#frequency: forsaken

[pluppsauthor]

WIP Title Game!

Thank you to @tildeathiwillwrite & @leahnardo-da-veggie for the tags!

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

Alright, so I might have misunderstood the rules a bit, or maybe I didn't. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to put the names of all the files in my WIP folder, or just the WIPs themselves.

But uh... I'm not going to undo this, I'll just let people see it, why not :)

In increasing order of... size, I guess, here we go: (Titles are folders, and bullet points are individual files/documents)

From the Stars

From the Stars

534ft

534ft

534ft Outline

Four Wanderers

Four Wanderers

Important Info

Outline

Wild & Grief

Ideas/Magic system?

Language Spreadsheet (spreadsheet)

Wild & Grief Languages

Wild & Grief Main Document

Frequency

Future Scenes

Frequencies

Frequency Setting

Gods, Goddesses, & Daemons [OLD ERA]

Languages

Realms of Frequency

Forsaken

Blessings/Gods

End of godborn

Family Information

Frequency: Forsaken

Frequency: Forsaken Characteristics (spreadsheet)

Frequency: Forsaken Outline

Frequency: Forsaken Runes

Ideas for Forsaken

Hellfire

Frequency: Hellfire

Frequency: Hellfire Characteristics (spreadsheet)

Frequency: Hellfire Characters

Frequency: Hellfire Outline

Kindred Spirits

Frequency: Kindred Spirits

Frequency: Kindred Spirits Characteristics (spreadsheet)

Frequency: Kindred Spirits Outline

Shattered Gods

Frequency: Shattered Gods

Frequency: Shattered Gods Characteristics (spreadsheet)

Frequency: Shattered Gods Outline

Wounded Reflection

Frequency: Wounded Reflection

Frequency: Wounded Reflection Characteristics (spreadsheet)

Frequency: Wounded Reflection Characters

Frequency: Wounded Reflection Outline

*heavy sigh* alright, that's pretty much all of it. No way in hell am I pinging that many people, I don't think I even know if I know enough people to ping for this.

However, my total number of WIPs is 9 (7 that I am actually working on).

Gently tagging @decadentpandawasteland, @kbwritesstuff, @illarian-rambling, @kaylinalexanderbooks, @mk-writes-stuff, @phoenixradiant, @diabolical-blue, and open tag to hopefully fill out the rest of the spots I may have missed :) ❤

I'm going to hibernate now if you'll excuse me... (jk jk, of course I'm going to respond to asks about my files here)

[bluesunsdusk]

--// It is sweet Sunday now, I've decided that, so I can post only wholesome things. Protective industrial-grade murderbot can be very wholesome.

[sophies-junkyard]

STEM is just some shit they made up to break women’s spirits.

[strangelittlestories]

The sound of the harmonica sounded out through the prison, a lonesome warble that sang a song of freedom frustrated.

“I thought,” said the cyber-warden, adjusting her aural implants, “that the forcefields were sound-proofed now? Didn’t we have a whole seminar about insulating the guards from distressing interrogation noise to protect their mental health?”

The strains of a soulful prisoner bemoaning their state via the tickling of sound waves continued.

“Unfortunately, Warden,” replied CAR (the Carceration Automation Robot who administered the prison station), “the sound waves of that instrument vibrate at a frequency that bypasses our fields.”

“That seems unlikely, CAR.”

“If you think that’s unlikely, sir, allow me to play you the readings my drones picked up in an orbit from outside the station.”

A drone dipped into the station’s control centre via an air duct. It proceeded to play a series of muffled-but-maudlin notes that harmonised surprisingly well with the prisoner’s current tune.

“This was echoing through the vacuum of space?” 

The warden’s face was impassive, but her cybernetic eye displayed a single pixelated interrobang.

“Quite so, sir.” CAR had no eyebrows but somehow still managed to arch one. “Impossible, but somehow still so.”

“Okay … how about we confiscate the instrument? We institute a strict instrumental interdict. A musical moratorium. A prison blues ban.”

“We have attempted this, sir. Somehow, the prisoner always finds a new one.”

“How?”

“It defies logic. My working hypothesis is that it is a universal axiom. A certain kind of person, when confined to a cell, will simply *have* an instrument.”

“It’s damaging my calm, CAR.” Without thinking, the cyber-warden casually stress-ordered a new round of mandatory improv classes for all inmates. “They really put the *harm* in harmonica.”

“And yet the prisoner seems to find it quite calming, sir. You could say they find it to be a ‘heal-onica.’”

The warden sighed a sigh that foretold a great deal of distressed prisoner sounds that the guards would, thankfully, be insulated from.

“Find a way to stop the authority-forsaken noise. That’s an order. Or you will find the prisoner is not the only one who can make harm-on-a-CAR appear out of nowhere.”

“Very good, warden.”

In their cell, an entity grinned. This entity always had a harmonica. This entity made music that could always be heard.

And its solitary song sounded out a slice of madness in the key of C.

---

The word ‘harmonica’ was submitted as a pun-seed by a Word of the Month member. To become a member and suggest words for puns of your own, please check out https://ko-fi.com/strangelittlestories

[scarlettaagni]

Original Zs’skayr

The original Zs’skayr was a cruel High Ecto Lord on Anur Phaetos. Enforcing his need for total control across its globe, handsomely rewarding his sycophants, and siccing his thralls onto dissenters.

At least until his tyrannical influence had begun intruding onto other planets, which caused the disparate populaces, collectively outnumbering his loyalists, to rise up and depose him. In a show of mercy he would never have afforded them if the roles were reversed, they banished a notably un-dismantled Zs’skayr instead of destroying him.

His own homeworld had forsaken him, and no place in Anur proper would have him. Few citizens of Anur had left the system, him included. The safest place he knew was remaining adrift in the vast expanse between planets and moons.

With no one to abuse or deflect to, having nothing left to his name, the cold vacuum of space gave him no choice but to begin introspection.

Zs’skayr lost the will to fight for his throne, as well as his hunger for power. There was little left to feel but shame.

With a new purpose in mind, he would explore the galaxy outside of his native system. In the face of his narrow-mindedness, Zs’skayr replaced his thirst for power with one for knowledge, and broaden his horizons.

To learn about the people and worlds outside Anur as well as he did the ones inside, he possessed various beings to explore.

A not insignificant amount took it poorly, such as on Vrykola—

They could’ve used their tools right then or come back with a mob holding pitchforks and torches, so he just counted his lucky stars and more discreetly picked a different host.

Most worlds were just confused, though.

A precious few took it well, like Aldabra—

The Geochelone Aerios were pleasantly surprised to meet an outsider who wished to learn and understand as much as they did, and they had a lot to discuss with him on autonomy and free will, as well as pacifism and de-escalation. Zs’skayr had much impromptu therapy there.

Some were even receptive to him outside of a more familiar host, or even outside of his (what he would come to recognize as appearing “less-threatening”) sun shade. In fact, the royal elect of the Chimeran Empire insisted on it.

That was mainly so it was easier for them and the snipers stationed around the capital to destroy Zs’skayr if he made a move they didn’t like.

Aside from the dawning realization he had just unintentionally threatened an imperialistic military state in front of its leader, the tour he received was enjoyable. They did not make mention of Vilgax.

It was strange, because he had heard developing stories of Vilgax’s conquests and reigns of terror upon other worlds. Maybe it wasn’t so strange the Chimerans didn’t acknowledge this sensitive, worsening stain on their history.

Considering what he and Vilgax had in common, Zs’skayr thought that his kind may have adopted a similar attitude about him. He ultimately would prefer for truth to prevail above all, including information embargos/taboos for the sake of his or anyone’s comfort.

Tales of the Omnitrix’s development similarly spread throughout the galaxy, in hushed whispers, and on his travels, Zs’skayr heard nothing but its prospects as the ultimate weapon.

He was none too pleased, already being surrounded with violence and advancing weapons. It seemed to be all talk and no bite, however. Equal in frequency of stories about the Omnitrix were the ones debunking its existence. It never turned up within Zs’skayr’s vicinity, anyways.

He helped others,

and he was helped by others.

Eventually, Zs’skayr had learned all he wished to, talked to more people than most do in their lifetimes. He was homesick, but knew no good would come from trying to return to Phaetos.

Still wishing to be close, he found a habitable rock on the outskirts of the Anur system, far from Phaetos and made a home.

Since then, Zs’skayr had lived a quiet, humble life in isolation. Built up a cottage, sewed furniture, cultivated a garden in the gnarled wilds that managed to sprout on this rock.

He didn’t feel he deserved to live with his people again, and he didn’t deserve an update on how they were doing, however they decided to govern themselves in his absence. Whether it was good or bad, it wasn’t his business anymore, and they wouldn’t want to be bothered. He respects their wish.

He writes (working on a journal of his travels), he gardens, he goes out for walks and floats, he sleeps, he’s become a tea-fiend, even leaving his rock to the nearest nebula to collect stardust for flavoring. Just a place to wait out his days in peace, hurting no one, retired from social interaction.

At least until an outsider entering the Anur system noticed the clearly inhabited rock and landed to explore. Though painfully shy, Zs’skayr politely greeted her and asked what she wanted, balking at the mention of contributing to the Omnitrix’s creation. As far as he was concerned, it was some superweapon that probably didn’t actually exist, and if it did, he wanted no part in it.

Myaxx gave Zs’skayr the boilerplate explanation of the Omnitrix project her boss Azmuth wrote out for her to read out to all potential donors.

The Omnitrix is a device, not a weapon, that allows its user to become another species. The wielder would become a symbol of galactic unity among its denizens, and to help them grow closer together. It pulls from a catalogue of DNA samples volunteered by willing members of their species. Would Zs’skayr do the favor and, on their behalf, volunteer for the Ectonurites?

The idea of someone who could step into another being’s shoes, or rather, assume the guise of another species to bridge the gap was personal to him. It was a radical, ethical, almost impossibly ideal version of what he had done across the galaxy to understand others better.

Zs’skayr could somehow contribute to the healing of entire worlds and systems. It was something he would have declined earlier in his life, and even doubted he could do now.

Moved by this, he agreed to be the Ectonurite donor for the Omnitrix and tore off a shred of his tentacle for her.

Unfortunately, a grave miscommunication neither realized had occurred. Zs’skayr knew that the sample had a copy of his consciousness on it, but believed that an Ectonurite was only being asked for a DNA sample because the Omnitrix project knew and had a way of correcting it.

Anur’s species are quite insular, rarely leaving or allowing outsiders, and as such, details of their anatomy are not common knowledge to them. Simply put, Myaxx didn’t know to ask, and Zs’skayr didn’t think to tell her.

The now original Zs’skayr then continued his isolation on the edge of Anur, secure in the knowledge that he, at last, could make a net positive impact.

He’d be proud to know of the difference Ben made with him, for the short while he could.

[undeniablespice]

drowned god the weak little beast you put on this earth to write fanfiction and like greyjoys has been neglecting homework in order to reread the affc ironborn chapters and have way too many opinions about the soggiest man in the world. i have Had Some Thoughts on aeron, theon, and names

it really is striking to me just how little people refer to aeron by his name. not just in conversation, but in the narrative itself, with the most notable example of this being aeron himself in his pov chapters constantly thinking of himself not as aeron but as damphair or just The Priest. he refers to himself as damphair or The Priest instead of aeron like twenty times throughout the prophet, to the point where it's used almost as frequently as his actual name. in the drowned man it's only like eight times (which i think is mostly because the vast majority of this chapter is given over to the kingsmoot, where aeron is mostly a spectator and the narrative focus is on the events taking place rather than his reaction to them). in the forsaken, it's ten times, though while aeron is actively imprisoned he mostly thinks of himself as aeron, with damphair being used four times in flashbacks to events that took place in the past, once during a conversation with euron while aeron is defying him, and then three times after he is freed and he can see the sea again

the consistency and frequency of aeron in his own mind thinking of himself as something other than his name reads to me almost like a foil to theon and reek. the identity of the damphair allows aeron to dissociate himself from the burden of his past weaknesses and sins: his pre-drowning frivolity and alcoholism and euron's sexual abuse. for aeron, being damphair is as empowering as being reek is degrading for theon. he is constantly affirming to himself that he is a loyal servant of the drowned god and that this makes him strong. it gives him status and purpose he never had as aeron the boy, who was the youngest and weakest of his brothers. aeron-the-priest cannot be frightened by any mortal man any more than he can be frightened by the dark or by memories. kill the boy to become the man -> drown the boy to become the damphair

(although, of course, when aeron tells himself all this about how god chose him and it makes him strong and special and immune to fear, he is deluding himself. the damphair is haunted incessantly by his brothers. aeron has the tendency to reconcile his lasting fear of euron with his special god-given immunity to such mortal flaws as feeling fear by believing that euron is ungodly/an avatar of the storm god/literally the devil, and therefore not really a mortal man in the same way that balon and victarion are

which is a really interesting parallel to how euron must see himself, what with the whole apotheosis god-king thing he's got going on by twow. in a way, euron is aeron's real god. it is euron's abuse that first connected aeron with faith, and it is faith that aeron uses to cope with and overcome the lasting psychological scars of that abuse and urri's death. aeron doesn't think of euron as a mere flesh and blood human being anymore. he's mythologized the crow's eye in his own mind: euron is not just his abuser, he's a boogeyman, a devil, quite literally the thing that goes bump in the night. and euron knows this, and delights in knowing it and in taking every chance he can to tear down aeron's faith and replace the drowned god with himself as the backbone of aeron's life. which he does not actually succeed in doing, as of the forsaken! aeron keeps his faith like theon keeps his name. it cannot be taken from them)

reek, meanwhile, is not an identity that theon chooses to assume to cope with his trauma. it is forced upon him in the middle of the trauma and he has no choice but to accept it for his own self-preservation. ramsay devastates theon physically: flaying him, starving him, beating him, removing his fingers and toes and teeth and genitals. imprisonment and violence are the tools he uses to take away theon's physical strength to resist him, but reek is how he gets to all the parts of theon that can't be bruised or cut. it's the psychological equivalent of a flaying knife. reek is the weapon he uses to attack theon's identity and sense of self and personhood. though it's important to me to note that those were things theon was already struggling with well before ramsay came on the scene, and that he has an absolutely unbelievably strong will that allows him to retain a degree of his original personality under ramsay and regain his own name later in adwd even after enduring all the torture and abuse. he is a greyjoy of pyke. his name is theon, and if he dies, he will die as theon, not as reek. when he leans into being reek, it is as a means of self-preservation and protection from harm. he basically says as much to jeyne when he tells her to be arya: he believes that serving ramsay and capitulating to his whim is the best way to stay safe. you have to know your name.

ultimately, theon is as relieved to be rid of the name reek as aeron is relieved to see the ocean again at the end of the forsaken. theon's name is a source of pride to him, something that he clings to after he has lost everything else, something that will always be his even after all that has been taken away from him. aeron's name is a source of shame, something that he is reduced to when he feels weak, something that he reverts to when he is powerless at the mercy of his abuser

[hbyrde36]

Life is a Game (and True Love is a Trophy)

Chapter 13

Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch 5 Ch 6 Ch 7

Ch 8 Ch 9 Ch 10 Ch 11 Ch 12 ao3 link

*Eddie*

When Eddie woke to a cold empty bed he immediately knew something was wrong. 

