#doc ... nero

[thatonefandomjumper]

It's a miracle that Nero didn't find Leo during his time homeless.

Just imagine, an incredibly powerful demigod with powers that haven't been seen in hundreds of years, alone and vulnerable out in the streets, ripe for manipulation. It would be a goldmine for Nero.

He could pull his beast tactics on him by being just kind enough to gain his trust before pulling the carpet underneath him. Or maybe he'd just straight up take him.

Who's going to care anyway?

The kid would have been his so easily his and I have no doubts he'd jump at the first opportunity to have him.

[sleepingwork]

作家

[ohbutwheresyourheart]

I have far too many half-written things in my google docs that have never seen the light of day, so I've decided to start buffing up the best ones and posting them unfinished. Maybe I'll come back to them later, or if not at least someone will hopefully enjoy reading them as they are.

First up: fragments from a WIP based on the concept that Eva did not actually die when the twins were children; instead, she got caught in the magic field of a Geryon and sling-shotted to the middle of Devil May Cry 5. What I wrote revolved more around the aftermath, and Eva trying to come to terms with the modern world, her losses, and not knowing what happened to her sons.

The building is echoing once the buffer of trash is removed. High ceilings dissipating into shadowy un-shapes. Dark corners shifting like predators turning and twisting. It’s too like the manor in those early days before she tamed it as Sparda had; made it respect her for all she was a mortal woman.

Made it respect her because she was a mortal woman.

She feels so tired, though; too tired to start a fresh war. So Eva lives with the shadows and whatever they may hide. At least it’s not outwardly hostile. Even if it was, by rights she shouldn’t be comfortable here.

This domain, this world, empty of her sons.

----

Swollen and fragile all at once, like a wine glass held too long in hot water - ripe for shattering with a single thoughtless move.

Midmorning is an inauspicious time for any demon to appear; Eva uses the reprieve to walk the city streets. Capulet is smaller than Red Grave but still a decent-sized city in its own right, checking off all the requirements: university, libraries, museums, churches, arts district, cheerful cafes dotting the sidewalk…

A few months ago -- no, thirty years ago -- she would have delighted in browsing the art supplies store, or checking the museum events for child-friendly exhibitions (but boys you must behave), or laughing into her coffee as two eight year olds descended into extensive debate on the merits of chocolate cake over strawberry tarts.

Now she buys peppermint tea in a to-go cup and takes it to the park.

Capulet is unexpectedly windswept in August, errant breezes stirring up the parched over-long grass around her ankles and pulling her hair, strand by strand, out of the confines of her ponytail.

The park is quietish; the younger children are out in force but a university city never really feels alive during the summer while the students are away. She follows the winding gravel path towards the duck pond at the centre and circles it once, twice. Watches other mothers with children tossing breadcrumbs to the ducks; running; playing.

“Why don’t you go and play, boys? Just--”

“Be careful, I know.” Vergil’s eyes, already so much older than they should be. “Why even try when we have to pretend?”

She’d never come up with a good enough answer for him.

Trish finds her on a bench. She sits down without ceremony or preamble, sunglasses her one concession to the summer day but otherwise as unaffected by the August sun as she no doubt will be by the coming autumn chill.

(Eva is rapidly coming to dislike Trish. Not because she is a demon, per se, but because it’s so fucking demoralising to constantly see the perfect version of herself; an Eva who will never succumb to sagging tits or a bloated stomach or even messy hair.)

“Are you all right? You’re sitting there like a ghost.”

Eva sips her tea to save herself from an immediate response. The cup is almost empty and the dregs are cold; she doesn’t remember drinking it.

“I’m fine.”

“Mm.” Trish doesn’t look as though she believes Eva in the slightest, but thankfully doesn’t push the issue. “Well, in that case, I have a favour to ask.”

“Oh?” Eva becomes instantly wary. Even as despondent as she feels, she knows better than to thoughtlessly promise a demon anything.

Something flashes in Trish’s eyes, gone too quickly for Eva to define it. The slow smile that curls the corners of her lips is equally inscrutable.

“Don’t worry, it’s not a favour for me, exactly,” she assures her, waving a perfectly manicured hand (again that familiar burst of jealousy towards a creature that could control their human physical appearance at will; Sparda had never had a bad hair day in his life--). “Lady heard you’re quite the dab hand with magic and she wanted to know if there were any goodies you could make for her, or teach her, or… whatever, really.”

“Last I saw, Lady has a tongue in her head,” Eva replies coolly.

Trish’s smile widens. “Oh, she does, but she’s out of town this week and when I saw you I thought I might as well ask now as later.”

“Mm.” Now it’s Eva’s turn to give Trish a searching look. She taps her nails (not perfectly manicured by any definition of the term) against her empty cup, wishing there was some left; she could make use of a timely pause to sip her tea and give herself a moment to think. “Well, I’m happy to talk to Lady about what she needs when she’s back in Capulet.”

“I’ll pass the message on.” With one flowing, elegant movement, Trish gets to her feet and stretches like a languid cat. “I’d better get going. See you around, Eva.”

“Yes, see you,” Eva mutters to her back; Trish is already going, sashaying through the park like she owns the place.

Something about this doesn’t smell right and Eva has sense enough to be cautious.

And yet… When she returns to Devil May Cry, she spends time going through the cupboards she’s restocked and checking her herbs. She uses the laptop Nero and Nico set her up with and finds websites that sell the supplies she needs -- whether advertised for witchcraft or otherwise -- and prepares lists of useful tricks; things that used to give her the edge she needed to survive another night.

It might not be useful for Lady -- if, indeed, Lady even asked the question -- but it’s useful for Eva. Practically, because she can’t be too careful even now, and in the abstract;  when she goes to bed that night, Eva sleeps better than she has in weeks. Her hands might be dry and her nails might be broken, but with her fingertips stained and smelling of herbs once again she almost begins to recognise herself.

----

To Eva’s palpable surprise, Lady does actually swing by Devil May Cry the following week.

“Trish told me she saw you,” Lady explains as she unholsters Kaline Ann and sets her down on the desk. “Did she tell you the kind of thing I was looking for?”

Because there is truth in this cover story that Lady and Trish have concocted between themselves. Yes, mainly they want to check on Eva, but it also never hurts for an old bitch to learn some new tricks.

And how does Eva look? Less like Trish than she used to; Eva has taken to shoving her hair up in a loose bun at the back of her head (the better, Lady assumes, to keep it out of her face now she was no longer playing lady of the manor) and has swapped her elegant black gown for a serviceable sweater and jeans. On her feet, Doc Martens. On her hands, broken nails and stained fingertips. In her eyes - fire.

