#but how the heck are you going to enforce that with a student body this large?

[thequietmanno1]

Thelreads, MHA 283, Replies Part 1

1) “But, I shall face this grief, and we shall see this through, on Chapter 283: 75 … Yeah that’s the name apparently.”- Should have been “75% to emphasize that’s how complete Tomura’s body is at present….which means he’s still got a sizable chunk of remnant power to unlock if he ever gets some downtime after this. Alternatively, flipping it around, that means the heroes have a 25% chance to win….but that number drops with every hero that falls to Tomura or Machia.

2) “Oh my poor kids, if only you lot hadn’t died so young, oh the humanity, sometimes it’s almost like they are still here, staring at the fourth wall with abject horror.”- They’re basically looking at the aftermath of a speeding bullet train crashing though the landscape, that only missed hitting them by metres because somebody had the presence of mind to push them out of the way. Heroes are used to confronting disasters, but not nation-wide ones on this scale- and mere kids at that.

3) “My… that was quite the scar he left behind, even considering it is gigantomachia jesus so the pro heroes are all dead aren’t they?”- For all we know, these kids are all that’s left of the army that tried to stand in Machia’s way. There’s just no stopping him when he gets going, no matter how strong you are, unless you’ve got something like OFA to try and hold him back…and even then, it’s honestly a toss-up how effective that would be, if Machia keeps getting up again and again thanks to his endurance-enhancing powers. 4)“WAIT FATGUM AND AMAJIKI WERE THERE AS WELL?! ON THE FRONT?! OH GOD NO NO ABSOLUTELY NO THEY MUST’VE SURVIVED”- Must they? Really? Are you sure that plot armour’s in effect anymore with this fighting? The danger is real, and there’s no guarantee that even your fan-favourites will survive – heck, I know of an author who killed one of their characters specifically because their editor liked him and asked him to let them live. 5) “jesus fucking christ Absolutely terrifying. It is like a natural disaster given flesh and bone”- If Tomura is becoming god, then Machia is his hammer, his enforcer, his will made absolute, and unstoppable for whenever the master himself is busy elsewhere but needs a job done regardless. And mere mortals cannot stand against a god’s will.

6) “oh god, that was directed at momo, wasn’t it? because she was the one that would be taking this one the hardest, she was the one that took this decision, she’s the reason why Machia rampaged ): “- It’s also because she’s the student he mentored during their internships, so he knows her the best out of all of the kids he’s saving, and reassuring her that she can’t blame herself for the fallout of this. On Momo’s side, it’s also her mentor trying to reassure her that she doesn’t need to feel guilty about this as he goes off the face his Obi-Wan moment.

7) “they were all for naught in the end, because there isn’t a way to stop machia Shigaraki is The End, but Machia, machia is the calm before the storm. You can imagine how bad things are when Machia is the easy, merciful one to be met with.”- Machia acts according to Tomura’s will, which is why he wasn’t a factor until Tomura’s nap was over, and allowed the kids a chance against him out of disinterest until they started proving effective. Tomura himself is capable of taking action immediately to kill his foes and is actively trying to kill as many of them as he can before his body falls into pieces like a victim of his own decay – and until that moment happens, you’d better take care not to let your guard down against a single piece of him. His body breaking apart isn’t a sign of victory, it’s the hope that the heroes can maybe outlast him in the end, and that’s still a slim hope.

8) “I don’t think there were “right” choices to be made here. This is the End, and no choice is right or wrong, just what allows you to survive until the next day, but there’s no escaping The End The End always arrives”- Mineta is way too young to be suffering from this much Peter parker guilt syndrome, and he’s merely voicing the concerns of the entire class. They took a risk, made a stand against Machia, and from their perspective it might have only made things worse, because it pissed him off and made him actively fight back, to devastating consequences. And until the war’s over, they’ve no way of guessing whether this was the best or the worst possible outcome of it all.

9) “And the calm blows through another city, precluding the days to come. The End is close, and the one to warn you about it will make sure you don’t forget that.”- Machia tears through the cities and the remnant of the PLF follow in his wake like a tide of villainy, rousing other criminals and the like to follow the chaos onwards, laying waste to what Machia’s original charge didn’t fully destroy, all whilst the heroes are either too dead or too far away to stop them. The image of a safe society that All Might protected has been smashed to bits, and there’s no putting it all back together.

10) “And seems like only Dabi there is enjoying himself, Spinner doesn’t look too pleased even though he believes this is necessary, and Toga seems… unhappy, which would be understandable considering that Twice died less than 20 minutes ago, but there’s something more than that. She seems angry in the way she’s looking forward, but it look like she’s looking at Dabi I wonder the implications of this”- Whilst Spinner, compress and Toga are pensive about the destruction, knowing on some level this is what they wanted, but still feeling twinges of guilt seeing the mass destruction of lives around them, Dabi is actively rocking out to the screams like it’s music to his ears, delighting in the madness and demanding more of it. Toga seems to notice that dabi’s composure has finally cracked a little, and she sees that the real him doesn’t care about all the death, not those of civillians, not even those of his “allies” like Jin.

But he’s still “on her side” for now, so whislt she might have a lowered opinion of him from this, she still can’t actually turn agaisnt him without a valid reason. After all, the league is all Toga has left, and she’s devastated by Jin’s loss, so regardless of how she feels, she’s doing her best to help them stick together in the midst of all this, including getting her friends to where Tomura’s in need of their aid.

11) “OH THIS MOTHERFUCKER IS STILL ALIVE MIC PLEASE, I THOUGHT WE AGREED ON TAKING CARE OF HIM ALREADY”-Satisfying as it would be, he’s the only other person they might hope to interrogate as to the truth of AFO’s grand plans, since clearly Tomura’s role in them is not exactly what he was lead to believe it would be.

12) “Oh that settles things then, Machia isn’t a nomu even though he had all those quirks in him, but he is pretty much the template that was used to design the final product. If he was able to handle it, so others should be able to as well, right? That also ties with using trigger to make instant villains, pushing the limits of the drug to see how strong it could make one’s body and quirk”- I’m pretty sure Machia was something of a “lucky accident” from AFO managing to stuff more than a few Quirks into a loyal servant, possibly on a curious whim, and from how he reacted to them, it gave the villain the idea of intentionally modifying the existing body to better handle more powers being forcibly injected into it by himself. Granted, from what’s been seen of Tomura, it seems like the Nomu, barring the High-End, where meant to be modified into “strongmen-like bodies” capable of using brute-force, simple Quirks in a fight, whereas the Hih-Ends got more control and versatility added into themselves to go with their higher brain functions. Tomura’s enhancements seem to be the best of both, in his base state, he’s arguably as strong and as durable as Machia without the size issues, and if he can unleash his full range of Quirks properly, he’ll have the same versatile combination and on-the-spot mixing techniques AFO demonstrated at Kamino. The only advantage All Might had against him then was than no combination of Quirks was as strong as OFA’s singular core power, and against Machia, his lowered brain functions mean he can be tricked or out-thought easily. A being that combines the traits of both is utterly unbeatable, which is why Horikoshi’s had Tomura on the verge of completion, without actually managing to cross the threshold into an absolute powerhouse.

13) “The Calm before the storm marches forward, with no regard to what is destroyed in its path. It shall only stop when it reaches The End and i don’t like the implications of what will happen once Shigaraki gets Machia’s power”- I mean, he technically doesn’t need it. Tomura’s already as strong as Machia, if not stronger, and he’s a harder target to hit to boot. Machia’s more effective as a walking base for his allies to defend from heroes whilst Tomura’s out tearing the world apart around them.

14) “Oh yeah, Aizawa is down, now the fuckery can truly take place sweats cold I’m absolutely ready to see what will unfold”- Aizawa’s down, but luckily, the damage dealt to Tomura’s not-quite-ready-yet shell in the interim period was enough that the cracks started to show by now, and whilst Tomura can now use his abilities, it’s starting to physically cost him, destabilising his body further the more damage he takes, whether self-inflicted or by the heroes. It’s now possible for him to use Decay again, but the power might now blow back on his body once again, and even besides that, he’s still getting used to his new range of abilities, such that he’s stuck with simple but effective ones so far. Having too many powers to handle at once gives Izuku a window of opportunity to use his one power most effectively right in Tomura’s face before he can decide.

15) “Okay the old timers can step back, now it’s time for the next big three to show what they can do and hopefully not be completely obliterated”- Well, Sans Izuku and his immense power, the other kids can only really provide support for the top pros still standing to pile on the damage to Tomura whilst there’s still a window of opportunity to do so. In fact, Izuku’s now really the only one who can hold back Tomura for any length of time, both because of his Quirk combinations preventing him from using Decay, and his immense strength beign the best thing to damage him through his durability and healing.

16) “Oh look, is that Gran Torino’s body? And Midoriya jumping in towards certain death? My that reminds me of the Stain arc”- It’s Bakugo flashing back to Tomura’s charge towards Aizawa’ and how Izuku moved faster than he could to entangle him with Black Whip, whereas Bakugo was only fast enough to barely blow up the decoy Erasure Bullet in Tomura’s other hand. Bakugo swore he’d keep up with Izuku as his rival, but in this clash between AFO and OFA’s inheritors, he’s just not on the same level no matter how hard he tries, and that’s eating at him.

17) “oh okay he wasn’t going towards certain death this time, he went to see if Aizawa was alive, that’s certainly an improvement. Can’t believe it would ever come the day we see Midoriya not rushing into the meatgrinder like the maniac he is”- Izuku’s bloodlust is barely being eclipsed by his natural concern for other’s safety, but the more Tomura hurts those he’s close too, the more the red mist descends….

@thelreads

[katieblooming]

my 15-person class: we're staying online for the semester, we don't want to take any risks and we want you all feel safe :)

my 1000-person first year physics class: we're not recording or posting lectures, if you want to learn you need to come to class.

[neesieiumz]

PAIN - Chapter 1 {Shouta Aizawa x Reader}

Story summary:  You’ve been away for so long, for over thirteen years. As soon as you graduated, without saying by to the man you like and your best friend, you left. Not even leaving  a note, Aizawa and Yamada had to hear from your female best friend, Nemuri that you were going to join the I.H.A.C, the International Hero Agency Commission. You became the best hero there, saving so many people with tactical precision, but you’re always overworked yourself, to the point where you’ve dropped and fainted while walking to your office. Concerned for you, your boss called your old principal, who’s been looking for a new teacher to teach about stealth and rescue operations. Deciding to send you, even though you’ve adamantly refused, you’re finally coming home... a place you abandoned a long time ago.

Chapter summary: You were with your teammates, discussing how to write up a report, this were the worst part of your job. That’s when you’re called to your Unit Chief’s office, the man who represents your team with the Higher Ups. What does he need, and who do you see again?

A/n: MERRY CHRISTMAS!! This is the second gift I have for everyone! Keep in mind that I have not started the second chapter but I’ll see if I can get it out before the end of the year... but I can’t promise that...In the prologue/ sneak peek, I had your female best friend be Mirko, but I changed it to Midnight, because she was the only one who went to school with Aizawa and Mic. I wrote this in three days and took one to edit. So enjoy this first chapter and hopefully there will be more to come!

Word Count: 4.2k

Chapter 1 - A Decision of a Lifetime

You were sitting at a table, in the conference room with your teammates, discussing how the report should be split up. Who should take cultural impact, how the people reacted, the steps we took to bring stability and what not. You were currently arguing with one of your male teammates, someone who you’ve but heads with before. This was nothing new. 

“I’m telling you, I should take this part, I was there during the Rancin incident. I saw everything that happened!” Your teammate, Chad Barrymore, argued, slamming the papers on the desk. 

You rolled your eyes, “but who’s the one who actually solved it? Oh right, it was me!” 

The rest of your team was sitting around, some looking at their phones, some already starting on their assigned part of the report. One of your teammates even took this opportunity to catch up on some sleep. 

“Chad, who was assigned leader of this team?” You questioned, already knowing the answer.

He groaned and rolled his eyes, “you were,” he mumbled under his breath. 

You smiled and assorted the papers in front of you back into the file you had. 

“That’s right, me, Y/n L/n, not Chad Barrymore. Alright? You’re the best at the budget report and justifying why we used over 200,000 american dollars over our budget,” You smile sheepishly at him making him glare at you before snatching up the papers and putting them in his own file. 

“Fine, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna like it,” he grumbled, making you shake your head and roll your eyes. 

“Who actually enjoys doing the reports?” You questioned, mostly  to yourself. 

“I do!” Your teammate, Mariposa, popped her head from ehr laptop where she had already started her part of the report. 

You shook your head and laughed with the rest of your teammates, “Mariposa, you are one in a kind.”

“Y/n L/n, You’re needed in Agent Prowess’ office, Agent Y/n L/n, you are needed in Agent Prowess’s office at this instant…” The announcement went off, making you groan and plant your head face down on the table where you and your teammates were sitting. 

“Uh-oh, someone’s in trouble,” One of your teammates, Michelle LaRue, teased, poking you in your back. 

You swatted her hand away from your body and slowly lifted your head up and looked around,

 “Why me,” you groaned, slowly getting up for your seat. 

“Maybe you’re finally getting that promotion, you’re literally the youngest here but you’ve been here for over thirteen years, the longest out of anyone here. it’s time for you to finally get paid your dues!” Another teammate of yours, Ian Adewanju, exclaimed. 

His words made you burn red with embarrassment, reminding you of the fact you are 31, you are the youngest one on the team yet you’re the one who's been here the longest. You shook your thoughts out of your head before turning around and heading out the door to go to your Unit Chief’s offices. You had just gotten back from a sting operation in Aprain, helping their forces uncover a huge child position ring. There were villains with very strong quirks, and that country's heroes were outnumbered by the ring’s villains so they had called us. My team especially to help narrow down who was the leader and how they should go about freeing all the children they trafficked. We were given temporary hero licenses and stayed there for about a year, being those countries’ heroes until they were able to get a stable enforcement system in place. After that, we come back to base, on an independent island, where we stay for 4-6 months until our next mission. 

And there’s always another mission. 

You reached Agent Prowess’s office and knocked on the door a couple of times. You waited for a response before you could enter. 

“Come in, Agent L/n,” You heard his muffled voice call out. 

You opened the door and immediately closed behind and stood guard, standing up straight and placing your hands behind your back. 

“Agent Prowess.” You greeted, looking at the wall behind him. 

You didn’t see the person who was sitting on one of the couches, wasn’t your concern yet. Probably someone who just wanted to meet you in person. 

You heard a couple of paper shuffling around, “at ease Agent, I want to introduce or rather, reintroduce an old face from your past.” 

Your face twisted a bit in confusion, you stopped looking ahead at the wall and looked at your unit chief. You then noticed a white blur sitting on the couch in front of your boss’s desk. You got a closer look. And then you froze. 

It couldn’t be…

But it was, it was your old principal from U.A. What the heck was he doing here? What would the Principal of one the best hero schools in Japan, top two and some say they aint number two. You tried not to show your surprise in your face but you knew Principal Nezu knew you better than that, but he said nothing as he continued to sip the complimentary tea that Prowess always offers to his guests. 

“You remember Principal Nezu, don’t you Agent L/n?” 

You took a deep breath and nodded, not saying a word. You could hear the clanking of fine china hitting the table before hearing a throat being cleared. 

“It’s good to see you again, Ms. L/n, it’s been over a decade since I last saw you. At your graduation, I believe.”

Before you could stop yourself, you mumbled “It was the last time anyone saw me.” 

Prowess’s throat cleared and you closed your mouth quickly and lowered your head. You could hear a hum come from Nezu. You tried to ignore it as you waited for Prowess’ instructions. 

“L/n, I’m gonna be honest with you. I’m worried,” Prowess started, making your head shoot up in confusion. 

Worried? What is he talking about? You were confused, did you do something? Was something in your reports wrong, did someone complain about your behavior recently that you weren’t checking in within yourself? You doubt Prowess would have let you walk around with so many complaints about your behavior without telling you about it or having consequences laid out. Your mind raced through all the possibilities that could have happened. 

“Agent L/n, we can hear your mind racing 5 miles a minute. Calm down, nothing happened concerning your work ethic. You’re a good agent here and a good hero as well,” he started to explain. 

He gestured for you to take a seat on the couch in front of the one Principal Nezu was sitting on, you glanced at him and your boss before slowly walking over to the couch and slowly sitting down on it. 

“As you know, you were recruited from a hero course school, which is very rare as you were recommended to us by one of my peers. You came here straight from graduation and have never let up. You’ve been here since you were 18, barely even an adult in the world. You were one of the top students in U.A, who had the potential to be something great, but you came here, a place where you’d never get fully recognized for your accomplishments.”

You sighed and leaned back into the couch, wondering where this conversation was going. This was information you already knew, things that you lived. You remember when you got the recommendation, the talk with Principal Nezu and your homeroom teacher. When they were talking about your options with your older cousins.

“Prowess, I’m not understanding, why are you telling me this?” You couldn’t help but ask him. 

You still weren’t understanding why you were here with your old principal in front of your new boss. You looked in front of you to find a poured cup of tea right front of you. You glanced up at Nezu who simply looked at you with a smile. You scoffed before grabbing the teacup and taking a sip. 

Chamomile, with honey, nice…

“You were one of the youngest recruits here, and out of your training class, you’re one of the only ones who’s still here. This job weighs on people and a lot can’t take it after a while.”

“But you’re still here,” you interrupted his spill. 

“I came here after being a hero in America for over 10 years, the high rise lifestyle wasn’t for me. Most of the recruits we got were sidekicks that needed a place to go, heroes who still wanted to make a difference even if they couldn’t work anymore. You were different.” He noted, opening a file, your file you assumed. 

“You immediately came from the hero course in U.A, you had some of the best offers one could have ever have been given, even a sidekick offer from the current #2 Hero in Japan, am I correct?” 

You sighed and nodded, turning your head to look at him as you finished the tea. Prowess gave of a soft chuckle before continuing to flip through your file. 

“You decide to come here, out of all places. An isolated island, away from everyone with limited english skills as well… I questioned it, my superiors questioned it, but you were one of the best, if not the best we’ve ever seen. We couldn’t give up a gem like you, because you decided to come here… but we should have let you go sooner.”

You froze, mid-way of putting your cup down on the table, and slowly turned your head to look at him. He was staring at you with concern, a look you hated seeing with him but was a regular occurrence with you. 

“Last week, before you came back to base. You were admitted into the hospital for extreme exhaustion, for the 16th time. Your teammates were concerned about you. I’m concerned about you, and I should have put my foot down about your own well-being.” He said, leaning back in his chair.

“I didn’t because we were getting an amazing track record, your team was being asked for specifically. You have been overworking yourself, not recently but for the last 13 years,” You rolled your eyes he said that but he caught it, “don’t roll your eyes, you know it’s true. You’ve been overcompensating for over 13 years.”

“I don’t know what you were running from but it was obviously too much for you to stay in Japan but now I want you to do something for me. Principal Nezu is in need of a teacher, a teacher that can teach aspiring heroes about stealth and rescue operations. And I know that you were the perfect person for the job, you are the perfect person for the job…”

Your anger roared through before you could stop it, the cup in your hand was crushed by a cloud that you summoned on accident. 

“Deep breaths, Ms. L/n. Take deep breaths, we’ve had issues with your anger before…” You heard Principal Nezu say in Japanese, hearing the language you once spoke all the time. 

You felt your hands shake as you took deep breaths and leaned back into the couch. You placed your head in your hands to stop the shaking but that just triggered your legs to start moving up and down in its stead. Your face felt wet, you licked the side of your face and tasted the familiar salty liquid. Tears. 

“So what,” you garbled out, “you’re forcing me into retirement to go and teach some snot-faced brats?”

“I’m making an executive decision to let you go before you destroy yourself, Y/n… I’ve always seen you as someone I need to look out for, even if you were the most capable at your job… you were never the best at taking care of yourself.”

“I didn’t have an excuse of how to get you out but until Principal Nezu here asked for someone here to be a teacher at U.A… I knew it had to be you,” He finalized, closing your file before handing it to Nezu. 

You said nothing as the exchange of papers went on. You were sinking back into your thoughts. 

So that’s it huh? After 13 years of giving your life to help people, helping people off the grid. And now I’m being sent back to the place I ran away from. Run away from everything that’s haunted me for most of your life huh…?

“L/n,” he called out. 

You slowly turned your head to look at Prowess, who was handing you some papers. Your retirement papers were in his hands. You sighed before reaching over to grab them from his hands. 

“I know you’re mad at me, but trust me on this… It’s time to let you go off this job and find something else, something else that makes you happy and not want to overwork yourself to death. It may not be teaching, but it’s definitely not here.”

You looked at him with low eyes before getting up and walking towards the door, not waiting for his permission to leave his office. 

“Ms. L/n, I know this isn’t ideal, but know that you are the best person for this job… just trust me on this…”

You sighed at Principal Nezu’s words, and turned your head slightly to look at him. 

“We’ll see about that, Principal Nezu…”

                                                           ---

You didn’t return to your teammates after that, heading straight to your room.  You laid on your bed, papers discarded somewhere on your desk. You held your pillow in your arms, staring into the nothingness that is your ceiling. You didn’t have much belongings, mostly souvenirs from the countries you were assigned to. Your walls are white and blank, the only thing you brought from Japan was a picture frame, a picture of before everything went wrong for you. 

A knock came at your door. You lifted your head and turned it towards the door but didn't get up to answer it. You wanted to be alone, you weren't ready to face anyone, especially your team. 