Which was silly, right? It was only the second time he and Steve had spent the night together in the same bed, so how did he know that the other boy wasn’t just an early riser, or one of those people that had to get right up once they were awake?

Because he just knew. 

In the same way that he knew so many other things that he really shouldn't, he knew that Steve was a lingerer, that he loved the feeling of being wrapped up, warm and cozy, and would stay in bed to the last possible second just to enjoy it for as long as he could.

Still, Eddie hadn’t yet learned to trust himself, his other senses, his instincts, his powers, whatever you wanted to call it, so he pushed the feeling down and tried to unwind the panic coiling in his chest. It was very early in the morning, he could tell by the quality of light coming in through the window. There was no need to wake everyone up in a panic– yet.

He tiptoed out into the living room, rightly assuming that all the boys would still be asleep, though uncle Wayne was no longer sprawled out on the couch. He checked the bathroom first, its door wide open revealing the obviously empty space, and a quick peek next into the girl’s room told him what he already expected. Steve wasn’t in there either. 

He closed the door softly and rounded the corner leading to the kitchen, where Wayne sat nursing a cup of coffee. 

He looked up in surprise at Eddie’s arrival, no doubt wondering why the hell he was up at this god-forsaken hour.

“Have you seen Steve?” Eddie asked, gnawing on his bottom lip.

Wayne shook his head, carefully setting his mug down on the table as he studied Eddie’s face. “I ain't been up long, don’t panic,” he added quickly. “Maybe he’s out front.”

Eddie nodded but found himself hesitating to move, almost afraid to check. Until he actually looked outside and got confirmation of his fears, he could pretend that everything was okay, that Steve had just stepped out for some air, and would be coming back inside any minute, but that thing is the back of his mind was still screaming at him that something was wrong, and it had only gotten louder since he first woke. 

Despite his own easy words of reassurance, Wayne was up in a flash, and both of them shoved their feet into shoes and slung on jackets before heading outside.

Steve wasn’t on the porch. 

He wasn't anywhere in the immediate vicinity of the cabin, and it was all Eddie could do to not let the panic completely overtake him. Freaking out wouldn’t get Steve back. He had to stay calm– had to think. He needed to wake up the others and come up with a plan, now.

–

Eddie was worried at first about how they would be able to let Hopper and Claudia that something was wrong when he knew the phone in the cabin was dead, but to his relief it turned out the chief had left them with a ham radio, set to a frequency he’d be listening out for in case of emergencies. So, Wayne got on the air to let the Hop know Steve was missing, as Eddie woke everyone else and got them up to speed. 

When he was done with the boys he took a deep breath, preparing himself to face El and tell her that her brother, the person she loved and trusted most in this world, was gone without a trace. He knocked this time, waiting for the first grunt of, “come in” from what sounded like one of the older girls, before pushing open the door. 

Something must have shown on his face because Robin was instantly on her feet at the sight of him. 

“What happened, what’s wrong?” She asked.

He looked to the bed, glancing at El who was just beginning to stir from the noise, before quickly looking back at Robin, fighting not to let his face crumple. 

“It’s Steve, he’s… “

“Eddie?” El’s voice rang out thick with sleep as she rubbed her eyes. 

He crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed next to her. “Steve, he’s…missing, and I don't know how long he's been gone… If he left, or was taken. I just woke up and he wasn’t there and he’s…”

El sat up suddenly and threw herself into Eddie's arms just as he began to fall apart. He’d meant to put on a brave face for her, but it was all too much to think about Steve being gone again so soon after they had just found each other. 

She gripped onto him fiercely, and he held her back. More arms wrapped around them a moment later as Robin, Chrissy, and Max hugged them both, offering what comfort they could in this stolen moment before regrouping with the others to figure things out. 

-

An hour later the cabin was full to the brim. It was standing room only as Claudia, Hopper, Nancy, Jonathan, and surprisingly Joyce, all filed in. She had apparently put her foot down after the school meeting the night before and demanded that Hopper tell her what the hell was going on.

She looked a little shell shocked on arrival. Eddie sympathized, he knew the feeling. She greeted Wayne and hugged each of the younger boys before turning to him and embracing him as well. 

He stiffened for a moment before hesitantly winding his arms around her in return. He knew Joyce liked him well enough, even if it was only because he watched over the kids and kept them busy, but he was pretty sure she had never actually hugged him before. 

She pulled back and patted his arm, giving him a sympathetic smile. “Oh, honey. Hop told me everything. I just need you to know it doesn’t change the way I feel about you, not at all. You’re still one of my boys, got it?”

He nodded, not trusting himself to be able to speak.

To make matters worse, her phrasing, her acceptance of him for being– different than she’d always known, reminded him of how he and Steve had planned to come out today. To tell all of the people in this room about their relationship. The idea had been a little scary to think about at the time, but he’d give anything for that to be his biggest fear right now. 

“Alright. I think we should do one more sweep of the woods. I know Eddie and Wayne did a cursory search this morning, but now that we have more bodies we can span out a bit further in each direction. How about– “

“I can try to find him.” El said, just loud enough to be heard over him.

Everyone turned to look at her once, confusion colored the adults faces but the boys whooped, exchanging glances and smiles, likely at the prospect of getting to see her powers in action.

“Like, look look?” Eddie asked, miming the action of tying a blindfold around his face.

She nodded.

“And quiet right? You need quiet?” Mike asked.

“Yes.” She answered, but pursed her lips and quickly added, “Well, some noise. Like water, or– ”

“T.V. static?” Dustin supplied excitedly.

She brightened, smiling. “Yes, that will work.”

Eddie retrieved a bandana from his room while Dustin and Mike fiddled with television, adjusting the dial until the screen was full of snow. White noise filled the room as everyone held themselves silent and still. El sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor allowing Eddie to tie the makeshift blindfold around her eyes and block out the world. 

The minutes ticked by, two, ten, fifteen, and Eddie was starting to get antsy. The only indication El gave that anything was even happening were a few muttered sounds of frustration. At the twenty minute mark she tore the cloth from her head and threw it to the ground in front of her.

“He is nowhere!” She shouted. “I look, and I look, but it is like he is nowhere at all!”

“Maybe her radar’s broken.” Lucas suggested.

“Don’t be stupid.” Mike said. 

Dustin tapped his chin, thinking. “Maybe she should try to find someone else, just to test it.”

“She can hear you, dumbass.” Max said, smacking him so hard in the back of the head that his hat fell off. “Stop talking about her like she isn’t right there!”

“Sorry.” Dustin at least had the grace to look embarrassed.

“What about Jason?” Will said.

“Yeah!” Mike agreed. “Could be a good idea to see what he’s up to anyway.”

El shrugged and placed the bandana back over her eyes and only a minute or two after she started looking, she found him. 

“He is inside a house. There are other boys with him too, all wearing the same jacket. They’re talking about Eddie, looking for him. Jason went to find Chrissy at her house this morning but she was not there. So they think he took her.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “Of course they fucking do,” he said. Not that it mattered, he had bigger problems than some blonde jock inciting a witch hunt. 

“This is such bullshit, someone needs to do something!” Mike shouted.

“Yeah, can’t you arrest him for making threats or something?” Max said, turning to Hopper.

“One problem at a time, kids,” the chief said, gruffly.

“So her radar is working, clearly.” Lucas said.

It was Dustin who finally posed the question. “But if it’s working, and she can’t find Steve, what does that mean?”

There was one very obvious answer to that question, but Eddie refused to even consider the possibility. Besides, if the unthinkable had happened, she still would have found his body… right?

Eddie crouched down next to El where she still sat on the floor. “What about the Upside Down?”

She tilted her head questioningly. 

“The other place? Where Vecna, uh, Henry is?” He explained.

A look of fear crossed her face but she smoothed it away quickly and nodded, squaring her shoulders with a renewed sense of determination. 

Almost as soon as she put the blindfold back on and had settled in for the search, her nose began gushing blood and she fell back forcefully, as if she’d been pushed.

“He is blocking me. He… forced me out.”

“Who?” Eddie asked, though he already knew the answer. 

“Henry.”

“That’s a clue in itself, isn't it?” Robin said next to him. At some point she and Chrissy had joined him on the floor for moral support.

“Vecna’s got him. That has to be it.” Dustin said.

Hopper held his hands up.  “Just, hang on a second, we don’t know that.” 

“What else could it be?” Dustin said.

Hopper blew out a long breath, running a hand over his face. “I don’t know, but just ‘cause he– kicked her out doesn’t mean– “

Eddie interrupted, tired of wasting time squabbling. “Did you mean it before, El, about my memories? You can help me get them back?”

“I think so.”

Robin laid a tentative hand on his arm, no doubt recalling his hesitancy on the subject only the day before. “Do you think that will help?” 

Eddie looked at her and sighed. “I don’t even know what I don’t know.” He said, throwing his arms up. “And at this point we’re out of time to find another leg up against this guy. If he’s got Steve, then we need to learn as much as we can so we can fight, get him back. I need to know what I'm capable of, how it works. Anything that might help.”

-

At El’s suggestion the two of them went into one of the bedrooms where it was a little quieter and more private, and she had him sit on the bed across from her so that they were facing each other. 

“Close your eyes.” She said, and he felt one of her palms pressing flat against his forehead. 

“The elevator, in the lab. The one you escaped from, picture it in your mind.”

“But I don’t remember that, I only know because Claudia said– “

She gently cut him off. “Pretend. Concentrate, let your mind make it real.” She took his hand. “I will be right here with you.”

He did his best to imagine what the elevator in a place like that might be like. Gray commercial carpeting on the floor of it, harsh fluorescent lighting at the top, its glare bouncing off the sleek cold metal walls. 

It was simple, basic, a service elevator. No muss, no fuss, no decor needed for something only the cleaning staff and a few guards were ever going to see. No need to put forth the effort to front like they did with the rest of the common areas and the main lobby, where someone of importance might catch a glimpse. 

The more he focused on the details, the more real it became, until suddenly he felt the floor below his feet vibrate. He opened his eyes and he was in the elevator. It was just as he imagined, save for the panel of buttons being on the wrong side.

His heart hammered in his chest. What was even happening right now? He started to hyperventilate, then heard Eleven’s voice echo through his mind. 

“You are safe. It is not real, it is only memory. You are safe, in the cabin with me. Promise.”

“Okay.” He said shakily, unsure if he’d said it out loud or only in his head. It didn’t seem to matter, she heard him regardless. 

The movement of the elevator stopped, a ding sounding as the doors slid open. He stepped forward expecting to find himself in a hallway but instead he was in a small room. He looked back confused, but the elevator was gone.

“Are you ready to try again, Five?” A familiar voice called from the side.

Five.

Eddie turned back and was suddenly staring down at a pair of huge brown eyes set into the thin face of a scrawny little boy dressed in clothes eerily similar to those Steve and El had been wearing when he met them at skull rock. 

He knew those eyes. Intimately. They were the same ones that looked back at him through the mirror every goddamn day.

Sitting across from the boy– the boy that was him, was a white-haired older man dressed in a sharp suit. 

Eddie shuffled backwards, desperate to get some distance between himself and this man whose mere presence made his skin crawl. Neither the man, or the child version of Eddie paid him any notice.

Right, this was a memory. They couldn’t see him. 

He couldn't hurt him, not in the present, not anymore.

Papa.

Dr. Brenner, his brain supplied, just before the little boy began to speak. 

“I don’t want to do this anymore, Papa. Can I go back to the rainbow room now?”

Brenner smiled at the boy but the expression screamed of faux sincerity. The corners of his mouth may have been turned up but his eyes shone brightly with disappointment. “Not until we’re done here and you can give me a clear and accurate vision.”