“In passing.” Eva is - suspicious? Well, Lady can’t entirely blame her for still finding her feet with all of them, particularly Trish - though Trish herself had taken it as a compliment that Eva considered her enough potential trouble to be wary of.

“You’re welcome to anything I can teach you, although…” Eva’s gaze slides across and down to Kalina Ann. There is something distinctly hungry (covetous?) in her eyes. “You seem to have the offensive side pretty well covered.”

Lady grins, one firearms aficionado to another. “Give Nico a call if you want anything - you can’t beat the Goldsteins for guns and for you she’ll probably do it for free.”

That does it: the reserve cracks and Eva grins back. It is not the kind, motherly smile that Dante probably remembers. This is the smile that a tiger would give you if it could.

“Noted.” Eva pulls out a stack of books from one of the desk drawers. “Now, where do you want to start?”

It does not take long for Lady to be very, very glad she arranged this meeting. Eva is an absolute trove of knowledge. Much of it Lady already knows, and some of it is interesting but not strictly relevant -- Lady’s fighting style being much more full-on than Eva’s tactics lend themselves to -- but she still picks up plenty.

----

Nero is a dutiful, darling boy. He checks in with her, regular as clockwork, trying to disguise the anxiety in his voice. He doesn’t know how to be with her, but he tries nonetheless.

He asks her, often, to visit him in Fortuna; to meet his girlfriend and the children they have adopted. Eva demurs and lets him think she’s still putting off the inevitable label of grandmother. It’s not a total lie, but it’s far from the primary reason. Maybe, perceptive as he is (and he is; Sparda’s eyes staring at her, seeing straight through her despite the un-Sparda-ish mouthing off), he knows that, too, and is giving her time.

It’s just… what if they come back, and she isn’t here to greet them? What if they think she’s truly gone again? She can’t hurt her boys like that a second time. She can’t let them down again when they look for her, reach for her. God knows she was worth fuck-all to them then and even less now, as much protection as a paper cut-out, but if they know she’s willing to put herself between the two of them and danger, then… that’s something, isn’t it? However little, it’s something.

The latest attempt comes on a late autumn evening. October is slipping away, each dark evening bringing them a little closer to Halloween. The most enterprising of the local children have already ventured out trick-or-treating with the excuse that the 31st is a school night, and Eva watches troupes of ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties parade past the windows with a bittersweet smile. She bought a bag of candy but doesn’t really expect any trick-or-treaters; Dante, with good reason, didn’t take pains to encourage the local kids to come calling.

Nero and Nico pull up, a welcome interruption to her descent into melancholy, out of breath but radiant from their latest skirmish. They stop by Devil May Cry on the pretence of leaving word for Morrison that payment is due, but Nero could do that himself on the little computer phone he carries around with him. In reality, they’re checking on her.

Eva doesn’t mind, really. She likes the company, and the kids (God, she calls them kids, they’re not that much younger than she is) are energetic; it’s hard to be actively maudlin when refereeing a shouting match. Nico especially is nosy and almost impossible to brush off or offend. On every visit, she wheedles a few more secrets out of Eva’s recipe books. Lately, Eva has been amusing herself by giving her tidbits and letting Nico reverse-engineer either the process or the product. Usually, she gets it right. Occasionally, she comes up with something better.

Tonight, though, Eva feels even harder to cheer than normal. Nico is put off by a wad of cash to get takeout -- Sparda laid the bounty of the world at her feet, but Nero and Nico are giving her a world tour laden with grease -- leaving Eva and Nero alone for half an hour. Nero has unchecked notebook privileges, as long as he’s careful with them, and he flicks through the entries thoughtfully.

“How did you learn all this stuff in the first place?”

“It depends which stuff we’re talking about.” Eva leans over his shoulder, pointing to the pages. “Sparda gave me a lot of them; things he’d picked up over the years, I don’t even know where from. But this one -- here -- that was from a hunter I partnered up with a lot in the early days. These tisanes were from my aunt. I used to say she should have been born a mediaeval herb-woman, except they’d have hung her for a witch.”

But Nero has stopped looking at the pages. He’s looking at her instead; thoughtful, in a way that is so Vergil it makes her heart skip a beat.

“What were they like, your family?”

“My family...” How long has it been since family wasn’t Sparda and the boys? How much longer since it meant the house she grew up in, and the people who populated it? “Oh, they -- they’re long gone. Better not to dwell. I have the boys,” Except she doesn’t. “And you, of course.”

Nero isn’t diverted, not for a moment, and the tilt of his eyebrows is pure Vergil. But he lets it go for now.

They taper off into silence. It lasts for a few minutes, Eva turning over possibilities in her mind. The words, when they come, are nevertheless a surprise; something she hadn’t meant to let loose.

“My father was a twin,” she says abruptly. “He and my uncle were thick as thieves. I always used to hope I’d have twins -- they say it skips a generation, so I thought it was likely I would -- and then they’d both always have a friend.”

She lets out a hollow little laugh. A friend. What a fucking fairytale.

Where did she go so wrong? Yes, the boys had always had their spats, but Eva had chalked that up to a mixture of their demonic blood and the marked differences in their personalities, watchful but not truly worried. She tried to encourage them to get along, to talk out their problems, but had also comforted herself that it was something they would grow out of as they got older and developed a bit more emotional maturity. Siblings fought; it was perfectly normal. Even she and Elijah--

Eva squeezes her eyes closed. She can’t think about Elijah right now.

A warm, calloused hand covers her own and Eva opens her eyes to see Nero watching her, his expression unusually serious.

“It’s not your fault,” he tells her, quietly but with a forceful conviction behind his words that reminds her of Sparda. “Yeah, they’re idiots, and they’re both kind of fucked up in their own ways, but it’s not your fault. They’d be a lot worse if it hadn’t been for you.”

Is that true? Eva isn’t sure which is worse; that she has ruined her boys, or that they would somehow be even worse without her.

But none of this is Nero’s problem. Grandson, she reminds herself once again. Grandson. Not a peer, not a comrade to lean on. A young man she needs to protect.

Pull yourself together, Eva.

----

Eventually, Eva gets sick of sitting around Devil May Cry waiting for something to happen.

She has never been a passive person. Eva makes things happen. Ever since Lady asked for some tricks to help her on hunts, Eva has been building up her supplies again. Restocking her herbs, potions, and powders. Dusting off Dante’s collection of magic books (a surprisingly comprehensive collection; Vergil had always been the bookworm, while Dante was too much of a fidget-bottom to sit still for five minutes)  and reminding herself of her favourite cantrips. Eventually, she contracts Nico to make her a pair of guns like her old ones.

