Hey, first of all, I really love your work!
I was reading some of the news stuff and I wondered if Peach ever gets a quiet contented moment for herself and what that looks like. And maybe for the extra challenge, we’re there ever moments during her training or adventures like that? Five minutes where she was just able to breathe?
Oh she gets them, it’s whether or not she takes them.
Peach pre Hisui is tightly wound, a workaholic, always stay busy so the stress and the panic doesn’t settle in. If she keeps working and training then nothing bad can go wrong. Her “down time” was spent painting for days on end in secret, and while she found joy in it, she also sold them under a pen name for cash so the labs can get needed upgrades and items. There was always a stressful background hum of needing to do well, to make money to help others. On the rare moments she got back then to relax, it was brief but pleasant. Fleeting moments where she could sit and take a breath, try to focus on the good for just one minute.
The readers of the current comic and various story lines get to watch her learn how to relax during Hisui in particular, it’s a huge part of her growth, and it’s all thanks to Rei, the boy who just happens to be there when she is, and destined to intercept her grouchy stressed out life. He shows her how to relax and enjoy more. The hisui arc is SO important to her unwinding, learning not to be a control freak, not to get hung up on her rage.
She gets plenty of opportunity to relax despite being thrown around in the past, and it’s that endless struggle to survive and win that makes her see that in fact the joys matter, they never did until she gets close to losing them all. She learns to laugh at jokes more, Rei gets her dancing even when she can’t much, but he teaches her what he can. They start to have inside jokes, start to laugh together. Their “training” turns into a more jovial activity, where both parts are actually having more fun than they’ve had in a long time. There’s plenty of moments where she can accept that sometimes you can sit back and relax. It’s ok to not always be ‘on’. Rei is her change, a teenager with no bad vibes what so ever, she needs him way more than he realises.
So when she's finally home and dry, with the people she thought she'd never see again, her loved ones, human and pokemon alike, Peach is a changed woman. Grey has never seen her demand a day off, but she's activly picking her schedule and allowing for time out (unheard of) and in that down time she's busy sure, but busy with things that make her smile, even takes a nap in the sun sometimes, or gets five minutes to stitch in peace for the hell of it. Plum will watch this once stoic and often serious woman crack more jokes, dance with her, she can kind of do that now??? They get to all see this person finally step back and do things for herself in a way that gives her time to rest and come back to do her job way better.
It's a huge notable change, she's much more fun, way more open, with a softer heart, and a calmer disposition. Once you fight a god, can you really be stressed out by the small stuff? She sure can't.
she even kicks a ball around with the oddish now, takes joy rides on Boa just for the fun of it, goes and wades around in the mud with donphan, is a sucker for taking a day to bake something she really likes, bonus everyone else gets to enjoy it. For a non traditional looking woman, her hobbies do slip into quite traditional areas, gardening, baking, sewing, art, and sport.
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The feral cat gator of a 13 year old freshly scarred Zuko being forcibly adopted by the foggy swamp tribe! Bonus points if they willfully ignore the fact he's a firebender and treat him as a very strange waterbender bending-wise
It was Earth Kingdom ships that drove the metal one onto the reefs, so when the little thing came crawling up through the marsh spitting and hissing and dressed in red, they knew it weren’t no earthbender. No matter how much mud it had tripped in, trying to find where the ground stopped sucking at its feet.
“Wow-ee,” said Old Earl, “that sure is one way of keepin’ off the ‘squito-chiggers.”
And they all watched from Big Earl’s porch, sitting or rocking, as them bugs came for the all-you-can-eat and ended up on the bar-b-que.
“Sure is some weird bending,” said Little Earl, who was taller than Big Earl, but when they'd been twelve and they’d wrestled for the title it hadn't been Little Earl who’d won.
The little thing looked maybe twelve, too. And he was little little. But he had that same look like he was going to shove someone’s face in the mud until they said otherwise, as he stood there all panting and dripping and just realizing they’d been watching him this whole time.
“It’s firebending,” the one-kid mud-wrestler said, as bugs kept pop-snapping into flames around him.
Old Earl cupped a hand over his ear, like he couldn’t hear. And he kept doing it, while the kid got louder and louder about that bending of his, but quieter and quieter about looking at them like they were his next bugs.
“Oh, firebending,” Old Earl said, nodding like he’d only just got it, when the kid had stomped straight up to his chair. “Right, right, Old Jane’s got fire-water-bending, too. Why don’t you take him to her, boys.”
“It’s not-- ugh,” shouted the kid, but maybe he only had the one volume. Certainly only had the one volume for stomping, even though stomping was what got a fellow’s shoes shoved down so deep in the mud they’d be seeing them again as mole-shrimp hats. Not that the kid had shoes. Neither did Earl, Earl, or Earl. ‘Cept for Fancy Earl, but he’d gone off to Ba-Singing-Se, to be fancy.