“I’m trying.” The boy said grumpily, slumping down in his seat. 

“Not hard enough.” Brenner said, heaving a sigh. “I think maybe I've been too soft on you, Five. Letting you play, letting you read those books you seem to like so much. It was– shortsighted of me to allow you to indulge in such fantasies. You can’t keep your head out of the clouds, that’s the problem. Your imagination is your enemy, it muddies the waters and makes your predictions unreliable”

“I said I'm trying!” Eddie shouted definitely, pounding his little fist down on the table. Everything on its surface went flying as if caught in a shockwave, papers and pens sent scattering to the floor.

And oh Eddie remembered this day. Papa had been at him for hours and he was so exhausted.

His lessons had always been very different from the others, fraught with tension. The other numbers all had powers that revolved primarily around telepathy and telekinesis, abilities that Brenner and his cronies had some familiarity with, some basis of knowledge with which to model their training after, but Eddie– Five, he was unique. The first subject in the program's history to display the powers of precognition. They wanted him powerful, badly, but no one knew quite what to do with him, how to help grow and hone his power.

Brenner, unfazed by the display, gave the boy another disappointed stare and shook his head. “You could be our greatest asset, If only you would apply yourself.”

“I do not want to be an asset! I want to play! To go outside and see what’s past the fence!”

Even as a child Eddie knew asset was really a codeword for weapon, and he didn't want to be that. He was tired of this place and its rules, knew there had to be something better out there. 

This was the day he decided he needed to escape, to take her and run.

El…

Eleven, his favorite little sister. He remembered her now– not as the girl who was sitting with him on a bed in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, but as the little girl from his childhood. She’d been having such a hard time lately. Some of the others were bullying her, had grown jealous, scared of losing Papa’s favor now that she’d shown them all how powerful she was. What she was truly capable of.

The light in the room flicked, dimmed, and the scene in front of Eddie grew dark for a moment before the light suddenly returned. 

He was in a hallway. 

A hallway littered with bodies, its walls painted with blood spatter, the sound of screams and gunfire not too far off. 

The little boy that was him suddenly ran past, heading not away from the danger but toward it, towards the sound of his brothers and sisters dying. 

He’d had a vision, a strange one, almost dream-like in its quality. He knew the orderly was planning something. He knew the man had a secret, and was pretty sure he knew what it was. Henry was like them, powerful. Papa had done something to separate Henry from that power. Eddie didn’t know all the details but he knew Henry intended to throw off his shackles if he could and escape. 

Eddie did too. And so he said nothing. He kept his eyes and ears open, figuring that when Henry made his move it would cause a significant enough distraction to allow him and Eleven to escape as well. 

Had he known…

Had he known what Henry intended to do he would have said something. He would have told Papa, would have warned everyone. 

This was all his fault. 

They were all dead, and it was all his fault.

Eddie ran after himself, catching up just as the boy burst into the rainbow room to find Henry and Eleven locked in a battle of wills, and the small girl was floating several feet up above the floor. Eddie’s heart sank, then and now.

Henry glanced from El to the boy as he entered. An odd look flashed across his face, but was gone before Eddie could decipher it, too distracted as he was by the sight of tiny, wounded Eleven. Her face was a pale ghoulish mask, blood poured from her eyes, nose, and mouth as she struggled against an invisible hold. 

The boy threw his arms around her and tugged, trying to pull her to the ground, but she would not budge.  

“Let her go!” He screamed at Henry, hands still locked around his sister's legs.

“You cannot help her now, my son, it’s too late. She made her choice. I offered for her to join me, to join us, but she refused.”

“Son?” The little boy squeaked.

“Yes, Five. I think it’s time you learned the truth about where you came from. Didn’t you ever wonder why you were so special?”

“No!” Eddie and the little boy shouted at the same time, the boy’s head shaking back and forth furiously. 

This wasn’t a memory it was a fucking nightmare. 

Eddie wrapped his arms around himself, wishing he knew how to end this. He’d seen enough. He remembered, and he knew what was coming, what he’d done. 

“Back away now, Five. Let me finish her and we can walk out of this place together.”

And that little boy? That terrified child who just wanted to grab his sister and run? 

He did. 

He backed away.

And, seeing no way to fight against a monster of this caliber, truly believing that it was too late to save Eleven, he kept backing up until he hit the double doors, then turned tail and ran. 

Eddie didn’t follow, he didn’t need to see what the boy did next. He recalled navigating the hallways blindly, eyes swimming with tears until he made it to the service elevator. Instead he stayed to watch as against all odds El gained the upper hand and sent that creep packing to another dimension. 

-

Eddie woke from his trance gasping and sobbing. 

He shoved himself off the bed and away from El as fast as he could, backing himself into the corner of the room before sliding down the wall to sit in a heap on the floor. 

“I knew it, I fucking left you there! That bastard had you and I just fucking ran. And he…” Eddie cut himself off, suddenly feeling like he couldn't breathe. “He’s my… oh god.”

El got off the bed slowly and took a few steps towards him. 

“Don’t.” Eddie said, shrinking even further into himself as she continued to get closer. “I’m… bad. Can’t you see that? Don’t you remember, weren’t you watching?! I’m bad. Why would you want to be anywhere near me after what I did to you?”

Eddie felt her small hands grip him firmly on either side of his face, tilting his head up so he was forced to look her in the eyes. “You. Are. Good. Eddie Munson.” 

He whimpered, trying to look away but she wouldn’t let him. 

“People lie. Henry lies.” 

“But what if it’s true? What if I'm just like him?”

“Even if it is true, if he is your– father, you are not like him. You are like Wayne, like Steve–” Her voice cracked a little on her brother’s name and she paused, swallowing thickly before continuing. “Like me. And we are not like him.” 

Eddie wanted to believe her but with the return of his memories came a seed of darkness, buried deep in his gut and growing by the second as it was fed by his guilt and shame.

He nodded anyway so she would let him go, and scrubbed at his face while he tried to pull himself together. He still had a job to do. As disgusted as he was with himself now, he could not let that get in the way of rescuing Steve.

He understood a little more of what he could do now, but he still lacked the skill to focus it. He could see all kinds of things from the past, present, and future. As a kid, and even now he supposed, the visions came on their own, unpredictable and often in dreams, though if he tried hard enough he could cause them to happen at will. He just didn’t know how to control what he saw. If only he could see what had happened to Steve, they might have a better idea of what to do to get him back, if he really was trapped in that place with Henry. 

“Just think of him.” El said, as though reading his mind. And maybe she was but it was also likely that she had simply followed the same train of thought. “Like the elevator.”

“But that’s… I thought you did that?”

“No.” She said, shaking her head. “I helped. Gave you a push and, uh, piggybacked in your mind, but it was you, the power. You got your own memories back.”

“Oh.”

“Close your eyes.” She said again, directing him as before and he compiled without hesitation. 

“Picture Steve, as you last saw him.”

Despite everything Eddie felt himself begin to blush, trying furiously not to think about what he and Steve had been up to before going to bed and only concentrate on the after– when they were cuddled together close in the dark, in the minutes before falling asleep. It was still incriminating as hell, but at least it was P.G. 

“El, can you, um… see?” He said, trying to hold on to the image as he spoke. It was like trying to stand in two places at once.

“Yes.”

“And are you… okay with it? Me and him?”

“You love him.” She said simply, part statement, part question.

All things being equal, and if their world and situation were a little more normal, Eddie would argue with her that it was far too soon for words like that, but if he was honest, his feelings for Steve were big, undeniable, powerful things, and so he responded in the only way that was honest. 

“Yes.”

“He loves you too. You make him happy. Why would I not be okay with that?”

“Oh.”

She made it sound so simple. It wasn’t, for a lot of reasons, but now wasn’t the time to explain societal hang ups, or the fact that Eddie wasn’t sure he was good enough for Steve anymore, had hardly thought he was good enough even before finding out about his potentially evil parentage.

“Focus on him, how he looks, feels, the details of his face, the room.”

Eddie did as she said, letting himself sink into the scene the way he had with the elevator, and when he could feel the wooden floor with its threadbare throw rug beneath his feet he knew he was in. 

It was surreal, watching from a few feet away as he and Steve shared a few final sweet kisses before settling down, their breath evening out as each of them fell asleep.

He willed time in the vision to speed up as he continued to hold onto it tightly, fighting not to let his mind wander anywhere but the moment he was in. 

It worked. 

Seconds later Steve was sitting up, staring at and speaking to empty air, his words lost, garbled as the vision became hazy. 

Shit.

“Why can’t I hear him?” Eddie mumbled aloud. Wondering about both himself now and his still sleeping form, then.

“I do not know.” El replied.

Eddie pulled the vision back into focus as best he could and managed to follow Steve as he ventured out of their room, still talking to thin air and eventually went outside. 

How did he make it all the way to the front door without waking anyone up? It had to be Vecna, he’d done something to mess with Steve, to trick him and keep the rest of them from noticing. 

Eddie kept watching, following Steve as he ran through the woods and continued running all the way to the lab. 

That fucking lab.

Which still had an old gate in its basement. 

A gate Henry must have reopened. 

He let the vision fall away and opened his eyes to find Eleven wearing the same expression of worry that he knew was echoed on his own face. 

It was true. Steve was in the Upside Down. He had walked right in on his own two feet and probably right into Vecna’s clutches. 

“We will get him back.” El said, a steely determination in her voice that left no room for doubt. “We will save him, just like the superheroes in your comic books.”

Eddie wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that, for the first time regretting having let her and Max pilfer his collection. Heroes might save the day but they didn’t always live to see the next one, and El was entirely too young to be thinking about sacrificing herself for anyone else. If they were really going to do this, venture into that place to get Steve back, he’d have to keep a close eye on her or find a way to get her to stay behind. 

A hot trickle ran down Eddie’s upper lip and he wiped at it without thinking, assuming his nose was just running from all the crying he’d done earlier, but the back of his hand came away smeared with blood.

“You need to rest now. Recharge.” El said.

“We don’t have time for me to rest. We need to go in there and get him out!”

-

Eddie was overruled. 

When he and El returned to the rest of the group and explained what they’d seen, it was decided that they needed to stock up on firepower before going anywhere. 

They hadn’t told the others about the past and what Eddie had seen in his memories, agreeing without needing to discuss it that it was his decision if and when he chose to share those details with anyone else, which he was grateful for. After everything they had been through, he wouldn't have been able to bear it if this was the thing that finally made everyone look at him differently. El seemed to forgive him, or at the very least wasn’t holding any of it against him, but there was no telling if the others would feel the same. He was having a hard enough time convincing himself that it didn’t change anything.

So, while Hopper, Joyce, and Jonathan made a trip back into town to stock up on weapons and any other supplies that might come in handy, Eddie allowed himself to be banished to his bedroom and tried to rest. 

It was impossible to sleep surrounded by the memory of Steve, their mingled scents still embedded in the sheets. Though he was exhausted, he couldn’t stop thinking about Steve being in that place, afraid to close his eyes lest he fall into a vision of it. He was also struck by the way everyone was still rallying around him, each of his friends and family as hell bent on getting Steve back as he was, but he didn’t like the idea that anyone else might get hurt on his watch. 

He was also terrified to let El go anywhere near Vecna, afraid of what he might do to her in retaliation for banishing him. 

Maybe…

Maybe Henry would make a trade. If Eddie was, in fact, the monster’s son, maybe he would be willing to let Steve go, to stop attacking his people, if Eddie agreed to join him in his place. It was the only way he could see out of this mess without risking anyone else. 

He slipped out of bed as quietly as he could and got dressed, at the last minute digging through his bag to find Steve’s letterman jacket, shrugging it on before adding his battle vest on top. It was probably silly, but he thought having a reminder like that of Steve and what they shared would give him strength. 

The last thing he grabbed was a pocket knife, stuffing it into his jeans. He didn’t bother worrying about taking any other weapons. This wasn’t going to be a fight. It was barely a negotiation. He just had to hope Henry would accept his offer.  

He clumsily snuck out the window, thankful that the boys and Max, as far as he could hear through the wall, were keeping the remaining adults busy by arguing against being left behind when the time came. For once he was on the side of the adults.

*ELEVEN*

After Eddie was sent to his room, Wayne insisted that Eleven should get some rest as well. She wasn’t actually feeling very tired yet, she had spoken the truth when she said Eddie had done most of the work, but she liked Mr. Wayne. He was kind, and smart, and if it would make him happy she would try to nap, but only after making him promise to wake her up and not leave her behind when they went to the Upside Down. They would need her, she was sure of it. She didn’t know how useful their weapons would be against something like Henry, but she had almost defeated him once, and for Steve, she could do it again.

El tried and tried but sleep would not come.

It was just… Eddie had been so sad earlier. He carried so much guilt now that his memories were back, and she didn’t know how to tell him that he was wrong. He thought this was all his fault somehow, but it wasn't. It was hers.

She was the one who set Henry free, tricked into giving him back his powers.

She was the one who’s failure to put him down properly had landed him in a world where he somehow became even more powerful, enough to come after her and others from a world away.

And then she’d drug Steve into things.

Just thinking of him made her heart hurt.

If it wasn’t for her, he would have never even heard of Hawkins lab, and would certainly not be in danger now. And Eddie? Eddie would have gone on with his life, happily having no idea of his own tragic beginnings. 

She’d caused this and now it was up to her to fix it, and she couldn’t let anyone else be hurt by her failure. 