“Hey Y/n, we… we heard about what happened. Where Prowess is sending you…” You heard the voice of Blake, one of four females on the team, called out. 

“Y/n, I’m gonna be honest with you, I had a hand in your transfer… I just didn’t realize he was turning it into a chance to force you to retire… that you weren’t coming back at all… that we were losing our leader for good…”

You laid back down on the bed as you registered her words. She had a hand in this? She’s the reason I have to leave? 

“I know that isn’t what you want to hear but I’ve been here right beside you, I came here after 7 years you were here and I saw so much pain behind those eyes… you reminded me of myself when I was a hero in France… constantly throwing yourself into work,” she started to explain, making you sit up on the bed.

“Although with me, it made me lose everyone that I love. All for fame and glory, while you threw yourself in work for different reasons. You threw yourself to forget who you once were, and everything you knew about your past. Babes, I’m scared for you and I know it’s time for you to get away from this place, you’ve been in these walls for 13 years… don’t you think that’s enough?”

Once again, you could feel your anger rushing right through you. They don’t… they don’t understand what you’ve been through… they don’t understand what’s waiting for you back in Japan… you had to get away and you had to stay away from Japan, it doesn’t matter… it doesn’t matter, he can’t… he couldn’t find you here… he couldn’t find you here, he couldn’t track you down here…

“But I also know you, and so does Prowess, you’re running… that's why you never took the opportunities to go home and see your family… and that’s okay, you don't have to see them.. You don’t have to see them, but you need to get away from this desolate place.”

You threw your pillow on your bed before flopping back and laying on it. You looked over at your night table and saw two picture frames sitting on it. The one you had brought when you first arrived here, and a recent one, from a couple of years ago when you were on an island country, helping them out until they also had a stable hero system. You were with the locals and they were throwing you a goodbye party. You were smiling, holding a child of a family you had gotten close to… the first time in a while you were happy with yourself. 

You took a deep breath before turning around on your other side. You just wanted to go to sleep and pretend that you weren’t actually leaving, that you weren’t being forced to go to Japan. You could hear Blake walking away.

                                                           ---

[This conversation is in Japanese]

The air was cold, and tasted like salt water from the surrounding ocean. After Blake came to your door, you couldn't fall asleep, your head spinning after all the information that came at you at once. You grabbed a blanket, a random bottle of alcohol you had lying around and a glass before coming to the one place where you could feel like you could breath. You were on the rooftops, watching the sun go down and sipping on a glass of some kind of spicy alcohol, you honestly didn’t look at the bottle. 

“I thought you would be here, Ms. L/n.” A voice called out behind you. 

You didn’t bother to look back at who it was, there were only so many people who spoke Japanese here and none of them were on your team or weren’t even close to you. 

“Should have known that you would find out where I am,” you mumbled under your breath, downing the rest of your drink. 

You could hear him walk towards you before stopping right beside you and looking out into the horizon with you. Together the two of you watched the sun lower together. You pulled the blanket closer as you felt more chills throughout your body. 

“So then you should also know I have an idea of why you're running. You can’t hide much from me, Ms. L/n,” he added. 

You sighed, using your hand that held the glass as support for your head. You could feel a headache coming, making you groan out loud. Using your free hand, you moved your head around until you could feel and hear your neck crack. You felt a pressure at your shoulder, and you looked over to find a water bottle and a couple of pills  being handed to you. You glanced at Nezu who was still looking at the horizon before looking back down at the bottle. Sighing, you took the pills and water bottle. You threw the pills in your mouth and ripped open the cap and downed the entire bottle in ten seconds. 

“You’ll be safe at UA, I hope you know that, we’ve introduced a dorm system including one for teachers. I promise you.”

“Not as safe as I am here,” you scoffed. 

You looked away from the sunset, placing your arm down and using it to support you from behind. 

“How do you know that?” Nezu questioned. 

You said nothing, which answered Nezu’s question. You could feel him turn around and start to walk away. 

“Your plane will be here in two weeks, use that time to say your goodbyes and figure out your lesson plans and learn about your students. I would pay particular attention to the incoming class of 2A.”

You scoffed, 2A huh?

                                                          ---

“AND IN FIRST PLACE, IS Y/N L/N!! One of the most strongest quirks I’ve ever seen in a first year, there’s nobody to match her in battle formations and strategies, even when faced with a difficult quirk, she found a way out and was easily able to snag that FIRST PLACE TITLE!!” The announcer yelled out as the crowd cheered on. 

In the center of the stadium was the stage, where the winners were being honored in front of everyone and in the center was you, Y/n L/n, with the biggest smirk on her face. Hair in a large afro puff, with a purple bandana. You were tired but you were happy, you had fought and trained hard for a long time for this. This first step to creating the path to becoming one of the best female pro-heroes Japan and this world has ever seen. You looked at the rest of your peers as they cheered you on and gongradualted you on winning the U.A Sports Festival. You looked to your left and saw a close friend of yours, Oboro giving you a thumbs up. You winked and gave him one back, mouthing “good job” to him.

“Y/N!!! OBORO!!!” A loud, familiar voice called out to you. 

You looked at where the voice came from and saw Yamada, your closest friend Nemuri Kayama, and him, Shota waving at you, although he wasn't waving but he was staring at you. You gave him a soft smile while you felt your cheeks burn before turning to Principal Nezu who was offering you the gold medal. You bent down, low enough for him to put the medal on you. Once you stood up, you lifted the medal slightly to get a good look at it. 

First place felt so good…

The ceremony ended and soon enough, you were getting ready to go home to show your family what you got, what you had won, even though you knew they were all watching you. You were tired and just wanted to get on the first train to your home when you heard Yamada call out to you again. You flinched at the loud noise, his quirk was called “Voice” after all. You turned around to find him, Kayama, Shirakumo, and Aizawa all walking towards you. You smiled tiredly and flipped your bookbag on your back. 

“Hey guys…” you greeted sofly, “what’s up?”

They all stopped in front of you, all ready to go home as well. 

“For someone who won first place as a first year, you look like pure shit,” Aizawa said bluntly.

You rolled your eyes, “I’m just tired, over using your quirk will do that. I know my parents will have a whole party waiting for me when I get home.” 

“Well, let’s walk to the train together, I’m sure we’ll be able to get you out of your tired mood by the time we get to your stop!” Shirakumo said, turning towards the door. 

You glanced over at Kayama who was looking at Shirakumo with heart eyes, you walked up to her and nudged her with your elbow. This made her snap out of her heart eyes and look at you, you look abc at her with a knowing smirk. 

“Shut up,” she mumbled, making you laugh out loud. 

The both of you followed the three boys out of the room and out of the school. All five of you walked to the train station, Yamada having to take a different train because he lives in the opposite direction of the four of you. You waved goodbye to him as he waited for his train and the four of you got on the one waiting for you. You all got on and immediately found seats, well for you and Nemuri, Shouta and Oboro had to stand at the poles in front of you. As you were riding on the train, Kayama got a call on her cell, possibly from her mom. She groaned and answered it, but the call wasn’t long. You could hear her voice start to rise and even could hear her mom’s start to rise. They argued for a while and then she quickly ended the call and turned to look at you. 

She gave you the same puppy eyes she always gives you before she asks you the same question she always asked you before. You exhaled and looked away smiling. Shouta looked at the both of you before rolling his eyes, making you reach over and pinched him in the stomach. He grunted and wacked your hand away from him, making you smile at him before poking him and leaning back into the bench. 

“Yes, you can spend the night, you know my mom doesn’t care,” you laughed , pushing her softly. 

“Thank you L/n, I can’t deal with her tonight! You know she got a new boyfriend and he honestly creeps me out,” she groaned as she remembered interactions with her mom’s new boyfriend. 

“You’re welcome,” you giggled, giving her a one armed hug. 

“Aww, group hug!” Oboro shouted, pulling down Shouta with one arm and pulling Nemuri and you into a big group hug. 

“Oboro, fuck- warn somebody please!” Shouta complained, but was ignored by said man who just pulled him closer to all of us. 

We all laughed at his pain, who just made a grunt-like noise but made no movement to wiggle out of the group hug. 

“Yamada would be jealous,” Nemuri said, as we all separated from the hug. 

You looked out the window and smiled softly… you were so happy...

[twistedapple]

On Pomefiore

[Note: Tumblr being Tumblr, I’ll put the links and due credits in a reblog; also, partially under the cut because it’s a bit long]

This post is something that has been brewing for a while now – my more observant followers will know when it started based on a certain tag. To preface this write up, I’d like to precise that I have been motivated in working on it because of the way Pomefiore was being received when I joined the fandom. Since then it has been followed by certain beliefs that – while being qualified as headcanons, which is perfectly fair and fine in itself – tend to be treated as actual gospel. It’s not a thing specific to the Twst fandom mind you, it happens in most fandoms – heck I still keep an eye on the KHR fandom and there are still people regularly making posts about mischaracterisation, and that fandom has been around for at least ten years. So I’m not here to preach, but to clarify a few things regarding what Pomefiore represents as a dorm, as well as provide a comprehensive commentary on its associated characters.

First belief: Pomefiore is the shallow dorm of pretty people.

But is it? The very first thing we learn about Pomefiore is that it’s the dorm of Hard Workers and other Overachievers, right in the prologue. This dorm is presented as built on the hard work of the Fair Queen, and she’s regularly taken as an example of how one should conduct oneself – especially by Vil, who expresses a lot of admiration and respect in his lesson chats, and clearly treats her as a model to follow in order to reach perfection.

Now you may think “but Crow, the very first thing we learn about the students is that they look impeccable and polish their appearance”. And you would be right; it is indeed how the students of that dorm are presented. However, let me expand a bit on this thought by making something clear: there’s what the dorm is defined as, and then there’s the path each dorm leader decides to follow. To give a few examples, we see Riddle follow the rules of the Queen of Heart to the letter, and dole out punishment whenever these rules are broken – to the point it impedes the students, who can’t use their magic in an environment where it is required. We see Leona applying the Might is Right type of thinking, which leads to Savanaclaw students being often depicted as bullies (and let’s not talk about the Magift tournament...). Azul, under the pretence of benevolence, is actually ruthless in the way he binds people to his contracts – it’s also shown that the Leech brothers act as his enforcers, either by forcing people into deals (during exam periods, as shown at the start of Episode 3) or by reclaiming the due payment of the contract in more or less pleasant ways (Jade being the local master manipulator, while Floyd canonically states that he finds the breaking of bones a more efficient method). Are you seeing where this is going? As a dorm leader, Vil applies his own views on his fellow Pomefiore students; his views happen to include appearances because he aims to be perfect in every way and has a professional background that justifies it. Is it fair to go as far as he is going when it comes to pressuring other students? Of course it isn’t, it’s the whole point of showing him slapping Epel for what he deems an inappropriate behaviour (see Epel’s Ceremonial Card). It sets the conflict of the dorm – and I personally dig how this major narrative bit is hidden in a story... Which brings us to the other point, the meta aspect of Pomefiore. It’s based on Snow White, a story that relies heavily... On appearances. Now let me ask you: is it really surprising to have a dorm based on such story have a focus on appearances as well? And we even get to see different aspects of it: Vil focuses on the tiniest details to be as polished as possible, Rook has a deep love for change and fleeting moments, Epel can turn something nobody wants into something highly desirable (carving damaged apples to sell them better). Pomefiore is the dorm of transformations – both literal and metaphorical -, a fascinating concept in my opinion and a brilliant idea for a solid narrative arc.

Second belief: Vil is a horrible, narcissistic person, but he will also play dress-up/makeup

Let’s sit for a second there, because there are many things to unpack. Now, what do we know about the fairest of all dorm leaders? Well, quite a lot, for someone who has yet to properly appear in the main story! The very first thing we learn about him is that he has a whooping 5 million followers on Magicam – which is massive and not a number you reach while sitting on your hands and waiting for something to happen. This is such an impressive number that we even get to see various reactions to it, from being very impressed to trying to use that fame for personal purposes. Through reading the stories in which he appears, we get to learn some interesting things about Vil: generally speaking, he fits perfectly the image of the consummate professional. In Jade’s SSR story, we get a solid peek into his life and the man has a busy schedule. He juggles daily with his duties as a student, a dorm leader, an influencer and a professional model – these things take time and he manages to go from one duty to the other with both the ease of someone who’s used to it and the precise organisation of someone with a solid head on his shoulders as well as an incredibly strong work ethic and drive. Speaking from personal experience with the modelling part and an informed opinion on the influencer part, these two fields alone aren’t easy to handle at all. Being an influencer can be very cutthroat (as a certain beauty community has been demonstrating since last year...), and being a professional model requires a lot of drive and dedication, as well as major self-care in regard to both your body and your mental health, because those are the tools of your trade as a model. In consequence, Vil as a dorm leader focuses on appearances as a result of heavy intellectual work to honour the Fair Queen he so highly respects (he says so in his voicelines: “True beauty is determined by strong intellect. You can always doctor your looks, but your true colors will still shine through right away.”), but Vil as a person is also extremely focused on his appearance because he’s doing his job. It’s not narcissism, it’s professionalism. And with his Ceremonial Robes story, we even get to learn that he was ostracised in his hometown for being a performer, yet he kept going and working to reach his goals. For someone who’s only 18 years old, this is an exceptional display of drive, discipline and maturity.

Vil has the highest standards for himself, but because he comes from pretty damn far, he also expects other people to be capable of showing the same degree of determination to achieve their goals. He expresses that in various ways, from being openly displeased with Leona’s general negligence (with Ruggie doing all the work in the background – see Leona’s school uniform story and Ruggie’s lab coat story), to being unimpressed by the new Pomefiore students and getting ready to whip them in a shape he’ll deem desirable as soon as he lays his eyes on them. He’s also highly critical of people going for the easy way out: in his school uniform story, he not only criticises Cater for trying to use him for his own five seconds of fame by buttering him up, but he also emphasises the fact that his services aren’t free. Emphasis on that: Vil isn’t a charity. He isn’t the sort of person with whom you’ll mutually brush your hair while sharing smoothie recipes. Rook is more likely to be the one up to that sort of thing, because Rook is nice and a good senior (see: Rook’s ceremonial robes story). Vil, on the other hand, encourages a lot to try and learn on your own, to use your own head in order to create your own brand (see his lab coat voicelines). He’ll be more enclined to help only after you started doing a part of the job independently and showed you can think and act for yourself. And even then, he’ll likely kick your ass to push you to keep up, because behind all the sparkles and lustre Vil is very much depicted as an overbearing Drill Sergeant. Like I pointed out earlier, it’s heavily hinted that he didn’t get where he is by waiting for good fortune to come by. He works for his success daily and expects other people to do the same. Does it seem like a rather unfair treatment? Sure, but at the same time it provides a great learning opportunity for those willing to put up with it, and Vil offers it in a surprisingly selfless manner: there is an open concern about the way people present themselves, and how they can do it to be their best self at all time.

Interestingly, it creates a peculiar dynamic with his vice dorm leader, Rook. There’s a constant sway between them, with Vil bluntly telling him he can be easily replaced if he fails in his duties, while still relying on him more than Rook relies on him in return – in fact, Rook pretty much follows his own path, and Vil happens to be a very nice view along that path so Rook decided to stop and hang out for a bit, but he still checks his surroundings for other nice views. So while Rook puts up with Vil’s tight requirements (see Rook’s ceremonial robes story, where Floyd cleverly observes that he doesn’t seem that fond of the perfume Vil created for him and forces him to wear during ceremonies), he’s also the one taking actual charge of the new students (see when he checks on Epel in his ceremonial robes story, or when he offers his support during the Ghost Marriage event) and trying to smooth things out when Vil is being too rough (see Vil’s ceremonial robes story). Interestingly, it leads to a communication issue between these two, fueled by what looks very much like a unilateral dependant relationship on Vil’s part, no matter how much he denies it. He rejects Rook through threats of replacing him, yet fully trusts his eyes and sincerity, yet this very sincerity is the reason why Vil doesn’t fully open up to Rook (see Vil’s lab coat story, he goes to Trey to vent about Rook’s lack of consideration) and uses a Harsh Commanding Queen attitude to hide his own insecurities from the eyes of the person who can see them best. It’s likely not helped by the fact that Vil is aware that he needs Rook more than Rook needs him – it’s obvious when reading the latter’s profile: Rook likes his privacy, and while he keeps putting his nose in other people’s business (not out of malice, but genuine curiosity), he’s notoriously deemed annoying by characters like Leona and Malleus because of his overly curious yet inconsiderate nature. There’s a selfishness in Rook which protects him from getting fully controlled by Vil, I’ll repeat myself here but I’d rather insist on that: Rook willingly decided to follow Vil, it means he has the power to refuse him as well (which is very much like... Oh, the Huntsman in Snow White – though in his case specifically, there’s also variations in which his family is held hostage and all, while Rook makes his own decisions).

This entire situation is heavily fueled by Vil’s need for control. As aforementioned, he focuses on the tiniest details and holds complete control over everything that makes his life what it is: from the type of makeup he picks to every single component used in the meals he prepares himself, Vil has a clear need for full control, and it’s reflected in the way he interacts with other students, as well as in the way he handles even his club activities. Vil isn’t just a model, influencer and even actor, in the film study club he works as a director and in one of his stories (lab coat), he’s even shown to create the special effects himself, because only he can provide for his own desires in the most exact fashion. This is where his little “I can replace you easily” becomes funny, because it translates his need for control without really holding since Rook is the one with the most agency in the relationship. In comparison, in Silver’s PE uniform story, Silver is treated like a pawn and Vil even berates Malleus in front of him because Silver dares deny him (how dare he have his own agency instead of being a nice prop who should feel honoured to be selected). Interestingly, Silver also compares Vil’s way of doing things to something martial. AhemDrillSergeantVilahem. In this story, the interesting point is that things finally start working well when Vil stops considering his own vision and decides to look beyond it a bit: taking Silver’s actual abilities into consideration, he finally has a scene that works. It works because he loosened the control a bit – while Silver went along with it but remained vocal the whole time about where his own skills lie.

While the relationship between Vil and Rook, as well as Vil and the rest of the Pomefiore dorm, have been holding through a quietly tense status quo, there is one pebble - dare I say, one potato - who is more than willing to challenge the whole situation through open defiance and a strong will: Epel. He has been set by the narration to be the catalyst to an incoming breaking point, because he wants to live his life to the beat of his own drum, yet remains a teen still in need of a journey of self-discovery. It’s illustrated in how he misunderstands the point of Pomefiore by only looking at the surface - something Vil reproaches, which is why he even talks about his need for more self-awareness in the lesson chats. Of course, Vil uses his own language (beauty) to get his point across, but the underlying point is that Epel has yet to reach a certain degree of self-realisation - such as the fact he is free to try and work hard to become beefier (Vil wouldn’t object as long as he puts in the necessary efforts), or that he is a good fit in Pomefiore because he has the drive to reach his goals and gives himself the means to do so (high awareness, anyone?). Basically, he’s the example of Vil’s communication issues: Vil’s martial nature tends to drown the actual meaning of his motivational speeches. Paradoxically, when dealing with someone like Epel, it actually fuels the teen through spite, which is both comical and quite impressive given Epel’s results (reminder of his own lab coat story, in which he manages to impress Crewel, a man made from the same fabric as Vil, with his formidable results through hard work). However, this form of motivation isn’t healthy, and just like with Rook, a good, long talk is needed to create a better understanding - instead of forcing his Tyranny of Beauty on others.

Bonus point, because I really want to address it

For some time now, I’ve been vocal about my personal feelings regarding the reception of Pomefiore and its characters. While it became more positive since June, it still tends to miss the point for a reason I’d like to address: the Not Like The Other Girls mentality and how it specifically affects the way Vil and his own femininity are perceived.

While I am not invalidating this thinking as part of a larger growth process, I think it has been unfairly used against Pomefiore. In a way, it’s very much the way Epel reacts: it’s just a Pretty People Dorm led by an Annoying Pretty Boy, and Savanaclaw is cooler. However, this is not only superficial, it puts a judgement of value that means that one has to be put down for the other to shine. In other words, Vil as a character is undervalued because his way of life - which matches traditionally feminine occupations, hell he’s even using a feminine pronoun - has been associated with vanity, narcissism, and superficiality by the fandom. To get my point across, let me provide you with quotes from some of our most brilliant minds:

“Woman wants to be independent […] this is one of the worst developments in the general uglification of Europe. Woman has so much reason for shame; in woman there is concealed so much superficiality, petty presumption and petty immodesty – one needs only to study her behaviour with children!” - Nietzsche

“What is truth to a woman? From the very first nothing has been more alien, repugnant, inimical to woman than truth - her great art is the lie, her supreme concern is appearance and beauty” - Nietzsche (again)

“A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.” - Oscar Wilde 

“All the pursuits of men are the pursuits of women also, but in all of them a woman is inferior to a man.” - Plato

“As regards the sexes, the male is by nature superior and the female inferior, the male ruler and the female subject” - Aristotle

Do you see where I’m going with that? Because he has an occupation focused on appearance, something historically associated with women, Vil should be… Less? Should be negative? Even though he is quite vocal about it being a mere result of a much deeper work on himself, throughout his voicelines, lesson chats and personal stories? It’s not vanity, it’s not narcissism. It’s Vil expressing himself through the age old art forms of fashion, skincare and makeup. How, and why it being focused on something external should be less? It’s especially obvious when you stop and consider Vil’s own testimony: he has been ostracized by his own community for being a performer. His appearance is as much a mask as it is a proof of everything that preceded it – him saving himself with his own means and work. It’s both a protection and a result that he proudly brandishes – and he absolutely can afford the arrogance to do so, considering his achievements at such a young age (reminder, again, that he’s 18 years old, despite being very disillusioned with life already). Why should it be less that? Vil’s inclination towards appearances is both his truth and his fiction, that’s what the narrative tells us - and there’s nothing bad about that.

