#but oopsie! that then circles back around to (2) if someone is using a tag incorrectly there's no way to deal with that

[themoonking]

when people bring up the racism, homophobia, transphobia, romanticization of domestic abuse / rape / pedophilia / incest, literal actual written porn of literal actual real life flesh and blood children, et cetera et cetera on archive of our own, one of the ao3 stannies’ main defenses is “you can just filter out the tags if you don’t want to see that!” when that defense has no fucking legs to stand on.

ao3 is not an archive, it is barely even a website: a rant <3 (very long)

ignoring the fact that it’s a problem that all of that is permitted on the site in the first place (i guess child porn and racism are fine, and the people who allow it on their platform are fine, as long as i, personally, do not see it), that defense literally means nothing. it’s assuming that every little thing on ao3 is tagged properly and it absolutely is not, and if you think it is you are dumber than rocks. i mean for fuck’s sake, just touching on archive warnings and not tags, “creator chose not to use archive warnings” is literally a valid option for fic authors to use when it should fucking not be.

if someone is a freak who thinks that pedo shit is hot, they might not tag it as “rape” (archive warnings OR tags). i’ve literally seen underage father/son rape porn with no trigger warning tags but “child abuse if you squint”. IF YOU SQUINT. if someone thinks that domestic abuse is actually cool and sexy when attractive people do it, they might not tag it as “abuse”. if someone is a freak who likes incest, but bends over backwards to justify it by only shipping adopted family members, then they tell themselves that they don’t view it as incest, and might not tag it as “incest”. if someone is a racist, a homophobe, a transphobe, et cetera and they wrote bigotry into their fic (or else wrote a deliberate troll fic to trigger people on purpose), do you really think they’re going to tag it as racism / homophobia / transphobia / et cetera? and some people get kicks out of writing purposefully triggering content and either leaving it untagged or mistagging it so that people will read it unsuspectingly.

even for just general content tags, it’s a mess. people just forget to tag things all the time. people deliberately won’t tag the endgame ship of their fic because “it’s a spoiler heehee”. people use the romantic or sexual “x / y” tag instead of the platonic or otherwise “x & y” tag, sometimes by mistake sometimes on purpose. it’s a joked about issue how people will tag characters or ships that appear in their fic for two sentences.

there’s no standardization of tags, which is a pretty obvious problem. what first comes to mind is the “dead dove: do not eat” tag which should just not be a tag at all because it just has no meaning. depending on the individual fic writer using it, it could mean anything from “literally the most sickening and depraved thing you’ve ever read in your life” to “horror w/ gore”. but it applies to other vague tags too - different fic writers will have different ideas of what the tag means.

in addition to that, what is and isn’t made a filterable tag, what tags are made synonymous, et cetera, is entirely up to the whims of the site staff. as an example, if you’re trying to look for fanfiction of a singular animated disney movie, the infinite crossovers with other disney movies will not actually be counted as crossovers (which they are) because they’re classified as the “disney theatrical animated universe” (which isn’t a fucking thing), so you can’t filter them out the “exclude crossovers” way. if you try to filter out the fandom tag “disney theatrical animated universe”, it’ll show up with zero fics because that tag is synonymous with every disney animated film (regardless of if the fic author actually used the tag “disney theatrical animated universe” or not), thus also filtering out the one you actually wanted to find.

and do not get me fucking started on the “all media types tags”, which also just shouldn’t be a thing because it makes it fucking impossible to find the specific fics you’re looking for. some people use it in place of tagging a specific canon / adaptation when their fic very clearly draws from one specific canon / adaptation, and you can’t filter it out because it’s synonymous with every fandom tag under its umbrella.

as an example of the issues of both the “all media types” tag and mistagging in general: as a fan of the witcher books, it used to be a fucking ordeal to find fanfiction specifically for the books (post netflix show release). some show fans would, for whatever reason, tag their fics with the book fandom tag in addition to (or even in place of!!) the show fandom tag when their fics were unquestionably show-specific, meaning i could not simply search only in the book fandom tag. i could not simply filter out the show tag, because some show fans would, for whatever reason, tag as fucking “all media types”, when their fics were unquestionably show-specific. and alas, i could not filter out “all media types” and the show tag, so that i see only those fics which have been deliberately and exclusively tagged as the book, not only because as mentioned some show fans would tag their show fics with only the book tag, but also because the fucking all media types tag filters out the book tag as well, leaving me with zero fucking fics REGARDLESS of if the author actually used the “all media types” tag. now, thankfully, i’ve thankfully seen this issue in this specific fandom lessen, but it still occurs in other fandoms and i guarantee that it didn’t lessen in the witcher fandom because of any fixing of the site on the part of ao3 staff.

