ship is still docked at the nearest harbor because Armin has suspicions that Reiner will change his mind.

When Reiner, Armin, Jean and Annie reach the harbor, the sun is almost setting and Reiner finally revives his dwindling courage to tell her how he truly feels about her and he would like to remain by her side if she'd allow it.

Kiyomi forewarns Reiner that if he is serious about her kin, then he would have to sacrifice his newly-found freedom from being a soldier and titan shifter to become prince consort to their new imperial monarch.

Reiner only says, "I am as good as dead without Mikasa and my freedom means nothing if I'm spending the rest of my life without her."

In the sunset of the New World built from ashes, the two young loves finally seize the courage to pledge their hearts to one another with a kiss; the first of the many in their life together, which is only beginning.

*Continues in Pt. II

------------

Thank you once again for the beautiful Ask! I truly enjoyed working on this ❤ Also, please don't ever feel that you need to apologize to another ESL speaker/writer for the language. We're always learning 💖 Take care! xoxo

[distinguished-slacker]

Theory: Who will unite the Shinoa squad?

(Because I am bored~)

Many people must know by now that the whole Shinoa squad is dysfunctional and the members cannot lead themselves to a single goal. They call themselves family but in the end all of them have their own problems and priorities that prevents the members from staying united in difficult situations.

Yuu was the driving force of the squad but now his mentality reversed to one of a child (as a defence mechanism to cope with his traumas) to the point that even Kimizuki and Yoīchi cannot deal with him. On top of that, even if he calls everyone ‘family’, he wanted to commit suicide when Mika died even if it meant leaving the other squad members behind.

Shinoa is the official squad leader but in my opinion I feel that she failed at doing her job properly ever since Nagoya arc finished. Also, she has to deal with being the vessel for Shikama Doji and her newfound feelings for Yuu so she cannot take care of everyone equally in the squad.

Kimizuki is the ‘big brother’ and voice of the reason in the squad but Yuu never listens to him which adds to his own exhaustion. On top of that, even if he expressed his desire of letting go of his responsibilities recently, he still wants to prioritise Mirai over anyone else in the squad.

Yoīchi is the one who takes the role of calming things down. However, he is hiding his dark side from the squad which sets a barrier between him and the others, and he always chooses to follow Kimizuki and help him. Yoīchi also has the pending goal of torturing and killing Lacus. Moreover, he is unable to take initiative and ends up being dragged by the others such as when he changed his mind and decided to drink like the girls did (probably to cope with the recent stressful events).

This all makes me come to the idea of what if this is Mitsuba’s time to shine? When Shinoa got possessed by Shikama Doji and Yuu offered himself as a lab rat, Kimizuki went to where his little sister was with the idea of taking her and running away from everything even if meant leaving Yuu and Shinoa behind. Yoīchi and Makoto immediately decided to tag along with Kimizuki. On the other hand, Mitsuba stayed because she got concerned when she saw what Yuu was about to be injected with and when the Hyakuya Sect member took Yuu, Mitsuba turned around to tell everyone just to realise that they were gone the betrayal. Everyone has a specific person as a priority while Mitsuba’s goal has always been the same since the beginning: to maintain formation.

She doesn’t have a specific person she wants to protect nor any hidden side of her so far. Even if she doesn’t have a black demon unlike the others, she is still a member of the main squad of the series and it’s so intriguing why Kagami left her the last when it comes to showing her demon and the inside of her heart. By referring to the importance of the demons in the Shinoa squad, Shinoa’s demon should have been saved for the last but interestingly this was not the case.

In chapter 45, called ‘The Sangū sisters’, when Crowley attacked Mitsuba she caught his foot while expressing her low self-esteem because she felt she was holding her squad back the same way she felt as a hindrance with her previous squad. This could have been a great chance to show even just a few panels of Tenjiryū addressing Mitsuba’s inferiority complex. But Kagami didn’t take this chance, and even if the chapter title referred to Aoi and Mitsuba, they barely had any protagonism in here which makes the choice of the title awkward. However, I heard that Kagami-sensei said that the real story begins now which makes me wonder if Kagami purposely did things in a half-assed way so he could come to this point to turn the tables.

Although it is likely that Mitsuba’s demon will be revealed to be more important than initially established because of the meaning behind their name ‘Heavenly-shaped dragon’, which contradicts their demon nature, I am not essentially saying that Mitsuba will be like Shinoa and turn out to be special. In hindsight, what the squad needs the most right now is not more powerful people but someone who can maintain the structure of the squad. Recently Kagami-sensei has given us moments of every squad members’ thoughts about the current situation but only Mitsuba has been weirdly quiet.

Now Mitsuba must be feeling lost. She started out as the most promising member of the squad, the elite soldier with battle experience since the age of 13, but now all the other four ‘rookies’ turned out to be powerful genetically engineered humans while she stayed as the normal and weakest one what a punch in the gut. This makes me wonder if Kagami waited this much to develop the strength of the other four to worsen Mitsuba’s inferiority complex enough so she can now have her time to fight her own insecurities and grow as a character. Before Mitsuba felt inferior to the others for a reason her mind created on her own due to her past traumas but now she has an actual, visible reason to feel inferior.

Mitsuba initially was angry at the fact Guren chose Shinoa as the squad leader and eventually settled with the role of second in command. The advantage that Mitsuba has over Shinoa and the other three members when it comes to the current situation is that she is not directly affected by it. The actions of Shikama Doji, Guren, Mahiru and other masterminds had influenced the other members a lot like the genetic composition of Yuu and Shinoa, and the lives of the sisters of Kimizuki and Yoīchi. This would mean that Mitsuba is the character with the most availability to take this vacant role. Even if we consider Mika and Makoto as part of the squad, neither Mika nor Makoto have a special emotional attachment to the squad so I doubt they want to lead them. Moreover, Mika’s current situation takes him out of the question and Poseidon has disappeared since like 20 chapters ago💔

I know many people are not interested in Mitsuba’s character🤧 I was one of them but after being continuously disappointed on how Kagami handled the character development of the main characters, I started focusing on the characters that still didn’t get any development and realised their potential in the manga. That’s why I really hope she will not become another victim of Kagami’s poor depiction of female characters.

P.S. Or maybe it’s just me and I am being delusional after so much OnS angst and I would probably need to lower my expectations a bit😭🤧

[halcyonbound]

( SAMARA WEAVING, UNKNOWN, SHE/HER )  We opened the gates to the seelie court for CAMILLA DE' MEDICI and we are curious to see how the DEMON  ( PRINCESS OF HELL ), that is often described as the halcyon, will contribute to the new era ━ are they the hunter, the prey ; or are they just here to search for Cosimo de' Medici, their twin brother? We will find our answers in due time and until then, we hope that they can keep their little secret from getting exposed. It could be dangerous if everyone knew what we know… ( sab, she/her, 23, gmt+2 )

STATS .

( taken ) name :  camilla de’ medici . age :  unknown  ( stopped counting a long time ago ) . birthday : july 3 . nationality :  n.a. / italian . species :  demon  ( princess of hell / formerly angel ) . gender :  non-binary woman . orientation :  pansexual & panromantic . religion :  formerly catholic . moral alignment :  lawful neutral . occupation :  princess of italy /  trained seamstress . location :  cosimo de’ medici’s mansion .

PERSONALITY .

open, caring, compassionate.  she was always a little more ...  humane  than most of her siblings. her deep fascination with everything  living  and  moving  and  changing  extended to humanity - from the moment she first came to earth  ( still an angel then, and naively hopeful )  she had a sort of natural charm, always appearing approachable, friendly, and optimistic. while none of that changed, and she is usually  genuine  in all her feelings, there is a spark of  calculation ,  at times - she’s seen too much of the world to simply accept things at face value anymore.

loyal to a fault.  those she considers  family  are her everything, and she’d do  anything  to keep them safe. camilla generally strives for compromise and peace, for the sole reason that she’s  tired  of the fighting and the conflicts and the sorrows she witnessed in hell, but when the people she loves are concerned, all bets are off. whatever they need, she will provide  —  at whatever cost.

vindictive. it is hard to loose her good opinion  ( or amused tolerance, as it may stand )  but once someone does, they are in  serious trouble .  although she barely showcases her demonic powers, she  does  know how to use them - and to mess with a princess of hell is, quite possibly, one of the worst mistakes one could make. it takes a lot to get her going, but when she does, she’s easily lost in violence.  ( a touch of  hell-ish insanity  is hard to hide when it comes in so  handy  in certain situations. )

free-spirited.  spurns rules and regulations; and bounds of any sort. likes travelling, moving, discovering, trying out new things. incredibly curious about anything and everything and reacts with wholehearted  attempts  and a humorous  ‘ watch me ’  at someone telling her  ‘ you can’t ’ .

perfectionist with a limited attention span;  she has long since stopped trying to wrestle her mind into any sense of order, and tends to give in to impulses rather quickly. usually, they’re  positive  ones - new projects, interests, ideas - and it frustrates her a little when she cannot seem to finish any of them to her liking. it makes for ... interesting situations, however, when she does work for hell.

SKILLS .

trained  ( and talented )  seamstress.  her interest in clothing - and not just wearing, but  making  it - comes from that leftover angelic urge to  create ,  she thinks. it started when cosimo and her were taken in by teresa; the woman was of the opinion that a  princess  needed to have certain skills, and after starting with embroidery, camilla quickly became interested in and learned the other aspects of the trade, and the hobby has remained with her since.

pianist.  another one of these skills teresa so valued was  musical proficiency .  her singing, in their society’s general opinion, is no good  ( not that she cares; she’ll sing as loudly and falsely as she wants if it brings her joy, thank you very much )  and she never quite got the hang of string instruments, but she managed to turn into a passable pianist. then again, centuries of practice will do that.

good mediator.  ( when she wants to be. )

demonic powers.  elevated strength, speed, and agility; possession, levitation, teleportation, and the lot. as she’s a princess of hell, her abilities are much stronger than those of normal demons, although she ranks on the lower end when compared with her immediate siblings, as she does not practice as much and hasn’t in centuries. her powers manifest mainly more defensive aspects, and she has an affinity for telekinesis  ( as  that  is something she actually uses regularly for convenience ) ,  making her able to manipulate a large amount of objects or people at once and with surprising precision.

BIO .

they barely remember their creation.  there was light ,  as it is said, and from  nothing  they became  something ;  one  thing among many. heaven was home, and that was enough  ( for a time ) ,  and they were one with their siblings  ( until they weren’t ) . their fledgling days are a blur, now ;  only a few memories stand out. cosimo and his tales of earth ;  their strive for  making ,  for  being ;  reprimands, restrictions, rules ;  their other brothers’ annoyance - then anger - then fury - with all of it.

falling  is much clearer in their mind ;  mainly because it  hurt .  worth it ,  they told themselves as their wings burned up and their grace shattered and split and warped itself into something  else  somewhere between heaven and hell. they left, less out of malice than curiosity ;  for the need to see, and to  become ,  to be more than heaven’s meticulously directed hand.  corruption ,  they knew their siblings called it.  freedom ,  they whispered as they stretched into their new form,  beyond  what god intended.

except they weren’t free ,  not really ;  there was a  price for everything, even  becoming .  hell was ... much the same as heaven, they found, except viewed through a mirror. the humanity they idolized sold themselves out, but despite sharing their sibling’s curiosity to see just  how far  they could turn, hell’s work held little joy for them. they did not want to see the result - they wanted  the process .  they wanted  life .

rising ,  in turn, was much easier given their position, they remember. at one point they simply left for an assigned task and didn’t come back - creeping through the cracks of the world, looking for ... something .

demon’s didn’t have  true vessels ,  she knew from those who frequented earth ;  but whatever was left of her grace, twisted though it might have been, recognized  something  in the girl. or maybe it was something  around  her - it mattered little when they took possession of the body. they were surprised, though, to reconcile that much with her - they  felt  her fear, her recent loss, her remaining love for a brother long gone ;  a brother they now recognized as their own. they didn’t even need to lie to swear they would protect him above all else before the girl let go.

she became camilla .  after recognizing cosimo’s grace in her vessel’s twin brother, her decision to remain on earth became final. it wasn’t just her promise to the girl ;  she’d missed her brother more than any of her other siblings, and he welcomed her to his side with open arms, accepted her more than heaven or hell ever had. for the first time since creation, she felt ... whole .  human. like she had choices ;  had the  freedom  to choose a home.

eventually ,  they ended up in italy, being  ‘ adopted ’ ,  of sorts, by the ruling family. the situation never ceased to amuse her, but she liked teresa well enough  ( it felt interesting, being  mothered )  and being once again styled  ‘ princess ’  opened the doors for a myriad of new experiences. this  was precicely the  joy of life  she had always craved.  ( and if hell came a’knocking, no one forced her to open the door. )

things took a turn  when cosimo decided to get married and fell in love - unfortunately in the wrong order, she thought then. illyria was … a special case. camilla didn’t particularly care for political marriages  ( the trend of the decade was  romance  and she’d read far too many novels on the subject )  but her brother seemed open enough to the idea. so for his sake, camilla made an effort to befriend her; she was intrigued by the dragon and enjoyed her company with others, but they never quite became confidantes - camilla bemourned her brothers’ heart too much.

when instead ,  he fell in love with one of illyria’s ladies, she was ecstatic - this  was what was meant to be. anastasia makes him happy, and so camilla is happy, too ; conversation was so much  easier  with her, and camilla came to love her like a sister and did everything to make her feel comfortable and supported in her new position as  mistress - especially with a child on the way.

who could have expected neglecting illyria could have such  dramatic  consequences?

good things burn as good things do ,  and when cosimo was called back to heaven,  something  didn’t sit right with her. that fear was validated soon after when ana and aurora were attacked ;  and with no way of knowing when cosimo would get back, she did what she could to help them.  ( it wasn’t much. it, arguably, might have made things worse ;  but it was the best option at the time. the  only  option. )  

when she heard from heaven next ,  however, it wasn’t from cosimo, but someone  else ,  with a very clear message. furious as it made her, she accepted the offered deal ;  but she’d never hated heaven more than the day cosimo returned with memories altered and something ... missing. she lied and laughed and tried to make up for forgotten happiness as much as she could ;  as much as was possible without raising suspicion ;  attempting to return to some form of normalcy. 

CURRENT SITUATION .

centuries later ,  with cosimo’s memories recovered and his family returned to earth safe and sound, they finally found some semblance of peace. camilla tries not to dwell on the past, but her role in all of it weighs heavy on her heart.

now, while they are ... mostly stable  in the fae realm, she tries to keep a low profile  ( fearing the past eventually catching up )  although she grows more and more  antsy  being stuck in the same place for so long.

she’s offered her services  as a seamstress, working from a little house in the village of spring ;  it’s a nice way to stay occupied and keep an eye on new arrivals and the general talk of the town.

IDEAS FOR CONNECTIONS / PLOTS .

LOVED AND LOST :  camilla loves to love. she gets along easily with just about anyone  ( if she wants to )  and collects hearts like other girls do necklaces - but she’s just as likely to give her own away. most of her relationships over the centuries have ended amicably, simply due to growing apart. her one and only engagement is the notable exception to this.

→  WANTED CONNECTION POST : ex-fiancé 

BLOOD OF THE COVENANT : throughout her life, she’s abandoned both heaven  and  hell, and while she still holds some affection for her  siblings ,  she’s stopped hoping for a friendly reception. besides that, she’s angry at heaven and hiding from hell, so that should make for some interesting dynamics.

BAD MOON RISING :  as a princess of hell, she was directly involved with creating more demons. i’d love to explore a connection to someone she met in hell and/or screwed with on earth!

any kind of relationship, really: platonic, romantic, antagonistic. whatever shennanigans you can imagine!

hi all, i’m sab and this is my chaotic friendly-ish demon babe. i’m also writing darcy, who you can find over  here .  if you’re interested in talking / plotting / just starting a thread based off of these ideas, hmu!! i’m always up to chat!

[secondhand-trash]

Crystal Clear

A/N: All these gloomy looking boys with aesthetically pleasing character design is making me THRIVE. (Also, I was gonna post this on Saturday because yay algorithm but then I wanted to get it out by Halloween aka the last day of @villainmonth even though au is for day 27​ so here ya go)

(au masterlist)

Pairing: seer!Dabi x reader

Description: The person you worked for happen to be able to see into the future and he was convinced that you would be in love with him. You weren’t buying it though.

Warning: non-consensul touching from a third character under alcoholic influence (nothing too major but putting a heads up just in case)

Word count: 3945

Playlist:

Somebody Else//The 1975

Norman fucking Rockwell//Lana Del Ray

Drunk Text Romance//Cyberbully Mom Club

-

“You are going to fall in love with me.”

You looked up from your desk to meet the piercing blue eyes of the man you were working for, “Is that a question, a statement, a challenge, or a threat? Because no matter which one it is, that’s pretty much not gonna happen.”

Dabi placed his palms on your desk and leaned forward, towering you slightly with a smirk on his face. “We’ll see about that,” he said, sounding as cocky as always, “I see it very clearly in my vision and you’ve worked with me for long enough to know that my predictions are never wrong.”

You didn’t say a word as you couldn’t quite argue with that. Dabi made a name for himself for being a brilliant seer at such a young age. He was young and good-looking, mysterious with a snarky personality, the full package for media adoration. The internet’s opinion on him was polarized, a lot of people practically worship him but not without an equal amount of people who hated his guts, not that he cared at all. But no matter how people felt about him, there was no denying that he was frighteningly good at what he did, giving off extremely accurate readings to each and every single person who came to ask for a glimpse into their future.

The media had been digging into the origin of his great talent but they never found anything. Dabi hid a lot more from the light than most would expect but you distinctively remember the time he had you closed up the shop early and pulled out a bottle of vodka, pushing the glass that you didn’t even know he store in the shop in front of you despite your protest before taking a swing from the bottle directly himself. You did not know what gone over him that day but he looked almost distressed so you stayed. Half of the bottle was gone when he told you in a slurred voice how he got the ability to see into the future. He stared at you with those eyes of his that was so clear you almost mistaken them as glass and told you that the sight was given to him in a bet with a demon on the same day many, many years ago.

He did not tell you if he won the bet or not.

You, on the other hand, was just a poor college student who needed a job to afford rent. You came across the flyer that had “assistant for hire” written on it in a barely comprehensible handwriting with dark purple ink that gave off an odd glow when you looked at it under the sun. You were skeptical of it, it did not look legit at all and a chain of patterns that looked like runes were scribbled on the back of the thin paper in the same purple ink. Not to mention the salary it was offering seemed to be a bit too high for it to be real. It could very likely be a scam or some trap but you were really desperate and people do stupid things in desperate times.

Which led to the current moment, two years after you pushed all survival instincts to the back of your head walked into the shop that was hidden in a quiet corner at the back alley of a busy market, being mildly annoyed by the man you were the assistant to.

Dabi’s smirk only widened when you rolled your eyes. You were just about to make a remark about how your feelings was a matter for you to decide when the crisp chime of the small bell hanging on the door frame of the shop caught your attention. You looked towards the door to see a young man timidly entering the shop. Getting up, you greeted the customer with a small smile and started going through the details of his booking. Seeing that you had no intention to give him any attention and getting slightly bored by the business talk, Dabi uninterestedly turned around and lifted the heavy curtain to the back room where the scrying sessions usually take place.

With a hand lifting the fabric and his back facing the reception, Dabi took last quick glance at the man before disappearing into the room. He could not pin point what exactly gave him the feeling but something about that seemingly kind face gave off the aura of a bad omen, and he was never wrong about an omen.

“Can I leave work a bit earlier today?”

“What? Why?” Dabi tried to hide the shock on his face as he peaked out from the curtains to look at you. In the two years you had been working for him, you had never asked to leave early or to get an extra day off. There was this one time when he had to dragged you to the doctors himself because you were coughing like crazy but still insisted on showing up to work. It’s not like he couldn’t get any work done if you left just a few hours earlier than usual but knowing that he could hear your laugh as he passed by to make fun of unbearable customers in your ear made those few painful hours just a bit less miserable.

“I have a date,” you didn’t see the way his face dropped as you started organizing the waiting area of the shop, “remember Yamamoto, the guy who had an appointment a few days ago? He gave me his number before he left and he’s taking me to a pier tonight.”

You did not get any response. The silence was stuffing you and you looked up at your boss in concern, “You won’t mind, will you?”

“Yeah, of course,” he tried to sound as unbothered as he could, “it’s just, that man gave off the wrong vibes.”

“Everyone gives off the wrong vibes to you,” you laughed and shook your head, “if it has anything to do with your vision that I’ll fall in love with you, do I have to remind you that it’s my choice to make, not yours?”

Dabi wanted to tell you it wasn’t that, that he could feel something off about that Yamamoto. But he couldn’t say it, not when you looked so excited and giddy and it had nothing to do with him. He brought up his vision of you being in love with him to tease you, that was true but he ended up liking that idea a lot more than he thought he would and now it was all he could think of when he looked at you. Dabi trusted very little people and if it had been someone else, he would have do everything to prevent it from coming true. But you, you he could work with. Somehow he didn’t quite mind if his fun-loving assistant who always pick up after him despite complaining ended up falling in love with him. His mind was screaming at you to just open your eyes and see that it could have work. But as much as he knew how scarily accurate his visions could be, he also had the equally accurate knowledge that you did not believe in that at all. So he ignored the screaming of his heart and hummed a word of approval before turning his back to you, disappearing behind the curtains.

You did not talk to him again until you left the shop that day.

You didn’t pay much mind to Dabi’s scrawl whenever Yamamoto showed up at the shop to pick you up for a date. He had been nothing but a kind and loving person to you since your first date a couple months back, you wouldn’t say you were crazy for him but being with Yamamoto was enjoyable no less. He was an average man, nothing that special about him that could make him compare to a powerful seer but it gave you more sense of security than the idea of dating your boss. You couldn’t lie and say that you weren’t just a bit attracted to Dabi or that his smirk didn’t make your knees weak at all, but being in a relationship with him would be a whole other deal. You never know what to expect with him and as charming as it might sound, the idea of being with someone who could easily break your heart in that unpredictable way of his scared you.

Dabi was starting to think that he might have made a mistake. Things between you and that guy was going sickeningly well. So well, that it had him doubting his ability as a seer for the first time since the very devil who gave him all those scars and the power to see into the future in the first place laughed at his face many years ago. He had never seen anything clearer than the sight of you linking your arm in his, looking at him with so much adoration in your eyes but right now those eyes were twinkling at the sight of someone else. It made him feel pathetic at how he wanted him to be the one those eyes linger on instead.

Dabi knew the look of someone who cried themselves to sleep way too well for him to not pick up on your swollen eyes and the blood vessels that’s covering every part of them when you came into work that day. He was going to find and end the person who did whatever they did to make you cry right then and there if you wasn’t there to stop him.

“It’s fine, I’m the one who broke up with him.”

He couldn’t deny that he had been secretly hoping for this to happen for the past few months but seeing your blank expression made his heart ached no less. He was confused, you still looked so smitten with your so-called boyfriend the day before when he waited for you outside the shop, what has happened that night for you to break things off with him?

Your ego was already severely bruised and telling him what happened wouldn’t make it hurt any less. Admitting that Dabi was right and you were wrong would not help your pride at all.

You knew something was off the moment Yamamoto’s voice got just a bit louder than usual after the third cup of wine hit his throat. You let it slide when he got a bit too handsy for your comfort, convincing yourself that it was the alcohol acting up. But you couldn’t pretend that you didn’t hear him vile words left his mouth as he had a hand still resting on your thigh like it was nothing.

“I have no idea how you put up working with that thing. Just seeing that monster’s face make me sick.”

“That person you called a ‘thing’ is my friend.” you tried to keep your composure but nothing could mask that churning in your stomach as the man sitting next to you laughed.

“Oh please, we both know that you only pretend to be his friend because that job pays well.”

