#cannot tell if it feels more like slaying a hydra

[bexiguess]

reporting pornbots is a herculean, if not sisyphean, task

[giorno-plays-piano]

Remain Nameless

Part III

Pairing: swordsman!Bucky Barnes x mage!reader

Warnings: darkfic, stalking, descriptive violence, gore, near-death experience, possible noncon/dubcon in the future (but I swear it’s not as scary as it sounds)

Words: 2.7k

Summary: You could give up literally anything just to see this war-crazed psycho getting hurt, but, perhaps, he isn’t crazy as you think, and you aren’t the sort of person who enjoys others’ pain.

Part I

Part II

__________

It's always late when you crawl out of the hospital into the dormitory just next to it, rubbing your neck tiredly. You are so hungry you feel you could eat a whole sheep in one bite, but you have no strength to cook whatsoever. Maybe some of your neighbors won't mind to share something, you hope.

"You look like you came back from the dead," Shuri, a young talented blacksmith tells you when you land on the wooden bench in a common kitchen. "I have some pie leftovers. Wanna have a piece?"

"Bless you, cutie," you put your head on the table, growling from the ache spreading throughout your overworked body. "It's a pity I can't marry a pretty young lady who will cook for me every day."

She raises a brow at you, "Can't you, actually? You just don't seem to want it. But why don't you find yourself a nice guy who will cook for you just the same, mm?"

You stiffle a sarcastic laugh. "Yeah, right."

Truth be told, your marriage prospects were pretty much nonexistent at this point.

When Shuri sets plats on the table, you listen to her sweet chatting about the new set of swords the magistrate commissioned her to make - she is so passionate about what she does - and a new magic stones mine opened nearby, and then the girl announces proudly she has finally finished working on metal prosthetics. She tells you something about them being light and much more comfortable to use comparing to the wooden ones, and for a second you think back to Barnes' missing arm and wonder if a new metal prosthetic would make his life easier.

Maybe, but over your dead fucking body. A man who nearly turned you into a cripple does not deserve a prosthetic. You would very much prefer to see him struggling to use his sword, but the bastard will surely find a way to fight just as easily with one hand as he did with two.

Shuri's cheese pies are always good, but you cannot really feel the taste with thoughts of James filling your head. You hate him. Oh God, you hate him so much this feeling takes all the space in your chest, and it starts to hurt all over again. But the worst thing is that you do not feel happy about him being injured. It does not make you even the slightest bit satisfied when it should. Why are you not happy? He deserves it. He only lost a left arm when Tony Stark died out there. You should be extatic Barnes is hurt.

But you are not. His injury does not make anything easier for you. And God, you are repulsed something in you tells you to bring him a prosthesis, but this irritating voice only sounds louder and louder in your head.

Why should you do it? Regardless of whether Barnes really slayed Hydra or not, he does not deserve your help. Hell, he did not say he was sorry even when he remembered it was you. Why should you be kind to him?

Because you are a good person, the voice inside your head says. Because regardless of how much of a monster James Barnes is, you are not the same. This is why you are better. This is the reason you are in the right and he is in the wrong.

"Do you have any finished samples?" You ask Shuri, hating yourself so much this very moment.

___________

You cannot thank her enough when Shuri agrees to deliver the perfectly crafted metal prosthesis to the hospital early in the morning by herself because you better risk fighting a grifon on your own than let Barnes know it was you who helped him. If you are being entirely honest with yourself, you do not feel even the slightest bit of satisfaction from doing this. Barnes is a bastard, and it would do him good to finally feel what it is like to lose a limb. But you still instruct Shuri what to say when delivering the prosthesis before leaving for the hospital yourself.

Luckily, you do no run into the man again during the day, and going through the very same routine helps to ease your nerves as you cast spells over and over again until you finally land on the sofa in the doctor's lounge, Lu already waiting for you with a cup of herbal tea.

"If I see one more asshole asking for lamia's poison antidote, I swear I will curse them to go bald," she grumbled, visibly tired, stretching her legs with a grunt.

That forces a laugh out of you: the magistrate forbade anyone to visit the caves where a large lamia tribe resided, but some mercenaries still think they could try their luck. It backfires most of the time, of course, and today is one of those days where you have to cure lilac-skinned people slowly turning to stone.

"I wonder when we are going to catch a break," you sigh, and Lu looks up to you, suprised.

"Haven't you heard? Since our saviour Barnes managed to kill Hydra, we have just two weeks left until they'll let most of us go. That is, unless you are really inclined to stay in this hole," she wiggles her dark bushy eyebrows, and you can't help but giggle.

Well, you thought it was gonna happen soon, anyway. You certainly have no plans to settle down in this godforsaken town, but the thought of moving somewhere in just two weeks unnerves you, nonetheless.

Perhaps it is not a bad thing. You need a break. You spent so much time pouring whatever you have into healing spells you have nearly forgotten what it is like to have a social life. Aside from Lu, you don't really speak to anyone, unless it is job-related. You don't remember when was the last time you bought yourself a new dress or visited a tea-shop. Hell, the last time you danced was probably when your grandmother hosted a ball once you turned 20 years of age, and it seemed like a lifetime ago.

You rub your stiff neck, "Maybe I will visit my grandmother. She keeps sending me letters she wants to see me."

"Heartless creature. When was the last time you saw her?"

You snort at Lu's remark. It must have been a couple of years at the least, and you should have really visited your grandma sooner. Well, maybe now was the perfect time to do it untill you decide where you are going next. You know the old woman will try to marry you off again, but you doubt she will have much luck: she never does with this, really. Most aristocratic families she is aiming for prefer noble daugthers who sew and sing and paint, not mages who can curse their husbands with a second nose or donkey's ears if they cheat.

"You coming back to your family in the capital?" You ask, hoping to exchange letters with the woman you grew close to over the last couple of months.

"Yeah. I'm thinking of replacing my good-for-nothing brother as the next family head. Imagine, his wife wrote to me not so long ago to help her kick him out of the mansion." Lu smirks, and you both start laughing: her brother married a woman who could make iron bend with her glare, and with her support Lu had a good chance to become the matriarch of the family. Her throwing her pompous older brother out of his house would be a sight to behold.

You quietly admit you will miss her and sigh again, rubbing your temples tiredly. Maybe your next destination after your grandmother's mansion should be the capital.

____________

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[janeykath318]

BuckyNat Fantasy AU

For @green-angst-and-ham

“How much farther?” 

“Not much,” answered Lady Natasha softly. “Quietly now, Sir Steven. We cannot afford to alert the sentries just yet.”

Steven nodded and followed her silently, leather boots making very little sound as the pair crept toward the lair of the evil Hydra sorcerers, who were finally going to meet their doom today. 

The land had suffered greatly from their cruelty and inhumane magic and thousands had died at their hands or killed by the fire of their fierce black dragon, who periodically emerged from the Serpent Mountain to wreak havoc.

Ostensibly, Natasha and Steven were here to slay the dragon, but their true mission was rather different, for the Hydra dragon was no natural dragon, he was a man under a powerful spell, captured years ago in battle and now forced to do their bidding. 

Steven had been Sir James’s close companion and had grieved his friend’s supposed death for years before he had met Natasha and she had told him of her own captivity under Hydra and that she had known and loved James before they’d turned him into their puppet. 

Natasha had spent long years searching for answers in dusty magical tomes and seeking out the most renowned Wizards in the land in hope of learning how to break the spell that held James captive. 

Finally, she had succeeded in finding it and together with Sir Steven, was nearing the end of her quest. Her heart pounded as they drew closer to the entrance to the cave where the dragon was chained. Several stern looking guards were posted outside, but they would soon pose no threat. 

Natasha looked at Steven. 

“It is time,” she told him. “Remember, it is crucial that you not interrupt me when I start the ritual, no matter how perilous things become, do you understand?” 

Steven nodded somberly. The risk they were taking was very high and there was a good chance neither would survive, but it was one they were both very willing to take. 

“I understand.” 

“Then, let the rescue commence,” Natasha said, giving him a confident smile. 

Stepping in front of the cave mouth, she waved her hands and cast a spell that put all the guards into an enchanted sleep. Steve bound them and dragged them away where they wouldn’t be any bother. Step one completed, they entered the cave and Natasha led the way through its winding, twisting passages until they reached the largest chamber where the shape of a huge beast could be seen, chained to the wall and deep in slumber. 

The dragon was huge and fearsome looking, with sleek black wings and scales and deadly claws and a large horned head with flared nostrils that gave out puffs of smoke as he slept. As they grew closer, Natasha could see he looked rather thin and gaunt and the iron chain was digging into his neck cruelly. His left front leg appeared to be made entirely of silver. 

She saw Steve’s mouth tighten in anger at the sight and her own heart ached thinking about the mistreatment he’d suffered from those brute sorcerers. Normally, he’d be surrounded by his handlers, but they were currently being engaged in battle by The wizards and knights of the Golden Shield. 

Taking a small bottle out of her pouch, Natasha carefully opened it and let the contents waft around the room as she began speaking the words of the spell that would break James’s enchantment. 

The dragon began to stir and large red eyes glared at them suspiciously as he sat up on his haunches. Steve moved to stand closer to Natasha, ready to throw up his magical shield of protection, should The Dragon breathe fire at them. Natasha calmly continued chanting, words flowing effortlessly from her lips. It had taken her months to memorize it all and it would likely take at least ten minutes to cast. 

What she had not told Steven was that the spell was so powerful, it could very well drain her life force and kill her by the time she finished. Stephen Strange had almost refused to even give her the formula, so concerned was he for her safety. 

What did her safety matter while the man she loved continued to suffer so? 

She swallowed the lump in her throat and kept speaking. 

The dragon was growling at them now, eyes blazing and mouth opening. Steve threw up the protective shield just in time as a blast of fire burst toward them. Natasha held her ground, sweat trickling down her neck as she recited the spell. 

The dragon continued to blast fire at them and grasp with his claws, but due to his chains, he couldn’t get around Steven’s shield and growled angrily before giving up and sitting back down.

Feeling herself weakening every minute, Natasha steeled herself to finish her mission, Steve standing silently beside her. 

As she uttered the final words, she pulled out a blue powder and threw it into the astonished dragon’s face. 

A piercingly bright light appeared and Natasha sank to her knees, feeling as though she’d been kicked in the chest. As she tried to get her breath back, she heard Steven gasp and looked up to see the light dissipate and the dragon gone, leaving the huddled body of a man where he’d been. 

Steve reached him first, but only because Natasha could only crawl in her weakened state. He broke the chains off of James and began looking his unconscious friend over worriedly. Natasha’s eyes filled with tears as she recognized James’s human face, bruised and battered, dark brown hair falling past his chin. The rest of his currently bare body was littered with various scars and marks from tortures she didn’t want to even begin to imagine. 

“Oh, James,” she said, pressing a kiss to his cheek, and muttering a quick healing spell, forgetful of her lessened powers.  

The last thing she saw before she blacked out was Steve’s panicked face.

She woke up in James’s arms, with his big beautiful blue eyes looking down at her with love and worry in them. 

“Natasha,” he murmured. “You saved me. How…..”  

She rested her hand on his face and enjoyed its warmth, relief and joy coursing through her. She had her James back!

“With a lot of help and practice,” she told him. “It was a complicated spell to master.”

“Without doubt,” he agreed, placing his right hand over hers. “You nearly killed yourself for me. Good thing Steve here had some healing potions.” 

He gestured towards Steve, who was standing guard some yards away to give them space.

“It was worth it, James,” she said tenderly. “I love you and I never stopped.” 

James’s expression twisted as he fought back tears. 

“Natasha, my love, I longed for you for so long. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.” 

His voice broke and he buried his face in her hair, breathing hard. 

“I’m sorry it took me so long.” She told him. “Those Hydra dogs made it very difficult to undo their enchantments, curse them to the black pits of Hell.” 

Her vehement tone had him smiling again and he helped her sit up.

“Do you feel able to walk?” He asked. “We should probably make ourselves scarce before any of them come back.”

The healing potion seemed to have been very effective, because Natasha found she could indeed stand and walk, if a little shakily.

“Yes, but James,” she asked, noticing his silver left arm, “what happened to your arm?”

He gave a grimace and pulled on a tunic Steve had given him. In one of his more optimistic moments, Steve had decided that human Bucky would likely need clothing once he had been transformed and had packed a whole set.

“Happened during the early days as a dragon before the enchantment had been perfected. I transformed back into a human while flying and nearly died in the fall, which cost me my arm. For a long time, I wished I HAD died.”

Natasha’s heart ached for him again and she saw Steve visibly wince at his friend’s words. Leaning up on tiptoes, she took his face in her hands and kissed him. James seemed surprised, but definitely returned the kiss eagerly. 

“There,” she said, after they’d managed to pull apart. “Feel a little better now?”

James outright grinned at her teasing tone and she basked in the glow of it, not having seen of of his becoming smiles in way too long. 

“With this kind of treatment, I’ll be good as new in no time,” he declared, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. There’s no telling how long their flirting would have gone on had Steve not given a polite cough.

“Loathe as I am to interrupt this happy reunion, we really do need to be going, friends,” he reminded them, though his own eyes were sparking with delight. “It would be best if we put on our Cloaks of Concealment.”

James and Natasha took his advice, and soon three grey-clad individuals were stealthily exiting the caves. No one spoke until they had managed to leave the Serpent Mountain far behind and then James heaved a sigh of relief. 

“Thank you,” he said quietly to both of them. 

Natasha squeezed his hand in response and Steve said firmly, “You know I’d do anything for you, Bucky.” 

“I remember,” James said fondly. “How many times did you go off and fight something well beyond your strength because it looked askance at me? Does he still do that?”

“Less often now that he has a wife and child,” Natasha informed him. “Lady Margaret has been wonderful in talking him out of overly reckless ventures. And when she can’t, she usually joins him.”

Steve blushed and James turned to him, looking downright delighted. 

“Lady Margaret! Really? My heartiest congratulations, Steve! So You finally got up the courage to speak to her!”

Steve mumbled again and started walking faster to avoid his friend’s questions. 

“Oh, they’re an absolute delight,” Natasha told James, green eyes dancing with mirth. 

“I’m sure they are,” he agreed. “I have so much catching up to do, especially with you.”

He kissed her hand with a look that promised a lot more, and Natasha’s heart fluttered in a way it hadn’t in a very long time. Her James was finally free. 

[thewrongexecution]

thinkin’ ‘bout final fantasy

I go by Not The Author for exactly the reason that I ain’t no expert on any given work of fiction, but I do like to make connections what make me seem smart: an illusion, haphazardly crafted by incident accident and supplemented by precocious pretentiousness. All the same, here are some fun thoughts I had that you might also enjoy!

I do have a point, that I do get to. I feel like I should say that ahead of time, all things considered. Like, I can appreciate if you can’t appreciate a shaggy dog story? But there is a point to all this.

...Eventually.

Spoiler Warning:

Final Fantasies 1, 6, 7, 7R, 13 and 15

Content Warning:

Discussion of death

Cussin’

Length warning:

5621 words

13 sections

16 digressions

Let’s dig in.

- - - - -

Final Fantasy 1 was not my first Final Fantasy experience, but I think it was the first I ever played by myself? The remaster for the GBA, came bundled with FF2 on the same cart, which I played briefly but did not complete and do not remember, except that it had Cid.

FF1 doesn’t have a Cid, but I really loved the narrative anyway, straightforward as it was, because it was very specifically about spitting in the face of an uncaring god who would doom the world for a laugh. Take these chains that bind us to darkness and, though we be forgot to history, strangle with them that selfsame darkness to bring an end to its tyranny.

((it is a terrible curse, to love time travel. so many grand expectations, so few ever met. play ghost trick, chrono trigger, radiant historia, majora’s mask, outer wilds. have you any recs yourself, lemme know! I digress.

((I digress a lot, as I may have mentioned. they’ll be noted in parenthetical, like this.))

This is the foundation upon which Final Fantasy is built, and while any student of architecture could tell you of many and varied perfectly valid construction techniques, it resonates. Grappling with an immutable past to course-correct an uncaring future is, too, an apt description of personal growth; a theme as universal as being alive. And I, as an impressionable youth, ate that shit up.

((I assume I was young, at any rate. my love for time travel, be it era-spanning or moment-stretching, is, I suspect, not entirely coincidental to my terrible temporal memory.))

And that was the tale of the studio, too. Final Fantasy was so titled because, the story goes, the developers knew they would shutter if it didn’t make bank. Staring your imminent demise in the face, knowing your fate is doom, and giving it your all, all the same.

And then they made another twelve, plus two-and-a-half MMOs, and god knows how many mobile games and spin-offs, and now the Fantasy is that there could ever be a Final one. so say I: life parodies art.

