#gaudy fanfic

[whimsicalmeerkat]

jump, brain, gaudy - teen wolf

On AO3

“Jesus, you promised you wouldn’t try to make me jump!”

Derek attempts to raise the brow that’s missing since he’s shifted while Stiles clutches his heart and gasps for air.

“Wait, where’s your costume?” Stiles asks, distracted from his heart attack.

“You promised it wouldn’t be gaudy.”

“There is a single tasteful rhinestone belt. That isn’t gaudy!”

Derek looks as unimpressed as someone with mutton chops can manage.

“Only in your brain.”

“C’mon, Sourwolf. You’re ruining the disco theme,” Stiles whines.

“No.”

“I’ll take off the booty shorts.”

Derek glares, but stomps away, presumably to change into the sparkly costume.

~

Written for @sterekdrabbles for the 10/25/2023 challenge words “jump, brain, gaudy” and theme “Halloween”.

[jackalopes-pen]

I was bored in Dramatic Writing, so I did this.

Do me a favour and click on the image cause Tumblr eats image quality for breakfast.

[selistealproductions]

First real chapter to the fun. Meet Tess, a physically disabled yet sassy woman who will fight Karen and flip off the manager. (looking at you Phil)

I hope y'all like her >.< (ps Solar Lunacy by @bamsara was a huge inspiration to actually give this a try, so thank you!)

[penkura]

knowing [8/8]

Summary: Sanji knew you were the one the moment he met you.

Pairing: Sanji x Reader

Warnings: None really. Normal One Piece stuff I guess.

Note: I changed my mind, I'm posting this today because I loved this and just can't wait any longer. Thank you all for reading this little fanfic!! I wrote this before I fully finished reading Wano, so it's not 100% accurate at first, but that's fine, this is a fanfic of course. I hope you all enjoy, and I do have another two one-shots connected to this series!

Taglist:

@jzkeisuke | @arcanumlaw

[Ch. 1] ● [Ch. 2] ● [Ch. 3] ● [Ch. 4] ● [Ch. 5] ● [Ch. 6] ● [Ch. 7]

With Big Mom and Kaido defeated, Wano freed from the Animal Kingdom Pirates reign, you were beyond relieved when you'd heard you could all rest. Luffy and Zoro seemed near death, both had just woken up when you'd snuck out with Sanji to another area. He still needed rest more than you, and Chopper had followed along to make sure neither of you did anything to upset your wounds. You'd made it out with a few small burns, some scrapes and cuts, a slightly deeper wound on your abdomen, but Chopper had taken great care of you and gotten you as close to 100% as he could. Sanji too of course, he suffered slightly worse wounds than you did, but the geishas had taken great care of him and he had nowhere near the same battle damage as the other two members of your monster trio. Chopper had instructed him to lay down and rest, which Sanji did, trusting your doctor that he knew what was best, despite his wanting to join in whatever party was being started in the other room. You knew there was no way the people of Wano would let you leave without a large celebration, Sanji would just have to wait for that.

After Chopper left the infirmary you'd walked off to, you gave Sanji a smile while saying something about changing your own bandages real quick. Despite your insistence that it was fine, he looked away while you stripped off your shirt to change your bandages, instead quietly pulling something small out of his pocket to occupy his eyes, wondering if now was the best time or if he should wait.

"What's that you've got there, Sanji?"

Your voice brought him out of his millions of thoughts, making him decide that yes now's the time, before he smiled softly and held it up, making your eyes widen and your mouth open just a bit.

There's no way…no way, right?

"I picked this up in Dressrosa."

"Sanji, you did not."

Sanji grinned at you, nodding happily. "I did! I saw it and…I thought of you instantly."

It was a small ring he held in his hand, a thin silver band with some blue gem on it, perhaps a small sapphire, you weren't sure, but it was very pretty to you anyway. You didn't care for gaudy, showy jewelry anyway, so if this really was an engagement ring, you were all too ready to accept.

Even without a ring you'd accept. You loved Sanji, more than anything. If he had shown up to the women's bunks in his pajamas without a ring at 3am and asked you to marry him, you would accept even then. The middle of battle, though not his style, you'd say yes. An evening after dinner where you'd both drank a little too much and were giggly messes, if he said 'marry me' you'd accept instantly, whether you remembered it the next morning or not.

It didn't matter. You'd marry Sanji no matter how he proposed.

"Maybe I'm crazy, or all that wedding talk because of them got to me, or even us playing husband and wife for the time we did here, but…I'm certain of this." His voice was quiet, even though it was just the two of you at the moment, and it made you start to tear up.

It definitely was crazy. The fight with Kaido and Big Mom had ended just two days ago, you were still surprised Sanji was even capable of walking and sitting up right after his fight against Queen. You half wondered if he suffered a blow to the head that knocked something loose that was making him do this right now.

But really, you knew he hadn't. He was mentally sound, he knew what he was doing.

"Sanji…"

"I'm probably the worst mess of a man you've ever met, I'm worthless really, but I know I love you," Sanji smiled softly while you cried and gladly held your hand out for him to take when he reached out for it, "I don't want to ever again look at another woman the way I look at you. I can't imagine myself with anyone else, married to anyone else, becoming a parent with anyone else, if we're so blessed. Everything that's happened recently just made me more aware of that."

Sanji moved more towards the edge of the bed while gently pulling you closer to him. You couldn't have cared less if he was on one knee or not, it didn't matter to you.

What mattered was that it was Sanji.

You wished you weren't crying, especially when he pulled you down beside him, just to place his forehead against yours and wipe your happy tears away.

"I love you so much, [Y/N]. You mean the world to me and I just want to be with you forever. I wanted to ask you weeks ago now, even when we all met up again in Sabaody…but now feels like the perfect time. Please, [Y/N], will you marry me?"

Trying your hardest to stop crying, you nodded and kissed him, hoping he didn't mind your salty, teary kisses.

"Yes! Yes, a million times yes, my dear!"

Sanji pulled you into a tight hug that you returned, telling you again that he loved you and you responded in kind. You took a few minutes to fully calm down, and once you did, you let Sanji put the ring he'd bought all the way back in Dressrosa on your finger, not at all surprised it was a perfect fit. Of course he knew your ring size, either that or he borrowed one of your rings you wore for fun and took it with him to get the right size.

"A perfect fit."

"Just like us." You smiled brightly at Sanji, which he returned before kissing you again.

Your sweet moment was interrupted when the door to the infirmary almost flew open, and you jumped back up a bit, only to be relieved when you saw it was Zoro, who looked like he didn't know what he was even doing there.

"What do you want, moss head??"

"...looking for Chopper." Zoro's eye wandered over to you, noticing you'd been crying and he looked almost ready to cut down Sanji, until he took in the fact you now had a ring on your finger.

That same ring he'd watched Sanji pick out in Dressrosa.

"Oh!" You nodded, giving a smile. "He left a while ago, said he was going to go check on the Samurai and Luffy!"

Zoro nodded, turning to leave before he stopped and looked over his shoulder at you. "Congrats. If he hurts you, let me know and I'll kill him."

"Zoro!"

"As if you could, moss head!!"

"Sanji, stay in bed!" You pushed him back down when he went to get up, a scowl on his face while Zoro left and closed the door behind him. Sanji started complaining to you about the "stupid moss head" and how he couldn't touch him, but it made you laugh.

"What's so funny?"

"Oh…it's just…it's like a little brother protecting his big sister…that's all Zoro means by it."

Somehow, Sanji understood what you meant when you said that. If his family had been different, he probably would have been the same with Reiju, protective of her when any potential boyfriends or suitors would come to see her, if they ever did considering how their father was. If your lives were different, if you had met under different circumstances, he was sure your biological brothers would be the same.

While he was thinking about it, Sanji barely realized you had crawled into bed with him, until you wrapped your arms around him and hugged him close. He did the same, kissing the top of your head as well.

"I love you, Sanji."

"I love you too."

I can't wait to marry you.

+!+

Once the Thousand Sunny had taken off from Wano, your next destination decided by the log pose, you were determined to be married with your found family as the witnesses. While in Wano, you and Sanji had slipped away to find something like a courthouse, whatever their equivalent was, to get a marriage certificate so you could have a small ceremony on the Sunny. It took a bit of time, but you found a place that processed marriage certificates and got one printed immediately, knowing that technically, as soon as you signed and dated it, you'd be husband and wife.

You hadn't told anyone yet, Zoro would never, you knew that, but you had told Sanji you wanted everyone there and to be married on the ship you called home. He quickly agreed, telling you that he'd do whatever you wanted for the wedding, while thinking it was the best place for you two to get married. You were both absolutely sure your crewmates would be happy for you, they'd all be glad to participate in the wedding and help you two tie the knot.

You also made Sanji promise not to spend so much time on the cake or to make it too big, though you had to give some leeway there due to Luffy. But he promised he wouldn't work on it so much that he was doing last minute touches when he was supposed to be saying his vows to you. You didn't want the wedding to be an extravagant, fancy affair. Just something small and simple with everyone you loved there.

Sanji didn't tell you, though, that he'd talked to Nami and told her you two were engaged and wanting to get married as soon as possible. She was so happy for the two of you that she burst into tears and hugged him, about to run off to find you when he stopped her. He wanted to surprise you with your parents and siblings at the ceremony, and knew your home was an island in the New World, so Nami put the ship on a detour there in the middle of the night when Sanji had a night watch, so no one would have any idea. There were no questions about where the ship was heading the next morning, and Nami was constantly talking about romance and things like that to you, trying to get you to spill your engagement to her. Anything she said you related back to Sanji with a smile, annoying her that you were acting so dense.

It was about two days before your unknown arrival to your home island that Sanji convinced you to tell everyone. You had gone over it multiple times in your head, wondering if it was a good time, before he told you that you'd probably never be ready to tell them, so might as well do so now. When he said that, you ended up agreeing and when everyone was on the deck that night, Sanji told them all you two had an announcement to make.

"You guys aren't gonna leave, are you??" Luffy was so terribly concerned that you and Sanji had chosen to leave the crew, but you quickly reassured him it wasn't anything like that.

"No, no, not at all! We," you took a breath and smiled at Sanji, taking his hand, "We've decided to get married."

"Ahh!"

"And we want the ceremony to be on Sunny in a few days."

"AHH!!"

Everyone was so excited for the two of you! Nami immediately ran over and hugged you, Robin joining her after a moment and both asking to see your ring, where Sanji got it, and what you were going to wear. Luffy laughed a bit and threw himself on Sanji, saying he was glad for the two of you. Brook said something weird about marriage; Franky was crying but patting Sanji on the back; Usopp wanted to know when and how you'd be married without a priest; Chopper said he was very excited for the two of you; Jimbei also gave his congratulations, saying he may not have known you both very long, but you seemed like quite the loving couple, and Zoro, who still viewed you as his sister, reiterated his previous statement of being willing to kill Sanji if he ever hurt you. Before Sanji could argue back at him, Zoro put a hand on his shoulder and congratulated him, causing everyone that heard him to be shocked, and then even more surprised when Sanji thanked him.

The Straw Hats threw a celebration party for the two of you the rest of the night, almost like an engagement party. There was a point where Sanji had slipped away, knowing you were in good hands with Nami and Robin, who were trying to help you decide on a few things for the wedding. He went back to your shared room, picking up the transponder snail you'd bought a while back, and made a call to the Baratie. He didn't let whoever picked up know it was him, requesting to speak to Zeff personally.

"Hey, old man, it's me."

"Sanji? What's this about, calling after heading off two years ago?"

"I…I had some news I wanted to tell you, that's all."

He couldn't see him, but Zeff was a slight bit concerned with how calm Sanji sounded, to the point he made him hold on while he transferred the call over to his personal snail.

"Sanji, you in here?" You had gone searching for your fiance once you noticed he was missing and found him in your room, he waved you over to sit beside him on the bed while he waited for Zeff to get back on the phone. "Who'd you call?"

"Zeff."

"Ooooh." You nodded and took his free hand in yours, Sanji gripping it tightly, nervously waiting.

"All right, what'd you wanna tell me, kid?"

"I'm…getting married in a few days. I just…I wanted you to know."

It was quiet for a bit, and you worried that maybe Zeff was angry that this was the first thing he'd heard from Sanji in over two years, but then heard laughter.

"So! You finally found a girl willing to put up with you, huh?"

You giggled and Sanji smiled.

"I found a girl that's done more than just put up with me."

The two of you stayed on the line with Zeff for a while longer, Sanji's tight grip on your hand loosening after he realized Zeff was truly happy for him. Eventually you decided to let him have his privacy with his true father, kissing his cheek and returning to the party your crewmates were still throwing.

You finally decided you'd get married four days later, the two of you were ready for this step and didn't want anything to interfere, not the Marines or another pirate, nothing.

However, when Nami had said you'd all reached an island to dock at, your breath caught in your throat and you started to tear up when you recognized the pier, despite it being nearly seven years since you'd last been there.

"This…this is my home."

"Yeah," Sanji held your hand and gave you a smile, "I…figured you'd want your family there when we got married, so I asked Nami if we could take a detour. Is…is this okay?"