another common defense of ao3 freaks is that it’s an “archive”, and therefore can’t get rid of anything anyone posts, and disregarding the fact that that is not how archives fucking work, they don’t just allow anything and also ao3 DOES get rid of fics... when they say that they don’t like proshippers, apparently, archives have... you know... archivists. they have someone or a team of someones making sure that everything in the archive is *properly fucking categorized*. they have someone or multiple someones making sure that everything they recieve (1) belongs there and (2) is properly labeled and organized. same for libraries. meaning that if ao3 really were an archive and not a sub par fanfiction website, they’d have something like that in place. something as simple as a report button for fics with a review team that will see if something’s been mis- or untagged. they’d have some kind of standardization of tags (especially the warning / trigger tags) and have proper tagging enforced in some way. and then they could also do something like stop being spineless racists, queerphobes, and pedos have the barest minimum of content guidelines saying that you can’t post fucking hate speech.

if something is mistagged or untagged, the most you can do is leave a comment politely asking that the author fix the issue, and then hope and pray that they do that. and if that person thinks [insert form of abuse] is hot, or if they’re just straight up a bigot that wrote bigotry into their fics to be bigoted, or they’re a troll that gets kick out of deliberately traumatizing people by tricking them into reading their mis/untagged fics, they might not! AND if you see a major tagging issue on an orphaned work, or a work that has an inactive author / hasn’t been updated in forever, good fucking luck getting even a negative response.

you can’t permanently block tags (i mean even tumblr.hell has that), meaning that if you would like to search for fic without coming across something troubling, triggering, or just something you don’t like, you have to either (1) do a work around by having a bookmarked link for every fandom you’re in or every character you like with all of your tags already blocked, (2) download browser extensions that do the work for ao3 because they can’t be bothered themselves, or (3) input every individual tag every time you search ao3 and don’t forget that all of those options only fucking work at all when everything is tagged properly, and we’ve already established its not. you also can’t actually block people (you can only prevent them from commenting) meaning that if there’s a specific person you’d like to stay away from your fics or a specific fic author that you don’t like and would like to stop seeing their fics clogging up the tag, you’re out of luck (though for the latter you could insert “-[username]” into the “search within results” box, but then uh oh we’re right back around to having to input that every time or have a bookmark)

their archive warning system is shit. first of all it’s functionally useless because, as mentioned, “creator chose not to use archive warnings” is an option. what’s the fucking point of special required archive warnings if you’re going to allow people to opt out anyway. second of all, aside from “chose not to use warnings” and “no warnings apply”, the only warnings are “major character death”, “graphic depictions of violence”, “rape/non-con”, and “underage”. disregarding the fact that they shouldn’t be allowing porn of underage characters in the first place (but i’m talking to a brick wall on that issue) and that “non-con” (and “dub-con”) as terminology needs to die, it’s just fucking rape lets not use weasel words... this is a paltry list of possible warnings. there’s no official warnings for depictions of: domestic abuse, animal abuse, depictions of racism / homophobia / transphobia / et cetera, suicide, self harm, et cetera et cetera. and we return to the issue of standardization of tags. in your required archive warnings at very least, there should be a standardization of what these mean, but ao3′s own faq is just like “ehh... you decide. we’ll leave it up to you”. what qualifies as graphic depictions of violence? two people may write the same level of violence, but qualify “graphic” differently, and make different decisions regarding their warnings. and we also return to the issue of: if a freak doesn’t see something that is clearly rape as rape, they might not tag it as such.

this website gets a disgustingly large amount of money every year that it doesn’t fucking do anything with. it’s been over a decade and they’re still in fucking beta. features that would actually be useful, like an actual block system, don’t exist. they technically have a report system for abuse and harassment and such, but apparently what they qualify as abuse and harassment is fickle. ao3 defenders seem to be very proud of the legal work they do for fandom / fanfic authors, but they set aside a very small amount of the money they get every year for legal advocacy, and they actually use even less of that, because it’s not the early 2000s “anne rice hates fanfiction” era anymore - you aren’t going to get fucking sued for writing fanfiction in the first place. based on their own self-reported yearly cost of upkeep, they literally already have enough money to run the site as they are now for the next twenty years.

once again: ao3 is not an archive. it is not a library. it is barely a even a website.