I guess I’m especially tired of this point because I’ve had to deal with that thinking pattern myself irl, for evolving in similar fields/similar hobbies, and it’s frustrating to see that sort of close mindedness. It’s infuriating. So, that’s a more personal aspect of my rant... But here we are.

[nerdified]

Procedural Notes: Patient #3 (FKA Hugo Jensen)

NOTE: [At the time of this audio recording, Mr. Hugo Jensen (NKA Norville Nerdlinger) has just begun the process, and is restrained. The identity of the speaker is unknown. This transcript is reproduced here in order to assist with identification of this man, who has since disappeared, absconding with an undisclosed amount of the process agonist. Efforts to locate him have, to date, been fruitless. If anyone knows anything about this man or his whereabouts, please report the information to Central Command.]

[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT]

Quiet, now. It’s no use struggling.

I’m not going to hurt you. Quite the opposite.

I see that look in your eyes, like you don’t think I could hurt you. You’re probably right. I’m not much of a fighter. But I know what you think of me, and other guys like me. I’ve been listening to you on the phone, you know. Hacked your telecommunications. What was it that you called me, on that call with the client yesterday?

Oh, yes, I remember. A walking pocket protector. I’ll admit, that was a new one for me. I’ve had “pencil-neck” and “four-eyes” and the good old-fashioned “nerd” lobbed at me before, but “walking pocket-protector”… Heck, it’s got a little poetry to it!

Shh. I know, it feels strange. It’s a little unsettling, at first, I’ll agree. But you’ll get used to it. It’ll go easier for you if you just relax and quit fighting it. In time, you’ll even begin to like it.

I’m sorry about the gag. Unfortunately, it’s just the beginning of the process, so I have to leave it in for…twenty-three more minutes, at least, if my calculations are correct.

Ha! Who am I kidding – my calculations are always correct.

I can see from your eyes that you hate my guts right now. That, too, will change.

You see, what’s about to happen to you isn’t out of the ordinary, or even very noteworthy. As far as I can tell, it happens to a lot of guys, especially those that zip through their twenties and then hit that speed bump called thirty, bank accounts empty and career opportunities shot. Those of us who didn’t win the genetic lottery couldn’t get by just on our looks and our charisma, like you did.

I remember how it felt when I was in high school, and guys like you were all A+ students and perfect jocks, too… gosh, it’s enough to make me swear.

But no. You couldn’t leave well enough alone. You couldn’t just be a jock, be good at sports, and leave the academics to the rest of us. We didn’t ask for much, you know. We just wanted to be left alone in our science labs, and in our tutorials, in our lives.

There's no escaping guys like you. You’re everywhere, and you’re spreading. For a time, we ignored it. Figured it was some kind of anomaly. But it wasn’t – it was a trend. And despite the fact that we didn’t see it coming, we are now prepared for its end.

Like I mentioned – it won’t surprise most people to see you change. Maybe a few of your close friends will worry about you. Express some concern. But by that point, you’ll already have accepted your new self. You’ll be able to say “This is just who I am,” and it’ll be their choice how to proceed. That’s a side benefit, by the way, of the process. You get to find out who your real friends are – and, spoiler alert: they’re not exactly big football fans.

You have to be prepared for some major shake-up in your life, though. The good thing about the process is that it won’t faze you in the slightest. Everything will be gee-whiz gosh-darn super-duper spiffy keen neat-o, if anyone asks, and for you, it will be.

Now, I know those terms are a little outdated. We’ve had to make a bit of an adjustment to the process in your case. The earlier version wasn’t quite strong enough for you, so we’ve had to over-compensate in a few directions. You won’t just be a little bit nerdy, you know, a couple of odd quirks, some new hobbies. For example, Derek – well, that’s his dead name, he goes by Derwood now – Derwood can sometimes get by in normal society. He even kept a few of his old friends. He’s just more into things like superhero movies, and he’s left behind all knowledge or passion for sports. I think I even saw him reading a comic book the other day, come to think of it.

But that’s not going to be you. Oh, sure, you might develop a taste for superhero movies, but if you do, it won’t just be a passing interest. You’ll become a rabid fan. I believe…obsessive…is the operative word, in fact. Yes, you see, that earlier version of the process would have worn off, and you’d have been back to your old self in no time, which would wreak havoc on your psyche, not to mention put our entire operation in jeopardy. We can’t have that.

It looks like some time has passed, but not quite enough for me to remove the gag yet. Do you feel your perfect white teeth shifting around in your gums, almost impatiently? Nod once for yes.

You don’t have to nod at all, not if you don’t want to. I don’t need you to confirm for me what I can already see happening in your eyes. Speaking of your eyes – how’s your vision? I can see you starting to squint every now and then. Trying to see past that blur? Don’t worry. I’ve already got your glasses, right here, for when it gets too bad for you to see. Talk about your Coke-bottle lenses - my calculations again predict that you’ll settle somewhere around…hm…negative six diopters, which is even worse than mine.

To put it simply: you won’t even be able to read the big E on the eye chart without your glasses on.

I know, you’ve never been to the optometrist in your life. You never needed to. And don’t think about getting contact lenses, either. I mean, go ahead and try, if you really want to embarrass yourself.

Oh, I can see it now: timid, nerdy little guy like you, shuffling into the doctor’s office – you say you want to get contact lenses, and they get you in the back for a fitting. They show you how to do it, you know, hold your eyelids apart and then just plop the lens on there. But you have to do it three times before they’ll let you leave with them, and you won’t even be able to get one in, because you’ll keep blinking it out. I wish I could be there to see it, honestly – you, all frustrated, trying to swear, but only able to say things like “Fudge!” and “Gosh darn it!”

It’ll be so beautiful. I’m getting teary just thinking about it.

I’m glad you’re starting to settle down a bit. Let me know when you need your glasses. Maybe while we wait, I’ll get started on your hair. That trendy fade has got to go, and so does that scruff on your face. At the start, you’ll have to shave a lot, but as the process continues, you’ll start producing more of a 5-alpha reductase enzyme. This will convert your testosterone into dihydrotestosterone, or DHT, which will actually miniaturize your follicles. Kind of like using a shrink ray on them! Oh, and there will be no taking of inhibitors, like finasteride or anything like that – our process contains a potent agonist, with an affinity of 0.25 to 0.5 nM for the human androgen receptor.

It’s all very scientific, I assure you. And with the miniaturization of your follicles, your sebaceous glands will begin to over-produce sebum, which results in – you guessed it! Acne. Pimples. Zits. I know you’ve never had to deal with that before, so I’m just preparing you for it now. Pizza-face, I think the popular nickname is. Get ready for a lot of that.

Let’s see…what else can I tell you.... Gosh, this is kind of like the orientation for a new job, isn’t it? Ah, yes. I know. Speaking of jobs...

Yeah, this is the tough part. It’s all very natural, I assure you. Just like with your friends, your co-workers will come to see you in a different way. I know you have quite a few cutthroat underlings who would eat one another alive to get your corner office, and the moment they sense you’re not as much of a threat as you used to be, they’ll swarm.

I give it two weeks, tops, until you’re gone. If you choose that road. Or you could make it much easier on yourself and resign. You won’t be financially ruined – not with all that new information surging through your brain – you’ll be an asset to the right company, the right department. Maybe IT will take you. Or accounting. Maybe you won’t work corporate. Maybe you’ll work retail.

God, that’s cruel even for me. I wouldn’t wish retail on anyone, even a jerk like you. But there’s no telling what could happen. For all I know, once the process has completed, you could end up one of those Geek Squad guys at Best Buy! Have you seen the uniform they have to wear? It’s company-mandated dress code. You’ve seen them, haven’t you? White, short-sleeve, button-down shirt. Black polyester clip-on necktie; black, pleated trousers; black lace-up shoes…and white socks. Yes, white socks, kept completely spotless and bright. All this is enforced, too, with routine inspections, to make sure you’re being compliant!

You see, there’s really an infinity of possibilities for you. If anything, this is a new chance for you – a fresh start. I know it feels scary, all this change. But change is the only constant. Everything is always in flux. Heck, every seven years, your entire body regenerates – every cell is new and different, so why shouldn’t your personality and identity change, too?

It’s logical, isn’t it? Nod once for yes.

Good! You’re starting to come around, aren’t you? Like I said, it won’t be so bad if you just accept it. If you don’t fight it. That sudden urge to position your tongue up behind your teeth when you say ess. Eth. Eth. How your voice keeps breaking, and in the most unfortunate ways, and at the most unfortunate times – all of this is being etched into your muscle memory as I speak to you.

There isn’t much longer now until I can remove your gag, and I can see that the physical alterations are beginning. Too bad all that hard work at the gym all these years is so easily eroded by our process, but then, those muscles were mostly for show, weren’t they? Well, no longer. It isn’t exactly sarcopenia, but it’s close. You’ll be at least one and a half, possibly two, standard deviations below the relevant population mean, and no amount of exercise will restore your former abilities.

Yes, the ropes are looser now, because you’re much smaller. Rapid onset muscle deterioration. You could struggle out of them. Maybe you could even escape. You could try. But there’s no way you’d make it very far without your glasses. Who would believe you, anyway? What would you even say?

Like I said, you might as well give in. It’s not so bad, once you get used to it. And you’ll have me. I’ll be with you for the whole beginning process, so you can acclimate to your newly nerdy life. You won’t be able to continue living in that luxe apartment you’ve got – no, you’ll be moving into a nice little basement apartment I’ve got fixed up for you, in the suburbs outside the city. The landlords have just got it refurbished, with some nice wood paneling, and there’s a spare twin bed that should be just your size! There’s also tons of room on the walls to put up all your posters. You won’t need much room for anything else, really. You definitely won’t be needing that enormous closet of tailored, fitted button-down shirts, or all those sneakers, definitely not those expensive Under Armour boxer-briefs. What a waste. No, the new you is way more frugal with his money, seeing as he’s paid so little of it. The new you doesn’t even think that much about clothes, or fashion.

This must be a lot to handle. Maybe I should have a little mercy on you.

Tell you what. I’ll let you choose your underwear. How’s that, pal? That make you feel any better? Nod once for yes.

See, I’m not that bad. That’s right. So, here. You can choose…Hanes, or Fruit of the Loom?

Oh, I see. You thought I meant what kind of underwear. Haha, no. You’ll be wearing tighty-whities from now on. Sorry, them’s the rules. Besides, you won’t need much support…down there, if you catch my drift!

Don’t look so horrified. You won’t even notice that it’s gone. Mostly. You’ll still have some length, just, you know, not a lot. You won’t be able to call it a “cock” or a “dick” ever again, either. Oh, look how cute – you’re blushing just hearing me say it! You might call it something else, like your ding-a-ling, or your wiener.

Okay, okay, I can tell you’re getting embarrassed, you’ve gone all red and blotchy in your cheeks. We don’t have to talk about the … “no-no place” anymore, little buddy.

All right. Here’s your glasses. I’ll just set them on your nose, for you…there. Wow, they sure do make your eyes look tiny!

I can tell you’re getting near to the end of the process, and I’m curious to see how big your two front teeth have gotten. From that bump in your upper lip…gosh, it looks like you might be giving Bugs Bunny a run for his money!

You’ve really been behaving better, so I’ll bring you a mirror, okay? So you can see for yourself. I must say, it’s already quite the improvement. I wasn’t expecting your hair to turn so red, or get so curly. Maybe if you can’t get a job at Best Buy, you could run away and join the circus as a clown!

I’m just horsing around with you, pal. Don’t pass out on me. You promise not to scream? I hate it when they scream. Nod once for yes.

You’re a little excited, aren’t you? It’s okay. You can tell me. I bet you get a little more excitable than you used to. Maybe you even get a little clumsy, with the loss of all that hand-eye coordination. Trip over your own two feet and go sprawling.

But who knows. There’s so much potential.

And you’re just the beginning, too. Let’s just say that my proposal for introducing you to the process wasn’t well-received by Central. What do they know? They have this power, and they don’t use it. Well, you snooze, you lose, by golly! If you have a gift, you use it, otherwise it goes to waste.

Anyway. Enough of the supervillain speech. You don’t need to know anything more. It’ll probably be wiped out in the massive crush of nerdy trivia about Star Trek and Star Wars that’s going to download into your brain soon, anyway.

So, this is it. Are you ready to see? Nod once for yes, and I’ll pull the cloth off this mirror here.

Alrighty, dweeb, you asked for it. Here goes.

Say salutations to the new you!

[END TRANSCRIPT]

[rvmmm21]

. you know who i am? .

k, so i didn’t mean for this to get so out of hand. also, my first time writing in present tense? idk how to feel about it, but i guess it’s different. it felt so different writing for like actual humans lol. my first ‘normal’ fic, this is!

please for the sake of this making sense can we all pretend jennie, joy and irene are around the same age? also look who had fun with brand names. moi.

anyways this is [badgirl/bully!joohyun ‘persuading’ clumsy freshman!seungwan to be her assignment buddy] 

...

University culture is grating.

It’s overwhelming and it suffocates her. She has no time to prepare herself for the apparent runway the halls have become, what with the stupid-rich kids treating every day like it’s a fashion show; Seungwan can barely blink from one person to the next without being smacked across the face with fur coats from Chanel, Louis Vuitton sunglasses hidden under Prada nylon bucket hats and Off-White tracksuits tucked into Balenciaga socks. She hadn’t considered a future in law enforcement, but had she done so, anyone who tucked their trousers into their socks mid-calf would find themselves behind bars with the rest of the criminal scum. End of.

Just as she dusts her hands of that smug little sentiment, Seungwan finds herself with a face full of hair, and an even bigger nose full of what smells like laundry detergent. She lets out an embarrassing squeal, and the girl turns round to face her. A ghost of a scowl brushes across her face before she fixes her with an indiscernible gaze.

That scowl is an awful colour on a face as pretty as yours, she impulsively thinks.

Seungwan knows no more about the history of art and the intricacies of sculpture than the average Joe, but she’s sure Michelangelo missed the mark with David. She inwardly laughs at the thought of the man dedicating his entire being to crafting his flimsy idea of ‘perfection’ when she’d just bumped into it; the real thing. Of course, if that was defined by forming new constellations from faded freckles on flawless skin, or vantablack tresses framing sharp features like a painting, then yes; she was, by very definition, ‘the perfect (wo)man’. Easily outdoing anyone within a 50-metre radius.

Heck, make that 500.

The girl glares intimidation and Seungwan manages to save herself the humiliation of drooling in front of the white-hot beauty and her friends with a quick gulp, already feeling crimson seeping into her cheeks.

Perfect; now that she’s watched whatever new potential friendship this was blow up in her face, all she has to do is avoid her at all costs from here on out.

She mouths a haphazard apology and zooms past before anything can come of it, keeping her head down even after she’s well out of sight. Seulgi, Seulgi, Seulgi, save me, she brisk walks and begs all the way to class.

~~~~~~~~~~

A small commotion rings through the lecture hall of keyboard clicks and lethargic shuffles, calling to attention the girl who’s just spilt her drink down her front, now frantically digging around in her backpack for anything she can use to soak it up. A few jeering giggles are stifled, meanwhile students close by donate tissues and sympathetic looks. They are gratefully accepted with rapid-fire bows and machine-gun stuttered apologies.

“That freshman’s just ruined her rep, huh?” Jennie chuckles, “blindly walking into people… can’t even keep liquid in the cup. Give her a dog collar and a sign and she’s good to go.”

“Eh, I thought it was cute.”

Jennie’s retort comes quick.

“Sooyoung, you think anything in a skirt is cute.”

“What,” the girl says, ignoring the implication, “Haetnimie doesn’t wear skirts. And she’s not even wearing one right now. Plus, I didn’t say ‘she’s cute’, I said ‘it’s cute’. Learn the difference, idiot… it’s not like I wanna have at her or anything…”

Jennie shoots her an incredulous look and Sooyoung relents the banter. They both turn their attention to the girl sitting next to them, completely un-present in the moment. Sooyoung notices who she’s looking at and leans in to nudge her.

“Joohyun,” she whispers, poking her in the ribs when it’s obvious their friend is well on her way to signing a contract with NASA with how apparently well accustomed to space she is, “what do you think of her? Or are you still mad she walked into you?”

“Nah, forget it,” Jennie waves her off before she’s even had a chance to respond, “she’s not interested. I had to literally pay her money to go on a stupid double date with me in high school. I washed five cars for her to not even hold his hand once during the movie.”

Instead of participating, Joohyun sighs, casting the girl in question a seemingly uninterested stare. Unbothered eyes take in the sight she’s presented with: frustrated brows knitted together under a wispy caramel fringe and a blot of taro milk tea the size of Canada staining her baby blue jumper.

“I want her.”

The words are so simple her friends almost miss them entirely.

Sooyoung and Jennie battle for first place in an impromptu competition of ‘who’s-the-most-shocked’.

“You’re joking! Yah, you’re so annoying seriously, now?! You couldn’t have ‘wanted’ Min-seok in year nine?! I paid good, hard cash for that stupid boy!”

Joohyun looks at her, smug as a cat.

“I did it for you, Jennie. I didn’t even remember his name was Min-ho.”

“Min-seok.”

“Yeah, right.”

Sooyoung, wide-eyed and on the verge of passing out, grabs Joohyun by the shoulders, ignoring the glare she receives for it. “Joohyun, seriously? You’re serious. You want her like want her? Or want her like you wanted that cookbook after that trial week of Food Tech during summer break?”

Joohyun regards her, absolutely blasé. “I don’t follow recipes.”

“Exactly. Are you play-”

Sooyoung’s statement dies down with the rest of the class as the lecturer walks in. Furious clicking, hurricane scribbles and flipping pages are all that remain as the lesson kicks off, Jennie and Sooyoung casually scrolling through Instagram while the professor speaks. Joohyun leans forward, elbows on desk and chin resting on interlocked fingers. Her full attention is on the poor girl on the other side of the hall, intermittently peeling the cold, damp fabric away from her body, face flushed and avoiding all eye contact. Joohyun snickers at how uncomfortable it must be to have to sit through class in a wet jumper, how awkward and squeamish she looks.

Strawberry-tinted lips curl into the faintest smirk.

Hello cutie.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Yah! Kang Seul-Gi!” Seungwan calls out to chocolate-swirly space buns and baggy gym clothes hurtling towards her from across campus grounds, “where the heck were you?!”

“Sorry sorry! Overslept!”

“What!? Your class starts at noon! … and this is like… day 1!”

The girl looks like she’s barely had the chance to screw her head on the right way as she joins Seungwan on the steps of the university entrance.

Seungwan’s sweating buckets; physically and metaphorically, both from the waves of humidity and her all-exclusive one-idiot circus show this morning in class. That little muck up makes it to the tippy top of the endless list of embarrassing things Seungwan has stored in her long-term memory.

“You okay?”

Seungwan palms rosy cheeks as she takes another mouthful of her rainbow sherbet cone.

“You wouldn’t believe what happened to me.”

Seulgi chortles as her best friend recounts her ordeal, trying to subdue the sea of smart alec remarks bubbling under her skin.

“So that was great, too. And now I’m a laughing stock. A meme. They’re probably editing my stupid face as I speak…”

Seulgi reverts back to the first incident. Of course she would.

“Sooo… not like in the dramas then?”

Seungwan hangs her head, “not at all… she looked like she wanted to kill me.”

Seulgi lets out a snort before prodding her with more curious questions. The cogs in Seungwan’s brain churn and stutter as she tries to filter as many redundant adjectives as possible, only using ones she deems absolutely necessary to describe the most beautifully terrifying girl she’s ever seen.

Just then, as if Seungwan had meant to conjure hell itself, the three girls make an appearance from round the corner, chatting amongst themselves and taking Seungwan and Seulgi by surprise. The latter glances down where steely fingers are squeezing her wrist, as if that’d activate some magical cloak of invisibility. Seungwan’s as good as swallowed her tongue, shakily motioning to the girl in the middle of the black velvet storm with her eyes and a few nose twitches.

“H-her…” she stutters, finally getting her brain into gear after they leave, “… her.”

Innocent eyes double in size at the realisation.

“Wha-wait no, her?! You bumped into… her?! Her, Bae Joohyun leader of killer senior pack Bae Joohyun?”

Seungwan’s heart only thumps faster at the panic in Seulgi’s voice, but her words still mean nothing. The other girl swipes the dangling question marks off the top of her friend’s clueless head.

“Yo Wan-ah, you have to lay low. I mean why would you even – oh geez wow you really messed up. Can’t you look where you’re – I can’t even begin to – why would you – oh my gosh!”

Seulgi’s disjointed sentences allow enlightenment to trickle in and Seungwan slaps a hand over her forehead, mortified.

Oh god no. That’s the Bae Joohyun?

She’d heard the rumours. Many, rumours. Bae Joohyun who makes her juniors cry. Bae Joohyun; precious daughter of the most elusive mafia gang leader in all of Korea. Bae Joohyun; ice queen senior, sole roost-ruler of Hanyang University and the biggest bully you’ll ever meet.

Positively preposterous, empty claims with no evidence whatsoever to back them up… she hopes.

“Pft yeah okay she’s… mean, but she’s not like… jesus or anything she can’t… like… part the Red Sea or, turn water into vodka I don’t know,” Seungwan tries and fails at consoling herself, receiving nothing but an apologetic pat on the back from the girl beside her.

“Yeah well… she’s not the messiah but everyone treats her like it. And for the sake of your own neck, you’d better start too. Watch out, Wan-ah.”

Seungwan hadn’t paid any mind to those wet-eared freshmen whom she’d overheard during orientation gossiping about Joohyun and her charming little posse; but perhaps she should have.

She gulps, too afraid to think of anything else.