He insulted your honor and values, but nothing could compare to the fury you felt at the way he talked about your friend like he was some dirt on the ground that he could step over. You didn’t look back as he yelled after you, storming out of the restaurant right after slapping that asshole across the face.

Dabi’s voice brought you back to reality from your reminiscence of that fail of a break up, “Call the people who are coming over today and tell them that I’m not feeling well.”

“What?” you whispered in disbelief, “We can’t just do that!”

Dabi snorted and forced the phone into your hand, “Of course we can. They’re the ones who needed me, not the other way round.”

“But-”

“Just do as I say,” he said impatiently but there was nothing but concern behind those glass-like eyes that were staring right through you, “what kind of boss would I be if I let you work when you look like this? People are gonna think that I mistreated you for fuck’s sake, we’re going for a drink.”

He sighed in relieve when he saw the faint smile on your face as you obliged his command.

Throughout the rest of the day, Dabi made it his mission that he would get your mind off that prick and he was having a hard time holding back a grin as your laughs echoed in the empty street. You hadn’t have so much fun in a very long time and it was definitely not something you expected to happen right after an ugly break up. It was only the two of you in the empty neighbourhood, you rolled your eyes when Dabi insisted that he would walk you back to your flat, completely oblivious to the fact that it was nothing but an excuse for him to spend more time with you. Only the moon watched on as the seer who knew everything realized he did the one thing he never foresee to ever happen. He fell head first in love with you before you even noticed that he was no longer joking when he brought up the possibility of you feeling the same. The self-doubt did not help when you brushed off each of his attempts at convincing you that what he saw would eventually come true with a laugh, that beautiful sound made his heart flutter and wrench all at the same time.

You stopped in front of a building and turned to face him with a bright smile that contrasted so drastically to the disheveled expression you had this morning. Dabi thought that perhaps, he was allowed to be proud of himself for once and took credit for the change.

“Thanks for today.” you said with your hand on his forearm and the contact was driving him insane. He had to use all of his self-control just to stop the urge to pull you towards him by the arm and close that painful distance between your bodies.

And that’s when he heard that voice screaming at that back of his head again. Those three words echoing through his brain as he greedily basked in the moment when your smile was his alone to see.

I love you.

I love you I love you-

“I love you.”

His heart stayed still as the screaming in his head escaped through his lips and it sank to the bottom of his stomach as your hand that was previously on his arm slowly retreated back. Your eyes were wide and your mouth parted slightly in shock, each part of his mind begging for you to say something.

Your voice broke as you tried to force out a laugh, “No you don’t-”

“Why is it so hard to believe?” Dabi could not control his frustration anymore and his heart cracked at the way you almost flinched at the raise of his voice, “what is so wrong about it that you try so hard to deny that I could be in love with you?”

You wanted to. You wanted to just believe in it and run into his arms, but it was all too much to take in right as you were hurt by someone else. You could hear voices at the back of your head too, and each of them was whispering things that made you fear things you shouldn’t.

You could feel your lips tremble as you used all of your might to pull yourself together, even when the man in front of you looked like he was so close to breaking down. “You know everything and I know nothing about you,” your throat tightened as you forced each word out of your shaking lips, “I’m just afraid of being thrown away, is that all too wrong?”

You could not bring yourself to look into his eyes, those hypnotizing orbs made of crystal that were filled to the brim with pain because of you. You could hear the glass crack. “You think I’ll do that to you?”

“I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry.

That one line burnt through his chest and made his ears sting, the dull ache all too much to handle.

You called in sick to work the next day.

And the day after that.

And the day after that.

It was a cowardly move and it made you feel miserable, but you would much rather shut yourself in than go and face Dabi like nothing happened when everything was different. You could not bear to imagine the way he would look at you, the way those eyes had looked at you when you were too occupied with someone else to notice. If escaping from reality meant that you could pretend like you did not caused his pain, you would defer every minute until you had no choice but to return to the real world.

But the world did not work that way.

You turned off the alarm, and you stilled got up at the exact time you normally did when you would go to work. You picked out the shirt that was in the same dark shade of purple as the ink he used in the shop you wore to work because he always said that it made you blend into the shop more, that you two matched. You brew two portions of coffee when you were living on your own because you brought coffee to work that one time and Dabi did not stop nagging you about it until you started bringing an extra flask for him every day since.

He was so printed into your life that you didn’t even realize how he left his shadow in every part of it until you had the need to stop thinking about him and failed.

Dear god, you missed that bastard so much.

Now you felt stupid, and you felt terrible for pushing him away all for nothing. Because it was Dabi we were talking about. Dabi, who was never wrong about anything. Dabi, who you gladly worked for the past 2 years and made it the happiest time of your life. Dabi, who annoyed you and made you laugh all at the same time. Dabi, who was more concerned about your health than you did most of the time. Dabi, who was the reason why you did not mind going to work every day at all. Dabi, who tried to warn you about someone who eventually hurt you before you even noticed the signs. Dabi, who noticed that you had been crying and forced you to take a day off. Dabi, who made you forget that you just had a breakup the day before because he was just that good. Dabi, who told you that he was in love with you and looked wrecked when you didn’t believe him.

Dabi, who maybe, just maybe you were in love with as well.

Dabi felt miserable. It was nothing new, but he felt even more miserable than he normally did so he was really wallowing in an inhumane amount of misery. You hadn’t shown up in days and he never knew how dysfunctional he was without you until now.

He missed you so god damn much.

He kept trying to tell himself that it was his shop and he would be fine, but everywhere he turned there was something that reminded him that you were here just a few days before. That plant you put beside the door because you said the shop looked like it was lifeless when you just started working here, the small Jack Skeleton poster on the wall that you got him as a gag gift last Christmas because “he reminded me of you”, that half-emptied cereal box in the cupboard that you forced him to keep because you were convinced that skipping breakfast was bad for his health. Everything in the shop was your as much as it was his, and they were all mocking him in the face at how lost he was without you around.

Dabi hated his powers, it was nothing more than a slap in the face that he had no control over his own life. If he had the choice, he would never use it again if it meant that he could finally enjoy life without that voice in his head telling him exactly what would happen before he even get to savor it just a little longer. But now, for the first time in a long while, he closed his eyes and wished for the picture in his head to be the same as the one he saw before. The all-knowing seer who snickered at those who believed in fate now begged for the vision in his head to be unchanged.

The vision was so real that he almost thought that you were actually standing there in front of him instead of some fake image in his head.

Please be real. Please, please, please be real.

“Hey.”

You had so many things you wanted to say to him. You kept practicing the speech inside of your head as you sprinted on the route you knew at the back of your head again and again but when you saw him, standing there with his eyes closed, even the voices in your mind went silent as it gone blank and the only thing you could barely utter was that one word.

“Hey.”

Dabi could feel the lump in his throat as he finally registered that it was all real and he did not made it all up because he went mad. There were so many things he wanted to say to you but he didn’t dare to say anything more than that, too afraid that if he said something wrong, you would disappear again.

“I’m sorry.”

The same words that pained him now brought him the smallest sense of relieve and you almost let out an indecent sob when you heard his reply.

“I missed you.”

And that was all it took for you to crash into him, wrapping him in a tight embrace. Dabi quickly wrapped one arm around your waist, the other brought his hand up to your head and threaded his fingers into your hair. He clutched you tightly in his arms like you would back away at any time if he didn’t hold onto you.

When you finally pulled back, you lost your breath at how close you were to him. You could stare right into his eyes. And those eyes, those eyes you would never grow tired of looking into.

You felt his hot breath fanning your lips as his face was only so little distance away from yours yet he didn’t lean in any further as if he was waiting for a sign. So you gave him one, and locked you lips on his as your hand reached for his chin, your thumb gently caressing the metal studs on the side of his face as he tugged on your bottom lip.

You were breathless when you pulled away, lips numb from the intimacy it just experienced mere seconds ago. As Dabi closed the distance once again, you could hear the smirk in his voice that made you want to punch him and kiss him all at the same time.

“Told you my predictions are never wrong.”

[ganymedesclock]

There’s so many interesting questions raised by Lace, though.

If we assume she’s the one who broke Hornet’s seal- which looks likely given the white fly that did so is the same as the ones that she’s ‘conducting’ when she talks to Hornet, and given that she knows Hornet arrived in a cage...

Her immediate willingness to end Hornet’s life to prevent her from reaching the top, even if she seems to bear Hornet little ill will / her saccharine trash talk doesn’t seem to be hiding genuine revulsion or hatred, would suggest she hardly did so for Hornet’s benefit.

So Lace is acting on, presumably, her own agenda here. The way she talks to Hornet certainly sounds like her decisions aren’t coming from anyone else’s, and musically, her being depicted as a conductor suggests her associates, as the demo mentioned she’s part of a group (presumably, Sharpe’s gang), might actually be subordinates who she is directing, much as she is those butterflies.

 Since a conductor is generally someone called upon to preside over a band with multiple individual players- but while they might all be looking at the sheet music, the conductor is the one they’re reading all their cues from. We don’t know if Sharpe et. al have overt musical motifs of their own, but, if Lace did free Hornet, that suggests a certain penchant for acting from afar by proxy- certainly the tactics of someone with subordinates and a sense of delegation.

But this all would seem to suggest Lace is in direct conflict with the Bell Cultists- who appear to be deeply entrenched in Pharloom, possibly being the soldiers of the citadel, and, thus, the kingdom. Since the bell cultists seemed to want to ferry Hornet all the way into Pharloom and right up to the top- the way her cage is positioned on the cart, she’s being presented like an offering, more a material good for delivery than a hostage or prisoner.

Lace makes it clear when she and Hornet meet face to face that she sees herself as sparing Hornet the agony of the top. To a certain degree, she seems to enjoy toying with Hornet- she’s gleeful when Hornet tells Lace to fight her- but she’s also actively saying that she thinks Hornet is better off dead than whatever fate the bell cultists seem to have intended her. Which would certainly explain the nature of Lace’s ‘help’ early on- she, didn’t exactly follow up once the cage fell to see if Hornet made it out, given she remarks on Hornet’s escape with surprise. Her objective there was to interrupt the delivery- make sure it didn’t reach its destination. Wherever else Hornet went was inconsequential to Lace, it seems.

While Lace in some ways seems a very deliberate echo of where Hornet was in the previous game- 

Right down to, if we presume Deep Docks is the second area unlocked after the Moss Grotto, then, Lace being the boss of Deep Docks would line up with Hornet being introduced as the boss of Greenpath, the second area of Hollow Knight-

-this certainly suggests she’s a bit more proactive. Hornet only attacked Ghost because she caught sight of them following her, and led them to an arena of her choosing to confront them and defeat them. Her only real conversation in the matter is to make her judgment of the situation clear, and then go for the kill.

Lace, conversely, has a larger game plan and the majority of her eye is on that. At this point, she’s not really considering Hornet a piece on the board, it seems- just an obstruction to remove. That’s probably going to change given Hornet thwarted her assassination attempt. But she’s proactive in setting this situation up- she’s unsurprised when Hornet arrives at the Deep Docks stage, which could suggest Lace was waiting for her, or it could suggest that Lace is simply not easily ruffled by new developments.

Either way, Lace seems like she’s trying to manipulate the situation a great deal, and she’s much more focused on some other enemy. Hornet at this point matters to her in the sense of making sure her enemy doesn’t get Hornet- she’s not really bothering to think that much about what Hornet herself wants, except a sort of backhanded insinuation that Hornet very much does not want the kingdom’s peak.

We really don’t know who’s up at the Citadel. Presumably, the ruler of the kingdom- possibly the “heart” spoken of in the poem, but I would presume not, because they hardly seem “bound in slumber and servitude” if they’re demanding timed deliveries of metal, coal, and the fealty of all of their workers. If they’re the one whose figurative voice is ringing through the endless, endless bells of the kingdom, then they have immense power here.

On the other hand, if they’re also driving the entire kingdom towards an objective, they may indeed be bound one way or another, and are actively working towards their freedom, the ‘waking’ spoken of in the poem.

Either way, someone in Pharloom has an enormous amount of power, is consuming the labor of countless subordinates, likely the nexus of the haunting that’s overtaken the kingdom since it’s working so charmingly in their favor. (Forge Daughter noting that all of her colleagues have lost themselves- but are still doing their jobs perfectly)

And Lace seems to be fighting that individual. Which is, interesting because much as Hornet doesn’t like Lace at this point, that dislike is basically reactionary. Hornet was pretty prickly and bellicose in Hollow Knight, and Silksong is exploring a whole new dimension on that- it’s pretty clear Hornet hates the idea of being threatened, bullied, or pressed into anything. She retaliates in an extremely destructive manner against the caravan as soon as she’s able to, attempts to threaten the Church Keeper on the idea that the other might be a threat even if Hornet can barely stand at the moment- and her dialogue towards Lace furthers this.

Lace threatened her, and Hornet outright says, “if you are my enemy,” to quit dancing around the point and put that shiny weapon of hers to use. Her only enmity towards Lace is just, “if you mean me badly, then act on it. if you don’t, don’t talk like you do.”

Which is one big reason I don’t think they’re going to stay enemies. Lace doesn’t hate Hornet because she doesn’t really care about Hornet. The only real opinion she has so far is that she likes the cut of Hornet’s jib. This seems to be a move Lace is making against a different opponent, where their actions mean everything to her, and Hornet’s actions haven’t really distinguished themselves yet.

Hornet doesn’t like Lace because Lace threatened her, and Hornet is obstinate in the face of threats, or perceived threats, or anything that seems like it might be dangerous. Honestly it just seems like Hornet is the equivalent of an angry cat. Nobody gets to touch her if they want to keep their fingers attached, unless she has personally decided it’s okay, and if you even come near her when she hasn’t signed off on it you’re on thin fuckin’ ice.

And ultimately, I feel like just from what we know tenuously about Lace and her enigmatic enemy, Hornet’s likelier to take Lace’s side than the others’. Hornet is the last person who’d sign off on something like Pharloom’s haunting and the way it appears to seize and overwrite the personalities of its afflicted. This is too much like the plague, that Hornet was actively willing to give her own life in the service of stopping.

Lace isn’t exactly spotless, here, but, she hasn’t crossed any lines Hornet herself has proven willing to cross in terms of a worthy cause. Hornet was willing to murder one of her half-siblings in cold blood, even when she finds the vessels’ plight upsetting and not something they deserve (she calls Hollow “birth-cursed”) just to avoid Ghost potentially unsealing the Radiance. So with a broader understanding, I don’t think Hornet would begrudge Lace trying to run her through.

But like... if Lace hates, presumably, Pharloom’s royalty, or whoever else is up there at the Citadel, then why? The obvious answer is fixing the haunting, but, if it’s as easy as just getting the drop on her enemy and making with the stabbing, Lace probably wouldn’t hesitate. It’s entirely likely, given what of the game’s themes have been revealed to us, that Lace is herself bound to a role in some way, which might explain why, unlike the very direct Hornet, Lace is a lot more cloak and dagger about her operations- she has no problem being candid to Hornet, because she was under the impression Hornet wouldn’t survive the conversation, and, besides which, a foreigner probably isn’t going to have the context to blab Lace’s movements to the right person to get Lace in trouble.

This is a lot of conjecture, obviously, but, that’s just one potential angle to take to this. What’s up with you, Lace. 

[cheshirebandit]

Raffle winner post!:

There may not be a common beauty standard in the vastness of space, but when you grew up with it on earth, they tended to stick with you. No matter if the other worldly beings you’d seen would make nightmares, or dreams, seem like a tame reality. The fact they thought the same one would think they would be null and void! Two eyes, two arms, two legs, even that little amount of normality was questionable. Smooth skin? A foreign concept to those with scales. Pale pasty or rich dark flesh colors? To things with feathers, it seemed an atrocity, weren't they cold…all bare to the elements like that? With the standard of said beauty so shifted, wronged, different, you’d so really think it was all tossed out the window! No.As the softer than average human looked at herself in the mirror she just...saw all that was wrong. ‘Wrong’ some people would emphasize the quotes. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Of taste there can be no dispute. All those things, Never sunk in with everyone, even when they should. When her hands ran across her stomach, the lines people compared to flowers, stripes, and other imaginative things...all she saw was the ‘truth’. The ‘shame’ instilled in her too long ago to believe the nice things others tried to say. The tight outfits her love had her in most of the time had not helped, not in the least. They were by no means uncomfortable but when she caught glances of herself in reflective things...it ruined it all. Ruined the fun, the focus, or anything else she was trying to do at the time.

“Why can’t you just be a little smaller...” Her hands cupped on her bulging tummy, hating the way it was able to be held on it own and smushed in her hands. Her love, the one who adored all the tight outfits, listened from a door he’d cracked open just a few moments ago. At first when he heard her talking to herself he wanted to pop in all shocking and give her a playful freight. Once he heard all the words tumbling from her lips...his intents changed. This was valuable and terrible information. He knew she was insecure, it was very obvious when you spent more than a few minutes with her just by how she avoided mirrors. But this? The barrage of...insults once could hurl at themselves should never be so...heartfelt. People were entitled to their opinions, yes, even about themselves,this was upsetting him! This was not an opinion she should be entitled to. He loved her and nothing, no one he loved should be berated! Even by themselves! What a strange feeling! To be so angry and yet sad for the same person. To want to protect someone from themselves so urgently. Lotor was sure this made him a failure, something he couldn’t and wouldn’t stand for. He failed to make her feel loved. It wasn’t true, but in his mind the thought echoed as fact. Having to be a bit of the best of anything this wasn’t going to stand, period. His looming was going to come to an end very soon.

“And, you, why can’t you be-” She had been looking at her thighs, so ready to belittle them as well. Her attention was forced to the door as she was interrupted by it being more or less slammed open. Upset was written all over his face, it wasn’t hidden behind anything else like he tended to do. A subtle thing that proved their closeness. a closeness he felt lacked given her hidden away actions taking place right now.

“That’s enough!” Lotor had heard his share, in abundance. It was an earful from the first glance, he wasn’t going to take more. Even if these things weren’t intended for him, or anyone, to hear. the invasion of privacy however was the last thing on anyone's mind with the physical intrusion.

“Where you-” An obvious question that wasn't even allowed to be finish.

“Yes! I was eavesdropping. I did not like what I was hearing.” He wasn’t ashamed of it by any means, in fact he almost felt he had the right to, but that wasn't the point right now.

“You can’t talk to yourself this way, it isn’t true for one, and furthermore, I won’t stand for it.” He could see she was bewildered by the outburst. This wasn’t something she had planned to deal with since this sort of self hate wasn’t a public affair.

“If you don’t show your body the love it deserves, I will!” It was a type of stubbornness that was at least born from love and kindness.

There was no further corrections, as soon hands on her skin to fulfill his words. Locating the edges of clothing, forcing his hands past them. It wasn't like they were able to put up much of a fight, not with his current tenacity. If he so wished he could tear what little she had left on, but that wasn't what he aimed for. Any roughness didn't need to take place here, no, this was a time for tenderness. A time for reassurances. A time that she could enjoy the kisses he would be placing on the skin she tried to shame just moments ago. He heard her protests, trying to ask what he thought he was doing, why he had been watching, all those reasonable things. Still, they went unheeded. When her back hit the bed she relented any argument, half hearted or not, they were being proved futile.

“I can’t stand to see you treating yourself this way.” It wasn't tolerable. The large hands ran over her frame, beginning to slide over her stomach, ignoring the twitch of discomfort until it disappeared into a lax posture. Which is what he was waiting for, now starting to plant kisses on her throat, across her soft shoulders, the collar bones, anywhere he could lead the trail of love. Before she could get used to it, he pawed at one of her breasts, earning such a sharp gasp he just had to smirk, not breaking his lips from making contact with her skin.

The sudden chill that took her skin was due to her shirt being lifted just above her chest, where his kisses continued, along with bites making their way into onto her skin. It wasn't shocking, that was for sure he was really taking a path she was familiar with. The teeth made a war path downward, the curve of her breasts being painted in red markings that made her his. She always, forever, was, but a reminded never hurt anyone, did it? Though his teeth became all the more alarming when his lips attached to a nipple, sucking for now, but she knew soon it would turn to a bite, a pull, making her back arch involuntarily even when she knew it was coming. The entire time of his sucking his hands trailed on her plump waist, holding and caressing the parts she disdained with care. They were worthy of love, as were all of her.

“Well, well, maybe this will teach you to treat yourself better.” Or get her another way to ask for lovens.

“I’m not so sure about that.” It wasn't her being a smartass, and it wasn't about her denying him. Which she’d yet to do beyond her initial confusion.

“No? I must not be doing a good enough job then.”  She was only pushing him to do more and more. His mouth once more progressed downward, placing pecks to her soft stomach, still making those red markings from the gentle nips of teeth as he went.

“I can’t imagine not adoring every part of you.” His normal tone wasn’t always so sweet, in fact there used to be a time not so long ago when the two didn’t exchange glances, even in extended presence. A time that he didn’t think of often anymore, as it didn’t seem worth thinking about.

“Every single inch is just so….supple.” He wasn’t incorrect. Lotor’s lips moved to the lines that faded in and out of flesh colors. Stretch marks, he thought she called them, but he didn’t care. It was an explanation as to why they were there. By no means did it sound derogatory.

“I know, but-” She went to argue finally, and he was having none of it. The cut off was brisk.

“Ah, ah, ah. None of that.” His hands glided down to her hips, lifting her closer to his face without her effort, as he enjoyed the tremble of her uncertainty.

“I told you, if you won’t love your body, I’ll just have to do it. Why not? I do everything else around here.” A joke mixed in to change her tone again. There was no need to worry. No need to hate the vessel she resided in. He found it enchanting, humans were so fragile, her more so next to him. Another reason he was so entranced with her, even before they had showed mutual interest in one another.

“The more you argue, the more I’ll have to do it...of course I might just do it anyway.” Oh no, that smirk, dastardly, and a warning.

@annchan-17

[waldeinnsamkeit]

Information

Name: Anton Leopold

Nationality: Greek/Austrian-Hungarian

Age: 27

Sexuality: Homosexual

House: Habsburg-Lorraine

Hometown: Vienna, Austria

Place of Residence: The Castle

Occupation: Trainer

Face Claim: Jack Falahee

Biography

The past...

Like any heir to the throne, Anton was seen by many outside the family as lucky. He got everything and anything he wanted. He was well taken care of by both of his parents and each and every staff in the household. Although, Anton would say he didn’t feel loved. He was produced out of necessity. The Habsurg clan had a strict rule that only the male legitimate son of the reigning ruler could take on the throne when the time comes. And ironically enough, a male Habsurg was never easy to produce. Anton was the miracle child. The one who would will lead the clan one day and take care of the kingdom. Anton, more than anything, was the family’s most priced possession.

Anton minded this a lot. He felt the pressure the family had put onto him even at a very young age. It made making friends never easy. He didn’t have any kids to play with in the first place. His time was devoted to learning and refining his skills as a young prince. And the only sibling he had, Ariadne who was a few years older than him, didn’t like him. He didn’t know this of course but he felt she was distant. He persisted following her around anyway. He admired her because she did things he could never do. She defied their parents. She ate what she wanted, played when she wanted, and even did dangerous things at times. Anton might’ve appeared as the annoying little brother to Ariadne but he meant no harm. For the most part, he stood around far away from his sister just watching and eventually, Ariadne didn’t mind him hanging around. It could be that curious look on his face or the sad twinkle in his eyes that made Ariadne soft for Anton- whatever it was, it worked.

Anton and Ariadne became inseparable. She was the rebel and he was her follower. Anton didn’t mind. He was just glad he had someone to play with. She was someone to talk with and in time, Anton found himself pouring his thoughts and emotion into his sister. She became his support. The one that listened to him when no one else did. She was his voice who often said what he couldn’t say about the people who run him, “They can go fuck themselves,” which they’d follow with a giggling fit. She was his rock. And then one day, she was gone.