You looked up at him and smiled brightly, despite the tears threatening to fall down your face. "Of course!!"

Once the Sunny was fully docked, you didn't bother waiting for your allowance from Nami, grabbing Sanji by the arm and dragging him in the direction of your childhood home. None of your crewmates bothered to stop you, they did stop Luffy from following and getting in the way of you introducing your fiance to your family.

To your surprise, your family already knew you were on the way, you figured Sanji had something to do with that as well (you'd be correct if you asked him). Your mom was the first to hug you, telling you how much she missed you and how beautiful you'd become in the last few years. Your dad told you the same, before he and your mom introduced themselves to Sanji, you weren't at all surprised at how easily he won them over despite not being able to ask their permission to marry you.

All your siblings ended up running at you when they knew you were there, and it made you beyond happy to see you had a new sister after all. She was a little more shy around you, but Sanji speaking to her convinced her that everything was all right. Everyone ended up mentioning how they had copies of your wanted poster, your brothers would brag to their friends that their big sister was a badass pirate while your sisters would use that as leverage against the boys in town they didn't like, and it all made you blush and become flustered.

Your parents insisted the two of you and the rest of your crewmates join them for dinner, which you happily accepted and so did Luffy when he heard. Your family gladly accepted your found family, sharing stories and having a lovely time with everyone around.

It got to be a little much for you, you had to step out on the porch for a bit so you didn't get too overwhelmed, Sanji following you a moment later to make sure you were okay.

"You know, sometimes, I wonder what would've happened if I hadn't left."

"Oh yeah?"  Sanji smiled a bit while lighting a cigarette and watching you.

You nodded, sitting down with your legs dangling off the edge of the porch, your youngest sister having followed you and Sanji out the door and now cuddling next to you. She'd opened up quickly and became attached to you and Sanji.

"I wonder if we ever would have met."

"I still would've found you."

"You're sure about that?" You laughed a bit, but Sanji sat down beside you, putting his arm around your shoulders.

"Luffy still would have come to the Baratie and convinced me to join him. We'd still have all the same adventures, and eventually end up here…where I'd find you. And I'd still be attracted to you, and try to get you to come with us, and we'd still end up together."

Humming a bit, you nodded.

"I know you'd still find me."

+!+

The next day was your wedding. You'd woken up early with a bit of happy anxiety, Nami and Robin were already up and ready to help you get dressed and do your hair. You'd ended up buying a white sundress with a [f/c] colored sash around the waist and white flats to make it simple, you never really wanted a fancy wedding dress anyway. Nami took a curling iron to your hair and added some soft curls, while Robin brought you a flower crown your sisters had made overnight for you to wear in place of a veil. Both girls were still beyond excited for you, and Nami kept giving you hugs through the morning. You and her were like sisters at this point, she'd already called being aunt to any kids you and Sanji may have in the future. Having her and Robin with you helped calm your nerves, and you were more than ready to get married to the love of your life.

Sanji, though, was almost a nervous wreck. He'd already gone through half a pack of cigarettes, before he even got dressed for your wedding. You'd told him during the events at Whole Cake Island that you really preferred black suits on him, so he gladly got one specifically for your wedding, choosing a [f/c] colored tie to match with you. He didn't know why he was so nervous, probably the fears that he wasn't good enough for you and wouldn't be able to make you happy were the cause, but he couldn't stop his racing mind. He tried everything but went back to smoking as his stress reliever, worried you'd change your mind at the last second and leave him.

"She's not gonna leave you."

Surprisingly, Zoro was the one to get Sanji to calm down.

"And what if she does?"

"She won't. She wouldn't have agreed to marry you and plan a wedding so quickly if she wasn't sure about it. If she didn't want to be with you she would've rejected your ass all the way back at Alabasta."

"What. How do you know about that?! I thought you didn’t know until Skypiea!"

Zoro rolled his visible eye and smirked.

"You guys weren't exactly subtle back then. Freaking weirdos making out in the kitchen."

Despite Zoro being amused, Sanji knew he was right. If you really didn't love him and were going to leave, you probably would have done so after everything that happened with his family and that attempted arranged marriage. Instead you had stuck by him, giving him a smile and hug when he first told you how much he loved you, repeating it to him every day since you all had left Thriller Bark, telling him even more so after you'd retrieved him from his screwed up family, giving him the time he needed before showering him in hugs, kisses, and constant 'I love you's so he knew you'd never leave him or let him go again, and that you understood what he was doing when he fought with Luffy and 'broke up' with you in front of his brothers and sister. When he told you everything about his childhood, despite your crying and wishing you'd been born in the North Blue so you could have been his friend, you accepted every bit of it, telling him how much his mother must have loved him and you would have loved to have met her. He'd never felt more relieved than when you said his past didn't matter, the things his father said didn't matter. What mattered was that he was Sanji and you loved him. That was the first time he'd cried to you, hugging you and letting you stroke his hair, while he thanked you for loving a “failure” like him.

"You're not a failure. You're Sanji, and you're perfect as you are."

Sanji knew Zoro was right, you'd never leave him. If you did he'd fight to get you back, but he was sure that wouldn't be necessary.

"Yeah, you're right. Thanks."

"No problem. …don't tell anyone about this."

"Wouldn't dare."

+!+

Your wedding ceremony went off without a hitch, several hours ago now, and you and Sanji were finally married. While you were being wed, you couldn't stop smiling and crying lightly, Sanji giving you soft sweet smiles while he held your hands. Your mother, Nami, Franky, and Brook were all blubbering messes, you wondered if they'd actually heard anything the whole time. Your dad was slightly teary, but he'd never fully admit that to you. All your siblings were excited, more so that they were on a pirate ship but your wedding was a nice excuse to be on the ship. Luffy couldn't stop grinning, he was beyond happy for the two of you. Usopp was also slightly teary, mostly because he couldn't believe you two were actually getting married. Chopper was anxiously waiting for when he could have cake, but he had told you when he saw you earlier that day that he thought you looked pretty. Robin smiled, looking at you like you were her baby sister who was getting married and she couldn't have been happier for you both. Jimbei acted as your priest, after you learned he actually could legally perform marriages, you practically begged him to be the one to marry you. He agreed quickly and you were grateful for it. Zoro, always the quiet one, watched without much emotion visible on his face, but those of you who knew him well enough could see he was happy for you.

Of course, you and Sanji were the happiest ones there. Your ceremony wasn't long, it didn't need to be really, just something small to show you were committed to each other, now and forever. When Jimbei pronounced you husband and wife, and said Sanji could kiss you, you had to keep yourself from almost bouncing out of your shoes in excitement. Once he did kiss you, everyone cheered for you, which made you giggle after breaking the kiss and giving Sanji a smile that he returned.

"We're married!"

He couldn't help it, Sanji picked you up and spun you around, he was so happy! You two had gone from awkwardly facing your feelings for each other, to now being deeply in love, and married finally. He set you back down, only to kiss you again, laying his forehead against yours afterwards.

"I love you, ma femme."

"I love you too, my husband!"

"Come on you lovebirds, let's start the reception!"

The reception, which was really just a normal Straw Hat party, went on for several hours. You had to step away at one point to bid farewell to your family, none of whom wanted to see you go but they understood you couldn't stay on your island for more than a few days, and the Sunny would be taking off in the morning.

Sanji noticed quickly you'd disappeared from his side while he was fighting to keep Luffy from finishing off your piece of cake, and when he saw where you were, he put Zoro in charge of keeping Luffy at bay so he could go stay with you.

Your family had already walked off the dock and back into town when you felt Sanji wrap his arms around your waist and place his chin on the top of your head.

"We'll come back someday."

"I know we will."

"And you can always call or write."

You nod, looking up at Sanji with a smile. "This was a wonderful surprise, thank you. It meant a lot to have them here."

Sanji returned your smile, kissing your forehead. "Anything for you, mon amour."

You were about to suggest the two of you slip out and go off to bed, before Luffy shouted your names.

"Come oooonnnn!! The party's for you guys!" Really he just wanted more cake, but Sanji and Zoro had stopped him from having anything more until you had what you wanted.

Grumbling a bit, Sanji pulled away but still held your waist, causing you to giggle a bit and turn around in his hold, putting your arms around his shoulders.

"A bit longer, then we'll go to bed." You whispered before kissing him with a smile.

He sighed but still nodded. "Fine, fine."

Your reception continued well into the night, you avoided drinking too much so you'd remember it not only in the morning but in years to come. Eventually everyone had either passed out or was calmed down enough to start cleaning, refusing any help from you or Sanji and telling you to both go on to bed, with a kind a smile from Robin or Nami but a sly smirk from Franky.

Once you did, you both simply admired each other's ring and how right it felt to have them now. Within a few more minutes your exhaustion was taking over and you took Sanji's hand in yours, snuggling right up next to him, causing him to do the same with you. You'd consummate your marriage another night, but for tonight, all you wanted was to bask in the fact you were married to the love of your life, and enjoy the warmth that came from knowing that you were his and he was yours. Sanji had tried to say something to you at one point, but you were so near sleep you didn't hear him, except for when he chuckled lightly and kissed the top of your head.

"I love you, [Y/N]...in every lifetime and every universe, I'll always love you."

[sovlstr]

Sneak peak of a fanfic for my selfship! It’s a Maria x Mafiafell Sans wip

I consider myself a novice writer but hopefully I could deliver some quality reading PSPSPSSPS

——————————-————————————

Sans watched in silence as Wingdings unclasped one of his many gaudy gold rings, the ruby top shining as a small white pill dropped into the glass from the undone latch- making a plop as it dissolved inside the crystal clear sparkling water. Wingdings did everything accordingly, every action done to be taken with a purpose. And so, Sans wondered, with his eyebrows raised and mouth opening to speak- what was Wingdings planning? The quiet brother shot Sans a soulless stare, making quick work of silently telling sans to shut the fuck up. Sans simply grifted his teeth, before lowering his eyes back down to his plate as he considered Wingdings actions. Surely he wasn’t trying not poison Maria, at least, not in front of Sans. He’d never seen Wingdings do that though- poison an obvious ally. Unless he knew something he didn’t know. About Maria.

He cleared his throat, forcing down the potential thought with a visible grimace. Wingdings continued to smoke his cigar, reasserting the comforting smile on his grim features as Maria click clacked her way back to the dinner table, gesturing at the brothers with a respective smile.

Sans tried to keep his soul from thumping, that stupid agonizing scent of his minty cigar wafting around the sitting trio. Even if he knew she wouldn’t notice, and even though both papyrus and Wingdings knew he was romanticly involved….. If he had to see that smug chastising grin on Wingdings face once he realized just how blind he was for this woman….

He’d never hear the end of it.

Maria wrapped some spaghetti around the silver fork, keeping her eyes low as she ate the dinner in silence. It was awkward, but not for the reasons she was aware of. Sans felt himself gulp, trying his damn best not to make eye contact with any of the dinner tables audience, Papyrus simply enjoying his meal and blatantly ignoring the grating fact that Wingdings had just potentially poisoned sans little lady.

Maria turned her sight onto the oldest brother, speaking in a low tone as she finished chewing.

“If you don’t mind me asking…. What career did you hold before your families migrated here?

Maria felt the tension stiffen between Papyrus and Sans, both skeletons irking at her somewhat privying question as Sans gave a cough into his napkin. He had to hold back a snort once he noticed Papyrus eye sockets wide, unabashedly staring at Maria like she had gone mental.

Maybe she had.

Wingdings kept a faint smile on his face though, never once visibly taking her question any deeper than he cared for as he responded.

“You could say… I was a scientist.”

He gave nothing else for her to work with, before once again going silent.

The dinner was silent from then on, all 3 parties waiting for Maria to touch the sparkling water. Sans stared at her, eye lights flicking to each person as his fork dug itself into a meatball- merely toying with the food on his plate. He felt Maria siding him with her gaze, though he willed himself not to meet her eyes, he noticed the slight tug of a smile on her lips.

She reached for the glass of water, a tension once again resurfacing as Sans tensed. He felt his hand tighten around the fork, willing himself to stay as calm as possible, though finding himself sweating quite profusely against his will.

Maria brought the glass to her lips, before feeling that familiar tug in her inner being. Goosebumps rose their way up her arm, feeling her body stiffen up as she stopped just before the water could reach her lips.

Wingdings was staring at her. The light in his eyes, solely focused on her entirely with no other presence subjected to his attention.

She knew something was wrong, even before she had touched her glass. Sans had gone from all smiles to entirely worried, Maria noting the familiar way he curled his fists tightly around whatever object he had his meaty hands closest to.

Maria let her eyes slip towards Papyrus, eyeing his relaxed manner of eating as he simply chewed. Hyperfocused on himself. He was completely silent. That was not the normal Papyrus.

Emerald eyes glazed over, succumbing to the fact that there was a fault in the air amidst the 3 men she sat with. She slowly lowered her gaze… and set down the glass of water. She turned her eyes to latch onto Wingdings observant orbs, before letting a simple sentence escape her breath towards him.

“So what kind of science did you do?”