[lavaeolus]

A Peaceful Stroll: reaching level 50 without any recorded kills in Elder Scrolls Online

To anyone on the EU servers who might've stumbled upon odd and erratic behaviour from a Wood Elf player, I'm very sorry. Maybe you saw me running as I was chased by everyone in a dungeon. Maybe you saw me being attacked and jumped in, only to wonder why I had been speedily circling an enemy while spamming cloak and doing jack-all. Maybe you saw hints of me creeping through a delve and then, the moment you took on the boss, saw me swoop past to take the objective and leave.

I had an urge over the Christmas season to revisit the game. Wanting a refresher but also not really wanting to just repeat content again, I decided to mix things up with a challenge: to beat the game without killing anything. At least, not officially. Not a unique idea to me: I've seen some threads here on pacifist characters and while preparing for this I found this old Reddit report from Zenitharr. But hey, four years have passed since that post, Vets are no longer a thing, and One Tamriel dropped -- so perhaps it'll be interesting to give it another look.

Terms and conditions

The rules I set for myself were relatively loose. My goal was to get to level 50, and there were just two firm, unbendable rules to follow while doing so:

1) Keep those kill counters at 0.

To my knowledge, a kill is added when an enemy you have dealt damage to is reduced to 0-health. If a quest needs you to 'weaken' an enemy or just 'challenge them to a duel', it'll generally be safe to do (just watch out for other players). Non-combat objectives that result in an enemy dying do not, generally speaking, count.

At one point I was doing a quest and was tasked to burn down some slaver tents; "Hell yeah", I yelled to no one in particular, "No more tents for you!" Immediately after, an animation of a slaver running out screaming and burning to death played. This is what is known in pacifist circles as an 'oopsie', but it did not increment the counter. Rule of thumb: if you attack and damage something to death, that's a kill; if you press E on something and an enemy explodes, you're probably in the clear.

2) No grouping up with killers.

I generally prefer to do these sorts of challenges without interfering with other people's games. If another person feels like grouping up for some sort of pacifist raid, well, maybe that could be fun, but you can probably understand why it'd be a little dull to write a post about "Can you sit back and let other people kill and do quests for you?" (The answer's yes.)

Still, I didn't bar myself from interacting with other players entirely, and every now and then you walk into a dungeon where everybody's already dead or you get credit for another player jumping in and defeating people. That's fun! Emergent gameplay, sort of. When opportunities made themselves apparent I used other players to my advantage, but I never explicitly asked anyone to tag along or gank a guy.

The build

Overall a simple one. I made a Magicka Nightblade with a Restoration Staff, using Medium Armor to enhance my stealth and sprint speed. In hindsight the Khajiit's racial stealth ability would've been nice here, and a race with boosts to Magicka would've had its charms, but Bosmer was decent enough even if not a particularly optimal pick.

Life mostly revolves around your cloak: you can pretty much just sweep through to the end of a dungeon with it. Get enough Magicka and you can practically run through most places. Sometimes confrontation is inevitable due to the time it takes for your character to interact with things -- but there your cloak comes in handy again. Turn invisible and everyone tends to freeze in place. So if someone's lured away from what they're guarding... and if you have the time to walk back and just interact with it before they can hit you... bye bye. Alas, it's a strategy that's a lot less consistent than it sounds.

Note: Since you don't tend to actually fight, a Restoration Staff isn't amazingly necessary. For the first 20 levels I had actually resigned myself to not having the Restoration skill at all. You can't kill something to pick it up, and Restoration seems to have no skillbooks to let you bypass that. So how do you get it? Er... I don't know. When beating someone up with the staff, the skill popped up mid-fight. I have three theories, then: 1) if you manage a certain amount of hits with a weapon without killing anything, it's automatically added; 2) I had been carrying around a Resto Staff and, as a failsafe, a skill's stuffed onto your character if it somehow reaches level 20 or so without being learnt; 3) I just accidentally hit a random 1-HP spider or rat during the fight, didn't notice, and it didn't increment the counter.

What can you do?

More than I expected, to be honest. Quests where you have to kill -- as an objective -- are common, but compared to other MMOs there are plenty of quests where combat is technically incidental. The game will set you up for a fight, but it won't always demand it. I ran into plenty of scripted ambushes that you can just... immediately cloak away and ignore, quest proceeds as normal.