She put some shoes on and wrapped one of Mr. Wayne’s flannels around herself, considering her options. She couldn’t tell the others, so simply walking out the front door wasn’t possible, they would never agree to her plan. They saw her as a child, a powerful one, but still a kid that needed protecting.

The window in her room was high, but El was able to slide a box under it to use as a step stool to pull herself up. She went through and landed hard on the other side, holding herself still once she landed until she was sure that no one had heard her rough landing. 

She didn’t exactly know the way to the lab from here, but she remembered the general direction from Eddie’s vision of Steve, and when she concentrated she could feel the pulsing of the gate calling to her. 

-

Too late Eleven realized it was maybe not the best idea to do this alone. She had made it to the lab and through the gate just fine, but the growls and snarls that could be heard in the distance were a terrifying reminder that Henry wasn’t the only monster in this place, and it wouldn't do Steve any good if she got eaten before she could offer herself up to as a trade for his life. 

The growls came closer and Eleven got spooked, taking off at a run while she looked back to make sure nothing was on her trail, and ran smack dab into Eddie’s back. 

Chapter 14

Thanks forever to @penny00dreadful for being the best friend, cheerleader, and beta in the whole fucking world💜

Taglist: @newtstabber @goodolefashionedloverboi @adaed5 @buckleybarnes @soaringornithopter @eddie-munsons-lunchbox @bestwifehaver @5ammi90 @sofadofax @ellietheasexylibrarian @manda-panda-monium @hardboiledleggs @mentallyundone @epiclazershark @herebedragons404 @estrellami-1 @paintsplatteredandimperfect @the-s-is-silent @brbsoulnomming @goinsteddie @steddie-there @yeahhhh-suga @thestarslittleking

[the-things-i-love]

As I’m counting down the hours to the Sumeru update, and I’m seeing that people seemed to like my word vomit for Gorou? Take this love for the Traveler. Our nearest and dearest in a world where Genshin is self-aware. (Also, thank you to everyone that enjoyed my Gorou one-shot??? What the heck???)

✧Fandom; Genshin Impact

✧SAGAU (Self-Aware Genshin AU)

✧Characters; Traveler, Gorou (briefly mentioned), Lisa (mentioned once), Baizhu (mentioned once), Ayaka (mentioned once)

✧Pairing(s); Traveler × GN!Reader/Overseer, Lumine × GN!Reader/Overseer, Aether × GN!Reader/Overseer

✧Warning(s)/Genre(s); Possessive thoughts, use of the word ‘whore’ (as a term of endearement)

Like a sixth sense, they feel something is coming. Or at least that kind of anticipation. Its in the way that their movements, their actions, your entire will is anxious. The phantom blips and trills of your actions have been ringing with greater frequency this ‘day’. Many had passed for the golden haired outlander, but something innate told them that it was but hours for you, their truest guide, their Overseer.

A thrill ran through them as they allowed the possessive thought into their mind. It felt right. After all, they were the very first to feel your presence. They were the first being in all of Teyvat, despite not being of Teyvat themselves, to taste the tug of your will. You may be Teyvat’s greatest divine, but you were their guiding light, their northern star... and they were your cherished. So of course they could tell the difference between their minutes and yours; between their days and yours; between your changing emotional states.

‘Today’, there was an excitement to your energy. Nervous, but excited. Delighted, maybe? What they felt, clearest of all, was that you were excited for them. Again, they shivered at the favouritism being shown to them. Favourite. Their sword-hand clenched. They were your favourite. No, they are your favourite. Why else would you always return to them? Default to them?

“Aww, Gorou, I just wanna pet your fluffy, little eeeears~!”

“Ok, but, why isn’t Lisa in the library waiting for meeeee? I miss you! Mommy? Sorry- Mommy? Haha!”

“Baizhu, you cheeky whore, get back here!!! I love yooooou, be playable already!!!.” 

“Gods damn, Ayaka! I’m so sorry it took me so long to build you, my lil’ yuki-hime!”

They let out a shuddering breath…

Aether

What drew you so much to that puppy-boy general? They had almost the exact same build! And, not to blow smoke, but Aether considered himself much more appealing than the Inazuman general! No-one you had come across so far in Teyvat looked like him, sans his sister! He was beautiful! He was exotic! So why didn’t you dote on him? His cheeks puffed petulantly. But he shook his head, recollecting himself.

No, no. He was the soft twin. Gentle smiles and a soft, warm voice. That was how you described him, no? A… ‘soft boy’? These ugly thoughts didn’t coincide with his idea of that title. That wouldn’t do. He was your cherished. Your soft boy. He was whatever you wanted him to be. Your words, your will, you were his. His body, his soul, his everything was yours. Whatever you wanted him to be.

Aether’s hand came to rest over his heart. That was right. The two of you were one. He moved at your thought, he fought for your honour, he died and was reborn by your will. So, it only stood to reason that your excitement was his also. Yes, there was something exciting on the horizon. Something that warranted his fervent anticipation if it made his Observer so energetic…

Lumine

Her teeth ground together painfully, the sudden sensation of animosity pulling aggro from the hilichurls that should have been nonthewiser to her presence. She heard you curse before she leapt into action, Festering Desire practically singing with bloodlust as she dashed into the camp of forsaken. Lumine’s heart grew lighter as elemental energy coursed through her very being, following your will as it dispersed; decimating poor ‘mobs’ that had thought to attack the two of you.

“Hey! Paimon’s in danger too, y’know!” Oops! Three.

Flicking her sword to the side, watching it disintegrated before feeling it reappear on her back, Lumine took a deep breath. No. She loved the friends she had made here in Teyvat. These wonderful people that felt your presence as she did. A being as ever present, effervescent, eternal as you had a heart filled with far too much love for her alone to shoulder; even if the thought thrilled her.

She was the cool twin. Take names, and kick ass. Stoic but with a heart of gold. If she recalled correctly, this was your… ‘headcanon’ for her? Something you had just for her! Her cheeks coloured. Yes. She was your number one; your cherished among cherished; the one you always returned to. Her hands rose to cup her cheeks. She felt your love at her very core. You filled her so perfectly. It was ok that you loved her friends, wonderful even!

Just more cherished to shower you with all the love you deserved…

A blippy trill filled their mind. That could mean a plethora of things. One in particular shot a terrific, icy stab into their heart; it could mean you were withdrawing your presence. That terror fled with the warmth of teleportation. By the Seven, you shouldn’t scare them like that! Appearing beneath a statue of the Raiden Shogun, their legs quickly carried them across the Inazuman landscape. Leaping across a waterway near the Sanganomiya camp, they shot out their wind glider; the musical theme being a gift you only granted them, yet more proof of your favour.

They came to a stop just outside of Yasumoto’s home. Oh, right. At the top of the ‘day’, you’d had them leave a dozen plants in his basket. They kept hundreds on hand so what was a dozen a ‘day’? Their heart stuttered as they heard you laugh. Could you be more perfect? Your voice alone completed them, but your laughter…

“Hope you’re as excited for Sumeru as I am!” You cooed their name, half laughing. Were you that excited? …Sumeru? Was that what you were excited about? Did you intend to travel to Sumeru soon? Another step toward their wayward sibling, another new adventure to embark upon with you. They felt light. Abuzz. How could they not be excited to share yet another experience with you? It was almost enough for them to miss that familiar, phantom trill. Almost.

“Ok, I’ll be back as soon as the update finishes tomorrow, promise! Get ready, because we’re gonna be busy!” Usually, their heart would drop as they felt your presence leave them. But you just weren’t playing fair. You were so excited, positively giddy to be traveling to yet another nation with them! They took a seat on the stone fence behind them, quickly transitioning to laying back; gazing up at the stars.

Of course they were excited for the morrow… so long as it meant more time with you.

BONUS

Glancing out his window, the man trembled. They had just been… laying there. For days. Should he go check on them? His instincts as a doctor were drowned out by a primal terror each time he happened to spot the golden-haired outlander waiting outside his abode. As if something in him knew that he flirted with death if he were to disturb the powerful person but moments away from him.

Yasumoto sighed. All he wanted was to collect his Naku Weeds...

[gunkreads]

WOW (breathe)

WOW (breathe)

WOW (breathe)

Look, I saw it coming from about the halfway point. It was written on the walls and floor, and even little hints on the ceiling sometimes. Fuck, dude, it's written on the cover of the damn book. (spoilers below) GO READ IT. HARD RECOMMEND.

But a perfectly-executed twist has values besides shock to carry it.

The beauty of the twist at the end of The Traitor Baru Cormorant is the steadiness with which Dickinson shifts the narration itself to make you question whether you could have ever believed Baru was really with the rebels. Around the midpoint of the Haraerod summit, Baru's internal monologue--i.e. the narration--begins to betray small hints that she's trying to re-distance herself from the Aurdwynni. From there on, Dickinson makes these

HANG ON I JUST LOOKED HIM UP, HE WAS A WRITER FOR

THE TAKEN FUCKING KING??????

okay we're back

AND FORSAKEN????????????? TAIN HU = SJUR EIDO CONFIRMED??????????

okay back for real.

makes these little "slip-up" hints appear constantly and with increasing frequency throughout the latter half of the story. By the time they're gathered before the battle, Baru is all but admitting to herself that she's trying to end the dukes. Dickinson plays with the fact that his writing is so deliciously tight and refined that any teeny little "misplaced" word sticks out like a gunshot in a church.

I love it, OK? I love when authors know how good they are and play chess games in which their own mastery is the piece that lands the checkmate.

But really, once I had a little chat about this book (thanks @pillowfriendly) and established that it wasn't meant to be a mind-bending political drama, I picked it up and blasted through the latter half. So it was also a teaching book! I now have a better idea of how to assess what a book is trying to be when I start it.

Also, what the hell is up with people comparing this series to The Locked Tomb? What's the similarity there? I'm asking because The Masquerade can be compared much more directly to another series that infected me with a nearly identical flavor of brainworm: Red Rising.

Like... come on, man. I could draw a Venn diagram of plot points between the first Red Rising book and The Traitor and you'd have to break out a microscope to find the places they don't overlap.

Probably ice fucking cold take: Seth Dickinson's first book is about two miles better than Pierce Brown's. Red Rising (the book) takes a HOT sec to get off the ground and is just so incredibly derivative in its structure that I have a hard time putting it up on the pedestal that Dickinson has just effortlessly launched himself atop. I love RR in a deep, unkillable type of way, but the first book isn't... all that. I'm not unpacking that shit right now.

Anyway, yeah... The Traitor Baru Cormorant is an all-timer for sure. Elicited a lot of soft "oh...."s from me, which is about twice as much as I ever ask for.

[peligin-eyed]

🧍‍♂️ for everyone!! >:3c

🧍‍♂️— What stats would they provide as a companion? Where would you obtain them?

The Esoteric Aesthete- He’s equally likely to gift you fine new clothes or mind-searing Correspondence poetry. A menace at parties and in academic debates. Persuasive +10, Watchful +6, Bizarre +1, Artisan of the Red Science +1. A fate-locked Feast of the Rose companion.

The Fierce-Eyed Hunter- Their gaze is piercing, their demeanour gruff, their manners leave something to be desired. But they seem at peace on the zee. Dangerous +10, Dreaded +1, Zeefaring +1. You can either encounter them through a card at zee where they try to attack and board your ship (gain them as a companion by passing a Dreaded challenge to Come to an Arrangement), or at Gaider’s Mourn with 25+ Docks renown.

The Cursed Balladeer- A monster-hunting professor with a lovely singing voice and a dangerous secret. Watchful +7, Dangerous +7, Monstrous Anatomy +1. You can meet him at the University and play through a card-based story where you do tasks like help wrangle beasts, grade assignments, and book performance gigs for her while gradually uncovering snippets about his past. You gain him as a companion at the end after dealing with an unexpectedly transformed Liam in his office. She unlocks an option to aid you when hunting in Parabola.

The Blithe Sharpshooter- A disarmingly light-hearted fellow who knows how to keep a secret. You don’t want to be on the wrong end of his gun. Shadowy +7, Dangerous +6, A Player of Chess +1. You can find him through a card draw at Mrs Plenty’s Carnival and become better acquainted by going sport-hunting or exchanging encoded messages. He can be upgraded at Hallowmas to become more Dreaded.

The Forsaken Doctor- He brings a gloomy air to any conversation, but he’s ever so good with a scalpel. Watchful +8, Bizarre +1, increases Nightmares build-up. Obtain him by completing a lab experiment where you help him graft a new arm and leg onto a tomb-colonist. He can be hired as a lab companion with expertise in Biological experiments and special options on projects with a Shapeling Focus.

The Illusive Rascal- They are hard to track down in London yet they have quite a reputation with certain elements of the city’s underworld. Shadowy +9, Watchful +3, Glasswork +1. You can find them in Parabola with high Revolutionaries renown. They add an Infrequent Frequency card to your deck where you can rendezvous with them in a dream for a favour with Revolutionaries, Urchins, or Criminals.

Ask game from here

[hunn1e-bunn1e]

Series

🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.

Diabolik Lovers

—[Name] The Vampire—

In which [Name], the one and only son of Sakamaki Richter, strives to make his dearest cousins' lives a living hell. Or; In which yearns for what can never be his own and will do just about anything to yank it within his reach.