——————————-————————————

[cthonyxa]

Look, it’s baby’s first shitpost! Aww!! The Apritello Discord server I’m in held a June event which culminated in a game of fanfic telephone. I was, unfortunately, asleep for the writing portion, but I swooped in last minute with this lovely piece of garbage. Tryhard Team Donnie ftw, amirite?! (Love you, too, Team April.)

We’ve posted the fic, Of Gaudy Sweater-Jackets and Lost Telenovelas, over on AO3, so check it out if you have time.

[hapan-in-exile]

Volume 4 - Post #4: Say goodbye to the old me

Another installment in this ongoing serialized fanfic

GIF by dindooku

Genre: Mandalorian x Fem! Reader

Total word count: 5.6K (fourth post in Volume 4)

Rating: Explicit - smut, language, +18 *NSFW*

_______________________________

IV. “Hey! Watch it! I–oh…I, um…” the Trandoshan’s words died on his lips the moment he looked up to discover who he’d bumped into.  

The Mandalorian hated working on Coruscant. It was noisy, crowded, and endlessly labyrinthian. Most of the filters in his helmet were rendered useless due to the sheer number of life forms in such close proximity. Continuous vehicle traffic across every level of the city overloaded his motion sensors. 

The frenetic energy of the megalopolis set him on edge.

But what Mando really hated, what he absolutely loathed, was visiting the Uscru District. It was all the worst parts about a place like Daiyu—gambling dens, night clubs, garish neon lights, vendors shouting, the flashing, stochastic holograms—made somehow worse because it was repacked for gawking tourists. 

Acrobats hung from cables crisscrossing overhead, their lithe bodies shimmering, while street musicians played for coins. Instrument cases littered the walkway, and goods were hawked on the pavement.   

He felt uncentered. The next idiot who tripped over him to stare slack-jawed at some fucking juggler was getting bodied. 

Luckily, it didn’t come to that. Mando couldn’t afford the delay.

The Mandalorian turned onto Daring Way, toward the sky bridge that would take him to the Floating World. Tourists liked to keep to well-lit thoroughfares, so the foot traffic here was sparser, and he made better time. Soon, the soft, glowing lights of the pleasure quarter came into view. 

Music spilled out from decadent parlors where the doors and windows had been flung open to lure passersby. Beings of every gender and species could be seen lounging, sprawled out on display, wearing little more than scraps of fabric and gaudy jewels. 

Each house catered to a different clientele, their specialty made known by the facade of the building or else the costumes worn by hosts welcoming their clients inside. 

Most tourists never entered the brothels of the Floating World. They just came to take in the scene and watch the crowd, which was a sight in itself. Amongst the extravagant fashions and decor of the houses, many visitors donned elaborate masks or robes to conceal their identities.   

So the Mandalorian was surprised to discover that the Dark Garden had no hosts waiting in the doorway and nothing on display in the windows. Instead, they were closed, sealed tight behind intricately carved black shutters. 

The whole building was black. Its gleaming stone exterior looked more like a palatial mansion than a pleasure house.  

The woman stationed behind the desk in the entryway was also dressed in black. It was a stark contrast to her pale pink skin, white-blond hair, and nearly colorless gray eyes. She looked up at him from between two onyx vases overflowing with vibrant red blossoms that matched her painted lips. 

“Welcome, sir. We appreciate your business. Do you have an appointment?”

“No, I’m not in need of your…services. I’ve come to see Mistress Anassa. She’ll know why I’m here.”

“Mistress Anassa is very busy,” she smiled apologetically. “Her clients book months in advance. I cannot promise she will have time to—”

He slid several gold peggats across the highly polished surface of the reception desk. 

“Tell her a Mandalorian is waiting. I’ll be here until she finds the time.”

“Very well, sir. Please come with me.” 

She led him through a dark passage to a lounge filled with curved sofas and circular ottomans, where clients–some wearing masks, others with their faces bared–sat huddled in conversation, drinking from elegant carafes or smoking ornate water pipes. 

The hostess directed him to an alcove beneath a cluster of illuminated, floating orbs. 

“Can I offer the Mandalorian anything while he waits? Company, perhaps?” She lowered her voice as she leaned in to place a pillow behind his back. “We cater to every desire here.”

“My desire,” he said evenly, “is for solitude.”

“As you like,” she smiled again, leaving him to wait for Mistress Anassa. 

But he was conspicuous sitting alone, and it wasn’t long before another hostess dressed in black strode toward him. She walked over on towering heels he imagined Thuli would have loved to see if the Mandalorian needed attention.

She artfully placed one of the gilt carafes onto the lacquered table beside him and poured a drink. “May I offer the gentleman anything else?” 

Her voice was as supple as her corsetted leather dress. 

“No. Thank you, I–” 

The sight of two luminous violet eyes caught him by surprise, and his heart stuttered. He turned sharply to see a woman entering the parlor. On second glance, she looked nothing like Thulindhara. But the eyes were unmistakable—their iridescent sheen, how they glowed bright like full moons. She was Hapan. 

“Perhaps the Mandalorian sees something to his liking?” 

It wasn’t her, yet the thrill that rose inside him didn’t ebb. It clutched the breath from his lungs and twisted his stomach into knots. 

Mando knew he would miss her, but he hadn’t expected to feel her absence as a physical pain. 

“No,” he said. “Thank you. But, no. I’m here to see Mistress Anassa.”

He watched as the woman who wasn’t Thuli walked up to a Keshiri couple at the bar, gesturing them to follow her down a long corridor hidden behind a pair of lush velvet curtains.

Beside him, the hostess offered the drink she’d poured, and he accepted it. Not for the sake of politeness but because he felt compelled to hold something in his hands. Sensing his discomposure, she looked meaningfully towards the curtains as they fell back into place and whispered, “They say to lie with a Hapan is to open the doorway to heaven.”

The Mandalorian had heard that said many times and always dismissed it as a self-serving rumor. He didn’t pay for sex, but mercenaries loved to talk about how they would spend their take on Hapan courtesans. The most expensive pussy in the galaxy, they said. Once you’re between her thighs, you’ll forget your own name.  

Now, Mando understood the truth of these stories. Well…he hadn’t forgotten his name, but she did taste like heaven. 

For most of his life, sex had been about release. Lust was simply another physical need. Like hunger or sleep, he met those needs for the sake of his body. When a woman felt so inclined, he obliged—helmet sealed, armor intact—to let her take what satisfaction she could find.

With Thuli, he learned that sex could be something beyond physical pleasure. They shared a connection unlike anything he’d experienced. Real intimacy. Mando hadn’t kissed a woman since…he’d barely been a man. Still a child, really. 

To be with Thulani, naked and vulnerable as he had never been before, was not about release. It was fulfillment. Satisfaction of body and soul. And, yes, part of that was being between her thighs.

In the abstract, he’d been a little intimidated, but in the moment, it had felt entirely natural. He wanted to linger over her every curve, to put his mouth over every inch of her body, and he had loved all of it—the way she tasted, her fingers tugging at his hair, how her hips lifted with his touch.

It made him feel powerful in a way he hadn’t expected, drinking her in until she was soaked and breathless under his tongue. 

Then, a door had opened—a door between their consciousness, when he’d felt her pleasure cresting through his body, rippling over his skin in waves that matched the stroking of his fingers. She’d lost all control, and his whole being was suffused with her ecstasy, so intensely passionate that he saw stars behind his eyes. Maybe it was heaven? 

Thulani’s trick was making people believe in her openness, yet Mando recognized how rigidly she held herself in check. He sensed the wild, fierce nature in her heart that she constrained. It made him feel both immeasurably powerful and deeply gratified to be the one who made her unravel.  

“The Mandalorian asked for me?”

A woman in a crisply tailored black suit stood before him. He did not immediately recognize her species, but the horns that spiraled around her long, folded ears and convex nose reminded him of a dray goat.

“You’re Mistress Anasssa? The proprietor of this…establishment.”

“Mmm, the Mandalorian is polite for a mercenary,” she sat beside him on the bench and reached out with slender fingers (no hooves) to take the glass from between his hands. It struck him at once how artfully the gesture was both sensual and dominating. “In answer to your question…” she drank deeply. “Yes. The gentleman would be wise not to let the crystal and chandeliers fool him. This is a dungeon. And I am its master.” 

“I see.” It was all he could think to say. “Boss Set’ki said you’d be expecting me.”

“My apologies. I was otherwise occupied when the Mandalorian arrived.” She looked at the untouched carafe on the table. “I am sorry my vintage is not to his taste. And none of my ladies, either, I hear. If it is males he prefers, the gentleman need only—”

“That is beyond my purpose, Mistress Anassa. I’m here on business.”

“I doubt the Mandalorian would burden himself with such formality if he intended to capture me,” the mistress smiled curiously. “What is his business?”  

“I’m interested in one of your clients.”

She scoffed. “The gentleman must realize discretion is an essential tenet of my profession. Why would I betray my client to help him?”

“Because Set’ki owes me a debt. And while you may be the master of this dungeon, your master is Boss Set’ki.”

Her features became resolute. “Then let us discuss this matter in private.”

The Mistress rose and walked toward the velvet curtains. Mando followed her down the long corridor until she stopped before a door with gold flowers embossed along its hinges.

She placed a tasseled fob against the keypad. “I hope the Mandalorian will appreciate that it is to everyone’s benefit if he appears to be another of my clients?”

“Very well,” he said and stepped inside.

He wasn’t sure what he had expected. The black walls did not surprise him, but the abundance of those same red flowers, blooming from vases and wall hangings did. They matched the illuminated floor tiles that pulsed with crimson light. 

Otherwise, the room was sparsely furnished to accommodate the…equipment. There was a saltire cross with a rack of whips and paddles positioned beside it and a polished steel beam with manacles chained to its post. A length of rope dangled from one of the ceiling beams overhead. Instead of a bed, a quilted leather couch sat in a far corner of the room. 

Plastered across one of the walls was a diagram of knots with cautionary notes about circulation and nerve damage. 

“I’m sure the Mandalorian must be very accomplished at tying knots,” Mistress Anassa said from over his shoulder.

“I prefer cuffs.”

“Mmm…” He felt her eyes rake over him with heightened interest. “I have never met a Mandalorian before, but I begin to see why you inspire so much fascination. The armor, the brute force, stalking, capture, imprisonment—all potent themes for bondage role play.”

“I am Mandalorian. Violence is my trade. Weapons are part of my religion.” Mando turned to face her. “I’m not playing a game, Mistress.”

He could tell Anassa enjoyed hearing him call her that. 

“Of course. Though I’m sure someone has offered to suck your cock in exchange for their freedom. Can you honestly say their begging has never aroused you?”

Her tone was frank, not seductive. A businesswoman appraising a commodity. 

“I think the Mistress has a false impression about the sorts of people I’m sent to collect.”

At that, she laughed. “Still…I see the appeal. If you’re ever interested in a new line of work, I believe the Mandalorian and I could make a great deal of money together.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Mando recalled that Thulani had said much the same thing. A Mandalorian would make good coin at one of those Keyorin brothels.

He suddenly wondered if this was something Thuli might enjoy. Bondage? Role play? The clamps and paddles didn’t exactly appeal to him, but he wouldn’t be opposed to tying her up if that’s what she wanted.

Mando looked at the steel beam, and his mind couldn’t help but stray towards fantasies of throwing her over it and fucking her senseless. 

“About your client, Mistress Anassa.”

“What is it you wish to know?”  

“This man, Ronan Carr,” he said, taking the holo-puck from his pocket and activating its profile. "I’m told he makes use of your services when his wife is out of town.” 

Mistress Anassa schooled her features, but it was too late. He’d seen the look of panic cross her eyes the instant she recognized the man’s face.

“The Senator will be leaving on a diplomatic mission. Does Carr have an appointment scheduled for her departure?”

The Mandalorian suspected that Ronan Carr had an appointment booked for later that day. He’d been following Carr for the past week. Yesterday, the man had reserved an entire hotel floor under a false name and given his personal assistant the night off. 

“He does,” the Mistress confirmed. “But I won’t help you. Boss Set’ki may kill me for my refusal. I will accept that punishment. A political assassination would condemn every soul under my care. That I will not accept.” 

“I have no intention of killing Ronan Carr,” he assured her. “It’s information I want.”

“I suppose that is his trade,” her eyes weighed the Mandalorian, and she dropped the artful persona. “You won’t harm him? No kidnapping or torture?”

“If those are your terms, then I will agree. I only want to talk to him.”

“What if I have other terms?” The Mistress asked shrewdly.

“Name them.”

“I don’t want any of my people harmed.”

He nodded. “Do you know who you’ll send?” 

“Yes, there are a few he favors.” 

“Then give me some token or signal. But tell no one of this.” 

She paused before coming to a decision. “I will go with them tonight. To ensure all will be as you promise.”

“These are your terms?”

“He’s a good client,” she waved her well-manicured hand vaguely, “And if word got out? If he thought I’d helped you?”

“Ronan Carr won’t risk the Senator discovering his…hobbies.”

“I suppose that’s true.” 

“Here,” he pulled out a folded wallet and handed it to her. “To compensate for your loss of business. Though I expect a man with his proclivities should be back before long.”