((the half-an-MMO is FF14 1.0, which no longer exists and is a fascinating tale, a rally against bleak futures all its own. I’ll [link] Noclip’s three-part documentary covering the developer’s side of things, because that’s the one I’ve seen. there’s plenty other material to hunt down, though, if you wanna.))

- - - - -

Final Fantasy VII is a game about fate, too. Particularly Death, that most ultimate of fates. Tragic, to be sure; preventable, or at least delayable, in many cases; necessary, at times, for the growth of something new.

Unrelenting. Unstoppable. Inescapable.

Death, and the fights against it, take many forms. There are the fascist death squads that hunt down your ragtag band and any dissent against their cruel masters, but these will only truly stop by cutting off the hydra’s head and building an entirely new society; eight dudes and their dog, faced with a corporate private military, can survive but never win. There are such disasters as do slay that hydra, be they natural or man-made. There’s the space alien and the apocalypse it ushers. There’s literal illness and injury, physical or otherwise. There are the deaths of loved ones, friends and family, that lead to some subtler deaths within those that survive them. The deaths of relationships, by neglect or abandonment. The ideological deaths we inflict on ourselves, accepting ever-growing lesser evils in the name of some impossible ideal.

Every day, the person we were becomes the person we are, and soon, the person we are will give way to someone new, and this, too, is a sort of death. In this sense, we tally Cloud’s deaths at least five: failure to become a Soldier and rebirth in shame, the massacre of Nibelheim and rebirth in grief, arrival at Midgar and rebirth in delusion, his cratering at the Crater and rebirth in nihilism, and his death and rebirth in the Lifestream of Mideel.

((you could prolly hunt down another two if you wanna be cheeky, but I lack the knowledge, motive and patience. frankly, this whole thing is to create a leading line of logic and probably isn’t, uh. academically ethical? or whatever the term is. I’m not necessarily wrong, but I’m definitely scuttling nuance. oh well!))

Now, I say “rebirth,” because that’s how deaths of identity more-or-less work. There’s usually some new identity waiting in the wings to take over. And rebirth is itself a notable theme, inasmuch as it is one outcome of death. But death is oft more final than that, and what people do in its imminence and wake is key here, too. Wutai’s collapse into an insular tourist trap. Avalanche’s vengeful fervor, in general and post-plate drop. Bugenhagen trying to pass his knowledge on to Red. The whole party’s ongoing post-traumatic depressive episodes.

Ultimately, death is the inescapable fate of all things. It’s what we do, in light of that, that makes us who we are.

- - - - -

Final Fantasies 13 and 15 are the only modern Final Fantasies I’ve beaten, and I bring them up because both deal very prominently with fate and death, and as Square’s most recent mainline FF titles, Remake can’t exist without comparison to them. Here’s what I remember:

Final Fantasy 13 was a game I enjoyed. The stagger system mixed up my casual FF tradition of Get The Big Numbers by putting a prominent UI element onscreen that says You Can’t Get The Big Numbers Unless The Bar Is Full. Suddenly there’s a natural-but-enforced ebb and flow to combat built in, where you gotta juggle chip damage, survival, and crowd control while keeping resources enough to burst down a staggered foe, but maintain situational awareness to swap back into survival mode if you’re not gonna down your enemy, all in something close to real-time. Very obviously a direct precursor to the combat of Remake. I didn’t realize the depth of it, but it was still super fun.

People at the time didn’t like the linearity of the game and, I can see that in retrospect? I think it’s closer to, there weren’t breakpoints, there wasn’t variety. It was cutscenes, combat, and the stretches of land between them; the only real thing for the brain to get a workout on was the combat, and eating only one kinda food is gonna make that food taste bland.

((I didn’t mind, but I like idle games, and, also probably had depression around then. Take that how you will.))

The story, though, I loved. You got your uncaring gods forcing mortals to do their increasingly-impossible bidding, cursing them to agonized unlife if they take too long, and with blissful, beautiful death if they succeed. It sucks! And here you have a ragtag band of incidental idiots trying to rebel against a system that, actually, wants them to? Like that’s the plan? Have mortals kill god and summon the devil to destroy all life, because god, doesn’t.... like life anymore?

((The lore gets more than a little impenetrable, and I remember bouncing off it a couple times. The throughline of God Sucks And Makes Zombies was good though.))

The biblical parallels are obvious, and if they weren’t, the final boss’ design will clue you in, god that’s a good design. hang on I can add pictures and already tossed a spoiler warning, here, look at this:

(per the Final Fantasy Fandom Wiki [X])

That’s literally The Holy Trinity But A Sword The Size Of A Building. It’s perfect.

Anyway, I love this game, because the heroes win, which is what God wants, so in winning, they lose, as was fated to be, right? Fuck All That, say the lesbians from space australia, as they turn into satan and, as satan, stop God’s shitty metal moon from crashing into space australia and destroying all life.

((this awakened something in me, though, as is becoming a theme, I wasn’t aware of it at the time. actually hold up I’m gonna rewatch that sequence.

((yeah okay wow on review that was aggressively cheesy and had a whole bunch of weird emotional whiplash that just leaves a super-bad aftertaste. I don’t really like it as an experience, but big bazonga lesbian satan with arms for hair is still a look-and-a-half.))

The whole thing is not entirely unlike if meteor was also Midgar, and there’s more than a few points where I went, hang on, are they trying to evoke 7 here? “Lightning” is ex-military and bad at emotions, Sazh is a black dad w/ guns and emotional trauma and I love him, quirky pink healer girl who might be an alien is here, the game starts on a train and leads into a robot bug fight; obviously it’s not one-to-one but the connections are there for a brain like mine to make, and only more prominent for the fact that FF7 was the more satisfying game.

((I cannot speak to 13-2 or -3; 13-2 was fun up until the enemies were abruptly 30 levels higher than me, more or less a mandate by the game for me to do all the side content, which I was not on-board with. I skipped 13-3 entirely, especially when I learned the whole game is on a timer. did not and do not need that stress in my life.))

- - - - -

But okay, FF13 was “too linear” and wasn’t doing super great. Enter Final Fantasy Versus 13, by which I mean enter Final Fantasy 15 actually, we don’t need any more of this 13 crap. And once again, I enjoyed it! ...Right up until it was bad.

Final Fantasy 15 was not a finished game, and we know this for certain now, because all its DLC was to make it a finished game. At the time, though, there was uncomfortable and inconsistent story pacing, only one playable character, relatively sparse combat mechanics... but it was open-world, and hey, that’s what you wanted, right? open, non-linear environments? I picked it up because, Teleporting Swordsman With a Motorcycle Sword. I am of simple pleasures, and those are they.

Of the little I remember, one point that’s stuck with me is the sequence following the Leviathan fight. See, we’ve been talking about fate and destiny and how Final Fantasy likes to spite them. Here in 15, our main man Noctis doesn’t want the destiny he’s been burdened with, to Become The King and Save The World from the Coming Darkness, or whatever. He’d really rather be doing, anything else? like hanging out with his buddies or actually getting married or, I dunno, grieving the death of his father. Nope! You don’t get to do that. Go find the ghost armaments of your dead ancestors so you can ~saaave the wooorld!~ I would have been in college around then, so, eminently relatable.

Now, on this journey, you meet a guy called Ardyn. He’s the sort of character that was built as an attack on me personally: sleazy, charming, possessing airs of casual familiarity with people he’s never met, kinda helps you out in tight spots, and also, by the way, vizier to the empire that killed your dad and wants you and your friends dead too. But not in the “secret good guy” way, he just likes fucking with you! he’s perfect.

Right up until the Leviathan fight.

See, Lunafreya, your betrothed--

((I’m so mad about this stupid, stupid garbage. I love Lunafreya on principle, but the game doesn’t bother to give her screentime. you only ever hear about her incidentally, which can be cool if you then meet the character and get to compare/contrast what you’ve heard, but the initial release only has her show up for this one chapter, and your party doesn’t really get to interact with her that much.))

Your betrothed is here and she’s some symbol of the peoples’ hope, right? she’s got light magic or something, and can actually commune with the gods. the gods are on your side, but you can’t actually understand a word they say, but she can, and that’s sick as hell. anyway.

You lose the fight against Leviathan, because you’re a shitty emo teen who doesn’t know how to use your ghost swords, and she got beat up earlier when Levi got all pissy at being summoned. And then Ardyn shows up in his magitek dropship.

Now earlier, Ardyn had Luna as his captive, completely at his mercy, and right now, he who would be king of kings, destined to save the world from darkness, is clutching at rock in a hurricane, beaten, wounded and dying.

Of the two, which do you think he stabs to death?

if you thought, “the protagonist, which will allow him to win, and subvert Final Fantasy’s themes of defying fate by having the villain be the one to do it, forcing everyone else to scramble for some alternate solution and deal with the fallout,” congratulations! You win disappointment, because that idea’s cool as hell and they didn’t. fucking. Do it.

((Ardyn, before this, had given me major Kefka vibes, and thinking on it now, the world descending into darkness in the 15 we never had could have played with even deeper parallels to FF6... but I never played 6, and that FF15 doesn’t exist, so... I’ll leave that analysis to better scholars.))

now, with the benefit of hindsight, that was never going to happen. too long in development hell, game had to ship, had no time or budget for mid-game upheaval. but at the time? made me lose any interest I had in Ardyn, made me mad at the developers for passing up on fulfilling the themes their series had explored in past, made me almost stop playing the game. I’m still mad about it for crying out loud!

((thinking about it gets me tensed up, coiled, with that sort of full-body thrum that’s best conveyed with letters that jitter around. best I can do here is bold italics, but it doesn’t have the right energy. it’s a fleeting feeling, but when it’s here? god. given the men that wrote this scene I would fight all of them and win.

((inhale...

((exhale...

((and move on.))

We, the player, never really meet Luna, so there’s no real... impact, no substance to it. It’s sad, but impersonal. villain kills damsel to inflict manpain on hero. that’s it. we’ve seen this song and dance before.

But kill Noctis? The character the player’s been controlling all this time, who they know intimately? Now it’s personal. Now your party members’ grief is a mirror to your own. And now you get to play as Luna, maybe? give the game time to flesh her out, have her bond with your old companions over their shared grief, and maybe use her connections and public speaking skills to rally the people of the world, in a perhaps-vain attempt to resist the oncoming darkness, while simultaneously using that public-facingness to drive her to hide her own fear and hopelessness...? That’s a complex character ripe for drama and tragedy right there! And then her, at the head of a story about people coming together to solve a global calamity themselves, rather than await their appointed savior?

Even then, but especially now... You can see the appeal, right?

- - - - -

Lemme step back and zoom out for a moment, because there’s one more kind of Fate to discuss before I finalize my thesis. Yes, I promise, there is a point besides being mad at FF15, this is still ultimately about Remake. Bear with me a little longer.

See, Remake’s premise is that it’s not quite FF7, but that itself is predicated on Remake being essentially FF7. Certain things must be in the Remake series, or it will cease to be the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series. The developers have gone on record saying as much, that they’ll still cover the thrust of the original, and that makes a lot of sense from a development standpoint. Building on an existing framework saves loads of time, and lets them focus on details as they have in Remake.

((I think they've already set up an in-universe justification for this, too. The party may have defeated the Whispers at Midgar, but the Whispers are the will of the planet. The only way to truly defeat them would be to defeat the planet itself, which: kind of the goal of the villains!

((a bit ironic, because the villains are the Whispers’ means to keep manipulating events. Remake backends a very large portion of the plot, and I don’t think Rufus seeing the Whispers is a throwaway detail. The party chases Sephiroth by chasing Shinra in the original, so even if the party has shaken free of the direct influence of the Whispers, manipulating Shinra should in turn manipulate the party.

((on top of which, Rufus prizes power, and the power to change or control fate-- something both the party and Sephiroth have seized-- would be as enticing as anything.))

But this begs the question: How much of Final Fantasy 7 is necessary before it stops being Final Fantasy 7? Do you need all nine characters? The Weapons? Rideable chocobo? Breedable chocobo? What about locations? Can you drop the Gold Saucer? or Mount Condor? or Mideel? How many minigames am I holding up? These are necessary questions, but so is this:

“Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?”

- - - - -

Now, the phrase “emotional impact” is necessarily kind of nebulous and subjective, so lemme dig into that a little bit.

The first significant chunk of the original FF7 takes place entirely in Midgar, which is one huge city. Every screen is densely packed; movement is typically constrained to narrow corridors and industrial crawlspaces. The whole world is deeply claustrophobic and visually hostile, by design.

This is FF7 for the first few hours, before a motorcycle chase deposits you outside city limits, and then... you hit the world map, and everything changes. The world is rendered in three whole dimensions, now! (Then, a technological marvel in its own right.) There’s a sky! There’s a horizon! Grass, mountains, the ocean!

Boundless, terrifying freedom.

From a mechanical standpoint, there’s only one real destination, an A-to-B with random encounters before a small enclosure with an inn and shops, no real change from what you’ve already been doing. But the mood? Everything’s fresh and new, now. Everything’s an unknown.

So, how do we do that again, two-and-a-half decades on?

Let’s say, something like this: Remake 2 starts with Cloud and Sephiroth en route to Nibelheim. For new players, this provides immediate intrigue: why are these mortal enemies hanging out in a truck? how did they get here, where are they going? For veterans, it’s familiar: oh, we’re in the flashback sequence.

For both, it provides mechanical familiarity. We just finished last game hanging out in Midgar, a bunch of town squares with shops and cutscenes connected to hazardous corridors. Well, Nibelheim’s a town with shops and cutscenes, connected to a monster-filled anthill and capped with a reactor. We know this. We’ve done this. We can do this again.

And when the flashback ends, we’re in Kalm. Another town, maybe with sidequests this time; Midgar looming in the distant skybox as a reminder of how far we’ve come.

And then you leave Kalm, and the camera zooms out, and out, and out...

Remake is essentially 7, and you can’t have the impact of 7′s world map reveal if Remake isn’t functionally open-world too. Square has plenty of experience with open environments, however successful their more recent attempts have been; I’m confident that the have the ability, at least, to craft an expansive world that feels appropriate to FF7.

((I’d like to take a moment here to talk about FF14, which mixes both compact twisty dungeons and wide-open overworld zones, and is necessarily wildly successful to still be operating as an MMO... but though I have played it briefly, I don’t claim knowledge sufficient to go in-depth. The point is, Square not only can make a game like that, they have, and are, and apparently possess non-zero competency. I have worries, but I’m not worried, if that makes sense.))

So, can you recreate a given kind of emotional impact? Yeah!

Can scenes from the original Final Fantasy 7 be rendered into a new context, more-or-less as they were? Absolutely!

Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?

- - - - -

Aerith dies.

If you opened this post and didn’t know that, well. There were spoiler warnings up at the top, the game’s more than two decades old, and the spoiler itself is basically a piece of pop-culture, up there with space dad and wizard killer. There’re probably plenty of people who know next-to-nothing about Final Fantasy 7 except that Aerith dies.

Everyone knows because, at the time, it was so big a thing. This was a title that Square hyped to heaven and back to push JRPGs into mainstream western markets, and it worked. And this was before major death was so common and arbitrary as it is today; even now, Game of Thrones and its ilk are a relative rarity. The death of a protagonist or love interest wasn’t a new thing for games, or any media really, but usually you knew it was coming, or it served some purpose. Aerith’s death was sudden, arbitrary, you’re almost immediately thrown into a boss fight so you don’t even have time to process it right away, and it’s the first stone in an avalanche of other pointless arbitrary tragedy. It’s an obvious narrative setup for the endgame confrontation with Sephiroth; instead, Cloud has a breakdown, Meteor happens, and now there’s an entire Disk 2.

Fandom has always been fandom, even before the continuous immediacy of the modern internet, but... people wrote letters to Square, and got sad on message boards. There’s an entire subset of forum signatures, back when those were a thing, that you could sort as “people fucked up over Aerith dying.” And again, this was the world. Not just Japan, or Asia, but everyone.

((Or, everyone with the finances to have a PS2 and/or an internet connection. Gaming as a pastime remains way expensive, whether played or watched. But you know how it is.))

And that’s the problem with answering that question.

See, FF7 is a lot of things, but for better or worse, it is defined by Aerith’s death. It’s one of many factors, but you can’t... leave it out, right? or it wouldn’t be FF7 anymore.

Aerith dies in FF7, and everyone knows it.

- - - - -

But Remake has promised, repeatedly, that things will be different this time. Everyone is coming together to defy fate, and Cloud in particular is here to keep Aerith from dying. Bodyguard jokes aside, Cloud repeatedly has flashbacks (flashforwards?) to Aerith’s death and the events leading to it. When he meets her in the church, when they cross into Sector 6, twice in the final battle. Hell, the very first time they meet, Sephiroth taunts him about not being able to save her. Even from a metatextual standpoint, since everyone knows Aerith dies, that’s like, The Most Obvious Fate To Change.