P R O L O G U E

FIRST ACT: "The Boy in the Woods"

Episode One

Episode Two

Episode Three

Episode Four

Episode Five

‐–—INTERLUDE—–‐

SECOND ACT: "A Girl From Afar"

Episode One

Episode Two

Episode Three

Episode Four

Episode Five

‐–—INTERLUDE—–‐

THIRD ACT: "The Brothers Mukami"

Episode One

Episode Two

Episode Three

Episode Four

Episode Five

‐–—INTERLUDE—–‐

FOURTH ACT: "Memories Drifting Aloft"

Episode One

Episode Two

Episode Three

Episode Four

Episode Five

‐–—INTERLUDE—–‐

Genshin Impact

—The Tale of Sky Weaver—

(On a temporary hold....)

In which the Traveler and Paimon come across a mysterious adeptus by the name of Sky Weaver while the two are exploring near the sparsely populated cliffsides of Mt. Mingyuan. Or; In which the long-forgotten tale of the adeptus Sky Weaver is uncovered by Aether from the lips of the various Adepti of Liyue and the people who know them.

Prologue – The Forgotten Tale of Sky Weaver

1. Mysterious Adeptus, Sky Weaver – Aether

1.5. Fallen Star Seeking Enigmatic Clouds

2. Beautiful Adeptus, Sky Weaver – Gaming

2.5. Ardent Dragon Rests Upon Resplendent Cliffs

3. Compassionate Adeptus, Sky Weaver – Xiao

3.5. Anguished Bird Embraces Sky-bound Benevolence

4. Knowledgeable Adeptus, Sky Weaver – Baizhu

4.5. Inquisitive Serpent Seeks Ceaseless Wisdom

5. Courageous Adeptus, Sky Weaver – Zhongli

5.5. Omnipotent One Observes Peculiar Gallantry

6. Lonesome Adeptus, Sky Weaver – Everyone

6.5. Foreign Beasts Perch On Forsaken Mountain Peaks

Epilog – He Who Shapes the Horizon

Extra 1 – Solitary Fallen Star And Foreign-Born Kin

Extra 2 – Sky Born Night Woven Lanterns Soaring

My Hero Academia

—Speed Drive—

1. Oh! Ah Baby, You're So Fine,

2. You're So Fine You Blow My Mind,

3. Jump Into The Driver Seat-

4. -and Put It Into Speed Drive,

5. Riding Through The Streets,

6. On A Different Frequency,

7. Know You Know Just What I Mean,

8. We're Running Through The Red Lights!

9. La-ah-ah-ah-aah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ights!

10. Red Lights, Red Lights, Red Lights, Red Lights!

Obey Me

—Good Boy—

1. Leash and Collar – Mammon

2. Sit Boy – Mammon

Twisted Wonderland

—Otaku × Delinquent—

1. You Have Some Nerve – Idia Shroud

2. Dinner and an Autograph Signing – Idia Shroud

3. Ways With Words – Idia Shroud

🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.

Back to the Masterlist Hub?

[pluppsauthor]

OC Interview

Thank you to @kaylinalexanderbooks and @tildeathiwillwrite for the tags! I'm a bit behind on some of times, but that's alright :)

Rules: answer the following questions in the perspective of one of your OCs!

Last time I did Dusk, this time I'm going to go with my main man Jesse Graves from my (still unnamed) western WIP, as well as a randomly decided character... the wheel says... Reven from Frequency: Forsaken! (Jesse's answers are in orange, and Reven's are in blue)

Are you named after anyone?

"Hmm... Well, I named myself, but 'Jesse' is a common name. Especially in the east. It wasn't after any one person, just the first name I thought of." "No. It's not even a name. Short for 'Revenant', should say all it needs to."

When was the last time you cried?

"Men don't cry. That's what I like to tell myself, anyway. In truth... every time I'm reminded of the people who died by my hands, I cry. May their souls rest in peace." "I've lost my limbs, been burned, and had my head cut off once. I don't cry any more, I can't."

Do you have kids?

"No. And I'm not looking to start a family right now either." "No."

Do you use sarcasm a lot?

"I don't really like to joke around. If I say something, I mean it. Simple as that." "HAHAHahaha, only when I'm cocky. What's the point in being serious? Takes all the fun out of it."

What’s the first thing you notice about people?

"How they carry themselves. If they walk with the confidence of a killin' man, or the regret of one, then I know to keep an eye out. Beyond that... I see if I recognise them." "I don't really pay attention to other people that much. I guess I notice if they might want to kill me, but they can't anyway, so what's the point."

What’s your eye colour?

"Brown, like the colour of my hair." "Blue? Why are you asking?"

Scary movies or happy endings?

"I've heard of the theatres in some of the big cities out far to the west. But I haven't seen a movie myself. But between scary stories and happy endings? ...There's no harm in a happy ending I suppose." "Nothing scarier than what I've been through, and there's no happy ending waiting for me... But a scary movie is more fun."

Any special talents?

"I'm a quick shot. My soul's a little unique too. But if you're looking for tricks, go see a priest or a witch. I'm not one for magic, so I don't have many special talents." "Yeah, I can't die. Anything more special than that?"

Where were you born?

"Don't ask me that. It's not important, and I don't want to tell you." "What does it matter? North City, the one near that rocky coast? I couldn't bother to remember."

Do you have any pets?

"No. I have my horse, Biscuit, but I wouldn't consider her a pet." "No."

What sort of sports do you play?

"I don't play any sports. Some people to the north consider marksmanship a sport. But I don't." "What are these questions? None, I don't have the time or interest for that."

How tall are you?

"I don't know, 165 maybe?" "Seriously, I don't care. 170, 173 maybe?" (Both in cm)

What was your favourite subject in school?

"School?" "Okay, one more of these questions and I'm done. Who do you take me for, some rich kid who grew with real grass on his lawn?"

What is your dream job?

"Dream job? I don't got one. All I want is to be at peace. Forgiven and without anything I need to do." "Alright, I'm done. I don't know why you wanted to ask me these so bad, but I've had enough. I'm done." *sound of door slamming* (Real answer would be to kill Dusk, nothing else)

Great round of questions this time. (Shame Reven left) But now onto the tags! Gently tagging... @kbwritesstuff, @illarian-rambling, @xenascribbles, and @leahnardo-da-veggie. Open tag as always to anyone who wants to hop in! ❤

Here are the questions!

Are you named after anyone? When was the last time you cried? Do you have kids? Do you use sarcasm a lot? What’s the first thing you notice about people? What’s your eye colour? Scary movies or happy endings? Any special talents? Where were you born? Do you have any pets? What sort of sports do you play? How tall are you? What was your favourite subject in school? What is your dream job?

[I'm stealing the easy copy/paste format >:)]

[amiedala]

SOMETHING HOLY

CHAPTER 3: DANGEROUS THINGS

WARNINGS: explicit sexual content, canon-compliant violence

SUMMARY:

“The darkness will not get you,” he says, his voice fervent and husky. “I will not fucking let it.” 

“This galaxy is filled with dangerous things,” Nova whispers.

“Yes,” Din grits out, hand braced against the column of her throat, “so let’s destroy them.” 

“You think I can do it?” 

For a beat, neither of them speak. And then Din is on top of her, breath warm on her neck, his hand cresting against her cheek. “I know you can.” She can hear the smile in his voice. “And whatever you don’t will have to go through me.”

AUTHOR'S NOTE: HAPPY SOMETHING HOLY SATURDAY!!! this chapter is more setup than action, but if you love character-driven storylines, this one is for you.

This chapter is dedicated to the lovely anon in my inbox. You know who you are.

If you're new here, Something More & Something Deeper are the first installments in this series, available on here & ao3!

Nova can feel something pulsing. It lives in the ground underneath them, chittering in the open, toxic air. Everything here is hollowed out, scraped down to nothingness, a fungus growing in the dark. 

They don’t talk on the way back to the ship. Din pulls Nova behind him. She feels moorless, without an anchor, tossed to the wind. She holds onto his hand, her own lost in his iron grip, tugged along by his current, happy to be in his orbit. 

No one speaks. The planet is hissing, angry, giving off a frequency that isn’t meant to be heard. They head for the rock outcropping cresting over the hill, planning to meet Bo-Katan where they first left her. Over her shoulder, Nova can almost see something moving through the smog, ghosts that aren’t real, here to haunt and nothing else. 

The only other living thing out there is the five of them, like guiding points of a compass, like a multi-headed animal. Nova moves forward, always forward, folding her own arms around herself like it will keep the chill out, like it will fend off the darkness.

*

Bo-Katan can feel something pulsing. It travels through the air, gets absorbed through the helmet, gets pushed back out again. Her oxygen is not poisoned, but it feels like wreckage all the same. When she originally found her way back to Mandalore, the atmosphere had been like this. Razed, down to nothing. Glass in the place of where home once was.

The rubble matched how she felt. Desperate, nothing, in shards in the place of what danger lies ahead. She vaults over large pieces of destroyed buildings, careful to avoid the geysers filled with toxic steam, threatening to invade the barrier of her armor. 

Bo-Katan adjusts her gloves, once, twice. To carry enough fuel for the ship, she can’t be reckless. She needs to be smart, measured, and ice-blue. A soldier. 

Bo-Katan Kryze knows how to be a soldier. She was a soldier before she was a princess, before she carried the full weight of being a Mandalorian. She was raised the same way Mandalore was—on being a warrior, on fighting back. That same drive oxygenates in her blood, fortifies her down to her bones. She’s at the city center. Din was right. There’s a small fuelpost here. A sign hangs from a singular, rusted nail off the evaporator in the center: KEEP OUT.

She doesn’t listen. Carefully, precisely, she reaches forward to fill an empty tank, praying to something she doesn’t believe in that the gas hasn’t run dry, that she can gather enough to get them off this forsaken planet. 

The fuel runs rapidly for a few moments, then the tap dries up. 

“No,” Bo-Katan says, like she’s scolding the fuel.”Come on.” With a grunt, she pushes the lever all the way up. Slowly, painstakingly, a trickle of sludgy fuel runs through the pipe again, tinkling into the pail like wind chimes. Everything about this place is completely unsettling, raw and undone.

She can feel the unsettled air around her shift and crack. Bo-Katan takes a glance at her blind spot, the hair on the back of her neck standing up underneath the armor. 

Mandalore isn’t haunted. Bo-Katan knows this. 

Parnassos might be. Nova could tell her for sure.

Bo-Katan doesn’t believe in ghosts. 

But if they did exist, it would be out here in the Unknown Regions, where there’s swallowing blackness, a hole with its mouth open wide.

*

Wedge can feel something pulsing. In the low, deep light of Bo-Katan’s vessel, he sits with his legs crossed in the cockpit, peering out at Parnassos’s foggy, war-town surface. Whatever died here didn’t stay dead. 

Luke said those words once, curled up against Wedge’s chest. It was after the power went out on their ship, and the two of them huddled in silence in the corner. To preserve body heat, Wedge had suggested, but Luke’s blue eyes bloomed with the hint of something more. 

Something more has followed Wedge Antilles around since then, yapping at his heels. He’s ignored it for this, for the mission, for the Alliance, but it’s restless. It has a name, this something more. Wedge just can’t verbalize it, can’t put it into words. 

And then his friend’s daughter crashed into him on Dantooine, rebel girl gone rogue, all grown up, and the light came back into Wedge’s life for the first time in years. This is what fighting back feels like—not just going through the motions. 

Outside, the air is still pulsing. Everything here is foreboding. 

But in the corner, Grogu is sleeping, his small green body still. He sighs, turning over on his tiny side, tucking one of those big green ears under his head. And in here, Wedge is safe, on the other side of the door, in the liminal space. 

Wedge, preoccupied with the past, doesn’t notice that Ezra’s blinking hologram is no longer on the ship. 

*

Din can feel something pulsing. It seeps under the beskar, chilling him to his core. As the Mandalorian, he doesn’t get ruffled. Not easily. No, that’s not right. Not ever. Back when he was a bounty hunter, there was nothing that could shake him. He was a killing machine in silver, tempered metal—pushed to the edge, a live wire. Before Grogu, there was nothing that could rattle him. No star, no vessel, no person. 

He made a rule of it, after Xi’an and her ruthless clutches, her purple fingers clasped tight around his own throat. Not literally. 

Din never took his helmet off for anyone. For anything. 

When Nova ran into his path—into him, really—everything shook and shattered. Opening his heart to the little green bounty and killing anyone who stood in their way—that was easy. Like breathing. It was part of his Creed to protect, to defend. 

But Din Djarin never planned on falling in love. It was out of the cards for him. Before the kid—he was a lone ranger, traversing the galaxy in the Razor Crest, bringing in people who had committed crimes. He didn’t think about it twice, the act of it. Dropping them, freezing them, taking the reduced price on bringing the quarries in dead rather than alive. It wasn’t about the morality of it. It was about doing the job, and doing it well. 

And even when Grogu showed up, when Din’s focus shifted from killing to protecting, there was still a wall built around his heart. Built of beskar and steel, not out of sheer necessity, but out of something he created himself, reinforced with the love he had once lost, before the word Mandalorian meant anything to him. 

And then Novalise ran into his path, and that wall shattered. 

Din chances a look back at her, out of his periphery. In the helmet, he can look beyond her, but his eyes are laser-focused on his girl. Everything she is radiates magic. Something beyond what he ever was. Something good. 

Something so much holier than his Creed. 

They’re waiting at the outpost for Bo-Katan. Nova’s inhaling through the helmet, the air harder to hold onto if you’re not used to it. She cocks her head at him, listing to the left like he always does. He wants to climb down inside her heart, breathe his own air into her lungs.