“Thank you,” she gave him a curt bow. “You know where to find him?”

“Carr has gone to great lengths to conceal his plans, but yes, I know where he’ll be tonight.” And without really intending to, the Mandalorian said, “His desires make him weak.”

Mando was surprised at the scorn in his voice. Surprised to hear himself say that. Did he believe desire made him weak? His desire for Thuli?  

It certainly made it difficult to concentrate. How many times did he think about her each day? 

Maker, if he was being honest…he woke up thinking about Thulani, and the thought seemed to last all day. He worried about whether she was safe. He’d make some stray observation and imagine her reaction. He saw something beautiful in a window and wondered if she would like it. 

When he lay inside the sleeping compartment alone, surrounded by her scent, he thought of Thuli’s mouth on him, those delicate fingers stroking his cock, and his body ached. He could not bring himself off without thinking about her. 

Mistress Anassa looked at him with genuine sympathy as though she could sense his turmoil. 

“Shame is Ronan Carr’s weakness,” she said. “If he were honest about his desires, you would have no power over him. His wife might even oblige. But shame feeds arousal. Maybe you can understand that?”

“Excuse me?”

Shame. Was that at the root of his sudden anger? The Mandalorian was not ashamed of his relationship with Thuli. He did not believe she made him weak.

But he did feel shame about his own selfish cowardice. That in her absence, he’d realized how deeply he cared for her, and it killed him knowing he could never say those words. 

Why? Because they gave her power over him? No. Whether he said the words or not, didn’t change his feelings. But to say them aloud would be a promise. One he couldn’t make.   

She’d met him on those terms, yet he felt ashamed he couldn’t give her more. She deserved better than a man who could not share his name or his face or his life with her. It would always come back to that.

“Shame is one of the most effective tools of repression,” Mistress Anassa shrugged. “But repression simply fuels temptation. Temptation transforms into desire. Desire generates more shame.” 

Anassa opened a hidden panel in the wall and beckoned him forward. Lightly placing her fingers over a wooden slat, she slid it open, and a pinhole of light pierced through the room. The muffled sounds of moaning grew louder.

Gesturing toward the peephole, she said, “It’s only when we embrace our desires that we become free of this endless cycle.” 

Curiosity getting the better of him, the Mandalorian looked. What he saw was the Keshiri couple from the parlor. The man was fully clothed, on all fours, his hands and knees braced against the ground. His partner was naked, splayed on his back, while the Hapan woman fucked her roughly with a strap-on.

“They were honest with each other about their desires. Now, it creates a bond rather than a wedge.”

Mando hadn’t anticipated that visiting a sex dungeon would prompt so much soul-searching. His eyes strayed back to the peephole, towards the Keshiri in the throws of climax, eyes shut tight as though she might die from ecstasy. 

While he felt ashamed that he could not tell Thulani he loved her, he could at least ensure she felt loved. When he worshipped her body, when he fulfilled her desires, when he made her unravel—she would know the depth of his feelings.     

“I’ve heard it said that true Mandalorians do not remove their armor. Perhaps the gentleman prefers to watch?”

He pulled the slot closed. “I’ve seen enough.”

**********

One thing the Mandalorian did appreciate about Coruscant was the simplicity of bribing government officials. As with any vast bureaucracy, front-line New Republic workers like the port operatives were overlooked and underpaid. 

Flush with cash from Ryun Vos, Mando was able to dock under fake tabs at a shipyard centrally located in a safe and discreet area. Money made all things possible on Coruscant.

“Please tell me something in that bag is fried?” Nito moaned as the Mandalorian stepped inside the Razor Crest. 

“I got some of everything, so your odds are good.”

The Ardennian was sitting at a makeshift table of stacked cargo containers with the Child seated in his lap. He had his mechanic’s apron on while the kid was stripped to his breechcloth. And they were both covered in paint.

“There better be a bath planned for after this,” Mando growled, reaching to wipe the Child’s talons clean with a take-out napkin.

“What? Yeah. Sorry,” Nito said dimly. “Yes! Oil bread. And rice balls! Fuck yeah!” 

The Mandalorian thought vaguely that Thulani would try to curb Nito’s swearing, but he only had so much paternal energy left in him today, and he needed it for the baby.

Mando pulled the fried bread out of reach and replaced it with the box of bean pods. “Hey, kid, you need to eat at least five of these.” 

His enormous ears wilted in disappointment.

“How’s the programming going?” Mando asked, searching for the sweet and sour broth.

Nito shoved a rice ball in his mouth and swallowed it whole. “Do you have any idea how complex a unified operating system for an industrial plant—with residential facilities can be?”

“No,” he admitted. “That’s why I’m paying you.”

“Paying me in more than dumplings, I hope.” Nito laughed cheerily. “Assuming it’s the Imperial coding language, I think it is…”

“We’re going to find out tonight.”

“You got Carr?”

“I know how to get to him,” Mando said. “We leave in three hours. Spend at least one of those cleaning up the kid.”

“Okay. Okay.” 

The Mandalorian was relieved to have such a tidy solution for Ronan Carr. It wasn’t in his nature to wait for reconnaissance or planning. He was a blunt instrument—brute force, as Mistress Anassa had said. But Nito proved that hacking the man’s communicator could be useful. Coruscant was not the Outer Rim. Best to be cautious here. 

Months ago, he would have stormed the hotel, shoved a blaster in Carr’s face, and broken the man’s fingers until he talked. Now, when Mando considered this approach, the crew from Dark Garden weighed on his conscience. Not everything needs to end in a shoot-out, Thuli had chided him. She wasn’t even here, yet her memory was wringing these little bits of decency from him.

Nito snapped his fingers in front of Mando’s viewplate. “You in there?”

“What?” He shook his head.

“You’ve been staring at those dumplings for an eternity. I want to eat them.”

Mando passed the container. 

“I was telling you about this utter stroke of genius I had.” The Ardennian lifted the kid onto the table and pulled something out from his apron pocket. “So, he’s green, right? Well, I painted his face. And when I put on the bonnet…See! He’s Mirialan.”

Underneath the paint splatters, Mando recognized the geometric facial markings.

“That’s–sure, that is pretty genius.”

Nito beamed. Thuli told him things would be easier with the kids if he put in a little effort. So far, it was working. 

“I mean, he hates having his ears tucked, but it’s only temporary, buddy. Just to keep you safe.”

The Child squirmed and pounded his fists against his thighs. 

Mando had to suppress a laugh. “Bean pods and bonnets. Guess you got it pretty rough, kid.”

The baby stopped mid-tantrum to glare at the Mandalorian.

“Anyway,” Nito went on. “We had the paint out, so I found some packing paper…and look what he made.”

Mando tilted his head and squinted, “It’s a…bantha?”

“It’s the Razor Crest,” Nito snorted.

“If you say so.”

The kid squealed until Mando handed him a meat pie.

“I miss her too, you know.” 

“What?”

“Fish dumplings are Thuli’s favorite,” Nito said quietly. “It’s hard not to miss her when she makes everything so…” he shrugged, “cozy when she’s around.”  

The Mandalorian nodded. “You heard from her today?”

His heart twisted painfully in anticipation. It did every day when he asked that question. But he knew she must have checked in that morning. Nito would be inconsolable if she hadn’t.

“Yeah, I got the signal.”

Good. She's alive. Hopefully safe. “We’ll see her soon,” Mando assured them. “We’re stocked up on supplies, weapons, equipment. Once we get what we need from Carr, we can make a course for Lakaran.”

“Did you get a gift to bring her now that you guys are, you know, sleeping together?”

The Mandalorian choked on his soup. The steel jaw of his helmet caught him painfully on the lip, and he had to pound his chest a few times before he could breathe again. “Did she–ahem–did she say something…about…?”

“Didn’t have to,” Nito waved a furry hand. “For months, you’ve both just wreaked of longing and frustration. Then you came back and smelled…satisfied. Pretty logical conclusion.”

“You can smell that?”

“Oh yeah! It’s kind of funny that humans can’t since all of your emotions get communicated through hormones and sweat glands.”

Mando shook his head again. “I’m not entirely comfortable talking about this,” he sighed. “But while we’re on the subject, there are some…things I should…we should probably…discuss before we leave to find Carr.” 

“What? Like, sex stuff?”

The Mandalorian groaned. Where do I even start…? 

**********

The hotel Ronan Carr had booked was elegant enough for his aristocratic tastes while also offering the assurance of privacy. There was a separate entrance and elevator for the penthouse floor so he could avoid bumping into anyone from his social circle—or his wife’s senatorial colleagues—in the lobby. 

Mando opted to gain entry from the roof. 

“You hear something?” One of the bodyguards asked. 

But just as their partner began to answer, the Mandalorian slipped behind him and placed a blade to the man’s throat. In an instant, he had grabbed the guard’s wrist and raised his blaster. Mando shot the other bodyguard before they could cry out in warning. 

To stage this right, the knife needed to go in at just the right angle. But the man continued to struggle under Mando’s grip, trying to break free from his hold. The guard tried everything—stomping on the Mandalorian’s foot, slamming his head against the Beskar, thrusting his shoulders against Mando’s arm around his neck.

The bounty hunter might as well be a statue for all the give there was in his frame. The guard’s death was inevitable, but he refused to make peace with it. 

Mando hooked his leg around the man’s ankle and sent them both hurtling toward the ground. The force of impact drove the knife into the guard’s throat.

A wet splatter hit his view plate when the man coughed blood onto the Mandalorian’s helmet. Yet he still fought. Hands flailed blindly until Mando drove the blade deeper, severing the spinal cord. And finally, the fingers clawing at his wrists fell limp.    

He rolled the bodyguard onto his back and returned the blaster to the man’s right hand. Should be enough to cover my tracks.

Mistress Anassa had left the south-facing balcony doors unlocked, just as he instructed. They slid open with a soft rolling hush before he made his way silently through the suite. She was waiting for him in the study, hunched over a display monitor. 

“You look a sight,” she arched an eyebrow at him. “Can I get you a towel?”

“No.” The blood was war paint. It would make what came next that much easier. "I staged the guards. You can claim a fight broke out, and you had to get your people to safety."

Anassa cleared her throat and nodded. It was the first time he’d seen her unsettled. “The false name on the hotel reservation avoids a paper trail, but I can’t decide whether Carr realizes Set’ki is tracking all of this.”

“Do you record him every time?”

She glared at Mando. “No, but I had a feeling my master wanted some insurance. I don’t expect Ronan Carr will be making any future appointments with Dark Garden after tonight.” 

Involving Set’ki and Anassa—at all—was an unnecessary risk. The Mandalorian had done it to ensure the safety of her employees, and he didn’t feel any remorse about the Mistress’s bottom line. 

“Tell them to leave the room.”

She crossed her arms with a frustrated sigh. “I know I don’t have a say in any of this, but it shouldn’t go unspoken, this is a gross violation of my professional ethics.”

“You’re arguing ethics after admitting to blackmail?” 

“Those restraints are intended to aid his submission. He needs to feel safe to surrender control. And instead, you’ve co-opted them for violence.”

Mando huffed. “Are you referring to the silk scarves tied around his wrists and ankles?”

“The type of restraints are irrelevant. Bondage is a kink that depends on trust. It’s a choice to be helpless. Consent is based entirely on trust. This is a violation of trust. I feel the weight of what this will do to his psyche, and I ask you to acknowledge that before you step inside that room.”

The Mandalorian couldn’t fathom why she was looking to him to absolve her guilt. 

“And I told you, violence is my profession. Get—your people—out.”

From the display screen, Mando watched as the Mistress entered the bedroom. Her sudden presence startled the other women, but she quickly ushered them into the hallway and closed the door behind her. 

When he was confident they were gone, the bounty hunter opened the bedroom door. The first thing he did was drape a towel over Set’ki’s camera. Mando didn’t want any record of his presence on Coruscant.

He approached the chair Carr was bound to without bothering to stifle his footsteps. The man had a sensory deprivation mask covering his eyes and ears. He hadn’t sensed the ladies from Dark Garden leave the room, and he was becoming agitated, sitting in a puddle of urine, confused as to why they didn’t end the session. 

Ronan Carr paid to be tied down and tickled until he pissed himself. The kink wasn’t inherently sexual. It didn’t make him hard. He didn’t come, and nobody brought him to completion. The tickling made him laugh and his muscles spasm, and eventually, the stress on his pelvic floor emptied his bladder. 

Then, he slept for ten hours. It simply…relaxed the man. 

“Whoa!” Nito said when the Mandalorian explained this. “So it’s like getting a massage? But, like, a really extreme massage.” 

It wasn’t not sexual…he paid to be tickled by beautiful women, after all. 

As he ripped the mask off, Mando tried not to think about Anassa’s sanctimonious pleading. He felt no remorse for Ronan Carr, either.

The bounty hunter unholstered his blaster and pointed it in the man’s face so it was the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes. On cue, Carr jumped, recoiling in terror at the sight of the Mandalorian.

“Don’t cry for help," Mando said, his voice cold and stern. "You don’t want anyone coming through that door to find you like this, do you?”

Ronan Carr shook his head. 