The last time Eva felt so lost, she was drowning in grief for her husband and it ended in tragedy for her sons. She will not make the same mistake twice. Reaching back through the years, breaking down the walls she had so carefully built up, she remembers how it felt to be fifteen and alone; fifteen and desperate; fifteen and unstoppable.

Then she asks Morrison for some work.

As a young woman trying to break into this line of work, Eva had gotten used to the looks she elicited from these “brokers”. The initial amusement, thinking she’s joking. The surprise when they realise she isn’t. The patronising shake of the head as they assure her this is no work for a pretty little lady like her. Finally, the shock and anger as they hastily reconsidered their position with a gun jammed up against their throats.

Over time, she’d gotten a reputation for being an infernal bitch who was extremely good at what she did, which meant the work came easier. Eventually, by the time she met Sparda, she’d been running her own jobs without a broker at all - unless they were coming to her for a favour.

But that was then. Now she’s back to square one. Unproved. Untried. Untested. It’s aggravating but Eva knows she’ll have to just deal with it if she wants an in.

Because Eva is pretty sure she can talk Morrison into kicking a few jobs her way. Asking Lady, or Nero, or Trish to share, though? It will all be there - amusement, surprise, disbelief - and the worst thing of all is that they will be speaking not from baseless stereotyping but all too real knowledge.

Dante told us all about it, Eva. You barely lasted a minute when the demons attacked, isn’t that right? This is way too much for you.

No. She will work until she has beaten the softness out of herself. Until she can go back to them on an even footing. Until it’s second nature once again to have gunpowder on her clothes and the spark of magic at her fingertips. Until the Underworld has learned to fear Sparda’s whore again.

Then she will get their respect, rather than their pity.

Morrison drops by periodically for coffee and a chat. There hasn’t been any money-grubbing yet; Dante owns the office outright - Eva has seen the deed and it’s real enough - and the bills are being paid out of his last earnings. It won’t last forever, but it’s been enough to take one worry off Eva’s mind so far.

Instead, Morrison seems to simply enjoy her company, or maybe he just can’t kick the habit of showing up at Devil May Cry to see Dante. Whatever the reason, Eva enjoys his visits and his dry humour. What Morrison makes of her, she’s not sure; Eva had told him, in a tone that made it clear she was lying, that she was Trish’s long-lost sister. Morrison had simply chuckled and refrained from asking any questions.

That’s one thing Eva always did like about brokers; they’re the kind of people who don’t ask difficult, unnecessary questions.

“You’ve got this place looking real good, Eva.” Morrison looks around with genuine admiration and gestures with his lit cigarette to the spider plant growing ever larger in the corner. “Way better than Dante ever did. Mother of God, the state I’ve seen this office in… well. Maybe best not to elaborate too much there.”

Eva laughs, remembering how Dante always tried his best to weasel out of his chores. Even getting him to make his bed was a challenge. It seems he hasn’t improved with age.

“It’s certainly been quite the project. But, now that it’s done, I’ve been thinking I need something else to do.” Eva watches Morrison carefully, waiting for his reaction. “Do you have any work for me?”

Morrison smirks. “Getting bored already? Yeah, I got a few things on the back burner - the kind of stuff the other ladies think they’re too good for, if you catch my drift, and the kid really has got his hands full.”

...Okay, that was absurdly easy. Eva narrows her eyes, but Morrison doesn’t look like he’s trying to mock her. On the contrary, when he sees her expression, he holds his hands up in mock surrender.

“Hey, I don’t control the work that comes in! Besides, pay is pay, am I right?”

“I’m looking for hunting work,” Eva says pointedly, wondering if he’s mistaken her meaning.

“Yeah, yeah, I got you.” Morrison chuckles as he takes a drag on his cigarette. “What, were you expecting me to say no? If nobody will do the work, I won't get paid either.”

“I…” Eva is floored. All of her preparation, all that time spent rehearsing her arguments, and it turns out she doesn’t need any of them. “I was expecting, uh…”

“Pushback?” Morrison gives her a knowing look. “Do you really think I’d have lasted this long with those ladies if I trotted out that kind of line? As far as I’m concerned, if you hang around with Dante, Lady, and Trish, then you know what you’re doing and you can take care of yourself.”

Morrison pulls a notebook out of his pocket and rifles through it, humming under his breath. He tears out a page and walks over to lay it on Eva’s desk.

“Here are the details. Just give me a call when you’re done with them and I’ll arrange your payment. Damages come out of your cut, mind you. If everything goes well, I’ll see what else I have for you.”

----

It really is grunt work, but Eva doesn’t mind; she’s not arrogant enough to think she could jump single-handedly into something like Red Grave, guns blazing.

The job also isn't urgent - hence Morrison being lackadaisical about bullying someone into taking it - which gives her the leisure of reconnaissance and planning time.

An empusa nest out on some waste ground that a local developer bought before noticing his unexpected squatters. Straightforward enough, although Eva takes more precautions than she thinks are necessary just in case. After all, she’s seen her judgement is far from perfect.

But in the end, all goes smoothly. No nasty surprises. Just some nasty stains on the concrete from empusas blown to kingdom come. Eva grimaces at them, hoping they don’t count as “damages”. The land is being developed anyway, right? Surely they’ll be putting down fresh tarmac?

In the end, Morrison does take a cut from her pay, but it’s less than she feared and so Eva swallows it with as much good grace as she can muster. The stack of notes is a reassuring weight in her hand. Ballast, though for (or against) what, she’s not entirely sure. The important thing is that she’s done a competent enough job that Morrison leaves her with the details of another couple of jobs. In this way a reputation is built.

“Morrison,” Eva calls out just before he leaves.

Morrison pauses on the threshold. There’s a beat before he looks back at her over his shoulder and Eva gets the impression he knows exactly what she’s about to ask.

“Do you think he’s coming back?”

Because Morrison is not Trish, or Lady, or Nero. He does not know her connection to these people. To Dante. So he has no reason to lie to her or spare her feelings.

He sucks in a breath, considering. “You know, I’d gotten to the point where I never thought I’d see anything Dante didn’t come back from. So many times I thought he was in way over his head, only for him to walk away laughing. But this job… this felt different from the start. Gave me a sort of -- premonition, you might say.”

A soft hum; something that might have been a laugh, if there was any humour in it, and Morrison shook his head.

“The truth is, Eva, I don’t know. I really don’t. He could come waltzing back in here tomorrow, carrying a pizza and laughing at us all for ever doubting him. Or we might never see him again.”