~~~~~~~~~~

Seungwan often fantasizes at work. There has to be some way to pass the time, after all.

Deep down she’s a sucker for romance, she knows it far too well; she envisions herself ten years down the line, letting whoever she has on the other end of the phone know that she’ll be home soon, that work has just been extra grueling today, and that she cannot wait to give them a cuddle. She’ll stir the dinner pot while she tells them stories, pausing in between to remind her lover how beautiful they are. Perhaps one day, the honour will be hers, to see her soulmate walking down the aisle.

But as the tinkling of the doorbell rings through her café, Seungwan files those cloudy fantasies for later and greets her first customers with a smile.

She hasn’t been sleeping very well, worrying her mind with ridiculous thoughts and impossible scenarios. All involving Joohyun as a tick-tocky alligator and herself as none other than Captain ‘I’m-actually-innocent-why-are-you-still-trying-to-eat-me’ Hook.

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s five minutes to closing time. Seungwan suppresses the yawn in her chest and blinks away the moisture in her eyes. Just zero to sixty, five times in your head. You got this, Seungwan. Gosh, there’s no one in the café and hardly anyone outside. She briefly contemplates closing early.

“Small iced Americano.”

“Coming r – aii!! Ai…!”

Seungwan’s adrenaline spikes so high she could serve it ice cold in a coffee cup right now. Caught completely off guard, she begins stammering nonsense behind the till, crinkling the leather of her dark brown work apron and then using the hem of her polo shirt to wring clammy palms none the drier. All the while her customer stands there, brow quirked and card held out between slender fingers. Her expression, although slightly amused, threatens her to take her money, or else.

Before she can open her mouth, a buttery voice snaps her out of her trance.

“Hello, Seung – wan… hey, don’t we have Korean Literature together?”

Seungwan tries not to spontaneously combust on the job as she instinctively slaps a hand over her name tag. It’s useless though, it is now known. Known to her, of all people. The notorious Bae Joohyun; dressed in Acne jeans and an over-sized midnight Balenciaga cardigan, she looks like any other young, caffeine-dependent university student. But Seungwan knows a lot better.

Oh god save me… what the hell is she doing here!? This has to be a set up. She’s here for me. I’m going to die tonight. Mummy, daddy I love you.

“J-J-Juh…”

She can’t say it. All the years of schooling; learning the alphabet and how to enunciate your words drain out through the holes in her ears. She gawks dumbly, moving her head in what could be considered to be a nod.

“Ah, I thought I recognised you,” she doesn’t even bother trying to sound surprised, “I’m Joohyun.”

Don’t I know.

All Seungwan can do is nod again, hating herself for even breathing right now.

Joohyun clicks her tongue and fiddles with the card in her hand, impatient, “soooo… is this Americano free, or…?”

Yes, yes it’s free, please just take it and go! I’ll upgrade it to an extra-large if you want, on me! If it means I’m spared for the rest of my student life, take it all! Jesus, how did you even find me?!

“Ah, yes. Sorry! Uh, yes that’ll be um two fif – two… two thirty.”

There’s a shaky exchange of a debit card and a forgotten peace treaty iced Americano before Seungwan takes an unconscious shuffle back from the register, eyes glued to the smudge on the toe of her right sneaker, unable to meet Joohyun’s piercing gaze for too long.

“Thank you, Seungwan.”

The way she lingers on the ‘S’ whispers shivers down the girl’s spine. She glances up at the worst possible time, too, nearly jumping out of her mismatched Muji socks when she sees Joohyun’s hibiscus-tinted lips bloom into a coy smirk.

“I’ll see you around.”

And with what a shivering Seungwan could’ve sworn was a terrible attempt at a wink, Joohyun is gone. Clutching at her chest, she tries to slow her accelerated heartrate, praying she doesn’t need heart surgery after what she’s just been through.

Seulgi’s so hearing about this.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Daebak,” Sooyoung scoffs, side-eyeing Joohyun as she twiddles her pen.

“What else did you say?” Jennie presses, taking a sip of her chai latte.

Joohyun merely hums, disclosing no further details of her little cafe incident. She misses Jennie’s disbelieving grin when the walking, talking definition of awkward bumbles into the lecture hall, just on time, armful of texts and messy cinnamon locks matted to her face.

Sooyoung can’t resist a jest. “Joohyun, look. It’s idiocy on legs.”

Joohyun bites back a snort as her eyes follow the girl stumbling and murmuring apologies all the way to her seat. She slumps into the chair with burning cheeks, brushing her hair back with her fingers and fiddling with her gingerbread fringe. Too cute, Joohyun thinks, gritting her teeth.

It happens about mid-way in the class. The mention of pair work triggers the uniform eye-roll, groan and grumble combo, more so from the seniors, who sure as hell don’t want to be paired with icky, snot-nosed first-years who can barely lift their spoons to their mouths. The grumbling evaporates when it is stated that, although compulsory, it is not a fixed-paired assignment.

Seungwan breathes a sigh of relief along with a few others, content to set up camp in the aisles of the library, perfectly undisturbed. But she suddenly feels paler than chalk; flashbacks of heeled boots, midnight cardigans and heart surgery flooding into her veins once more when she catches a pair of stealthy pupils regarding her from across the room. A deceptively sweet smile sparkling on those dreaded lips, breath-taking and utterly petrifying all at once. Even from the other side of a bloody lecture theatre, Bae Joohyun has Seungwan sweating bullets and unconsciously fidgeting at her collar to release steam no one else can see.

About a minute away from hurling herself out the nearest window, Seungwan diverts her attention to her notebook at the last second. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Seungwan stabs her chopstick into the egg yolk, watching it dribble all over her rice. She’s jealous of her own best friend who doesn’t have to live every waking hour with a red sniper laser dot on her back.

Should’ve majored in art too, goddamnit, she curses, poking her lunch in a dazed stupor.

“Wan-ah!”