“Good. Do what I say, and I won’t have to hurt you,” he growled. “Tell me you understand.”

Ronan Carr took a deep, steadying breath. “I understand.” The man’s voice quavered, but he didn’t panic. Some people became paralyzed with fear, which made interrogation that much harder. If Carr could keep it together, this would be over quickly.

“Untie yourself.”

Despite Mistress Anassa’s speech about trust and surrender, her words were meaningless sentiment. Ronan Carr had never given up control. The scarves were tied with enough slack that he could easily lift his hands over the headrest and pull free the knots at his wrists. After that, he only needed to lean forward to release his ankles.     

“Where is everyone?” Carr asked nervously, massaging his wrists.

The man was wiry, more muscular than the bounty hunter expected from someone who spent his life behind a desk. Intimidation was his best tactic to keep Carr in check. Use of physical force would only complicate things. And he made a deal with Anassa.

“You don’t need to know what I did with them. Worry about yourself.”

After a lifetime of doing this work, Mando knew most people’s imagination was far darker than any threat he could make. The man looked at the blood splattered across his helmet, and all the color drained from Ronan Carr’s face.

“What is it you want?”

“I need something, and you’re the person who can get it for me.”

“My wife—”

“This has nothing to do with the Senator. And it doesn’t have to. You give me what I want, and she won’t discover what you get up to under the name ‘Kirk Satu.’” Carr’s eyes went wide with horror. “The piss play makes for an awkward conversation, but I think all the bank transfers will be harder to explain.”  

Now, he had the man’s full attention. “What do you want?”

“First, I want you to put some clothes on. Meet me in the study when you’re ready.”

The man’s suit hung neatly from the bathroom door, yet he stared at the garment like it might transform into a torture device. 

“You’re not—you aren’t going to lock me in?”

“We both know you won’t run,” Mando said. “You’re going to do what I tell you. Then you can forget all about this.”

The look on Carr’s face when he walked into the study made it clear this encounter would haunt him for some time. 

“Is your communicator on?” Nito asked from behind his data-pad. “Your real one. Not the burner?”

“What?” Ronan Carr stammered. “I–yes.” When the notification bell chimed, he pulled the device out from his pocket.

“Okay, read me the security code.”

“Wait! This is about work? You want something from the Archives?” 

Carr looked between Nito and the Mandalorian.

“You do realize the New Republic Library doesn’t store any military or intelligence records. This is not…what could you possibly need that isn’t already publicly available?”

Mando thrust his blaster in the man’s face. “Ask me about my business again and see what happens to you.”

“The security code?” Nito drolled.

Mando grabbed the communicator from Carr and handed it to the Ardennian.

“I’m just…we have a records request system online…”

“For redacted documents!” Nito howled. “If you guys just uploaded everything onto the Net, you could enjoy your tickle party and we wouldn’t be here.”

Ronan Carr’s face turned scarlet. “It’s our responsibility to make sure sensitive information doesn’t fall into the hands of…criminals.”

What a fucking hypocrite. “Can we hurry this up?” Mando barked. The fact that the bodyguards in the foyer hadn’t burst into the penthouse meant that Mistress Anassa had done her part. But their luck wouldn’t last long.

“Well, it’s not my fault the file structure isn’t intuitive,” Nito looked at Ronan Carr with disgust. “And you call yourself an Archivist?”

“I–I don’t oversee information architecture.”

“Ah! Okay…security question for the download. What is the name of your first pet?”

When Nito had the files he needed, Mando thrust a disc into Carr’s hands.

“What—?”

“I lied when I said this didn’t involve your wife. That’s for her. From a former Rebel fighter, Ubaa Dir. Remember the name. The next time you hear it, give the Senator that disc. You’ll know when.”

“How will I explain—”

“You’d rather explain the sex workers and money laundering? Figure–it—out,” Mando snapped, and Ronan Carr jumped.

This time, the Mandalorian did lock him inside the bedroom.  

He found Mistress Anassa in the living room, offering the Child sugar cubes from an abandoned tea service tray.

"I'm done here," Mando said, watching as the kid delightedly crunched the crystals between his teeth. "He's unharmed, as per the terms of our deal. Are you satisfied?"

"Very," she smiled serenely at him. "I thought I'd be spending the night cleaning brain matter off the walls. Instead, I got to play with an adorable baby."

Anassa lifted the Child from her hip and handed him back to the Mandalorian.

"You still want me to bind and gag you?" Mando asked. "I could just lock you inside, like I did with Carr? It might take him a while to break out, by the way."

"No," she shook her head. "I've got to sell this if there's a chance I can retain his trust. And he'll need a witness to help explain what happened to the guards." Mistress Anassa looked thoughtfully at the Mandalorian. "When life hands you an opportunity, it's best to seize it with both hands."

"Very well." Mando reached for the plush, decorative rope tying back the curtains—he could at least ensure that she was comfortable.

"Speaking of which," the Mistress grinned. "I do hope you'll reconsider my offer. There are a number of ways we could leverage your particular talents at the Dark Garden."

The Mandalorian offered her a chair.

"After listening to the ruthlessness in your voice saying, You're going to give me what I want..." she shivered rather theatrically. "Fear is a very potent form of arousal. I'm confident we could find clients looking for nothing more than degradation."

The audacity of her proposal impressed him, and his mouth quirked into a begrudging smile beneath the Beskar helmet.

"I'll keep that in mind," he said.

"And what knots do you plan to use?"

Mando huffed—not quite a laugh. This was beginning to feel like an audition. "A bowline. But I can use a hitch knot if you prefer?"

"Merely professional curiosity," Mistress Anassa grinned, sitting in the armchair as though it were a throne. "Do you have a suggestion for the gag?"

The Mandalorian cocked his head, "Give me your necktie."

He wasn't entirely comfortable with how much keen interest lit up her face. A businesswoman through and through.

She hurriedly fished something out of her suit pocket. "Take my card. You're a working father, after all. It pays to be flexible when there are mouths to feed."

****************

Continue reading: Volume 4-Post #5: Wish You Were Here!

Back to Volume 4 - all posts

[alicehattera03]

Hello! I've been reading some of your fanfics and I loved them, especially about Villains Are Destined to Die. I really like your writing, and I was wondering, when you had time of course, could you write a fanfic/short story about Penelope being yandere/very possessive with Callisto, please?!

I just found a spoiler that mentions that she felt jealous and got drunk, but I wonder what would have happened if she was sober, would it just be comical jealousy or did she really feel a huge surge of possessiveness towards Callisto?!

Anyway, thank you for your beautiful writing!

Oh now THIS type of spoiler I can get behind...Anon, just for you, I'll make an exception because of how sweet you are ehehe

She always made sure to use the title of "crown prince" in front of his name, or at the very least, "prince". She doesn't this time.

She steps across the floor, her nightgown a fluid movement across the white marble. "Callisto," she calls out softly.

Her voice wound into his ears and he feels possessed as he wraps her into his embrace, burying his face into the crook of her neck. He breathes in, her natural scent underneath the florals of her shampoo.

"Penelope," he whispers into her ear. Usually, she would melt into his arms, her ears burning red- but she was oddly rigid as she dug her fingers into his back.

"I hate it," she mutters quietly.

"...Hmm?" He leans back a little to look at her, raising an eyebrow as he rewinds that sentence. "Hate what?"

"I hate that they cling to you during balls, that I'm not declared your fiancee yet and that I have to wait by the sidelines as you return from war." She grinds her teeth, and her nails scrape down his back.

Her whisper was deadly sweet. "You're mine, Callisto. Mine. No one can take you away from me because you're the only person who will ever truly be mine."

He chuckles a little, finding her endearing as he places kisses onto her forehead and onto her eyelids, slowly making his way down her face to her neck as he smooths out her wrinkled brow. "Only yours, Penelope, my love."

She doesn't tell him of the intrusive thoughts that barrage her day in and day out, how she wished to aim her bow at the ladies who tried to flirt with him. How she wished no one would dare to go near him- and how she wished she could utilize the title of "Mad dog of Eckhart" in a way that was useful to her for once.

All he had to do was reassure her, and her fears would melt away. She wished that were true. She licks her lips and cards her fingers through his hair as she sighs, her body relaxing into his grip.

She decides she would never tell him of how she looked on with cold eyes at the lady that she tripped earlier that day. Of how she watched as her mirthful grin grew at the sight of that gaudy fan breaking under her heel and how red dyed the stream and nearby rocks.

Callisto was always so sweet to her. Her eyes wander to his neck. She touches him softly, just with her fingertips- sliding down as she presses her lips onto his skin.

She wondered how he would feel if she sent him into the next evening's ball with her bite mark adorning his neck.

[xantchaslegacy]

Lyese

(A March of the Machine Aftermath fanfic; please give the story on AO3 a read and leave a comment if you can ;) )

Lyese was gone.

Lyese was gone, and the sky was empty.

And below, Phyrexia reeled.

...

Glissa stood alone. To every side the open sands of the Glorious Facade rolled away in shallow hills, fine grains of pearl-white sand cool and still beneath her heels.

Not even the wind stirred those grains.

And Lyese, that green sun of Phyrexia, and of Mirrodin before it, was gone.

They’ve all gone.

Every sun that’s ever graced Phyrexia.

Or Mirrodin before it.

Black reigned above Glissa. Not even the vivid-dark light of Ingle, the black sun, but an empty, blank, unbroken black. Lifeless black. Only the far edges of the sky (if you could call it a sky) were interrupted, by tilted, moldering monuments to Phyrexia and its praetors. Silent sentinels lording over nothing at all.

Glissa’s eyes searched the black.

Searched in vain.

Even without the light of the suns, she could see the plane around her clearly. The sands, the monuments, the wandering figure of the occasional phyrexian pilgrim, one of those pensive, nomadic creatures who graced the facade of late. Everything was thrown into sharp, shadow-less relief, as though illuminated on all sides by a colorless, unseen moon.

Whether this strange, source-less light was the effect of Phyrexia’s banishment to a pocket space beyond the multiverse, or of some as-of-yet unknown property of the argent shell their new Phyrexia had been built upon, no one yet knew.

Karn had said once, when Glissa was fitting him to be the next father of machines, that Mirrodin was sunless at the time of its creation. He had called it “Argentum” then, in the eponymous nature of a demigod. Argentum had been empty too, if the silver golem’s ravings were to be believed. Empty but for the blinkmoths. Empty, but beautiful and precise and rich in detail. Mathematical artistry in planar form.

A bitter smile split Glissa’s lips. Urabrask would have loved such a thing, that form-loving fool.

Now the exterior of the plane was an unending uniformity of sand, hex-plates...and these gaudy monuments to the glory of Elesh Norn’s Phyrexia.

Glory . Glissa spat a wad of tarry oil onto the ground. It shivered on the surface for a moment before soaking into the sands. What arrogance drives a conqueror to build monuments before she’s even triumphed? As if New Phyrexia were ever even hers entirely. As if she’d won us all over before she planted her ruinous realm-breaking tree and challenged all the multiverse.

She felt the lie in these thoughts as they filtered through her mind. Just out of sight over the horizon, there was a statue to Vorinclex. Further in the other direction, one of Urabrask, heretic and rebel though he had been. Phyrexians of all factions had joined in Norn’s invasion, even if some had dissented, and the monuments would not let her forget.

Glissa had walked as far as she could from those monuments for...for what, really?

An uninterrupted view of the blank, pitch nothing that surrounds us now?

Her eyes twitched; a hunter’s acuity taking in the whole expanse above. Again and again. Moment by moment. Alert for even the smallest movement or disruption to that black uniformity. A secondary set of optic nerves, connected to a lens in her eyes that saw heat signatures, flickered on and off, seeing the same blank field.

Yes, that’s exactly why I came here. Exactly why I keep returning. Confirmation that the suns have fled our sky.

No.

That they’ve been torn from their place.

White Bringer, red Sky Tyrant, the blue Eye of Doom, black Ingle...the green Ugly Child.

Lyese. Lyese was not an ugly. And she was a woman grown. A child for a time, perhaps, but it was beautiful.

No, not it.

She.

Glissa grimaced. Not at the sentiment itself, but because, no matter how hard she tried to recall, she did not know where the sentiment came from. The Mirran goblins had had a vast mythology prescribed to the suns. She had familiarized herself with that mythology, but she also knew their name for the green sun, ‘the ugly child’ was not appropriate. She knew Lyese was a name for the green sun, she also knew it was not their name for her. It was Glissa’s name for her. It had been her name for the green sun for many years, before she’d known Phyrexia’s touch.

She was so certain of it, she just couldn’t say why.

She moved forward. One step. Two steps. The facade had been as dangerous a place as any in New Phyrexia before the great invasion, but now it lay inert. Swallowing, confounding sands had fallen still. Wandering predators, the outcasts of the layers below, still haunted the corners of the place, but most had fled back into the lower spheres in the time since the plane had been cut off from rest of the multiverse.

Fertile hunting grounds, once. Now it was still and sterile. Prey could see and hear a predator coming miles off. This glorious facade was the furthest thing from the Hunter’s Maze. Even the Quiet Forge had ledges and heights for a predator to pounce from. Even the Jin’s surgical bays had tunnels and chambers to lie in ambush – and prey worth chasing.