It had been years since Ariadne packed up and leave. No note, no goodbyes. Anton was beyond hurt. He felt betrayed. He felt abandoned. He felt stupid thinking Ariadne actually cared about him. Nobody did. He was just a body, a vessel that would carry their family’s legacy. No one cared about who he was in the inside. He thought Ariadne did but obviously she didn’t when she didn’t even bother to tell him she’s leaving.

Anton lost all spark since then. He lived his life in monotone, just like he did before he and Ariadne became friends. He lost interest in a lot of things and followed any instruction without qualms. He was once again the perfect prince. And then one day he was introduced to a new page who he barely noticed until he found himself confiding in him just like he did with Ariadne. He felt that rush of pain being reminded what he once had with his sister and he broke down in front of Erwin. The page was quiet for the most part. Never offered any thoughts or opinion whenever he spoke his thoughts which he found alright. Comforting, even. After all, he wasn’t looking to connect as doing so only will disappoint him, based on his past experience. When Erwin started to open up, Anton was alarmed. He felt that rush of excitement having someone to talk to, the way he felt that rush of pain when he remembered his sister… He cautioned himself; warned himself about Erwin and whatever agenda the young page had. But the strong force that drew him to the page was strong, unbearable almost that he finally gave in, accepting the friendship. It didn’t take long before they sharing thoughts, opinions. He once again laughed, the distant look in his eyes replaced with a happy glitter.

When Erwin confessed about being gay and wanting him, he felt relieved. It was one thing he never shared with anybody else aside from his sister of course and now the person who came to save him from insanity wanted the same thing. They were sharing his bed right after then. Every night when the house sleeps, Erwin would crawl next to him and they’d explore and learn together as lovers. They were happy. Until his parents found out what truly was going on. His parents were easily disappointed especially by his sister. They always told him he was the future king therefore he can never make mistakes. An idea which he believed was entirely bullshit [and with thoughts as such, he’d hear his sister’s laughter in the distance, cheering him on.] His parents fired Erwin then announced that he was leaving to Hohenzollern as soon as possible. He was devastated. He knew what went on in Hohenzollern and he didn’t like the place, not even a bit. He had no chance to tell Erwin goodbye. He was immediately flown to Germany, meeting the powerful Queen Verena before he was assigned to a Trainer, an older man who was known to inflict pain to his tribute, a form of his own twisted education…

It has been five years since Anton came to Hohenzollern and became one of Queen Verena’s Tributes. Two years and he was sent back home to his own kingdom where he trained for the throne but before taking over, he once again had to visit Hohenzollern and this time, as a Trainer...

Personality

Five years ago, Anton was a quiet young man who kept to himself. He was never as outgoing and spontaneous as his older sister who did whatever she wanted. Nothing much changed after his last visit in Hohenzollern. Anton matured, became more focused and took his job as the throne’s heir seriously. Since he lost his sister’s company and his first love Erwin, he also lost his spark... He is loyal and obedient, among the traits his time in Hohenzollern cultivated. But are they enough to make him an effective Trainer?

Important Connections

To be added.

[pikkish-moved]

Growing in Other Directions

In which the Koppaiates encounter a new species

Today, the Koppaiates were returning to the Garden of Hope. There was still some fruit to be gathered there, and this time, returning with Captain Charlie, they were sure they could add to their juice supply exponentially, and maybe even find some hint to the cosmic drive key’s whereabouts.

Alph was, as usual, at the helm of the Drake, scoping out the best landing place. Thus far, it seemed such a spot was the very same place he had landed the ship when first seeking out Brittany. Then, he hadn’t so much been looking for a good landing spot, but merely somewhere close to her signal.

But, now, coincidentally, it seemed that was the best landing spot anyway.

Alph panned over the map onscreen one more time, just to be sure. No better landing spot caught his eye, but something else certainly did grab his attention, something he hadn’t really paid attention to on his previous scans of the topography. The image was small on the Drake’s map, nestled under some tall foliage in the northern part of the Garden, but the longer Alph looked at it, the more certain he was that he knew the familiar shape. Still, the unlikelyhood of it being what he thought was so great, he couldn’t be entirely sure.

“H-hey, um… Captain Charlie?” Alph called, seeking a second opinion. He pointed to the map as Charlie approached. “What do you think that looks like?”

Charlie leaned in, his brow furrowing as he looked at it. After a moment, the sudden widening of his eyes, the sharp hiss of breath between his teeth was all the signal that was needed to tell he had come to the same conclusion as Alph. “I… I would say it’s a spaceship.”

“A spaceship?” Brittany asked from across the room, where she was still pulling on her suit. “Another one? Did someone get here before us?”

“Seems that way,” Charlie responded. “Or, at least, around the same time as us.”

Alph looked to the captain. “Should I land the Drake nearby?”

Charlie nodded. “We might as well introduce ourselves, and try to make a good impression.”

Brittany muttered something under her breath about how it shouldn’t be Charlie to make first contact if they were going for a good impression, then, but it wasn’t quite loud enough to reach the other two’s ears.

✿✿✿

Alph landed the Drake a safe distance away from the other ship, and after calling out a band of pikmin, the trio made their way towards the other ship.

But as they neared it, it quickly became clear something was wrong. The ship was nose-down in the ground, its hull scorched and stripped, the interior of a ship clearly exposed in some places. Wreckage was strewn about all across the ground, and there was a trench cut in a long line where the ship must have impacted the ground and then slid.

Worst of all, the pikmin seemed nervous. They were unnaturally quiet, not keeping up their usual enthusiastic chatter and sticking close together.

And as the Koppaiates approached the wreck, their pace slowed considerably.

Eventually, Alph took the lead. As the engineer of the crew, he could tell a lot about the ship from a single look that the others couldn’t, and some of his nervousness was dampened by his curiosity in the alien vessel.

“It… looks Hocotatian-made, I think,” he relayed to his companions. “An older one, too; it’s still got the whole ‘aerodynamic rocket’ design. Looks like… I think it’s a deep-space freighter, probably a single passenger ship. The crash is… it must have hit the ground from freefall, probably from the upper atmosphere, though… I think it’s probably been here a long time. Most of the shielding is gone. Looks like a lot of the equipment is missing, too, though-“

Alph froze as there was a crunch underfoot. Looking down, he saw something glinting in the mossy ground.

“Alph?” Brittany asked as she and Charlie came to stand beside him.

Alph didn’t answer, just knelt down, looking for whatever he had stepped on. After a moment, he came up with a clear shard of-...

...Oh.

“Is that glass?” Charlie asked.

“No,” Alph said quietly, turning the shard over in his gloved hands, careful to not let the sharp edges cut his suit. “It’s polycarbonate.” He didn’t look up to meet his crewmates’ blank looks, instead reaching down to unearth more pieces. “There’s-... probably more of it nearby, too. I don’t think-... Whoever it was, they would’ve had to land pretty hard for-... for their helmet to shatter this badly.”

There was a long moment of silence as his companions processed what he had just said.

Finally, “Are you sure that’s what it is?” The quiet plea that Alph was wrong was still audible in Brittany’s voice. She may not have had the greatest opinions of people in general, but that didn’t mean she wanted to find some poor person dead of oxygen poisoning.

Unfortunately, Alph was certain. “Yeah. Same stuff our helmets are made of.”

For a good long moment, there was silence among the Koppaiates.

Then, looking over his shoulder at the wreck, Charlie said, “We should check the crash.”

Both Alph and Brittany recoiled at the suggestion. The very thought of setting foot in a derelict ship that had crashed there long ago, possibly still with the remains of some crew…

But Captain Charlie was a veteran space ranger. This wasn’t the first, nor the worst crash he had ever seen, and, he added, everything had to be inspected in case any of it could be if use. They were in a hostile environment, and everything that could provide them with an edge was to be claimed.

“Besides,” he added in a slightly more sympathetic voice, “we ought to see if they left any sort of log, or journal. To try to figure out who they were, and… Well. I can tell you from experience, it’s better to know the fate of a loved one than to be left wondering forever.”

Though Alph and Brittany hated the thought of being such bearers of bad news, they couldn’t argue with that, and with significantly lower spirits, they followed after Captain Charlie towards the crashed ship.

✿✿✿

Captain Olimar had, in fact, left a voyage log.

On arriving at the derelict ship, the lettering “S. S. DOLPHIN” still faintly visible on its scorched, scraped hull, the trio of Koppaiates had left their group of nervous pikmin to board the ship. Once inside the small main bridge, Alph had found the main computer to, surprisingly, still be functional. He had navigated to the captain’s log file. Inside, there were two folders, one marked “notes,” and  the other “logs.” Inside the logs folder, there were a mere twenty nine entries.

At Charlie’s quiet direction, Alph opened the final log entry.

“Entry 29”

“Tomorrow, is the day my life-support system fails. If I do not recover all my parts, I have no choice but to try to blast off. Missing a few parts may not affect my attempts to return to Hocotate...but then again, it may. At any rate, I must try to recover the remaining parts tomorrow."

“I... feel so very tired.”

“That… doesn’t tell us a whole lot about them,” Brittany murmured. “Except maybe they were a Hocotatian.”

Biting his lip, Alph selected a different log.

“Entry 14”

“Looking from this planet into the skies above, I see the pale white moon floating overhead. It brings to mind memories of the moon from back home. I bet that even now my wife and children are sitting at home, gazing up at our pale red moon... Hang on, dear ones! Your Olimar will return some day!”

In that moment, all three Koppaiates felt something of the same grief. It was not to be so; Captain Olimar had perished, and his family would never see him again.

Almost out of a sense of duty, then, Charlie took over the computer terminal, and opened the first log. And from there, they read, from the beginning, the final trials of Captain Olimar.

They read his accounts of his crash landing the first time, to awaken on a strange planet, his ship broken and incapable of flight. Of how he discovered the pikmin, and with their help, he recovered his ship’s engine, and at least managed to reach the relative safety of low orbit for the night.

How he had a mere thirty days of life support battery to recover all his ship’s missing pieces and escape the planet.

They read his discovery of yellow and blue pikmin, of his valiant battles with the indigenous monsters of the planet to recover the pieces of his ship.

Of his hope on the recovery of every ship part, and his despondency on the days without success.

And they read of his longing for home, of his love for his wife and children, as he watched himself growing thinner in the mirror and only thought of the worry his absence was causing his family.

When they had finished reading Captain Olimar’s voyage log, they sat for a moment, in silence.

“I… suppose we’ll have to find his family when we get back,” Alph eventually said in a whisper, barely meeting his crewmates’ eyes.

Charlie just nodded in solemn agreement. There was another long moment of silence.

Finally, Captain Charlie turned away from the computer. “At any rate, we’re wasting time here. We are on a mission, after all.” Being a space ranger in the war, he had seen his fair share of death, and more than once had to postpone mourning for the sake of work.

Alph and Brittany quietly agreed, and turned to follow Charlie out of the ship. But when they got there, they found the pikmin they had left were not waiting patiently for their return. In fact, the entire group was marching away, as if led by one of the Koppaiates themselves.

Or… maybe a new type of pikmin? There was, at the front of the crew, a bright red flower that rose a bit higher than all the others- about the height that the antenna of one of the Koppaiates’ helmets rose.

Regardless, whoever it was, they were leading off one hundred pikmin, possibly into danger.

Running forward, closely followed by Alph and Brittany, Charlie let out a sharp blast on his whistle, calling for the pikmin to stop. The pikmin, being very well tuned to the more urgent tone of the whistle, froze, and disbanded, leaving the would-be leader alone in front of the charging Koppaiates.

All three of them quickly slid to a halt, however, on seeing the figure in front of them.

For he stood with the same confidence and determination they had come to expect of him, and though his suit was dirty and torn, and his face smeared with mud, and his helmet long gone, swapped for a stem and flower, there was no mistaking it.

Standing before them, pikmin gathered about him and looking to him for instruction, was the very same recently deceased Captain Olimar.

[avehi-the-adamant]

Coming Home

Set following the Fall of the Lich King, but before the Cataclysm

~*~

The mist around the Death Knight seemed to freeze to her plated armor, as Avehi stepped off the ship and onto the dock. It had been well over a year since she’d set hoof on the Azure Isles; last time she was here, she was saying goodbye to her friends before setting off to join with the Alliance. Much had changed since then. The war in Outland was won. The Draenei had earned their place in the Alliance.

She had died.

That fact cut through her like a chilled wind. She felt so empty now. A hollow husk of her former self.

After Outland, she joined a group of human Paladins - the Argent Dawn - in cleansing their ancestral home of Lordaeron of a foul presence. She’d never come across the undead before… but the Light would surely cleanse their blighted presence. The humans had done much for the Draenei people… a Vindicator like her was honor-bound to return the favor.

She lent her strength to their cause, and fought hard against the Scourge presence. But ultimately, this strange and foreign enemy proved to be her end. She fell by their fetid claws, left to be consumed by their endless, mindless, aberrant hordes. The last memory she had of her life was that terrifying image; being overrun. Being consumed. Then, only darkness.

It wouldn’t last; her eyes opened again some time later in the heart of the necropolis. She had been robbed of her peaceful afterlife. Denied the glory of joining with the Light. No… instead she became a slave to the very darkness that had taken her life - and so much more after that.

She shivered, shaking her head at the thought as she pressed onward. She pulled her dark hood over her head, further hiding her shame as she entered the vibrant and radiant halls of the Exodar. It was brighter than she remembered it; blindingly so. Her icy gaze narrowed as she progressed through the luminous halls. She could feel the radiance of the Naaru, dwelling within the very heart of the crashed vessel that had become their home. It was different now, though - before, a Naaru’s presence filled her with blissful calm. Now, she felt it like a fire, burning at her from the outside, rather than from within. It made her feel sick. Tired. Fatigued. Like she’d stood out in the heat too long. She was well out of her element here… she couldn’t stay.

Why had she even returned at all?

Rising as one of the Scourge’s Death Knights was surreal. She remembered her past, yet at the time it didn’t matter. All that mattered to her for a time was destroying the living - bringing down the Scarlet Crusade which threatened her Master - the Lich King - and his dark forces. She adapted well to combat, even in this new form. Her Vindicator training already taught her how to tap into power beyond the physical; though now, rather than calling on the Light, she called on something much more abhorrent. She was deadly on the battlefield, cutting down Scarlet after Scarlet in a vicious slaughtering. She found herself enjoying the carnage, reveling in the bloodshed. This was her purpose now, and she embraced it fully.

For a time.

She departed the Exodar as quickly as she’d arrived, barely making it down the ramp before she turned back. It was too much… physically, and emotionally. She remembered it with such fondness; now, it only filled her with dread. The darkness within her could not abide so close to such holiness. It hurt her form. It hurt her soul. She hung her hooded head in immeasurable sorrow as she emerged from the ship, back out into the misty pines of Azuremyst. She could feel onlookers gazing at her - she must’ve stuck out like a sore thumb to them in such a place. Her chilling gaze caught sight of a fisherman; he turned from her quickly and hastily without a word. Another glance, and she beheld a woman and her child. The woman gripped her youngling closer, pulling him along expediently away from Avehi. She couldn’t imagine they knew what she was… only acted on the fear of uncertainty. If only they knew…

The Scourge’s Champion.

With the Scarlet Crusade routed, and the Plaguelands claimed for her dark Master, she joined her brothers and sisters in undeath as they set their sights on their next target - Light’s Hope Chapel. The memory of that place resonated deeper with her than previous memories. It was jarring to see such a hallowed place again… from the other side of the war which raged there. Comrades she’d come to know from the Argent Dawn now stood before her, weapons drawn in defense of their holiest of landmarks. She stood in opposition of them - humans, dwarves, elves… people she’d considered friends, in life. It shocked her to her core to see them glaring her way. Looking at her as if she were their hated enemy… because she was now. The viciousness and ruthlessness with which she’d conquered the Scarlet Crusade left her; how could she raise her weapon to her friends in the Argent Dawn? Her eyes had opened now, and she realized what she was. As the forces clashed, she defended herself… but did nothing else to antagonize or bring harm to her Argent friends. They lost that battle… but she’d won something much more important. She remembered who she was in life. What she was in life. Her goals, her ambitions… her purpose renewed. She laid down her arms with other Death Knights who had had similar revelations about themselves. She joined with the newly founded Ebon Blade, and swore vengeance on the dark Master who had taken everything from her.

She couldn’t let that happen to anyone else.

Her eyes narrowed as they settled on another Draenei - a shamanism practitioner, by the looks of him. She set aside her discomfort for the moment, and stopped him on the path. Perhaps he could help her find who she had come looking for here…

“You, Brother.” she said shortly - voice distorted. “You are a shaman?”

“--Ah, uhh…” The Draenei froze in place, scared and confused. “Y-Yes…”

“Do you know a fellow shaman called Mierne?” Avehi asked.

“M-Mierne? I know of her, yeah… they say she lives along the eastern coast of Bloodmyst.” he replied, timidly. “Why?”

Avehi didn’t reply; she had learned what she needed from him. Without another word, she brushed past him, and headed towards the northern isle. Azuremyst was populated by her people, but Bloodmyst had only one settlement. It was much more hostile up on the northern isle; between the infected, agitated wildlife and the invasive and relentless Naga, it was far less hospitable than the relatively tranquil Azuremyst. Strangely, such a place seemed well-suited for Mierne. She’d never been the sort to conform to comforts. She carved her own path. Avehi remembered meeting her years ago in Zangarmarsh. Despite the Draenei settling in Telredor, Mierne had set up her own place to live out among the Krokul - the Broken. The opinions of her peers didn’t matter to her. She did what was needed, and helped those who weren’t able to help themselves. It had impressed Avehi so, and led to a firm friendship between the two of them.

That friendship was why Avehi had returned to this place. If anyone could understand her as she was now, it was Mierne.

~*~

The shaman sat on a cliff overlooking the sea. She had set up her crude, but functional hut hidden in the woods on the southwest side of Bloodmist. Despite her people’s best efforts, the wildlife was still deeply affected by the Exodar’s crash. Mierne has made it her own personal mission to help stabilize and heal the land with the spiritual gifts the elements granted her. It was an uphill battle, but bit by bit, progress was being made.

It wasn’t easy living, but it was her way. Mierne has always preferred solitude, preferring the comforts of the natural world to the metallic and crystalline structures of the Exodar. She would visit on occasion, to give reports and personal visits to a friend, but her heart was wild. Untamed.

As she sat in quiet meditation, her tail twitched as one of her alarm totems was set off. Someone was nearby. She opened her eyes and pressed her hand to the ground. It wasn’t an animal… it didn’t even have a pulse. Arcs of electricity sparked over her form as she stood. However, she didn’t remain standing for long, before her form shifted to that of a slightly transparent wolf.

She took off into the woods, towards the Forsaken that dared intrude on this land.

~*~

The Naga’s blood began to gurgle in their hollow throat, as Avehi pulled her blade from it. She kicked the last of the slimy fish-beings over, before stepping up to the water to cleanse their viscous blood from her runeblade. She frowned at the weapon - it wasn’t one she used in life. No, in life, she used a blessed crystalline hammer… a vessel of the Light. She scowled as the runes along the blade’s surface illuminated - the blood she’d shed excited the unholy sigils, coaxing them to life with satisfied hissing whispers.

She hated this blade. She wondered why she even carried it still. It was a gift once. A gift from her Dark Master. But now, it felt more like a curse… the blade shared in her hunger for blood. A hunger she had to sate time after time. These Naga sufficed for now, but the blade would hunger again soon. She grew tired of feeding it. Tired of sustaining such a dark relic through her carnage. She suddenly felt sickened by the very sight of it - the runes pulsing, like low, silent laughter. She hated this blade!

CRACK!

In an angered fit, she gripped the blade’s tip and hilt, and brought it down over her plated knee. There was an ethereal scream as the runes shattered! The blade itself fractured, cracks sprawling like veins from the impact site. She growled, baring her teeth at the inanimate, broken weapon. With a heave, she tossed it into the sea to be consumed by the waves.

This visit was to look forward. Not back.

Her hand oozed with dark blood - a parting gift from the blade. He grunted as she knelt down, to dip her hand in the water and let the waves wash the blood away. A sigh… what did it matter? Discarding the blade didn’t change what she was. What she’d become. She felt better… but only for a moment. Now, she felt alone. Lost. She sat back from her kneel, simply sitting on the beach as the waves crept up her legs… then receded. Again, in steady rhythm. She closed her eyes, and listened to the waves break over her hooves and plated legs. It was soothing, helping her calm her troubled, racing mind.

Her search could wait a moment or two.

Mierne’s ears pinned back as she heard a scream. It didn’t come from any living creature she knew. It wasn’t natural. She stifled a growl as she silently made her way onto the beach, surveying the damage. Naga bodies lay dead, littering the shoreline with their blood. The wolf paid them little mind. They were a nuisance, like the murlocs, fine in small numbers, but left to multiply, they became invasive and a danger to everything around them.

She kept her guard up as she padded over to the one that had caused the carnage -the undead-. For a moment she wondered if it was still ‘living’ as it kneeled perfectly still in the water. Her instinct had been to attack and chase the creature from the isle, but if it was injured or near death.

She shifted into her natural form as she mentally called to the elements. Gathering storm clouds above them. She drew the silver hammer that had been strapped to her side.

“Two choices,” she spoke in common with a heavy Draenei accent, “You leave, or I put you at peace, once and for all.”

Avehi froze; she recognized that voice! Her search ended much earlier than she anticipated! Oh, how she wanted to spring up, and rush into her old friend’s arms… but given the tone of her voice, and the thundering clouds she’d conjured overhead, it was clear Mierne didn’t recognize Avehi.

How could she, anyway? Avehi looked down at herself - her dark, frayed, bloodstained Ebon Blade robes. The hood which covered her hair and obscured her horns… but deeper than her appearance, Avehi knew her aura had changed significantly - something a seer like Mierne would read easily enough. Even in that way, she was disguised, unfamiliar to her dear friend. It hurt to think how different she was now. She closed her eyes, and sighed.

“... I am not here seeking trouble.” she stated, in her native Draenic. “Nor peace.”

She stood slowly, as the water crashed over her lap one final time. Deliberately and calmly, she reached up and pulled her hood back as she turned to face Mierne. She stared at the shaman with icy blue eyes - screaming silently in pain and sorrow. If they could well up with tears, they might’ve in that moment… even if they’d only freeze to her face as a result. She frowned deeply, expression heavy with anguish. She wasn’t the jovial Vindicator she was in life - inside, or out. No wonder Mierne didn’t recognize her...

“I’m here seeking an old friend.”

Mierne’s snarl vanished as the undead filth removed its hood to show a familiar face. Her eyes widened, as though she were looking at a ghost. In a way, she was.

“...A… Avehi…” the name came out in almost a hush, unable to believe what her eyes as elemental senses fed her.

Her dear friend in the shape of an animated corpse. There was no mistaking the aura of undeath, the still, unbreathing chest, the lichfire blue eyes, the pale skin… there was no mistaking what she had become. A fate worse than death, some would say…

She dropped her hammer in the sand as she brought a hand up over her mouth as she found herself unable to do anything else but stare. Tears stung her eyes. Mierne had lost many dear friends over her long life, but losing Avehi had been one of the hardest deaths to swallow. She still hadn’t fully recovered…

“I…” she managed, swallowing down the lump in her throat, “...never thought I would see you again.”

She opened up her arms to the younger Draenei… now frozen in her youth… beckoning the Death Knight over like a mother would a lost child.

Her expressionless face found one - a shameful frown. Avehi watched Mierne’s reaction for only a second, before the shaman’s expression of stunned disbelief turned Avehi away. She clenched her fists, fighting back tears that wouldn’t come as she stared off to the side. Avehi hated what she’d become… and it showed in her inability to look her dear friend in the eye. Somehow she felt sick. She wanted to vomit. She wanted to scream. She wanted to run. A part of her wished she never come here, and revealed to Mierne what sort of abomination she’d become. Why? Why did she even bother coming? Now, it felt as if all she’d done was hurt her friend by revealing a horrible, horrible truth. Had she--

Avehi gasped, catching Mierne’s movements out of the corner of her eye. She looked back to the Shaman… who stood arms wide open to accept her. Avehi was stunned. It was a gesture she never would have expected, but it was one she desperately needed in that moment. She took a tentative step forward… then another… her lip trembled as if about to cry as she closed the distance between herself and her friend - her only friend.