She glances up at him, visor locked on his own. Neither of them speak, but Din holds out one gloved hand, taking her own in his palm. Nova’s not that much shorter than him—a head lower, but not much more—but she looks up at him, obscured by her Rebel-streaked helmet, and his heart surges, pumping faster. 

“You okay?” It comes out low, hungry. 

“I’m alive,” Nova says, and her voice sounds wrong all modulated. Not like honey and salt, like she usually does. Din would hate it if it wasn’t the woman he loves behind that helmet, sending vibrations through their interconnected hands. It reminds him of darker days, of things he’d rather not think about. Stars, he hates it here. 

“That’s not what I asked.” It’s harsh, too deep. Din winces. 

Nova sighs, the sound barely registering through her own helmet’s modulator. “Din, I—”

“Hurry up.”

Nova’s visor connects with something over Din’s left shoulder. He exhales, turning to face Bo-Katan. She looks like a lothcat, something in her posture rigid and poised. Like something ready to strike.

“Waiting for you,” Din mutters, regrettably letting go of Nova’s hand to offer it to Bo-Katan, wielding three giant fuel cans. “We could have made it back by now.” 

Bo-Katan stands still, like she’s listening to the planet’s frequency. 

“It does that,” Din says, flapping his open hand until she relents and gives him one of the cans. “Parnassos. It has a…noise. It always emits it.”

Nova looks at him. Din can feel her eyes burning through the back of his pauldron. 

“What happened here?” Bo-Katan grunts, slinging one of the other cans over her shoulder, jutting her chin up to signal them to keep moving. “Why does the planet feel—”

“Haunted?” 

Bo-Katan affixes Nova with her visor’s withering stare. Nova doesn’t budge, jutting her chin up. Something has shifted between the two of them, something DIn doesn’t know about. Under the helmet, Din presses his mouth into a thin line. 

“It was beautiful,” Din answers, feeling the fuel slosh around in the can as he shifts it to his other hand. “Once.” Over the foggy horizon, he can almost make out the outline of Bo-Katan’s ship. They’re not far away, but Din moves like they are, refusing to be out in this radioactive non-silence any longer than he has to. “Nuclear disaster. Wrecked the planet.” 

“How do you know that?”

Din doesn’t answer Bo-Katan’s question. Instead, he soldiers on. 

Behind the two of them, Nova follows, silent, observing. 

“I’ve spent time here before.” 

Bo-Katan cracks her neck, matching her pace to Din’s long strides. “Why would you ever choose to spend time on this wasteland?” 

There are so many reasons. Din used to be a glutton for punishment. Din had been stranded out here. Din lost contact with his covert. Din met Xi’an, and thought her ruthlessness was something he could adopt, wear it like armor. But he glances back at Nova, hips swinging as she climbs, a lone black curl hanging down her back from the airlock of her helmet, and his heart burns. 

Because I thought I’d never have this, he thinks. Because I thought I didn’t deserve something more.

“Because,” Din says, finally, the outline of their starfighter revealing itself through the muted smog, “I was stranded out here. And the Unknown Regions are much worse.” 

When they get back to the ship and take off into the air around them, the memory of Parnassos’ wasteland filters out of his mind. Space welcomes them with its blackness, its inevitability. 

Even wrong, it feels right. Whatever danger out here must wait. 

*

Wedge refueled the ship back on Parnassos after Bo-Katan silently slung the cans into his hands. Now, they’re listless, floating through outer space, with enough fuel to slowly traverse the stars. 

Nova is trying—and failing—to sleep. In the corner are Grogu’s tiny, fluttering snores. Down the hall, in their own separate compartments, Wedge and Bo-Katan are, too. Din is piloting the ship, moving through the stars. He pulls her in like a magnet, like a tectonic plate shifting. Nova turns over for a third time, trying to clear her mind, trying not to think of the dizzying memory of Din’s weight on top of her, of the visions she’s fallen into, of the galaxy’s end hanging on the horizon. 

In her head, Nova replays the moment she first stepped on the Razor Crest. Bo-Katan’s ship is utilitarian, made of beskar and not much else. The Crest was like that, too, at first, but there was home lingering in the silence, a life to be made within its walls. 

Selfishly, hungrily, Nova longs for those moments—when Din was still the Mandalorian, when the three of them traveled through the stars, aimless except for the bounties Din brought in, drifting, content. 

This is too much. 

The pressure, the heavy press of responsibility. Nova sighs, shoving back the blankets, suddenly sweating. She gathers her hair on the top of her head, loose and wild, trying to feel the air on her skin, the sweet, safe oxygen of the starfighter. Her hands ache from fighting off the danger in her visions, but it’s pitch-black in here. She can’t see if they’re bubbled up from Parnassos’s toxic surface or scratched from clawing away the evil in her head, but they hurt just the same. 

Bottom lip trembling, Nova stands, pulling on a fresh pair of pants, a new top. Her Mandalore blue shawl is draped over the tiny outcropping on the wall, and Nova wraps it around her shoulders, the door hissing as she opens it. 

She moves down the hall, silent, the light growing bigger as the cockpit sprawls open in front of her. There, in the center, is Din, arms crossed over his steel chest, visor trained on the stars. 

“Hi,” she whispers, and he turns his head to the side as Nova pads forward into the room, settling down on the copilot’s chair. For a brief, fleeting moment—she can pretend they’re back where they were nearly three years ago, traveling the cosmos in the Razor Crest. 

Her chest aches. 

“You’re supposed to be sleeping.” It comes out gruff, like he’s arguing an inner war with himself. Nova offers Din a small smile, pulling a knee up close to her chest. 

“Couldn’t,” Nova murmurs, tracing over him with her eyes. The armor is foreboding, sure, but it glitters with the remnants of the space around them. “My head’s too full.” 

Din sighs, leaning to the right, like Nova’s presence is magnetic. Her teeth find her bottom lip, studying him. “What are you thinking about?” 

How monumental and overwhelming this all feels, Nova wants to say, but when she opens her mouth, something completely different falls out. “How badly I want to win.” 

That catches more than Din leaning into her. He turns his full body, swinging his armored legs around to face her head-on. “Win.”  It isn’t a question. 

Nova nods. “To wipe out all the evil, yes, But… this is different. Every other battle we’ve fought together felt…limited. Like there was still danger outside, but that some of it was compartmentalized. Contained. This, though…” she trails off, looking at the stars glinting back at her outside the window, “this feels…different. Like all the pieces of the puzzle are leading us to a bigger threat.” She swallows. “I saw it. In my head.” 

Din studies her, careful. Even through his helmet, Nova can feel his gaze burning a hole through her, straight down to her soul. 

“I want to win, Din,” she whispers. “Not just beat them. The Order, the people rising in Gideon’s place, the man Ezra disappeared with, the threats waiting to come. I want to send them back where they came from. I want to make them hurt.” Her hand clenches down at the last word, and Nova unfurls it, finding nothing on her skin but the impressions her fingernails left. Underneath though—underneath, it’s like fire has swept in, consuming her bones, her throat, her lungs. 

Nova closes her eyes, trying to chase the desperation away, to make it recede.  Her heartbeat is still off-kilter, wrong. When she flutters her eyelashes open, Din’s gaze is trained on her—a locus, a perfect fixture. 

“You can do it,” Din says, so quiet. He reaches his gloved hand forward, stroking over her cheekbone. “Make them hurt.” 

Nova takes in a shuddering breath. “Does that make me…as bad as them?” Her voice sounds derealized, hollow. Small. Like an open wound. “Does that make me worse?”

“No.” A single word, so much power behind it. “You want to burn them all down, Novalise? I’ll get the kerosene.” 

Nova stares back at him, so obscured by the helmet. For a second, his grip tightens, desperate, and Nova’s breath gets knocked clean out of her lungs. The lines blur, and she’s back in her dream where Din was the shadow version of himself—hungry, pulsating like the planet they just escaped. She blinks, and it’s gone. It’s just Din—the man she loves, the one who would tear the galaxy apart to find her, the one who will watch her raze it to the ground. 

“I don’t want it to get me,” she murmurs, “this feeling.” 

Din closes the space between them, standing between Nova’s legs in a flash. Blink, and she’d miss the whole thing. His voice is a cloying, consuming thing. “I won’t let it.”

*

In the dark, Nova sleeps.

In the dark, Din watches. 

His eyes are exponentially better at seeing through the darkness. He doesn't know if it’s from years spent under the helmet, or if it's because he has a preconceived likeness to it. The low light in the ship has faded over that line of nothing at all. Pressed up against his body is Novalise, his Novalise. In the dark sprawling silence, she’s inhaling even breaths. 

For weeks, now, he’s laid beside her in the darkness, trying to get her inhalations to register as normal. Nova’s sleep is filled with restless, fitful dreams—nightmares. Some of them are Force dreams. Din has taken stock of which ones are nightmares and which ones are full of want. It fills the air around them. It makes the oxygen heavier. 

Want is a pulsing need. Din knows the way it feels, low in his own stomach. He can smell it on Nova—the helmet has many perks, but picking up on her arousal is a special one. For days, when they first met, Din tried to stifle the want in his belly, twisting tendrils around his logical, rational mind, turning him into a madman. Weeks passed with Nova sleeping on his ship, eating his food, gentle and kind and so different from anything else he’d ever encountered. 

Pure. Novalise is pure. 

Still—deep inside, she’s depraved. She feels like honey and heaven, like the darkest temptation. But it’s the sweetest kind of sin, every time Din sinks deep inside of her, every time his bare skin gets to brush up against hers. And no matter how troubled she is, no evil lurks under her skin. 

Din would stomp it out if it existed. But Nova would beat him to it. 

Everything Nova radiates is magic. Din Djarin never believed in anything holy, not really. Not until Nova ran into his life, changed his world. Before, the stars above were just something to travel through. Now, he sees them light her eyes. 

Nova sighs in her sleep. Din watches as her mouth parts, closes. He pulls her closer, against his unarmored chest, draping his arm over her hip. His hand palms flat against her lower belly, an anchor, a vow. 

The entirety of the ship is blissful and quiet when Din finally crosses over into sleep.

* 

In her dreams, Nova is back on Yavin. 

It’s gorgeous, as always—sweet and warm, with a gentle breeze swaying across the greenery. The last time she was here, she was fighting off Sparmau—a physical manifestation of her anger, her pain. 

Her refusal to let the light leave the sky. 

Above her, there aren’t any clouds. The sky is a pale, pale blue, the sun shining off somewhere in the distance. Flowers dance on the horizon, climbing up the trees like vines. She turns to the right, and the pyramid-like structure of the base stands resolute, all stucco and sienna. 

It still feels like home. 

“Novalise.” She turns. Din is unarmored—not just without the helmet, but altogether. Without beskar, he seems smaller, lighter. Even though there’s no danger here—Yavin may be altogether mostly abandoned, but it’s still a safe haven—Nova feels fear seize in her chest, rushing towards the man she loves, anxiety kicking her heart arrhythmic. 

“What are you doing here?” she asks, stroking her thumb over his cheekbone, reveling in how soft his skin is for the millionth time, untouched my air, untouched by time, untouched by anyone else but her. 

Din laughs—a long, loud thing. Nova wants to bottle it up, to drink it clean down, to savor it for every time she feels the familiar fault line cracking. It’s not a sound she hears frequently. She’ll take all she can get. “You’re here,” he says, a gorgeous smile splitting across his face, “so I’m here.” 

Nova looks beyond him. There’s nothing—just Yavin, just serenity, just greenness. Bringing her eyes back to Din’s deep brown ones, she traces over his face reverently, drinking it in, soaking every inch she’s spent the last three years of her life committing to memory. “But what about the darkness?” 

Din looks taken aback, panicked. Usually so unflappable, so resolute—the expression looks strange on his face. No, Nova realizes, it looks wrong. “The darkness?” he repeats, his voice a small, untethered thing. 

“The darkness.” Nova nods, sliding her thumb down his cheek, so light, so gentle. “It’s coming for us, Din Djarin.” Her mouth splits open, revealing rows and rows of sparkling teeth. Vaulted from her own body, Nova spills outside of herself on Yavin’s green floor, watching in horror as her shadow-self grins back at Din, glittering and horrifying. 

“No!” She screams out, reaching one hand forward, trying to return to herself, the original vessel, to wrench this darkness out of her eyes, her mouth, her lungs. Din stands, immobilized, a Mandalorian without his armor, as shadow-Nova wraps her hand around his throat, squeezing hard. “Stop!” The syllable is split down the middle as a sob wrenches its way free from her mouth, undone, a lightning bolt.

Looking over at her, Nova’s reflection grins. So many teeth—like Sparmau, like the creature back on Primea, like the nightmares that haunt her every dream. Her eyes are black—hollow, blank blackness. There’s no light left. Like there was no light ever there at all. Nova tries to move forward again, sobbing, but it’s like she’s grown roots, tied down to the battle ground she used to call home. Terrified, screaming, she fights against the invisible force, against all this danger, but Din still stands, wheezing through her own fist. 

“Let him go,” Nova manages, tears streaming down her face, trying—and failing—to wrench herself free. “Take me instead.” 

“Oh Novalise.” Her name sounds perverted coming out of this self’s mouth—so much like her, but so completely different. “I already have you.” Her voice is so unsettled, so wrong. “You’ll become me, destroyer of worlds. It’s been prewritten.” 

“It,” Nova snarls, “has not.” 