There wasn’t much prey worth hunting on New Phyrexia now, and the hunt was no longer about growing strong for the Grand Evolution, but simple, mean survival. The plane could no longer afford to squander its resources pursuing the disparate objectives of every sphere and faction.

Glissa grit her teeth. Stepped faster. Even in the absence of wind, the cold air rushing past felt soothing.

The facade was no place for a hunter, but it was the only place she could get away.

The only place she could breath.

This is as far as any of us can go without leaving, and leaving is no longer an option.

She’d felt most comfortable above the surface of the plane for as long as she could remember. Maybe that was why she’d pushed to unleash the beasts of the vicious swarm on the Mirrans long before any other faction had deigned to emerge. It had been balm to leave the artificial light of the interior…

...to hunt and bask in the light of Lyese...

Glissa scowled. Rushed forward even faster.

Her responsibilities in the spheres below felt distant here. The facade was a reprieve. A precious rest and intermission from the burdens of being a leader, and a mother to a world thrice-orphaned.

Veins pulsed in the back of Glissa’s skull, beneath copper cables of hair. Each throb a phyrexian, waiting still in its incubating pod somewhere on the spheres below, destined to emerge too late to take any part in the invasion for which they’d been germinated and crafted. Each throb a child who would emerge instilled with an undeniable purpose they would never be able to fulfill.

And it fell to Glissa and the other remaining nursemaids of this abandoned Phyrexia to find purpose on their behalf.

Her skull pounded. She had attuned herself to the birthing pods of Phyrexia at Norn’s suggestion, but using the means of the Grand Evolution. She’d thought it a clever subversion of Norn’s machinations, to incorporate her own innovations, crotus-born organs and enhancements, into the final design of the birthing and conversion pods, but all she’d done in the end was saddle herself with a responsibility that weighed down like shackles of blightsteel.

Another succession of pulses, bringing her head close to aching.

Glissa did not want to be a mother.

The Glissa she had been before Phyrexia had not wanted to be a mother either. She hadn’t even wanted to be a warrior. Not in the way that was expected of the elves of the Tangle, at least. Though she only remembered this life in brief, erratic flashes, or those rare stretches when she dreamed, she was sure of this much. The Glissa-before-Phyrexia had only wanted to be free.

But Mirrodin was not a plane for being free. It had never been such a place, no matter how much the Mirran resistance romanticized the times before New Phyrexia’s ascendancy.

It had been sterile from the start. This much they knew from Karn. It had been empty. Unintended for any life except for Karn’s guests - the demigods that had been the planeswalkers of old. When life had been brought to its sterile surface, by Karn’s mad steward, Memnarch, that life found a hostile world waiting for it. Grain and game scraped from what cold metal would allow to grow on it. A menagerie of artifact predators that swept across the plane to cull and to kill.

Not a home , but a slaughterhouse. A petri dish for Memnarch to grow a planeswalking spark so he could steal it and leave that world of barren metal behind .

K arn had lamented Memnarch at length in his more lucid moments. He had not meant to be a parent either. The weeping regret he felt in his failure at that role had made Glissa uneasy in a way that even his most frantic ravings had not.

Perhaps because it affected me directly, in another life.

Memnarch’s world produced Glissa. Glissa and a spark that should have made her free, but made her prey instead – the indefinite prey of Memnarch the mad. That world had forced the old Glissa to be the meanest, lowest thing imaginable: a survivor. Prey.

None of that made her any more inclined toward motherhood, and neither her death nor rebirth had changed that inclination. To live as a phyrexian was enough. To hunt as a phyrexian had been sublime.

And yet she had let motherhood be thrust upon her.

Norn had been clever about it. Dressed motherhood in skins (skin...that hateful stuff) that she knew Glissa would find appealing. The role as an alpha not just for the Vicious Swarm, but for all the fledgling cubs of Phyrexia. A mentor for the incubated, the new swarm that would prey upon the every inch of the multiverse that their invasion tree could spread its branches into.

She would have an avenue to ensure the Grand Evolution benefited all factions of Phyrexia. Through the invasion, she would have brought the blessing of strength to countless worlds. Thanks to her, all would have known the freedom to evolve past the limits the incompleat put on themselves and others in compensation for their weakness. Liberation from all the expectations and trappings and manipulations and hypocrisies of “civilized” fools.

Glissa clenched her fists. Copper on copper ground together. Sand ground under her heels as she strode on.

In truth, she’d been nothing more than a nursery guard. A kept spouse keeping Norn’s house in order, worrying over germs in the womb while the self-proclaimed “Mother of Machines” stood on her parapet, conducting the actual invasion efforts.

Efforts that failed. Efforts that set back everything their New Phyrexia had worked towards.

And just like Norn’s incompetence had stolen the future of the Swarm, just as Norn’s cunning (and the interference of that worm, Tezzeret) had stolen Karn and Glissa’s place at the helm of Phyrexia years ago.

More pounding. Glissa touched the wind-cooled copper of her palm to her forehead, to ease the sensation.

If Norn was wrong to seize control, and to force herself on all the burgeoning beliefs of New Phyrexia, was I truly any better?

Hadn’t she been acting the mother to Karn then? Hadn’t she betrayed the swarm’s disdain for individuality by taking on that role? Hadn’t they excised Yawgmoth from their dogma of predators and prey for his failures? Didn’t making any one phyrexian the father or mother of machines run contrary to what she aspired to?

No. It was not the same. I sought to install leadership to oversee that nature was left alone to run its course. It was not for the glory or honor that came with such a role, but for the functionality. The practicality of it.

A rationale as fragile as the facade, but it would do for now.

That Glissa had believed Norn would ever hand her back any fraction of that power in earnest was laughable. She should have been suspicious when so many of the caretakers of the incubating and converted proved to be members of Norn’s Alabaster Host.

But she had persisted in her role, down in the depths of the spheres. A better caretaker than most of the Orthodoxy's host, at least. Even now, she had to move mountains to gather the hands needed to tend to the remaining pods. She had been so subservient to those ends during the invasion that she had not even been present on the surface to say a final farewell to Lyese, before the Zhalfirins stole her away.

Not been present for a final farewell.

Maybe it was justice, for her folly.

Glissa halted, inspecting the sands around her. She might as well have not moved, for all the change in scenery her strides had brought.

Her muscles tensed, and for a single, thrilling moment, Glissa warred with the impulse to attack the ground with her claws, and tear a new hole through the facade to Mirrex below. It would be a delicious catharsis , but she had to be a builder now, and tearing the facade down would only be denying Phyrexia space that it would badly need in the days ahead.

W aste not, want not.

Slobad was at work on a scheme to reinforce this outermost sphere into a surface they could actually build something meaningful upon. The facade had been made at first out of little but scrap metal and malice. A structure as mean as the spite that had motivated it, and just as flimsy. Norn’s mouthpieces had claimed constructing the Facade was a strategic decision. One to expedite the task of defeating the Mirran rebels by demoralizing them. Any fool could have guessed it would only aggravate. Solidify the Mirran resolve and spur them to fight all the fiercer. Norn had to have known that, but she was, in the end, a spiteful creature. A cruel creature.

It was by malice the mirrans had their suns taken from them. Had their suns blotted out.

And now those suns were lost to Phyrexia.

Maybe that was justice.

Glissa shuddered. That was not a phyrexian thought. Strength was the only justice in the multiverse. Triumph was the only vindication that held any value in the world.

And yet, Glissa could not help but feel Lyese would have found a justice in what had happened. She had always had a strong sense of justice, especially when it came to punishing the guilty. Especially after her parents had died.

Glissa blinked.

Parents? The only parent the suns of Mirrodin had was the core. And she was certain none of the goblin myths had mentioned any parent other than the great mother. Certainly not a mother and father, as Glissa felt certain Lyese had had.

Lyese is a sun, not a daughter.

Or was she a moon?

Again, Glissa tilted her eyes to where the sky was not. Lyese continued to be nowhere in sight.

Lyese had wanted to be a wife. A mother. Glissa could never empathize with that, but she wanted it for Lyese. She wanted Lyese to be happy.

Glissa scowled. Why did she know that? Where did it come from? The notion had vexed her for years, and not a single comple a ted mirran goblin had ever corroborated these notions of Lyese. They did not even know the name.

And why did she miss Lyese?

Because Lyese was strong and bright and beautiful.

She is a sun.

It is a sun.

A strong, beautiful sun.

But strong as it was, if Glissa didn’t know where Lyese was, then how could she protect it when it needed protecting? How could Glissa embrace her when she cried? How could-

Glissa grabbed at her shoulder with metal-shod fingers and gripped it tightly.

Where is this coming from?

The pain was just inconvenience for her body, but it centered her.

It was all the losing that was causing her to lose focus. Losing Karn. Losing authority to Norn and the machinations of that shit-licker Tezzeret. Losing the invasion. Losing Benzir. Losing Lukka, and so many of the Swarm’s other beautiful predators.

Losing Geth, even, had stung. Grasping, treacherous buffoon though he was, Geth had been familiar, even when New Phyrexia was not, and Glissa was quickly running out of familiar things to anchor herself when everything became heavy. She would work with Ixhel to keep this new, reduced Phyrexia intact, but she would never forgive Atraxa’s little maggot of a child for re-purposing Geth.

Everything familiar is falling away.

Glissa drove her claws deeper into her shoulder.

The pain centered her.

...

The pain helped her focus.

…

…

Glissa’s eyes snapped open.

Someone was coming.

She did not move, or make any further outward indication she noticed that the ground was vibrating, just slightly. That there was a shifting in the grains of sand in the distance behind her. A predator did not scare so easily, and…

...

...and besides, she recognized the tread of the creatures approaching her.

They were welcome.

So she waited, breathing steady. She tilted back her head, eyes scanning the sky.

Just in case.

“Glissa?”

“Is something wrong, Slobad?” She kept her back turned, but she could picture the two figures behind her. One made of solid-forged steel, guided by the keenest mind left on the plane. One huddled and bristling, but bulging with muscle that put the steel body of the other to shame. Smaller creatures bustled and skittered at this second figure’s feet.

“Just came to see you, huh? Everything alright?”

S he didn’t answer. D idn’t know what to say to that. So she let them approach, turning only when they were within five paces.

Vorinclex was still technically shorter than Slobad, even though he’d been eating and growing at a voracious pace since the Zhalfirins had separated his head from his body. It was a w ound that would normally have been trivial for him to regenerate from , but the Zhalfiri ns’ cursed time mage had cast an enchantment on Vorinclex that slowed his normally prodigious healing to less than a crawl. The spell had persisted beyond Phyrexia’s banishment to this void, and the nominal praetor of the Vicious Swarm was still no larger than a juvenile vorrac.

But he was growing, at least. Growing, and more than a match for most any creature left in, above, or below the Hunter’s Maze.

S curr y ing about Vorinclex’s legs were small, hunched, raptor-like creatures of chrome, poking at the sands and sniffing the air. T wo of them were perched on Vorinclex’ back.

Glissa gave a tight smile as one of the little chrome raptors trotted up to her, and examined her legs with small tilts of its head. Norn hadn’t tried to make a parent of Vorinclex, but he had insisted no one else was suited to raise Jin’s cannibal larvae into proper phyrexians.

Slobad coughed. “Glissa? How are you?”

“Did you smell me all the way up here?” Glissa did not like ignoring Slobad, but she still didn’t have an answer for him. Instead she ran a hand along Vorinclex’s snout. He growled appreciatively, though she knew, and he knew that she knew, that he had no tactile feeling in his steel bone carapace. “Stronger and sharper with every day. I knew that meddling mage couldn’t suppress your prowess for long.”

S lobad shook his head. “ Not Vorey. Myrabrask saw you, huh? Sent a message down to the other myr in the F urnace.”

Glissa spun around, grinding the sand beneath her heels and glaring at the nearest monument. It was in bad repair, even by the standard of the facade, sitting crooked in the sand like some titanic tree, a broad mask in the shape of Elesh Norn’s own face crumbling atop it.

And there, in the upper reaches of the porcelain metal, a dark-red form skulked, perched on the mask like a bird, half hidden with a single beady eye fixed on Glissa from atop a curved, beak-like head.

“From master of the forge to a skulking snitch,” Glissa hissed. “I wish you hadn’t put him back together, Slobad.”

Slobad shrugged. “Waste not, want not, huh? He’s been handy, hasn’t he?”

Glissa grunted, and turned away from the monument. She didn’t trust anything sneaky enough to get so close without her notice.

Still, she didn’t begrudge Slobad finding a use of Urabrask’s parts. He remained as good at skulking in the periphery as he’d been in his previous life, and honest to a fault. The information he’d gathered on the still-power-hungry portions of the Thane and Orthodoxy factions around the core kept their outer layers one step ahead of any scheming.

“So there’s nothing wrong?” She looked up from Vorinclex.

“Nothing you don’t already know about, huh?”

“Right.”