“Mierne…” she whispered, stopping just before the Shaman. “Mierne… I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…”

She closed her eyes tightly as she threw her arms around Mierne, and tucked her chin over her shoulder. A hug… an embrace… it had been so long. Her body was cold and lifeless, but in that moment she felt a flicker of warmth as she reunited with Mierne. Like a child in the tender embrace of her mother…

“I’m so sorry… I never meant to worry you… or startle you...” she sobbed. “But I… had to see you again…”

“Shhh….” Mierne soothed her young friend.

Her arms held Avehi in a tight embrace. She’d managed to hold in her own sobs, but tears still rolled down her dirty cheeks. It pained her to see her friend like so, to feel how cold and lifeless her body had become. She felt her knees weaken, allowing herself to kneel down in the sand and pulling Avehi down with her. She didn’t release the embrace, as though she were trying to bring life back into her friend with warmth alone. Her heart ached? But she knew it was nothing compared to the suffering the Death Knight felt.

“Do not apologize,” she finally said, releasing the embrace slightly only to bring a hand through Avehi’s hair, “I am thankful you came to me… that you have returned home. I will always… ALWAYS… be there for you.”

She took in a deep breath, pushing back her own sorrow to better take care of her friend. She took Avehi by the shoulders and pushed her back slightly. Hands cupped her face and forced her to meet her gaze.

“I promise.”

Avehi played her part well; she hung lifelessly in Mierne’s arms as the two collapsed to a kneel. She only held on, clinging to the Shaman tightly as quiet whimpers escaped her. She remembered the last time she embraced Mierne like this, before leaving the Isles to join with the Alliance and see what Azeroth had to offer. The contrast between the memory of that embrace and this one now was stark… jarring… driving home for Avehi how much undeath had changed her. How she felt, how she sensed things, how disconnected it all seemed, while at the same time being such an overload…

‘What have I become…?’

For all the differences, Avehi felt something familiar in Mierne's arms. Something even death couldn't twist or distort… a calm comfort… the very comfort she came seeking. Mierne's words only made that calm comfort stronger. Her icy blue eyes peered into her dear friend’s. She nodded, offering a weak but genuine smile.

“Home…” her death-distorted voice echoed. “Mierne… thank you. I need… I need a home, now more than ever.”

She shook her head, brow furrowed as a frown replaced that weak smile once more. She looked away in shame again, teeth clenched.

“I've been… lost… for so long.” she murmured. “I never should have left you! I… I never should have…”

“You did what you had to do, Avehi,” Mierne comforted her friend, bringing a hand through her hair, “You made our people proud and died with honour, fighting a great evil.”

Mierne removed her helm from, revealing the mess of tangled braided hair beneath, and genuine features. She looked her friend over, now that the worst of the shock had worn off. Avehi had always been a beautiful Draenei, and even her obvious undeath couldn’t mar that. Sadly, not many would look past the pale features and lich blue eyes… Mierne knew how quickly their kind could be to outcast others.

“We do not always get to choose our path, my friend. This is the path you have been given. Many will not understand what you are, but death is part of life, even for the long lived. Do not allow anyone to tell you that you do not belong because of what you are. You will always have a home with me, whatever happens.”

Avehi wept - an unholy wailing, echoed and distorted by undeath. It rang out, hauntingly, eerily, along the coast and back through the misty woods of the Isles. She cried her cries devoid of tears against Mierne’s chest, tucked in her warm embrace. She had no words, yet the moaning cries spoke volumes of her anguish, fears… relief, and gratitude. Hardly the reunion she envisioned having with Mierne… but the elder Draenei always knew what to say and how to treat her. At her best… and now, at her worst. She was grateful for that, expressed in the moment only through tightening her arms around the shaman. She needed to hear that; to feel that acceptance of her in spite of her horrific new form - the husk of her deceased body breathed living once again by foul and unholy magic. The pain was intense, physically and emotionally, unlike anything Avehi had felt before. But there, in the arms of an old, dear friend… she felt a sense of calm. Relief. Peace.

She was home.

~*~

((Co-written with @kidcatgemini, the character Mierne belongs to her))

[justaramblingromantic]

superheroes need childcare benefits too

Characters/Pairing: Kobayashi Rindou, Tsukasa Eishi, Tsukasa Hi’en (OC)/EiRin

Type: Superhero!Family!AU, Freestyle

Word Count: 3071

A/N: Inspired by this post. 

This drabble has been sitting in my draft pile for a couple of months already, I think? I was fooling around with the random super power generator and decided to write out something with the results I got, just for fun. Was also in the mood to write cute baby things...so there was that, too, lol. 

The thing about being a superhero was that the benefits suck.

There were no such thing as paid leave or annual bonuses and the nature of the work was akin to voluntary military service to the country so it wasn’t exactly very high paying in the first place, either. In fact, it was something like an anonymous, part time obligation to society on top of juggling a ‘normal’ day job and whatever life issues and familial commitments the ‘normal’ population had to deal with…only maybe with a bit more explosions and dangerous, life-threatening events randomly thrown into the mix.

You get to meet all sorts of interesting people with interesting abilities too, and then, depending on their intentions and alignments, you try your hardest to incapacitate, or outright kill, each other. Fun times.

Rindou quite enjoyed it, actually. The thrill of living a secret double life. The excitement and unpredictability that came with every mission. And who would not enjoy being a superhero? Her partner was something amazing too, and they worked together seamlessly. Their abilities complemented each other extremely well, and after all the years of being paired together, their teamwork was one of the best in the country, for their rank and specialty type, even.

That was just as well, since they were partners in every meaning of the word. They had known each other from a young age and had only grown closer over the years, from teammates to best friends to lovers.

Recently, they had also become parents. And with parenthood, came responsibilities that both were suddenly acutely conscious of, towards the tiny young life that they had made together. Being reckless for the sake of having fun was no longer acceptable. They had to be more careful during assignments now, and for the moment at least, they had also agreed that both should not be going on call at the same time – one would remain at home on baby watch while the other was out performing their civic duty.

“Rindou.” Eishi’s calm, smooth voice spoke over the comm earpiece that she was wearing. “Are you heading home soon?”

“Mm,” she replied distractedly, concentrating on focusing her powers and directing them to work as she intended. Her abilities had always been a bit on the wild side and not very easy to control, and she constantly had to work on them so that they would not get the better of her.

It was a simple rescue mission this time. There was a serious collision between two freight vessels off the shores of Tokyo, just sitting on one of the major shipping routes. She had been activated by the agency because her powers were probably the most useful to deal with an incident of this scale involving huge mobile constructs. The crews of both vessels had already been evacuated and airlifted out of the scene so now it was her turn to flex her muscles and get down to business.

“Can you swing by the store for some milk and eggs on the way back? We ran out.”

“’Kay~” Slit gold eyes grew unnaturally bright as she concentrated, willing all her energy into intense mental focus. Visualizing the bright, glowing rope of power in her mind’s eye, she proceeded to grab firmly onto it and give it a mighty heave.

Just like that, the atmospheric pressure dropped, and the energy around her shifted.

Hovering midair over the vast ocean, a mere fifty feet above where the partially submerged cargo ships were rapidly taking in water and about to sink right in the middle of the high sea traffic zone, the redhead watched musingly as a couple hundred thousand tonnage of steel and freight creaked and groaned ominously as the absolute laws of physics were exerted on them…in an entirely unnatural way.

“Is there anything else that you want me to pick up, dear husband?” she asked cheerfully. She was in a good mood today, and for obvious reasons. The sun was shining overhead, the weather was great. All in all, it was a really nice day to be out and about, even if she had to help haul back to the bay two huge ass ships.

There was a pause, and then her significant other remarked. “You’re just really happy to be finally out of the house, aren’t you?”

Before Rindou could respond, a loud, unintelligible squawk transmitted through the earpiece, followed by what sounded like awkward, unsteady flapping. Both parents winced at the ringing, pitched cry.

“Is that En-chan? What’s he doin’? He sounds energetic.”

“Our son is sitting on my shoulder.” Was Eishi’s reply. “I think he’s screaming for you.”

She could not help but grin at the mental imagery of her somewhat ruffled mate having to stay at home wrestling with their quirky and unruly offspring. The baby was barely six months old but the rapid manifestation of his unique abilities meant that his parents never quite knew what to expect next when it came to him. Regardless, Rindou still thought that her son was the best thing since sliced bread. Eishi more or less rolled with the lofty opinion because he largely felt the same way ever since they handed him the squalling newborn straight out of the delivery suite.

“Geeze, he’s probably just hungry again. Feed him well, Tsukasa~!”

The semi-submerged vessels were no longer sinking. If anything, they were expelling water at an incredible, exponential rate, and starting to recover miraculously from their previous, badly listing conditions. Rindou kept a halfhearted eye on the ships, but her attention was caught more by the slight commotion coming from the other end of the line.

Eishi muttered. “He doesn’t want his bottle. I don’t think he’s even interested in milk right now.”

More indignant chirruping and belligerent rustling could be heard from the other end of the line. The older of the two also seemed to be having quite a time of it pacifying the younger one. “En, settle down. I know you hear her voice, but your mother’s not here.”

There was a querying, unhappy cry of what sounded like a young eaglet. By then, Rindou could not contain her curiosity any longer. Her son had been a normal human baby (a super cute, chubby cheeked one) when she had left the house, but apparently that was no longer the case. She would have been more worried as a mother if not for the fact that this peculiar occurrence happened too often for her to be alarmed anymore. In their household, this type of situation was only normal, when one’s offspring possessed the rare ability to randomly shapeshift.

“Eh? What did En-chan become this time? How come all the interesting things happen only when you’re home alone with him? That’s hardly fair at all!”

There was a brief pause as her husband struggled not to share his actual thoughts on the matter, which more or less amounted to how he would rather have preferred not to have anything interesting happen at all when he was left in charge of watching their only child. Because Hi’en was still very, very young and had no control whatsoever over his powers, the infant often randomly shifted into supernatural creatures that had only been heard of and read about in myths and legends. The first time it happened, the boy was only a couple of months old when he abruptly turned into a phoenix chick, and when the panicked parents found the young creature floundering about in their son’s cot, they had initially thought that someone had stolen their precious offspring only to replace it with this strange looking…scraggly, angry baby bird of unidentified origins…and that which could also random burst into fire.

The problem with their child being able to shapeshift into random mythical creatures was that when he was in those forms, feeding and caring for his needs became a unique challenge. Sometimes Hi’en would stay in one creature form for an hour at most before popping back to his sleepy human baby self, other times, he stuck with whatever form he was most comfortable with for days on end and that was when his parents abruptly realized that (mythical) animal husbandry had also became an important prerequisite when it came to parenthood. This time was no different.

Eishi observed his awkwardly flailing son, all wings, talons, feathers…paws, claws and tail. The wings on the back were still small and not yet fully developed, the feathers all fluffy brownish-bronze baby down and not even molting anytime soon. The body was that of a very young lion cub; soft russet gold fur still speckled with camouflaging spots and clumsy, tapering tail fat and stubby from infancy. The front limbs ended in raptorial, razor talons and the back limbs in feline paws and equally sharp pinprick claws. A fuzzy, aquiline face with beady golden eyes and a sharp hooked beak paid rapt attention to his male parent, who was squinting at the youngster just as discerningly.

Hi’en let loose a series of demanding chirrups and clumsily headbutted his father for attention. Eishi plucked the youngling who had insisted on climbing precariously onto his shoulder when he heard his mother’s voice earlier and cradled his cat-sized child against his chest, barely even flinching when the baby dug his tiny claws into his forearms for stability. The white-haired man balanced the cellphone between his ear and shoulder, distractedly replying Rindou even as he padded into the kitchen with the fussing cub in tow.

“I think he turned into a griffin this time.”

“…Huh. What do those eat?”

That was a very good question, and one which the young parents found themselves asking almost every other week these days.

In the background, the massive constructs that were the damaged shipping vessels were now floating lightly on the shimmering ocean surface, delicate as a pair of drifting feathers. Thanks to her abilities to manipulate gravity and air, sending the ships back to the shipyard for repair would be a breeze. Pun intended.

“Think the packet of raw chicken sitting in the freezer will work?” Rindou asked as she started to gather and shape the climate to obey her will. Her gaze turned upwards, watching the gigantic nimbuses roll in and dim the skies overhead. The barometric pressure quickly dropped further, and the ambient wind speed started to pick up. The previously calm, tranquil waters became more restless, choppy, though not turbulent enough to send the ships back down to the bottom of the ocean. Rindou exerted her will and steadily pushed.

The two vessels slowly started to move, the howling gale and reduced inertia enough to set them both limping in the direction of port. Rindou trailed her responsibilities closely, making sure that they would reach their destination with no unforeseen accidents along the way.

Back home, Eishi obligingly popped open the door of the freezer compartment and pulled out the cellophane wrapped tray of chicken. He presented it to Hi’en, who nudged at the Styrofoam curiously with his beak before recoiling from it with disdain.

“No?” he asked the little griffin. His son peered at him briefly with his slit gold eyes before deciding that his father’s shirt buttons were much more interesting. He started to peck at one of them, trying to pry it off.

“I’ll defrost and cut the meat into smaller strips to see if he wants it,” Eishi spoke into the phone, shutting the freezer door and setting the packet of chicken on the counter to thaw. “I think we should find that anthropology professor at the university again and seek his opinion, just in case.”

Rindou grimaced at the thought of meeting the suspicious, twitchy man once more. She was pretty sure that the man was starting to suspect that something weird was going on with the overly insistent couple who kept asking him overly specific questions regarding the diets and behavioral patterns of legendary creatures that should not exist.

“Alright, if you feel that’s gonna help.” An excellent idea struck her. “Maybe En-chan would want fresh seafood instead. I can rustle up a waterspout and bring some catch of the day home!”

“…Please don’t do that.” Eishi was quick to shoot down the idea before his mate could run wild with it. The last time she did something similar in a misguided attempt at domesticity while harboring delusions of a homemade dinner, it rained fish intermittently over the city for an entire day. “The agency frowns upon that sort of power misuse and we don’t have enough fridge space.”

Rindou grumbled. What use were her powers even if she couldn’t apply them for little things like that?

“Come home soon,” Eishi continued. Their child lifted his head from where he had been gnawing at his father’s shirt and chimed in with an accompanying series of inquisitive peeps and chirps. “We’re looking forward to your safe return.”

Despite her disgruntlement, Rindou’s cheeks warmed happily. “Then I shall, since you asked so nicely.”

When two beings with the recessive mutated genome that gave them unique abilities produce an offspring, it is virtually guaranteed that their progeny would inherit the same metamorphosed DNA sequence as well. However, just because that peculiar gene had been passed down from parents to child did not mean that the latter would end up with the same type of ultra-abilities that either parental units had. As such, having children when one possessed superpowers was very much like entering a lucky draw.

There is an implicit understanding that there will be a special prize, but what it is exactly or how useful it will be is something entirely up in the air until the child’s powers finally chooses to establish themselves.

Even before the birth of their son, Eishi and Rindou had already decided on his name out of two reasons.

The first was for bond. Both parents were distinct air types and spent so much of their time in the skies that they might as well have been born birds themselves. They had flown together, fought together, courted, loved. Their mutual joy, their steadfast devotion to each other… Hi’en was the precious culmination of all this happiness.

The second was for blessing. It was the parents’ sincerest wish for their firstborn that he would always be able to fly as far and as freely as he wanted to, just like a brave and lithe swallow, unfazed and unhindered by all the challenges that he would ever meet in life.

When Hi’en’s powers initially manifested in an unexpected way that turned him into a firebird, his parents wondered if they had perhaps named him a bit too aptly. Even though the kanji ‘Hi’ in his name translated to ‘flight,’ it also shared the same pronunciation for the kanji that denoted ‘fire.’  

Regardless of the fact that their child’s abilities bore no similarities whatsoever with theirs, his parents remained endlessly delighted and fascinated with their strange little chick. All of his little milestones and progresses Eishi noted down meticulously and Rindou cheered for with pride and glee. Hi’en was developing physically and mentally faster than the average infant, though in all likelihood it was because he was switching forms so often. However, all that growing was exhausting for the young baby, and so he ate a lot, and then he slept a lot.

When Rindou returned that evening, it was to a quiet apartment with the lights dimmed. There was a flickering glow emanating from the living room, and when she exchanged her shoes for indoor ones at the genkan and went down the hallway, she discovered that the source of light was from the television, the volume muted so that only the images were playing across the screen. Eishi was sprawled out in the middle of the couch strewn all over with toys, his eyes closed, faintly, halfheartedly humming a lulling song. Curled against his chest was a little ball of fur and feathers, and the little thing must have tuckered himself out after running his father ragged all day, for he barely stirred even when his female parent approached and sank onto the adjacent cushions.

Eishi cracked opened one eye, sleepy lavender meeting quietly amused gold.

“…Okaeri,” he greeted his mate softly. He wasn’t exactly his usual neat, immaculate self. It appeared that even possessing the ability of accelerated thought process was no match to counter the sheer unpredictability of a small but determined infant. Eishi’s hair looked like he had run his hands through it several times that evening alone, his shirt was missing some buttons and partially untucked, and there were unidentifiable stains on his jeans and also on his collar. She thought that he looked manly and attractive all the same, exuding responsible daddy vibes, very irresistible.

“Tadaima,” she mouthed back. Her hand came up, fingers brushing over his crown, trying to help arrange the unrulier locks into some semblance of order. “Looks like you had a nice time with En-chan,” she drawled innocuously, trying not to grin at his visibly disheveled expression. She petted his hair affectionately, at the same time leaning in to brush her lips against his jaw. “You’ve worked hard today, papa~”

He silently tilted his head against hers, his arms already occupied cradling their child. Rindou’s gaze lowered onto where Hi’en was quietly sleeping. His fuzzy little face was barely visible, tucked under one downy front limb as he continued to doze, his little torso gently rising and falling with the cadence of his deep, steady breathing. Just looking at her son made her very happy, regardless of what form he chose to take. He was safe and protected, he was perfectly healthy, and he was growing up well. That was all that mattered.

“…Ah. I forgot the milk and eggs.”

Eishi’s eyes had closed again, and he leaned just a little more into her before she could move away.

“Let’s do that tomorrow… Stay.”

…So maybe she wasn’t the only one who felt a bit lonely now that they wouldn’t be able to take missions together, at least not in the immediate future.

She snuggled down beside him, this boy she loved first long before he gave her another to dote on and adore. Their family might be small and there were also times when it felt like they had no idea what they were doing, but to her, this was perfect.

“’Kay.”

Eishi: Accelerated Thought Process, Mid-Air Combat

Rindou: Gravity Manipulation, Primordial Air Manipulation

Hi���en: Mythical Bestiary, Electric-Fire Manipulation

Chouko: Faithifery, Existence Sense

[verbumincarcerem]

Stowaway

Here it is. The thing that nobody wanted that I wrote anyway. Treasure Planet, me/Silver, no regerts.

Chapter 1

It was obvious that women were more suited to wearing pants than men, who had the bits to actually warrant loose, flowing skirts, but no one was asking Melody Westfire her insider’s opinion on the matter. At the moment, public interest in her was at an all-time low, and she greatly preferred the change. Melody had thought a man—even a woman pretending to be one—would warrant all kinds of unwelcome attention at a bustling spaceport, but she was as invisible as she would’ve been cooped up at her father’s estate.

Still, she had no time to linger. Getting to the Montressor Spaceport hadn’t been difficult, but every second she lingered in Crescentia was a second she could be caught and dragged back to Fleet Admiral Edmund Westfire, who was far more likely to flay her for insubordination and humiliating him than to welcome her back with open arms.

Melody and her father had not gotten along for quite some time, and he especially wouldn’t like her if he realized how much she’d stolen from him on her way out. Indeed, the knapsack she carried over her shoulder was heavier than it ought to have been, seemingly containing only a change of clothes, basic necessities, and oddly rolled socks, and she tried not to betray in any way that, with it, she was a walking safe of riches.

White sails of Royal Navy ships and merchant craft stretched toward the clouds, bright even against the tanned buildings of the artificial satellite, but Melody couldn’t go down to the docks just yet. Instead, she checked that her ponytail was still in place—tied low on her neck in adherence to the current fashion of young men but which truthfully drove her and her neck crazy—and slipped inside a pawn shop to conduct her first order of business.

The alien merchant inside barely had time to glance up at her before she slammed down her engagement ring on the glass counter. “I need to pawn this,” she said in a tone that was slightly deeper than her usual.

Instead of taking the ring and examining the diamonds at its center and along the band, the alien narrowed its milky white eyes at her. Melody became grateful for many factors in her favor at the moment: the low lighting of the shop despite the perfectly sunny day outside; the brims of her tricorn hat that left shadows upon her clean-shaven face; her short stature that could explain the smoothness of her skin and her face’s other feminine features.

In a voice that was surprisingly clear though tinged with the native accent of Montressor, the alien said, “She say no, boy?”

With one short grunt and the clearing of her throat, Melody let out an approximation of painful admission, righteous fury, and acute embarrassment. She shoved her hands in her pockets, hunched her shoulders, and turned her face to stare at a rack full of assorted timepieces as if to say, I don’t want to talk about my feelings ever, so quit asking.

She’d learned a lot by watching the boys at the naval academy.

The alien picked up the ring between two spindly fingers that had more phalanges than a human’s and brought it close to his left eye. He stared for a long time, never reaching for anything even resembling a loupe to inspect the quality. Melody suspected something about those white eyes accomplished it for him, that perhaps eye sensitivity was why the shop was so dark.

At last, the alien stared unblinkingly at her, the ring held between them. “I can give you two thousand drabloons for this.”

Melody took a step towards the counter, leaning her hip and arm against it. “I want five.”

“Impossible,” the alien shook his head. “This is an old ring. The band is beginning to tarnish, and the setting is loose. The most I can loan for it is two thousand five hundred.”

“It’s an heirloom and, by all rights, priceless, but I have no more use for it.” Melody was nowhere near tall enough to loom over anyone, particularly not an alien who was already taller than her sitting down, but she hoped the commanding tone of her voice did the trick. “Four thousand.”

His face turned bland with annoyance. “Thirty-two,” he bit out, “or nothing.”

Melody rapt her fingers on the counter in quick succession. “Done.”

It was less than she’d hoped for, but she was glad to see the ring and the connection she had to her despicable betrothed, a navy lieutenant she’d wanted nothing to do with from the get-go, disappear from her life. Even better that with an illegible electronic signature, the drabloons became available to her offshore account in the blink of an eye.

“You’ll have three weeks to pay back the loan,” the alien said by rote, “or I have the right to resell. In the meantime, the interest rate—”

“No offense,” Melody said, already backing away towards the door, “but I couldn’t care less. Sell away!”

When she stepped outside, the light nearly blinded her, but she pulled the brim of her hat lower and set off, ignoring the feel of the alien’s honed stare at her back. Ever since she left home, she’d been paranoid and trying not to be obvious about it. She told herself again that she was imagining more suspicion than she was actually gaining—none of it for the reasons she feared since she was traveling so incognito—and she managed to believe it until a series of wanted posters by the entrance to a popular bar caught her eye.

They featured what she expected to see: at-large war criminals from the conflict between the Terran Empire and the Procyon Expanse and, of course, pirates. Billy Bones was still there, featuring a hefty bounty and an old projection of his face and turtle-like features. As far back as she could remember, the hunt for Billy Bones, dead or alive, had been on, and he’d never been caught for long. Beside his poster was one for a pirate dubbed “Long John,” but since no projection was given, the poster only offered a description and a bounty. Melody was about to read it, until the surface of Billy Bones’ wanted poster flickered and vanished. In her experience, that meant he’d either been reported as captured at last or killed, but that wasn’t what made her entire body go still with shock.