Sometimes you'll stare at a delve boss aggressively standing in place and psyched for a fight, and you'll realise there's absolutely nothing stopping you just walking past them. That's always funny.

Which isn't to say this was a walk in the park, exactly. Presumably to stop exactly what I was doing, interacting with objects takes a noticeable amount of time. Which means sometimes, yes, you can just cloak past someone and do the objective while they're still turning to face you, but that's not always practical and sometimes takes a fair amount of maneuvering to pull off. If you're not willing to deal with the frustrations of possibly getting caught and having to flee and try again, you'll cut off most quests.

Nor is it to say that you won't get through a quest and hit a sudden roadblock where, uh oh, the objective suddenly does require outright combat and you'll have to abandon what you were doing. I'd say the story quests can be worse than sidequests here, as they're more likely to end in a climactic fight and leaving them undone is more likely to lock off other content.

What was it like?

There's an inherent fun in just bending a game and doing something you weren't meant to do. There's something fun about there being a dungeon and you just swooping through it. Did that wear off? Ultimately I ran into frustrations from the game not being designed to support me doing that -- arbitrarily suddenly being locked off a quest, progression assuming I'd be a killer, the amount of quests on offer in an area being very feast-or-famine, etc.

But the One Tamriel update was kind to this playstyle. This is not a character who'll ever have a complete track of the overarching main storyline, and they'll never officially mark a delve as complete -- but they can absolutely wander the world and dive into delves, stumble upon quests and attempt a lot of them, and gather skyshards or lorebooks or whatever else. Just be aware that I did most of this using double-XP from the New Life Festival, and I found towards the end that I was running the XP-well dry with just the base game. (I only started trying out DLC areas once I'd gotten to level 50.) Note that I got most of my XP through questing and exploration; it'd be theoretically possible to sit there and craft your way up to 50, but I was curious how much general content I'd be able to do.

It was interesting. I was, for most intents and purposes, locked off the main and faction questlines, albeit able to dabble here-and-there in the latter. The end result was that I pretty much lost all sense of direction. The flipside is that it freed me up to go anywhere, do anything. I got used to questlines not always having much of a conclusion and sort of adopted the mindset of a wanderer occasionally helping out. Jumped about a little and wasn't too certain on where I'd end up next. I did heroic things, but I wasn't the hero; indeed, the whims of other heroes charging about could have an immense impact on my gameplan.

I also had a lot less loot, obviously. I'm wearing the Servant's Robe disguise there, because my actual armour is pretty patchwork. Maybe not an experience I'd wholeheartedly recommend, overall, but an interesting enough change-of-pace for a gimmick alt.

The end

And that about wraps things up. I uploaded my character to ESO-Database and, while I'm not sure the stats are entirely accurate, you can see their quest history here; that'll give you some hints on what I was able to accomplish and what I wasn't. My Achievements are here.

If you see me in-game feel free to give me a /wave. Just don't invite me on a raid. My damage-per-second is terrible.

Originally posted to Reddit in 2019, followed by a post on the official ESO forums. It's actually a little outdated: kills are now tracked account-wide, across characters!

[keelywolfe]

FIC: The Rose and the Thorn: Chapter 5 (Mafia AU)

Summary:   So where was Blue while Rus was off getting kidnapped and how did he end up with Red, anyway?

Tags: Spicyhoney, Mafia AU, Flower Shop AU, Violence, First Meetings

Warnings: Some violence. A wee bit of unwanted touching and some innuendo.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

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Read it here!

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It was barely afternoon and Blue was already tired. He’d spent the morning coaxing a variety of flowers in their garden into bloom, gently forcing them to quickly travel through their growth cycles until they were ready to be cut and added to a bouquet.

Normally, their garden had a rigid schedule to keep from pushing the plants too much; stimulated growth could only go so far, after all. But losing most of their stock was forcing Blue to abandon it. Using so much magic in such a short amount of time was exhausting and when Blue parked in their assigned spot, the elderly van wheezing to a stop, he took a moment to sit in the sagging driver’s seat, ignoring the spring pushing through the cheap vinyl to poke at his coccyx as he closed his sockets for just a moment.

There really wasn’t time for a rest. Papy was waiting on these flowers, likely working hard since this morning readying the baskets for Blue’s delivery. There were funerary floral arrangements to be made, birthday gifts, romantic gestures, and every one of them added desperately needed profits back into their coffers.