Her shadow-self snaps, the sound ringing out loud in the air. Like a bell ringing in the silence. Like thunder threatening to split the sky in half. Nova is transported back into her body, staring in a mirror she’s not sure is even real, held captive by her own reflection. Her fist is still curled around Din’s throat, squeezing so hard she can feel his heartbeat bursting through her fingers. Crying, transfixed, she stares at her own self, so unlike the person she is, so completely opposite. 

“I will never be you,” she whispers. “Do you hear me? I will never give in.” 

“Look what you’re doing,” her mouth whispers, “you already are.” 

Nova screams, loud enough to shatter bone, angry enough to explode the stars. Everything turns black and white, shot into grayscale. The glittering of space surrounds her. For one awful, terrible second, Nova’s afraid she’s done too much—that by banishing this version of herself, she’s damned Din, too, but then her fingers unclasp from his neck and they both topple to the ground. 

“Cyar’ika,” Din pants, and despite all of it, despite the horror here, he still sounds reverent. He touches his hand to her cheek, wiping away tears with his thumb, “you saved me.” 

“I nearly ruined you,” Nova sobs, “Din—”

“You saved me,” he whispers again, finger tracing over the soft heart her mouth makes, “I won’t let the darkness get you.” 

Nova pulls him against her chest, hearing him rattle out deep, unsettled breaths. In the familiar green of Yavin, her head pressed against the hollow of his heart, she whispers something that neither of them can hear. 

“What if it already has?” 

Nova wakes up. Her breath is stolen straight out of her mouth. In the darkness, a soft light blinks on and off, and in stuttered, shuttered frames, she catches glimpses of Din’s beautiful, sleeping face. He looks at peace—like the weight of the world has been removed from his shoulders, like he’s been absolved of a burden. 

Silently, Nova chokes back her sob, gently tracing her fingers across Din’s face. Over the beautiful prominence of his nose. Over his thick browline. Over the ridges at the corner of his mouth—new, gentle wrinkles, proving Din Djarin has smiled more than he’s frowned. In the near-blackness, the danger subsides, and Nova soothes her heartbeat back down to normal rhythm. 

The visions—they’ve been of tangible, fleeting images. Evil blueness. Sinister laughter. White stormtroopers. Sparmau’s teeth. The Order. Everything contained within two words, simplicity—even if the danger here is multitudinal, even if everything is connected—it’s easy to quantify, to put into words.

All of the danger Nova has fought and dreamed over the last few years have been real. Sitting in the future, on the edge of the periphery, yes, but a tactile, real evil. It hasn’t seeped under her skin, it hasn’t rotted away at her heart. This is different—the light stomped out of her green eyes, her hands splitting what she loves most down the middle. It’s terrifying, this danger. This is Novalise coming undone.

Swallowing, she draws her knees against her chest, staring down at her hands in the dark. Soft, blue stitches of light cut through the blackness as she looks down at them. Her fingernails, medium length. Her long, elegant fingers descended directly from her mother. Peppered freckles, drawn like a constellation across her right wrist. Her engagement and wedding rings, ice-white crystal and enduring beskar. The lines that map out her life—as Andromeda, as Novalise, as the woman she has not yet become. 

“I will never choose the darkness,” Nova breathes out. A promise. A vow. 

Beside her, Din stirs. Nova presses her lips together, trying to remain quiet, to stay silent enough for him to fall back into much-needed sleep. He turns over, facing back to her, and through the gentle strobe of the faded blinking light, Nova sees his eyes open. 

“What’s wrong,” he whispers.

It isn’t a question. It’s like he already knows. In the dark, Nova presses her lips together. “I keep seeing things in my dreams. Things that are…after us. Dangerous things.” 

Din shifts closer to her. Reluctantly, Nova drops her knees, sliding back down. The second she’s anchored against Din’s chest, that sharp panic melts away, slides into the background. In the cocoon of his arms, the danger dissipates. Not gone entirely, but it reduces, slinking away to the corner of her mind that Nova locks the hurt away in. 

“You’ve faced dangerous things before.” Din’s voice is half-formed, still eroded by sleep.

Nova swallows. “This is different. This is…more personal.” She doesn't want to cast it into the light. She doesn't want to call it by name. This is the darkest part of her, a razor’s edge. At the forefront of her mind is her vision from what feels like ages ago—just over a week, in reality. Din asking her not to leave. Nova telling him to bring her back. “You have to promise me something.” 

Din stills.

“Anything.” 

“You’re not going to like it.” 

Silence. Then, Din turns over to her in the dark, gripping her cheeks with vigor. His palms are rough, hardened. Nova sways into his touch, tangling her legs in the scratchy sheet, pressing her forehead to his. “What?” 

“If something happens to me,” Nova whispers, “and the darkness…gets me, you have to be the one to end it.” 

Din is so rigid, so still. “No.” 

“Din—”

“We have gone too far to not have a happy ending. You promised me first. You said you weren’t going to be a martyr, Novalise.” He swallows, and when he starts again, his voice is ragged, unyielding. “Do you understand? I will not forgive you this time.” 

Nova’s heart stops. “That’s not what I mean,” she whispers, five little words with so much weight. “I’m not talking about sacrificing myself. I’m… talking about if the darkness swallows me.” 

Beside her, Din’s grip loosens. Not enough—just a hair. But Nova doesn't dare speak until Din draws in a ragged, dangerous breath. “Nova,” he breathes, “what did you see in your dreams?” 

Nova doesn’t want to speak it into existence, to bring it back with her into the light. “I’ve been seeing visions of myself. And it’s not me, Din. It’s not me.” Tears well up in her eyes. “But I’m terrified of her—of me. And I don’t know what I’m capable of.” Under the covers, against Din’s chest, Nova squeezes her hands together, trying to conjure the memory of light, to trace the silhouettes of her own hands, to be a peace-bringer. 

“I’ll tell you what you’re capable of.” Din’s hand finds the back of her neck, squeezing down tight, anchoring her in place. “You survived your parents’ deaths. You killed the man who abused you for months. You struck down the woman who wanted to tear me apart. You got Grogu to trust in the Force again. You wanted to reason with Gideon—not show him the same unspeakable violence he tried to show you. You united the Rebels and the Mandalorians after years of irreconcilable differences. You showed Ladmeny Sparmau that nobody can fuck with Novalise Djarin.” 

Nova shudders, tears welling up in her eyes. 

“You saved me, Novalise,” Din whispers. “Over and over again, you save me. You fight back against all the darkness. I don’t know what’s coming, but I don’t give a fuck.” His voice is low, dangerous, a live wire. “Because I know you can beat them. We can beat them. You hold the Darksaber. You’re becoming a Jedi. You belong to the light.” 

Nova feels Din’s hand stroke through her hair. 

“The darkness will not get you,” he says, his voice fervent and husky. “I will not fucking let it.” 

“This galaxy is filled with dangerous things,” Nova whispers.

“Yes,” Din grits out, hand braced against the column of her throat, “so let’s destroy them.” 

“You think I can do it?” 

For a beat, neither of them speak. And then Din is on top of her, breath warm on her neck, his hand cresting against her cheek. “I know you can.” She can hear the smile in his voice. “And whatever you don’t will have to go through me.” 

The danger is still at the tip of Nova’s tongue—threatening to consume her, to gut her from the inside out. But She reaches up to find Din’s mouth and crashes her own to it, wanting to expel all of it, to drown herself in violet and honey, to taste the man she loves on her tongue. Out here, in her crush of space—this feels so familiar. It feels like coming home. 

Everything fades out as Din’s lips find her own, thrashing against her tongue. Nova tangles her hands in his messy hair, pulling him closer, closer still. His mouth latches onto the pulse point on her neck, and Nova strangles out a sigh. Din Djarin fucks like a man possessed, but that want has a name. 

“Novalise.”

She wants him to split her open, to bisect her. The Din from the dream—the one haunted, the one held captive by demons neither of them can name—he isn’t here. This Din is desperation, happiness, want, need. Nova tears at their clothes, frantic, shoving her panties down to her knees so he can push inside of her and spear away the hurt. The panic has disappeared, given way to something lush and dangerous, maroon and wanting.

Din still smells like cinnamon and gunmetal, even without the interior of the Crest, even without the armor. He is not her Mandalorian right now. Din moans as Nova pulls his own pants down, too, hard and ready against her exposed core. Nova wants to talk to him, to whisper sweet nothing in his ear, but she still has herself captive. Din is here, on top of her, nearly inside of her, ready to resuscitate her from ruin. Ready to bring Nova back to life. 

“Please,” she whispers.

“What are you pleading for?” Din asks, low and gravelly, his voice laced with poison.

Nova swallows. It feels safer, in the dark, to admit it. “For you to take me.” 

“Take you,” Din grits out, his weight heavy and hard as he grinds into her, sending stars through Nova’s eyes, “or worship you?” 

The room stills. “Do you want to worship me?” Something dark flutters around her heart, dives deep into her belly. She can feel her pulse jump, ricocheting as Din’s fingers bisect her legs, teasing at her entrance. She inhales a tiny breath, dizzying, dancing. “Would you get on your knees for me, Din Djarin?” 

Din swears under his breath. “To pray to you, cyar’ika?” His words come out silken and barbed, pleasure and pain in equal measure. “Or to pleasure you?” He licks a line down her body, swirling his tongue around her bellybutton as he gets lower, deeper. Nova bites back a yelp as his tongue meets her clit, pressing flat against her cunt, like a viper ready to strike. She arches up, not away from his mouth, but into it. Din holds steady. “Answer the question.” 

“Would you pray to me?” 

“Oh, Novalise,” Din sighs, “you’re the only holy thing I believe in.” But before Nova can digest that—can think anything else, his tongue is inside of her. She screams out, unable to clap a hand over her mouth in time. It just spurs Din on, licking a line clean up, teeth scraping against her clit. This is want in its purest, depraved form, cloying and desperate. Nova writhes in the stuttered light as Din moves inside of her, hips digging into the thin mattress, too crazed with her taste to keep from bucking up against anything. 

When he’s driven her to oblivion—once, twice, Nova pulls at him, yanking hard, until Din’s body collapses on top of hers, cock twitching. 

“Fuck me,” she whispers, “please, Din.” Nova thinks she’ll shatter if he doesn’t, want hungering low in her pelvis. He doesn’t waste any time, doesn’t need to wetten his cock before he pushes into the hilt, sinking in until they’re intertwined. 

A long, low moan  falls out of Din’s mouth. It’s the sweetest divinity Nova has ever heard. He sinks his teeth into her shoulder as he fucks her—snapping his hips up, down, an unyielding rhythm, a desperate need. This is how it’s always been with them—star-crossed, love burning so loud it lights up in the darkness. Din’s breathing hitches as Nova pulls him closer, closer, both of them moving toward oblivion, framed against the low, blue light. 

The low blue light, emitting from Ezra’s hologram. With a yelp, Nova tries to sit up, but Din doesn’t stop, doesn’t yield, and she surrenders to his desperate want, burying himself inside of her until both of them reach their shuddering, unanimous end. Din presses his forehead to Nova’s, breath choppy and uneven, cupping a hand to her warm cheek. “You,” he breathes, “are everything, Novalise.”

Nova’s eyes flutter back down until the warmth of his words subside, edging her arrhythmic heart back to groundedness, to clarity. “Ezra,” she breathes into the darkness. 

Immediately, she regrets it. Din twitches inside of her. 

“Dangerous thing,” he grits out, “saying another man’s name while my cock is still buried inside of you.” 

Nova’s face burns. “That’s not what I meant—look, Din, there’s a new message.” 

He turns, staring at the blueness, and immediately, the two of them are scrambling to get up, to get dressed, to leave their tiny bedchamber that smells like sex and sin, to wake the others. 

“I should be jealous,” Din mutters, as he pulls his helmet back on, “that there’s another man in your head.” 

Nova grins as she pulls her shirt over her head, opening the airlock to the mainframe of the starfighter. “You’re the only man in my heart, Din Djarin.” 

Obediently, he follows after her, an eternal star. 

“Well,” he grumbles, letting the door hiss closed behind them, “I still don’t like it.” 

*

“I’m awake,” Bo-Katan slurs through a sleepy voice, rubbing at her eyes. Wedge appears a second later, still in his orange jumpsuit. He doesn't look like he slept at all, purple rings under his eyes. Nova watches him carefully, knowing Primea got under his skin, but Wedge doesn’t speak a word about it. 

They convene in the cockpit, the four of them huddled around the center, Gorgu silently observing with wide eyes from the side in his cradle.

“Play it.” Bo-Katan watches Din hold the hologram out in his hand, eyes trained on the azure figure in front of them, blue and distorted. 

“Wait,” Wedge says, stopping Din’s thumb from hitting the button. “Let’s just… stop for a second.” 

None of them move. 

Wedge sighs. “I want to bring Ezra back,” he says, and his jovial voice has lost its luster, “I do. But… we’re walking into uncharted territory, and none of us are equipped to handle it out here. I think maybe… if he’s somewhere we can’t easily get to, that we at least call in reinforcements.” His gaze snaps over to Nova’s, distant and longing. “There’s so much we have to fight,” Wedge says, carefully, “so we need to do it carefully.” 

Still helmeted, Din cocks his head to the side. “Who do we call in?” He asks, visor studying Wedge, “Rebels or Mandalorians?” 

Nova opens her mouth to speak, but it’s Bo-Katan that beats her to it. “Both. We’re on the same side.” 