Eva sinks slowly into the desk chair, feeling the truth of it in her bones. A tidal wave of exhaustion crashes over her, threatening to drown her in one clean swoop. Tired of worry. Tired of uncertainty. Tired of never even having the cold comfort of a body to bury. Tired of that tiny speck of hope that even now refused to be snuffed out completely because, however ridiculous it was to expect it, there was still the chance--

“I knew someone else like that, once,” she hears herself say. “He never did come back.”

Morrison gives her a searching look. He seems, for a moment, to be on the verge of saying something more, but in the end refrains. Instead, he tips his hat to her.

“You take care, Eva.”

“Yeah,” Eva replies distantly. “You too, Morrison.”

----

The work is important for more than Eva’s ego.

Her blood sings in her veins once again. The hum of power at her fingertips, like the whine of electricity. A promise, maybe even a vow if you were so inclined to call it such, that one day in the none-too-distant future a small slice of the world would once again turn at Eva’s call and beckoning. She has known this once before when playing lady of the manor. Now, the power is both weaker, for lack of Sparda’s force bolstering her, and sweeter, for knowing it is all of her own clawing and devising.

Her blood sings and Eva tastes iron and lightning on her tongue. Her fingers smell of metal and herbs and something no mortal can rightly put words to; the tang of the Underworld and the burning sulphur of demons.

When Eva looks at her reflection in the chipped bathroom mirror and sees an old, familiar light in her eyes, she knows it is time.

Very little magic needs to be complicated. The point is will, and the directing of it. For those unfamiliar with the craft then the trimmings of rituals and candles can go a long way in finding that direction.

For those who live long enough to become old hands, just the thinking, coupled with the right runes, is enough. Eva takes a sharp knife, a handful of herbs, and a silver-backed mirror (in this, old ways are better; a mercury mirror would work better still, but this will do for now)... and she searches.

Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, soul of my soul, I seek thee now. Come to me, come to me, come to me…

It is a powerful spell. Kinfinding may not be enough to physically draw her boys forth from the Underworld, but it should at least show them to her in the scrying mirror.

Eva seeks until her blood runs dangerously thin and her head pounds and her vision begins to darken. She seeks further still until she knows herself at the very precipice of what she can safely come back from… and only then, with great reluctance, does she let the spell go.

She has not seen them, either of them, even once.

----

Eventually, it feels meaningless to even keep up the pretence she thinks the boys are coming back.

What has happened to them is almost immaterial. The nightmare scenarios are so numerous that eventually they blur together into one long snuff film that leaves her numb. Like Sparda, they were there and then they were not. Like Sparda, she will never know what exactly happened.

Devil May Cry becomes part tomb, part cocoon. She has saved enough money to keep Morrison at bay for a while even after Dante’s funds run out, and she continues to take work for the sake of it, though she doesn’t keep track of her income versus expenditures. If or when the money runs out, she’s not sure. It’s pointless to think so far ahead. Perhaps she’ll just die, like she should have before.

A wife without a husband. A mother without sons. Once, she would have vomited at the thought of a woman identifying herself by the men in her life, but somehow it crept up on her over the years and now she’s left with gaping, bloody holes that gung-ho feminist rhetoric does nothing to paste over.

Nobody seems to notice the change in her philosophy. Though, she gets precious few visitors anyway. Trish and Lady leave her to her own devices, having apparently satisfied their curiosity about her. Morrison has tapered off their tete-a-tetes and only shows up when he wants money. Nero is a busy boy these days.

One night she dreams about them. The dream is very similar to the ones she used to have about Sparda; lifelike, almost lucid dreaming, where everything was the same - she is in bed, having just awoken - except he is there, smiling gently, brushing her hair out of her eyes.

Sleeping in, Eva?

Dreaming about the boys is very similar. She dreams she awakens in the night to a sound downstairs. There is no panic of a break-in; nobody bothers her these days. Voices, muffled, from the floor below. Eva calmly gets out of bed, registering even the rustle of the sheets and the cold, bare wooden boards under her feet. She pads slowly out of the bedroom to the top of the stairs.

There they are, standing in the centre of the office, illuminated perfectly by a strip of moonlight through the window. It is like a picture. It is too perfect and too easy. This is how she knows she is dreaming.

Still, for the first time in months, her heart eases.

They are talking softly to each other, too softly for her to catch the words (there is a limit, she concedes, to just how much even her vivid imagination can conjure). Eva doesn’t mind. She stands at the mezzanine and soaks them in.

Dante gestures to the stairs and looks up. He freezes as their eyes meet. Vergil, a half-heartbeat behind his twin, mirrors him.

“...Hey,” Dante croaks, the gesturing hand that had fallen still now awkwardly waving. “We’re home!”

This is more than she expected. Eva’s throat constricts. Even her dreams of Sparda were not so vivid or so long.

“You’re late, boys,” she manages after a moment. “Dinner was hours ago.”

She is trying for levity, trying to play her part in this scene, trying to piece together something happy for when she wakes up, but her voice cracks halfway through the sentence and she finds herself choking on a sob.

Dante is halfway up the stairs in a moment, hand outstretched to her. Eva, too, is reaching out to her little boy and she cries out when she finally has her arms around him again.

She does not get even a heartbeat of joy before the world collapses into shadows and flames. Dante dissolves, her arms closing around thin air, and the staircase morphs into an endless corridor to hell. Her boys are nowhere to be seen, but she can hear them screaming.

Or maybe she just hears her own voice, screaming herself awake.

There are more dreams, afterwards; more recognisable for what they are. Her life runs before her eyes in reverse. Searching for the boys. Watching Sparda walk away for the last time. The face of every person she never saved. Then, at last, the denouement: Elijah, torn open. Her father and uncle staring sightless into an abyss. Her mother reduced to so many scattered chunks of meat.

Eventually, because Eva is someone who makes things happen, not someone things simply happen to, she makes the decision to go back. She has faced Red Grave; faced the ruined manor. It is time to face much older ghosts.

It is a private matter, and so Eva tells nobody of her intentions. She lets Morrison know she will be out of town on personal business, timeline uncertain; she will give him a call when she’s back. He is free, in the interim, to pass her usual work on to other sources.

For anyone else (because she still hopes, deep down, that her boys will one day come home), she leaves a note on her desk.

Out of town for a while.

Eva re-reads the brief scribble and wonders what else to add before realising there really is nothing more to add. No forwarding address or contact number, because she does not want anyone to find her. Anyone who wants her, can wait until she comes back.