It was seeing her own face appear in Bones’ place on the page, her brown hair cascading down her shoulders and the top of the white bodice of what would’ve been her wedding dress if she’d stayed. It was like staring at night and day. The Melody on the wall was elegant, almost coldly so, her face sharpened and her pale coloring heightened with cosmetics so that her blue eyes appeared brighter than robin’s eggs. The Melody staring at this aloof stranger from the street had flecks of dust and dirt on her face, and she wore brown worker’s pants, a hat, boots, and a loose, sand-colored top that covered an almost flat chest, thanks to her breast bindings. By comparison to her past self, Melody felt self-consciously, unrecognizably boyish—perhaps even ugly—and relief stole over her briefly because that was, after all, the entire point of her disguise.

Fleet Admiral Westfire would not stall in having others attempt to find his wayward daughter before she could escape port. Long gone, too, were the days where women were reviled as “bad luck” on voyages, and Melody often scoffed that, centuries ago, people had actually believed it in the dark days before intergalactic travel. As a lady and a fleet admiral’s daughter, Melody would’ve had no trouble boarding any ship of her choosing, but staying on it? Going uncaptured—especially after her father issued a search warrant and reward for her? Impossible.

But no one would be looking for a boy.

Melody ripped her wanted poster down, the projection vanishing as she crumpled the page and tossed it into the nearest disposal unit. She didn’t even feel flattered that her father had emphasized her safe return or that he was offering a small fortune to anyone with information about her whereabouts, let alone what he would give if someone physically brought her to him.

Instead, her pace quickened, making a beeline for the docks. She needed to get on a ship, now.

Stowing away on a ship wasn’t the hard part. With how busy each crew was preparing for their respective launches, no one had time to question whether or not so-and-so was a longtime crewmate or if they were newly hired aboard. Royal Navy vessels were a different beast altogether when it came to unfamiliarity among crewmates. Now that the war with the Procyon had lulled, wealthy members of Terran society could hire naval ships for personal ventures, staffing their own crew and calling upon the navy to supply the ships and appropriate leadership in the form of captains, first mates, and commanders.

Melody spotted one such vessel at the tail end of the dock. The RLS Legacy was a fine ship even without the glory of her sails being yet unfurled for all to see and admire. Sleek and narrow for increased mobility, the ship was also made of pale wood along the hull and warm wood upon the deck that gleamed like caramel in the light.

The crew themselves was the giveaway. They appeared more rough and tumble than navel cadets would have walking around in their crisp jackets of either red or blue and the matching cream uniforms underneath. Only one such uniform was visible among them, worn by a hulking alien whose face resembled that of moving stone as he ordered the other spacers about. First mate, Melody guessed, by the red coat he wore, but the insignia on his lapel would tell her for certain. Before she could leave her lookout post, a metal…thing and a human boy approached the ship, exchanging words with the first mate as they crossed the gangplank.

Funders of the voyage, no doubt.

Taking a deep, calming breath to help combat her racing heart, Melody rechecked her ponytail, adjusted her knapsack so it tied around her waist, straightened her clothes, and marched toward the ship. Acting like she belonged there and nowhere else, she grabbed a crate of supplies and began helping the other spacers load up the Legacy, making sure she never made eye contact with anyone or stayed in one place too long.

No one paid her a second glance until the ship had already launched.

Melody had forgotten what a ship launch felt like. The shockwave that rumbled the deck, the blast of heat from the engines, how the wind picked up as the ship rose, leaving the buildings below far behind until you couldn’t make out their individual corners and edges. Her favorite and most thrilling part had always been the part that also terrified her the most: the brief moment where you were weightless until the ship’s artificial gravity activated, and then the engines flared, shooting the vessel forward with canon fire velocity.

But never before had she experienced it from a crewmate’s standpoint. Everyone had a job to do on deck, and it became obvious to certain spacers that she didn’t have one assigned.

So Melody was not surprised when a few of them cornered her while she was busy untangling herself from the ropes of the mizzenmast thanks to the ship’s slingshot launch.

“What have we here?” one of them growled as he got far too close to her face. He looked like a cross between a lobster and a spider. “A rat on the ship?”

“I ain’t seem ‘im before,” another alien confirmed, his face seeming to occupy his entire chest. “So he ain’t one of ours. Maybe the captain’s?”

“You could always ask,” Melody pointed out, “rather than speculating right in front of me.”

The two aliens shared a glance, full of distaste and suspicion. Melody analyzed the statement, wondering what about it could’ve pissed them off already. She hadn’t said it with that much bite.

It was the spider alien who stepped forward with his many legs, his claw-like hand snatching her arm and clamping down hard. “There’s only one good use for ship stowaways. Know what it is, boy?”

Melody didn’t, but it was the other alien who answered gleefully, “For tossing overboard!”

The spider alien had only started to drag her toward the railing of the main deck—toward that endless abyss of stars—when the words’ meanings and their intentions caught up to her.

Terror spiked through her. Swiftly followed by outrage and her fist. Melody wasn’t sure what all her fist was connecting to, but she and the spider alien tumbled on the deck, instantly attracting the attention of everyone in the vicinity.

Including both the first mate and the captain of the RLS Legacy.

“Does it strike you as odd to discover that I’m not a fan of freeloaders on my ship?” Captain Amelia demanded, her eyebrow raised in judgment. “Particularly one who sees fit to start a brawl on deck just seconds after launch?”

Melody felt particularly shabby standing before the captain and her crisp blue uniform, knee-high black boots, and sleek figure, and that was without the new bleeding cut she’d acquired on her forehead. The spider alien had managed to land a hit on Melody before the ship’s first mate had wrenched them apart, yelling his disappointment about each of their failings at the top of his lungs.

His words about her “moronic bearing and doubtlessly despicable upbringing” still stung, so Melody responded with a short “No, ma’am” to the captain, demonstrating that, yes, she did have manners. She stood in the captain’s quarters, hands resting harmlessly by her side as she tried to appear as contrite as possible, which to a certain extent she was, though her next words implied otherwise. “But I didn’t start it. He tried to throw me overboard.”

“We did suspect Mr. Scroop would be trouble,” said Mr. Arrow, the man in the red coat who Melody now knew for certain was the captain’s first mate. Thinking that perhaps he’d warmed up to her, Melody threw a grateful glance over her shoulder at Mr. Arrow stationed by the door, but his face was still stern with disapproval. “But that doesn’t excuse your presence here, boy. If this were a less disciplined ship, Mr. Scroop would be viewed favorably for his actions.”

“Though Mr. Arrow raises a good point, as always,” the captain said, shooting him a fond look before sobering, “that is not the matter at hand. Convince me why I shouldn’t turn this ship around and hand you over to the authorities.”

“Because Crescentia is already a very long way behind us, and to account for the extra fuel used to ferry one person to and fro, you’d have to cut into the crew’s wages or beg more funding from your benefactor, something both parties would likely riot about.” Heart stampeding in her chest, Melody noted the frustration creeping into the captain’s feline features and revised tactics. “I don’t expect a free ride,” she said to her. “I know this expedition is likely funded with a strict budget by—someone.”

“Doctor Doppler,” the captain confirmed, the corner of her mouth twitching slightly, though whether it was with amusement or exasperation, Melody couldn’t tell.

“He wasn’t the man in the metal suit, by any chance?”

“The very same,” Amelia said dryly. “For an astrophysicist, the doctor is highly eccentric.”

“Yes,” Melody continued, “so I imagine there’s nothing in the budget to pay me with, but that’s alright. I don’t need money, just passage. In exchange, I’ll work in whatever capacity I can with no complaint, and the next time you make port, I’ll be on my way.”

“I’m sure you would be, if we were making port.”

Melody stared at the captain. “What does that mean?”

“It means I’ve seen your type countless times. It’s obvious that you’re running from something. Authorities, responsibilities, it doesn’t really matter in the end.” Amelia braced a hand over the map stretched out on her desk, and Melody saw that her claws were out and extremely sharp.

But Amelia merely leaned against the desk, keeping her unwavering attention on her stowaway. “We are not traveling to another occupied port for you to escape to. We are on a retrieval mission, and regardless of whether we succeed in said retrieval or not, we will be returning to Crescentia in four months’ time, if all goes well.” Captain Amelia pushed off the desk and came to stand before Melody, hands clasped behind her back, and here was a woman who did know how to loom. “There will be nowhere for you to hide. In the meantime, I expect you to work, or I’ll allow Mr. Scroop to finish what he started.”

So all this, and Melody had chosen wrong. She’d return back where she started. Part of her hoped that four months would be long enough for her father to assume she’d already left the system far behind, that she wouldn’t do something as foolish as to return, but another part knew better. Those wanted posters would still be there, and bounty hunters were nothing if not relentless. Captain Amelia might even be the one to turn her over to the authorities, unaware that her stowaway was actually a missing heir to an empire.

Or perhaps not. Melody held the captain’s gaze knowing this was the moment of truth. She hadn’t expected to encounter another woman on board, let alone a captain, and if Melody needed her disguise to fool anyone, it needed to be Captain Amelia.

Too many beats of silence passed. Melody felt her breath starting to shudder past her lips when Amelia pulled back, brows raised in surprise. “Good Lord, you’re white as a sheet. Come now, young man, you didn’t actually believe that little threat, did you? You’re not on a pirate ship, you know.”

Melody was so relieved—for so many reasons—that she struggled to speak. “Right. Apologies. No disrespect meant, ma’am.”

The captain shrugged, exchanging another look with Mr. Arrow. “None taken, I suppose, Mr.—?”

“Oh.” Snapping to attention, Melody replied, “You can call me Mel, Captain. Mel Dawson.”

“Very well, Mr. Dawson.” Melody didn’t have time to think about how strange it felt to speak her mother’s maiden name aloud or even hear it spoken back to her because Captain Amelia had already flung open the doors to her quarters and was marching toward the deck. Melody rushed to keep up. “I don’t have time to teach a green spacer like yourself the ropes, if you’ll pardon the expression, and nor does Mr. Arrow. Fortunately, there is someone here already making time for Mr. Hawkins, and I doubt your additional presence will make much difference.”

The captain led Melody downstairs into the bowels of the ship where they met a series of empty wooden tables. Amelia wasted no time marching past them, and Melody followed behind her sure steps, taking in the area much more slowly.

Other than the benches, the saloon was largely dark and barren, the exact opposite of the next room Melody found herself in. Pots, pans, and cooking utensils hung from the ovular walls and pipes curving the room, and in its center was a large pot boiling with some sort of soup resting upon a raised, circular stove, its heated burner casting a warm orange glow over everything.

Captain Amelia had brought her to the galley, but that wasn’t what caught her eye. It was that the boy she’d seen from the docks was already here, his brown hair pulled back in a rat tail and his arms elbow deep in soap suds as he scrubbed a pile of dirty pots and pans with a brush. Not looking up from his furious scrubbing, he said, “You’re making that up.”

“I swear by all the stars, I most certainly am not, lad!”

Melody searched for the other voice, which was light and drawling even in its roughness, and stared when, rising up from the other side of the stove clutching vials of spices in his hand, a man came into view.

An incredibly large man, with an incredibly large hand.

An Ursid, Melody noted, though the fact that this man was an alien was hardly his most obvious feature.

No, that honor was shared between his left arm and leg, which were both mechanical wonders of cybernetics. Melody watched, mesmerized, as the gears and gyros in the man’s arm shifted with seamless whirrs, turning from a cyborg hand into an assortment of tools. Cleaver, scissors, cutting knives, claws, the metal twisting, shaping, and reforming into each as the man busied himself with his tasks.

“Your attention, please, gentlemen,” Captain Amelia interrupted their conversation.

The boy looked at the captain rather sullenly, but the cyborg’s countenance brightened as he turned, revealing that he also possessed a golden, cybernetic left eye. “Back again, eh, Cap’n? Missing my fine company already?”

“For your unwanted flattery, Silver, I’ve brought another pup for you to train.” Amelia pushed Melody forward with a hand on her shoulder. “Mel Dawson, this is John Silver, the ship’s cook, and James Hawkins, his cabin boy, a title you now share.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“This lad’s a bit politer than Mr. Hawkins,” Amelia said, fixing Melody with a stern look, “but anymore fisticuffs with the paid crew, and you’ll spend the rest of the voyage in the brig, understood?”

Melody grimaced at the dressing down, and the looks of surprised interest Hawkins and Silver sent her did nothing to stave off her embarrassment. “Yes, ma’am.”

The captain must have sensed it, too, for she merely nodded. “Carry on, then, and tend to that,” Amelia indicated at Melody’s cut, “or you can expect an additional earful from the ship’s doctor.”

“Who’s—” Melody started, but the captain had already turned on her heel, exiting the galley.

Silence had barely settled between the three remaining spacers before Silver exclaimed with a hefty sigh, “Jim, why are ya just sittin’ there? We don’t want no more earfuls or, most importantly, interruptions. Lend the boy some soap.”

Melody raised a hand to ward them off, the other brushing away the blood. The cut stung on contact, but just as quickly, the pain faded. A shallow, superficial wound. “It’s fine. Nothing to worry about.”

“Disregardin’ the captain’s orders and mine as well?” Silver asked, his mouth in a stern line though his eyes sparkled, even the mechanical one. “No, lad, even if I was the careless sort, that won’t do. You’ll tend to that cut, you will, for though this marks one of the finest vessels in the navy, sickness spreads in space, and you’ll do well to remember that.”

Chastised yet still doubting the cut’s seriousness, Melody relented. “Got a clean rag anywhere?”

“Well, of course!” Silver said, sounding both amused and affronted that she’d even had to ask. He crossed the galley, opening a drawer as he went and retrieving a clean cloth, before offering it to Hawkins—Jim—who then wordlessly contributed a dollop of soap.

Melody expected Silver to then pass the rag to her, but instead he took a long stride and was right in front of her, not just looming but towering. Somehow, despite recognizing that John Silver was an incredibly large man, her brain had still downplayed that fact until this very moment. “Now, hold still, lad, and let’s have us a look,” Silver said, bringing the soapy rag up with his cybernetic hand. But it was the fingers of his flesh and blood hand that brushed against her forehead as he adjusted her hat back. Instantly, she tensed and swatted his hands away.

Realizing swatting probably wasn’t the most masculine or polite move, Melody tried to think manly thoughts. So, pretending nothing had happened, she stared at him straight on, extended her hand palm up, and said blandly, “I’ve got it, thanks.”

Silver just shrugged and passed the rag along. “Suit yourself, lad.” He returned to the task of preparing meals for the crew. “This humble cyborg’s always respected the independent sort. Jimbo here didn’t even breath word that he’d brought a friend along.”

“That’s because I didn’t,” Jim said, curious rather than defensive.

Dabbing the rag at her forehead, Melody decided to go ahead and be honest. “Can’t say I’m anyone’s friend on the ship right now. I sort of…boarded without permission.”

“Ah, and so the cap’n’s settled us with a little stowaway. Suppose it’s the best t’ing, taking advantage of all hands as it is.” Silver looked between her and Jim and laughed fondly. “Why, if I had half the gumption as you lads at your age, you can be sure I wouldn’t be a mere ship’s cook, no sir.”

“Maybe you’d still be a cabin boy,” Jim said slyly while Melody tried to remember it was a good thing Silver had mistaken her as the same age as Jim, when it was obvious to her he was much younger than twenty-seven.

Silver guffawed, wiping his hands—flesh and mechanical—on his apron. “Now, Jimbo, mind your cheek. Our Mr. Dawson may not be used to such cuttin’ words as that.”

“It was nicer than what I was thinking, actually,” Melody rebutted. “And Mel’s fine.”

“So, Mel,” Jim drew out the first word as he reached for another pot to clean, “the captain mentioned something about a fight. That where you got that?” He pointed to his own forehead.

“Oh. Uh, yeah.” Melody suddenly found the rest of the room to be incredibly interesting. “It was something like that.”

“Who with?”

“Uuuuh,” she hedged, trying to remember what Amelia had called him. Snoot? That didn’t sound completely right, but she was tempted to call him that from now on out of spite.

“Let me guess,” Jim said, “it was that spider psycho, Scroop.”

Melody laughed before she could help it. “The very same. How’d you know?”

“We don’t get along either. In fact, he probably doesn’t get along with anyone.” Jim rinsed the pot with water. “What’d you do to piss him off?”

“Easy on the inquiries, Jimbo,” Silver cautioned teasingly. “Here, we’ve just met, and you already want the lad’s whole life story.”

But Melody didn’t mind. If she knew anything, it was that bonding over the mutual hatred of someone else often began beautiful friendships. “He took offense to my presence and tried to throw me overboard, so I slugged him.”

Silver had been in the process of taste-tasting the soup, but at her admission, half a spoonful spewed across the room. “Now, how many times—” Silver half-laughed, half-grumbled to himself, trailing off.

“You slugged him?” Jim laughed much louder, the dishes all but forgotten now. He looked at her as if she’d brought him a gift he’d treasure for the rest of his life.

Melody shrugged. “I slugged him, he slugged me. It was a mutual slugging. Mr. Arrow broke it up very quickly, as you can see.” Melody gestured down at herself, showing that, other than her forehead, she was no worse for wear. (Neither was Scroop, but she put the sad thought out of her mind.) A quick inspection of the rag and the cut itself showed her the bleeding had staunched, so Melody tucked the rag into her pocket and said to Silver, “And we’re supposed to be working, sorry. Tell me what needs doing, and I’ll do it.”

Silver appraised her, Melody feeling the stare of his cybernetic eye more than his natural dark green one. “The manifest still needs lookin’ over. What with getting our bright Mr. Hawkins up to speed, I’ve yet to grab a spar minute to check the cargo. After that, there’s plenty of laundry to busy yourself with.”

Already? But aloud, she promised, “I’ll stay out of your way, sir.”

Staying out of John Silver’s way, as it turned out, was impossible. The man was a force of nature that preferred to be constantly in motion and everywhere at once.

With Silver and Jim busy below deck, she’d gotten a brief reprieve checking over the cargo still in the stowage, but everything else on the manifest was food-related and had already been brought to the galley. Melody returned there eventually, throwing Jim a sympathetic glance as she crossed the deck. It looked like he’d finished the dishes, and Silver already had him busy with mopping. A small, pink…blob hovered around Jim, but Melody didn’t have time to investigate that further. Knowing the joys of laundry were in her immediate future, Melody allowed the thought she was humoring that this would be a pleasure cruise to wither and die. Oddly, she looked forward to it. Melody didn’t want much time to think about what she was leaving behind.

“Stowage is checked, all accounted for,” she told Silver. “I ran into a locked door on the deck, though.”

“Hm, locked by the cap’n, I reckon.” He made a cutting motion, made even sharper by the fact that he was peeling potatoes with a speed and precision Melody couldn’t help marveling at. “I’ll tend to that, lad. No reason for you to catch her ire any further…unless that’s your poison of choice, of course.” He winked.

Melody was truly caught in a dilemma on how to react to that, for there was truly nothing she could intimate that would convey “Right poison, wrong gender” without getting into the more dangerous waters that she was not the gender she was pretending to be, and there were still those rare people who weren’t as free-thinking as she was.

Silver saved her the trouble of doing anything by laughing uproariously and clapping a hand on her shoulder, the affectionate force of it nearly buckling her knees before she braced herself. “I’m just kidding, lad! The cap’n wouldn’t look at you twice, I’d wager.”

“Gee, thanks,” Melody laughed dryly along with him, hoping that would be forgotten soon enough. Changing the subject, she muttered, “I’ll just…finish up.”

“Ah, pretend I ain’t even here,” Silver said cheerily, then immediately began whistling.

Shaking her head, Melody flitted around the galley, doing an odd dance with Silver as she tried not to run into him while she opened up cabinets, barrels, and freezers, checking off inventory and foodstuffs. A lot of grains and grain products, she noted, along with dried and smoked meats, spices, frozen vegetables, oranges, and—she internally laughed—beer. Kegs of it. The entire time, Silver seemed absorbed with his soup preparations, and at last, Melody’s last manifest check consisted of the items above the pipeline.

Scowling at how high up those pots, pans, and hanging vegetables and meats were, Melody stood on tip-toes and reached up anyway, knowing it would prove futile but having to try.

“Oh, ‘scuse me, lad.”

Silver’s voice was suddenly right above her. Before Melody could move, a weight settled on the small of her back—no, her entire lower back—and she jumped at the touch of his real hand, so unexpected and unfamiliar, banging her knee into a cabinet in the process. She just barely managed to turn her pained yelp into a groan and some murmured cursing before shuffling out of his way.

“You alright there, Mel?” Silver sounded concerned as he drew down a stack of bowls. “You need something from up top?”

“I—um—I, no. I mean, yes, I’m fine.” Melody was currently bent over the counter, more to hide her flaming red face than out of pain. Glorious reaction, this. No doubt a pinnacle of manhood.

To hell with it.

Convincing herself she hadn’t just blown her cover and not looking at Silver directly, she straightened, leaving the manifest on the counter. “In fact, everything’s here. Crew and now all cargo checked”—she didn’t point out that she had not been added under the crew and would not correct that oversight—“so off to the laundry, I go. Bye, Mr. Silver.”

Melody would have fled the galley if Silver hadn’t insisted on saying, “Sure you don’t want any of me famous Bonzabeast stew? It’s nearly ready, it is.”

Her stomach telling her to stay but everything else telling her to go, she hesitated. “I’ll eat when Jim eats.”

Silver nodded, as if that was a sound thought she hadn’t just pulled out of her ass to get away. “On your way, then. Tell the rest of the gents to come down, and I’ll do me best save you both a bowl.”

Melody escaped. Once she got on the deck, she stared out at the stars and took a bracing breath with her arms akimbo. Shaking off the last vestiges of her embarrassment and adrenaline, she turned to the rest of the crew and crowed, “LUNCH IS PREPARED, YOU LOUTS! CHEF SAYS GET BELOW DECK AT ONCE!”

Scattered cheers greeted her along with the shuffling of feet. Melody moved out of trampling range, noticing that some spacers grinned at her while others—Scroop, for instance—eyed her with acute distaste. Rather than testing her luck by lingering, Melody started for the laundry but stopped as she spotted Jim climbing the stairs to the poop deck. She hurried after him instead.

“New plan,” Melody said once she caught up to him on the higher deck. “I help you, you help me, we eat much sooner. Agreed?”

Jim leaned on his mop handle and shrugged, but he offered a slight smile. “Works for me, I guess.”

“Great.” Melody pulled the rag out of her pocket and inspected it. Aside from a few bloody specks, it was clean enough. “You mop on one end, I’ll scrub on the oth—” Her words derailed, and she took a quick step back as that pink blob she spotted from earlier shot itself out of Jim’s jacket and floated in front of her face.

“Oh, this is Morph,” Jim said, laughing slightly at her surprise. To Morph, he said, “This is the stowaway I was telling you about. So far, he’s okay.”

Melody watched as the blob literally shifted into a pair of wide, floating eyes, as if to watch her unblinkingly, before turning back to his pink, gelatinous shape again. “Apt name,” she said.

“Apt name,” Morph said back in a high-pitched voice. Abruptly, he morphed—into her, though miniature, same clothes and all, repeating, “Apt name, apt name.” The creature giggled, changing back and performing a barrel roll in the air.

In this circumstance, Melody didn’t find any of this funny. She managed in a thin voice, “Quite the interesting pet you have.”

But Jim shook his head and began to mop the starboard side of the poop deck. “Silver’s the one who rescued him, not me.”