If, after all that, Aerith still dies? It’s not just tragedy, at that point. That’s the developers, actively lying to the player about their intent in making this game series. That’s frustrating, and immersion-breaking, and when said death is likely to still have one or more entire sequels to come after? maybe not great for sales! I know I didn’t bother buying the complete edition of FF15; I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about a game that set up this cool possibility, and then just, failed to deliver on every count.

And, Remake is being made for two audiences. I’ve said “everybody knows Aerith dies,” but that’s not really true, is it? It’s been 23 years, after all. Remake could well be someone’s very first Final Fantasy experience. That’s why they’ve been telegraphing Aerith’s death so hard. Not everyone knows, but at least everyone can guess. Is it fair, then, to this new audience, with potentially no knowledge or understanding of the legacy of this flashy new action game, to foreshadow tragedy in the future, have everyone come together to say, We’re Going To Stop This, and then... not? Is that good writing? Is that satisfying? When this is a multi-game and potentially multi-console investment of time and money, is this, as a newcomer, a story you’d want to keep playing?

And then on top of that, it’s 2020.

I don’t mean that in the current-year-fallacy, “we’re better than this now” kind of way. Rather, the way I felt about Final Fantasy 15 is even more relevant now. People, in real life, are realizing that the powers-that-be are failing them, have failed them, have been failing them for far longer than twenty-three years. The people that already knew that are actually showing up for each other, to spite what felt and feels like inescapable fate and finding that, together, they might just be able to ruin God’s day.

Game development is, of course, its own whole beast, and projects in motion tend to stay in motion; deviating from a plan takes time and money that Square may be unwilling to spend. But, under current world circumstances: is making a game where the hero sets out to save one specific person from their fated death, and following that with a game where that one specific person dies anyway, aside from everything else, a good business decision?

- - - - -

So... Aerith, shouldn’t die, right...? But, FF7 requires Meteor, and so requires the Temple of the Ancients and the Black Materia. And, Meteor can only be stopped by Holy, so FF7 requires the Forgotten City.

FF7 is a tragedy. FF7 demands blood.

...Hey, actually, hold that thought. How come Cloud can remember Aerith dying in the first place? He’s not from the future, right? He’s got a connection to Sephiroth, who is from the future... and Sephiroth can manipulate his memories...? but, why would Sephiroth let him, or make him, remember that?

Hey, how come Zack is alive, but like, in the “narrative scope” sense? Wouldn’t his presence circumvent Cloud’s delusions about the Nibelheim incident?

Hey, how come Cloud had multiple big climactic Sephiroth confrontations at what’s essentially the end of the prologue, including one that mirrors the very end of the original FF7? Shouldn’t that still come at, like, you know. the end?

Hey, how come--

- - - - -

Remake has these... Callbacks? Refrains? Like my favorite, when Sephiroth throws a train-- you know, The Fate Metaphor-- at Cloud, who absolutely shreds the thing. Or, for a more direct example:

And it frequently uses these to show that people are changing, that things can change. You know, the whole Running Theme the game has going on.

Sephiroth gets a refrain, too.

At the start of the game (give or take a reactor), in his first real appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, makes sure Cloud hates him, and tells Cloud what he wants.

At the end of the game, in his last appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, tells Cloud what he wants, and makes sure Cloud hates him.

Structurally, these encounters more-or-less bookend the game; thematically, it doesn’t exactly indicate change. Barret may or may not have come around on Cloud, and his admission that Cloud is important to him after all is, itself, important. Cloud, on the other hand, was always going to defy Sephiroth. He stands resolute, now, ready to fight rather than flee, but apathy was never on the table.

Now, Sephiroth’s whole Thing is psychologically manipulating Cloud to get what he wants, and as part of that, what Sephiroth wants is usually not what he says he wants.

All throughout the original FF7, Sephiroth riled up Cloud so that Cloud would pursue and defy him, culminating first in the Black Materia incident, and then again in the Forgotten City. None of the Sephiroth clones could survive the trip through the Northern Crater, so Sephiroth had to lure Cloud, with the Black Materia, to him, and then also convince Cloud to give up the Black Materia of his own accord. Mind control, memory manipulation and illusions were involved, but if Sephiroth could maintain those indefinitely, he probably just. Would have done that instead. Way easier,

The point is, in Remake, in addition to all the intermittent retraumitization sprinkled throughout the game, Sephiroth goes out of his way twice to directly ask Cloud, “hey, you hate me, right?” And, as part of that question, he tells Cloud, “this is what I want.” And Cloud? He hates Sephiroth, and will do his damnedest to keep Sephiroth from getting what he wants.

So. What does Sephiroth... say he wants?

- - - - -

One last aside before we cap off: This post would not exist without the valiant efforts of one Maximilian_dood. His devotion to the series kept myself and many others engaged and excited and, frankly, hopeful, in the leadup to the release of Remake, and his correlations between the rest of the FF7 series and Remake were enlightening and entertaining.

and had he not the gall to identify defying fate as a device to make aerith’s death more tragic, I would never have been angry enough to write this.

((I know, I know. Gaming and streaming and lit analysis are all hard individually, and I don’t begrudge losing one for the other two. And it was a first playthrough! I might have seen these lines sooner than some, but collating all this info was certainly not instantaneous. And Square can be hack writers at times-- see again my rant on FF15-- so even then, I can’t discount the possibility.

((but, still.

((Really?))

So, while I would like to believe that I have, by now, made my thesis on Remake’s narrative direction abundantly clear, here it is spelled out anyway:

- - - - -

At the bottom of the Forgotten City, at the shrine on the pillar in the lake, Cloud will find Aerith, who believes her fate immutable.

Sephiroth will descend, and Cloud will sacrifice himself, that Aerith should live.

This is Sephiroth’s plan.

- - - - -

Hey, thanks for reading this far! With my conversational tone and rambling tendencies, I’d have preferred to make this an audio post or, god forbid, a video essay, but I got a keyboard, and that’ll have to do. Diction is important to me, as the capitalization, italics and use of punctuation may have clued you in on, so... maybe you’ll get a dramatic reading sometime in the future? but, don’t bet on it.

Feel free to riddle me with questions, or point out inconsistencies with this big ol’ thing! I’m not exactly an expert, and I’m sure I glossed over, heavily paraphrased, completely forgot, intentionally ignored and/or aggressively misrepresented some stuff, but I love learning and teaching esoteric bullshit about The Vijigams. On that note, anything that sounds like it should be sourced is sourced from “I heard about it on social media or in a stream or youtube video one time, but if I actually had to hunt it down this whole thing would never see the light of day, and it has already been like three months,” which isn’t to excuse my lack of due diligence, but I do, lack diligence, so, tough.

Oh! but the Remake screens all come from [here]. Don’t care much for that splash screen, but, I Get It, so, whatever.

There were some other things I wanted to touch on but couldn’t really find a spot for. FF7 Remake as a metaphor for its own development, for example. Or, some of The Possibilities, like how Cloud’s death could very literally haunt Aerith, or how Remake sets up a more fleshed-out Midgar revisit that Cloud’s death specifically would make infinitely sadder.

On that note, if it was not yet obvious, I love speculation, and if they do go this direction, it’ll probably be their justification to go completely... off the rails? Remake only has to be FF7 until it doesn’t, after all. If there’s some wilder implications youall see for like... I dunno, a Jenova more fully-regenerated from also having Cloud’s cells back, getting into proper Kaiju-on-Kaiju battles with the Weapons, or anything like that? Feed me your brain juice, etc.

And, once more, for the road: this is interpretation; subjective, opinionated, and very much in denial of any kind of author-ity. Nor is this a claim on how things should be, or an assertion that this would be good or bad. Everything ultimately rests on Square's narrative design team and, we’ve touched on them already.

((but, for your consideration: I’m smart, and right))

Here’s hoping, whatever happens, we get the game we deserve.

thanks for coming to my ted talk, have a great day

[retroateez]

Prophecy - Chapter Two

hi again,,, i have nothing to say here lmao, except that i hope u enjoy it and if u do!! please let me know bc it rlly helps me out xx

Prophecy Masterlist

wc; 960

Being a thief was all fun and games, until you went and got yourself caught.

You got swept away in the moment, you supposed. Your practised hand reaching out to expertly snatch a fresh loaf of bread from the market stall, just like you had done plenty of times before. This time it was different, the merchant must've smelled something suspicious as he kept his wary eyes fixed on you. Something told you he wasn't a stranger to thieves. Still, you smiled sweetly at him, a trick you had learned from the older children in the village. He definitely knew you were up to something, bellowing out the second your hand darted out towards the edge of the table.

"Thief!" He screams, "nasty fucking creature!"

You had barely grasped your meal, before panic rattled through your bones and screeched at your brain to run. His outburst had attracted the attention of some nearby guards, all of which were slacking on the job; nothing interesting ever happens on market days. Of course it doesn't, you never get caught. Until now.

Adrenaline forces your entire body to sprint through the confused muddle of townfolk, grumbling as you bat them aside with your narrow shoulders. The slapping of your worn, leather shoes against the uneven cobblestoned paths keeps in perfect time with your rapid heartbeat, like some kind of sick, organ orchestra. A chorus made entirely of limbs and entrails, blood rushing and pumping to the beat. Clutching the loaf of bread, you think that maybe it wasn't worth your life for. Although at this point you'll either starve to death on the streets, or starve to death in prison. Dignity dictates you'd rather take the streets.

You swerve your small frame around the corner of a bookshop, deciding to take the guards chasing you through the dingy alleyways you knew like the back of your hand. You figured you could lose them in the maze of confusing back-alleys; the guards looked as if they could only navigate themselves to the nearest tavern. You dive left and right, yet no matter how many turns you take, the guards never lose sight of you. The clanking of their armour reverborates dangerously behind you, reminding you that these guys are powerful, In fact, they'll probably kill you the second they lay their grubby paws on you. They'll enjoy it too.

Sweat gathers on your forehead, almost like it was mocking you for failing at something you were usually so good at. You couldn't tell if you were sweating from sprinting or if it was the panic crashing in waves underneath your skin. It was probably a mix of both.

Why did it go wrong?  You ask yourself. What happened?

The guards were fast gaining on you now. You could feel the rush of air pass by your head as their hands frantically shot out to grab you. Luckily, you were just a split second ahead of them. Call it destiny; you were not getting caught today. You simply wouldn't allow it.

Turning once more, you find yourself at a small, secluded beach. More like a sandy bay, without a short pier or any remnence of a harbour, except for a lonely rowboat half docked on the shore. Despite your confusion, you hurtle towards the boat, praying to all and any deitys listening that you get out of this alive. Luck seems to be on your side today; inside the boat are two oars, laying patiently, waiting just for you.

You don't even have time to think or process your next actions as you thrust the oars into the sand, pushing desperately. Strength was not something you had ever been particularly gifted with, yet you felt as if Hercules himself had granted you his muscles. Perhaps later you would find a Hydra or two to slay. The tiny rowboat has no arguments, allowing you to push it away from the safety of land and start the endless drift into the sea. You were a team now, you and the little boat. A lonely pair who only had each other. You both gave the other purpose; the boat had escentially saved your life, and a boat is almost completely useless unless it has somebody to captain it. Just a lifeless hunk of nailed wood, a shell with so much potential.

The guards stand seething at the shoreline, swearing at you as you only glide further and further away from their steely glares. You watch neutrally, leaving the kingdom in which you grew up should hurt more, but it doesn't. Not at all. Being a thief wasn't much of a life anyway. And it wasn't like you had an adoring family, waiting eagerly for your return. You wouldn't be missed. You wondered why you hadn't bothered leaving before, maybe the life you'd grown accustomed to was just something you didn't feel like changing. Although now, you didn't have a choice.

Pulling the battered loaf of bread out of your pocket, you take a sizeable bite. You should probably ration it, seeing as you likely won't be seeing land for a long while, but you don't really care. You turn away from your hometown, gazing at the vast expanse of ocean before you. Taking another bite of bread, you realise again that maybe a single loaf wasn't worth the trouble; you should've grabbed another.

An invisble cog assumes it's place, the first one required to complete the chain. It spins slowly; this cog is new. It's different. Untouched. It's abrupt creation a shock to itself. A lonely cog, waiting eagerly to be joined and finally have a purpose. But of course, the first cog in the sequence is the most important. Without the beginning, there cannot be an end.

Chapter Three

[brolinjosh]

endgame review

i’ve waited 24 hours for my endgame feels to sink in. spoilers and strong opinions are under the cut.

first i need to start with the parts that i loved and that made the movie stand out and be memorable and parts that i immensely enjoyed:

- tony and nebula’s friendship and nebula’s arc later. she finally stopped being self destructive, lost the desire to please thanos and stood up for herself. she made a strong bond with gamora and even in the past, that bond stood out and it was beautiful. she got more screen time and stopped being just a weapon. got to play games, got to be appreciated for more than a good warrior. joked with people and made good friendships.

- tony telling steve off. tony stan here, but unbiased opinion is that him and steve had a falling out. steve stayed on earth and tony ended up stranded on an alien planet and nearly died. he is a non powered man and only had his armor and got stabbed by thanos and he has never felt more alone than when oxygen was slowly running out on him and nebula. he should have argued and called him out on them sticking together, and he had every right to do so.

- whole time travel thing. it was nostalgic, i am really glad they connected this, as last movie, to the previous ones. thor getting his moment with frigga, tony commenting on shape of steve’s ass, loki disappearing with tesseract, little things like that. they gave movie depth and not just thanos aftermath. 

- steve had some show stopping scenes. telling himself he could do this all day and being tired of himself bc he knows how big of a pain in the ass he can be in the battle?? hell yes thank you. steve wielding mjolnir?? legit had me cheering, wig snatched. 

- i genuinely liked thor’s arc. he lost everyone he had ever cared about, it was normal for him to be depressed and angry and that he had given up. i am glad rocket snapped him out of it because it gave rocket depth and we saw how deeply he connected to all of them and decided not to be an asshole and be kinder to people that surround him. it showed another part of them being a family and how even characters we never thought would love each other this way, ended up with an unbreakable bond that is more than just a team work.

- more screen time for underappreciated amazing characters, james rhodes, scott lang, clint barton. more of their interactions and showing how funny and smart they are??? they had my heart.

- i LOVED professor hulk. mark ruffalo finally got more screen time and it showed how smart bruce really is and that he is not just some likable guy who is intelligent, but not as much as other scientists (like scenes with shuri in infinity war that i loved because of shuri, but in past movies they downplayed his intellect a bit). i loved how he was more confident and at peace with himself.

- thanos!!! thanos remained a formidable villain and his arc was still the best villain arc in mcu. he is not easy to take on , he is a threat and he gave movie and everything that happened a meaning.

- best mcu scene to this day - strange opening portals and people passing through, ready to slay enemies. all united, all fighting together, all boosting and helping each other out in this final battle that we waited for 10 years??? literally killed every other movie battle ever. they have outdone themselves.

- peter seeing tony and talking about soul stone world, not realizing that everything was done for him and out of love for this amazing boy?? beautiful.

- TONY FUCKING STARK WIELDING INFINITY GAUNTLET. YES. had me yell at the screen, it was showstopping. my favorite scene ever in movie history. mere mortal taking on the fate of the world and killing every bad creature and smiting thanos himself. CONTENT I LIVE FOR.

- valkyrie a king??? hell yes, she deserved it. no one more than her. 

now, things that ruined the movie for me and that i do not think i will easily accept or forgive:

- i understand that in the end, since natasha and clint went to vormir, in the end had me desiring that she would be the one to give up, since he has a family. but it’s not supposed to be that way. natasha seemed out of character the whole time. she was way more emotional, i partially understand because she lost everything and it has affected her more than anything ever. but it was bad writing. woman dying for shock value and to effect men??? why. she just started expressing herself and letting know people she loves them and really connected and bonded with them and have her go like that? as a sacrifice? uncalled for.

- pepper’s arc bugged me the whole time. woman who was there from the beginning to call tony out on his shit, also was a woman who stopped him from doing reckless things. she was always the one who kept arguing with him, literally in every movie, over his desire to save the world and to protect them. he told her he found a way to bring everyone back, but one word from her (something she was terrific at), and he would ditch it and stay with their family. and this is the first time she encouraged him to do something so reckless and it was poor overshadowing of his death and insanely out of character for her. she knew how it would end and she kept saving him from himself, because he was always terrified of losing her and in a way that stopped him from doing what he did years ago. they had a family and in the end . her showing up in an armor had me in tears, because that’s my gal, but also that is incredibly reckless and like she didn’t think things through in 2-3 scenes she had in the movie?? 