Rest would have to wait. Instead, Blue pawed through the glove box, past the yellowed owner’s manual and an odd collection of fast food napkins to find a granola bar in its depths. Tastelessly stale, the chocolate chips cast in a white haze and Blue ate it anyway, chewing without tasting. It would help revive his magic and he’d be able to paste on his sunniest smile for Papyrus when he got inside.

His little brother was working so terribly hard, so many long hours on his own. Blue’s soul was so tight with pride, it felt as if it were ready to explode and shower his Papy with it, even as he kept the underling guilt hidden away, tucked back where his brother wouldn’t have to deal with it.

This was his fault. Papy shouldn’t have to deal with the brunt of the stress. He’d abandoned his own faint hopes for college to help Blue with the business, worked hard without a fuss. He learned to make flower arrangements from bouquets to corsages, how to run the registers, how to smile and charm their customers into buying more than they intended. This was Blue’s dream, not his, but he’d thrown himself in entirely, and Blue didn’t want him to know about the bills rubberstamped in red ‘past due’ ink. He didn’t want Papy to worry about their dwindling savings.

The insurance money would help, quite a bit if the representative he spoke to yesterday was correct, and they only needed to last the few weeks until it came.

A little hard work hadn’t dusted him yet, Blue told himself as he got out of the van and retrieved the first heavy bucket of cut flowers; lilies, for the funeral arrangements. A few weeks more wasn’t going to do any harm.

When he got to the shop door, for a moment Blue didn’t understand why it wouldn’t push open. Then he realized the open sign was off, the door was locked tight. The shop was closed, on a Friday afternoon when all the lovesick swains got their paychecks and were ready to pick up flowers in hopes of a romantic weekend and they’d be purchasing their bouquets elsewhere because his shop was closed.

Later, Blue would be ashamed his first instinct was largely irritated; had his silly brother forgotten to leave the door open for customers, they did have some stock! But that was not for more than a startled second, long enough for him to see the broken mug scattered across the stoop.

He leaned down to pick up a shard of the plastic, absently noting the tremble in his hand. It had been his brother’s favorite travel mug, a silly thing he’d gotten it at the thrift shop, leftover from some Halloween or another. The skeletons that danced around it would dance no more, the piece Blue held had lost its legs, and he took very little comfort in the fact there was no dust on the broken pieces because there was a single splotch of redness, a near-perfect circle of dried marrow.

Someone had hurt his brother, Humans, perhaps the same ones from yesterday and how had he ever believed in his naiveté that Humans would welcome them to the surface with open arms.

“now thems some pretty flowers you got there.”

Startled, Blue turned towards that voice, ready to tell them with as much forced politeness as he could muster that they were currently closed, and would the police even come if he called them, would they even care, who else could he possibly—

Then he caught sight of who spoke, and his soul felt as if it froze right in his rib cage, icy fingers digging in and oh, his little brother was in far worse trouble than Blue could have ever guessed.

He’d never met the Fells, neither on the Surface or below it. The Underground was a big place and the madscrabble life they’d grown accustomed to in Ebott did not lend itself to making new acquaintances. Not that Blue frequented the sorts of places where one might meet the Fells. No, he’d never met them, but he knew them by reputation. Thugs, whispered along the gossip-line, loan sharks, racketeers, even murderers said the quietest rumors, though not for very long.

This one could only be the older brother, Red. He stood only a bit taller than Blue and nearly twice as broad, with little resemblance past the fact they were both skeleton Monsters. His teeth curved into a jagged, shark grin, unlike Blue’s blunted smile and his eye lights were the burning crimson of an ember. His dark expensive suit with its rich scarlet shirt boasted of handsewn silks, and the fingers holding his cigar were circled with gold rings whose stones were too garishly large to be anything but real. His other hand was tucked into his pocket, oddly threatening for its nonchalance. Flanking him were two large Dog monsters, white on white ties and shirts, and Blue was suddenly struck by the absurdity of it all.

His little flower shop along with his brother had somehow been transported into some ridiculous Godfather-esque alternate, only proved by Red exhaling a billowing cloud of smoke as he said, “but it looks t’me like you’ve got a lil’ trouble bloomin’. lose somethin’? or mebbe someone.”

Inappropriate laughter bubble up, choked away, and Blue heard himself say, “I suppose I did.”

Red nodded as if Blue had offered not a stream of wisdom, but an entire glistening fountain. He started pulling his hand out of his pocket and Blue tensed, angel-only knew what thoughts about guns or knives shooting through his mind. But that hand was empty and Red only plucked one of the lilies from the bucket, running a razor-tipped finger along the satiny petals.