“That’s…” Normally, Melody would’ve finished with “cute” because that’s exactly what Morph was, and his connection to the eccentric old cook below deck was both unexpected and heartwarming. But men didn’t often use “cute” as a descriptor, and more importantly, this shapeshifter could blow her cover in ways she hadn’t imagined. Morph’s small, fluid shape meant he could be anywhere, watching and listening. From this moment on, Melody had to assume that she would never be alone and wouldn’t be able to drop her act unless she somehow made foolproof plans to be. So she finished her statement with a flimsy, insincere “cool” and left it at that.

Jim was so focused on his work that he didn’t seem to pick up on her mood. “Yeah, Morph’s good company, but he’s also Silver’s second pair of eyes. Follows his orders and doesn’t give me a break.” He glared at Morph, but there was no real heat in it, particularly when the shapeshifter cuddled Jim’s face, making him laugh.

Melody settled the two with a flinty smile. She was certain her weakness for cute things would unthaw her towards Morph soon, but for now, she was reeling about the snag in her plan he presented. She needed some time to think up contingencies, and mindlessly scrubbing floors would allow her to do just that.

She needed to start coming up with many plans, anyway, because she sure as hell wasn’t about to go four months in space without even a sonic shower, and she needed time out of these itchy chest bandages, or she’d go mad even sooner.

“Nice to meet you, Morph, and good chat. Now, let’s get this done,” said Melody, wetting her rag in the bucket and crossing to port side.    

[duhragonball]

[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (75/?)

Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation.   This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.

Continuity Note: About 1000 years before the events of Dragon Ball Z.

Previous chapters conveniently available here.

[6 March 234 Before Age.  Nat-Chezz II.]

When Zaperc led the Saiyans to Nat-Chezz II, their plan had been to defend the planet against any would-be invaders.   The idea was to imitate what the Super Saiyan Luffa had achieved with her establishment of an interplanetary Federation.   Instead of seeking out easy battles, they would stand their ground and try to cultivate a reputation as a force to be reckoned with.    This would in turn attract even stronger invaders, giving the Saiyans a chance to become stronger themselves as they repelled them.   At least, this was the theory.

In practice, Zaperc’s followers were virtually indistinguishable from the sort of invaders they pledged to drive off.    Upon arrival, they declared martial law, shut down much of the planet’s communications, and helped themselves to whatever supplies and treasure they wished.  The Chezzi people had endured worse occupations in the past, so they tolerated the situation for a time, but they still breathed a sigh of relief when Luffa discovered their plight and intervened.  

In the weeks that followed, Luffa subjected these Saiyans to intense training, determined to mold the band into the sort of champions they had claimed to be.   The Chezzi King had allowed them to keep the mansion they had appropriated, but all the treasure they had taken was returned, and the Saiyans spent most of their days drilling in the wilderness or conducting war games with the Chezzi military.   When their work for the day was finished, they convened at their manor and feasted on whatever luckless animals they happened to find during their training exercises.  

“That’s what I like about you, Jikama,” Lesseri said as she ripped hunks of flesh from a carcass on the table.  “You may be half-Chezzi, but at least you eat like a Saiyan.  I knew a mixed-blood on Siphone II.  Guy had no appetite at all.  Creepy.”

“Thanks... I think,” Jikama said between bites.  “So, any word on when Luffa’s coming back?”

“Nothing new,” Vigurd said as she drank an entire pot of stew and wiped her mouth on her forearm.  “What’s wrong, Jikama?  You miss that gilded blowhard already?”

“I just enjoyed her cooking,” he said awkwardly.  “Not that there’s anything wrong with this, but we’ve been roasting animals on a spit for a week now.  I could go for some of that insect crumb of hers.”

“Insect crumb, my foot!” Lesseri scoffed.   “Don’t listen to him, Vigurd.  He just wants another pat on the head from Zattie.”

Jikama chuckled at this.  Of all the Saiyans in Zaperc’s group, he had shown the most improvement in tracking Zatte through dense foliage.   Luffa’s alien wife lacked Saiyan power, but she could make herself virtually undetectable, and she was armed with advanced weaponry and a talent for asymmetrical warfare.     She had praised him a number of times in front of Luffa and the other Saiyans, which had earned him a lot of teasing from his comrades.   Not wishing to antagonize any of them, he smiled and tried to take it in stride.  

“If you asked me, it’d be just as well if she never came back,” muttered Brockle.   He sat at the head of the table, nursing a flagon of ale while he devoured a plate of spare ribs.

“Please, Brockle,” Vigurd laughed.  “We’ve all seen you leer at her when you think no one’s watching.  You miss Zattie more than Jikama does.”

“Yeah,” Lesseri added.   “Don’t take it personally, Brockle.  You’re just not her type, if you know what I mean.”

The two women laughed, and Jikama tried to delicately suggest that maybe they shouldn’t make a habit of calling her “Zattie”, when Brockle slammed his fist on the table.  

“I’m not talking about the damned alien,”  he said.   “I meant Luffa.”

“I wouldn’t let your father hear you talk that way,” Vigurd warned.  

“I’ve learned all I need to know from the Super Saiyan,” Brockle insisted.  “I’m getting stronger every day, and before long I’ll be powerful enough to surpass her.”

“No offense, kid,” Lesseri said, “but get real.  We’ve all felt the ki Luffa puts off.   You’re nowhere near her level.”  

He stood up and raised his fists.  “I’m more than a match for you, Lesseri!” he shouted.  

She nodded and sipped her drink.  “You’re right, but being stronger than me doesn’t change anything, does it?”  

“I have the potential to beat her!” he insisted.   “I know it!”

“Maybe so,” Vigurd said, “but until you do, you’ll have to put up with her crap like the rest of us.   Unless she’s dumb enough to get killed in spaceflight.   I wonder if someone could sneak an explosive on that ship of hers without her noticing...”

“Now what would that accomplish?” Lesseri asked.  

“Oh, I’m just thinking out loud,” Vigurd chuckled.  She finished her meal and patted her sizable belly with satisfaction.  “People would pay a fortune to hire the mercenary who slew the Super Saiyan, wouldn’t they?”

“Not once the word gets around that she’s just a run-of-the-mill Saiyan like a hundred thousand others available for hire,” Lesseri noted.   “All you’d prove is that you know how to set a time-bomb.”

“Wouldn’t someone else try to bomb your ship?” Jikama suggested.    “Then they could cash in on being the one to kill the mercenary who killed the Super Saiyan.”

Lesseri pointed a table knife at Jikama.  “See?  He’s only half-Saiyan and he gets it.”

“I don’t know why my father put up with you fools,” Brockle grumbled.  

“Because he knows he needs all the help he can get to keep his son from getting himself killed,” Lesseri said.   “Maybe you were in line to serve in Rehval’s elite guard, but you fouled that gig up, and now you’ve got to scrape together a living like the rest of us merc trash.   You don’t have to like us, Brockle.   You don’t have to like Luffa either, or her blue-skinned devil girl, for that matter, but you still need us for the time being.”

He opened his mouth to respond, when suddenly all four of them gasped with shock and turned to look up at the sky.   There was nothing to see, at least not with the naked eye, but the ki they had sensed was powerful enough to be sensed, even from outer space.  

“Is that... Luffa?” Vigurd asked.  

“It can’t be,” Brockle said.   “It feels completely different.    And there’s... two of them.”

“Jikama, contact the Chezzi military,” Lesseri said.   “We’ll need telemetry on that ship.”

“Huh?   Oh, right!” he said as he scrambled out of his seat.   While he took off into the air, she turned to Brockle.  

“Go find your father,” she said.  “Looks like we finally have a fight on our hands.”

“I don’t take orders from you, woman!” he said indignantly.  

“That’s right, you don’t,” she said.  “We both take orders from your father, and I’d like to start taking some before whatever that is gets here, so hurry up and find him!”

He muttered obscenities under his breath as he got up from the table, promising himself that she would pay for her disrespect, but Lesseri didn’t care as long as he did as she asked.  

She looked to Vigurd next.  “Do me a favor and prep Zaperc’s ship for launch.”

“What?” Vigurd asked.   “You want to run?”

“Right now I want to keep my options open,” Lesseri said.   “Without Luffa to back us up, I don’t know if we can beat these guys, and I don’t know if Zaperc’s sensible enough to order a retreat.  I don’t know about you, but I’d like an escape route handy.”

“You know, so would I, now that you mention it,” Vigurd said after a moment’s consideration.  

“Yes, I thought you might,” Lesseri said after Vigurd flew off.

*******

Two hours later, Zaperc was with Hijik in the throneroom of the King of Nat-Chezz, accompanied by several high-ranking military commanders.   They had been discussing plans to destroy the incoming vessel  before it could deploy its forces, when suddenly an image of two women appeared in the center of the room.    

Both of them had pale, almost transparent skin.  The shorter of the two was almost completely concealed beneath a black cloak.  Only her bare feet and lower shins were visible below the hem, and the hood of her cloak revealed only the portion of her face below her eyes.    Her nose and mouth were contorted into a cruel sneer.  

The taller woman was adorned in black leather up to her chest, which added emphasis to her large, muscular arms.  An iron helmet concealed her eyes as well, though a dark, horizontal slot on the front presumably allowed her to see out of it.  Lengths of wire hung from the back of the helmet, almost as if to serve as a crude substitute for hair.   Her lips were stretched to reveal her clenched teeth, as though she were constantly on the verge of biting someone.

“Are they holograms?” the king asked.  

“I think they’re some sort of ki constructs, Sire,” Zaperc said cautiously.   “Hijik, can you sense them too?”

Hijik nodded, and curled his tail around his waist.  Before he could give his own opinion on the images, the cloaked one addressed the room.

“Hail, King of Nat-Chezz.  I am Ünderlyne, and this is Stryquethru.   Henceforth, we shall be the new masters of your world.”

“Long have we coveted your scandium resources, King of the Chezzi,” Stryquethru growled through her teeth.   “You will surrender your world to us, or we shall take it by force.      Doubtless you have warriors who can already sense our power approaching your world.  They will tell you that we cannot be defeated.   Heed their warning and surrender to us!”

“Surrender, and you shall be shown... mercy...” promised Ünderlyne, though her tone lacked sincerity.   “The tender mercies of Stryquethru and Ünderlyne...  Oh how we beg you to submit.”

“Resist,” Stryquethru seethed, “and your people shall suffer terribly!   Woe to the defiant!   For there is no refuge from our wrath!”  

“Woe!” wailed Ünderlyne.  

“Woe!” added Stryquethru.

“Wooooooooeeeeee!” they howled in unison.  

As their voices faded, so too did their images, and the message appeared to be concluded.   The king looked to his advisors, and then to the two Saiyans, desperate for counsel.    

“At current velocity, we expect them to reach the planet in two hours, Sire,” said one of the generals.

“My son Brockle may be able to destroy their ship before it reaches the atmosphere, Sire,” Zaperc said.   “If not, I would recommend deploying our forces here...”

“Is this a joke?!” Hijik yelled.  

Suddenly, everyone in the room fell silent, and all eyes were looking to him.  

“It’s obviously a trick!” Hijik said.  “Am I the only one who sees it?”

“Hijik, what are you talking about?” Zaperc demanded.  “We don’t have time for--”

“That was Luffa, of course!” Hijik said.  “Luffa and her alien ‘partner’ or whatever she calls it!  They left the planet days ago, frustrated that we weren’t jumping through their hoops fast enough for them, so they dreamed up this phony invasion as some pathetic team-building exercise!”  

Silence fell upon the room again.   At last, the king spoke.   “Zaperc, could he be right?   Would the Super Saiyan do such a thing?”

Zaperc hesitated.   He had studied Luffa’s career for over two years, only to find that the real Luffa was very different from what his sources had told him.  She had been testing them for weeks now.  Could this be another test?  If it was, wouldn’t she have informed the king?  Perhaps he was aware of her plan, and he was feigning ignorance to help Luffa gauge their reactions.  

“I... I don’t know,” he finally said.   “Perhaps we should wait and see.”

“Wait?! Wait for what?” one of the Chezzi generals demanded.   “Neither of those women looked nothing like Luffa.  The shorter one was at least six inches taller than her.”

“It was a ki projection,” Hijik said.    “They could have made it look any size or shape they wanted!”

“And since when does Luffa have that ability?” the general asked sharply.  

“Her woman has all sorts of energy manipulation powers,” Hijik said.  “Working together, there’s no telling what they could do.”

“But why go to all this trouble?”  the Chezzi king asked.    “Why not simply arrange a war game maneuver?”

“Because it’s a team-building exercise,” Hijik said.  The disgust in his voice made it sound like he was describing the most detestable atrocity he could imagine.  “You don’t understand how women think, Your Majesty.   They want to humiliate us, then force us to work together against a common foe, and then they’ll reveal their ruse at the last moment, to reinforce the idea that none of us can accomplish anything unless they allow it.”

“Wh-what?” the king asked.  

Hijik sighed.  “I can see I’ll have to go over the basics of involuntary celibacy with you.   I’ll need something to write on so I can make a diagram...”

********

On a cozy island village off the coast of one of Nat-Chezz’s larger continents, Bodi stood in a library and watched patiently while a Chezzi woman looked through an almanac.  

“Sorry this is taking so long,” she said as she ran her maroon-skinned fingers down a table printed on page 702.  “You’d probably have more luck calling the Royal Astronomy Society.   They have a computer program that calculates things like this.”

Bodi smirked as he rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger.  “Luck?   Calculations?” he asked.   “With the fate of this world on the line, there can be no half-measures.   Take your time, and while you concentrate on finding the answer I need, I will drink in your beauty, and let it inspire my Saiyan power to unseen heights!”

The woman faltered for a moment, and clutched at her temples.   Even the horns on her head seemed to droop slightly.  

“Is something wrong?” Bodi asked.  “Have you found it?”

“No, I just... felt a little ill for a moment,” she said.  “Could you maybe save the cheesy lines for after the invasion?”

“Very well,” Bodi said as he dramatically removed his sunglasses.  “I accept!”

He had been patrolling this part of the planet when he sensed the huge powers approaching from space.  With Luffa and Zatte offworld, his standing orders were to report to Zaperc and the Chezzi military command, but he knew better.   There would be only one way to halt this impending doom.   Only one power that could bring Bodi and his comrade the victory they all craved.  Bodi would seize that power, and with it, the triumph, and with that... maybe some grateful Chezzi women...

“Okay, I think I’ve got it,” she said.  

“Good job!” he cheered, pointing at her with both hands.   “The location of the full moon!”

“Well, that’s just it,” she said sheepishly.  “The full moon won’t be in the sky for another week.   It doesn’t matter where you go on the planet’s surface.   It all depends on the moon’s position in relation to the sun.”

His jaw dropped.  

“What I was thinking of was a solar eclipse,” she explained.    “With those, it depends on where the observer is on the planet’s surface.   At a certain latitude, the moon would obscure more of the sun’s disc, but that has nothing to do with lunar phases.   I’m sorry.”

He didn’t move.   A pathetic squeaking sound emanated from his throat, but nothing more.

“Are you sure you need this Giant Ape form to win?” she asked.   “It just seems kind of unreliable to me.   You get all this power from it, but it only works under the light of the full moon.  And what if the invaders managed to cut off your tail?”

He nodded slightly.  

“Well, is there anything else I can help you with?” she asked.   “If not, I’ll uh... let you get back to strategizing.   I feel like I ought to see my family before this ship arrives.   So, uh, good luck out there.”

She left him standing there, dumbfounded.  One by one, the other patrons left the building, until at last the librarian at the desk shut off the lights and locked the doors.    Bodi didn’t move, except for a slight twitch as a single tear ran down his cheek.  

*******

“Behold, mistress!   The world of Nat-Chezz.   And soon it shall be ours!  The domain of Stryquethru and Ünderlyne!”

Stryquethru gazed at the image of the planet on the viewscreen, admiring whatever her helmet allowed her to perceive through the slot that obscured her eyes.   A tear of blood ran down her cheek as she made a twisted smile.  

“How peaceful it looks!” she exclaimed through clenched teeth.   “Soon, very, soon my lady--my queen, we shall have all the scandium we could ever need.  Scandium enough to sate the darkest of appetites!”  

Their ship had only one deck, containing a single, nearly empty room.   Nearly every surface was shiny and black, with heavy chains and manacles dangling from various positions on the wall.   There were no physical controls.   Ünderlyne simply waved her hands, seemingly clawing at the air with the long black nails on her fingers, and the ship responded instantly.  

“But hold!” she said.    “We are under attack!”

“The fools!” Stryquethru hissed.  “Do those spineless worms reject our kind warning already?”

“Worry not, my pet,” Ünderlyne said in a spiteful tone.  “The energy beam is a powerful one, rich in vital energy, but easily avoided.   Yes, we need only slip our vessel beneath normal space, into the welcoming darkness of subspace, and wait for the danger to pass.”  

As she spoke, she gestured with her hands to illustrate, and Stryquethru grunted with malicious approval.  Then she tilted back her head and growled.  

“Do I sense... Saiyan power in that attack?” she asked.  

Ünderlyne paused and considered the question carefully.  “Yessssss,” she said with a gleeful cackle.     “And added bonus for our conquest!”

“I would bathe in their blood!” Stryquethru insisted.   “The one who fired that insolent shot!   Yes, my pet, I will not rest until shreds of his viscera are lodged between my teeth!”

“Let us not be hasty,” Ünderlyne said with an evil smile.  “The Saiyans make fine stock for breeding, as well as for soup.   Imagine an entire offshoot of their race, toiling away to refine scandium for our dark bidding.”

Stryquethru screamed for thirty seconds straight.    “Delightful,” she added.   “I cannot bear to wait any longer!  How long until we arrive?!”

“Soon!” Ünderlyne cried.

*******

“Now!” Ünderlyne cried as they stepped out of the hatch of their ship and onto the courtyard of the Chezzi royal palace.  

“Where is the king!?” Stryquethru screeched.  “He must surrender his world to us immediately!”  

“Bring us the king!” Ünderlyne shrieked.  “Lest we hunt him down and devour his eyes!”

But the courtyard was empty, save for the two invaders and their black, disc-shaped vessel.   Suddenly, the vessel was engulfed in an explosion.  

“How dare!” Ünderlyne rasped.  

“My chains!” Stryquethru howled.   “All of my favorite chains were on board!”  

“Take heart, mistress,” Ünderlyne said.  “We shall soon forge new chains, of scandium alloy!”

“Seems your ship is much easier to hit when it’s standing still,” shouted Brockle as he flew over the courtyard.   He alighted just in front of the invaders and the burning hulk that was once their ship.   “Now I only need to destroy the two of you.”

“You were the one!” Stryquethru moaned.   “The one who fired upon us before!   Saiyan!  I would have your innards!”

Brockle clenched his fists and raised his power level to its maximum.    “Come and take them if you can!” he growled.    “I’m going to make an example of the two of you.   When I’m through, no one will dare come near this planet again!”

“Then let us do battle, fool!” Stryquethru shouted.   “Let the seas run red with our blood!   Unleash your power Saiyan.    Bring forth your fury!”

“Wait, stop!  We surrender!”

Brockle turned to see his father running out from one of the palace doors.   He ran past Brockle and dropped to his knees before the dark women.  

“Father, what are you doing?” Brockle asked.  

“Spare my son, please,” Zaperc asked as he clasped his hands together in supplication.   “He is only a boy.”

“Father, I am not a boy, I am seventeen years old!” Brockle protested.  

“How touching,” Ünderlyne cooed.    “The son seeks war, while the father begs for peace.   Do you truly know what you ask, filthy Saiyan?”

“We’re no match for you,” Zaperc said.    “We have no choice but to yield.”

“Then prove your sincerity, knave!” Stryquethru commanded.  “Cut off your tail and eat it here in front of us!”  

“That is disgusting, Stryquethru!” Ünderlyne muttered.  

“It is the only way they will learn, my mistress,” Stryquethru said quietly.  

“Father, you can’t be serious!” Brockle said.   “I’m strong enough to defeat these wretches.    Let me--”

“Son, your power doesn’t even compare!” Zaperc snapped.   “Look past your pride and sense what stands before you!   I’m not sure if even Luffa could stand against these monsters.”

Zaperc’s words were like a heavy blow to his gut.   In that instant, all the confidence simply drained out of Brockle.  “F-father--!” was all he could bring himself to say.  

“I’ll do as you ask,” Zaperc said, glancing down at the end of his furry tail.   “If you agree to let me and my son leave this planet peacefully.”

“No!”

The four of them turned, and found Hijik floating over the courtyard, looking down upon them.   There was a large sphere of energy in his right hand, and he was brandishing it with look of desperation on his face.  

“Hijik, what in blazes are you doing?” Zaperc asked.  

“I’m rescuing your dignity from these she-beasts!” he shouted back.   “We can’t defeat them, but we do have enough power to destroy the planet, or at least render it uninhabitable!”  

“Are you mad, Saiyan?!” Stryquethru barked.   “Put that energy away and come down here!   Or do you want to kill yourself along with the rest of us?!”

“I’m not bluffing!” Hijik said.   “If we can’t have this planet, neither will you!  I suggest you get back in your ship and leave.    This world isn’t safe for your kind!”

“They can’t leave, Hijik!” Zaperc groaned.   “Brockle destroyed their ship!”

This was apparently news to Hijik, or he may have seen it happen, and simply failed to consider the ramifications.    “He... did?!” Hijik stammered.   “But... but...”

“We cannot leave!” Stryquethru gloated.  “Nor would we wish to do so.    Tell me, little man, would you hold that ball of death over us forever?!”

“No, wait!” Hijik said, thinking as fast as he could.  “You could take our ship.”  

“In the first place, Hijik,” Zaperc said, “it’s not ‘our ship’, it’s my ship.   And second--”

As he spoke, they all sensed another Saiyan life energy moving overhead.   It was Vigurd, piloting the very ship they were just discussing.

“What is she doing?” Zaperc asked.  

“That coward!” Brockle fumed.   “She’s running away!  Leaving us behind!”

“Well, someone get to a transmitter and tell her to turn around!” Hijik yelled.  “She doesn’t need to run away now!   She can bring the ship down and hand it off to these two.   Hell, she can leave with them for all I care.   Just so long as they--”

Suddenly, Zaperc’s ship exploded into a fireball, and began a steep descent towards the horizon.  

“Vigurd?!” Zaperc cried.   He couldn’t sense her energy now.   It was possible that a Saiyan of her power level might have survived the explosion, but if Zaperc couldn’t sense her ki, then that meant Vigurd wasn’t using it to protect herself, or to break her fall to the surface.    If she wasn’t dead already, she soon would be.

Hijik wasted no time dreaming up another alternative.   “There’s plenty of other starships on this planet,” he said.  

“Enough!” Stryquethru shouted.   “You’ve put up a nice front, little Saiyan, but your game is over now!  Come down here, and if Ünderlyne deems you suitable, we may make use of you for our breeding experiments.”

“Breeding?” Hijik said.   “You mean, me and you?”

Ünderlyne simply cackled and waved her hands with abandon.  

“And perhaps I as well, dog,” Stryquethru added, “assuming there is anything left of you once dear Ünderlyne is through.”

Hijik quickly dissipated the energy ball in his hand and descended beside Zaperc.   “When do we start?” he asked hopefully.

“Hijik, are you mad?” Zaperc asked.   “A moment ago these two demanded that I eat my own tail!”  

“What’s your point?” he asked.  

“Not so fast, ladies!” called a voice in the distance.    

“Oh, what now?” Hijik groaned.  

The dark women were equally annoyed.   The looked and found a figure standing atop one of the stone pillars in the courtyard, with his arms crossed and his back turned toward them.    With a flourish, he backflipped off the pillar, twisting and flipping as he moved through the air, until at last his feet touched the ground and he struck a dramatic pose.

“Bodi,” Zaperc said.    “I’m asking you to please stay out of this.”

“I’ve come to issue a challenge!” Bodi said.   “We can’t defeat you ladies now, but in a week, when the moon is full, my comrades and I will be ready to fight you with all we’ve got.”  