- i’m in it for tony. naturally i am upset. but not because he died, but because of HOW he died. naturally gauntlet took a toil on him. his body was combusting. it was devastating. what killed me was that pepper, love of his life, approached him and seemed like she had kind of a bad day. asked for his vitals and when told he is dying, she shed a tear and told him that he could rest. it blew my mind that she did not crumble in front of him, no “ i love you” nothing that would be her last words to him that showed him that he meant the world. he knew that, but would have been nice to have something like that. ALSO, him not being able to speak??? BEYOND OUTRAGED. no actual goodbyes, no him saying anything to the avengers, just lying like he had a stroke. the best character with the most complicated arc in the entire marvel universe and did something unimaginable and to have him just fall and not say goodbye or how he feels, or is he afraid of dying or what is happening to him??? “ i am iron man” is a great line for taking on thanos, but as last words while he is alive, unsatisfying and writing for shock value. peter crying, hugging him, apologizing , that was beautiful. everyone who he had just given his life for just standing aside, looking at him, shedding one tear???? steve? STEVE ROGERS???? JAMES RHODES??? no goodbyes between best friends, no them being wrecked and having breakdowns??? really?

- steve’s ending. it was the most out of character thing russos have ever done. they became famous for taking on characters in their own ways, but steve, person who had such strong relationships with tony, bucky and sam, leaving bucky and sam for a selfish cause of going back in time to a woman who already had a fulfilling life and found a way to live without him?? who had a husband and family? who was accomplished and her heartbreak over losing steve gave her depth and she got out stronger than ever. and he just went back and her whole history and family was erased for it, because he loved her and they shared one kiss a lifetime ago? steve going back to do this and not free bucky from hydra or help his best friend out, a man who he started civil war over and fought government for, steve leaving bucky and sam, people who have been with him through thick and thin, going back to indulge himself, thinking he cannot be happy in present, not thinking about two people who have to now live on without him? bucky who never got a decent time with him after ca:tfa, who’s life has been nothing but a shitstorm, now having to live without his best friend and only person that felt like a home? insanity. steve rogers, the most self-sacrificial, stubborn little shit, who gave enemies hell for people he cared about, leaving people behind? never. 

in conclusion, for me movie did nothing but upset me, because i have invested 10 years into this, countless hours of writing meta and giffing scenes that went unnoticed, loving these characters, pouring my heart and soul and time into this, and for them to kill off people for shock value, natasha and tony, to have them fuck up steve’s arc beyond words, to end relationships or to make them meaningless.... they did pay an omage to previous movies, but not characters  and how they were previously portrayed. tony, man who started mcu, should not die for us to be miserable bastards after spending so much time in this universe, he should have gotten to live a happy life with the family he had just started. 

in the end, if anyone had to die, for me it was supposed to be both steve and tony, in a battle, bloody with glorious goodbyes, their last battle, showing each other how they would lay their lives so the other one lives, sacrificing for each other, but have both biggest characters die gloriously, not one like he had a stroke and second one grow old and selfish, abandoning his friends and family.

in the end, i did not like the movie. first marvel movie to this day that i didn’t like, because it was first that erased so many good things. 

[lenacopperleaf]

A (Not So) Brief Summary of The First 27 episodes of Critical Role

So @i-do-as-i-want had mentioned wanting a summary of the first bunch of episodes so that they could get to the part without Tiberius and his player. I was originally going to message this to them but then it got long, and I figured others might be interested too. I tried to be brief while still covering everything important (27 episodes is still almost 100 hours of content ya’ll). Feel free to add if you feel I missed important stuff, but be kind as I did this pretty quickly. This isn’t a post to talk about what went down with Tibs’ player. There’s a lot of those posts around rn and they serve their own purpose. But this post is just supposed to be a summary of in-game events. Summary under the read more!

Underdark Arc (episodes 1-16)

We meet Vox Machina—Percy a gunslinger nobleman who’s trying to avoid his past; the half elf twins, Vax the rogue, and Vex the ranger (and her bear Trinket); Keyleth the half elf druid who is completing her journey to become her people’s Voice of the Tempest; Scanlan a gnomish bard; Pike a gnomish cleric of Sarenrae and her best buddy Grog the barbarian; and Tiberius a dragonborn.

They are a group of adventurers who have just successfully saved a city called Emon. After a six(ish) month break where they have split apart to complete pieces of their individual stories they have rejoined to find Lady Kima, a friend to the Sorcerer Allura whom they met in Emon. Kima, a paladin to the Platinum Dragon, had gone to the Kraghammer to deal with an evil vibe she had been getting. VM arrives, talks to a bunch of people and go to a mine where creatures had been coming to the surface from the Underdark. They make a deal with the mine owner to take care of his creature problems for a lot of gold pieces.

VM goes through the mine defeating a vast assortment of creatures such as umber hulks, intellect devourers, and illithids. Along the way Vex and Keyleth meet Clarota, an Illithid who has been cast out, they invite him to come along to help defeat a mysterious figure known as K’varn who the group believes to be the source of the problem. They then reach the castle of the Underdark Dwarves (duergar). The evil king and queen had been holding Kima! The gang rescues Kima, who dislikes Clarota and wants to leave him behind. VM has a battle against the king and queen. The King dies but the Queen gets away with Grog. Eventually the gang gets back Grog, defeats the Queen and heads on to face K’Varn. The group finds out that K’varn is a beholder controlling the mind flayers through their elder brain, battles him (ep. 11) and wins out. Then it turns out that the god Orcus is trying to use K’varn through the Horn of Orcus-this reanimates the beholder corpse. After persevering again VM unintentionally frees all the controlled mind-flayers and Clarota betrays Vox Machina in the hopes his people will take him back.

The gang fight-run away from the mind flayers and through the use of a teleportation circle return with Kima back to Emon. There is a shopping episode where we meet Shaun Gilmore, Vox Machina’s favorite merchant who has a bit of a flirtationship with Vax. (Ep. 14) The band of adventurers is summoned to Sovereign Uriel and the council of Emon. VM tells the council about the Horn of Orcus and decide to bring it back to Vasselheim where Kima’s temple is where they should be able to keep the Horn safe and away from dangerous creatures/people. VM does this, traveling by air ship. They return the Horn to the Platinum Dragon’s temple. They also say good-bye to Pike for the time being as she has decided to stay to fix the temple of Sarenrae (Ashley Johnson was cast in Blindspot).

Adventures in Vasselheim (17-23)

After saying goodbye to Pike, VM looks for things to do. Grog gets in a fight against Kern in what is known as The Pit (ep. 17 part 1 quite good). Grog loses just barely and is very sad. The group looking to cheer him up and get back to what they’re good at, leave Vasselheim and come across a hydra, and defeat it. Unfortunately Vasselheim has an organization known as the Slayer’s Take who are given assignments to hunt monsters and other creatures and the hydra slain was one the Slayer’s Take was supposed to take care of. Vox Machina is told that they must join the Slayer’s Take or will be persecuted as poachers.

Vox Machina is split up to undertake the Trial of the Slayer’s Take. Vex, Scanlan, Grog and two new friends go to slay a white dragon. Vax, Keyleth, Tiberius, and two other new friends have to beat a Rakshasa (I like these episodes and reoccurring guest characters are introduced. Ep. 18 and 19 have no Tiberius, ep. 20 and 21 have…well a lot more Tiberius. For the reoccurring guest character of 20/21 it is Kash a cleric/paladin who is played by Will Friedle. Kash is interested in Keyleth romantically and Vax gets jealous. Kash is good here but there are other instances of him after Tibs so no big to just avoid these ep if need be just know the Rakshasa will be a problem again in the future). Once everyone has passed their trial they become members of the Take. Yay!! Then they go to the village of Pyrah so Keyleth can pass the Fire trial of her Aramente. They go to the Fire Realm, things are hot but they get by and Keyleth passes. On their way back they have to hide from a big scary red dragon (foreshadowing!!)

Before they leave back to Emon, Grog returns to the Pit where he faces off against Kern, and this time…is victorious!!!! (ep. 23, part 1. There is some Tibs but the Grog part is pretty good and is pretty heavy Grog centered which is the last we’ll see of that for a little while.) Fan Favorite NPC Viktor the gun powder merchant is also in this last episode in part 2, (2:08:29)

VM returns to their keep and meet Kynan (recurring NPC) who wants to join Vox Machina. Vax knocks him out and then revives him in an attempt to teach Kynan that their work is dangerous and not for him at that time. He tells the boy to train and that one day maybe he can join. Kynan runs off saying he will do that. Vax later feels guilty and tries to find him but cannot. Seeker Assum, a member of the Council, sends word to Vox Machina that they are invited to a fancy feast next week to welcome Emon’s new fancy guests…the Briarwoods (aka the people who invaded Percy’s home and killed all of his family).

The Briarwood Arc (24-27)

After receiving the invitation Percy finally tells Vox Machina all of what had happened to him before he joined the Adventure Party. Basically bad people came in, killed everyone, Percy was tortured before he was able to escape and now he wants revenge. On 5 of the 6 barrels of his gun there is a name—Lord and Lady Briarwood, Anna Ripley, Sir Stonefell, and Professor Anders. The group says that they will help Percy.  The group splits to do errands, get their money from Kraghammer and play with Trinket.

Then the group goes to the feast, Percy disguised as Vax. They see Silas and Delilah Briarwood and hear their version of how they acquired Whitestone (ie. The de Rolos got sick and died and they were in line to inherit), Vax although asked to go with Seeker Assum sneaks off and does his own thing (after agreeing to say “Jenga” over the magical earrings if he needs help). He ends up getting caught by the Briarwoods in their room. As dinner ends Vax finds himself in deeper and deeper trouble as he isn’t able to speak or move.

When he gets a chance to break the spell Vax throws himself out of a window and yells Jenga. A Very intense fight follows (ep. 25 is really good overall though as it is nearing the end of time Tibs was around things are starting to get strange/tense with him so watch if interested and you can just skip him really) as the group fights to save Vax and stop the Briarwoods. They fail to stop the Briarwoods though they do save Vax. Percy begins to act more rash than is normal for him. Sovereign Uriel and his council are unhappy with VM as it seems they attacked Emon’s guests. He agrees to look into it but VM is on some thinnnnnnnnn ice. The gang does some…questionable stuff when some bloodhunters come after one of their new friends (This is where the Vox Machina hates old people comes from). There’s a filler episode where Scanlan turns everyone into Cows. Its kinda amusing though skippable overall.

Okay, now we’re at ep. 27. The tension throughout the episode is weird at the beginning and terrible by the end imo. Unless you enjoy second hand embarrassment/awkwardness/weirdness I would suggest trying to avoid this episode. Percy begins to have nightmares and dreams of a smoke entity before ghosts attack Grey Skull Keep. They fight off the ghosts and then later in the day start to make plans.

Seeker Assum comes to see them and says that he thinks that Uriel is under a charm like Assum was earlier. Keyleth had used Greater Restoration on him when the council was talking with VM, but Assum pretended it didn’t work b/c he wanted to stay in Uriel’s good graces to help VM later.  After more debate, and an offer to raze Whitestone from Tiberius, and some creepy smoke voices in Percy’s ear, Percy decides that they will go to face the Briarwoods and that they will have a week to prepare. (Now comes the worst part of the episode tension wise). The party makes their preparations to leave the city, Vex leaves a note for Uriel.

Then they leave for Whitestone. The journey goes okay though they lose their horses to harpies. Keyleth is becoming increasingly concerned for Percy, feeling he isn’t telling them everything. The next day they continue on their way and the episode ends as they are faced with a dragon-ish creature.

The next episode they continue onto Whitestone but Tibs is controlled by Matt. The disappearance of Tibs’ player is brought up sometime over the next few episodes but he does not come back to the table and you can now enjoy the rest of the episodes of Critical Role! 

[osmw1]

Poison-Wielding Fugitive   Chapter 73

what would you like to read next? suggest titles for me to translate!

A handful of people ran away as soon as Veno issued his warning.

“Stay where you are! It is simply an empty threat to frighten you! The town only appears to be purified, but it is a mere trick on the eyes. And then, he will…”

Virage whistled, summoning the Bio Corpse Hydra to his side. And its back… split open? Virage then climbs inside.

“You cannot possibly touch me if I command my ultimate weapon from the inside!”

The priest’s voice came through the hydra’s mouth. It’s like he’s piloting that amalgamation as if it were a mech.

‘Judging by thine memories… ‘tis rather interesting.’

Hey, don’t get distracted by anime robots. Focus on the fight, damn it.

‘‘tis without a question that I am focused. Casting spells take time, even if I am filled with Mana. I have nothing practical to do in the meantime.’

Five minutes’ time to escape… you mean you need five minutes to cast this spell. Knowing the truth just spoils it for me. And why aren’t you using any poison anyway, Mr. Poison Dragon?

‘Oh, be quiet. ‘tis the same reason I had mentioned before. If I were to use my poison, no one will survive.’ “Now, my ultimate weapon, slay the dragon who corrupted the dragonslayers!” “Sir Elfé! He is mighty and righteous! Do not waver, men!”

Controlling the hydra from within, Virage repeated spewed noxious gas onto Veno. However, Veno’s Yggdrasil completely countered it. Virage’s followers attempted to do the same to the surrounding dragonslayers and townsfolk but were ineffective due to the same reasons.

“Damn you, you evil, deceiving dragon!” “You deserve nothing but death for your sins! Hurry, Sir Elfé!” “What makes you think you can tell me what to do?! And I know that much! The dragon cannot maintain this barrier forever!”

Virage and his goons struggled and struggled. But, I know. I know that their efforts against Veno’s Yggdrasil amounted to nothing.

“This is a miracle… o Sacred Yggdrasil… we have not misplaced our faith in you.”

Celes and her comrades continued to pray to Veno. Absorbing their prayers, the already stable Yggdrasil became stronger and more resistant. Five minutes have already passed during this exchange… and the magic was ready.

“Now… I have given you five minutes’ time. Virage, receive thy punishment for thy sins! I cast the almighty spell of destruction and the divine punishment upon Sodom and Gomorrah, Fire and Brimstone!”

As soon as Veno casted his spell, the skies swirled with grey clouds. A pillar of light penetrated through, striking straight down along with the crackling and rumbling of thunder and lightning.

“This magic is nothing compared to my—”

Virage commanded the Bio Corpse Hydra to defend itself, but Veno’s spell destroyed its defenses and pierced through the monster in an instant.

“Aughhhhhhhhhh!” “Wh—” “No w—” “Im—“

Virage and his assailants didn’t have enough time to cry out. By the powers of Yggdrasil, Celes and the other dragonslayers were once again protected from the great fire that raged from the lightning strike. Within ten seconds, the monster and men had been reduced to nothing but ashes. “Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah…”

The elf’s voice trailed until the fire fully consumed him. What was left was but a crater in the ground.

“Whew.”

Perhaps Veno was feeling generous after casting his spell. He used more Mana to fill in the crater and repaired the nearby buildings which had been destroyed by Bio Corpse Hydra.

“Ahh… that felt great. ‘tis very satisfying to finally unleash my powers.”

I could almost imagine Veno lighting up a cigarette after all that. It seems to me as if you’ve overdone it a little though, don’tcha think?

‘I am sure things shall be fine. I have restored the town to status quo ante bellum.’

I mean, I guess… Now then, it was time to clean up this mess. Surely, Veno could undo the magic casted on me, right? I now totally understood how it feels to be a spectator and I had had enough. Whatever it takes for you to return me to my world though.

‘Aye… then I shall… gah. It… seems that I am all out of Mana.’

You what?!

‘Perhaps we will need to… aaaaaaahhh’

Kersplash! Veno disappeared into a beam of light and I was switched back to the physical world. Then, I gently floated to the ground. Maybe it was because I was holding onto Karma Blaze. Luckily, I somehow landed safely.

“Yukihisa!” “Muuuuuuuuuuuuuu!”

Arleaf and Muu rushed over to my side.

“You did it! You too, Lord Holy Dragon!” “Muuuuu!” The world tree Veno spawned with his magic faded into the light as well.

‘Aye… however, the Mana I had been receiving from Karma Blaze stopped flowing.’ “Will Yukihisa turn into the Lord Holy Dragon again?” “Umm, y’know, me and Veno are totally separate beings, right, Arleaf?”

You don’t seriously think I’m the human form of Veno… right? We’ve already talked about this before, so she should understand.

“Oh… sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I was wondering that because the Lord Holy Dragon had spoken how he couldn’t undo Forced Possession Summoning.” ‘Aye. But…’

Veno shifted his attention to Celes who had walked up to us.