Glissa raised her gaze further, back to the sky above Slobad. On top of the utter upheaval among what was left of the Thanes and the basilica phyrexians, t here were growing concerns about how many of their offloaded resources were forever lost across the multiverse to the nigh-countless planes that Realmbreaker had linked together. Phyrexia had, in effect, gutted itself to empty out armies across every world in reach, banking on the prediction that what they spent would be replenished by the worlds they claimed. Very little had been brought back, relative to what Phyrexia sent out by the time the invasion tree had been hijacked, and the enemy had swapped P hyrexia’s place in the multiverse with this pocket of nothing where Zhalfir sat for centuries in stasis.

The lingering unrest between the spheres and the factions therein was almost trivial next to these logistical issues. The orthodoxy and the thanes did not have enough military might to exert the kind of authority they coveted. The former had spent themselves more completely than any other faction in the invasion, and the latter where as divided by in- f ighting as ever, the deaths of multiple thanes having done nothing to make their sphere more united.

The introduction of several not-fully-compleated, or even completely incompleat creatures from other planes was another issue. Branches that led out to the multiverse led right back to Phyrexia, and not every creature from the planes beyond that currently inhabited their isolated world had been brought their by their invasion forces. Ezuri, of all creatures, had allied with Vishgraz to gather these disparate planar orphans into a loose group that remained incompleat and as-of-yet unaffiliated with either the thanes, the orthodoxy, or Glissa’s even more tenuous coalition of Forge, Swarm, and Engine.

Slobad tapped a steely finger against his arm. The sound rang like a bell, soft and clear over the silent dunes. “Another council soon, yeah? See if we can’t talk our way to peace?”

Unlikely.

“Peace is a fever dream of the flesh,” Glissa answered. “I’ll settle for antagonistic coexistence at this point, so long as those fools don’t rip what’s left of Phyrexia to pieces.”

“You gotta talk to Ixhel at some point, huh?” Slobad tapped a nervous finger against his side. “Geth’s gone.”

“Geth’s gone,” Glissa echoed. She scooped up the Jin-raptor closest to her and set it in Slobad’s hand. The little creature tapped its snout against the goblin’s forearm, and started to climb its way up to the shoulder. “And a child holds the key to controlling the Thanes and the Orthodoxy both.”

“I’ll take Ixhel over the Alabaster Host worshiping some scarecrow made out of Norn’s guts, huh?” Slobad was flexing his arm up and down, making an obstacle course of the limb for the Jin-raptor. The goblin heads adorning Slobad’s shoulder moaned petulantly as the chrome creature clambered closer.

“A low-hanging fruit,” Glissa replied with a tight smile.

They hadn’t even found Norn’s pieces, in the end. Glissa had hoped, in small part, that she might at least be able to take out her frustrations on the Grand Cenobite’s corpse, but not a trace remained. She would have put a bounty out on the pieces, but the remainder of the Orthodoxy had put that exact call out already, and as far as anyone could tell from the wailing that still pervaded that inner sphere, no one had delivered.

“Three out of five spheres is more than we could have hoped for already,” Slobad remarked with a shrug, leaving the little raptor dangling from the lower lip of one of his shoulder-heads. The little thing squeaked and rasped as it pulled itself up, and started pecking the heads on the nose.

“More than we could have hoped for, and yet not enough.”

“When did you become the pessimist?” Slobad asked.

“I’m ever-evolving.”

“Still, well done so far, huh?”

Glissa nodded. She had thankfully engaged in plentiful diplomacy with the Progress Engine, even before Norn’s ascendancy over the other factions. Vorinclex’s constant and vitriolic spats with Jin-Gitaxias had made it necessary to pay that faction especial attention to ensure the sniping across territory had not unduly slowed the Grand Evolution. That groundwork had paid off in the past few months in securing gitaxian cooperation in negotiations with the inner spheres.

Slobad, in turn, had been vital to securing the cooperation of the fickle Furnace host. He and his newer, even more hidden Myrabrask.

Still, difficulties abounded. The gitaxians couldn't decide whether they loved or hated councils to discuss the way forward. One day they would be clamoring for an audience with every faction to proclaim they had divined some great advancement that would bring Phyrexia back to a state of flourishing. The next someone would press them on their research and the shrimp-spined fools would slink away to their labs and hiss that they did not wish to be disturbed. 

The Furnace layer remained taciturn and sullen. Preoccupied with their craft to the point of obsession. With Norn gone the personalities with the...loudest sway seemed content to treat Urabrask’s remains as figurehead and Slobad as a tolerant (meaning ignorable when it suited them) leader, following the hidden praetor's final dictates to persist in their quiet building and development. 

“We all have so much to offer,” Glissa said, half to herself. “If only we could act in harmony. If only we could converge naturally.”

Slobad tilted his head, quizzically. The raptor at his shoulder echoed this movement.

“Norn was wrong to partition New Phyrexia,” Glissa said, louder. “She was wrong for this desperate, sad attempt to ape the glory of the nine spheres. What has it benefited the Grand Evolution? Or the Great Synthesis, or the Great Work, for that matter? It was all for her vanity and the vanity of the Orthodoxy to be placed at the physical center, to keep Phyrexia divided into its singular colors, rather than letting them mix and make each other stronger. Divide us and lord over us, that’s what she did. We were meant to grind up against each other. To come together as a strong whole.”

Slobad nodded, though his lips were tight. “Is that what Phyrexia is?”

“It’s what it should be.”

“But is it what we are?”

It was Glissa’s turn to purse her lips. Old P hyrexia had been a parasite, ultimately, thriving only where it was able to steal and invade to claim the resources of others. What were the first phyrexians, after all, except for weak, arrogant, xenophobic, aristocratic flesh that had stolen the stronger flesh of other cultures, other bodies, to prop themselves up?

T he pounding in her head was back. Throbbing. Searing.

That was an incompleat way of looking at things, of course. The strength to steal for one’s own benefit was, after all, strength. Doesn’t the predator steal the life and vitality from the prey it consumes? Would anyone ever suggest that a predator apologize for taking that which it is strong enough to take?

Something nudged Glissa’s shoulder, nearly bowling her over and breaking her train of thought. Vorinclex had lunged at her, and was pouncing again, jaws wide.

She laughed and threw her body into a spin. Her foot landed along the side of Vorinclex’s face, and sent him sprawling sideways in the sand. The jin-raptors scurried all around them, flailing their arms and chirping shrilly.

Vorinclex swiped at her with one paw, then another. She dodged both, and when he swiped again, she knocked it aside with a savage counter-blow.

She hooted. “Such soft blows, cub!”

Vorinclex lunged again, but she seized him around the neck and threw herself onto the ground, dragging him to the sand with a heavy THUD.

They lay there entangled for a long minute, Glissa’s arms locked firm around Vorinclex’s neck.

“Better to – hrk – act than to stew in useless thoughts,” Vorinclex grunted.

“Better be strong if you wish to act against me,” Glissa grunted in return.

Vorinclex laughed at that. Most creatures would not know his laugh from the other fierce vocalizations of beasts, but he was Glissa’s own beating heart, and she knew.

The raptors knew too, and they swarmed the both of them, chirping and pecking.

The two disengaged and rose to their feet. Glissa gathered two of the raptors as she rose, and tossed them onto Vorinclex’ back, where they clung.

“A gathering then, soon.”

“Yeah.” Slobad dropped his shoulder-riding raptor onto Vorinclex’ back as well. “With Forge and Engine leadership, plus Ixhel and Ezuri. We’ll need to make sure the gitaxians behave this time, huh?”

Glissa nodded. “ The progress engine can posture all they want, but we have resources, and we’re the only factions willing to work with him and not above him. Unctus is too proud to acknowledge equals, but Malcator isn’t as fool-headed– he’ll wrangle the m into line.”

“And we trust Malcator to get the others in line?”

“I trust Malcator to know the value of having his house in order,” Glissa flexed her wrists. Both her arms looked the same now, for the first time in a long time. Her sickle lacked practicality on this new front, and she suspected, would antagonize those she wished to bring into the fold.

“Malcator’s not the only loud voice in the Progress Engine.”

“Yes, but he is the most stubborn by leagues. Unctus doesn’t have the pull to displace him, and he knows it. Threx just wants to get back to his work. We’ll have the surgical bays on our side.”

Vorinclex growled, just low enough for Glissa to detect, at Threx’s name. The chrome butcher had been all too keen to get his own claws on Jin’s children.

“Optimistic,” Slobad said.

“It’s that or defeatist. I thought you believed in New Phyrexia.”

“I’ve got brains enough to know Phyrexia’s the only thing that can save any of us. Not so sure Phyrexia can be saved though.”

“What choice do we have but to try?”

“You’re right, Glissa. You know I know that’s right, huh?”

Glissa smiled. “I know. Go back, Slobad. I’ll find you both when I return.” She tapped her forehead against Vorinclex’s. “Go. Eat and grow. I need you strong again soon, and there’s nothing worth consuming up here.”

“No.” Vorinclex nudged back against her head. “Nothing but memories. Those won’t sustain you, either.”

“No, but I’ll linger here a little longer all the same.”

Vorinclex grunted, but turned trudged away.

“Stay close”

The little chrome creatures clustered near to his sides, running at a pitter-patter jog to keep up with his longer strides. In the spheres below, Vorinclex left the larvae to hunt and forage on their own, but around the surface, or the remains of the Basilica, he kept them nearby. Norn’s ruinous interference into the Swarm’s evolutionary aspirations had made him protective, arguably to the point of detriment, in the production of new predators.

Glissa grit her teeth. Vorinclex resented as much as she did the way Norn had wasted Lukka. A fine predator, and a grand addition to the swarm. So much potential for evolution, and Norn had thrown him away to die in a pointless exercise against a whole world of beasts. Of course even an apex predator would die if pitted against a whole world. Norn had done it just to spite them. So she would have an example to point to when she needed to set the other factions against the Grand Evolution. ‘See how this planewalker who chose the path of the swarm fared,’ she would have said. ‘See how their path pales besides the glory of the orthodoxy.’

Well Norn had gotten what she deserved in the end. All her plotting and bluster and now she was pieces and parts – porcelain rubble on who-knows-what world that would do no more conquering.

Glissa wondered if her pieces were on Zhalfir, rotting under the light of...

“Slobad?”

The goblin stopped short, and turned about to face her. He’d waited a few seconds longer than Vorinclex had, but was turning to leave when she called out. Vorinclex kept his pace, stalking away with a muted urgency.

“Yeah?”

“Who was Lyese?”

Slobad shifted. His unease was not phyrexian. Not really. But he was a greater help and reassurance than anything else on this plane, and Glissa would take that, even if it came with the unease of the flesh. Even if he cried at times, when he thought no-one was watching him .

It was rare to see a phyrexian cry, but the bodily structures that allowed the process were left in place for most compleated sapients who had the capacity originally. Jin-Gitaxias, during a long-ago convening of the praetors, had explained it thusly to Vorinclex, in his usual haughty way:

"We've found it sensible to allow this biological release for imperfect emotions that might otherwise build up to tear one of the compleat apart on a psychological level. While it might do us good to remove the capacity for such a buildup entirely, eventually, at present it is too much a liability to have a large portion of our population susceptible to."

"Not that you would concern yourselves with such complexities," He had added unnecessarily, as was his habit.  "Working as you do with beasts."

“I’d tell you if I could, huh? Geth knew...but I don’t know if Vishgaz still has those memories. And besides...” Slobad grimaced. “Geth said they would break your heart. He was very happy about that, actually.”

“My heart is too strong for that.”

“Maybe.”

They stared at each other. Slobad. Vorinclex. Glissa would never let any harm come to these two. She had lost more than she could remember, but as long as she had them, she would persevere.

“Not today then,” She whispered, barely loud enough for Slobad to hear.

“Lyese is safe, though,” Slobad said. “At least...Geth told me she’d been sent away, and away from here must be some bit of safe, huh?

“Even after the invasion?” Glissa asked.

Slobad only lowered his head.

“Right. It is not in our nature to hope. Only to do.”

“We do what we can,” Slobad said. “Waste not, want not.”

Then he was off, following the prints Vorinclex had left in the sand. The onetime-praetor was gone already, disappeared into a hole at the base of a many-armed monument in the distance. Glissa turned away. She could tell by Slobad’s heavy, halting tread that he was stopping every few paces to glance back at her.

To make sure she was alright.

Alright was debatable, and beside the point. She was, at least, not without a pack. This was good. The scriptures, so far as she understood the interpretations of factions outside the Swarm, had little to say on the concept of being alone. The compleat were sufficient in all things, it was true, but outside the cowardly work of sleeper agents, it was pre-supposed in most texts that phyrexians worked among and besides phyrexians, and that in their inevitable spread across the multiverse, phyrexians would all be, always, among their peers.

All will be one.

It was good to not be alone. To have others. To have a pack.

A cluster of mites scuttled across the sands, some distance away. The creatures were slowly learning how to mold the sands of the facade into burrows and nests.

Glissa let out a slow breath.

I am not alone, but this new life is lonely, all the same. 

She’d come out here in the past, after Norn had erected the facade. There had been something comforting about the suns. The artificial light of the Hunter’s Maze had been a great achievement for the Swarm, but it was not the same as the moons...as the suns...as that daughter and child and…

...and what?