“Why should we do such a thing?!”  Stryquethru asked.  

“Your comrades are already surrendering to us!” Ünderlyne hissed.   “What possible reason would we have for delaying our triumph?”

He rubbed his chin, then adjusted his sunglasses.   “I see,” he said as he closed his eyes and smiled.    “It seems I failed to consider that.   Very well.   In that case, all that I have left is...”

There was a long pause, and for a moment, Zaperc dared to wonder if Bodi actually had a way out of this situation.  

“... No plans!” Bodi declared.  

Zaperc shook his head mournfully and looked down at his tail once again.  

*******

[7 March 234 Before Age.  Nat-Chezz II.]

As it turned out, Zaperc got to keep his tail, at least for the time being.   As sadistic as the invaders were, they seemed more interested in savoring their victory than in carrying out their threats.   Thus, the first ever “Surrender Banquet” was held in the palace’s main hall.  The decorations made the occasion resemble the interior design of Stryquethru and Ünderlyne’s ship.   The streamers were made of black paper, the bouqets of flowers were dyed to as dark a hue as possible, and pieces of rusted scrap metal were laid upon each table like centerpieces.   At the front of the room was a stage, where the new rulers of Nat-Chezz sat upon their “throne”, which was actually just a black leather sofa they had stabbed with assorted swords and knives.    Hijik and Bodi stood on either side of them, each wearing heavy manacles on their necks and wrists that were more symbolic than functional.  

“When do we start the breeding program?” Hijik asked Ünderlyne .  

“At a time and place of our choosing, mortal fool!” Ünderlyne insisted.   “If you do not stop asking, I shall carve out your tongue!”

“Oh, let him babble, my lady,”  Stryquethru said.   “I enjoy hearing the Saiyan whimper like an animal begging for table scraps.”  

There was a loud metallic crack, and Stryquethru turned to scold Bodi.   “Worthless wretch!  I told you to stop fidgeting with those chains!   Now you’ve broken them!”

Bodi had been trying to scratch his back, which had strained the metal to its breaking point.   He grinned and adjusted his sunglasses.  “Apologies, ladies,” he said as smoothly as he could.   “I suppose that I was so overwhelmed by your animal magnetism that I forgot my own strength.    Best surrender ever!”

At one of the tables, Zaperc was apologizing profusely to the Chezzi king.  

“We still have a chance,” he said in a low voice.   “Lesseri and Jikama are unaccounted for.   One of them might find a way to summon help and--”

“What good will that do?” the king whispered.  “These women are too powerful, Zaperc.  They could defeat an army of Saiyans, and I doubt your comrades can find us that much help.”

“There is the full moon,” Zaperc suggested.   “Bodi may have had the right idea after all.   If we bide our time, we might--”

The king was horrified at this suggestion.   “Don’t you think they’ve already anticipated that tactic?” he asked.   “In another week, they’ll either chop off your tails or destroy our moon.”  

Zaperc sighed as he realized the king was right.   It wasn’t supposed to have been like this.    His son Brockle should have unlocked his hidden potential and become powerful enough to tackle any challenge, including these invaders. Instead, Stryquethru and Ünderlyne had taken the planet without a struggle, and Brockle now sulked in a far corner of the hall, his spirit completely broken.  

"Silence!"  Stryquethru screamed.  "We would have music!  We would see merriment!  Dance, Chezzi insects!  Dance for your dark queens!"

With some reluctance, most of the ’guests’ rose from their chairs and began to dance in an open area of the hall.  As commanded by their new rulers, they all wore black gowns and formal wear mottled with ashes.

"Shall we?" the king said, offering his hand to Zaperc.

Zaperc was irritated by the situation, but he supposed every moment he spent playing along was another moment he got to keep his tail attached to his body.  Begrudgingly, he took the king’s hand and led him through a rudimentary waltz.

"You’ve done this before," the king said with some amazement.  "I didn’t think Saiyans knew how to dance."

"It was in the book," Zaperc explained ruefully.

"The book?   You mean The Luffa Way?" the king asked.

"There’s a section about opening oneself to new experiences.  It goes on to describe a time when Luffa supposedly taught herself to waltz in order to defeat a giant sea serpent on Planet Zeezil."

"And you resolved to learn the same steps," the king said.

Zaperc nodded.  "All of it was a waste of time.  The real Luffa told me the book was a pack of lies.  She had never been to the Zeezil system.  Her wife--who isn’t even mentioned in the book-- told me that Luffa doesn’t know how to dance."

"How gauche," the king said.  "I wonder what they did at their wedding reception..."

"Luffa levitated herself an inch off the ground and let Zatte slide her across the floor like a shuffleboard disc.  At least, that was what Zatte told me.  She may have been joking.  It’s hard for me to tell."

"That sounds rather fun, actually," the king said.  "Would you care to try it?"

Zaperc frowned.  "The point is that I’ve been wasting my time.  I devoted years to following in Luffa’s footsteps, only to find that her feet weren’t even touching the ground!  All the rumors and tall tales and false accounts I’ve studied--! All it’s won me is a life of bondage.  It would all be worth it if this somehow led to a better life for my son, but look at him over there.  I’ve only doomed him to the same fate."

The King glanced back at Brockle, who was still sulking in his chair.  A Chezzi maiden asked him to dance, but he wouldn’t even acknowledge her presence.

"Don’t give up hope, Noble Saiyan," the king said.  "My people have endured numerous conquests and occupations in our history.  This too shall pass."

"How can you say that at a time like this?!" Zaperc asked.  "We can’t defeat these monsters!  Not even Luffa could--!"

Suddenly, there came a loud noise from the back of the hall.  There was a massive double door at the entrance, made of particularly expensive and sturdy breed of Chezzi timber, and decorated with bismuth ink.  These now lay on the floor, the wood splintered and cracked where they had been shorn from their hinges.

"Eh?  Who dares!" Stryquethru screeched.

The newcomer stormed into the hall, walking directly toward the invaders without acknowledging the Saiyans or Chezzi.  When she was standing directly in front of Stryquethru and Ünderlyne’s sofa, she extended her hand and curled in her fingers, beckoning them to come closer.

"Let’s step outside," Luffa said.

NEXT: Post Mortem

[gascon-en-exil]

The Top Ten Women of Fire Emblem (As Written by a Gay Man)

#1 - Micaiah

When we were separated during the war, you changed, Sothe. And I changed too. I want to protect Daein more than anything. Our people must be saved, and if I can help in that effort, I will.

Let it not be said that this was an obvious pick simply because Micaiah happens to be a lord, and one from my favorite game in the series moreover. Although I thought it appropriate to end this ranking with a lord I’m well aware that all the women who’ve fulfilled that role in FE (excluding Avatars for obvious reasons) have had to work against writers determined to screw them over in one way or another. There’s not much point therefore in me rehashing the many criticisms, valid or not, that have been leveled against Micaiah over the years. I’m instead going to be breaking down just why I think she works for me as well as she does, and how thoroughly she earns the distinction of being the least narratively compromised female lord in the franchise...for whatever that’s worth.

Revenge of the Jugdral Waifs

Parts of Tellius’s worldbuilding borrow extensively from Jugdral, some in more subtle ways than others. Micaiah is one of its more obvious allusions, as both her look and class design owe much to a group of female light magic users from those games who also exist outside the framework of the traditional clerical classes (some - or all? - of them even share their starting class name with the Japanese name of Micaiah’s third tier class). Deirdre, Julia, Linoan, and Sara are all women of high standing, and three of them are linked by blood to the dark Loptyrian cult not unlike Micaiah’s association with the “dark” goddess Yune. In spite of circumstances that ought to grant them significant plot relevance however all four of these characters are diminished by the narratives of the two games, either kept on the political sidelines in preference to a man or turned into barely-characterized damsels in distress. To paraphrase Markoftheasphodel, Deirdre and Julia in particular encapsulate the whole of Jugdral’s particular brand of misogyny - some of the most important and powerful characters in the setting reduced to tormented plot devices devoid of personality.

It’s probably a stretch to suggest that Micaiah was intentionally written as a means of redeeming these characters after the fact merely because she owes so much of her design to them. Still, that reading is certainly there. Micaiah assumes Julia’s role during Part 4, becoming the human vessel for Yune as Julia is inhabited by the spirit of Naga during the last chapter of FE4. While there’s no arguing that Micaiah drew the short straw when it came to gameplay power-ups from her resident deity, in return she is allowed substantially more screentime and agency even when she’s sharing her body with someone else. Certain characterization threads relative to Micaiah and not Yune, like vengeance against Numida and Lekain and the back story of Micaiah’s relationship with Sothe, are followed through to their conclusions only during Part 4. Also, while it’s Yune calling the shots as the army ascends the Tower of Guidance Micaiah is still an active participant, taking responsibility for awakening Yune before Dheghinsea and saving Lehran among other things. 

It’s a common criticism that Ike takes over the plot of Radiant Dawn from Micaiah, but the truth is that he’s sharing the endgame spotlight with Micaiah and Yune together. Ike is still the saga hero of Tellius - the Seliph equivalent - but Micaiah displays none of Julia’s blankness and passivity at any point. She’s unquestionably closer to being the deuterotagonist of Tellius than any Leif equivalent (Elincia, perhaps?). What’s more, while Linoan must cede her political relevance to Leif and Julia’s epilogue has her being little more than a support to her emperor brother, Micaiah gets to rule the kingdom she’s spent the game trying to save - while not invalidating the rule of her recently-discovered younger sister over her own country, incidentally - whereas Ike leaves the continent to have adventures and gay sex. In Jugdral the best most women can hope to be is support for their ruling husbands; in Tellius all three beorc nations have women ruling them by the end. Indeed, even compared with the other non-Avatar female lords that’s a huge step forward.

Conquest Needs to Take Notes: FE10′s Villain Campaign

This should really be a more controversial statement than it actually is: the Dawn Brigade chapters of FE10, especially those in Part 3, make for a better villain campaign than the entirety of FE14′s Conquest route.

It’s sad how that it isn’t really an exaggeration at all, and even more sad that FE10 doesn’t rely on narrative shortcuts to convey the idea that you’re temporarily playing as the bad guys like Conquest does. Daein isn’t draped entirely in black, and its antagonistic history as a nation saddled with a legacy of racism and Ashnard’s goals of conquest isn’t swept under the rug or left to be inferred only from Path of Radiance. The Daein of Radiant Dawn still displays its anti-laguz prejudice from the previous game, and there’s no indication that that prejudice doesn’t extend to members of the playable cast or that it’s something that will be quickly and cleanly done away with after the credits roll. Micaiah herself plays to the wishes of her racist followers when she has to in Part 3, and though she’s not rabidly bigoted like Jill is in FE9 before her character development she does have a personal interest in not making waves.

I’m not only talking about her ambivalence toward laguz as a Branded, either. One of Micaiah’s most defining traits is her patriotism. It’s a curious element of her character, based in her feelings toward her adopted homeland and willfully unconcerned with Daein’s racism even as it forces her to hide her Brand. It’s rather amusing that probably the most common criticism leveled against Micaiah is that she’s a Mary Sue blindingly adored in-universe, not just because the same could be said for Ike but because that’s exactly what she’s built up to be. If anything the mounting conflict between Ike’s loyal followers - technically the Gallian army and later Crimea and Sanaki’s forces, but they all join together under him - and the cult-ish adherents of “the Maiden of Dawn” deconstructs this accusation. Everyone in Daein may adore her and may have rallied around the Dawn Brigade in a bid to remove the Begnion occupation, but by Part 3 that fervor is shown to be clearly unhealthy and something that Lekain is able to manipulate to his advantage. 

It’s not just the alliance with Begnion that places the Dawn Brigade chapters in villain campaign territory, as Micaiah is forced to resort to increasingly underhanded tactics to satisfy the demands of the senate, from ambushes in the dark to outright war crimes. All the while she’s being ironically proclaimed by her soldiers a symbol of light and divine will, a stark contrast to Nohr’s shadowy branding. It’s a matter of opinion whether Lekain’s blood pact is more or less contrived than the various plot devices that keep Conquest Corrin in line during the invasion of Hoshido, but Micaiah is actually allowed to be genuinely antagonistic toward the armies she’s opposing, in large part because of her pronounced nationalism and the atmosphere of blind worship she’s allowed to grow around her. One of the most important elements of a well-written villain story is that the characters involved shouldn’t think of themselves as the villains unless they’re fully evil and are committed as such (which usually isn’t that interesting anyway). Conquest focuses too much on Corrin’s angst over the ruin of Hoshido and leaves the motivations of the Nohrians vague, whereas Daein in Part 3 carries both its legacy of bigotry and militarism from FE9 and the memory of its glorious uprising against foreign oppression from Part 1. It’s not hard at all to imagine the members of the Dawn Brigade and even the Daein military thinking themselves heroes of their own story, bolstered by a leader determined to do whatever is necessary to save her people.  

The Token(-ish) Het of Tellius

I would be remiss though if I didn’t talk about queer content at some point, because Tellius pretty much runs off the stuff. In that regard Micaiah is admittedly lacking; she has her auto-A support with Sothe and almost nothing else, and while exposition on their early relationship reveals that their bond is a quasi-incestuous one riddled with age issues it’s not in the same league as Nailah/Rafiel totally inverting gender roles, Haar/Jill almost literally robbing the cradle, or Elincia’s complex feelings for her two closest retainers. One can appreciate though that Micaiah/Sothe displays a certain symmetry with Ike/Soren, from parallels in their first meetings to the experiences of one member of each pairing being Branded to their roles at the heads of their respective armies (from a gameplay perspective note that Soren and Sothe stand beside their partners when faced as enemies in 3-13 and 3-E respectively). I might go so far as to say that these symmetries provide additional legitimacy to Ike/Soren as a paired ending, especially since they get their own exposition-laden base conversation in endgame.

Ooh, Shiny!

And ok, my bias in favor of light magic users is on display here too. I was hyped for Micaiah as soon as she appeared in promotional materials as a caster lord, the first and so far only purely magical unit to hold that title. Even notwithstanding the fact that Radiant Dawn is arguably the worst game in the series in which to be a magic user Micaiah has some serious issues as a unit, but at least when she sucks in-game she does so in manner completely distinguishable from the likes of Leif and Roy. She can be a staffbot (she can use Physic as soon as she promotes), she can nuke stuff with Thani and/or Wrath crits thanks to her nonexistent defenses, she can riskily play around her late promotions with Resolve (Easy only, please), and even at the end of the game when she’s probably still frail and will never be fast enough to double everything she’s still the best candidate for Rexaura just because the saints are even worse. I appreciate too that light magic got some much-needed statistical buffs compared to Path of Radiance, and we most likely have Micaiah to thank for that. Even if the game hates her she can make for a fun if challenging unit to use to her greatest potential.

...Now I want to play FE10 again.

[slothcritic]

Dragon Ball Z Abridged - Episode 1

Rocky start. Piccolo is the only saving grace of this episode.

Right, let’s get right into this one.

“The Return of Raditz! … Wait…” starts off with a standard “nature is beautiful” sequence that begs to be usurped in any non-documentary video. Record scratch, something crashes into the ground and scares the pink turkey chickens milling about. The farmer cries for his marijuana patch (which admittedly I find hilarious) but then corrects himself to say its actually totally just a carrot patch guys. But no one is around, so this feels more like a jab at the viewer, for the creators to say “Ah? Ah? You see that? We’re funny.”

After a pointless joke about arriving at Earth “with open bar” and a clumsy comparison to Sonic the Hedgehog, Raditz makes his appearance, and within his first line of dialogue mentions two characters that haven’t appeared yet. This creates a problem.

On the one hand, foreshadowing and inside jokes are awesome: Much later in the series, Goku references Goten and Vegeta references Tarble. These examples work... if you’ve seen the source content. Granted, it’s an “abridged” series, you might be thinking “well, who HASN’T seen the original DBZ?” and I can tell you that I specifically watched DBZ just so I would understand all the jokes from DBZA. I watched four episodes in, got annoyed with all the very obvious jokes and references I was missing out on, and binged the entire DBZ series over the summer. It’s also simply a matter of how well you can tell a story, and leaving out key plot points because you feel like your viewership is already “in the know” isolates outsiders.

I understand most of the references within DBZA (not all of them, the later episodes get incredibly subtle), but a fresh observer might not. So for someone who’s never seen DBZ, this is confusing and unnecessary. So it doesn’t work for them.

This specific example isn’t remarkable either for show-watchers. Raditz mentions Kakarot and Turles, and while the former works, the latter doesn’t. Turles is too inconsequential to the story and is completely removed from Raditz as a character. In my opinion, the two are only mentioned for their similar appearance and nothing beyond that. So it doesn’t work for them.

It just does not work.

After a relatively (and I strongly use the word “relatively” here) solid bit, Raditz mentions another yet-established and barely-related character.

After the title sequence, we’re introduced to a much more interesting character within his first few lines of dialogue, and that carries through to the MySpace joke. While this scene does not hold up to time (and dates the show immensely), I can vouch that this scene was good for its time, and puts us at the (contextually, not objectively) best joke of the episode thus far.

Presently though it’s only purpose is to show that Piccolo has only one friend because he’s lonely. For the very few who are not aware, Tom is the default friend you get just from opening an account.

After yelling (through a cheap microphone I might add) some in-your-face exposition, Raditz lands in front of Piccolo, who he had mistaken for Kakarot. Piccolo responds. “I’ve got green skin, pointy ears, and a turban. Oh yeah, I must look like so many other people.”

This line supersedes the episode.

The next scene is infamously iconic within the TFS fanbase and represents something bigger than its face value. The voice actors, shattering the fourth wall, get into a fight over the name of Raditz’s special attack, which results in Raditz being voiced by someone completely different for the rest of the show.

The most important thing about this scene is that is shows creativity, and represents the first breadcrumb in the trail for what TFS had in mind for the series back then. But if we regard “The Return of Raditz! … Wait…” as a standalone, and mark it objectively based on its self-contained qualities, it becomes apparent how much of a flop this is. It’s a pointless, do-nothing skit that has an arbitrary payoff. It also comes off as a little presumptuous, especially as the first episode of an abridged series, which back then were popping up like crazy. Remember when let’s plays and minecraft videos were booming? It was basically that. The voice actors are placing themselves on a pedestal mid-way through their first ever episode.

Moving on, girls just want to have fun and the blue-haired girl makes her first appearance. She’s meeting friends apparently, and upon introduction, she’s met with “Boobs! I mean Bulma.”

There’s a lot I could say about this. It could be a dig at how she’s the only female character in the main cast (arguably excluding Chi-Chi), or it could be a suggestion that Krillin has a crush on her, or that Krillin is just a pervert and that was the first thing he associates with Bulma. I’ll just say it’s a poor line and move on.

The next notable scene has a man in orange arriving at the island with a small child in his arms. Bulma calls him Goku and Krillin calls him Tail, a tongue-in-cheek riff on his "Boobs!" line and saves TFS a little face, though not enough to make worth the former.

Conversely, there's references to Dragon Ball here regarding their exposition, which is different from making references to yet-established parts of Dragon Ball Z. However, chances are if people watching this haven't seen DBZ, they're not going to have seen the original DB. Assuming the shows didn't exist and this was its own product, no one knows whats happening here. People might regard this as a place where show-savvy viewers get to laugh at inside jokes that need no explanation, but to those who haven't, it's... Well, no need to be repetitive.

Goku admits to having a son, and the characters begin to hint at "So, that means you had sex right?" Goku is completely oblivious: The first indication the viewer has that Goku might not be the sharpest knife in the crayon box. The effect of Roshi "whooshing" next to Goku catches my eye as good sound design, which while sparse in the early episodes becomes commonplace later in the series.

We learn that Goku's son is being groomed to be a scholar, rather than a fighter like his father, and that he has a powerful MacGuffin strapped to his head, making him a huge target for greedy villains.

When Goku feels a powerful energy level, he compares it to the biggest thing he can think of: Krillin's losing streak... in the first episode... with a character that's had less than ten seconds of screen time. We don't really know how big of a losing streak this is, so the remark itself loses a lot of potential power. It's only real merit is exposition; At least we get an idea here that Krillin the series butt monkey.

Raditz swoops in and drops some knowledge, about who Kakarot is, why Goku/Kakarot is on Earth, why HE is on Earth, and their fraternal relationship. It's dense, fast, and to anyone who didn't watch DBZ first, I pity you. None of it will make any sense. It's just something you've gotta "go with". He then uses his tail to smack Krillin into Kame House, thus christening the first notch on Krillin Owned Count. This works better as a running gag than it does in the first episode.

Goku shows more concern for the house than Krillin, and then explains the MacGuffin Dragon Balls in more detail: They can grant any wish you want, including immortality.

Cut to a random pig (Oolong) chiming in that you can also wish for Bulma's panties. Uh... What?

This is not necessarily wrong unlike the "Boobs!" line, considering Oolong does exactly this in DBZ, but this is the first time Oolong makes an appearance in "The Return of Raditz! … Wait…" It's a very abrupt appearance with no explanation. No one addresses him before or after this. His name isn’t even mentioned in the episode. And why is he inside when everyone else is outside?

Cut to Vegeta and Nappa who have apparently heard Goku through Raditz's scouter. Wait, that hasn't been explained yet either! We get the barest glimpse at Nappa's character while Vegeta is, well, there. Raditz explains they're going to kill everyone on the planet and sell it, Goku objects, and Raditz smacks him into the ground. He kidnaps Goku's son and then flies off, for perhaps no other reason than "Fuck you I'm evil" It all happens pretty quick.

Krillin, despite being "bitch slapped through a house", is unable to stop him and thus takes the blame, for no other reason than being the butt monkey.

Piccolo shows up and openly mocks Goku for having his shit shoved in and losing his son, further cementing him the most interesting character in this episode. Goku then convinces Piccolo to join forces with him to confront Raditz, and in exchange, he'll friend Piccolo on Myspace.

"Tom you've been replaced." is a relatively fullfilling wraparound and a good ending for a... well, bad episode.

Conclusion

It's bad. There's no way around it. Let me break down why if it hasn't already been made clear.

The characters: Raditz the Walking Exposition, Krillin the Butt Monkey, Goku the Idiot and Piccolo, that's it. Everyone else is a non-character at this point. Piccolo, though handled in a slightly clumsy fashion, is shown to be the most diverse character here. The snark, the "fuck it" attitude, and the going joke that he's lonely. Goku's character isn't well defined beyond what he is. He's a father, a fighter, a Saiyan, Raditz's brother, but those are all things that have nothing to do with his personality. All we really get aside from "he's dumb" is that he's just a vessel for the plot to move forward. Raditz is literally pure exposition. He has no character traits aside from being a dick. Krillin is given the Milhouse treatment.

The writing: What is going on here?

The production quality: Old grainy footage, fine I can deal with that. It's how the original DBZ looks. Most people would shit on this, and KaiserNeko (the lead editor) does switch over to higher quality source footage for Season 2, but I personally won't knock it. What I will knock is the microphone quality. This is most noticable when Raditz and Piccolo meet. Contextually, I get it. It's the first episode, everyone in the main cast is like 19-20 years old at this point, maybe still live with their parents, maybe just have a default headset mic, everyone knows what that's like. Objectively, it's still terrible.

Score: 35

Passing Thoughts

MasakoX does the voice for Master Roshi very early on, before Lanipator took over the role. I’ve always imagined early Roshi as more like a teddy bear, whereas Roshi 2.0 was definitely “lecherous old man” to a P.

"Holy black on a Popo!" - Hasn't been established yet, but I like it.

[renaroo]

Twisted Legacy (12/25)

Disclaimer: Transformers and related properties belong to Hasbro Warnings: Canon-typical language and violence, Psychological torture and horror, Post-war politics, Canon divergence/Loose canon, Hospitalization and illness, Cultist indoctrination Rating: T Synopsis: [Canon Divergence from MTMTE and exRID #54] The legacy of the Primes has had a tainted past, one that weighs heavily on Optimus, his supporters, and those who seek the legacy for the future. But as they look forward for themselves and for Cybertron, a darkness looms that threatens to further corrupt the unsteady peace of their planet with its curious claim to be the Hand of Primus himself.