“Cohgray, you really were the dragon…” “Like I said, it’s complicated, but I’m not actually the dragon, right?” “But if you had seen it… no, you are correct.” “Do you still want to duel? Though we found out how we’ve been had already…”

Celes silently shook her head. The rest of the dragonslayers followed suit as well. Wait… when did all of the people in Lif’el gather around us? This… is bad? I mean, we really did cause quite a stir.

‘Shall we escape? Though, thou art surrounded…’

I sat down and looked around…

“You need not be on guard, Cohgray. People have not assembled because they hold resentment towards you. Rather… yes, let me offer a prayer first then let me apologize afterwards.”

As the leader of the Dragonslayer Corps, Celes led her team and about half of the townsfolk in a prayer.

“Wh-What the…” “Umm…” “Y’all have made a real ruckus here.”

Wayne and Rurika showed up to the plaza.

“Uhh… what’s happening here?” “Well, this because you turned into the Holy Dragon, created a world tree, and saved the town, I s’pose.” ‘Hmm? What is the meaning of this?’ “And so what does this mean?”

Veno and I couldn’t quite make heads and tails of this situation, but Arleaf lightly cleared her throat and stood up along with Celes.

“Many of these people have found our lord, the Holy Dragon. He had appeared and brought salvation with him, saving the town from the brink of extinction. It is very much like a god had descended from the heavens.” “The others are us followers of the Teachings of the Sacred Yggdrasil. Our scriptures tell of a miraculous spell called Yggdrasil that will clear miasma, save the fallen, and protect the people. It is said that the one who casts the spell should be worshipped as a saint as well.”

Rurika raised her index finger and quickly added to the conversation.

“And then, the third religion in town is the Church of Saint Oevarl, a harmony of the other two. The name is a reference to a certain dragon, it seems.”

Saint Oevarl… your name is Veno Yveval, right?

‘Aye… but sayeth thou it to be similar?’

Well, yeah, it’s kinda similar. It’s not identical, of course, but if it’s a mixture between the two religions… well, it wouldn’t exactly be unreasonable.

“To sum it up, the magic used and the divine punishment we witnessed today is something of legends… even if it was casted by a dragon. I am sure the people who have observed today’s battle believe that it was the return of the saint.”

Ah… so in other words, Veno’s magic and the miracle of Karma Blaze roused up a few religions.

“Let us relay news to our countrymen, telling them that the culprit behind our afflicted family members was Elfé—or rather, it was the ancient elf by the name of Virage!” “Yeah!”

The dragonslayers all cheered while they were in the middle of praying to us.

“Then, the whole killing me thing…” “What do you take us for?! If we were to slay the dragon after it had called forth the world tree… we should be the ones punished.” ‘This proves that I had made the right decision in casting my spells, does it not?’

Sure, it does, Veno. Whatever makes you happy. But you and I both know that you only casted those spells ‘cause you were aching to try them out.

“Yeah… well, I’m glad that we’re good. Actually, Celes, we should probably hurry to save your sister. There might be more of Virage’s people coming after us.” “And even now, you still worry about me… you truly are a man of good character, Cohgray.”

Oops. Celes looked a little shocked.

“It’s the second coming!” “Lord Holy Dragon!” “The legends have come true!”

Everybody seemed to be overjoyed with how things turned out. They gather around me and tossed me in the air.

“Whoa! Hey, hold on!” “Eek!”

This is crazy!

“Please, hold on!” “Muu?!” “You two are with the Lord Holy Dragon as well, right? Up you go then!”

With that, people from all religions reveled together with the whole town for today’s monumental victory. There was a ceremony in the middle of all that celebration… at least it gave me a moment to speak to Celes and the rest of them. Well, the people of the Sacred Teachings have already sealed off the curse-ridden prayer altar yesterday and are now taking care of it. Veno told me he’d look further into the issue later. Oh, and it seems like Wayne’s issue was most likely related to the infectious altar too. A few days before symptoms started hitting him, his acquaintance showed up to his home with a Teachings symbol in hand.

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contents: /ch001/ /ch002/ /ch003/ /ch004/ /ch005/ /ch006/ /ch007/ /ch008/ /ch009/ /ch010/ /ch011/ /ch012/ /ch013/ /ch014/ /ch015/ /ch016/ /ch017/ /ch018/ /ch019/ /ch020/ /ch021/ /ch022/ /ch023/ /ch024/ /ch025/ /ch026/ /ch027/ /ch028/ /ch029/ /ch030/ /ch031/ /ch032/ /ch033/ /ch034/ /ch035/ /ch036/ /ch037/ /ch038/ /ch039/ /ch040/ /ch041/ /ch042/ /ch043/ /ch044/ /ch045/ /ch046/ /ch047/ /ch048/ /ch049/ /ch050/ /ch051/ /ch052/ /ch053/ /ch054/ /ch055/ /ch056/ /ch057/ /ch058/ /ch059/ /ch060/ /ch061/ /ch062/ /ch063/ /ch064/ /ch065/ /ch066/ /ch067/ /ch068/ /ch069/ /ch070/ /ch071/ /ch072/ /ch073/ /next/

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[spliitsoul]

Cut off one head, two more shall take its place. ( from Steve @ bucky in hydra verse slay me )

fuck meee  //  @aetrnm  

         there is an ATTEMPT to remain cold– to be the SOLDIER they made him. he KNOWS the company line, has recited it, commit terrible acts in its name. but never once– in his moments of recollection of previous life coming in fragments– never did he imagine steve to be the one spewing them.  

( never had he imagined they would be right here. finally together again, gone through hell and back… only to be stood on opposite sides again. he still cannot TAKE IT. ) 

          “just STOP!” voice breaks through the monologue, the TEDIOUS WORDS spewed that echo in his mind and threaten to tear him apart all over again.  –hadn’t hydra done ENOUGH to him? didn’t steve claim to feel terrible about all of it? all of the terrible things he claimed to not even know about?  teeth grit and fists clench as bucky tries– forces himself to breathe, just breathe.   

( but how weak he feels– has felt every time he’s come face to face with steve since discovering the TRUTH of him. hates how looking into those eyes, all he LONGS to do is give in, to lean into him and forget about EVERYTHING and pretend they aren’t on opposing sides. ) 

          “my niece– tell me, i want PROOF that she is safe, like you agreed. i’m not going to stand here a second longer and listen to you spew this crap if she isn’t actually free and SAFE from you.”   

( and like that– bucky shuts down. outwardly, he looks the spiting image of the man he was before. THE WINTER SOLDIER. cold, distant. only this time– he isn’t ready to comply with ANYONE’S demands. ) 

  heart hammers against chest and eyes sting with previously shed tears– hands scrubbing at them in an attempt to compose himself, to at least regain some sense of togetherness.   

( something he knows realistically, is POINTLESS. doesn’t doubt that steve had been watching the ENTIRE interaction. no privacy allowed, not something he could ever be granted anymore.  –and really, is it that much different from everything he had already experienced with hydra? ) 

  straightening up, bucky sniffed, rubbed nose before rolling shoulders back and then swiftly exiting the bathroom.  if he’s going to be held here  ( because he doesn’t believe for a SECOND that steve is actually going to let him walk out of here– is prepared to have to fight his way out eventually when the moment is right. )  –then he is going to be COMFORTABLE, is going to take up every inch of space. make his presence known. will not be SUBTLE at all. 

  –spreads out upon couch, fingertips of metal arm clinking with repetitive motion against arm of chair as he waits for the mans return.  and all the while, feels a FIRE burn in his chest, one that longs to spread out, to touch EVERYTHING in sight, to destroy this DIABOLICAL EMPIRE.    –eyes snap toward the door at the first sign of noise and narrow before rolling when the man steps back inside. 

( force yourself to be sickened. force yourself to HATE the man before you. focus only on the lies, on all this version of him stands for. FORGET the ways he owned your heart, the way you loved him. the way you long to lose yourself to him, to press against his chest and find home in familiar heart. ) 

          “well, she’s safe. guess you get points for that one. didn’t scramble HER mind at least.” 

[ladyseaheart1668]

Endless Summer Fan Novel (Book 2, Epilogue)

Notes: So, I have decided to start posting Book 3 next week. If I do one chapter a week, just like Pixelberry, I should avoid getting too far ahead. ;) Let me know what you would like to see me novelize next, if anything. Options I’m considering are Hero, It Lives in the Woods, The Royal Romance, and The Crown and the Flame. 

The next thing I am aware of is a bitter, biting cold, as if my very blood is frozen. Then violent tremors start to race up my spine. I hear my teeth chattering.

“Come back to me.” The voice above me is somehow familiar. “There you are.”

I feel myself rocking. Suddenly, my fingers and toes are overcome with fiery heat. I squirm as the liquid flames surge up my limbs. I hear myself moan.

“Wh...where...”

“That's it. You're all right.”

My eyelids flutter. I am immediately hit by a blinding light. I throw my hands over my face, pressing into the warm body that cradles my naked form against its soft bare skin. ...Wait, what? The spots start to clear from my vision, and I look up at the face above me. Yvonne the Incorrigible smiles down at me.

“...Yvonne?”

She winks. “Oui. C'est moi. You may call me guardian angel if you wish.”

“You...saved my life.” I blush as I look down and confirm that both of us are naked, wrapped in a blanket. “And you, uh...warmed me up, I guess...”

She laughs. “Don't be so prudish. If I ever have my wicked way with you, I promise you will know.”

I sit up carefully, looking myself over, stretching experimentally. I'm on a small trimaran, floating in calm, crystal blue waters. Dark red bruises stand out starkly on my pale skin, left by Mouse and the bullet that dented my armor. Said armor, and the clothes I had been wearing underneath, are piled at the prow of the boat, my backpack full of amber idols on top of it. I go for the bag first, carefully counting the idols to make sure they're all still present. Finding them all accounted for and unharmed, I slowly move to get dressed. Yvonne takes up the oars, rowing towards the shore. I look around me. To the north, a column of smoke rises from what has to be the MASADA complex.

“You were out for several hours. Do you remember anything?”

“...I fell...”

“Indeed. Very far, very fast, and very ungracefully.”

“Wait...you were there?” She grins at my shocked expression. “But how'd you know to be there? It couldn't have been luck.”

“I was dispatched to your aid by your red-clad friend.”

“...Who?”

“I could not say. But you have someone looking out for you.”

As I start to fasten the various pieces of amber armor on my body, it suddenly occurs to me how warm it is.

“Hold on...are we back in the tropical part of the island?” I look at Yvonne in alarm. “Where are you heading? We need to find the others! They could be hurt!”

“Mais oui. They could be. But La Mer will guide them where they need to go.”

“I need to find them, Yvonne!” I cry.

She pins me with a steely gaze, her eyes narrow. “As you said, you owe me your life. I gave you help, and now I am in need of yours.”

I want to argue further, but I am not in much of a practical position to do so.

“Where are you taking me, then?”

As the belly of the boat starts to scrape the shore, Yvonne hops out onto warm, white sand, and drags her vessel ashore. Drawing her cutlass, she points up at the smoking peak of Mount Atropo.

“There.”

* * *

Yvonne leads me through the dense jungle, slashing at the foliage in our path with her cutlass. After several hours, we emerge at the foot of the volcano.

“This is it,” she says. “C'est impressionnant, non?”

Yvonne gestures ahead. I look up and feel my heart drop, splashing into my stomach. A colossal stone temple is carved into the volcanic base. ...A temple in the shape of a dragon's head...a face jutting out of the mountain...eleven graves within the dragon's mouth.

“Oh, no...nonononono...” I shrink back from it.

“Ma petite blonde, you shiver like the timbers.” Yvonne clicks her tongue. “I thought you a braver soul than this.”

“I...I've been here before. I mean...I've seen it...” I swallow. “...What is it?”

“Welcome to the Threshold,” Yvonne replies.

“...The threshold of what?”

“We shall find out together, non?” She clasps shut an antique compass, the one I saw her take from the chest in the Jeweled Cave.

“...That compass...is that how you found this place?”

“A keen eye, you have. Indeed it is. In a manner of speaking, I died to steal it. Malatesta made me walk the plank for my thievery, though I maintain that it is he who stole it from me.” She looks at me. “When I came here, though, I encountered that red-clad demon. It told me that I needed your help.”

“My help?”

“You and your compagnons. But as you may be the last surviving one, I must settle for you.”

The helpless fear that filled me at the sight of the dragon's mouth mixes with rage at her callousness. I open my mouth to tell her where she can shove her compass, but whatever venomous words I might have spat at her are cut off when she grabs my arm and leads me forcibly into the darkness within the dragon's mouth.

“It's pitch-black in here,” I say instead, my voice sounding sullen to my own ears.

“Never fear. There is a proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Make sure to stay near me, mon amour. It is easy to get lost in these tunnels. You could wind up wandering down here forever.”

Gradually, though, the world starts to take shape as bright red light trickles down from deep within the volcano. I brace myself to find graves or bones, but instead, I find myself in a large ceremonial chamber lined with lava spouts. A hunched figure in the center startles at our arrival.

“An intruder?” Yvonne snarls, pointing her cutlass. “Surrender, fiend!”

“I...I mean you no h—Alodia?”

My eyes widen as I place the voice. “Uqzhaal?”

The Vaanti shaman hobbles forward, taking shape through the gleaming red light. “Blessings of Vaanu, it is you!” He embraces me warmly, and I return the gesture.

“It's good to see you.”

Yvonne raises an eyebrow. “You are friends? Was it not his people who imprisoned you for life?”

“We ended up having common interests,” I say simply. “Uqzhaal, this is Yvonne. She's how we escaped Sharktooth Isle.”

“Ahh, the boat thief.” The shaman nods sagely. “A pleasure to meet you.”

Yvonne balks. “Pardonnez-moi, but I steal much more than just boats!”

“Of course.” Uqzhaal turns his attention back to me. “Alodia, I had heard such terrible news, of foreign warriors coming to slay you! Some of our scouts returned from the battle at the chasm and feared you dead!”

“I nearly was...and I'm not sure about the others...”

I fill him in on everything that has transpired since we left Elyys'tel. From the Arachnid's attack to our infiltration of the MASADA complex, to the molten wasteland we found on the other side of the Lernaean Gate, to Aleister's betrayal and our near execution, to our escape attempt and the destruction of the MASADA complex.

“...I'm sorry, Uqzhaal. Rourke...he has the Island's Heart.”

The old shaman's brow creases. He turns away, staring into the lava's glow.

“This is truly terrible,” he murmurs. “The Hydra with such incredible power...We must ask the Endless what to do.”

“I do not know half the things of which you speak, and I care for even less,” Yvonne declares flatly. “But if we are here to see the same person, then we can work together, non?”

“...How do we talk to the Endless, Uqzhaal?”

“The Catalyst idols were the keys the Endless bestowed unto us. When we could unite all twelve, that meant that we as a people were ready to learn its secrets.” He gestures to the twelve pedestals surrounding the stone bridge on which we stand. “But our people were not worthy. We lost the Idols in the Three Tribes' War. This is why I sought them. This is why I sought the Catalysts. Each of you has a special connection to your idol. I needed your help to commune with the Endless and learn the truth behind stopping Raan'losti. ...But if what you say is true, and Raan'losti has already come...I know not what we can do.”

“...Okay, so we put all twelve Catalyst idols on these pedestals, and then we get to learn the truth behind the Endless? And it's beyond this lava moat here?”

“So claim the legends. Did you manage to find the idols on your journey?”

I pull off my backpack and show him the twelve amber statues nestled inside. “All twelve. Every last one.”

“Incredible!” he breathes.

“You are truly incomparable, mon amour,” Yvonne agrees. She grabs my face and jubilantly kisses both my cheeks.

“...Right. So...where do I place them? In what order?”

Uqzhaal shrugs. “That, I cannot say.”

“...Guess I just have to go with my gut then...”

One by one, I pull out the idols and place them on the pedestals. My instinct tells me to keep them in the same order we were laid out before, month by month by month.

Andromeda, Lupus, Canis, Cygnus, Aquila, Draco on one side. Delphinus, Serpens, Corvus, Centarus, Ursa, Pavo on the other. The instant I place Michelle's idol, the floor starts to rumble under my feet. Rings carved into the bases of the pedestals begin to rotate to new positions.

“The gears are turning!” Uqzhaal exclaims excitedly.

“I can't believe that worked! I thought it'd be some crazy, complicated...” I trail off as one stone wall slides aside, revealing a series on symbols painted underneath the panel. I sigh. “Okay, this is kinda what I was expecting.”

I look at the wall. Underneath a crude painting of a bloody knife are six symbols. Beneath that is a painting of a skull over a pair of shackles, and underneath that, five more symbols. Underneath that is one more drawing, of a series of...waves? Mountains? Each is topped with a small white...hell, they might be nipples on breasts for all I can tell. And underneath them is another series of nine symbols.