She scoffs at the familiarity, but Seulgi’s crescent moon grin makes Seungwan momentarily forget.

~~~~~~~~~~

The black cursive of Han Kang’s literature stares up at her as she tries to digest what she’s reading, but she swears her brain allocates the worst times for that sneaky Bae Joohyun to pop up like an unwanted advertisement. Seems like now, she’s going to have to sit through an entire trilogy.

Despite the crippling dread, Seungwan can’t help but wonder. They’re so silly, but she wonders them anyway. She feels free to let her mind wander in the safety of the university library.

Bae Joohyun; Seungwan’s mind is unchanged; she’s the most beautiful girl she’s laid eyes on. It’s a unique kind of beauty; mysteriously edgy, knife-like and femme fatale. The grin Joohyun gave her in class this morning, she knows she should be running from it, but it doesn’t stop the fact that it’s been playing in her head on repeat ever since.

Seungwan unintentionally imagines what it would be like to kiss that sunset-infused smirk right off her face.

Too bad she’s a mean one, she sighs.

She doesn’t get much further with the actual task at hand when her blood-pressure plummets; she watches leader of the killer senior pack, Bae Joohyun, artlessly sit down in the chair next to her. It’s like the world stops spinning for the second it takes their eyes to meet, and Seungwan quivers in her seat, thoughts of literature fleeing out the back of her brain.

Trying to be polite, she gives her a courteous nod and returns to her reading. But Joohyun just sits there, staring, peppering her body with smoking bullet holes – it frightens her in the weirdest way. She can’t help the tiny bubble of… excitement? At the fact that Hanyang’s notorious Bae Joohyun is sitting next to her. Probably to get close enough to kill her, of course, but she’d count her blessings, no matter how terrifying. The thread finally snaps, and Seungwan is able to channel her inner stone statue no more, wordlessly excusing herself and stumbling to the bathroom.

It’s empty and silent; exactly what she needs. She flicks some cool water over the burning in her cheeks and dabs at the heat welled in the corners of her eyes.

But just as she’s about to leave, Joohyun’s standing in the doorway; cloaked in all her intimidating aura and eclipsing her only exit.

“Bathroom break so soon?” Joohyun’s voice drips into her ears like melted honey as she observes a wry smile crawl onto her face, “we’ve barely gotten started. Let’s get back to work… partner.”

It’s kicking in only now what Joohyun is saying. And it takes everything Seungwan has to formulate a pathetic response.

“Oh right, a-about that,” she nervously chuckles, averting her gaze and scratching the back of her neck, “uh, I-I was just um… I don’t wanna drag anyone down with – you know because you’re a senior and all – was m-maybe thinking –”

She doesn’t get very far when Joohyun begins advancing, walking towards her with such sure, dominating strides Seungwan has no choice but to back away, the piercing squeaks of Adidas sneakers easily drowning out the clicking of Louboutin heeled boots. Joohyun sports that coy smirk the whole time she’s cornering poor Seungwan, further and further back, until…

A tiny yelp is torn from her as her back hits the wall. Seungwan strains up to meet her eyes, 5 inch boots are a very useful intimidation tool. Her heart feels about as fragile as sugar glass, and she thinks it would do her good to invest in those styrofoam packing peanuts and a roll of caution tape.  

Joohyun observes the little caramel-haired mouse girl she’s caught; pressed against the cool, beige tile, both hands out in front of her, quivering like a jello pile. She quickly notes the way the top of Seungwan’s head just about grazes the bottom of the wall-mounted paper towel dispenser, and it stretches her grin even further. She looks irresistible, those doe eyes the colour of warm cocoa. Who knew she had a thing for sweet faces, well-intentions and weak-hearts?

Realising her hands aren’t doing anything to keep the other girl at bay, Seungwan drops them like a tonne of bricks - she’s never felt so small and helpless in her life. The rich scent of vanilla and mint tickles her nose; Joohyun’s too close, and she really needs those fragile stickers to go over the thumping in her chest. But she also wants to nuzzle in closer to that intoxicating shampoo smell.

“P-please… I-I didn’t mean to…”

Her voice sounds so tiny and fragile, it tugs on Joohyun’s heartstrings.

“You know who I am?” she demands in somewhat of a growl, caging the smaller girl in with both arms pressed on either side of her head, causing her to gasp out, “you’ve heard?”

Seungwan shrinks a little more, petunias searing onto her milky cheeks at the proximity, but terror-stricken nonetheless. It’s burning, and it’s too much.

A small ‘mm’ and a teary nod is all she can offer.

Joohyun shoots her a challenging smirk, a kaleidoscope of obsidian pebbles flicker in her darkened eyes as she brings a single finger under the girl’s chin, tilting her so she’s forced to look up.

“And you still think you have a choice?”

Seungwan wishes she could rear up at the challenge, hammer some humility into that smug attitude in front of her; put Bae Joohyun in her place. But who is she to change the way the world works? Girls like Joohyun toy with what they want, and get what they toy with; the natural order of things Seungwan has no hope of re-routing. Her resolve, her dignity and everything she’s built up in her 20 years on earth crumbles at her feet; she doesn’t bother picking up the pieces.

With that, she looks up at the girl who still has her locked in with her eyes alone, and meekly shakes her head.

Seungwan can finally breathe when Joohyun detaches herself from the wall and runs both hands down the front of her blouse. She hears a chuckle and before she knows it, there’s an arm around her waist, moving them in tandem.

She doesn’t see the triumphant smile etched into Joohyun’s rosebud lips, like she’s swallowed a coat hanger. All she knows is that they’re now bound by this assignment, and that Joohyun is leaving with exactly what she came for.

Seungwan hides a shy grin of her own.

[excuseme-howdareyou]

Death

@alculai (While I’m not the best at writing bad family, I’m unfortunately great at death and grief)

Warning: Major character death

Song of choice: ‘For This You Were Born’ by UNSECRET

..........

“Come on, come on, where is it?” Tim grumbled to himself as he practically tore apart his closet in search of his glove. It was right here! Or at least it had been last night when he got off patrol with Bruce at 2am. Tim had come home from a long night, exhausted and sore, and just kinda… threw off his uniform and tossed it into the closet. The uniform had been right where he threw it when he got dressed for tonight’s patrol. Minus one green glove.

Tim scratched his head and stared at his other hand, his bare hand. He needed that glove!

“Looking for this?” Batman popped up behind him, helpfully holding up the missing glove.

“Guukk!” Tim screeched.

……………….

If he didn’t know any better, Tim would think the night was getting colder. But no, this was the height of summer in Rome, and Rome summers were hot and sticky.

‘Heh, guess I got the sticky part down,’ he chuckled to himself and spared a glance at his palm. The night was dark, but the streetlights just strong enough to show the glimmer of blood. With a grimace, he pressed his hand back against his side. Shit, it wasn’t even stinging anymore. Just a dull ache and he could feel himself shivering. It felt like the night was getting colder but he knew better.

This alley was dark and dirty and whatever little shelter he found behind this dumpster would only last so long. ‘Come on, Tim, time to get going,’ he encouraged himself. With his free hand, he reached up and grasped the side of the dumpster to pull himself up.

‘Just a… just a little bit further.’

……………………

“Bruce Wayne?”

Bruce looked up from speaking with Lucius and saw two men in pressed trousers and simple button ups. Law enforcement of some kind, his senses told him, seeing the faint outline of a firearm at the calf of the taller one. “Hello,” he greeted them with his best Wayne smile,” How can I help you gentlemen?”

Just like he was expecting, they both held up their wallets sideways. “I’m Agent Markos of INTERPOL,” the shorter, blonde one said,” This is Agent Paul, we have some questions to ask you about your son.”

Internally, Bruce was grimacing. ‘Oh geez, what has Jason done this time?’ But outside he appeared worried,” Oh boy, they didn’t cause an international incident, did they?”

While the taller one continued to glare him in that subtle way, the shorter one at least attempted to be polite about the whole thing. “Mr. Wayne, when was the last time you saw your son?” he asked.

“Just yesterday I spoke to Dick, we talked on the phone for a little bit about his work,” Bruce answered readily enough. Granted, the work they talked about was Nightwing cases, but he could let the agents assume he meant they talked about Dick’s work as a police officer. “Damian I saw this morning as he went to school.”

“And your other son?”

“Jason’s happily running the Ice Lounge as far as I know.”

Whatever mock-politeness was on the taller agent’s face dissolved as he all but scowled at him. “Your other son,” he prompted through gritted teeth. His younger counterpart discreetly hushed him and one elbow pressed against his side until he stepped back and let the blond take the lead again.

It was Lucius who figured it out first. “Oh my god,” his jaw dropped open,” Tim. It’s Tim, isn’t it? Is he alright?” He looked between the two agents, becoming more anxious as he looked at their contrite faces. “Please, tell us. What’s happened?” he practically pleaded.

Agent Markos took a slow, measured breath. “Mr. Wayne, Mr. Fox,” he began,” I’m sorry to tell you, Tim Drake’s body was found three days ago in Rome, Italy…”

‘No…’

All the breath left Bruce’s body in one big whoosh.

“...Our medical examiner reports he passed on sometime last week…” Agent Markos was still speaking but… but Bruce could barely hear him, could barely comprehend what he was saying.

“...We’re trying to establish the last time he had contact with any of his family, try to figure out why he was in Rome…”

‘Tim… no, no… not Tim…’

“...-ayne? Mr. Wayne?-”

Then all went black.

……………………

Boarding schools weren’t big on the whole holiday thing. Sure, they put up decorations wherever there was room, allowing the professors to hang wreaths on their classroom doors and turned a blind eye when a student decked out his room in flashing colored lights. But beyond winter break and the decorations, the holidays were wholly unappetizing is one were to stay there for the Christmas season.

Mom and Dad weren’t able to fly back for the holidays, a new room of artifacts had been discovered on their dig and everything needed to be closely studied and catalogued. Or at least, that’s what he thought needed to be done. He wished they would tell him what they found, what was so exciting that they couldn’t fly back for just two days. Heck, he’d even take one day.

He could go home for winter break, head back to Drake Manor and hang out for two weeks before classes started after New Years. But the manor was empty and he doubted the cleaning service bothered to put up wreaths and lights while they kept the place tidy. Here, in his half of the dorm room, there were lights strung up around his four poster bed and a tiny little pine tree on his nightstand. That would have to be festive enough. And hey! He actually had the dorm to himself for once, as his roommate went back to Philadelphia to visit family.

It wasn’t such a bad Christmas, he surmised. He even got a little present from Batman when they finished patrol last night and a day off, telling him to enjoy Christmas. That had to have been big, Tim guessed, because he was pretty sure Bruce was Jewish and didn’t think he celebrated Christmas. Then he wondered if perhaps it was Dick who celebrated Christmas and that’s why Bruce got him a present, because he got Dick one too and thought might as well get both Robins something for the holiday. He wondered if Dick had driven home for the holiday, taking a weekend off from work and he wondered if they set up a big Christmas tree in the Wayne Manor. He bet they did. That sounded like something Alfred would do.

He wondered if when Bruce sent him home for the holiday, did he know he was sending Tim back to an empty dorm at the boarding school?

………………

Tim used to think Rome was beautiful. Hated how hot and muggy it got, but dreamed of vacationing here whenever the cold winter of Gotham got to him. Seriously thought of opening a safehouse in the city somewhere, just so he could make an excuse of a case in Europe and escape to Italy for a week. Let the sun and heat warm up his bones.

Now, he hated the city. Hated how it was unfamiliar and when he stumbled out of the alley, he had no freaking clue where he was. Didn’t even know which was way north, which was really stupid because that wouldn’t help him in the slightest even if he knew because Tim didn’t know where the hell he was in the city. Now he hated how hot and muggy it was and yet he still felt cold, hated how he could feel the stickiness of sweat along his hairline. His breaths came in faster and shallower, could feel his heartbeat staccatoing in his chest.

Help. He needed help. It was stupid to go out without his gear tonight. Stupid to go walking around Rome without his Red Robin gear, but he just wanted to be Tim for a night. Just wanted to explore the city a little bit, enjoy the old architect that was so different from Gotham and photograph buildings he’s never seen before.

Just wanted to celebrate having dismantled a serial killing cult and spend one last night in Rome before heading home.

Just didn’t think he’d stumble across one last surviving member of the cult sacrificing a young woman to their dark god. Didn’t think he’d have to fight for his life as a man/beast/shadow of a thing bore down on him with blades and knives. Didn’t think that when he twisted the thing’s arm beyond having broke it, it’d turn to him and laugh. Didn’t think it’d laugh in his terrified face and then a long claw would pierce under and through his ribs.

Didn’t think he’d be running through the dark alleys of Rome and desperately searching for help.

He tried his phone again, pressing the little button on the side that would send out a distress beacon. He was halfway across the world, but Batman would be able to get it, right? He’d be able to see that Tim was in trouble, and he’d come to the rescue right? Even if Bruce couldn’t get here in time, he’d call Superman or the Flash couldn’t he?

‘Superman,’ Tim realized suddenly, thinking himself very stupid. “Kon-el,” he rasped, growing suddenly wearier when he spoke,” Kon… Connor…help.” He prayed he would hear him, like Kon promised he would always hear Tim if he called out to him.

Then he remembered Kon was dead and a whine of despair escaped his throat.

…………………

Jason announced his presence with a bang and shouting, as always. He kicked the door to Bruce’s study open with all the force of a hurricane and stormed in. “I swear to God if this is another one your fucking convoluted plans to have another one of your Robins infiltrate a secret organization, I’ll rip your heart out through your-” he bellowed then fell silent once he got a look at Bruce.

He… he didn’t look good.

Bruce sat at his desk, supposedly going over the report that had been “acquired” from INTERPOL. Only… only he wasn’t reading. He wasn’t even looking at them. Bruce sat at his desk, head bowed and hands buried in his hair, gripping so tight his fingers had long gone white. His shoulders were trembling.

“It’s real, Jason,” he spoke in a ragged voice,” He’s really-” His mouth clacked shut with a click, unable to even speak it but somehow unable to even voice his grief with sobs.

Jason’s heart leapt up into his throat. “It’s not a…” he breathed in shock and disbelief,” You mean the replacement’s really-”

“He was not a replacement!” Bruce shouted at him with all the gentleness of a slap to the face. Shaking fingers slammed against the desk as he shot to his feet to scream at his second eldest. “Tim is my son just as much as you and Dick and Damian! He was not a replacement or a spare or a pretend son as I’ve heard you call him on more than one occasion! He was my son and now he’s dead and-” His face fell and Jason could see the cracks in his armor as Bruce all but fell back into his seat,” My son is dead and I didn’t even realize he was missing.”

………………….

Bruce was… Bruce was sure taking his damn time getting here, Tim thought as he staggered down the street. Or was it la via? Huh, he could’ve sworn he knew Italian, but at the moment Tim couldn’t remember any word in Italian to save his life. All he knew was there was cobbled stone beneath his feet and rough walls that scratched his palm as he made his way along.

There were no more lights in this area. Tim wondered why there were no streetlights, that had to be the only reason why it was so dark. It was late at night, he knew that, but why did it have to be so dark? Putting one foot in front of another was a monumental effort. Fingers scrambled along the wall until he felt what had to be a door. There was wood and metal, and yes, a handle.

A door. A door meant inside a building and inside meant people. Help. He had found help. Tim grasped the handle for a brief second before slamming his hand against the wood thrice. The sound echoed in the dark, but no voices answered him. It was late, it was night, maybe they didn’t hear him? He slammed his hand twice more. When no answer came, he tried the handle.

It was unlocked. Unlocked and open as he squeezed the handle and leaned his entire weight against the wood. He lurched inside, barely catching himself against the door before falling to the floor. It was dark inside but that was okay, it was late, it was night, they were probably asleep. “Help,” he called out, little more than a rasp,” Hello?”

He stepped forward and tripped over… something, and fell. There was carpet beneath his fingers as he tried to catch himself. An odd thing to notice as he tried to stand again, but that’s what he noticed. As well as how he didn’t have enough strength in his arm to push himself up. He felt so… weak. Weak and useless. Couldn’t even stand up from the floor. What would Damian think of him as he was now? What would Bruce think?

A sob escaping his throat, Tim rolled onto his side and pressed a hand against his stomach. It didn’t even hurt anymore, but there was a tiny voice in the back of his mind telling him ‘pressure, keep pressure on it’. He just had to keep pressure on it until help could get here. He just had to keep pressure on it until Bruce got here.

Tim laid on the floor and cried as he waited for someone to come.

[alsbesluit]

  It had been a little over a day since the inevitable announcement came - Tom Riddle’s dead body was found in the river - and little over a week until the new school year would begin. The town was shocked. Draco had no doubt that Liberty High would be buzzing. Personally he’d kept his mouth shut ever since Riddle disappeared, continued to do so since his body was found and would do so until his dying days. So he knew what went on by the harbour. So he knew who threw Tom Riddle in the water after he’d been beaten up. Justice had no place in Vallejo. Everyone that had lived in town for the past year should know it. Men could rape girls and get away with it. The police department wasn’t interested in solving crimes, the teachers didn’t care about the well-being of their students and law wasn’t served in court. Eventually the shock would recede, the sense of emergency would blow over and law enforcement would go back to sitting on their asses eating donuts. Until then, they just had to lay low.   He came home from a day spent by the pool of Viktor’s mother’s house, who welcomed them all with open arms as always and let Lavender and him use their kitchen to make pizzas. The extra car by the house made him pull a face. He’s almost forgotten his supposed sister would be coming home that day after going to college. His parents sat him down about two weeks ago to tell him that Astoria - adopted at a later age, never accepted by Draco - was coming home to work on her art and work part-time at Liberty High, where both Draco and his sister Luna attended. They asked him to be kind to her this time, emphasis clear, and Draco rolled his eyes and asked if that was all. Ever since a disappearance and murder mystery had been the talk of the day, but Draco hadn’t been around at home that Saturday for a reason. It wasn’t at all necesarry that his mother reminded him to go see Astoria after greeting him and asking him how his day was. His day was fine, of course, and he would go see Astoria.   Frankly, he didn’t intend to, and the earplugs that he put in his ears as he walked up the stairs implied as much. To get to his room, however, he had to pass her old room, and he should have known that was where she took residence again. He finished his message to Lavender as he paused in front of her room and paused the music. That was when he turned to look into her room and two steps to lean against the doorway. “Hi stranger,” he greeted dryly, arms folded in front of his dark blue T-shirt that he wore upon shorts, hair that almost touched his shoulders still drying and three fingernails painted red. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to welcome you back, but I have no doubt the others did one heck of a job. Were there tears?” He smirked at her. “I’m only messing with you, albeit tears would not surprise me. Luna has not shut up about your return.” That was good, since he’d rather not she think too long about Tom Riddle’s mysterious murder. “How does it feel to be back? Nostalgic? New?”

[apex-academy]

Chapter 5: Caring Is a Hazard to Your Health (#21)

The rest of the day is a blur. Some pool. Some Centipede. Some vapid conversations I barely remember as I’m having them. A cooking lesson that’s more lecture on Japanese sauces than actual cooking.

I don’t run into Aidan again. I’m not sure if I want to. Certainly I’m not going to try anything now, but... I don’t know. I don’t know.

I end up in the sauna dangerously late in the day. The only exit is to the bathhouse, which closes at nighttime... Would I be stuck in here overnight if I stayed too long? Punished? I bet I could stay awake. Wonder what happens in the restricted rooms at night. Cleanup and restocking or something. Maybe I should try staying in the kitchen. Eat some coffee beans straight up to keep from falling asleep and see how the heck Monochap sneaks in and out of there.

But for now, I’m just...

“...”

It is kind of pleasant in here. I may be bundled up a bit too much for a sauna, but it’s supposed to be hot anyway, right? As long as I swig plenty of water after this, I should be fine.

“...”

“After this” might need to be “right now,” actually. No use getting too light-headed. Or, well, I don’t mind having fewer thoughts, but I probably shouldn’t be taking health risks. I can worry about nighttime escapades later. I should... attempt to get some sleep.

After a cold shower. I don’t think I’ll be needing a warm bath after this.

...

"Um, hello! Good morning! It is now 7:00, so the off-limits areas have been reopened! I-I hope you all have a nice day…!"

I wake up again. That’s always good.

But when I make my way towards the cafeteria...

“Sounds like some kind of ruckus going on.”

I open the doors, but...

“.....”

No people, less noise. Uh.

I back up into the hallway and try next door. The gym. Sounds like maybe the hubbub is in here instead? Did I miss a summons to an early morning sports tournament?

Is someone...

“........”

No, that has too be too many voices. Right? If someone had been discovered, the jingle would have played...

“......”

It still takes me a minute to open the door.

People are still talking over each other, but I don’t see any bodies on the floor or fists flying.

Knives, maybe. But not fists.

A thud rattles the still-collapsed bleachers behind Kaichi’s shoulder. In true Kaichi fashion, he hardly flinches.

“Woooooow!”

“I’m next, right? I’m next?!”

“No way, dude!”

“That’s right! No one is going next!”

“What?! Nono I’m next!”

“Wh...”

“This is a completely unnecessary risk! Cease at once!”

“Risk? Surely you don’t mean to question my skill.”

“Seems pretty skilled t’ me.”

“.............”

I always manage to forget I should worry much less about these people dying than just being idiots.

Before anyone can notice I’ve joined them, the knife digging into the stands slowly tilts, then falls. Kaichi manages to pull his foot to one side before the blade clatters to the floor.

“Haha, whoopsie! You okay?”

“Looks like I still got—” he tilts his head down to check—”ten toes, s’. Yeah, sure.”

“That—”

“That makes it clear how dangerous this is!”

“Like, nothing happened, though?”

“That was a matter of luck!”

“Fool! You think any part of this is merely a throw of the dice? No divine weapon of mine will harm anyone unless I bid it.”

“Considering how consistently you threaten everyone, I don’t find that comforting!”

“So, anyway, it’s totally my turn, right?”

“It’s no one’s turn!!!”

I walk inside just as he’s about to blow a gasket. The door falling shut behind me is enough to get a little attention.

“I would ask what’s going on, but I think I have a good enough idea.”

“Ah, Kogamino!”

“If you understand, would you mind talking them out of it?”

“I’m afraid I’m having little luck.”

Another thud interrupts before I can say a word. Ichiriki starts laughing.

“Woooow, that one was super close! Ahahaha!”

Standing stiffly, Kaichi cranes his neck just enough to get a good glimpse of the knife now separating his face from his surfboard.

“Nice.”

“There.”

“Now the next wretch may step up.”

“I’m the next wretch!!”

It’s surprisingly hard to jump in and stop something when you can’t fathom why they started in the first place. Are we seriously that bored? Didn’t we just wake up? At least eat before you start throwing crap at each other, geez.

“Nuh-uh! I’m next!”

“How did this even start?”

“Well, like, Yuks was gonna make omelettes this morning? So we all kinda ordered ‘em or whatevs, and, like...”

“...”

“Amid the conversation as we waited, that one saw fit to issue a challenge.”

“I did?”

“And then things happened, and now we’re here!”

He finishes, as if he’s being the most helpful one here.

“I had been assisting with the cooking when I realized everyone had left, so I peeked out to see what had happened...”

“And you were met with a fun surprise, huh.”

“Yeah-huh! It’s super fun!”

“That’s great.”

“Actually, I just came over to see who got the first omelette? Because it’s finished.”

“Ah, first should have been... Riseiin, I believe?”

“Nice. ’m out, then. Later, brahs.”

“I don’t think the rest are far behind, so if you’d like your food warm, you can come back to this later.”

“I suppose that may be for the best...”

“Consider it a mercy to those of you bound to time, hmm?”

And just like that, the party dissembles to go for the door. Tsunyasha walks—like a normal human being—over to the stands to retrieve her mystical-whatever knives. Mahavir stays back, presumably to make sure she doesn’t kill me while we’re still here.

...I really hope Yuki’s almost finished. Maybe I don’t need to follow everyone over all that quickly.

Tsunyasha gets all her knives put away in quick order, but we’re still the last ones out. Mahavir, as usual, spares me from having to open the door.

As we cross into the hallway, I see Monochap opening the doors to the dorm area. Before I can wonder what he’s up to now, Aidan wheels himself out, with an uttered sound that I don’t think is actually a thanks. Upon seeing us, Monochap gives a little wave and a disturbing giggle before fleeing towards the Main Hall.

Aidan seems a little more pleased to see us.

“Good morning! I hope I haven’t missed anything?”

“Nothing worth mentioning.”

“...”

“Has Monochap been opening doors for you?”

The handicap buttons in this place haven’t been working since we woke up here. I hadn’t spared them a second thought, but now we actually have someone in a wheelchair. Guess that’s how it usually goes.

“When necessary.”

“Unfortunately, my student ID was reset to its original settings before they gave it back to me. But whoever did that also added an option to signal Mister Monochaperone for assistance.”

“It isn’t my favorite recourse, and I’m not sure why it’s necessary when it isn’t that difficult to summon him otherwise, but it can be useful.”

“Ah, to have a demon at your beck and call.”

“Quite fitting for a black-hearted sinner like yourself, hmm?”

“Don’t you start this again...!”

Aidan holds up a hand.

“Calm down, Mister Attenborough.”

“Miss Tsunyasha, I appreciate saving your comments for a more private discussion, but I’m afraid they are still highly inappropriate.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion of me, but I fail to see how repeating it does you any good. I cannot take back what I’ve done, so I would prefer to focus on what I can do at the moment, if possible.”

“Oh? Is this a sorely misguided plea for mercy, worm? You think I must gain something from this?”

“It is merely my job to ensure those of your corrupted ilk cannot walk away from their sins freely.”

He’s not doing much walking at the moment, in case you haven’t noticed.

“You call this walking away freely?!”

“Mister Attenborough.”

“.......”

Aidan turns back to Tsunyasha.

“Whether it’s sufficient for your tastes or not, I assure you I have most certainly been punished.”

“I can’t ask you to approve of my sins, as it were, but if you truly care about doing the right thing, your priority should be ensuring the safety of the other people here.”