It’s up to Optimus, Windblade, Rodimus, and their teams to try and save all Cybertronians from this mysterious threat and, perhaps, change the future for the better if they can.

A/N: Agghhhh this was supposed to come out Friday, but I’m LAZY and I apologize so much for the wait <3 

Special thanks to Isame, @secretlystephaniebrown, and squiggol for the feedback! I really appreciate it!

Part III: The Risk of Saving the Guilty Chapter 3.2: Steep Accusations

Velocity, like all Camiens, had been accustomed to worship of the Primes. These distant, mythological figures who were chosen by Primus to guide all mech, to open their spark to the Matrix and provide a guiding light to them all. 

She had, especially of her sorority, always been the more secular of the girls, especially if one did not account for Firestar’s self absorption. Velocity had never been precisely a skeptic or non-believer on the levels she had seen over the months being exposed to Ratchet’s tutelage, but the reality of a Prime was always so distant from her day to day life. 

One thing she never dreamed of was riding in a shuttle beside the Prime himself. 

The very real, very solemn, very intimidating Prime. 

His very presence smothered what otherwise would have probably been joyous reunification between her and her group of Amicas. 

Alongside her, Nautica seemed utterly starstruck by the Prime’s presence, unusually quiet and teetering on pure nervousness. So unlike her. 

Their Cybertronian Amicas and other friends did not share the quiet awe, but they were all visibly uncomfortable, from Brainstorm’s nervous chatter to Nightbeat’s suspicious leering in Optimus Prime’s direction.

Chromedome was flying their shuttle, Rewind by his side as always. But the minibot was downright furious -- his field was vibrating with it. Their reactions to the Prime’s presence on the ship was... curious and mostly an outlier. 

The Prime was unreadably stoic from his seat. 

“So what are the odds, given he was part of the mutiny, that Perceptor would allow me to design something briefcase shaped but under supervision as always?” Brainstorm asked, stroking his faceplate’s chin. “I’m thinking it’s in the twenty to thirty percent possible.”

“You’re being far too generous,” Nightbeat informed him. “I’d put it at a zero. I think briefcases are out of the question at this point in your scientific career.”

Brainstorm let out a frustrated noise and grabbed the sides of his helm. “But it’s the only thing I have on my processor since I woke up!”

“Hm,” Nightbeat said, bringing his own hand to his chin. 

Velocity looked at him curiously. He had been unusually quiet since the upset at Eukaris first broke news across their crew. It was very unlike Nightbeat, and even more than that it was most likely because he was trying to untangle some connections he was making. Though, Velocity couldn’t imagine for the life of her how he had enough information to figure anything out yet.

Nautica was hugging her arms before taking a deep vent and pulling her gaze away from the Prime as best she could. Instead she looked to Velocity. 

“Velocity, you got to spend more time in the medical ward while we were on Cybertron,” Nautica stated. 

“Yes,” Velocity agreed, somewhat confused by the subject.

“Did you see Windblade and Chromia at all?” she asked hopefully.

“I did,” Velocity said. “Though, not much. They seemed to mostly be looking for answers and checking the tensions in the room. With it being an interplanetary incident and all, I’m pretty sure they were figuring out political stuff more than come in for a visit.”

A somewhat disappointed frown came to Nautica’s face. “I guess Windblade always did dive headfirst into anything she was involved in, didn’t she? That’s a shame. I’ve always had a hard time of holding a high opinion of politicians.”

“Everything’s a little political at the end of the day,” Velocity observed. 

“And the patients?” Nautica asked. “I mean, Brainstorm’s doing better -- processor damage or not.”

“Who said anything about damage?” Brainstorm huffed defensively. 

“So the others have a good chance thanks to your all’s hands, right?” Nautica pressed. 

Velocity rubbed at her shoulder. “That’s difficult to really answer, Nautica. You’re dealing with different injuries, and I didn’t have a direct hand with everyone in the ward. I barely got to more than watch over Rodimus’ CR chamber while we were there and all.”

“But you could read his charts, right?” Nautica asked. “When do they think he’ll wake up?”

Surprised by the curious looks all of her friends were giving her, Velocity realized that they really didn’t grasp the state of their co-captain’s hospitalization. 

“Oh, gosh. Everyone, it’s not....” Velocity paused and gathered her thoughts. “Rodimus isn’t going to wake up until they decide to take him off of sedation. His coma is medically induced until they can figure out a way to reconstruct his bareframe over his protoform again. A lot of his natural physiology is melted and will require lots of reconstruction. It’s beyond natural mending abilities.”

"That sounds horrible,” Nautica said, placing a hand over her intake.

“I’d be completely lost on what to do if it was my case alone,” Velocity admitted. “Fortunately First Aid and Ratchet are on it. And they’re... It’s amazing. I’ve never seen some of the procedures they would use while working on Rodimus. I mean, First Aid alone revived Rodimus’ spark on the brink of offlining -- when it was the size of pinprick!” She then hesitated, recalling the enormity of those moments and glancing toward Optimus Prime. O-of course they were using the Prime’s help at the time. I even saw the Matrix itself once.”

Nightbeat and Brainstorm seemed intrigued but not nearly as impressed as Nautica, who looked to the Prime with complete awe. 

Velocity wondered if their similar religious upbringing brought the same subtle fears and amazement to her friend as they did to her.

It was difficult sitting in the same ship as a religious figure.

“I really got to put into perspective my position as a new doctor while in that room, though,” Velocity announced, steepling her fingers. “I worked so hard for all those years to make it through medical school and then through the exams. Even at my proudest moment, I had always assumed mediocrity for myself in my field. But the Lost Light -- learning under First Aid and Ratchet. They do laps around the mentors I’ve had for all these years. Their application has taught me more than all the books I’m still in debt paying off during school. I am beyond fortunate. And our captain is beyond fortunate to have them on his team, keeping him in the best care possible.”

Nautica nodded. 

Brainstorm and Nightbeat were unusually quiet for themselves. 

“Is there anything else you want to know?” Velocity asked. “If not, I’d love to hear about the sights on Cybertron you all got to visit while I was cooped up. The growth of the city is something to behold! Each time we stop there, no matter what crisis has happened in the time between, they’ve managed to do so much and grow in population and structures.”

“There’s a civilian-ran research facility--” Brainstorm began, eyes shining with excitement. “It’s the first time I’ve thought there could actually be something Cybertron could offer if the Lost Light ever docks back--”

“If I may interrupt...”

At that booming voice, Velocity felt ready to leap out of her own frame. She turned and looked in shock to the Prime. He was looking right at them!

Nautica actually squeaked. 

The Prime continued staring at them. “I overheard one of you telling Chromedome and Rewind about modifications to the hyperdrive of this shuttle someone made. That was one of you, correct?”

At once, Velocity joined the others in looking toward their resident quantum mechanic. 

“I...” Nautica began before coughing into her fist. “That would be me, Prime. Sir. Mister Prime....”

“I am called Optimus by my friends,” he assured her.

“I... Yes, Prime,” she said before burying her face in her hands. “I can’t be seen if I’m hiding. No one can see me. This is worse than being upside down.”

Velocity, uncertain of what else to do, reached forward and gently patted her friend’s shoulders while the socially awkward submarine flailed in the proverbial waters of social engagement. 

“Those are impressive enhancements to such a small vessel,” Optimus Prime said gently. “I would like to put you in contact with the scientist of my own crew -- Jetfire. I believe the two of you would get along very well by comparing notes. And having a quantum drive on our own ship could make travel between Earth and Cybertron without a space bridge more possible.”

“Oh...” Nautica said, dropping her hands slightly. “Oh! I mean. Oh! Yes. Yes, it would be an honor to help the Prime and his crew. I’m honored. I’m--”

“We would also cover your expenses in doing so,” the Prime continued. “I am not in a habit of not rewarding others for their work, even if they are religious.”

“That is even better,” Nautica responded without thinking. Then she smacked herself in the head. “Oh my god, what’s wrong with me -- what I mean to say is that it would be, I would be, you don’t have to...” 

“Vent, Nautica,” Velocity whispered.

Doing as instructed, Nautica vented pure steam. “Thank you, Optimus Prime. I am very grateful.”

“Better,” Velocity whispered with an encouraging smile. 

“I will be the one thanking you, I am certain,” he replied, looking back toward the bow of the ship. “Both for the assistance and for helping change the subject of conversation.”

The ship grew uncomfortably quiet after the Prime’s pronouncement. Nautica in particular looked like her fuel tank was expiring before their eyes. 

Velocity did her best to swallow down her own feelings of intimidation and stepped toward the Prime. She hesitated at first, but then gently placed a hand on his shoulder, drawing the large mech’s attention toward her. 

“We really appreciate everything you did to help our co-captain, Sir,” Velocity said. “The medical procedures were a success thanks to your very spark.”

At first, the Prime seemed almost surprised by her and, for a moment, Velocity was worried that perhaps she overstepped by touching him. But his optics grew soft and he glanced back ahead to the front of the ship. It allowed Velocity to quietly withdraw her hand and hold it as if some of the Primacy had rubbed off on it.

“There has been a lot more that I could have done,” the Prime said lowly.

It was a flat statement, not open for discussion. And, thoroughly intimidated and questioning what had gotten into her processor, Velocity backed off. 

She was just close enough to hear lowly as the Prime shook his head and muttered, “Co-captain,” like it was a curse. A regret. Something. 

The rest of the trip was stiflingly uneventful.

Cybertronians were a famously durable species. 

Drift remembered his own rebirth among the Knights, when he had been saved by Wing. He had been ripped assunder, and yet with the barest medical care available at the Crystal City, he was given a new body, a new life. 

Rodimus had the greatest scientific minds Cybertron had to offer working on him. 

But he still wasn’t awake.

Hands always dancing over the hilts of his swords, always prepared to protect his captain at the slightest sign of danger, Drift had to wonder why. Why wasn’t Rodimus awake yet.

He knew what Rodimus’ destiny was, he knew that the future of Cybertron, of their crew, needed him more than anything else. That his explicit, confusing visions needed him to survive any trial their journey threw at them. 

Including this. Certainly including this. 

“Drift.”

Cycling his optics, Drift turned and looked toward Ratchet. He had been so lost in thought he hadn’t even realized that the old grump of a robot had been finished yelling at his fellow doctors. 

“We’re done for the day,” Ratchet said, continuing to walk toward him. “Grab some of your stuff and come with me to Blurr’s. Get some decent energon in your system while we’re off the clock. First Aid assures me he has everything handled here for the night.”

Not making any motions to move on the suggestion, Drift rested his hands on the hilts of his swords. 

“You deserve a break,” Drift agreed. “You’ve done so much, so tirelessly, Ratchet. I can’t thank you enough. But I do not have a clock. I have a duty, and it does not take breaks for energon.”

Ratchet’s face showed that he was anything but impressed. Drift had to give it to him, he was a mech who wore his emotions with clarity. 

“You’ve got nothing but a security pass I wrestled out of that piece of scrap Rattrap’s hand for you,” Ratchet reminded him. “He’s not in danger anymore -- and he’s mostly out of the woods, as they said on Earth.”

Frowning, Drift looked back at the CR chamber. “He’s going to need someone -- someone not with a medical degree -- with him when he wakes up. When he sees... when he sees the damage.”

For once, Ratchet seemed to drop the snark from his reaction. “Well, his coma at this point is medically induced. He’s not waking up until we’re ready for him to,” the medic explained in what, for him, passed for gently. “So I think you can go out for a drink.”

Drift actually turned from Ratchet at that. 

He was exhausted... 

"I trust First Aid and the other doctors,” Drift said. “Medically. But as far as protection goes, I believe my place is still here--”

“Oh, for the love of...” Ratchet said, throwing his servos up in the air. “I knew you were going to be like this.”

“Like...?” Drift said, tilting his helm.

“Like a dunce with a second rate processor,” Ratchet snapped before waving to the doors of the lab as they slid open and Ironhide and the bodyguard he met before known as Chromia came walking in. “I called backup for you.”

Drift vented, feeling himself cool almost immediately with relief. 

It was better. His nerves were shot and the idea of leaving Rodimus’ side at all still unsettled his fuel pump, but it was better. He could manage it -- for a short amount of time. 

“Thank you,” Drift said to Ratchet. “For understanding my obligation--”

“Yeah, yeah, you should thank me,” Ratchet said with a wave of hi hand. “Can we get some energon or not?”

Drift frowned some and glanced back toward Ironhide and Chromia before stepping toward them, eyeing them from helm to pede. He ignored Ratchet’s “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding,” from behind him and concentrated on the bots before him instead. 

“You’re going to assure me that any threat to Rodimus will be handled by you personally?” Drift asked them clearly. 

“If a threat comes up, between the two of us it ain’t got a chance,” Ironhide said firmly. 

Chromia was a little more suspicious. “Has there been any attempts made on him? Or threats--”

“The threat that put him in that CR Chamber to begin with,” Drift responded snappislhly. 

"Drift!” Ratchet snapped from over his shoulder. “Move your tailpipe. They’ve got this.”

Drift let out a heavy vent and offered his servo out to Chromia .”Thank you for your time and service.”

“Not a problem,” Chromia assured him, taking his hand and shaking it. “Windblade was happy to get rid of me for the night. As usual.”

Before Drift could turn to tell Ratchet he was ready, the lab door opened yet again. 

Somehow, in the building relief Drift had been allowing in his system, he had not even made a move for his swords when he heard the doors. He hadn’t been prepared for the worst possibilities for the first time in months. 

He let his guard down, and was taken aback by the arrival of Starscream, that traitorous Rattrap, and the official badgeless Cybertronian guards. 

“How convenient, finding everyone in one spot,” Starascream said darkly as he neared the medbay. His optics then concentrated on Rodimus’ CR chamber. He seemed displeased. “Rattrap, your story doesn’t seem to be adding up right now.”

Drift moved for his swords, but the gards raised their guns. 

It was a standoff. 

“What’s the meaning of this!?” Ratchet demanded. “You want talk on your research, Starscream, go find First Aid or Knock Out. But don’t bring armed goons into a place of healing--”

“It was him, Lord Starscream. There’s no doubts about it!” Rattrap declared by Starscream’s side. “And just look! These guys’re here... but sure don’t see any Windblade, do ya?”

Starscream almost looked delighted to have the point made out for him. He shifted his gaze to Chromia. “Ah, yes, where is our favorite cityspeaker?”

“Recharging,” Chromia spat out. “What’re you doing here, Starscream?”

“To prove once and for all that Rodimus is faking his injuries and is guilty of collusion with our greatest modern threat to Cybertronian society,” Starscream answered as if it was the simplest statement in the world. 

“What the pit are you talking about?” Ratchet demanded. He waved toward the CR chamber. “We’ve had him put under for weeks!” 

"Then what was he doing downtown in the sewers just an hour ago?” Rattrap asked, as if he really ‘had’ them.

“That’s impossible,” Drift hissed. “I have been here every second since he was put in intensive care. He’s not so much as flinched on his own!”

“And I was with Windblade an hour ago,” Chromia defended. 

“You’ll have to forgive me for not taking your words for more than face value,” Starascream said dismissively before waving to his guards. “Open up the CR chamber. I want this cleared up yesterday.”

The guards took one step forward and Drift moved fast, slicing through each of their guns with his sword before the guards could even react. They looked at each other in shock and confusion while Drift held out his sword in an attempt to show the supposed leader of Cybertron just how serious he was. 

“You have no right to attack a wounded warrior!” Drift declared angrily. 

“I have any right I want,” Starscream said cockily. “But what right I have or don’t have is not of importance here. What’s of importance is that if we have truly caught Rodimus in a lie, then we are a step closer to understanding who attacked the mechs on Eukaris and what insider has been responsible for leaking information to the cltists.”

“What in the frag are you talking about!?” Ratchet cried out. 

“I think you understand perfectly what I’m saying,” Starscream announced. “I am formally accusing Rodimus , former Autobot, former captai nof the Lost Light vessel, is responsible for the death and carnage that befell Eukaris and his crew. I am accusing your former captain of assault and murder. Not to mention traitorism. The last charge goes for Windbalde as well.”

Everyone stared at the mad king in shock. 

It was not exactly predictable that the captain himself was not there to greet them at the shuttle, but it managed to put Optimus even more on alarm than he already was. 

Megatron wanted to make the encounter more challenging, then so be it.

He exited the ship looking all around the dock before finally settling on Ultra Magnus. 

“I hope the trip was decent,” Ultra Magnus said immediately. 

“You have a good crew if this group is anything to judge by,” Optimus said assuredly, earning some looks from his recent travel companions. “If not... easily lead into conversation.”

“We consider that a hallmark of the Lost Light,” Ultra Magnus said somewhat lightly. 

Optimus Prime had heard rumors of Ultra Magnus’ new leaf -- at his attempts to provide levity and humor. It was hard to believe. And in his actual presence, it was difficult to determine if it was that kind of situation or not.

“I need to speak with Megatron,” Optimus continued all the same. “Of course, I’m sure he knew that when he sent you.”

“I do my bet to not make assumptions on my higher commands’ intentions,” Ultra Magnus answered before leading and waving toward the nearest corridor. “But I am here to lead you to his office if you are interested in speaking with him yourself.”

“I am,” Optimus answered, stepping forward and all but marching toward the office Ultra Magnus was directing him to. 

Beyond the brief exchange, there was not much conversation between them. It was unusual for Ultra Magnus -- especially to not at least be asking about the status of the crew recovering on Cybertron. 

That all but cemented in Optimus’ mind that there was something on the Lost Light that was being kept a secret. And that just made the Prime more determined to learn it for himself. 

When he opened the door to the office, Megatron wasn’t even pretending to not be waiting on him. He was merely sitting at his desk -- hands crossed over a very distinct dent in the shape of a fist. 

“Megatron,” Optimus said, ignoring as Ultra Magnus entered after him and shut the door. 

"Prime,” Megatron said thinly. 

“Your ship has not been compliant with the Council of Worlds’ investigations to what occurred on Eukaris,” Optimus said angrily. “It also has yet to leave Eukaris’ airspace.”

Megatron remained stonefaced throughout the accusations. “I was not aware that the colony had any space program to speak of. Our Eukarian crew members did not mention as much--”

“Your mission to find the Knights of Cybertron is being stalled,” Optimus got to the point.

That declaration shook something loose from Megatron as he finally reacted. His look darkened and he unfolded his hands to grip the edges of his desk. “Of course it is stalled. Members of my crew, including my co-captain, have been attacked and hospitalized. We are waiting for the crew to--”

“You are postponing your trial through distractions,” Optimus snapped. “I know who you are, Megatron. I know what you are about. And there is very little you do without reason or planning.”

“Our mission is not moving forward without our co-captain,” Megatron said fiercely. “That is all, Prime.”

“You are the captain,” Optimus said firmly. “I made you such. You can do whatever you want without Rodimus’ input--”

“I could, and I wouldn’t!” Megatron yelled, getting to his feet and slamming his hands against the desk. “You do not understand anything, Optimus. You may think you do, but you don’t.”

“I understand that the less you do to help Starscream, the more reason he has to throw you and every member of your crew into jail, taking this ship, and cutting off financial support to the medical center in the capital that holds your crew,” Optimus bantered. “I understand you might just be selfish enough to risk it.”

“Selfish!?” Megatron laughed, a thunderous disturbing laugh that Optimus had not heard in years. “You don’t know the meaning of the word--”

“Enough,” Ultra Magnus stepped in between them, even going so far as to put a firm hand on Optimus’ chest to keep him and Megatron at arm’s length from each other. “This is not productive. We all share the same concern.”

“Do we?” Optimus asked dryly, reconcentrating on Megatron. “Do you understand what this all is looking like to those on Cybertron? That it seems as though you are making a coup against what Autobots are left on the ship who are not loyal to you? That you’re no longer looking for the Knights but are attacking an underdeveloped colony for invasion?”

"Is that all?” Megatron asked. “Really, Optimus? After the eons I spent determining near perfect ways of assimilating and overthrowing worlds at a time, you think that I am in charge of this series of disastrous events?”

“You and disastrous events are seldom mutually exclusive,” Optimus argued. “And it is not what I think, it is what Cybertron, the Council and--”

“Starscream,” Megatron interrupted, “does not believe I am responsible for anything at the moment because he knows my approach better than anyone. I taught him his ruthlessness, to my eternal dismay. If he sent you here with that impression then you are more of a fool than had ever realized.”

Optimus narrowed his optics. “Then what does Starscream think? Enlighten me,” he demanded. 

A look was shared between Ultra Magnus and Megatron that left Optimus feeling highly uncomfortable. The shared understanding between them was not something Optimus ever expected to see, even when he put Megatron in charge of the ship knowing Magnus’ fealty to the chain of command. 

They knew something.

“If you have anything--” Optimus began. 

“He could get the information to Ratchet even more quickly than Velocity, and we would not be without a medic,” Ultra Magnus argued on the part of a side Optimus was not even aware he was on.

“This has the potential to be the greatest of mistakes either of us has made,” Megatron said darkly. 

Suddenly, Optimus felt dwarfed by the momentum of their conversation, lost in the lack of information. “Who does Starscream believe is responsible?” he pressed.

Megatron stared at Optimus once more like he was the true enemy. 

“Rodimus,” he answered finally.

“Rodimus?” Optimus repeated. “But how? He’s the most damaged of the survivors -- I helped restart his spark three times--”

The former Decepticon was not listening to him anymore, reaching toward his gauntlet and producing a drive. 

“What is that?” Optimus asked suspiciously.

“Your answers,” Megatron said flatly. “The ones you don’t want.”

Still steeped in suspicion, Optimus accepted the drive and looked to Ultra Magnus instead. “What is he talking about?”

“That drive contains the saved audial logs that we were finally able to decode from the Lost Light’s emergency frequency,” Ultra Magnus explained. “They are from Rodimus’ away team during the incident.” The law abiding looked at him gravely. “We need to see these make their way safely to Ratchet and to Rung.”

Optimus tilted his helm. “Rung?”

“Our former ship psychoanalyst,” Megatron answered, still holding out the drive. “He... retired himself recently, but under my order he stayed on Cybertron after traveling with your recent companions.”

Idly, Optimus somewhat remembered an orange mech receiving hugs shortly before their departure. 

“Other than them, we have not allowed anyone to listen to the recording,” Ultra Magnus explained further.

“Why?” Optimus demanded immediately. 

Neither answered. 

“I suppose you do not wish for me to listen to them either,” Optimus surmised. 

“Do you trust Rodimus?” Megaton asked.

“Excuse me?” Optimus asked, thrown off guard.

Megatron did not so much as flinch. “Do you trust Rodimus? Do you wish to assist him? Or is he yet another acolyte to sacrifice for the greater good?”

“You of all mechs have no right to say such things against my character, Megatron,” Optimus argued angrily. 

“I don’t disagree,” Megatron replied. “I am old, old enough that I question if change is truly possible for any of us. In a sense of irony, our species seems particularly inept at change. But if there is anything that has led me to change it is that I find myself concerned for this ship, this crew. Rodimus is more than simply my crew, he is my co-captain. We have survived and led together through what we previously thought was the ship’s darkest hours. And without him there is zero possibility that I can lead this ship. Ultra Magnus and Perceptor have taken over most of the command duties. I am without power -- power to command, power to help those I consider... my friends.” 

Still, Megatron held out the drive. 

Optimus took it. “I take care of my friends as well,” he assured them both. “But I will be listening to this recording myself. I want to know what I am protecting them from.”

“Of course you will,” Megatron said with only slight disgust as he glanced toward the opposing wall.

Confused, Optimus looked to Magnus who seemed equally disheartened. 

“You will be protecting Rodimus from himself, Sir,” Ultra Magnus revealed.