“Look!” Yvonne exclaims. “Above us!” Throw my eyes to the ceiling, where a circle in the ceiling is opening up to reveal a second series of symbols. Three groups of four symbols, and then one group of ten.

“What are we supposed to do with these?” Yvonne wonders.

“It's some kind of puzzle,” I reply.

“The trial of the Endless will prove our worth!” Uqzhaal declares. “We shall solve it in no time at all!”

He sounds confident, but I can't tell if it's bravado. I look from the wall to the ceiling.

“Some of the runes on the wall are the same as those on the ceiling,” Yvonne muses. “Perhaps they are letters.”

“Of what alphabet, though?” I wonder.

“Perhaps early Vaanti,” Uqzhaal suggests. “Or perhaps something pre-dating us all. But it is clear the runes are spelling out words. ...Or...names.”

“...Names?”

He nods. “If this trial was created by the Endless to test us, perhaps the names are the ones taught to us by the Endless itself.”

“You mean...” I frown, looking at the wall again. “...Those sigils on the wall...those must be a clue...”

“Do you recognize them from anywhere?” Yvonne asks. “They all seem to suggest death.”

“Death?” I repeat. “I mean, the first two certainly do, but the last one...I can't even tell what it's supposed to be. Water? Mountains?”

“I count eleven of them,” Uqzhaal remarks.

And suddenly it hits me like a baseball bat to the head. My heart starts to pound. I know exactly what I'm looking at. “...Oh, god...they're graves. Those things on top are headstones.”

“Does this mean something to you, mon amour?”

“...It means that this trial was meant for me,” I say flatly. I close my eyes. The bloody dagger. ...Thrown by Rourke, burying its blade in Zahra's heart. The shackles around Jake's wrists pulled tight against Mouse's throat. ...Eleven graves. And only one left alive to dig them. “...Corvus. Lupus. Andromeda.”

“Quoi?”

“Those are the names on the wall. Zahra. Jake. Me. ...The answer is going to be in English.���

“You are certain?”

“Positive. Like I said. This trial was meant for me. It's either English or Spanish, because those are the two languages I know. Now if everyone could kindly quiet down for a moment, I need to concentrate.”

I let my eyes flick from wall to ceiling and back again. Mentally, I spell out names, linking up runes with letters and transferring them from wall to ceiling.

S-A-V-E... - - E-M... - R-O-M...

I don't even need to spell out the last word entirely. I curl my hands into fists at my sides and speak the message of the Endless into the chamber, my voice loud and clear.

“Save them from themselves.”

The whole room shudders in response. The idols begin to glow.

“What...what is happening?” Uqzhaal gasps.

“I don't know!” I cry in response. The idols glow brighter and brighter, each with a white-hot light in its center. Then, all at once, they dissolve into amber, leaking away down the sides of their pedestals. Left behind, resting in the basin of each pedestal where the idol had been is a small, crimson pool. “Is that...blood?”

Yvonne crosses herself. “What fresh hell is this?”

Water begins to pour from a series of spouts, hitting the lava with a steamy blast. White fog, painfully hot, engulfs my vision. I throw my arms up in front of my face.

“It's finally happening!” Uqzhaal breathes. “After so many generations of waiting...”

Impossibly quickly, the lava cools and hardens, and the steam begins to dissipate. I delicately test the lava with one foot. Then the other.

“It's safe. We can cross.”

“The path is opened,” Uqzhaal says reverently. The three of us venture into the darkness beyond the Threshold.

“After all that,” Yvonne mutters. “More tunnels.”

“Hush! There is someone up ahead.”

“What? I don't see any--” My voice dies in my throat as I see it. Black against black. A figure of shadow. “Who's...who's there?”

“Show yourself, coward!” Yvonne snarls.

A ball of flame appears in the dark, casting tongues of red-gold light over the walls. The flickering glow is reflected in the black visor of a red helmet.

“I've waited a very long time for this meeting,” the figure in the red spacesuit says. Their voice crackles through a speaker, modulated and electronic and impossible to place. The ball of flames flickers above a crude robotic right hand. Uqzhaal drops to the ground in supplication.

“Endless One...please, your faithful servants seek your help! Let us commune with you at last--”

“They always say 'at last,'” the Endless sighs. “As if they are the first. They are never the first. All that matters is if they are last.”

Every fiber of my being is electric with primal terror. Every instinct screams at me to run, but I swallow my fear and approach the red-clad being.

“Who are you? What do you want with us? What do you want with the Vaanti?”

“Having made it this far, you must already realize what is at stake,” the Endless replies.

“Yeah,” I say sharply. “The world is gone. Destroyed. We thought we could stop it, but it's already happened. ...Can you help us? You seem to have control of time.”

“Time is inevitability,” the Endless replies. “I know no inevitability. I will be here until this spinning rock and the sun that lights it are cold as the void. But it's no longer a matter of what I can do.”

Once again, I feel exhaustion, fear, and desperation blending in my gut into white-hot rage that bubbles up like magma and blocks out everything else.

“I've had it with the games!” I snarl like a wild dog. “Tell me now! What is the meaning of this?! What are these idols?! How do I stop these futures from happening to my friends?!”

“Futures?” the Endless repeats mildly. “The idols do not show the future.”

“Wha...what do you mean? I saw those visions. I watched my friends die! How is that not the--” I trail off as the truth comes crashing down on me. All the strength leaves me, and I sink to my knees in despair. “...Because they already died.”

“Yes,” the Endless confirms. “Again and again and again. And every time...every time I was there.”

A vision flashes through my mind. Rourke's office, where Zahra's body lies crumpled on the floor, the dagger hilt jutting from her heart. Only now, I see the Endless there too, cloaked in shadow, watching silently.

“...I saw them die,” the Endless continues, their voice sounding almost mournful even through the modulation. “So many times, I saw them die. But it wasn't enough for me to see. You needed to see too. That's why I made the idols.”

Another vision. This time I see Jake, his body cold on the floor of the stasis room at MASADA. The Endless hunkers over him, drawing dark blood into a long syringe in their hand.

“You mean...all this time...in the idols we were carrying...”

“A piece of your own mortality. It was necessary to forge the psychic link. To let you see the path.”

I feel my gorge rising as tremors race up and down my spine. I clutch my belly, trying to calm my raging stomach. “Oh god...oh my god...”

“This...cannot be true!” Yvonne murmurs.

“I do not understand,” Uqzhaal says.”This has happened before? All of this?”

“Two-thousand one-hundred thirty-nine times, to be precise,” the Endless replies. “The first time I went back to them, they died before my eyes. So terribly. Some of them didn't even make it a full day. I knew I had to help them. To guide them.”

I lift my eyes to look into the Endless' visor. “...What...?”

“I tried to intervene directly, but I quickly learned that the laws of time can be...unforgiving.” The Endless flexes their bionic arm, and I see the ragged stump just below the elbow. “I had to be more subtle. To change as little as possible. To influence indirectly. I left clues. Sigils. Symbols to aid their journey. To keep them alive.”

I remember being back at The Celestial, in the kitchen, and Raj turning to me with a frying pan in his hands. He said that something about the symbol stood out to him...

“All those symbols we found...that was you?”

“Yes. But it wasn't enough. The symbols kept them alive until they met the Vaanti. But that meeting always ended in death.”

Another vision flashes through my mind, of the cliffside outside Elyys'tel. A group of Vaanti warriors stand holding bloodied swords and axes. The broken bodies of my friends lie at their feet.

“The Vaanti were too hostile,” the Endless continues. “Too guarded. Every encounter saw the group massacred, no matter what they did. Changing the group wasn't enough. I had to change the Vaanti. So I went back. Further than I'd ever gone. And I shaped them.”

… Another flash. I see a beach at night. Ancient Vaanti, the ancestors of the tribe, huddle in reverent awe. The Endless stands before them, bathed in light, the very vision of a god.

“They will return to you!” they declare. “The Catalysts! They will stop Raan'losti!”

The Vaanti raise their hands in prayer and acceptance.

I recoil a little. “So you...made up the idea of the Catalysts...just so that centuries later, the Vaanti would help us? Their entire religion...was just a means to an end?”

“No...” Uqzhaal whispers. “No...it cannot be!”

“I did what I had to do. To protect them.”

“Mon dieu...”

I let my eyes fall to the ground again. “All this...just to keep us alive...? Why didn't you just go back and stop us from ever coming here?”

“My travel is limited to the time bubble surrounding La Huerta. I can never leave this island.”

I clutch my head. It's throbbing as I try to process what I'm hearing, to understand. I shake my head, whimpering.

“This is...this is too much...”

“Don't despair. The next stage of our journey begins here. After 2,139 loops, the cycle is broken.”

“What do you mean?”

“The temple is a test. A test that could only be passed under certain conditions. All twelve idols united. All twelve functional.”

“...Functional?” But even as I say it, I understand. I see visions that feel like memories now...visions of previous timelines, previous times I've made it to this temple...

“I don't understand,” I murmur. “Why aren't Raj and Michelle's idols lighting up?”

“Perhaps it is because they perished when the sea monster attacked,” Yvonne answers heavily. “The idols may only work if they're alive.”

“So...this is the first time...? The first time I've made it this far...with everyone still alive?” It's overwhelmingly frightening, but that thought makes hope flare to life in me. ...They are alive. All eleven of them. They're alive.

“Yes,” the Endless confirms. “All our friends yet live.”

My blood runs cold again. “...'Our' friends...?”

The Endless reaches up and presses a latch at their neck. There is a hiss of decompression. They reach up with their hands, one flesh, one iron, and lifts the helmet from their head. All sensation leaves me. Uqzhaal and Yvonne and the whole chamber seem to fade into static.

“Oh my god...” I whisper. “...Oh, my god...”

“I had to be sure you were ready, Alodia,” the Endless says gently. “Now our work can begin.”  

I can't answer. I am staring at the face of the Endless. A woman of flesh and blood stares back at me. The pale skin of her face has gone slack with age, her hair gone thin and gray. But in her blue eyes, I see the truth. I know the face before me.

...She is me.

...I am the Endless.

[shallahraekwon062488]

I decided to post a little application thread about one of the most fearless, unsung, righteous, honorable and courageous heroes in history. Matthew Murdock AKA Daredevil The Man Without Fear, The Guardian Devil ,The Scarlet Avenger and The First Defender. Know throughout Hell’s Kitchen as the Man Without Fear, Daredevil patrols dark corners, alleys and rooftops to rid the city of criminals forgotten by the law. His not-so-secet double-life as Matt Murdock, Attorney at Law provides him with the perfect cover, however also jeopardizes ever case he has ever tried. Though blind Daredevil’s heightened senses and radar vision allow him to do what must be done even if it destroys him in the process.

Personality Daredevil is a morally righteous hero with a strong sense of law and justice. This has also influenced him into becoming a lawyer. Daredevil objects to total violence and prefers to keep his enemies alive and defeating them rather then slay them. However, Daredevil does have a dark side, and will not hesitate to badly hurt foes in certain circumstances, often when he is under a period of stress. Matt Murdock suffers from depression.

Powers

Superhuman Sensory System: Originally coming from his exposure to a radioactive isotope, it was later discovered that many of Murdock’s “powers” come from his natural aptitude and intense training at the hands of Stick. His powers have been so honed by years of training that when he fought Psylocke during the war between the Avengers and the X-Men, she was overwhelmed when she tried to read his mind and found herself experiencing all the information he received through his enhanced senses, demonstrating the scale of psychological training required for Murdock to operate on a normal human level. Nick Fury’s intel classified him as power level 7

Superhuman Touch: Murdock’s sense of touch is so acute that his finger can feel the faint impressions of ink on a printed page allowing him to read by touch, though laminated pages prevent him from touching and thus reading the ink impressions at a much faster pace than a normal person would be able to read. The rest of his skin is equally sensitive, enabling him by concentration to feel minute temperature and pressure changes in the atmosphere around him. Even with his senses of smell and hearing blocked, he can feel the presence of a person standing five feet away from him simply by his or her body heat and disturbance of air. A side effect of his sense of touch is Murdock’s ability to manipulate his muscles and internal organs. The sense of touch is not just external, but internal too (central nervous system), thereby giving him the ability to have total body control, increasing his strength and reflexes to peak human levels, increasing his agility to enhanced human levels and also giving him the ability to numb himself to pain. Superhuman Smell: Murdock’s sense of smell is so acute that he can distinguish between identical twins at twenty feet by minute differences in smell. He can detect odors of an atmospheric concentration of thirty parts per million. Further, his ability to remember smells enables him to identify any person he has spent at least five minutes with by smell alone, no matter how he or she might try to camouflage his or her natural odor. His powers of concentration are such that he can focus upon a single person’s smell and follow it through a crowd of people at a distance of fifty feet. Superhuman Hearing: Murdock’s sense of hearing enables him to detect an acoustic pressure change of one decibel at a pressure level of seven decibels (whereas the lowest threshold for average human hearing is twenty decibels.) He can hear a person’s heartbeat at a distance of over twenty feet, or people whispering on the other side of a standard soundproofed wall. Through practice, Murdock is able to control his hearing acuity, mentally blocking out specific sounds like his own breathing and heartbeat, all ambient sounds to a normal human level of perception, or all sounds but a particular sound he is concentrating upon. Lie Detection: By listening, feeling and/or smelling, Murdock can tell whether a person is lying by sweat, changes in body temperature and heartbeats (though he can be fooled by a pacemaker and those able to keep calm under pressure.) Superhuman Taste: Murdock’s sense of taste enables him to detect the number of grains of salt on a pretzel. His ability to remember tastes enables him to determine every ingredient of a food or drink he tastes, as long as there are at least twenty milligrams of that substance present. Superhuman Balance: It is a common misconception that balance isn’t a sense, but Murdock’s balance centers give him equilibrium at least on par with Spider-Man’s. Telepathy: Due to Stick’s training, Murdock has displayed minor telepathic abilities. Radar Sense: A form of Human Echolocation via low wave projection, according to one theory, a energy within certain portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The signal emanates from sending regions of his brain, after which it travels outward, bounces off objects around him, and returns to receiving regions of his brain. In any event, with this ability, Murdock synthesizes a very close analogue of three-dimensional 360% human sight. Radar Substitute: An offshoot to Radar Sense this ability is the combination of all other sense (Excluding Radar Sense) and can allows to increase the stability of it as well as to be used as a sub-par replacement. Person Identification: All of Murdock’s senses help identify people by the specific patterns of their heartbeat, smell, touch, sound, and even Radar appearance as it allows to “see” through objects, specifically clothes (Though albeit obscure)

Abilities Professional Attorney: Murdock is a skilled lawyer, specializing in criminal justice. His law practice is considered one of the sources to his emotional strength and success in crime-fighting.

Devout Catholic: As a devout Roman Catholic, Murdock has the mixed benefits and access to certain resources and contacts/allies through the Catholic parishes of Hell’s Kitchen (modern day Clinton). As a lawyer, Murdock can also access additional assets in the form of safe-houses and sanctuary of the Church for his clients should local law enforcement resources become either compromised and or cannot be relied upon in witness protection cases. Murdock can also make use of contacts in the form of the Catholic Clergy giving him vital information regarding the movements of street gangs, the various mafia of the NYC area, pimps, and other elements of the criminal underworld in order to allow Matt to be more successful in battling the criminals of Hell’s Kitchen.

Interrogation Expert: Murdock uses many different interrogation methods to extract information from criminals. His knowledge of criminology and torture is unerring and often overwhelming.

Gifted Intellect: Murdock’s intelligence and brain functions have always been apparent, long before he was affected by radiation, his midnight training, A+ morning schooling and little need of sleep is an testament to that.

Expert Detective: He has shown to be an expert detective using his intellect to figure out complex problems and hyper-senses to find clues and evidence to crime scenes.

Expert Tracker: With the aid of his hyper-senses, Murdock is able to track objects and people from miles away with ease.

Master Acrobat: He is classed as a superb-Olympic athlete, gymnast, acrobat, and aerialist due to constant training and exercise since his preteens.

Weapons Proficiency: Murdock is proficient in wielding various weapons through his Ninjutsu training.

Expert Marksman: He is a skilled marksman capable of throwing his sticks with great accuracy. Murdock is also skilled with most projectile-like weaponry, archery and has been shown utilizing military-grade weaponry in extreme situations.

Expert Stick Fighter: He is an expert in wielding all types of stick weapons which include staffs, batons, nunchaku, and paired short sticks.