All of them appraise her. Wedge has a tiny smile on his face. Din’s head is still to the side, even more tilted than it was a second ago. And Nova is biting back her own grin. 

“What?” Bo-Katan asks, exasperated.

“Nothing,” Nova says, quickly, before anyone can antagonize her further, “Bo-Katan, play the hologram.” 

Ezra crackles through static, leaning into the camera. Again, Nova is stunned by how similar they look—the same coloring, the same ridge of their eyebrows. Their eyes are different, even though Ezra’s currently washed in blue—Ezra’s purple, Nova’s sage-green. Right now, though, they could be mirror images of each other, 

“I don’t have much time,” Ezra says, his words garbled by the sound of the hologram. “I don’t even know if I’ll be here when—” He turns around, looking at something beyond a wall, obscuring his view and their own. He turns back to the hologram, a haunted look in his eyes. “Don’t follow me. Do you understand?” The hologram chitters and pulses, the sound so familiar to the frequency Paranssos frequented that Nova shivers. “Do not come after me. Everything has changed—” The static cuts in again, dangerous and tangible. “Do not follow me.” He looks right into the recording. It sends a knife through Nova’s heart. “You will be too late. It’s not safe—” 

And the recording cuts out. Nova’s breathing is all shallow. Everything in the ship flashes, once, twice, three times, and Nova feels Din reach out and grab her in the blinking blackness. He whispers something in her ear, desperate and low, caging her and the hologram against the durasteel floor. Nova cries out, reaching for Grogu, for Bo-Katan, for Wedge—

All she feels is Din, beskar and cinnamon. Out of the front window, the stars pulse and stream, moving down, down, down.  

No, Nova realizes with an awful jolt, the stars aren’t moving. The ship is. 

The starfighter chitters and pulses, one last death rattle.

And when the light leaves the starfighter, so does all the gravity, sending the dead ship and her crew down to the swirling, awful blueness of the planet underneath them.

*

*

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*

I HOPE YOU LOVED IT!!! thank you for being here <3 please leave a kudos or a comment if you're so inclined!

Chapter 4 will be up at 7:30 pm EST on Saturday, April 22nd!

xoxo, amelie

[50cal-fullauto-astarion]

Yder gets jealous of Halsin bc Astarion fed from him PLEASE

HI BESTIE ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ i am here to give you the WHOLE THING.

The beds at the Last Light are a fucking luxury beyond mortal reckoning. Yder had decided early on that she would steal every moment from the wretched pitch-black of this gods forsaken land to sleep and trance in these beds—and not on miserable, hardpacked dirt, or, worse, frigid and rough stone in the basement of Moonrise. But sleep does not settle over her. Astarion starves, slowly. She watches the bruises under his twitching eyes deepen as days pass, listens to his stomach growl and knot itself with fits of crippling hunger. He is always swallowing, he is always looking. It has become nearly dangerous to let him feed on her. It has become a practice that she loathes, keeping a stake angled below his ribs, in case he needs fended away.

There have been…arrangements made. Her teeth had gritted in jealousy of all things, when Halsin had approached the pair of them one evening in the red leaf camp, offering his neck. It was the least he could offer, he’d said, considering their efforts in eliminating the curse. And his own eyes were hungry as they flickered between the two other elves. Yder—stupid, silly, foolish Yder, an ignorant stump of a fucking girl, even at three hundred years—had been both proud and stung when Astarion had taken up the offer. It was only practical. She did not dare dampen his show of independence. She thanked Halsin, even, when Astarion did not think to. And the spawn returns to the room, boots dragging heavy across the floor, breathing raggedly as he unshoulders his leather overcoat, dropping it where his boots land. Finally, she closes her eyes, and it is not a moth eaten misery causing her skin to peel like scaled bark. He is *home*. She listens as he drops his boots and most of his weapons alongside the overcoat, peeling out of the rest of his clothes. A slow shuffle through their joint pack, and she tries to guess whether he’s wearing his own clothes, or one of her shifts. He claims that they’re more comfortable. And she thinks much the same of his clothes. Hells. Maybe that’s what ‘real’ even is. Loving the feel of the other’s clothes against the skin. His weight dips the mattress behind her, hand sliding a dagger beneath the pillow (some company for her massive, broken glass blowing shears), the other resting lightly on her hip, as if he is considering whether or not he wants the extra touch. Feeding can be overwhelming for him, this is a skin-close thing he holds to himself, but she can read him as well as she reads herself. Perhaps better. She rolls over, facing up at him, watching his rounded eyes flashing in the gray of darkvision—faint discs lighting up his glow layer. “Mm. Lamb,” she mutters, sighing heavily. “Hello, darling,” he whispers back, his hand finally finding purchase on her waist, thumb kneading softly and thoughtfully into the muscle beneath the layer of pudge. “Picked the gray one tonight?” she asks, resting on her arm, reaching out to touch the fabric at his thigh. “Only other one was the green, and neither of us look good in that shade,” he snorts quietly, shoulder lifting in a labored shrug. A pause hangs at the end of his sentence, and he swallows, whetting his lips. Their tadpoles aren’t connected, but they’ve become close. There’s some sort of—frequency, *resonance* between them. She has never felt it with the others. Only him. They speak even when they do not. “You’re still hungry,” she says, and his nose wrinkles as he turns his head. But his fingers grip tighter. “Yes.” The disgust in his tone is cutting, but she knows well enough that it is directed toward himself. He cannot stand the thing he is, a bottomless pit of hunger, a shadow-trapped villain by divine condemnation. If there were just gods, Yder does not think they would allow vampires to suffer. But the gods have never held warmth in their vast, hollow chests. “Halsin had to stop me,” he continues after a long moment of silence. “I still feel *dull*. Exhausted.” He shakes his head, herky-jerky side-to-side, and scoffs. “If I’m being completely honest, I feel like shit.” “Ohh,” she coos, faux-doting, brows furrowing over her overlarge eyes. “Poor dear. I so terribly wished you had some sort of fey creature, one that was very fond of you, and would like to see you prosper. Perhaps they’d have the sort of rich blood that would make you very good at casting, and even fat.”

[seekerblue]

WELL. To say he was annoyed would be an understatement. His ship had burned through the last of its reserves right as he entered Earth's orbit; his hope had been to land, locate some energon - or another fuel he could convert into energon - and leave, but instead he got to crash-land in the middle of some Primus-forsaken bog. Climbing out of the ship was a very noisy, and rather vulgar former Decepticon. Cursing himself, Megatron's bucket, the Decepticons, Primus, Unicron's oversized aft, and other fun expletives.

It wasn't as if he could get it fixed himself. Not in the state he was in. Low on energon, no tools, no equipment. "Fraggin'- augh. Fine. I guess I'll call." He raises two fingers to the side of his helm, activating his comm. line, and broadcasting on an open frequency.

::This is Thundercracker. Starscream, Skywarp- frag it, I'll even take an Autobot. Is ANYONE still on this disgusting mud sphere?::

@faultfindingfirebot hit the starter call!

[noisyjoj]

FALLOUT: CURIE

CHAPTER ONE: IGUANA FIREFIGHTERS

A spin-off web novel by Youssef Hegazy

As the sun rose to the top over the desolate wasteland, the outskirts of Washington came into view. Once a thriving capital city, it was in ruins, a mere shadow of its former self. The streets were littered with debris and remnants of buildings that have long since crumbled. A sense of eerie silence hung in the air, broken only by the distant sound of scavenging creatures, bullets echoing, and the occasional gust of wind.

Guard posts surrounded the area standing tall on a hill, every few meters there was one, the dusty skies spoke in moans and groans on what once was the world before, as an old man on his death bed reminiscing about the old days, some would think that this land was forsaken by God a long time ago.

“Bogie, 30” square to the right of that stop sign” “Affirmative, I got’em”

Up one of the guard posts stationed on the top of the hill, two men kept peeled eyes on the landscape before them, broken roads, rusty hunks of steel and engines resting on all sides, and a traveler, with an eyebot keeping them company.

“One female, early 20s, no weapons visible, one eyebot, doesn’t seem hostile.” “Roger, count that in, keep an eye on them.”

Edwin Blutarch was a seasoned sniper hired by Camp Leaf as one of the guards, some patrol on the ground, he and his spotter, Jacob, on the other hand, keep it tight on top of that decrepit wooden tower surrounded by barbed wires.

“Doesn’t seem like a threat to me…I think she’s just passing by..” “What if she’s a spy? maybe a scout for some gunners or something...”

If ordered to fire, it wouldn’t be Edwin’s first time pulling the trigger on an unsuspecting soul, many people died on these roads, some didn’t deserve it, but he wouldn’t know, to him, a good soldier follows orders, and orders are what brought him peace in this world.

Through the scope attached to his semi-automatic combat rifle resting on the wooden floor of their post, Edwin saw a young woman walking cheerfully with a large backpack, a weirdly warm smile on her face beneath the bangs of her short black hair her eyes looked at the sky with the fascination of a child, she was humming to herself something, seems like the eyebot hovering around her was playing her a song she enjoyed, it echoed throughout the dead silence of the area.

Her glimmering smile, her dreaming eyes, and the subtle way she moved and swung in excitement when the song beat rose, the closer she got, the louder the instruments echoed, it seemed like a rhythm and blues kind of song, then Jacob looked at his left leaving his binoculars for a moment to check on their radio if it worked, seems like the festive fever has caught up with the man. “If Commander Sandler hears Three Dog howling from our post again, he’ll make us sleep with the Brahmin..” “Eddy, please…don’t bring his mother into this…”

Jacob turned back to adjust the radio frequency to Galaxy News, random chatter and mostly white noise filled the post, Edwin followed the traveler with his scope step by step, he couldn’t get his eye off of her and the eyebot, his mind was flooded with nostalgia, warmth, soon guilt, grief started stabbing his heart, the shotgun shell he took in the chest in DC didn’t hurt as much as what he felt at that moment, still…he just couldn’t stop himself from looking at her.

“I think the radio’s busted…no good..gotta borrow one from Freddy later…” “I don’t think “borrow” is the right word…” “Your back still sore from that time? I told you old lady Guinness wouldn’t give us that pie.” “yeah, and you stole it, and somehow! I got caught up in your bullshit.” “And I am the bad guy? I am bustin’ my ass up here with you! And I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and I all had was iguana bits!”

“You thank God up in heaven for those bits, I told you Margret was bad news!” “She and her dad can kiss my ass, that guy can’t cook for shit anyway.” “Well here you are hungry for that meat like a cheerleader with her boyfriend’s football team, also I couldn’t help but notice you bringing a lot of behind stuff into your words, I don’t know what you’re into, but keep it away from me, please.” “Well, you learn to share your food!” “Well, you think twice before flirting with the mess guy’s daughter!”

“Oxide 1, Derpy, and Sector 4, action spotted on the eastern front, how copy? over.” A third voice shouted through the intercom strapped on the men’s military rags, a distressed speaker tried his hardest to sound stoic and calm.

“Derpy, action spotted on the eastern front, how copy?! over…”

“Roger that, Covenant, sending in, over.”

With their fiery red exoskeletons and venomous stingers, fire ants crawled from beneath the sand and rocks and struck the traveler and her eyebot companion, their mandibles were sharp as razors, capable of tearing through flesh and bone with ease, and it wasn’t long before the young woman was shooting at them with an automatic laser gun, sparks of bright red flew all over with fire breath from the ants constructed a spectacle in the area, the eyebot flying across shooting the ants with its built-in laser blaster. Jacob looked at the fire erupting from the monstrosities and then looked into his binoculars again. “Wind, left to right.” “Got it, locked on.”

“Send it” A 45 bullet blasted through the muzzle with a large bang hitting a fire ant just above the mandible. “Bullseye!” A hot bullet casing flew from the receiver, as Edwin readjusted from recoil.

“Bogie, the girl’s 3 o'clock!”

“Locked on!”

“Send it!”

Another bullet flew to hit the ant just on the ocelli, then he realized that the snipers from the neighboring towers were finishing off the swarm, one of the ants was speeding to the woman’s back and about to jump on her from behind, but the eyebot was busy finishing off another with her, Edwin fires without preparation and the shot lands right next to the ant’s left leg, causing a gush of dirt to cover it from his sight.

“NO!”

An ominous guitar riff echoed across the field amidst the chaos followed by a .44 magnum bullet flying off taking the attacking ant’s entire head with it, the shot came from nowhere, and the puzzled sniper looked around searching for the gunman but to no avail.

“...Did you hear that??”

Jacob looked momentarily at his fellow guard and then looked back through the binoculars, the ants were almost wiped out, but one last ant was breathing fire relentlessly at the eyebot, as the laser blaster kept firing at it, the young woman shot a plethora of laser shots at the ant before it finally crumbled, the fire was still on the eyebot, turning it insane, it hovered around aimlessly, low and high, hitting the ground beneath it and then rising again producing clouds of sand with how fast it rotated around itself.

“Aww…this ain’t good..” “SHOOT IT DOWN!”

Edwin immediately aims at the flanking robot out of control in hopes of dropping it from the air, one shot, misses, another land on its front speaker, then it turns sideways, the relief the two felt was short-lived as it flew all the way in their direction, it disappeared from their sight for a split second before the entire tower is shock with fire and a blast wave hits them, they both spectated with wide-open eyes as they fell down the hill filed with steel barbed wires and sharp rocks.

“Oh SHI-”

CHAPTER ONE: END

Here's the web novel cover I made for this!