She makes it ten minutes out from the city before she turns back to scribble an address at the bottom of her note.

Just in case.

----

Plane tickets are cheap these days, and she has a passport courtesy of Morrison, but Eva elects to drive. Call her old-fashioned, or even just plain curmudgeonly in her old age (ha), but Eva likes the hum of a good motor much better than the press of noisy crowds.

Besides, she’d need a car at the other end of the flight anyway, where she’s going. She can even call it a vacation if she finds a motel to spend each night in. If not -- she’s slept in a car before and it won’t kill her to do it again, especially when the rental is much more comfortable than any old banger she’s passed a night in before.

Highways turn to country lanes as she veers further and further off the beaten track. The temperature drops, too; winter in the shadow of the Appalachian mountains is nothing to sneeze at. Eva has forgotten a lot of things over the years (too many things), but she remembers that. Funny how events and people slide slowly but surely from her mind but sensory impressions remain: the icy, pinesap-tinged tang of morning air in winter; the crackle of a fire; the warm doughy smell and pillowy softness of homemade dinner rolls.

Become someone else, she’d told her younger son as their world burned around them. Change your name, change yourself, and hide. Not easy, no, nothing like easy -- but possible, for the right price. For the price of giving up who you were before.

Except no bargain is ever so neat and no transaction ever so complete.

[cheesehambu]

Happy Birthday to Me and Happy Valentine`s day!!!

Today I turned 20 years old and I'm very surprised that I survived at all. I want to thank all my close people for the support and love they gave me! This means a lot to me!

And my special thanks to the Ukrainian Armed Forces for protecting our country and our homes!!!

So for these special days I drew 7 cards of my beloveds and one with my OCs :>

[outofthiisworld]

. ✦ ݁ ˖ @grandgrief sent in: "Doc, Is it really my fault if we're working from Earth today? And that INTERPLAN bases are located underneath forest mountains and desert mesas?" The pop culture perception of Area51-BlackMesa-Type secret facilities of the 20th century, repurposed into ports for the fleet. But still studying fringe paranormal phenomena and quantum anomalies as they did on their inception. "In conclusion: There are no windows. You gotta take the elevator up to ground level and take a walk outside."

[🧪] Doc GROOOANED. Like how he’d groaned and moaned this whole entire time … being stationed on-planet was annoying enough BUT—! Stationed thousands of feet below the Earth’s crust?! 

It made his skin itch.

“I’m still trying to figure that part out,” surely this had to be some sort of higher-management-enforced punishment. Whether that was INTERPLAN themselves or the universe’s sense of humor— Doc still hadn’t sleuthed out just yet.

“All I’m saying is why couldn’t we be stationed out at one of the more tropical bases. Y’know: the ones with those giant, underwater walk-way where you can see all sorts of oceanic life swim around you?”

Doc leaned back and sighed. So longingly, too. All he could see was reinforced metal on metal.

“What a joke.”

[kalloway]

in @magthemage and I’s Android AU, Risotto Nero is a medical android who has a very rocky (dubious) past and is kinda finding his way as he goes - v much a ‘do what I must to survive’ kind of guy... though he draws a line at senseless loss of ('good’) human life - whether due to his programming or his sentience, is up for debate. ...That’s not to say he hasn’t taken lives before, however... He’s v likely the reason Miriam (my OC) survives her encounter with EcciDiO (because of his medical capabilities) that led to her meeting Professor Brando and started the events of our shared AU! (the ‘current’ events, anyway) - their meeting was completely by chance but taking a chance on him proved to be the right call, and now he’s in the service of Professor Brando because she encouraged him to pursue his sentience and what he *wanted* to do...

I’ve been having big brain rot about Nero (and how Miriam passed up the chance to date him in the au, smh) BUT one of the perks of being an artist is I can just *make* that content i passed up, and no one can stop me hehe 😏 . (Mag is actively encouraging it tho so it is supported and not really rebellious lmao) . anyway I haven’t drawn him much and wanted to give it another go! medical androids have all kinds of tools hidden just beneath the skin... so I think it goes well with his ‘canon’ version of himself too in that regard hahaha . the AU has a lot of canon characters in it, but because of the fact so many androids are ‘model lines’, they may come off as ‘ooc’ to a degree, and that’s intended! i think of it like every android has a little piece of the canon character in them (the multiple Dios being the best example imo), it just varies on their circumstances and experiences!

[manaosdeuwu]

no posteo barbaridades de la mamá de miles porque respeto a las mujeres. por eso se tienen que fumar el miguel posteo.

[elliewiltarwyn]

FFXIV Write 2023 | Prompt #14: Clear

TIL i use clear as an adjective and adverb way too much

-1164 words

----

“But do not think I reserve all of my scorn for Cid nan Garlond… adventurers.”

Nero tol Scaeva curls his gauntlet in front of his masked face. “Certainly, that Lord van Baelsar desires him at his side stings. Indeed, the thought that he would desire any such fool, one who has also made clear their lack of interest in ruling this blighted land, rankles.” And then his masked visage turned slightly to Elilgeim’s right. Towards Mia. “And you, traitor, are no exception.”

What? Elilgeim blinks rapidly, curling her fingers tighter around the haft of her cane. Traitor?

And then Nero moves, faster than any of them expects—it may be because of jets or boosters on his armor, but Elilgeim can’t see—and slams to a stop right in front of Mia, his gauntlet crackling with levin and glowing with energies, and he curls his fingers and delivers a fierce punch to the direct center of Mia’s brow; she cries out and staggers backwards onto her knees, clutching at the struck spot with her left hand. “Mia!” Lilyana shouts, and Elilgeim focuses her energies and slams a small blast of wind forward; Nero’s still too quick though, and he jets backwards, the blast flying by harmlessly. Lily capitalizes, lunging forward with knives bared, but he raises his hand and an electronic signal emanates from it, just before a massive jet-propelled iron hammer slams into the floor between them. Lily yelps and skids to a stop, and Elilgeim focuses again, drawing upon her curative spells this time—then stops herself, confused.

Mia’s not actually injured—from a solid punch to the face. How in the…

“When were you going to tell them?” Nero demands, grasping his hammer and hefting it over his shoulder. “When were you going to let your Eorzean allies know you hail from the very nation attempting to stomp them out… Maia jen Asina?”