Anyway, Old Jane was the best at turning anything and everything into fire water, which was the kind of thing a fellow called his or her liquor when they wanted fancy folk to keep right on walking. Was really good for making shouty little firebrands take their naps, too, which let Old Jane get her glowing mitts all over that fresh burn of his. And the love-bites from the shark-wrasses that had probably been half the reason the kid had come a-shore all a-shouting in the first place.
“Nope,” diagnosed Old Jane, when the kid woke back up. “That’s just how he talks. Mother was a screamer-bird, I’d say.”
“You take that back about my mother,” screamed their screamer-bird, who had pretty good hearing for someone who’s ear had lost the same fight as his eye. Anyway, Old Jane had done the best she could about both, and nothing was on fire that shouldn’t be, and she had that extra quilt she’d been working on that needed a body under it
And the waves and the shark-wrasses had all the rest of the kid’s crew
So sure enough they set their little screamer-bird up with a nest and let him cry loud as he wanted.
Anyway, if there was one thing Earl Earl Earl and Jane knew, it was how to make a joke so good the other person didn’t even know it were a joke.
“Firebending,” their little fledgling shouted, and waved his arms around, like all that fire pointed at no one was going to get them startled off.
“A-yep,” nodded Old Earl. “That there is some fire-water-bending. Just like Old Jane.”
Old Jane wasn’t the kind of gal who showed off, but she wasn’t the kind who missed no cue, either. She swirled a lick o’ liquor out of her latest barrel and twirled it ‘round and straight into her mouth, and when she spit it out, it looked so much like the little bird’s breath-o’-fire that he didn’t even notice the spark rocks she kept on her fingers as jewelry. No one did, ‘til they’d seen the trick a few times.
The kid’s mouth hung open so low and so long, a moth-tick flew in. That was some kind of life lesson, that was. The swamp was good at sending those.
The Earth Kingdom sent troops a-stompin’ through, losing boots and scaring catigators out of their sunning spots left and right, askin’ all rumbly about those fires they’d spotted, and if anyone from that shipwreck had made it on shore, and talkin’ about how there’d be money in it for them if they made that last answer a “yes,” sounding like Fancy Earl and all his talk about commerce and living standards.
“Got a few parts of them ship people in the lagoon,” Big Earl said. “Probably still floatin’ if you want ‘em. But we better bring the shrimp-minnow nets, ‘cuase they’ll just slosh on through the turtle-sturgeon ones.”
“...No thank you,” the head stomper said, like sayin’ polite words made a fellow a polite man. He’d tracked those boots of his right up onto their porch without so much as a scuff on their mud rug. Even the kid had used the mud rug. “And the fire?”
“Oh,” said Little Earl, with a grin, “that was Old Jane.”
And she did her trick again, only less tricky, so they could see the spark rocks real good. “You boys want some fire water?” she offered. “It ain’t blinded no one who wasn’t already headed that way.”
They didn’t want any, which was grand, ‘cause she hadn’t really been offering.
When the last of them had gone stomping off back to the kind of land that let people stomp it, it took them two whole hours to lure out the catigators from under the porch. And their little screamer bird, too.
“...Why didn’t you turn me in?”
“What?” asked Old Earl, cupping his ear.
“Why—”
“What?”
“—didn’t—”
“WHAT?”
“—you—”
“Speak up, boy,” Old Earl said. “I never heard such a quiet child.”
And boy, did that set their bird back to singing.
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It's a Deal.
So! Steph is in a bit of a Bind. Literally.
Her Father had just discovered that she was the Vigilante who kept ruining his Plans, and decided to Deal with her. So he tied her up at a Bomb Site for one of his Plans and left her to die there.
No matter how much she struggled, she couldn't escape the Ropes, and time was running out. If only she had managed to get that last message out to Batman in time, maybe he would have come to rescue her.
The Timer had nearly reached Zero, when all of a sudden Time Stopped. The Ropes around her fell away, and a guy walked up to her as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
"Hey, you seem to be in a bit of a bind."
"Not so much anymore, was that you?"
"Yeah, bit of a Free Sample. See, I'm in a bit of a bind as well. I made a Deal with these floating Eyeballs, and long story short in order to keep my town safe I need to take the Soul of an Innocent person."
"And is that where I come in?"
"Yup, Basically I save your life, help you out with whatever you want, and you give me the rights to your Soul."
"What if I just walk away while time is stopped?"
"The building is Locked down tight, and I can't actually hold Time stopped for too long either way, it's sort of a new power to me. Without my help you wouldn't get out in time."
"So it's sell my soul or die?"
"Trust me,I don't like it either, but it's what I have to do."
"You know what, sure. You help me escape, help me take down The Cluemaster, and I'll give you my Soul."
"Then it's a Deal."
"I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship."
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