Master Martial Artist: Murdock is a skilled, self-taught boxer due to watching his father compete and has been heavily trained in the ninja arts by Stick, a senior master and member of the secret order The Chaste. Nick Fury, former director of S.H.I.E.L.D, commented that there are only a handful of individuals that know what Matt Murdock knows, referring to the Chaste. Stick helped him control his powers and taught him valuable fighting techniques with stealth, vanishing, to even life-energy(chi/ki)control. Murdock is well educated in the functioning of the human body as well as martial arts techniques that target pressure points enabling him to paralyze limbs of an individual’s body or the entire body altogether. He’s disabled eye sight, speech, induced pain, and even has knowledge of pressure points inducing death. Murdock’s fighting style blends Boxing with Ninjutsu, Judo, Aikijujutsu and other disciplines such as Jujutsu, Capoeira, Eskrima, Aikido, Wrestling, and Kung Fu to varying degrees. His skills have proven so exceptional so as to enable him to easily defeat or stalemate some of the greatest fighters on Earth. He has fought opponents such as the Black Panther, Taskmaster, Iron Fist, Captain America, Sabretooth and Wolverine to standstills, even impaling Wolverine with a sword while the mutant was in a feral state due to brainwashing by the terrorists known as Hydra.

Strength level For a “normal” human, Matt has demonstrated remarkable physical strength. Daredevil is an Olympic-level weightlifter and possesses the normal human strength of a man of his age, height, and build that exercises intensively and regularly. Matt has demonstrated that he can lift and handle a 400 lbs. barbell as though it were fifty pounds, has overturned a limo full of people, and has picked up and used a mail drop-box as a blunt instrument. At his peak, Daredevil possesses sufficient strength to press lift approximately 450 lbs.

Weaknesses Blindness : Daredevil is blind. While his Senses help him overcome this, it becomes a problem for him to navigate and fight when his heightened senses are scrambled or can’t detect anyth

Sense Precision: Daredevil’s extent to discern pictures or video images are limited, and he can only guess at colors based on the amount of heat they are absorbing or reflecting. If nothing is being emitted (By a person or thing) that would trigger his heightened senses Daredevil wouldn’t be able to detect it, like when a sniper bullet fired outside the range of his sense of hearing was able to badly injure h Sound and/or Smell Peak: Daredevil’s superhuman senses render him extraordinarily vulnerable to odors and/or excessive noise, which can temporarily weaken his Radar Sense. Under extreme circumstances he can be easily immobilized, suffer great pain and/or left disorientated. Once the disruptive effects wear off, Daredevil’s Radar Sense is able to return to its normal calibration. Radar Sense Disruption: Though uncommon– in unique situations (where multiple objects, sounds, temperatures, and smells, are in close proximity) Daredevil’s Radar has been known to fail leaving him to rely on his other senses.

Non-Superhuman Physical Conditioning: As Daredevil’s powers do not give him any kind of superhuman physical ability, Daredevil is as susceptible to physical injury and disease as any other normal human, often having to rely more on strategy than strength when up against a superhuman opponent

Weapons Matt currently wields a multi-purpose cane that has many different modes. Its initial form is two short sticks held together by an extendable cable. It can be configured into a nunchaku- like weapon to a manrikigusari (a long rope/chain weapon with two weights on its ends), dual short sticks which can be wielded in a pair, staff, or a cable with a grappling hook. The weapon can also be adjusted to combine both sticks into a larger stick. The weapon is held by a holster on the side of Matt’s left leg.

[whatdoyouexpectthistime]

AFK: A Spark Reignited

This makes more sense, in the three fic plot, if you’ve read Part One first.

Part One - A Spark of Hope < HERE

Finally, Astraeus reappears, and I get to my feet.

Nerves raw.

Trembling in anticipation.

Eyes searching.

“Well?” I prompt.

My part in our plan was done with an hour ago.

It was inelegant at best, but thankfully, relatively bloodless. HERA HQ, and the elevator leading to Olympus was secure. We - Alex, Hydra, May, and Astraeus - with the help of the allies Hades had finally secured from the top tier gods, Aphrodite at the forefront, had effectively triumphed in our coup on Earth.

Our intelligence was on point – I credit Selene and Helios for that, as much for their combat support.

But Olympus itself is another matter entirely, and I cannot stop pacing – even now with Astraeus here, Hades is not with him.

Hades is not with him, and there is little left in me to keep the calm.

“Astraeus?” I press, reaching out fingers that have taken hold of his vest.

I want to shake the silence out of him.

“Are you sure you don’t want to side with me, blossom?” he asks, teasing, smirking. “Seeing you like this, the way you charged into battle, has made me fall in love with you even more.”

“That’s enough.”

Hades’ voice rings low.

It tumbles from the sky, crashing through the roof, through the ceiling. The sound alone pries my fingers away from leather, but I cannot look beyond the titan before me, because what if, in my hope, I have imagined Hades’ return?

“King of Olympus, is it?” Astraeus exhales, lazily turning his head.

“Let’s go with administrator,” Hades asserts.

Gaze heavy, draining the remnant strength in my muscles.

And I fall.

But am caught, and lowered into a lap I thought I’d lost forever; am encircled by indomitable arms so gentle all thought of them ever bringing violence flees.

And I’d thought him an enemy, been laid so low, bereft, it had felt a place from which there was no escape.

Is it in me to forgive the ruse?

The parting of my lips meets his breath, and mingles where he pauses there – staring, uncertain, waiting.

“I’ll just…” Astraeus says somewhere on the periphery of my awareness, and is then gone.

“Is it really over?” I whisper.

My hands lie flat against his chest. The material of his shirt is grubby and torn at one collar, speaking of the dangers he faced in his own fight.

Sadly, he shakes his head.

“No, it’s not,” he admits, and it pains him to say it.

He wants nothing more than to tell me we can be happy, live a peaceful, drama-free life – I believe that.

“It will take time,” he continues, and I feel the tentative slide of his hands up my spine, stilling briefly every time I breathe - like he’s taken it as a sign he should stop. “Even those who stood with us are wary of the titans, even I, am wary; this is, after all, my second revolution.”

Of course, Cronus was deposed by his own children.

“It makes sense that the betrayers should also fear betrayal,” he adds, and casts his eyes downwards.

Because he still feels the weight of my scorn for his decision to act as if he truly was going to force me into becoming Hera.

“I have proven it possible to tear down even Zeus, who we simply accepted as our leader for so long.”

If I choose to hold onto the sourness of that experience… if I decide this man, the traitor god, is irredeemable, then I should get up now and walk away while I can.

“I don’t,” I breathe, finally meeting his eyes, eyes that slay me every single time, “care.”

He looks confused, I’m ambiguous, and panic resurfaces in those powerful meres. So I placate it, I relieve it, I press my lips to his and tell him with that gesture I am willing to stay with him through the tumult.

For just a moment the tension in his body subsides and he is just a man painted by the reprieve I’ve offered.

“If you ever break my heart like that again,” I state, so quietly in the small space between the gentle press of our bodies, “it’ll kill me, I’m sure of it.”

“I am so, sorry,” he frowns, contrition so deep I can feel it in the ever present potency of his aura.

His hands fall away.

“Show me how sorry you are,” I instruct, inhaling to fill my lungs with the fact I missed him so much, I’ve convinced myself all memory of us becoming one is out of reach.

“Are you… sure?”

Such vulnerability, such uncertainty seems so incongruous and yet – I’ve always known, this  is the side he somehow became comfortable showing me.

“Kiss me, Hades,” I instruct, skimming my hands up his pecs, over broad shoulders, before knitting my fingers at the base of his neck. “Make me remember, how I used to feel.”

He asks no more questions, and though I see hunger overtake the relief in his eyes, the contact of his lips against mine is controlled and restrained. It’s nostalgic, drawing me away from all the hurt of recent weeks to the dawn of our relationship – so careful not to break me, so attentive to everything.

The Hades I have missed so much.

My fingers inch though the short hairs at his nape, and even that small gesture directs him away from caution.

I don’t want caution now.

I want raw.

So I dig into his scalp with my fingernails and pull his head to mine.

There are few, if any places between us we’ve not yet explored, but somehow the questing appetite of my tongue feels new. Words yet unspoken resting upon them are swept away by increasing fervour, and I gladly welcome the clutch of his hands at my thighs that effortlessly repositions me in a straddle.

“Yes,” I hiss, as those palms spread out over my hips and rock me against his firming lap.

The whole world vanishes, leaving just the two of us - the needy roam of hands beneath fabric that then peels it away, the drag of fingertips across skin, and the persistent sound of laboured breathing.

“I really thought, I would never touch you again,” he says suddenly, smoothing errant strands of hair away from my face and back over my ears. “That you would never touch me.”

“I want you to touch me so deeply I can’t tell we’re two people,” I tell him frankly, rising to my knees, sliding my firm grip up and down the impressive length of his cock.

The shudder that tremors through his body further stokes my passion – I, still a mortal regardless of Hera’s artifact, can make a god, tremble. But I drag out the moment as he dips his head and pinches a nipple between his teeth; and he knows just how hard to bite down if he wants to hear me moan, just how hard he can before my body twists in tormented desire for far more than that.

“Please,” he implores against the salty sheen of my skin, and I lift his chin with my free hand.

How can I not love this mighty creature who says please?

“I love you,” I declare tenderly.

The scars may take some time to fade, but I cannot lie; my heart belongs to the God of the Underworld.

“Not even Aphrodite has a word for how I feel about you,” he responds breathily, seeking my lips and I will not deny him that.

He groans into my mouth as I sink myself down onto him, parting the inviting drench of my folds, stretching the warm swallow of my inner reaches, until I can take him in no more. And my name drifts from where he’s been holding it tightly within - but soon, all words devolve to desperation and anticipation.

Our bodies meet again and again, rhythm interrupted occasionally by gasp and spasm as we pull each other toward a release by far more substantial than mere pleasure of flesh.

We reaffirm our trust in one another as we push boundaries. How close to the edge can I push him before falling still? How long can I hold him still before I’m overpowered, pushed back, pushed down, pushed to my very limit?

And over.

“Nngh… god… damnit!” I cry out, and as every nerve in my body sings, I cannot fathom the ridiculousness of that exclamation.

I never want him to stop, but the fire is so intense it borders on pain - the kind that commands the flesh to struggle and squirm, even beneath the delightful heaviness of Hades’ taut muscles and his determined penetration.

And I know I’m crying, and it’s ugly, but I cling, and clench, and buck, until the whole room shudders with the roar of his climax and the echo of it expanding through his aura.

He fills me, and I am okay with that, and sprawled on the floor with my legs still wrapped around him, we remain to catch our breaths.

His thumbs graze my cheeks made moist by both exertion, and an emotional easement we both needed.

Smiling, I kiss him again, a slow, deep sigh into his mouth that ends with his lower lip sucked into mine.

“Is it all right to keep Olympus waiting?” I question finally, knowing the truth of the answer but asking it anyway.

“Not really,” he exhales, laying light kisses against my eyelids before grinning confidently. “But it will wait.”   

@mai-dreaming @kiniloves @reinasescape @smutmylifeup @hifftn

[computerguideworld-blog]

How Game Of Thrones Ends Based On Computer Simulations

New Post has been published on https://computerguideto.com/must-see/how-game-of-thrones-ends-based-on-computer-simulations/

How Game Of Thrones Ends Based On Computer Simulations

We love Game Of Thrones, but it’s not without its flaws. So we ran a 100-percent accurate simulation to see how the story would have played out if the characters didn’t spend half their time sleeping around, torturing each other, and talking about their feelings. The highly advanced technology we used was Nintendo’s Advance Wars: Dual Strike, a 2005 video game about anime characters fighting with tanks.

No gratuitous boobs in this, but we’re sure somebody on the internet has fixed that by now.

We created a map, let the game’s artificial intelligence run amok, and watched as years of rambling storytelling were ruthlessly condensed into 38 minutes of all-out warfare. We also got drunk, watched porn, and grew beards, for maximum authenticity.

So here’s Westeros, which most of you know better than your own country:

And here’s our perfect 1:1 recreation:

*Play for full effect*

The Starks and their allies are red, the White Walkers are blue, and the Lannister-Tyrell alliance is green. Dorne and the Freys’ Twins start off neutral, while Stannis is cut because being overlooked is his lot in life. The Iron Islands are represented on the side, but the Greyjoys aren’t, because the only thing they’ve achieved in five seasons is one very uncomfortable fingering scene, and that can’t be recreated on a Nintendo console until Bayonetta 3 is released.

Across the ocean is Essos, where Daenerys (yellow) has spent five years yelling about slaves while acting entirely with her impressive eyebrows. Here’s her part of the world:

Mother of dragons, first of her name, breaker of chains, protector of pixels.

Now we need to create the Advanced Wars equivalent of 20,000 bearded men who want to kill each other. Game Of Thrones has more political factions than most real countries: Starks, Lannisters, Baratheons, Tyrells, Martells, the Night’s Watch, white walkers, wildlings, the Targaryens, the dozens of interchangeable one-dimensional villains Daenerys has butchered, rogue actors like Littlefinger, that kid who’s way too old to be breastfeeding, and on and on and on. But because most of them are ultimately irrelevant — just like in real life — so we’re chopping this story down to the essentials. First up are the Starks, whose 18,000 men were mostly peasants with pointy objects. So assuming each unit represents 2,000 men, here’s what Robb’s forces look like:

“Nine’s more than enough to invite to a wedding, right?”

The thing that looks like a duck with wheels represents his mounted units, while the soldiers carrying poster rolls / RPG launchers are his knights. And just to his north is a horde of white walkers, which we’ll assume have overrun the wildlings. As for Team Lannister, they start with 20,000 well-trained and equipped soldiers, as well as a small navy …

… while Daenerys has 8,000 Unsullied, 2,000 mercenaries, other miscellaneous soldiers, and three dragons represented by stealth bombers. See, our high-end simulation technology is flawless.

Right down to the dragons’ baffling decision to not simply eat every fleshy human and rule the planet their damn selves.

Snow falls as the war begins, and the very first thing the Starks do is march 2,000 men north to Castle Black and kill 1,000 white walkers.

“You know murder, Jon Snow.”

Fuck. Yes. The walkers were teased from the very first scene of the very first episode, only for 47 more hours to pass before Jon killed a single one. But there are no stories about incest and long shots of people walking endlessly through the wilderness here. The Starks get down to business, taking the walker threat seriously and acknowledging that having the realm’s only line of defense against a terrifying supernatural horde be a collection of poorly-trained rapists isn’t a great idea. While Jon immediately starts the war we’ve been waiting for since episode one, Robb marches the rest of his troops toward the Twins.

It’s amazing the progress you can make in a war when you don’t wait for all your soldiers to die first.

In the show, the Lannisters dealt with their enemies mostly via political machinations and cunning plots. But our Lannister AI said to hell with all that. They also march on the Twins, as well as sending Jaime and Bronn with 4,000 men to take Dorne by force …

… and two assassins equipped with wildfire (represented by remote bombs) straight at the heart of Dany’s forces.

Where, in keeping with the law of the land, they stop and wait while other people do shit.

Dany, meanwhile, sends one team to take Qarth while the rest of her troops march on Meereen, condensing four seasons of wandering and whining into one bold move.

Fire cannot kill a dragon, but boredom can.

So to recap, after a single day of combat, Jon is in charge of the Night’s Watch and leading the battle against the walkers (which, on the show, happened in season five), Robb is at the Twins (season two), Dany’s taking Qarth (season two) and Meereen (seasons three through five), while the Lannisters and Tyrells are actively engaging both of them with actual military tactics (season hasn’t-happened-yet). But while our simulation is cutting the show’s fat, it retains its flair for sudden and dramatic deaths. Sorry, Kit Harington groupies, but the light goes out of Jon’s beautiful doe eyes on Day Two.

“For the article.”

He exploded, and then his corpse vanished, so there’s no convenient resurrection or Jesus metaphors for him. But he takes thousands of walkers with him, and it fulfills something Jon predicted in the show — that the Night’s Watch could survive one night of attacks, but not two. Things go better for the Starks south of the Wall, as Robb, free from the sexy distractions of Charlie Chaplin’s granddaughter, begins his conquest of the Twins.

Amazing what you can get done when you keep your Little Tramp all zipped up.

No sooner do the Starks lay claim than the Lannisters massacre 2,000 of them in a single gruesome day. In no dimension is holing up with Walder Frey a good move.

“The Lannisters send their fuck yous.”

Meanwhile, their wildfire-armed assassins bring Dany’s dragons to the brink of death, and they wipe out three-quarters of her Unsullied in the process — a tactic that is shockingly more effective than one glass of bad wine and Jorah Mormont’s fickle boner.

The Unsullied’s nonexistent boners were simply no match.