Time itself seems to stop as Elilgeim—and Lilyana too, judging by the way her ears flatten against her head—processes what he means. Then she snaps her gaze over to Mia, who remains on her knees panting through clenched teeth and glaring at Nero with eyes blazing with fury. Underneath her hand, still resting over the spot where he struck her, is a strange shimmering wave that bends the light and warps the air. It takes her a second to narrow down that it’s the sort of phenomenon that appears over entities or clothes when a glamouring spell is cast upon them… or removed. But as far as she can tell, Mia looks the same…

“If you think… that means anything… about my allegiances… about what I fight for…” Mia exhales one more breath and curls the hand on her head into a fist. “Then you’re even more ignorant than I thought, Nero tol Scaeva.” And as she rises to her feet, she finally lets her hand drop, to two-hand her blade and level it in Nero’s direction. There’s a small black pyramidal object upon the spot, emanating the waves, but it finally fades away to reveal a small, pale, pearlescent orb, directly where Nero had struck—embedded directly in the middle of her forehead. Elilgeim’s heart stops. The Garlean third eye.

She’s pureblood Garlean.

And then she thinks about it for one split-second further and turns to slam a spell of Stone upon Nero’s head. He shouts in pain and swings his hammer wide, but Lily ducks underneath and strikes at his side, and it’s clear the battle has engaged. But even after everything Nero had already laid bare, he still isn’t finished somehow—

“What is it that draws his attention!?” he demands as Mia charges forth, slamming her shield against his hammer’s head before stabbing from behind her guard with her sword. “What is it about expatriates, heirs to the legacies of the most brilliant engineers in Garlemald’s history who deliberately spurn those legacies and turn their back on him—why does he give a whit about their loyalties, and not mine!?”

“Do I look like I care an onze?” Mia growls gutturally, just as she forces the hammer aside and lays into him with a hard slash. Elilgeim catches up to her right side at that moment, Lily on her left; and Elilgeim’s shocked by the look of consternation and contrition on her face. Her eyes flick to Elilgeim’s, then to Lily’s on the other side, and she freezes, paralyzed by uncertainty and doubt all of a sudden.

“Do we?” Elilgeim mutters with a bemused smirk.

Mia blinks at her, then back to Lily, who’s side-grinning fiercely at her. She takes in a deep breath, looks at Nero with clear resolve swelling within her, and charges forward once more to meet his attack.

The battle is short and furious—and so is Elilgeim when the power is cut, and he vanishes into the darkness, cackling. That they had been forced to slay Rhitahtyn and Livia, but let this one escape… She regulates her breath and clamps down on her rage as Cid breaks back in over the linkpearl, and she quickly updates him on their situation. In turn, he updates them on the other moving parts of Operation Archon. It’s all coming to a head—their final duty is set before them. As she lowers her hand from her ear, she glances back up at Mia; the other woman gulps, nerves settling in and wrinkling her brow around the little grey stone.

“I… I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to— I mean, I was hiding it, but… I was afraid that—”

Elilgeim claps a hand on her shoulder as she walks by. “Seriously: it does not matter even a little bit.”

“Huh?”

“We’re working with Cid Garlond, in case you haven’t noticed,” Lilyana says slyly, and as Elilgeim casts her gaze back she watches Lilyana gently nudge Mia’s other shoulder with her fist, that cheerful grin ever-present. “You’re literally not the first defector from Garlemald. You’ve also led the charge on fighting the primals and investigating for the Scions and a thousand other little things.”

“But—those things Nero said—”

“Does not matter,” Elilgeim repeats, rolling her eyes and shaking her head in bemusement; she crosses her arms and taps her foot, and jerks her head over her shoulder towards the giant funicular elevator behind them. “Do you seriously think we’re the sort of people to judge based on homeland? Nero’s amorality, Gaius’s madness—they’re not remotely because they were born in the same country as you. You’re annoying and you’re preachy and stupidly purehearted—”

“Elilgeim!” Lilyana snaps, her eyebrow arching sharply in indignation.

“—but it’s been clear from the beginning: you hold no love for the Empire and its ways and ideals.”

Mia blinks, meeting Elilgeim’s gaze. “Now are we getting on this lift or not?” Elilgeim says impatiently, a little quirk at the corner of her lips.

Lilyana rolls her eyes, squeezes Mia’s shoulder, and sprints past Elilgeim towards the console in the corner, and a small smirk of disbelief slowly grows on Mia’s face.

[rhetoricalrogue]

Help, I can’t stop creating characters that I will more than likely never use.

[shamsshamousa]

Dante looks a bit cursed but doesn’t matter

This interaction is canon

[ohbutwheresyourheart]

fragments from the google docs continues with: Nero's mom has a little chat with everyone's favourite goth kid, and she knows her ex well enough to sniff him out even when he's up to his stupidest hijinks yet.

Adaline has stepped out - she needs a breath of air not tainted by fear and guilt, please God just give her that much - and so she is the first to see them.

Her first impulse is to tell Morrison it can wait. Or, if it can’t wait, to send whatever job it is Lady and Trish’s way. Devil May Cry doesn’t need the money and the thought of leaving Nero -- or Dante leaving her -- is, for the moment, incomprehensible. Even for an evening. Even for an hour. She will fall apart. She will shatter like glass.

Then she sees the figure following -- limping -- a step or two behind Morrison, and holds her tongue. It’s rare that a client makes their own way to Devil May Cry; Morrison likes to act as go-between to keep the jobs coming through him. His pockets would empty fast if there was no need for a middle man.

So she keeps her peace, sipping from her glass of wine held in a hand that is only ever so slightly shaking, until Morrison comes close enough to see her in the dim glow of the neon sign. He tips his hat to her, as is his custom, but Adaline is hard-pressed to fetch up a smile as is hers.

“Always a pleasure, Ada,” he begins conversationally. “I realise this isn’t the best of times, but… well, we have a bit of a doozy by the sounds of it. Might even be connected to what happened here.”

Adaline’s toes curl inside her shoes and her grip on her glass tightens; the chardonnay glitters a kaleidoscope of colours as the neon lights refract through it. She says nothing.

The figure behind Morrison -- a young man, maybe only Nero’s age, dark-haired and covered in tattoos -- keeps his head bowed. In one hand he clutches a cane; no affectation, he’s leaning on it quite heavily. In the other, he holds something else, although Adaline can’t properly see what it is.

“May we…?” Morrison nods towards the door.

“Who are you?” Adaline asks the boy. “Why are you here?”

At first, she thinks he isn’t going to answer, but eventually he finds his tongue. His voice is low and slightly husky. Eventually, he does her the courtesy of looking at her. A pretty boy, with pale green eyes; she recognises the shape and colour from somewhere, though she can’t presently think where.

“My name is V. I am here because I have some information about a powerful demon lord poised to wreak havoc on this world. It is something I thought an equally powerful demon hunter ought to be aware of.”