I only see a flash before there’s a knife at Aidan’s neck.

“Then I should eliminate you now, yes?”

Aidan stares evenly back at her.

“Do you really consider me such a threat? I am incapable of physical combat, I am unarmed, and I would have severe difficulty engineering anything to kill another in this state. No one here has anything to gain from my death.” His gaze strains towards the knife. “This is nothing but a very rude gesture, and I would like you to stop now.”

“Oh? You still think I would follow a worm’s orders?”

“Why don’t you follow this?!”

Mahavir lunges at her. Aidan winces as the knife skirts along his jaw. Tsunyasha hops back an extra pace, and Mahavir tilts dangerously before catching himself on the wall. Huffing, he doesn’t seem able to push himself back up too quickly. I put myself between Tsunyasha and Aidan for good measure.

“So you’re relying on your little guard dogs, are you, whelp? You truly think they’re any match for a Holy Assassin?”

“I’m not a guard dog, you just need to stop?”

“I am not trying to rely on any physical enforcement here—” a pointed look at Mahavir—“nor am I giving you orders. I am merely pointing out that there is much more to being ‘righteous’ than harassing those you deem to be sinners.”

“So you question my judgment, worm?”

Your judgment is nothing if not questionable.

“More like questioning your ‘righteousness,’ or ‘holiness,’ or whatever else you’d like to call it!”

He finally shifts his weight back onto his feet.

“Regardless of who did and didn’t die, at least Doppler has done everything he can to help us!”

“What have you EVER done for anyone else here?!”

“Stir up trouble, mostly.”

“Hmph. Only just now I was providing you ungrateful whelps with entertainment, was I not?”

“And no one died, if I must remind you of that.”

“As a fluke! You easily could have injured Riseiin! It was only a matter of luck that he didn’t have any toes sliced clean off! And I shouldn’t need to tell you even foot injuries have the potential to be lethal!”

“...What did I miss here?”

“We can worry about that later.”

“The potential, certainly.”

“But a far less sure shot than firing a gun into someone’s chest, hmm?”

“But that wasn’t for amusement!”

“And yet it still happened.”

“I truly don’t understand how you could possibly favor that sinner’s actions, but I suppose your wicked ways are just that far beneath me.”

“It’s because you don’t understand that you’re the only threat here!”

“Oh, I’m quite a threat to those who would dare try taint my holy name. Would you like a demonstration, whelp?”

“No one would like any demonstrations!!”

“Of course you wouldn’t.”

“We get your freaking point, okay? You could stab a serious burn victim and a wheelchair-bound child to death with ease if you really wanted to. Congratulations.”

“You want to prove you’re such a great assassin, how about you wait until practically anyone here is in decent physical condition? You’ve held out this long. I’m sure you can handle a little longer. Or is patience suddenly not one of your holy virtues?”

“Hmph.”

“Don’t think for a moment you can understand the essence of a Holy Assassin, fool.”

“Oh, believe me, I don’t.”

She spins the knife once around the gloved part of her finger and sheaths it.

“Very well. I tire of these pitiful negotiations of yours.”

“I’ve a reward waiting for me, anyway.” 

She takes a few steps towards the cafeteria.

“Use this opportunity to think about what awaits you.”

Not an omelette on my end, I’m guessing.

“Any more of this and I assure you, whatever awaits you won’t be a reward.”

“Mahavir. That’s enough.”

“........”

Mahavir stares Tsunyasha down as she walks away. Even when the doors close behind her, he doesn’t turn away.

“......”

I hear a rattle and open my eyes again. Aidan’s started to wheel himself forward.

“Miss Kogamino. Thank you for stepping in.”

“No problem.”

“...”

“I’m halfway surprised you’re not upset about being called a child.”

“Well I don’t appreciate it, but I can understand it was for emphasis.”

“Right.”

He scoots himself closer to Mahavir.

“....................”

“Mister Attenborough?”

“.........”

“...I’m sorry. But she...”

“She can’t just...!”

“I know. She has no right to be making these sorts of threats, but pushing back like that will. Not. Help with her.”

“...........”

“So take a deep breath and come on. We have a meeting to get to.”

“........”

Aidan moves as close to the doors as he can, but Mahavir doesn’t follow yet. Guess it’s not that easy to let it go.

But everyone else is already in the cafeteria, right? No harm leaving him alone to cool down a bit.

I don’t want to think about what could happen if he ran into Tsunyasha again too soon.

[BACK] [NEXT]

[ambistep]

Play Date, part 1

Mina’s feeling some years. Training with Herald hits a snag - but she has a solution: a play date with her other student. Definitely not a calculated move working toward some larger objective.

Planned for three parts. Retribution spoilers.

“Again.”

His hip is out too far. There’s that hitch in his movement - you don’t even need telepathy to identify the exact moment he hesitates about hitting you, it’s all over his form. He follows through on the punch at least - and you lean back out of the way. And like you made him practice - right cross, left hook, short punch, jab, jab, and he should move his foot and- 

“Wrong.” You sweep his ankle and to his credit, he stops himself before he trips up, floating - but unguarded. To make your point, you jab him twice in his stomach - the sensation still feels weird, hitting him when he’s hovering, that lack of resistance. A slap on the side of the head is a bit of reach for you, but worth it for punctuation.

He grimaces and touches back down, backing off, “Ow.” You roll your eyes, both of you know that didn’t hurt. “I thought it was pretty good there. Until I tried to do that… southpaw thing.”

“‘Good,’ hm? You don’t commit to your approach until way late.” You pace away, retrieving a water bottle, trying to ignore the nagging pain in your back that’s starting to feel like something more. 

“I mean, yeah, but I think the Herald Style thing is working out, I just… it’s a lot to remember.”

“It’s not about remembering it, it’s about drilling until you don’t have to remember - and we’re not calling it that.” Coming up with approaches that suited his special case - all his strength came from his momentum and upper body and he could hardly stay in place - maybe because of the way his power had taught him how to move. It had taken some thinking, but it was the only way to teach him anything. And you weren’t going to call it Herald Style. 

Danny watches you, a look of confusion crossing his face, “What’s the matter?” What? Had he actually noticed you favoring your back? More perceptive than you gave him credit for. Irritating. Sloppy of you.

“Some of us aren’t in our twenties anymore, alright?” He starts to say something, that comforting look already painted all over his face, and you cut him off, “You worry about yourself. This isn’t supposed to be fun, alright?” You sigh, “It’s just a twinge in a muscle. Forget it.” 

He smiles in a way that - God, that better not be pity. “We can stop for today - I’ll hit the bags and you can yell at me.” 

“I don’t yell.” Okay, that was a bad lie, “I don’t yell that much. Only when I need to. And I need to, alright?” You settle down on the bench - and the fact that it does make that little pain your back vanish is all that much worse. 

Heck. Unbidden, thoughts about your… condition come to mind. What if there’s like, Cellular degradation, genetic breakdown, stuff. You’re making up words to worry about, that stuff isn’t real. But it could be…

There’s an uncomfortably bright ray of sunshine there to stir you out of your bad thoughts, “Mina?”

Clearing your head, you sigh a little, put on a show of it for him. You put a little bit of Steel in your voice, “Do you know who the Tenth Street Tiger is?”

Herald can recognize that tone, knows you’re doing your grumpy teacher bit. He moves for his water, wiping down a bit with a towel, “I… I don’t know, I think I heard Ortega talking ab-”

“The Tenth Street Tiger is a tong enforcer, a gangster, you know what she does?”

“I don’t know. Gangster things.” He shrugs.

“That’s right. Gangster things, like extortion, protection rackets, selling drugs. Out of a club on Alexandria and 10th, she’s been doing it for ten years. She’s too small time for the Ranger, because she’s not putting on a mask and robbing armored cars, blowing up galas.” 

“Come on,” Danny starts to protest. Good - think about that, Danny. Get angry about something. “That’s not fa-” You chew your lip, searching for the buttons to press, cutting him off before he says anything else.

“If Herald walked into her club, right now, and caught her in the middle of a bunch of her ‘gangster things’, you know what would happen? She’d take you out, easy, beat you down - use her power.”

“A gangster, Mina?” Danny is getting a bit pouty, his towel wrapped around his hands as he suffers your lecture. “You really think I couldn’t take her? What’s her power?”

“No, you couldn’t - they have low ceilings in there.” You snort a little, imagining him stuck on the rafters, “Her power is that she trains, every single day, like her life depends on it, so that when some clown like Figure Eight or the Handyman decides they’re going to be the one to cage the Tiger, she’s ready. That’s how you be a gangster in Los Diablos for ten years - you get too big for the little guys, and stay too small for the Guardians or the Rangers.” Or you make like Hollow Ground, but that’s another story.

Danny narrows his eyes, taking a long drink from his water bottle. “You made all that up, didn’t you?”

Fine. It’s so hard to stay irritable at him - maybe it would be easier if you dug down deeper for that real anger, that Clarity anger - but he isn’t ready for that. It isn’t for him. You match his look, raising an eyebrow, “I don’t know, did I?” 

“I’m asking Ortega.” He laughs, maybe just happy you’re not pretending to be mad at him anymore, “We can skip on Friday.”

“No, no - listen, I have an idea. If you’re up for it.” His eyebrows tilt up, that puppy curiosity on his face. Yeah, he’d be good for her to practice with. “I’ve been helping out someone else too, training like this.”

“You were helping someone else train?” His smile is instant, that big grin. Of course that thrilled him. Another confirmation of his hopes - that you’re still out there helping others, that you’re still a hero even if you’re not a Hero. He has no idea.

“Don’t make a big deal out of it, alright? It’s not a hero thing. Not exactly.” No, it really isn’t. “She’s a student at UCLD, I think it’d be good for you both to work with someone that isn’t me.” Clarity had timetables that couldn’t be moved if you hurt your back playing with the kids, after all.

There’s a rare shadow of reluctance on his face - what is that? Worried about his privacy? It passes, and he shrugs, “Sure - if she’s your friend, I’m sure it’s fine.”

“She’ll be discrete. About the Hero thing,” you promise. He nods as he wipes down, that easy smile, unconcerned. The trust stings, just a little. It’s hard, sometimes, to think about what you’re doing with Danny. He’s so sincere, hopeful, that it almost scrambles your motivation. 

Are you pretending to be friendly with him, to help him, so that you can use him, twist him around and keep Clarity happy? Or are you pretending to use and manipulate him as an excuse to hang around in his sunlight, to allow yourself a friend and keep Mina happy? For awhile, you thought they were both just masks you put on, neither real. But it’s getting more and more complicated - or you’re making it complicated.

In the parking lot, you reach into your bag, pull out Clarity’s phone - not Mina’s - they look the same but there’s weight to one the other doesn’t have. You’re pretty sure, anyway.

“Hey, Clar.” The voice on the other line is… crunching on something crispy.

“Shouldn’t answer the phone like that. I could’ve been someone else.” You pinch your nose, staving off a headache as you head down the sidewalk. “Also, please. Nehal. Don’t eat so close to the phone. It’s… really loud.”

There’s a pause. “Sorry.” The crunching stops. “What’s up, boss?”

“Need you on Friday - probably most of the afternoon.”

There’s some shifting and shuffling on the other end of the line, and Nehal’s voice gets closer to the phone, “Yeah? Just me? Is this a job?” Then more cautiously, “Or more training?”

“Job and training. Dress cute.” Better to clarify, “Not too cute.” Just moving pieces, people around. It’s so easy, lately. You’re the one picking missions now. You wonder if maybe that’d make Them proud, in some way.

“Huh. Who’s my date?” She knows the game - you told her you’d show her how to play it. Teach her the things they taught you. But not the same way they taught you. 

“That’s kind of a long story. You’ll know him.”

“Ooo. Someone famous.” A laugh on the line, “I’m in.”

[cookinguptales]

Betsy DeVos (or Betsy DeVil, as some of us know her) is currently working to cut funding to the Special Olympics, which has people understandably up in arms. Heck, I’m pretty angry about it myself. But I feel like that news is burying what I feel are even more dastardly cuts she made at the same time.

DeVos is continuing her years-long attack on the educational rights of disabled children by cutting special education grants, including funding for schools specializing in disabled education. The long-lasting effects are going to be stunningly awful. DeVos has in the past already done quite a bit to erode the rights of disabled students, including revoking guidance designed to inform budgets and policy, attempting to automatically dismiss civil rights complaints, and straight-up saying she wouldn’t enforce laws designed to protect disabled students’ rights. She literally said that under oath.

DeVos, in her role as US Secretary of Education, has been making a terrifying and effective effort to prevent the education of disabled kids. Her specific defunding of Gallaudet University speaks volumes -- it’s not just a historically Deaf school, it’s one that’s known for having a student body that demands to be represented by Deaf faculty. It’s a school that’s a hotbed of disabled activism and anger. By stripping us of education, she’ll be stripping us of power. And she knows it.

Personally speaking, I wouldn’t have gotten through school at all if not for the ADA and my 504 plan. The horror stories I could tell you, my god. And that was with the law on my side! I cannot imagine how much worse things are going to be for future students if DeVos gets her way and starts rescinding what scant protections we have.

Spread the word, organize, support activists, demand accountability. Do whatever you can to support organizations that educate kids with special needs because federal funding/protections aren’t going to be much help. If you really want to be an ally, now is when we need your help.

And special advice to disabled students reading this? I tried to sue my university for their blatant discrimination and was told that the statute of limitations is only six months. Going forward, you’re going to have to fight for your rights and do it on a tight schedule. Don’t let them take from you what’s yours. It’s an uphill battle, but a worthy one. You’re worth it, your education is worth it. Your brain and your voice are marvelous things, no matter how they’re put together. Your ideas matter. Fight for them.

(And to all those people who are aching at the defunding of the Special Olympics? You’re goddamn worth it, too.)

[satan-chillin]

Parent-Teacher Meeting (PTM)

Summary: You’re the homeroom teacher of nine students, four of which happened to share the same family name of Winchester. You dubbed them as the Winchester Four, two pairs of siblings and paternal cousins. You were pretty interested to find out the kind of parents they have.  

Pairings: Established Destiel & SamWena/SamWitch

Characters: Reader (female), Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Castiel, Rowena MacLeod (mentioned)

Note: Non-pairing reader, children drawings inside ;) 

Also available in Ao3

You straightened your skirt for what seemed like the tenth time within five minutes. 

 Not that you could be blamed for your nerves. It was the PTM, of course, and your first since becoming a kindergarten teacher. With the children, you were exactly in your element with their energeticness and rambunctiousness. The parents, however, were the uncharted territories. 

 Your first parent for the day was a nice young woman who happened to be a single parent of two boys, Connor and Marcus. You thanked her for her time and gave your appreciation after knowing she was also juggling three part-time jobs. Her kids were often the ones to be picked up a little past the dismissal, and after finding out her situation, you offered to keep watch for them until she could pick them up. She was delighted and was grateful while you didn’t mind the suggestion one bit since you tend to extend your stay after classes. Besides, it was also a chance for you to focus on improving her sons’ reading comprehension since it was your main concern.  

 You met both the parents of Alita, the quiet girl you have in class. You often found her sitting and coloring books in one corner and would encourage her to join the others during playtime. You would smile whenever she decided to join the rest on occasion and also understood that she was someone who frequently wanted time for herself. As a compromise, you often have her sit beside you while she was doing her coloring and the others playing. Her parents were alright, you supposed. A little snobbish, maybe, and clearly wanted Alita to be a more physically active child, but you did say you were doing your best and assured them Alita was outstanding the way she was.

 Your next parents were the lovely father and mother of the twin girls Lara and Mara. They were the oldest in your class and nigh inseparable which was a given, you thought. With their age, they were the maturest thinkers of the bunch and would help out with keeping the others in line. They were treated as the eldest sisters of most of the kids, and they both get along well with everyone. You told their parents that their daughters showed promising leadership qualities at their young age and pointed out their strongest points and the ones that needed improvements: Lara still struggled with the arithmetic while Mara was having problems with symbolic concepts. Both, however, were impressive with their grasp of the English language for their age. 

 You only have nine students in your class and after counting, you realized you already met the parents of five of them so far. The parents of the other four were yet to arrive and when you reviewed your list, you confirmed the students left. 

 The Winchester Four. 

 It was unexpected, but you recognized the eagerness in wanting to meet their parents. They were two pairs of siblings and both were paternal cousins, and, frankly, the oddest of the bunch. 

 Now, it wasn’t that they were weird, per se, though they did display peculiar qualities that could have been picked up from home. Nothing alarming, mind, and if anything, it made you curious as to what kind of people were raising the children—you were already leaning on the hipster-ish type of parents and given that it was already the 21st century, you weren’t certain if that should be impressive. 

 You have different backstories in your head like maybe they were kids of uber smart parents because heck, they have rudimentary knowledge in Latin, for god’s sake, while you struggled hard with that dead language during your college years; or maybe they were the nomad kind who would uproot the whole family to move on to the next location, which could explain the expansive knowledge on the geography the kids seemed to naturally have; or maybe they were absentee parents who just let their kids do their thing, making them—

 You blinked behind the window, your musing interrupted when you spotted a black ‘67 Impala in front of the school. You might have whistled there under your breath at what appeared to be a well-kept vehicle, though what made your eyebrow rise was the three men who exited it. 

 Were they… Were they law enforcement?

 You followed the three men with your eyes, thinking they were to walk to the building next to the school when they entered the school grounds instead. You quickly arranged your table and repositioned the chairs by the desk, and by the time you were done, there was a knock on the classroom door. 

 Oh, god, they were taller up close. 

 “Hi, how can I help you, officers?” you asked, trying not to sound nervous which you (and you thought most people as well) usually were around authorities. 

 The blond man smiled charmingly. “Sorry about the confusion, ma’am. We’re not here for work, we’re actually here for the PTM.” 

 “Oh. Oh! The PTM. Right,” you muttered, fumbling. “So, uh, for which students?” 

 “Winchesters,” the three of them simultaneously said. 

 All of them together. Wow. “Ookay. Have a seat here, sirs.” 

 There were only two chairs in front, and when you moved in to push another one, the man with the trenchcoat offered to do it instead and sat on it. 

 He was also the first one to ask, “Are Jimmy and John doing alright in school?”

 Straight to the point, this guy, you thought wryly as you adjusted your glasses. “Uh, yeah. Yeah. They’re great, actually. So you’re the parent of James and John then, Mr… Sorry, I think there will be a confusion here if I call you three Mr. Winchesters.”

 “Call me Cas,” said the man in the trenchcoat. 

 “Dean here,” said the blond one with a grin. “Cas and I are for the BJ brothers.”

 “I’m Sam,” said the tallest of the three as if the other two weren’t towering enough on their own. “I’m here for my kids Marybeth and Anthony.”

 “Well, I’m Y/N, their homeroom teacher,” you formally said once you wrapped your mind that, yes, these were the parents of the Winchester Four, and, yep, they were from law enforcement or something along that line of job. “The four kids are fast learners, by the way, and they’re friendly with the other children so we don’t really have an issue there, though there are some concerns that I personally want to bring up to you.”

 You reached for a drawer and pulled out a bunch of papers with drawings during the art time. You placed them face down on the desk and had the sudden urge to laugh at their seemingly curious and nervous reaction at the papers. 

 “Oh, no, don’t tell me they started drawing something disturbing. Like the serial killers did when they were young,” Dean said worriedly, frowning and the grin gone from his face. 

 “Did they draw a dead body, Ms. Y/N?” Cas asked grimly. 

 You sighed. “Nobody drew a dead body, sirs.” You pushed the drawings away for a moment. “Actually, before that, I have to ask something first. Jimmy told me once that he and John live in a cave with their older brother and their two dads. I don’t want to make assumptions here, Mr. Dean and Cas, but is it a metaphor for your living arrangements?”

 Dean looked rather affronted to have their home be called a cave. He opened his mouth to make a protest though Cas had beaten him to it. 

 “It is a cave in a child’s perspective,” Cas said. “It is not a cave. It is a bunker,” he said, addressing you. 

 “A large bunker with soft beds and a wide kitchen. If it’s going to be a cave, it better be the friggin’ Batcave!”

 You have no idea why Dean was defensive about his bunker, but you attributed it to the typical territorialism of men, something which you would probably never understand with your flaming lesbian flag. 

 “I’m sorry about him,” Sam interrupted with a sigh. “But, yeah, I think what my nephews called the cave is the bunker where they live in. It’s been with the family for generations and we inherited it from our grandfather. My wife and I moved out of the place so it’s just my brother there, Cas, and Jack during his sem breaks.”

 “I see,” you replied, unsure what to say to that further. You pushed the glasses up your nose once more. You cleared your throat. “I’m not asking to pry on where you decide to raise them. I guess I just want to resolve the mystery of this cave or something,” you admitted, assuring them with a slight smile. “There is also another question that I want to raise out of curiosity: where did they learn Latin?”

 “I think they might have got it from Cas and, often, from my wife.” Sam appeared to be positively glowing at the question.

 You knew it. Smart parents. “Oh. Cool. I mean, I guess it’s nice to encourage them at a young age. Might be handy in the future.” There were other non-dead languages the kids could learn, but to each their own, you supposed. 

 You pulled the eight drawings across the table. “As you know, we spend most of our day in art class. It’s to encourage kids to bring out their creativity and I gotta say, Bobby John and Benny James are… creative. So are Marybeth and Anthony,” you began positively. 

 There were plenty of drawings from the kids. First month in, your students already filled up the shelves. To remedy the lack of storage, you either post some of them or send them with the student once graded so they could showcase them at home. They were usually the drawings of sceneries, home life, their favorite holidays, and of family. Some showed promise in the pen and paper artistry, and the drawings helped you in figuring out their present state at home. 

 The drawings from the Winchester Four, barring the typical imagination exclusive of children, as usual, left you baffled. 

 You laid out the first paper from Marybeth Winchester. 

“I believe this is Mrs. Winchester, yes?” you asked, eyeing Sam. “What is she doing exactly?” 

 “Cooking,” Sam said simply as if that explained it. 

 Cas leaned close to study the drawing. “I think that is Rowena levitating the pans.” You stared at him. “She said she finds it tedious to cook and make the table without magic.”

 “Magic tricks!” Sam suddenly exclaimed. “Yeah, she often, uh, shows the kids what she learns from Youtube. I helped her set up this one with invisible strings. The kids like it.” 

 Dean rolled his eyes faintly at that as if saying ‘Really?’.

 “Right,” you deadpanned when you thought that was the best you could get. You believed that if you mentioned that Anthony and Marybeth told you that their Mom was a former queen—you thought there might be an instance before that they said she was a queen of Hell before she had them—you would get a completely unbelievable answer. “Magic. Cool.”

 The next drawing was from Marybeth’s brother, Anthony, and you have to admit, this one made you double-take. “This is from Anthony, and—is that a gun?” 

You pretended not to notice Sam paling a bit. Dean looked like he was stifling a laugh behind a cough. For some reason, he found it pretty funny. 

 You heard Sam sigh defeatedly. “Okay, that one’s my fault,” he said regretfully that you almost felt bad that you were interrogating him, but, hey, your student’s welfare first and foremost. If it has to do with Anthony witnessing his Dad at fieldwork, then it was something to be discussed. “I let him spend a night watching me play.”

 “Sorry?”

 “There’s this shooting game on PS4. I modeled my character after me—on-the-job me, I mean, with uniform and all. I kinda got addicted to it briefly and… you know.” 

 “And I thought I’m the irresponsible one,” Dean commented unhelpfully.

 “So it’s not Anthony watching you at work? I mean, you guys work at the side of the law, right? I understand your job isn't easy, but you know how it can also impact the children,” you said, expressing your concern. 

 For sure, they knew how it would be before they entered the family life, and they seemed to have taken your reminder quite well judging by the solemn nods you received in return. 

 To lighten the mood a bit, you showed Sam a joint drawing by Marybeth and Anthony. This one you intended for him to take home. It seemed that something he would like pinned up on the refrigerator. 

“Anthony and Marybeth shared in the class that their Papa is strong enough to lift them both at the same time,” you told Sam. “Marybeth insisted that they include their Mom since she said that Mrs. Winchester was actually behind the camera for this picture. Anthony eventually won the argument when he pointed out that they wouldn’t be any space for the message at the bottom,” you added fondly. “They said that they would just make their Mom a different drawing.”

 Sam seemed to have melted at the image, reverently staring at the drawing when you handed it to him. Dean and Cas simply smiled at Sam’s tender expression.  

 “Actually, there’s also a drawing here made by the four of them together,” you said, searching through the papers. “Bobby John and Benny James told me it’s their older brother Jack, which Anthony and Marybeth claimed their favorite cousin.”

 Dean huffed out a laugh. “Very minimal choices there.” 

You blinked. You remembered this one when you graded it. “Mr. Jack has… quite the set of eyes when angry,” you commented. 

 You just hoped that Jack wasn’t actually high with those red, blood-shot eyes. 

 “They captured Jack’s impressive set of eyes here,” Cas said with a small smile. “Jack got his expressive eyes from Kelly, his mother.”

 You didn’t mean to, but that Harry Potter meme about Snape telling Harry he had his mother’s eyes when the movie hardly bothered with the contact lenses entered your mind, unbidden. You suppressed a grin that nobody noticed. 

 “Jack’s a good kid,” Sam said. “He doesn’t get angry with the kids no matter how stubborn they are. He spoils them whenever he can.” He pointed at the ‘Angry Jack’. “That’s actually Jack being protective of them.”

 Well, nice to know the kids were looking up to a young adult as a good role model. 