Dany responds by merging her dragons into one three-headed terror with some horrible arcane magic and then, ugh, retreating to Meereen and Qarth to rebuild / sit around and grimace. So just like in the show, we get one awesome dragon moment, followed by a whole lot of nothing.

With pixels, it was too hard to tell if she shit herself this time.

On the third day of conflict, the Lannisters and the Starks start their epic battle …

… while the white walkers seize Castle Black. We’re three episodes into the Nintendo DS version of Game Of Thrones, and while there are no tits (a feature we are supplementing by browsing “Busty Asian Beauties” while the simulation runs), everything else is way more awesome.

Aside from Joffrey still running amok instead of choking on poison and vomit.

On the following day, Daenerys flies her hydra-dragon over Dorne, an important world event the Starks and Lannisters completely fail to take note of because they’re too busy massacring each other.

Had the real Daenerys thought of this, George R. R. Martin could’ve moved on to not finishing a whole other series years ago.

Jaime and Bronn’s troops capture Dorne by standing on it, which is slightly more realistic than the fights they got into there in the show:

“First take, nailed it. Cut!”

The Starks are forced to give up ground at the Twins to hold the Wall …

… while Dany’s King Ghidorah kills 200 of Jaime and Bronn’s men.

You make Jaime fight without Brienne constantly saving his ass, and look what happens.

Despite all the awesome action happening elsewhere — a three-headed dragon attacks a city held by two fan favorites — the camera decides to focus on Meereen, where absolutely nothing occurs. Huh, it’s weird that season five’s storylines play out exactly the same in both versions. It’s a great tactic, though — Dany announces her intimidating presence to Westeros with an attack on the one stronghold that resisted her distant ancestors. That will get her more support than five years of sitting around and grumbling ever could.

Over the next few days, the Starks hold Castle Black but lose the Twins to the superior numbers and resources of the Lannisters, Dany expands her holdings in the East, and Jaime and Bronn flee Dany’s dragon, which moves on to harassing Highgarden. The Starks are confined to the North, but there’s a glimmer of hope — the Lannisters land 4,000 men at the Wall, in an apparent sign that they’re willing to put aside their differences and battle the Walker horde …

… Kidding! The Lannisters immediately attack the Starks, right in front of the horde of ice monsters that want to kill them all and rule their corpses. Which is absolutely what a bitter, vengeful, and drunk Cersei would do. For her, it’s better to see the world destroyed than to see her enemies succeed. And all their attack does is benefit the walkers, as there are now even fewer good men standing between them and civilization.

If you can’t trust an incestuous, murdering wino, who can you trust?

With that incredibly destructive act, everyone in the Seven Kingdoms must be cheering for Daenerys’ dragon to slay the short-sighted Lannisters and save Westeros. So it’s a bit anti-climactic when the exhausted dragon runs out of energy, crashes, and dies. Maybe don’t take your storytelling cues from this particular event, George.

The dragon is exactly how Martin feels after writing more than ten words a day.

Still, Daenerys soldiers on, taking most of Essos with good old-fashioned soldiers alone.

No Unsullied victory teabaggings, cause, you know …

The Starks and the Watch successfully repel the Lannisters in the North, while in the South, Moat Cailin continues to hold out remarkably well (just like in the show). But their numbers are depleted, which means …

… the white walkers are south of the wall for the first time in 8,000 years, and we’re still in season one. The Lannisters are able to occupy Winterfell, the seat of their most hated enemy, but it’s a Pyrrhic victory. The walkers soon push them out and seize the North, and with the new resources available to them, they start fielding tanks. We shall assume these tanks are undead. Thanks a lot, Cersei.

Shame! Shame! Shame!

Arya may have escaped and Sansa is probably being sexually assaulted somewhere, but otherwise, the Starks are dead. The last hurrah by the North is a screaming kamikaze attack on the walkers led by Ramsay Bolton — an oddly heroic yet sufficiently crazy way for the show’s most hated character to make his exit. The Lannisters and walkers begin fighting, while Dany builds boats, lands her vanguard, and finds the southern half of Westeros almost completely undefended.

Everyone was distracted while mourning the tragic death of the guy who castrated dudes and raped girls.

She immediately marches on King’s Landing and defeats the remainder of Jaime and Bronn’s weary soldiers.

Sisters and prostitutes everywhere are inconsolable.

Jaime dies in the city he saved, at the hands of the daughter of the madman he saved it from. It’s a dramatically satisfying conclusion to his character, and it begins the great Targaryen-Lannister-Frost-Monster War. The Lannisters are able to rally their troops and defend King’s Landing, but at too much of a cost. The white walkers march to the Twins and start slaughtering them. It’s unclear if the dying soldiers are able to grasp the narrative irony and thematic significance of being massacred there.

“The Braaaaains Of Castamere.”

Dany lands additional troops and makes another attempt at King’s Landing, and the Lannisters are unable to fight off her naval assault — as they did Stannis’ on the show — because they blew their wildfire on their assassination attempt. On Day 22 of the conflict, Daenerys captures King’s Landing:

With the Mother of Ghidorah on the Iron Throne, the Lannister and Tyrell armies disband and their cities declare their loyalty to the new Queen. At this point, the walkers have overrun the North, but Daenerys has the heartland of Westeros and the combined might of Essos behind her. It’s numbers versus resources, with the only question being how efficiently those resources will be used. So it’s the fight the show has been hinting at for years, reached in under half an hour of simulation time.

The “Previously On Game Of Thrones” intro will be nothing but an ad for the one-disc complete series DVD.

To avoid being overrun, Dany immediately retreats to build her forces and otherwise sit around doing nothing, because while you can take the queen out of the shitty plotline, you can’t take the shitty plotline out of the queen. But Daenerys’ decision also highlights her ruthless side: She lets King’s Landing fall to the white walkers, the entire capital city slaughtered and zombified merely so she can rally her troops.

We’re starting to think she might hold a grudge.

But it works. The Queen gets her army, lines it up along the banks of the Trident — where the Targaryen dynasty fell in the first place after Daenerys’ older brother died in battle — and now she’s either going to restore her family’s name or doom the land to a reign of endless darkness.

Or spend three more seasons sitting around debating which is better.

It’s the final epic struggle, with every character who’s survived to this point putting aside their differences to battle a supernatural threat to their very species. Turns out they don’t need a dragon at their backs, because the true dragon … is teamwork.

The battle takes almost as long as the rest of the war combined, but Daenerys does it. They retake King’s Landing. Fictional humanity is saved!

“It’s Queen’s Landing now. Any objections? No, didn’t think so.”

From there, she drives the white walkers back beyond the Wall, then marches into the far North and topples their frozen stronghold. The Seven Kingdoms are reunited, and their greatest threat is destroyed.

Her traditional warrior garb of a red ball cap, power suit, and half-undershirt struck mortal fear into her enemies.

Oh, and Bran got eaten by zombies at the start of all this, because no one cares about him.

The end!

So there you have it. The dragons are a paper tiger, and Dany will become Queen not through their power, but by giving Westeros what it’s lacked for so long: a ruler willing to unite people against true evil. Jon will give his life fighting the white walkers. Jaime will die trying to redeem himself in the eyes of the people he loves. The Lannisters, in their arrogance, will fail to learn from the mistakes of the Starks. History repeats itself, as the final battle occurs on the same ground where this conflict began years ago. And, most importantly, a decade-old Nintendo game can tell an epic story more efficiently than a big-budget HBO series.

For more 100 percent not wrong insights into ‘Game Of Thrones,’ check out 6 Insane (but Convincing) ‘Game of Thrones’ Fan Theories and 19 Game of Thrones Plot Twists That Would BreakTthe Internet.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out The Definitive Answer To Game Of Thrones’ Biggest Mystery , and other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also, follow us on Facebook, and let’s get as drunk as a Baratheon or something.

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[osmw1]

Poison-Wielding Fugitive   Chapter 71

what would you like to read next? suggest titles for me to translate!

Though the dragonslayers all seemed to be afflicted by the miasma, they still wielded their weapons with resolution and took the fight to the Bio Corpse Hydra and the priest behind it. The plaza where everybody was situated was in a state of disrepair, and the homes surrounding the area were destroyed. The remaining dragonslayers who had not joined the battle were rescuing the townsfolk and carrying them to safety.

However, the hydra was much nimbler than its looks suggested. I was honestly could not have kept up with Celes and her squad as the buff from Veno’s poison had dissipated. Veno probably knew exactly how strong it was. Strong enough to wreck me, that’s for sure.

“Ugh…”

The Bio Corpse Hydra swung its tail and struck a dragonslayer, sending him flying. The dragonslayer landed some distance away and slumped over motionless. Don’t tell me… he’s dead…?! Did… did this all happened because I came to this town?

‘Nay. ‘tis because I resisted their Forced Possession Summoning. Thou oughtest not to worry.’ “Yukihisa. Lord Holy Dragon.” “Muuuu.”

Arleaf did her best casting Aroma Heal with Muu as a catalyst on the dragonslayers. Then, she grabbed me by the shoulders and started shaking.

“Get ahold of yourself!” “But… if I weren’t… it’s my fault they…” ‘Nay, I am to blame…’

Perhaps it was hubristic of me to think I could save anyone. It was because they got involved with me that first Nisua… and now Lif’el… Accompanied with a loud clap, my cheek seared with pain.

“Yukihisa! Lord Dragon! Have you snapped out of it yet? Please, stop blaming yourselves.” “But…” “Neither of you have done anything wrong. The one guilty of this all is… well, in the case of my village, it would be Elbatoxin and the followers of the Holy Yggdrasil. The ones guilty are whoever did this without so much a pang of conscience, the ones who tolerated all of this. They are the ones who committed these horrible deeds and not you, Yukihisa.”

When Arleaf spoke so bluntly… her expression and the way she spoke seemed identical to her ancestor.

“After learning of the truth, Celes immediately jumped into battle without even thinking about herself. What we should do is grant her wish and help take the townsfolk to safety. And then… we should defeat that foul creature and its puppeteer.”

Am I right?, Arleaf followed up her pep talk.

“Muu!”

Muu seems to agree with what Arleaf had to say.

‘… aye. We should do exactly as the lass says: ensure safety for the few who are still alive, slay the beast, then deal with the priest.’ “Yeah… you’re right.”

I realized I didn’t have time to waste feeling sorry for myself. We’re a pretty capable party.

“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

As I was pumping myself up, Celes found a gap through the Bio Corpse Hydra and she unleashed her Luminous Blade at the priest. It clashed against his magical barrier and then split through, cutting the priest’s veil. She was still following through her swing, but the priest… caught her blade with his bare hand?!

“Wha—!”

Even Celes was shocked. I mean, she’s the strongest one around, isn’t she? How can anyone stop her special move with a single hand?

‘Hmm…?’

The priest’s veil drops onto the ground, revealing a wrinkly old elf looking down at Celes with scorn.

“You have done well to make it this far, but you shall get no further! You filthy humans foolishly underestimate my power!”

Then, he sent his fist straight onto Celes’ abdomen. It might sound like an exaggeration, but he sent her flying for about five meters.

“Ugh… augh…” “Your misconception that defeating me would end everything is, unfortunately for you, incorrect. Ahh, it will be such a pleasure to torture Saint Yggdra’s finest warriors, ahahaha…”

The wrinkly old fart was extremely cocky. Well, if you’re so strong, you be the leader of the dragonslayers then. Anyway, the Karma Blaze strapped to Arleaf’s back started to glow like it never has before.

“Whoa?!” “W-What the…?!” “Hmm?!”

The bright light drew the attention of the priest.

“I-Is that the light of the sacred sword?! Impossible!”

Just as he was about to torture Celes to death, the priest began to panic.

“The sword…”

The sacred sword slowly lifted itself away from Arleaf’s back and floated upwards… and in front of me. … is it telling me I should wield it? I gingerly extend my hand out.

“Attack! Kill him now!”

The priest shouted his command at the Bio Corpse Hydra and it acknowledged the priest with a loud roar before charging over at us.

“Cohgray!” I immediately grab Karma Blaze and then… a scene unfolded in front of my eyes.

     This seemed like some laboratory or test facility but by the far wall stands a tree. Arleaf’s ancestor and the man who dreamt of reclamation rushes in… they look older than I remember. Standing across from them is an arrogant-looking elf.

“Virage, don’t do it!” “Hahaha… I did not expect you to be able to follow my trail.” “Do you have any idea what the hell you’re doing?!” “Of course I do. Since we have so painstakingly revived the world tree… we would be halting the progress of civilization if we do not make the best use of its graces. Everyone here understands. Everyone wishes to live with abundance. You, however, take it too easy.”

The prideful elf spits out his words.

“There is nothing wrong with treasuring the world tree. On the reverse, you are definitely in the wrong! Not only will your machines kill the world tree, it will go out of your control! The world cannot take any more damage! Why do you think Veno sacrificed his life?!” “Hmpf! Such foolishness… that stupid dragon wanted to see this world prosper? I am doing no more than hurrying that.”

With a snap of his fingers, the elf’s goons surrounded him… as he flicked the switch on, powering the machine. Then, the tree in the back started glowing.

“Hahahahahahaha! Do you understand yet? This marks the beginning of a new era!” “Stop!”

The man who dreamt of reclamation rushed over, but Virage showed no signs of stopping. It was immediately apparent what the machine did. A black, evil light began to flicker.

“What?!”

The earth began to quake as the needles snap out of the gauges.

“Cease it at once!” “I-I shall do no such thing! It is going critical!”

The evil glow filled the immediate area and, starting with the man who dreamt of reclamation, a force knocked them all over. In the middle of that light… was the shadow of a dragon much like Veno flying off somewhere. The only positive thing was that light seemed to have protected the men at the hypocenter. What we now call miasma began infecting the nation, forcing the survivors to take refuge. And in the middle of all of that… the shamefaced elf and his men all spout out the same rehearsed lines and blamed everything onto the man who dreamt of reclamation.

“I was forced to go through this inhuman plan by him!” “Lies! This was all you!” “What are you saying?! We are the victims here! How dare you lay the blame on us?! You despicable monster! You dreamer! It is your fault that everybody has now lost their homes!” “That’s right!”

Of course, there were people who still believed in the man who dreamt of reclamation… but it would be understatement to call it a tragedy. Dispirited, the man who dreamt of reclamation held his Karma Blaze and began to speak.

“We will be fine… no matter how difficult, how terrible the situation we get dragged into, we are simply back to square one. We simply have to once again build a better land for everyone to live, just as how Veno lent us this land before. Let us found a nation that they would envy… let us create the world that Veno envisioned, however…” He paused before continuing to speak to his sword.

“The only regret I have is that when Veno reawakens, he would feel utterly betrayed. He… he was a great guy. And even if I can’t do it in this generation, I want him to see how beautiful this world will become.”

I still don’t know whether his dream came true or not. I mean, I don’t really know this world and Veno doesn’t have any relation with the people alive now. I’ve been living as a fugitive, but I’m sure there’s a lot of the world I haven’t seen yet. There’s not much land people can live on because of the miasma. Arleaf’s family, his direct descendent, were forced to live right by the swamp.

But Karma Blaze witnessed those days. He passed down his world for us to see.

 Oh, by the way, Veno?

‘What is it?’

What exactly is Karma Blaze? Is this the only one there is in the world?

‘Must I explain it right here and now? Well, simply put, there are more than this one. I know not the true name of the lass’ sword, but there seems to be multiple. It activates only when it judges someone to be heroic and his enemy wicked. It is an inexplicable sword.’

I understood what Veno meant though. To get into more detail, it seems like when heroes visit a certain ancient temple, a sword would appear out of thin air on the altar. But if there are these hero’s swords in the first place, why would they come up with stuff like Forced Possession Summoning and that crazy living creature weapon? If people want heroes, they should at least live on as legend, right? Those heroes can just fight for world peace, can’t they?

‘I wonder. Even I til this day know not the location of that temple. However, it is surprising that the dragonslayers do not wield such a weapon. ‘tis as if they have discarded it for Forced Possession Summoning and that patchwork beast.’

You think so, too? From what I can tell, these sacred swords seem to mean bad business for some people. And then, Karma Blaze finds that one person.

      Without warning, I had been transported back to my body and the priest had just commanded to hydra to attack us. That priest… aside from more wrinkles on his face, he looks like a clone of Virage.

“Hurry and kill him! Do not let the sacred sword activate!”

Oh… I get it.

‘I do too. Uhh… testing, one, two, three.’

Veno’s voice suddenly became a lot louder.

“Wh-What?!” ‘What a coincidence to see you here, Virage. Everything had truly worked well for thee. Thou hadst successfully outwitted him and used the rest of us as scapegoats. Thou nearly deceivedest both me and the sword too.’ “Wh-Who are you?! Veno Yveval?!”

Oh, so Elfé’s real name is Virage then?

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