Again, Morrison makes a movement towards the door. “Probably easiest if we don’t have to repeat the story…?”

The last thing - the absolute last thing - Adaline wants to do is let them across the threshold of Devil May Cry. This boy brings trouble, she can feel it. She wants to run inside, batten down the hatches, and keep what is left of her family safe from whatever trouble is building outside.

But Dante never will; she knows him that well by now. Dante never saw trouble in his life without throwing himself into the middle of it. Deep down, Adaline knows she has (just, barely) too much of a conscience to let the world burn for the sake of her boys. Not for the first time she thinks of how much easier life would be, without caring. Without that little bean counter in the back of her mind, totting up life and death. The rippling, unknowable consequence of so much as an afternoon off at the wrong time.

She downs the last of her wine and nods towards the door. “By all means. God knows, he needs some occupation. Why don’t you boys talk about money first? And we’ll talk about… everything else.”

It’s difficult to tell, at first, who is more disconcerted by the proposal. Morrison, however, is a wonderfully uncomplicated man and the rare opportunity of browbeating Dante into promising away his earnings before he’s even earned them without Adaline there to intervene is a powerful incentive. Nodding again to her, Morrison strides into the building.

And so they are two. For once, Adaline doesn’t care to hear the details of payments and cuts and debts, which is all Morrison will be talking about for now. She’s much more interested in V.

He’s gone back to avoiding her eyes as much as he can, fiddling with his cane and what she can now see is a large, though not particularly thick, hardback book. Something about it catches her attention, but it’s too dark to make out the details.

Moving as discreetly and unhurriedly as she can bear to, Adaline lets one hand drop to her side, and then behind her back; out of sight, she casts a series of cantrips. V himself -- his body; his being -- is untouched, but to Adaline’s eyes only his tattoos glow a faint purple. Perhaps the surprise shows on her face, or else he is magically attuned enough to feel the cantrips probing over him; he raises his head, offers a half-smile tinged with an emotion she can’t quite place.

“I assure you,” he says, “I am no demon, nor am I here to launch an ambush.”

No demon, maybe, but something in V is of the Underworld. Adaline’s consolation is that she knows anything she can pick up with a cantrip, Dante will smell on him.

“Forgive me if I seem discourteous,” she says with only a moderate amount of irony. “Someone tried to kill my son two days ago. It’s put me somewhat on edge”

There: V is good, he schools his expression again as quickly as he can, but Adaline sees the flash of panic; the momentarily widened eyes, the white-knuckled grip on his cane; the look of a man caught out.

“I’m… sorry to hear that,” he manages, but it’s too little too late.

Still with one hand behind her back, Adaline prepares to conjure more than a cantrip. “Who are you?”

V holds up his hands -- one still clutching his cane, the other held awkwardly to keep the book under his arm from slipping away -- and the attempted calm is replaced by no small amount of fear. Genuine fear, too, as far as she can tell, unless the boy is an excellent actor. While Adaline can’t smell fear rolling off a body like a demon could, she considers herself a decent interpreter of body language.

It calms her, just a little; anything afraid of her is no match for Dante.

“A friend. Or,” he adds, seeing her disbelief, “If not a friend, at least not an enemy.”

“Someone else walked up to this building once and said the same thing. It ended up causing us a lot of pain.”

They say, the two of them, that they wouldn’t be without Trish now -- but if it was between Trish and Vergil? That bean counter again: life and death, death and life. Pray they’re never given the option.

She’s scaring him: the boy with the demon tattoos looks ready to peel off. Adaline shakes her head, reminds herself he’s only Nero’s age -- if there’s a plot at work here, V is the intermediary rather than the mastermind -- though Nero would be furious to know she still thinks of him as a boy, not a man. Even if it’s a ploy, a trick, they need to know who is after them. Of course they first assumed… But it can’t be… Or is she fooling herself? Maybe the wine was a bad idea.

“Fine. I--” Adaline gropes for the words. “We need to know. Especially if it’s really all that bad.”

V relaxes slightly; lowers his hands, looks at her with something like compassion. He’s just a boy, she reminds herself again; look at him, this boy with his tattoos and his postmodern goth aesthetic, with his cane and his book and something demonic carved into his skin, something he might not even know of or understand. Bound up in a world of trouble beyond his capabilities. Even if that trouble is to do with whatever attacked Adaline’s son, V did not break into Devil May Cry and tear Nero’s arm off.

Those eyes, though. There’s something about him; something she can almost touch, almost taste. Something she feels like a bigger idiot every moment for missing.

“Had I the choice, I would not bring trouble to your door,” he says. His voice is low, genuine; Adaline finds she believes him. Or, at least, believes that he believes it.

She sighs. Exhaustion is settling into every muscle after two days of adrenaline-fuelled anxiety. The wine was definitely a mistake.

“We should probably head inside. They ought to be finished squabbling over money by now.”

V glances at the door; what he sees must confirm her suspicion, because he nods. He shoots her a quick smile and bows: it’s over-exaggerated, a dancer’s flourish; head down as far as his waist, arms outstretched, his cane flicking towards the door.

“Ladies first.”

It’s a charming display, but Adaline isn’t in the mood to be charmed. Especially not when charm so often disguises an intent to hurt. Again, that impulse against all good sense to turn the boy away and batten down the hatches with Dante and Nero. Her brain is running through all of the possibilities, even the most outlandish ones.

Okay, Mundus is dead (or as close as they’re going to get to killing him) and his corpse is slowly rotting in agony, but what if some other demon lord got the same idea? Mundus sent an underling to tempt Dante into danger once before, why fix what isn’t broken?

If that’s the case, whoever has taken Mundus’s place has even learned not to rely on painted doll replicas (and what if that’s why V seems so familiar? Something old, something new, something borrowed, something… green).

V looks up with a smile but his face falls when he sees Adaline still looks decidedly unamused.

“Let’s hear what you have to say,” she says, leading the way into Devil May Cry.

Dante looks expectant, almost excited; Morrison looks satisfied. Those two states don’t normally coincide. Adaline wonders how much money is involved here, and where it’s coming from. V doesn’t exactly give the impression he’s swimming in cash. Then again, this is Dante: he gripes about money from time to time but he’d work for free if the pizza place didn’t demand payment. Adaline happily funds him but he has a few shreds of chest-beating masculine pride about paying his own way that surface now and again.

Adaline circles around the desk to set her glass down on it, briefly makes eye contact with Dante, and leans against the wall behind him. She nods to Morrison as he leaves with a few final words about bringing in Lady and Trish and sets herself to watch. Now that she’s taken her own measure of their newest client, she’s interested to see what Dante makes of him.