 “You can keep it. Mr. Jack might want to take it as a gift,” you told them. Cas folded the paper and kept it. 

 Only four more drawings were left, and for the next one, you picked the one that made you curious about the way it was drawn. 

 “This was from Bobby John,” you told them, showing the drawing the boy told you what happened on his last birthday. 

“Bobby John told me this was you,” you said to Cas. “Um, what happened here? If you don’t mind me asking.”

 Cas’s eyes softened imperceptibly at the memory. “This was when we visited Japan to banish an old curse and put the vengeful spirit at peace.”

 You blinked once… twice… thrice. 

 ... Did you hear that right? 

 “He’s talking about that Japanese horror movie that we watched in Tokyo,” Dean explained hastily, much to Sam’s amusement and Cas’s confusion. “It’s uh—It’s about that cursed well where some girl was dumped in and she became a ghost wanting revenge.” 

 “Oh,” you said dumbly. “And she could walk through the walls?”

 “It’s a television,” Cas answered. For a moment, Dean looked nervous when he spoke. “Her death was caught on tape. The tape was a cursed object that anyone who watched it would die after the seventh day.” 

 “Wow.” You were a horror movie nut yourself, more so of Asian horror films. You haven’t heard of this movie until now. “Was this released last year?”

 “Last year,” Sam confirmed. “It was an entry for the annual Japanese Horror Festival so it was exclusively shown that day.” 

 “That’s too bad. I would have watched it,” you muttered. You hoped they would release it on DVD with enough funding. “Okay. So if this longhaired girl here was the ghost in that movie, what was Mr. Cas doing here then?”

 “Vanquishing the vengeful ghost,” Cas said grimly. Dean nudged him subtly. “Bobby John and Benny James were scared after watching the film, which was a mistake in our part. I had to assure them that Sadako wouldn’t get them, not when I’m alive.”

 Your impression of Cas so far was that he was a man who took things too seriously and literally. You guessed they were just part of his character as the loving Papa. You found it adorable. 

 “Ah, kids,” you chuckled affectionately, moving on to the next drawing from Benny James. 

“I think I get it now why Benny James called you an angel in this one,” you said. “Complete with a set of wings and all.” 

 “That’s a pretty accurate image of my angel wings,” Cas said cryptically, clearly liking the drawing. 

 Dean squinted. “Is that me being carried by Cas?” 

 “Your son said so, yes.” 

 “I mean, he ain’t wrong,” Dean allowed. “Cas is our ride often,” he murmured. 

 You didn’t catch it, but his brother Sam did, prompting a “Yeah, I bet he’s always your ride” under his breath. 

 Dean kicked him at the back of his leg and claimed that Sam’s wife was infecting his innocence bit by bit.  

 You cleared your throat when you thought a childish brawl would break out between them. Cas merely glanced at you apologetically at their behavior. “They’re not always like that,” Cas told you. 

 You waved off the apology with a wry smile. You suddenly missed your younger brother back at your home. 

 “Oh, yeah.” You picked out the other drawing by Bobby John. “There’s another from Bobby John. I think this might be about a movie too.” You tilted your head. “It’s… interesting,” you said, for the lack of a better word. 

You heard Sam’s snort before catching the way Dean’s face fell. 

 “I think this is Rowena burning Dean that one time he called her fa—”

 “Okay, don’t listen to Cas,” Dean interrupted, covering Cas’s mouth with his palm. “That’s—That’s from a show. Okay, so that’s me and Rowena. I was watching the show with the kids, I irritated her for whatever reason, and she threatened to burn me the same way that guy in the show was burned,” he explained. He gave an uncertain chuckle at your reaction. “You know, typical in-laws stuff.”

 Yeesh. You were sure darn lucky you didn’t have any in-laws. Not yet, anyway. 

 “Pretty sure you were watching Tom and Jerry that time, Dean,” Sam cut in. 

 “And Tom got burned there,” Dean protested. “He was still alive, of course. Unlike me if Rowena went through with her threat,” he retorted, petulantly crossing his arms. At Sam’s bitch face, Dean sighed. “Look, man, I’m not demonizing Rowena. Just saying she has quite a temper. For me. Never the kids. I’m saying you could have done worse, Sam, and either way, I’d take her as my sister-in-law anytime.” 

 Sam looked like he wasn’t expecting the honest statement. He was warned by his brother not to tell her, and while Sam didn’t look like he was going to keep it a secret from his wife with that knowing grin, he nodded nonetheless. 

 There was a single drawing left, and when you saw what it was, you knew that like his brother, Dean would love the one intended for him. 

“Bobby John and Benny James both drew it,” you said, smiling at how Dean went silent in awe. “They told me that their Number One Papa is Cas and you're the Number One Dad.” 

 “Can I keep this?” 

 After the previous depictions of Dean being carried on air and being burned, you thought he deserved the drawing. “Feel free to.”

 Dean was beaming with pride. “Cas, we should frame this.”

 Sam shook his head amusedly. You weren’t fooled; you knew he would also do the same with his. 

***

The rest of the meeting was quick. The kids’ grades were impressive for their age, and it helped that they have good foundations from home as well. The three of them—yes, even Dean— commended Mrs. Winchester’s patience reserved for teaching them how to read and write and getting them to be interested in books the same way Sam also was.    

 “Hopefully, she’ll come with us next PTM,” Sam said. “I’m sure she’d like to know you.” 

 Mrs. Winchester seemed like a force to reckon with, but, frankly, you were also excited to meet her in person. 

 “Thank you, Ms. Y/N,” Cas said. You shook his hand. “You’ve given us helpful insights on how they’re doing at school. You’re a good teacher to them.”  

 “Yep. Nice to know they’ll be fine in school.” Dean mock-saluted you. “Until next PTM, ma’am.” 

 You weren’t expecting your first PTM to go smoothly as this, and you certainly didn’t expect that the parents that initially made you anxious (and interested) the most would be the most entertaining. 

 “Until next time then,” you said with a smile. 

 You gave a slight wave after you saw them out of the classroom when they stopped on their way and seemingly remembered something.  

 “You know what, before we go, we might as well give you this.” Dean reached for his jacket pocket and handed you a business card. 

It didn’t look like a precinct calling card, and at your apparent confusion, it was Sam who answered you. 

 “It’s our other job,” he said. “A family business.”

 “Hit us up, ma’am, if ever you need help.” 

 “With what exactly?” you asked. 

 “If you noticed anything strange,” Cas said. 

 “Like cold spots,” Sam added

 “Or weird smells,” Dean said. “Anything that you noticed… unnatural.” 

 “Oh.” Was that the position ‘Hunter’ was for? And what did ‘MoL’ mean? “Thanks?” 

 You remained holding the card even as they drove off in their Impala. Curiously, you pulled out your phone and searched the net for the names Sam and Dean Winchester. 

 Interestingly, the first search result that showed up in Google was a decade-old website named Ghostfacers. Once introduced to the content of the site, however, your reaction was a simple: 

 “Holy shit.”

[mst3kproject]

Night Fright (1967)

 I found this movie by accident while I was looking for Night of the Bloody Apes.  The goofy cover art got my attention, so I pulled the box out for a better look and there at the bottom was the name of the star: John Agar!  There’s also Bill Thurman from Attack of the The Eye Creatures, a movie I will be referencing a lot in this review. Furthermore, Night Fright was directed by James A. Sullivan, who according to IMDB edited Manos: the Hands of Fate (yeah, apparently Manos was edited… who knew?).  Clearly the Bloody Apes were going to have to wait for another time.

That woman on the cover?  Not in the movie.  I’m not sure she’s in the same decade as this movie.

We open on a couple making out in a car, and then watch as they get killed by a POV shot while a radio news announcer tells us that a mysterious object recently fell from space.  With that union-mandated scene out of the way, Sheriff Clint Crawford gets to work investigating the rash of mysterious murders that have beset Hollis County in Texas.  Weird three-toed tracks make it look like the Paulasaurus from Track of the Moon Beast might be to blame… and that’s actually almost it.  The object that landed in the nearby woods is a NASA rocket, and six months in space has mutated every living thing on board into hideous monsters!

I think ‘James A. Sullivan’ may be a pseudonym for Larry Buchanan, because this movie feels an awful lot like Attack of the The Eye Creatures.  I mean, there’s Bill Thurman, and both John Agar and Carol Gilley were in another Buchanan film, Zontar, the Thing from Venus (a remake of It Conquered the World).  The dingy and washed-out film stock makes the day scenes look exactly like Buchanan’s night scenes, while the actual night scenes are tinged blue, so dark it’s almost impossible to tell what’s going on, and still obviously shot in the daytime!  We see several full-body shots of the monster that are just black, with no features visible.  I’d be tempted to say this was an attempt to create suspense if we ever did get a good look at the thing, but we didn’t, so I guess the lighting was just that bad.

What little we do see of the monster is gloriously cheap.  It’s half-Paulasaurus, half-Bigfoot, a shambling fun-fur joke that moves very slowly because the poor actor in the costume can’t see where he’s going.  I think the reason shit-cheap movie monsters attack teenagers making out in convertibles is mostly because they’re not fast enough to catch anybody else.

A number of online summaries claim that the creature is a mutated alligator, but I’m going to disagree on several grounds. First, although we don’t see the monster very well we can tell it’s a primate… and it’s got fur, for crying out loud.  Second, the same summaries also say that the radiation from the rocket mutated an alligator that was already living in the swamp, which is not at all what the movie says happened.  And third, who sends an alligator into space?  A dog, sure.  A monkey, of course!  An alligator?  What poor bastard had to stuff it into the capsule?

Badness continues.  The characters are blandly-dressed and big-haired.  John Agar looks like he’s about fifty in this movie (he was, in fact, forty-six) while his love interest is implied to be in her twenties (I could’t find out how old Carol Gilley was).  The dialogue is breathtakingly bad – the way to kill the monster comes up in one of those ‘wait, say that again, no, the other part’ conversations.  The character of college student Chris is established as a philosophical type by having him say something like, “I keep thinking about the things we don’t know about, like the earth and the sky and the wind and even this leaf.”  What?  The movie’s scientist, Dr. Clayton, always has a pipe in his mouth and seems to be an expert on everything from rocketry to biology.  And god, I hate having to say this, but John Agar is actually the best actor in the movie.

The music is very strange.  ‘Suspenseful’ scenes are set to what sounds like a very, very sleepy woodpecker who occasionally wakes up and does some proper hammering before drifting off again. There’s a very annoying piece that consists of the same four notes on a flute, over and over – when we’re meant to feel more urgency, it’s reduced to three.  The ‘hip song’ the beach kids dance is a repetitive instrumental, which to judge by what the radio announcer says, is apparently the hottest thing around here.

And again like Attack of the The Eye Creatures, very little actually happens.  For much of its length, Night Fright just kind of lies there, trying to convince us there’s suspense and action when there isn’t any. Everything goes on way too long: there’s an early scene with a couple of young lovers who do far too much dull frolicking before finally finding a corpse, interminable scenes of men in cowboy hats searching the woods, a Manly Beach Dance that would show us lots of wiggling asses if it were only bright enough to see them, and many more.  There’s some kind of subplot among the sorority girls, having to do with who used to date who and who has a crush on who else, but this ultimately doesn’t do much in the plot and I’m not sure why they made such a point of it.

There is one kind of fun thing in the movie, though, and that’s how they defeat the monster.  Sheriff Crawford likens it to duck hunting – they set up a mannequin in the middle of the woods and all sit around watching it, with guns.  The monster doesn’t fall for it, though, perhaps because the thing doesn’t smell like a human.  Instead, it chases after Chris and his girlfriend Judy, who run towards the mannequin, and then it blows up when the creature touches it.  I was definitely not expecting that, and it made me smile, so I guess I can award a couple of points for that.

Really, though, there’s very little entertainment or amusement of any sort to be derived from Night Fright.  There’s just nothing interesting in it, and it completely denies us the two things we want most out of it.  The first of these is a decent look at the monster.  We can see just enough of it to tell that it’s probably hilarious rather than horrifying, but the details that would make the difference remain frustratingly just out of reach.  If you make a monster movie and the monster is not somehow memorable, then you’re screwed.

The second thing we want to see is the massacre of the teens at the lake, which seems to build up but then, as in Nightbeast, somebody tells them to leave and they actually do.  The only ones who hang around to get munched are annoying wannabe-tough-guy Rex and his whiny girlfriend Darlene, but Rex has already had his comeuppance when sensitive nerd Chris beats him up, so… why bother?  At the end of the film, the credits roll leaving us feeling fundamentally unsatisfied.  Why the heck did we watch that movie?  Why did anybody bother to make this movie?

As usual, I’ve managed to tease an answer out of the mess, and I think it may actually be an intentional one.  This movie is about government secrecy doing far more harm than good.

At the beginning, the rocket come to earth and the Area 51 types, with Dr. Clayton in tow, immediately show up to claim it (the movie can’t afford to show us this, of course, or the army of State Troopers brought in to help hunt the creature).  Nobody is allowed in, even local law enforcement, and so it’s only the coincidence that Clayton and Sheriff Crawford are old friends that allows anyone to make the connection between the downed rocket and the bodies.  Later, the Sheriff brings a plaster cast of the creature’s footprint for Clayton to look at, and Clayton recognizes it at once but has to seek permission from his superiors before he can say what it is.  I don’t know if I can say he would have saved lives by speaking up, since this movie has a body count of four, but the possibility exists.

Local law enforcement, in the form of Crawford and his deputy Pat, resent this, but also participate in it.  In the tradition of authorities in monster movies, they decide to keep what’s going on a secret in order to avoid a panic (the plot here really is just a bunch of tropes strung together).  They forbid the newspaper editor to print the story until they have more information, and then ask Chris and Judy not to talk about what they’ve seen at the site of the first murder.  Chris remembers this later when he urges his friends to abandon their beach party, and so Rex and Darlene dismiss his warning.  Everybody in this movie keeps secrets, and nobody gains anything by them.

In running this blog I’ve reviewed a few movies I highly recommend entirely because they suck.  There’s the amazing Lou Ferrigno Hercules, for example, or The Giant Claw, films that are absolutely no good at all and yet are funny or charming enough to be truly so bad, they’re good.  This is not one of those movies. There’s no reason to bother watching it unless you’re some sort of masochistic John Agar completionist, which… uh… well, at least I have a name for my problem now.

Damn it, I could have been watching Night of the Bloody Apes.

[epicmoonintensifies]

Return to Me

Requested Anonymously

This request was fantastic, but my imagine got away from me and it became... more.

You realized you were in big trouble as soon as you woke up.

Well, no, scratch that. The first few moments after you woke up, you spent trying to figure out where you were. And then you realized you were in big trouble. You knew this because, despite it being your first concern upon regaining consciousness, you still didn't know where you were (other than the middle of some freezing nowhere hell). Also, because there was a beowolf claw in your shoulder.

Yeah.

Pulling it out seemed too risky. It was dug in deep, dangerously close to piercing an artery, and it was probably the only thing keeping you from bleeding out all over the snow. And, honestly, you weren't sure if you could get a good enough grip on it to pull it out anyway. Your fingers were numb with the cold. Your everything was numb with the cold.

At this rate, you were going to die out here.

What?

Unacceptable. No, really, where had that thought come from? You couldn't die out here! That was ridiculous. You had responsibilities. Responsibility didn't allow for something as stupid as dying. And you had to get back to your students, who were depending on you to keep them safe on their first missions. You had to get home. You had to get back to Ozpin.

Oz. Oh, Oz, I'm sorry.

Well, you thought, gathering your aura up towards your pierced shoulder. This is going to hurt.

You were three days late.

This wasn't unusual.

Ozpin was far too used to you being late back from missions. It never failed to cause him... elevated levels of concern, as one might say. He always got distant and distracted while you were gone, finding it difficult to give his students the attention they needed from him. You, knowing this, had recently started taking more missions closer to home, but you were still a huntress, and that meant you went where you were needed. If that meant going all the way to Atlas, then... Ozpin just had to deal with that. Which was fine, really.

Really.

He wasn't sure when he had become so dependent on your presence in his life. He wasn't even exactly sure when you had become a couple, only that you had and it was wonderful and it made him feel... somehow, it made him feel both grounded and in full flight. His curse often made him feel insubstantial, like a ghost flitting from one half-life to another. You made him feel like he was bound not to a temporary life, but to you. But at the same time, when he was with you, he felt... like flying. Like he was high above the world with you and nothing could really be so terribly bad as long as you were with him.

But you weren't with him now.

This is really not my day, you thought.

First, you had found out that you couldn't just send a 'hey, James, I'm lost and injured in your frozen wasteland, could you send one of your gaudy airships with the shiny ribbons to get me the heck out of here' message, because your scroll was broken. And not just broken, but shattered. You carelessly left its cracked remains in the snow, along with your broken-beyond-Glynda's-ability-to-repair wrist watch. And then, you found some civilization (a back-water, ice-encrusted hollow scratched out of the side of the road and doomed to be destroyed by Grimm unless some top-notch huntsmen took up residence there, but, hey, people plus constructs serving as shelter equaled civ-il-iz-a-tion) but everybody's scrolls might as well have been broken as well. Why?

The Atlas CCT was down.

Not down, down, but not working, anyway.

This was news to you, considering that your scroll had had a half-decent signal only a few days ago, but you kind of felt embarrassed for not realizing that the CCT would be down, because you had just walked through the storm of the century to find out it was down. Right. The continent-sized snowstorm covering Solitas that had almost killed you, as if the Grimm hadn't done their best to accomplish the same, had also done damage to the Atlas CCT. Of course.

You couldn't send a message to Ozpin, who was probably worried out of his mind and drinking his own weight in hot cocoa every day. You couldn't call James, who you were supposed to be checking in with every day just in case of incidents like this (not that you had checked in every day because you had been out of range, but whatever. James would have to deal with it like a big boy). You couldn't call law enforcement and say, 'huntress down!' You couldn't call anybody.

So you were just going to have to go straight home.

Forget checking in with James. You weren't even within the bounds of the kingdom of Atlas. That was the opposite direction of where you wanted to go, and getting there would involve journeying even deeper into the storm. If it didn't kill you, it would certainly postpone your journey home, and probably by a long time, which meant that Ozpin would go even longer without knowing you were okay, which... well. Screw that. You were taking the fastest possible route back to Vale, even if it killed you.

... Poor choice of words...

James Ironwood had his failings. Quite a few of them, actually, and most of them weren't the sort of flaws that he could bring himself to admit to. But damn it all if he didn't take good care of the huntsmen under his jurisdiction.

Which was why he had sent a search party out for you in the middle of a blizzard.

You were over a week late. This wouldn't have bothered him under normal circumstances because you tended to be a few days late on missions like this one, but a blizzard was raging across the continent and the CCT was down. These were not normal circumastances and you were not three or four days late. You were nine days late and the world outside was raging.

For the first day, the search party found nothing.

On the second day, they found too much.

Every step you took hurt.

Your legs weren't all that bad, really. A few scratches that weren't healing as fast as they should have been because all your aura was focused on healing your shoulder, which had a big gaping hole in it. Yeah. Taking that claw out had been a special kind of pain that you hadn't exactly been acquainted with before, but you couldn't just... walk around with that in your body. Wounds caused by Grimm were incredibly likely to get infected, and having an actual claw stuck inside of you had basically guaranteed an infection. Pulling it out had been worth the risk of bleeding to death.

Which you hadn't. Bled to death, that is. Obviously. Because you were still walking towards the coast, pain throbbing through you with every step, because that wound needed medical attention but, surprise, surprise, during this continent-wide crisis, everybody seemed to need medicine and doctors right now. And, as a huntress, it was your responsibility to let civilians have 'dibs.' Which meant, at a time like this, that resources were already spread thin and there would be nothing left for you.

Well, okay. If that was how life was gonna be.

Fine.

From what you understood, the only airships leaving the continents were the ones that on the coast, near the edge of the storm. A few coastal communities that had already taken hard hits from the storm while it was forming were now being evacuated to Mistral. Most Dust transports were down until the weather let up, but a few of the bigger cruisers were still heading out every time they found a clear patch of sky. If you could find one of those, you could get to Mistral, and from there, Vale would only be a train-ride away.

But Mistral. Well, curse it all, but if the Atlas CCT was down, then the one in Mistral would be pretty weak too. All the CCTs had to be functioning for any of them to be working at full force. And you still didn't have a scroll, or the money to buy one.

You would just have to... surprise Oz. Yeah. He would probably kill you, but it would be hilarious. The look on his face would totally worth your subsequent murder.

The pre-recorded message that Ozpin received on his private channel was... a surprise, to say the least. Mostly because it was from Atlas, and with their Tower out of working order, Ozpin hadn't expected anything from them for at least a month, or even more, depending on how long the storm would continue. The message must have been delivered via data-disk to Mistal and then sent through a signal-booster from there. Which had to have been incredibly difficult and a consumption of Mistral's precious, limited broadband, which meant that this message had to be... incredibly important.

Ozpin wasted no time letting it play, but he immediately had to pause it when he saw what James looked like.

The headmaster-general looked wrong. Unshaven, unkempt. His eyes looked... red-rimmed. Like he had been... but, no, James didn't cry. James got angry and yelled or argued or brooded or hit things or used their shared manipulative streak. He didn't cry. Or, if he did, then it was something incredibly private. Certainly not something he would record evidence of and then send to a respected colleague.

Ozpin pressed play. The desaturated recording wavered and James sighed with his whole body, shoulders slumping.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

"Ozpin, I..."James's image flickered slightly as he looked away from the screen. The quality was poor, but Ozpin could tell that it was emotion and not static that made his friend's voice waver. "I'm sorry."

Ozpin's heart trembled. No.

James was responsible for you while you were in his territory, he was the one who made all your living arrangements and sent backup if you needed it, he was the one who promised Ozpin that he would keep a close eye on you-

"She's dead, Ozpin."

No. No.

"There was no body, and not much evidence left because of the snow, but we... we found... her scroll and her watch, which were both shattered, and parts of her coat, and there was... there was blood, Ozpin, I'm- I'm sorry...."

The air was jerked from Ozpin's lungs with a harsh gasp. His hands gripped the edge of his desk with such force that it creaked with the pressure and cracked.

This was impossible. You were the best huntress Ozpin had seen in this life. A prodigy. You wouldn't just.... He had seen you take on hoards of Grimm with a smile on your face, like it was a game, like it was an entertaining hobby instead of a fight for your life, and he had never really had to worry about you not coming home because you always-

But you hadn't. Not this time. This time, you had- in the cold, in the blinding snow, under the claws of Solitas Grimm, you...

"We're sending you... what's left. There's not much, but I thought you ought to have it."

He remembered, in one of his past lives (an early one), that he had been stabbed in the back. Literally, not metaphorically. That was what had killed him that time. A knife sliding deftly between his ribs to ruin his lungs and cut the air out of him. He felt like he had been pulled too tightly into his own body and then shoved painfully out of it.

This felt a whole lot like that.

The wound on your shoulder had started bleeding again.

When you pulled the claw out, you had torn off parts of your own coat to staunch the bleeding. Even with your aura working its hardest, those shreds of cloth had been soaked through to uselessness. You had ended up leaving bloody scraps in the snow.

But, now, while you were boarding an airship full of frightened, frost-bitten refugees, bleeding didn't seem like nearly as much of a risk factor. Bleeding was hardly a good thing, but maybe it would keep the wound clear.

You stared at your reflection on the metallic surface of a dust case. You looked pretty dead. The shadows under your eyes looked more like bruises. You had lost too much weight, including muscle mass, sending you from fit to thin to sickly. The color was washing itself out of your skin. Your lips were chapped and cracked. Dried blood was smeared across your forehead and into your hairline. In fact, there was blood all over you, including under your chipped nails.

You turned away, feeling oddly ashamed even though you knew that it was all proof of your own ability to survive.

It was warm inside the airship. There were plenty of nooks and crannies for you to curl up in. There were plenty of people to hide amongst, and the fact that you looked half-dead from exhaustion and blood loss only meant that you looked just like them. The rifle strapped to your back was a little conspicuous, but you couldn't be the only huntsman on the ship. These people were from outside Atlas's borders, which meant that they probably had live-in huntsmen to protect them from the Grimm.

Besides, it didn't matter. You weren't going to talk to any of these people. You were just going to... to...

... sleep...

Ozpin hadn't spoken to anybody in three days.

Glynda... understood, in the way that an observer with no similar experience can understand, that Ozpin was only himself when you were around. Without you, he tended to seem like he was off in his own little world. His mind was with you, wherever you were, no matter where his body was.

But this was simply unacceptable.

Never in her life had Glynda scolded the headmaster. She had argued with him and gotten unbelievably frustrated, but she had never... told him off. It wasn't her place, and Ozpin probably wouldn't listen anyway.

"I know you miss her," Glynda began, "and I understand that you're very worried, but this is unbecoming behavior. The students are talking, forget what the other teachers have been saying when they think I'm not around, and-"