“Are you here to help with that? My…my missing person?” Blue asked at last. Not that he wanted to, he didn’t, but his options were few, any choices dwindled away. There was no one else to ask and with every second that went by, the danger his brother was in could only be growing. This had something to do with yesterday, Blue was sure of it, and he couldn’t even imagine what sort of trouble his sweet, funny brother had gotten into to cause all this.

Rumor had it Red never broke his word, that he had a twisted way of keeping it, a monkey’s paw wish. But for his brother, Blue would have bargained with the devil incarnate.

He wondered if he was.

“could be,” Red said idly. He twirled the flower stem between his fingers. “you got quite the green thumb, dontcha.”

“Yes?” Blue agreed, warily. He’d heard that before when they’d first come to the Surface, and his refusal to grow drugs had been a costly one, losing him possible allies. He wondered dismally what conundrum he was about to be balanced on for his brother’s safety.

“hm.” Red gave the lily a considering sniff, “might have to see if we can drive your posy sales a lil’ better, after we get past this oopsie daisy.”

Blue didn’t know what that meant but he was sure he wouldn’t like it.

“tell ya what,” Red gave him a conspiratorial wink and a finger gun, as if they were close pals and not a known criminal chatting with a simple florist, “me and the neighborhood watchdogs here, we’ll take care of it. you hang tight and we’ll get your bro back to you.”

Blue didn’t ask how they knew it was his brother. He didn’t ask a thing. He simply crossed his arms over his chest and said, “No, I don’t think so. I’m coming with you.”

That earned him a deep frown, “baby blue, i think mebbe you didn’t hear me so good.”

“I heard you perfectly well,” Blue told him and didn’t bother with any astonishment over what this…this person might know or not know about him. Nicknames and whatnot were not important. Papy was. “And I don’t care. I’m coming with you and I’m staying until I see my brother.”

A low growl came from one of the Dogs, silenced instantly when Red held out a hand. Those jagged teeth curved into an unpleasantly wide grin, “you think so, eh. and if i say no?”

It was not particularly difficult to work up some tears, they’d been hovering thickly beneath the surface the moment Blue found that broken coffee mug. He let them loose now, wailing as loudly as he could, “How can you leave me like this!” Fat droplets rolled down his cheeks, huge sobs gasped out, “and with a baby on the way?”

Red froze, his cigar drooping in his teeth as his grin fell away so abruptly Blue half-expected it to shatter on the stoop with the remains of Papy’s coffee mug. All around them the people on the sidewalk who’d been previously been looking discreetly away were abruptly watching with avid interest, aghast and greedily outraged as Blue wept loudly, one hand pressed against his apron to his belly over their nonexistent child. A few people were shuffling their feet as if considering playing the hero, weighing their odds against a cruel wealthy ex-boyfriend and his friends casting aside a tiny pregnant clerk.

“get in the fucking car,” Red muttered. He tossed the lily on the ground, trodding on it as he turned to do the same. Blue tried not to see the mangled flower as a metaphor and followed, hopping through the open door that one of the Dogs closed firmly behind him.

He settled into the enormous leather seat, buckling his seatbelt to at least make it more difficult if Red decided it might well be easier to simply shove him out of the car on the next block.

Not that Red seemed to be considering it. He was rummaging through a small bar installed in the side door, pouring a finger’s worth of what was probably very expensive whiskey into a crystal glass, knocking it back in a single gulp. He poured another then settled back in his seat with it, crimson eye lights targeting Blue.

“you got some balls, kid,” he grumbled. It almost sounded grudgingly admiring but there wasn’t time to worry about that.

“Can you promise me you’ll get my brother back to me? Safe and sound,” Blue hastened to add.

“sure, toots. we’ll get your bro back in mostly one piece,” Red said. He grinned again, all jaggedly sharp teeth as Blue’s gorge rose, purring out, “nah, he’ll be all safe and sound. got someone on it right now, and not one of the usual mutts, neither. he’ll get your bro. meantime, we got some things we can discuss, you and me.”

Blue lifted his chin defiantly. He’d known what he was getting into. If there was a price to be paid for saving his brother, Blue would offer his own soul on a silver platter. But there was no reason for Papy to know. “I’m sure we do, so long as it’s a private discussion between us.”

Those crimson eye lights gleamed and Blue could very nearly hear the invisible chains of fate closing around him. “good boy. now, let’s talk about you, baby blue. how’s business?”

-fin

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