Not much at first. Dante leans back in his chair, posturing boredom with the merest glimmer of interest.

“So,” he begins without preamble, “What’s your name?”

V stands in the centre of the office, the book open in his hand and his gaze pointed down at its contents.

“‘I have no name; I am but two days old’,” he says. In the ensuing pause, he snaps the book shut and looks up. “Just kidding. You can call me V.”

Adaline isn’t looking anywhere in particular. It is pure chance when her eyes fall on Eva’s photograph. It’s been on the desk as long as the desk has been in Devil May Cry, and Adaline stopped really seeing it years ago. She knows Eva is there, watching them (watching over them?) but familiarity breeds indifference to the contours of her cheeks and the exact curve of her jawline.

Or the colour of her eyes.

V is watching her when she looks up again; he’s quite still, but his grip on his cane is white-knuckled. His eyes are wide. Helpful: it lets her check the colour again.

Adaline remains impassive to the best of her ability. After a moment, during which she sees V’s Adam's apple bob frantically in his throat, he becomes impassive too; he looks away, deliberately turning his attention back to Dante.

For Dante’s part, if he’s noticed the brief, silent struggle, he gives no indication of it. Humming, he lazily sets aside his magazine and stretches.

“Okay, V... Why don't you tell me everything about this job?”

There’s a slight pause before V answers. He gives a little shrug, his lips pursed, as if to… well, Adaline isn’t quite sure, but his nonchalance strikes her as over-acted. In fact, if he is bringing them information about a job big enough that Morrison is nervous about Dante going it alone, isn’t ‘nonchalance’ the last thing in the world V should be feeling?

“A powerful demon is about to resurrect and…” Again, the briefest of pauses, as if the explanation is so obvious that V can barely bring himself to voice it, “We need your help, Dante.”

Dante lets out a bark of laughter. Either he’s giving an Oscar-worthy performance (and people rarely realise it, but Dante is a good actor when he wants to be; the man practically has a degree in misdirection) or he’s not picking up on any of the inconsistencies and questions Ada is. In stark contrast to her own anxiety, Dante is languid and lackadaisical. He pushes himself out of his chair and strolls over to the couch, still chuckling.

“Now that’s a familiar tune,” he quips. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve heard that exact line before?”

V doesn’t look offended by being blown off so easily. He shifts slightly, grip on his cane visibly tightening. Despite her suspicions, Adaline has an impulse to offer him a chair; he looks genuinely in pain. Before she can, however, he walks towards Dante, intent.

“This is… special.”

“Special,” Dante echoes disbelievingly, a hint of amusement colouring his tone. “Okay, what’s so special about this one?”

It’s about this moment that Adaline realises V has almost completely turned his back on her and she can no longer see his face.

“This demon is your… reason. Your reason for fighting.”

Something shifts in Dante’s expression. He doesn’t enjoy being jerked around and doesn’t suffer fools, but he’s enduring V’s dancing with more patience than Adaline would have expected. Is he finally realising, as she has, that there’s more to this than meets the eye? Or did Morrison just flash more money in his face than usual? Adaline can’t think. His reason for fighting? His reason… your reason--

I have no name; I am but two days old. How -- poetic.

Poetry. Murmured half-under his breath; the one indulgence in an otherwise spartan life; the book she had picked out for him, unearthed in a second-hand store--

“This demon got a name?”

“Vergil.”

[potato-jem]

i may be tired, jetlagged, unable to write assignment due tomorrow, currently babysitting but just waiting for the parents to get home, but at least i am wearing a camp halfblood jumper while doing it

[outofthiisworld]

. ✦ ݁ ˖ @grandgrief Silver-Age Squabbles !!!

[🧪💜] When the remote control of the SUCK-A-TON (bad name, baaaad name) was slapped out of his hand; Doc had turned his head to scold Ophelia (it wasn’t funny the 1st time and it wouldn’t be funny the 20th time).

Yet, to the mad doctor’s surprise, he was instead nose-to-nose with none other than—

“NIGHT-THING?!”

— Doc sputtered, why even spluttered, and maybe almost peed his pants!!! He flung himself back, a quick tumble and stumble to get as much distance between him and America’s #1 Crimefighter (why couldn’t one of those other chumps show up; he had a whole can of raid for Wo-mutant-is and everything!)

“POL-POLTERGEIST P— FUCK THAT IS A HORRIBLE NAME! OPHELIA!!! BACK ME UP!”

With a few key inputs scrambled into his SCRAPYARD ARM 2.3: robotic rats skidded out from the depths of the sewers! Their wheels aflame and hot just like the toys they were based off of, and they charged at Night-Thing with massive mechanical chompers! (w…were they ticking, too?!)

Ophelia on the other hand, opted to watch instead, for now. Doc got himself in this mess— he should try to get himself out of it, too!

“Hiiiiiiiiii~ Night-Thing,” she still waved; this ghoulish girly wasn’t resurrected with NO manners now, come on.

[wine-porn]

Dope Rosso

I know I just opened this guy’s little brother a couple days ago, but it so impressed me I was dying to try the one nearly double in price. They’re calling this a Nero d’Avola ‘cru’, selected from the best head-trained, organic estate spots, though it is a blend with plentiful SY and CF. And–in a theme most 1%ers readily acknowledge from years dealing with “reserve” wines–the lesser bottling…

[icharchivist]

ok so first of: i knew it, and i hate that i'm right, i hate it i hate it i --

second:

NOW THE GAME ACTUALLY DECIDE TO COMMIT WITH A FUCKED UP PLOT????

Like listen the Remake just has constantly cut down on their tragic plot that even though i'm heartbroken i'm just like "oh god finally".

but also this is so horrible. Sonon flashbacking to his sister's death as why he would want to save Yuffie (tbh i don't think the flashback was necessary we saw what we needed to see a chapter ago), this obvious projection he made on her, the fact she was angry first until she realized what's actually going on

also on the latest screens i couldn't take Nero stabbed Sonon with 6 swords at once and it was fucking horrible.

Men with black hair in ff7 just can't resist taking multiple weapons into their own body to protect someone can they.

God what a great scene. And also i am crying.

[lecliss]

I'm beginning to realize that even tho I'm done with rebirth aside from some optional stuff and I definitely don't wanna go back to it, I still have that gamer itch. I spent 126 hours since March 1st playing that motherfucker and I haven't exactly switched modes back to wanting to fiddle on my phone while watching youtube all day. I need bideo gaem.