Ozpin finally looked up to his fellow teacher, and the broken look on his face chilled Glynda to her core.

"You're a huntress."

The little girl had a lisp. A really, really cute lisp. And she was adorable. And you... didn't care.

"Yeah," you said. Your eyes were hooded with the weight of your exhaustion, blurring your vision. Blurring everything.

"I have a kitten!" the little girl exclaimed, holding up said kitten for you to admire. It was a patchy little runt with extra toes that would never have survived without human intervention. "When I grow up, I'm gonna fight Grimm, and my kitten's gonna help!"

"That's a good idea," you assured her. "Cats and dogs are perfect for hunting Grimm."

Dogs were better for the task by far, but you wouldn't tell her that. No point to it. This pigeon-toed, short-legged, off-balance girl would never be a huntress. She would never be anything that required physical grace. You could already see it, and she couldn't even be six years old.

But she was the sweetest girl you had ever met, and so you kept your mouth shut. 

The little girl smiled at you. Her two front teeth were missing.

Infection tipped you into a haze of fever.

Ozpin started interacting with his students again, if it could be called interacting. He was barely there. He was a ghost in his own hallways, going through the motions of a headmaster. He did his paperwork. He watched over the students. He kept an eye on their borders. He even put some thought to potential Maidens among the new first years.

But the students didn't want to talk to him anymore. They did not search for his approval. The other teachers kept him at arm's length.

He was acting the part, but his aura radiated sorrow like none of them had ever known.

There was a doctor on the ship. He took his sweet time getting to you after a little girl told him that "a huntress was sick." But he existed, he was competent, and he had medical supplies. Good-e-nough.

You weren't exactly sure what he did to you. You were asleep for most of it.

When you woke up, you were in Mistral and everything hurt. But the fever was gone.

Keep moving.

Vale. It was... you were in Vale and your whole body ached with relief.

The train from Mistral had been a real pain in your... everything. And it was slower than you could stand. You should have hitched a ride on another airship. You really, really should have. But Mistral airships were more compact than the ones from Atlas. Not good for extra passengers. And you also had no money. You had used a rather devious trick to get a train ticket.

But now you stepped off of the station and onto solid Vale ground, and your eyes prickled with heat.

You weren't sure how long it had been. How many days late you were. It had been weeks. Maybe even a month. Maybe longer? You didn't know. You didn't know how long you had been passed out in the middle of a blizzard with a claw hooked in your flesh. You didn't know how long you had walked to find a town. You didn't know how many days it took to get to the coast, or how many days you were on the airship, or how many days you were on the train.

But you were getting back to Beacon, back to Oz, today.

You started running. Every step made your wounds flare with pain, but you were running home and it was the most amazing feeling in the world.

I'm coming, Oz.

Ozpin felt the air change.

He had been feeling oddly numb to everything but the throbbing in his head and his heart for a while now, disconnected from the shifting moods of his students and faculty that he used to be so aware of, but today, the fragile grief that had been spider-webbed across the school grounds suddenly shattered in a cascading, unbelievably explosive shock.

It was enough to make Ozpin fight for air.

"What's happened?" he asked Glynda with something near desperation. He still felt a bit too much like he was only halfway inside his body to reach true desperation, but concern for his students' safety drew some emotion from him.

"I don't know, I didn't see," she answered, but she didn't sound too worried. "I don't think it's bad, just surprising. I heard a few students cheering."

Cheering? How odd. Maybe Qrow had shown up to cause trouble again, but that would hardly be a surprise for anyone but the first years, would it?

"I suppose I ought to go see what all the fuss is about," Ozpin sighed.

Maybe it was just Qrow.

The first person who you ended up colliding with was Oobleck, which was slightly insane because he usually dodged faster than that, but then he gathered you up in his arms for a spinning hug and it turns out that he was aiming for you.

He talked too quickly for you to possibly understand, but you managed to pick out a few words like 'here' and 'alive' and 'beautiful' and 'glorious' and 'Ozpin.' Oobleck smelled like coffee and books as he held you and you missed him.

"Barty!" you laughed. Cried. "Oh, Bartholomew. It's alright, I'm home."

"You'reneverleavingagain!" he told you sternly, even though there was a wide smile on his face.

"Probably not," you agreed. you folded your arms (ouch) to hide the blood stains running down your front. "Where's Oz?"

"Office," the good doctor informed you, his smile falling to a frown. "Hehardlyever... hardly ever leaves it, anymore."

You took a shuddering breath. You knew Ozpin would react badly to you being gone for so long, but you hadn't imagined that he would lock himself up like that. Hardly ever leaving his office, really! He had responsibilities! He couldn't be like this just because you were late!

Although, it was... flattering. Very much so.

"Drama queen," you muttered. Oobleck gave you an odd look over his glasses. "Thanks, Bartholomew."

Ozpin heard Oobleck's happy laughter echoing down the halls for the first time since... since the announcement... and concluded that everything must be alright. Oobleck was attentive and protective of his students. If anything was wrong at all, the doctor would have gone to take care of it, or at least sent a message to Ozpin.

Oh, I thought too soon, Ozpin mused when he heard frantic footsteps approaching his door.

And then the world turned sideways.

The look on Ozpin's face when you entered his office was unreal. It was like someone had just torn the heart out of his chest. And it hurt you to see it.

"I'm sorry," you blurted out.

He dropped his cane. Took a half step towards you.

"I'm so sorry, I know I'm late," you continued in a rush. "I don't even know how long it's been. My scroll is gone, the CCT was down, I got a ride on a refugee transport out of Solitas, I didn't even go back to Atlas to check in with James because the storm was so bad, Ozpin, I'm so sorry-"

"You were dead."

What...?

"James said..." Ozpin swallowed harshly. His eyelashes fluttered and he winced, but he didn't look away from you. "James told me you were dead."

"Oh." The realization sunk in. "Oh, Oz."

He thought you were dead. All this time, you were just late after a bad fight in bad circumstances, and he thought you were dead...

You rushed to him and he met you halfway and you both ended up on the floor of his office. It hurt. Everything hurt. Your heart and your shoulder both throbbed, but then Ozpin pressed his lips to yours and you tasted the salt of tears that were either yours or his or both and you didn't care how much it hurt as long as he kept holding you like this, kissing you like this, Ozpin.

You weren't sure how long the two of you stayed there, like that. You knew the passionate kissing probably lasted too long and had irritated your wounds, and you were sure that the hard floor would make your bones ache tomorrow, but Ozpin pressed his ear against your chest to listen to your heartbeat and you knew you would be happy to stay like that forever.

[romanssippycup]

Day 2: Trouble Makers - Our Attention, Hour Detention

I am not proud of this fanfiction. I honestly have no idea what this even is! But I made it and I’m gonna post it. I literally just finished this. I hope you get at least some laughs out of it. HHHHH Patton’s out of Character. :(

Some Logicality smut with some fluff and a whole lotta of ‘what the heck is going on?’ Slight nsfw. I mean...it is a ship.

Based on Challenge a. Detention with Logan! What does it look like? 

If you are curious what challenge I am doing, check out this post here so you can join in the fun!

Without further ado:

Words: ~2,227~

Our Attention, Hour Detention

It was a tuesday morning, Logan was already dressed and ready for his next day of classes. As he walked out the door of his room, the aroma of freshly baked waffles and scrambled eggs filled up his nostrils and fogged his glasses. Patton had already began making breakfast, but it seemed as if he and Logan were the only sides awake. Neither Roman nor Virgil could be seen anywhere in the commons.

Patton turned from the stove to see Logan walking up to him.

“Good morning Logan!” Patton hugged Logan to which the logical aspect monotonously hugged back.

“Good morning Patton.” He took a seat at the table and began to read the day’s news on his phone.

Patton turned back to the food he was making and served him and Logan a plate once the breakfast was finished cooking. As he set down the food, Logan’s contemplated face remained fixed on his screen while he uttered a muffled “thanks”.

Patton frowned at the attention his partner wasn’t giving him. “Um...Logan?” He wanted his eyes on him.

“Hm?” Logan still didn’t look up from his phone as he began to eat the food in front of him.

“Can I see your eyes please?” It was only then that Logan looked up from his phone to Patton’s somewhat hurt face. Finally, it dawned on him.

“Oh. My apologies.” Logan quickly put his phone away and smiled lightly at Patton. “Thank you for breakfast.”

Patton smiled back. “Your welcome.” There were a couple moments of silent chewing before Patton talked again. “Would you like to hang out after school gets out? You’ve been really busy and I miss you.” Patton slightly whined. Logan could tell the elder aspect missed the quality time they used to spend together.

“I am sorry Patton, but once again I have to decline. I have an afternoon hour that is reserved only for detention and then 3 very important meetings that I have to attend shortly afterwards. As much as I want to spend time with you, I can’t. I won’t be back until tonight. Late.” Logan was just as disappointed as Patton. Even though he didn’t really show it, Morality could tell Logan was.

“Oh...okay.” Patton lowered his head sadly.

Logan despised seeing his boyfriend sad, so he arose from his chair and walked over to embrace him. Patton got up from his chair too and returned the gesture. They stood there for a second, before Logan kissed Patton on the cheek.

“I need to leave. I’m sorry. I will see you later tonight.” As Logan gathered up his teaching materials and got ready to leave, Patton cleaned up the table, before returning the kiss the logical aspect gave him.

Logan’s cheeks blushed a light pink as he was given the kiss. “Thank you Patton. Goodbye. I will return late tonight.” He waved, walked out the door, and shut it from outside.

Patton sighed as he stared at the back of the door from the inside. If only he could just tear that work-a-holic away for even one hour...hour...Hour?

“HOUR!” He shouted across the house then immediately covered up his mouth. After hearing no sudden noise, he let a sigh of relief wash over him that neither Roman nor Virgil had awoken because of his epiphany.

Logan had specifically said he had an hour set aside for Detention at the end of his regular school schedule. Patton was excited, until a thought occurred to him, ‘but what if there are students in detention?’ He wouldn’t be able to see Logan without the logical aspect scolding him.

Had one been able to analyze Patton’s facial expressions as he was formulating an idea, they would have seen the biggest grin turn into a devious smile. Patton had an idea and he knew exactly what to do to make it a reality. But, he was going to need a little help. After putting leftovers in the fridge for the other two sides, he grabbed his cardigan and ran out to take the bus to the school where Logan worked at. This was going to be fun.

The first three classes went smoothly. It was the fourth hour class where Logan had a bit of trouble though.

“Billy!” The brunette shot up and faced the teacher as he heard his name called. “See me after class!” Logan enforced sternly. The boy called ‘Billy’ had been throwing spit wads across the room to stick on the walls. Logan had caught him after the third throw.

The logical aspect was very disappointed in him for the rest of the class. Billy was one of his best students and to see him pull such a childish act soured his mood.

As the bell rang, Billy picked up his things and walked solemnly to Logan’s desk. The teacher was standing next to his chalkboard with his hands folded across his chest.

“I am surprised at you Billy. You don’t normally act out like that. Is...something wrong?”

Billy stopped in front of his teacher and hung his head. “I was paid to do that, by one of my classmates. I'm sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Logan raised an eyebrow. “Paid? Were your pressured to throw spit wads?” Billy nodded. “By who?”

“Andrew. He sits next to me.”

“Ah. The trouble-maker.” Logan flipped through his attendance sheet at all the warnings he had given the troublesome student named ‘Andrew'. “Nevertheless, you will still have to serve detention with me after school. On your way out, please take care of your spit wads. I will see you after school Billy.” Logan returned to his chalkboard and got the lesson plan ready for his next class.

“Yes Mr. Sanders.” Billy continued to hang his head as he took care of his ‘projectiles' and walked out of the room. He continued into the men’s bathroom.

“I'm over here…” A whisper was said. Billy looked around until he found the owner of the voice hiding in the janitor’s closet. He stood their shocked.

“This Is the exact place I talked to you three hours ago.” He whispered back to the cardigan-clad adult hiding in the closet.

“I know.” Patton smiled. “I haven’t moved.”

“But how...nevermind...just...can I have my money?” Billy rubbed the bridge of his nose in disbelief. He didn’t want to question this strange situation anymore than he had to.

“Sure thing kiddo!” Patton pulled a ten out of his cardigan pocket and handed it to him. “Now, you told him everything I told you to right?”

Billy groaned. “Yes. I did.”

Patton clapped. “Good! Alright. Let's change clothes. Did you bring a spare outfit?”

The high schooler nodded nervously. It was strange enough that Billy had the similar body type as Virgil, which Patton knew how to act as fairly well. So the parental aspect had the idea that they would swap places midday after his class with Logan.

Billy went into a stall and changed into his spare outfit. He then handed them to Patton who came out of his hiding spot and slinked into one of the stalls as he put on Billy’s clothes over his normal dad attire.

Once he came out of the stall, the high schooler's eyes widened. Patton almost looked just like him. Well, except with glasses.

Patton smiled. “How do I look?”

“Like me.” Billy was surprised. “We are actually doing this...okay.” He took a deep breath as he tried to grasp the gravity of the situation. “You have the rest of my class schedule right?”

“Yupperdoo! I know what to do. Thomas is a great actor so you don’t have to worry about anything. And Logan’s my boyfriend; he teaches me a lot of things. I promise I’m smarter than most think.” Patton was grinning from ear to ear.

Billy scratched his head in bewilderment. “So...where am I going to be?”

“In the same closet I was hiding in.” Patton stated.

Before Billy could blink, he found himself stuffed into the same Janitor’s closet that Patton had been hiding in.

“Just stay there for the next two hours and come out 10 minutes after the bell rings. Alright? Toodles.” Patton took off his glasses and assumed his role as the high schooler Billy.

Said high schooler heard the parental aspect walk off. He shrugged and decided to get a well-deserved nap before the last bell rang.

The rest of the day went surprisingly well for Logan, though he was relieved when the final bell rung. As his classroom cleared out, he began to get some chores ready for Billy to do during his detention period.

About 3 minutes later Patton disguised as Billy walked in looking shameful. “Hello Mr. Sanders.” He tried to mimic Billy’s voice and surprisingly did a very good job. Logan didn’t even do a double take as he sat down in front of him

“Hello Billy. You can start by sorting through these desk papers.” Logan set a large stack of papers in front of Billy to which Patton sighed at. He never really liked large stacks of papers and figured it was now or never that he would reveal his true identity.

Patton began to casually take off the shirt that was covering his polo and cardigan. Then he began to take off his pants that he was wearing over his sweat pants. His glasses made the most noise when he tried to put them on.

Logan heard him rustling around, but didn’t bother to look up until he realized Billy wasn’t doing anything with the papers. But when he did look up, he was met with Patton’s flirty stare.

“Hey Smarty-pants.” Patton grinned at a very surprised Logan. The logical trait jumped back and blushed madly. Obviously not ready for what he saw.

“P-Patton!? What...what on earth are you doing here? Where's Billy!?” Logan gulped as Patton seductively got up from his chair and walked over to the logical trait putting his hands on his shoulders.

“I’m not sure where he is...but I know where someone else is...and he’s right here with you.” Patton whispered in his ear.

Logan was on the brink of breaking. He too had been missing bonding time with Patton, but he didn’t want to lose his control at his job. His body wasn’t giving him much of a choice however.

“But...Patton…”

“Shhhh…” Patton quieted him as he pressed his lips against Logan’s. It was at this moment the Logical aspect gave in and began to kiss his partner back. Immediately, they were both pulled closer together by each other in a passionate embrace.

It was impeccable timing that the real Billy decided to walk into the classroom. Seeing his teacher kissing the same insane man that wore his clothes just weirded him out way too much. He coughed to let them know he was present.

Logan broke away immediately and faced Billy, his face as red as a solanumlycopersicum.

“I...I-I’m sorry…”

Billy chuckled. “No need. Your secret is safe with me. And before you ask, this was all your boyfriend’s idea. He payed me to surprise you. And quite honestly, what just happened was really cute.”

Logan turned to Patton who also mirrored the same red complexion as he had. Well, except there was a giddy smile on the other man’s face.

The logical aspect stood dumbfounded as he switched his gaze between Billy and Patton. “Patton!” Logan tried to sound mad, but knew he couldn’t. Especially not after that heated moment they had shared.

“Alright. I’m going to leave to give you two your space, but if a teacher catches me while I’m not in detention, what should I say?” Billy hurried nervously as he grabbed the rest of his clothes and belongings that Patton had borrowed.

Logan was going to answer that when Patton fell into his lap and cupped a hand over his mouth.

“Just tell them Logan had a very important...Parent-Teacher Conference he needed to get out of the way. And because you are a good student, he didn’t see a good enough reason to keep you here too long.” With Patton’s hand on Logan’s mouth, the logical aspect had no choice but to sit in his office chair and be silent.

Billy chuckled at the pun, while Logan just scrunched up his nose and furrowed his brow.

“Alright. Well, goodbye Mr. Sanders and Patton.” He waved and walked out of the classroom. Patton waved back and took his hand off of Logan’s mouth.

Logan took a deep breath and looked into Patton’s longing eyes. “Patton...you are in so much trouble.”

“Well then I guess you can say I’m in detention!” Patton kissed a flustered Logan’s forehead. The logical trait rubbed his eyes.

“I am so confused.”

“That’s ok we got 60 minutes all to HOURselves.”

“If you say one more pun Patton-”

“One more pun Patton.” Patton mimicked Logan proudly.

“That is the last straw! No more words from you.” Logan french kissed Patton to make sure no more silly words were said, to which Patton happily complied.

After about five minutes Logan broke away, panting. “How do you even know Billy?”

“He is an older brother of one of the kids I babysit.” Patton replied panting as well.

“Small worl-”

“IT’S A SMALL WORLD AFTER AL-” Once again Patton was cut off by Logan’s kiss.

I think it’s safe to say that both sides enjoyed the rest of their detention period.

[radpribadi]

The (necessary) illusion of Model United Nations

I have been doing MUN for the past 3 years almost on a non-stop basis. I used to be obsessed about it and what it can offer. Done those both nationally and internationally. Now as I slowly retire from the scene, I can say this with a fresher eye: MUN is an illusion, however, a necessary illusion for a period of time. I guess I would not introduce what MUN is (if you dont know, google it.) But what I really want to stress in here is the point that doing MUN is important, but not too much. I have met so many people around the world who seem to be addicted with MUN. Some nations are far more insane about it than others. Venezuelans go to international MUNs such as Harvard National MUN with its astronomical costs despite their economic crisis back home. Indians and South Asians in general could be crazier, a lot of MUN people I met from there did at least more than 50 (FIFTY) TO 60 (SIXTY) MUN conferences since their high school times (average Indonesian MUN delegates I observed participated in about 6-10 MUNs becausw it is indeed expensive). And man, they are ambitious as heck. The Dutch created United Netherlands, basically a "national team" dedicated to win international MUNs and the Peruvians created Peruvian Universities, a team of multiple universities in Peru that won many world-class awards. But what's the deal with it anyway? It has to do a lot with the idea that you simulate the process to world peace. In a way, yes MUN could be an embodiment of world peace itself. When you participate in international level MUNs like Harvard World MUN or The European International MUN, you do meet people from other countries. And they brought with them stories and cultures which would be great to be exchanged with ours. Meeting people of all races and kinds do give your eyes a great opening and instill that idea that "Man, I am in charge of making peace in this world now". You will be put around young "diplomats" from Africa, Europe, Asia, Latin America, Russia, and all corners of the world, and you are tasked to solve problems, complex and sophisticated problems like world hunger, refugee crisis in Europe, war in the Middle East, post-war state building in Western Sahara, or as one of my experiences would say, structural reform of the European Union. However, those are illusions. Yes, those topics seems to be complex and sophisticated, but I can tell from my experience, with young high school and college students that have no deep field experience about the problems they are tasked to solve, gathering and discussing to find a solution, they end up oversimplifying the problems at hand. Really. For example, in MUN, there is something I call the "standard package of solution" a.k.a. overused template of solution, a.k.a. fricking cliche bla-bla-blas. They are solutions that go around "regional cooperation, cooperation with media, long term education, creating a new UN body on X issue, financing assistance from developed countries to developing countries, campaign to promote X idea" and stuff. Man, you could go to MUN in Jakarta and then do one in Boston and you would find that package. Whether you discuss about refugee crisis, economic reform, or warfare in the Middle East, you will find that package. It is a sign of inexperienced students trying to solve deep and complex world problems. And that's what you get, the illusion of having big grand ideas that will change the world but untested on grounds, and unseen on the fields. Talking about changing the world, let us observe how MUN can change the world. Usually after passing a resolution that goes through tough political fight, you would feel accomplished, that there is something you contributed towards world peace. Again, this is an illusion. Most (and I think by "most" is 98% of the) resolutions do not even get any recognition from the real United Nations. They are usually just a .docx file gone minutes after the awarding session, losing all the importance after we found out who the Best Delegate is. (And with the current popular scoring system, ironically, the Best Delegate could be a delegate that actually lost in the draft resolution voting). The duration of the conferences also plays it part. Usually MUN lasts about 2 to 6 days. And then, that's it. Of course, it could seem to be grueling (trust me, a 6 days MUN conference will exhaust you) and it does give us a sense of accomplishment somehow, like after putting a long good fight. But hey, changes aren't made in 6 days. Real changes come after months or years of work. This will also serve for elite level meeting, say the Parliament. Passing a new law won't change things. But enforcing it, which of course could take years to accomplish, will change things. The danger of this world-problems-solver illusion is that it could create a kind of elitist bubble. Smart young students going to MUNs and glad that they solved problems yet do not realize that they are far off from the reality. And even more dangerous if they are satisfied with their MUN awards and accomplishment, perceiving that those are indeed achievements they can be proud of. Winning one or two Best Delegate awards, they are hungry for more and jump in to more conferences. It will seriously distract them from doing real work with longer time commitments to actually help people. The most terrifying possibility is that they will feel that their winning of MUN is enough to keep them satisfied, enough to make them a great person. Yet, with all of those dangers and illusions, I still however think that MUN is a necessary illusion. I would say that the importance of it lays in the divide between constructive imagination and destructive obsession. MUN indeed have strong benefits, and I have to credit my MUN experience for a lot of things that has made me who I am today. Negotiation, public speaking, persuasion, those are the qualities I learn from MUN, and without my MUN experience perhaps I would be less sharpened on them. It is indeed began from a constructive imagination, the way you imagine yourself as a diplomat tasked to solve complex problems ahead of you. And I personally think that the most valuable thing is friendship won. With MUN, you really meet people from all degrees and spectrum, and you really can see the world, although perhaps still superficially, but wide enough to humble your existence. Friendship, I think, is the most important benefit of doing Model United Nations. Just like gathering with people who have the same interest with you, MUN would be a great start for a long and lifetime friendship from the collective participation in an illusion. A necessary illusion, indeed. Nowadays, there are far more people doing MUN than when I began doing it three years ago. Yet I saw that some of them are going on the trajectory of destructive obsession part of the illusion. High schoolers are more than ever ambitious to win the Best Delegate awards, some even beat college-level experienced delegates. Now before they are trapped into the elitist bubble I have mentioned before, they have to learn when to finally stop doing MUN and start doing real work of change. If you are a seasoned MUN delegate and you start to keep thinking about "how could I win the next Best Delegate award", you have to stop. Because you already miss the point of MUN. The conferences itself should never be the end point of your achievements. In fact, I believe that it should be the beginning point of your real work for the society. I have many friends from MUN who are working on real work of changes like in climate and environmental issue, inter-religious relations, and others. I myself am working with my friends to build a filmmaking movement that focuses on social and political impact and to give voice to the voiceless, the Gerilya Film Mahasiswa. And I can say that this all began with my MUN experience, with the question on how can we all do something after passing a resolution. The "Best Delegate" award and certificate will blur itself to the background when the question "Okay, then what have you done to help the community around you?" arises. I believe that everyone could learn from MUN, and it is not and never about being the Best Delegate. It is about actually working and fighting for the values that we move forward on the resolutions. Yes, we could be illusioned on solving complex world problems, but without those illusion, we might never be initiated to dream big. The illusion of MUN is necessary to spark inspiration and imagination to solve world problems and therefore initiate action. We do not have to solve the refugee crisis or be the middle-person in a civil war somewhere now, but we can begin by little and small steps, going ahead. We should always ask ourselves this: "What is my resolution to help the people around me? And what have I done about it?" Because world peace and happiness is never about the United Nations fighting on it. World peace and happiness is about everyone, you and I, him and her, us and them, fighting on it. So, what is your resolution, delegate? #ModelUnitedNations