At times Glissa even missed the blue and the red and the white suns. She had come up here to the surface before to ponder them too, on rarer occasions. And their names…

Bruenna? Bosh? Raksha?

These were not the goblin names for those suns either, but Glissa was less sure that they had ever been the names of the suns, though something in her crotus-enhanced brain connected them nonetheless. 

A wave of nausea gripped Glissa, and she hugged herself closer, half by reflex to steady herself, and half consciously, copper claws pinching her arms. 

These spells had come in waves, nigh-paralyzing lows that she couldn't control, punctuating the longer, more stable periods. Standing there on as solid a surface as the facade could offer, she felt as if the ground beneath her had given away entirely. 

By the spheres, but I miss Lyese!

Glissa breathed, and spread her arms. Slowly, she flexed each hand, then her arms, then her shoulders. She was strong. She had her pack. All was not lost for her or for Phyrexia. 

So why do I care so much about a sun?

Glissa brought her hands back to her side.

Why does its absence feel like part of myself is lost?

Oil ran freely from her eyes, streaming harder than ever.

Why my worry for the sun's safety, its health, its...happiness? Glissa hardly fretted as much over these things for her own comrades, the closest of her pack excepted. 

A tremor hit Glissa’s knees. She would not fall. She would not kneel here. Still, she brought her hand to her mouth and gripped her jaw with talons of copper.

So why?

The flow of oil splashed down onto the white sands. Dark shapes formed in the pools and soaked into the grains.

Why do I miss Lyese?

"Lyese" is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.

[praxcrown5]

Doc Hudson Fanfic: Sneak Peek #2

This excerpt is from May 12, 1950 (Cycle 9): Hud's best friend tries to convince him to race as a favor to their mutual boss, Smokey.

Note: Hud (age 12) is the youngest member of a gang of moonshine runners called the Still Chasers. They are led by an Oldsmobile 88 Rocket named Ghost.

Note II: In my headcanon, vehicles reach physical/sexual maturity at the age of eleven.

Note III: Ghost speaks with a heavy Appalachian accent, seeing as he's originally from the mountains southeast of Middlesboro, Kentucky.

Ghost nudged open the door to the Cotter Pin and rolled in like he owned the place.

It was busy for a Sunday on account of it being a race day, and all makes and models were crammed in, bumper to bumper, talking loudly and animatedly; "pre-gamming," as some folks called it.

Ghost scanned the room.  Sure enough, he could see Hud and the rest of the Still Chasers hanging out in their usual spot by the bar.  Everyone was sporting their in-town paint jobs to better blend in with the law-abiding rabble. Cass was a lovely shade of red, Flips and Otto were matching shdes of beige, Wilkis was white with red fenders, and Hud had chosen a handsome indigo blue that really made his polished, chrome accents pop.

He was also wearing whitewall tires. Expensive ones. Lord knows where he got the extra cash from...

Thankfully, the young tripper hadn’t struck out on his own yet, though he seemed to be appraising someone at the bar: A Mercury Eight with an almost gaudy, metallic orange paint job.

Ghost rolled his eyes. Hud's taste in other cars was...odd to his sensibilities, so to was his preference for male company, but to each their own.

The Oldsmobile made his way through the crowd as quickly as he could, but it wasn’t easy.  By the time he reached the table, the whole gang was staring at him expressions ranging from annoyed—Cass, of course—to concerned—as was the case with Otto and Flips—to smug with Hud and Wilkis.

“I dare say that's a record." Wilkis said with a grin. He adjusted one of his rear view mirrors so he could look at the clock near the bar. "Twenty two minutes and three seconds. Yep, definitely a record."

"So..." Hud added, coyly. "What did you do this time to get bumped? Oo! Did you try to 'council' another married wom..."

"Bite your tongue, boy." Ghost rumbled, hiding his annoyance behind a strained smile. He'd gotten a bit too close to one of the racer’s wives the last time they were in town.  In his defense, she was having relationship issues, and just wanted someone to talk to.  The racer, of course, thought he was trying to hook up with her and a fight broke out.  Normally Ghost could hold his own in a bar-room brawl…but it was seven on one, and he ended up in a heap on the curb.

The smugness in the kid’s expression gentled to something approaching skepticism, but he slid one of his drinks over to Ghost who accepted it with a smile.  “Thanks, kid.”

“So…why are ya here?” Hud asked sounding serious this time. "Disguised or not, it's risky."

“Yeah,” Cass agreed. "Not that we don't mind your company...but I ain't in prison, and I'd very much like to keep it that way."

He considered the group of vehicles, shrewdly. "Well...Smokey's in a bind; big'un by the sound of hit. I reckon we should help him out. Might owe us a hefty favor iffen we can deliver."

Everyone quieted up and they looked between each other, surprised.

“So…what does he need?” Hud wondered.

"He needs ye, Hud.” Ghost replied taking a sip of his drink.

“I’m not into trucks.”

Ghost coughed and sputtered as he choked on the liquid in his throat.  Cass and the others laughed.

“He don't need ye like THAT.  Geez, kid.”  He fixed Hud with an almost paternal look of concern.  “Why? Why? WHY? Would that be your first thought?”

The kid threw a sly grin in his direction, then took a long swig of his drink.

Ghost pursed his lips, and turned to glare at Cassie, since she was usually the team's default "voice of reason" when he wasn't around.

"Don't look at me," she shrugged. She might as well have added: "He's an adult, now. What he does in his free time is his business."

Ghost stifled a sigh and made a mental note to pay more attention to what the Hud got up to during their forays into town.  Prostitution was illegal, after all, and the last thing they needed was additional police scrutiny. He cleared his throat. “Smokey needs a driver.”

“What about Bernard?” Cass asked.

“Injured.”

“Bert?” Flips wondered.

“Smack drunk.” 

“Figures…” Otto muttered with a laugh. “But, there’s always Bob.”

Ghost said nothing.

“Ungh…Bob’s out too, geez.”  Wilkis huffed, nudging his empty drink container with a tire.

“Yeah, he done got hisself a mighty good hookup…and he still a-sleepin’ it off…”

Good-natured chuckles traveled around the table…but after a moment, everyone quieted up.  Gazes slowly began to turn towards the youngest member of the group.

Hud considered Ghost out of the corner of his eye.  “Let me guess…” he drawled with his usual sass.  “Someone got it in Smokey’s head that I’m the fastest car in Georgia or sommat?” 

“Mighta...”   

“I mean…they wouldn’t be wrong…” Hud continued. “I am the Fabulous Hudson Hornet, after all.”

Ghost rolled his eyes, good-naturedly.  Hud had started calling himself the “Fabulous Hudson Hornet” after their latest brush with the ATF…when he got separated from the team...yet somehow managed to evade an entire ATF taskforce AND police squads from three, different counties. “But whomever made the recommendation—seein’ as they know me so well—must surely be aware that I was promised three days of uninterrupted R&R once I got back to Thomasville.”  He looked over at Ghost, batted his eyes, and gave him the most tar-eating grin his mouth could manage.  “A race is a MIGHTY big interruption if you ask me...”

The Oldsmobile pursed his lips.  “Are ye gonna do it or not?”

“Hmmmm… I don’t know…” the kid drawled.  His eyes wandered back to the orange Mercury by the bar.   “I could think of a better way to spend my evening…”

“Purse is $3500.”

Hud whipped his front-end around so he could stare at Ghost with wide, blue eyes.  “Are you serious?”

Ghost nodded.  “$750 for first; $500 for second; $350 third through six. Ain't nothin' of note after."

Otto and Flips whistled.  “Damn…”

“That’s some serious bank.,” Cass agreed.

The young Hornet nodded, impressed.  “I can’t say no to that kind of cash…and,” He fixed his mentor with a lopsided grin.  “…both you and Smokey owing me a favor each; feels like I hit the lottery.”

“Hey, I never said…”  Ghost protested.

“Oh, what’s that?”  Hud was already driving to towards the front door, grinning like an idiot.  “I can’t hear you over the sound of my imminent victoryyyyyy. Oooooo…” He made a hasty exit before the Oldsmobile could get a word in, edge-wise.

Cass laughed and nudged Ghost’s fender with the back of her front tire.  “Wow.  Y’all drove into that one.”  She looked at the rest of the gang.  “C’mon boys, let’s go see how this shakes down.”  The rest of the gang cheered and tamped their tires before following Hud out the door, leaving Ghost to idle by himself for a few moments.   

The Oldsmobile sighed, heavily, finished his drink and followed the rest of his team muttering to himself about the “nerve of that kid” and “don’t know where he gets it from."

Since I don't yet have character refs for the Still Chaser gang, here are the ref pics I used for the characters

Cassie

Otto

Flips

Wilkis

Ghost

[misswhateveryouwant]

A list of fanfics I would like to read or write about these two fancy people above:

A private fan dance just for the Inspector

A songfic referring to Joe Cocker‘s „You can leave your hat on“

A murder investigation where both of them can‘t keep their fingers off each other (of course with very embarrassing moments for Dot&Hugh)

A gaudy night where Phryne persuades Jack to take someone home for a threesome

The moment when Phryne tells Aunt Prudence that she‘s in love with Jack

Phryne & Jack giving Dot & Hugh advises for their wedding night

Phryne & Jack going on a holiday

…and that‘s still not all

[catladywriter]

Inotan Fanfic: Inosuke’s White Day Mission - Chapter 2

Bigger and Better

Synopsis: It’s the day before White Day and Tanjirou is busy making chocolates for all the girls who gave him chocolates on Valentine’s Day. Inosuke thinks it’s a stupid tradition. Why should Tanjirou have to return their favours? Shouldn’t Tanjirou be making chocolates for him instead? Of course, he’s not jealous or anything. Definitely not.

Alright, maybe he is a little jealous. After all, he has feelings for Tanjirou and wants to be the one receiving his hand-made chocolates. With a little prodding from Zenitsu and some help from Tanjirou’s family, Inosuke sets out to get the perfect gift to prove that he’s the best candidate for Tanjirou’s White Day chocolates.

Pairing: Inotan (Inosuke x Tanjirou)

Setting: Highschool AU (They’re 17 in here, a couple of years older than their Kimetsu Academy counterpart)

Wordcount: 8500+ words across 4 chapters

Chapters: 1 2 3 4

Status: Complete

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Kie, Tanjirou's mother, was busy attending to a delivery order. Despite that, she flashed Inosuke a warm smile to acknowledge his presence. Nezuko, managing the cashier, greeted him with a friendly wave while munching on a piece of bread. Seated next to her were her younger siblings, Takeo and Hanako, engrossed in their homework.

Inosuke always craved the Kamado bakery's signature chocolate cookies, which he made a beeline for on every visit to the bakery. But today, his eyes spotted the enticing chocolate and sweet sets packaged for White Day, tempting him to take a closer look.

Inosuke's eyes roamed the shelves until they settled on a whimsical round basket. It was decorated with bright yellow sunflowers that stood out amidst the usual red roses and heart-shaped boxes. On closer inspection, it was evident that the sunflowers were made by hand from paper. Each petal and seed head was intricately crafted to resemble freshly picked blooms from a field. The sunflowers were arranged in a circular pattern. Their long green stems coiled and weaved together, forming a natural-looking wreath around the basket's edges. A ribbon wrapped around the basket's midsection, culminating in a large bow adorned with a dainty sunflower charm. As he peered inside, he discovered a treasure trove of chocolates, wrapped in sunflower-patterned paper. The effect was charming and delightful, intending for the recipient to receive a bucket of sunflowers, only to be surprised by the sweet treats hidden within.

To most people, the sunflower basket might have seemed gaudy or childish, but to Inosuke, it was perfect. Roses were sappy, old-fashioned, and had thorns. But sunflowers reminded him of Tanjirou's sunny and bright personality, always there to uplift his mood on gloomy days.

The price tag gave him pause, but with his employee discount, he could make it work. He might have to skip his favorite tempura lunch set for a few days, but it would be worth it to see the look on Tanjirou's face when he received the gift.

Inosuke walked over to the cashier and placed the sunflower basket on the counter in front of Nezuko. She gave him a puzzled look, seemingly surprised that he was considering purchasing it. But Hanako, who had been working on her homework, looked up and squealed in delight, "I decorated it!"

Nezuko patted her little sister's head. "Great job, Hanako! She worked on it all night, and was worried that no one would buy it because it's not the typical rose and heart theme."

Inosuke dug out his wallet. "It's nice. I prefer sunflowers to roses."

"Who's it for?" Hanako's round eyes brimmed with curiosity. 

Inosuke's defensiveness kicked in. "None of your business," he said.

But just then, Kie walked up to them after seeing the delivery person out, and asked the same question. Inosuke felt exasperated. He couldn't exactly tell Tanjirou's mother that it was none of her business, could he? But they didn't ask other customers, so why were they being so nosy with him?

"'None of your business,' he said," Takeo smirked.

Kie gave a pleasant laugh. "He's just shy." She smiled at Inosuke with kind eyes. "It must be for a girl you like then."

"I'm not shy! And it's not for a girl! It's for Kentarou! Uh, I mean Tanjirou." Inosuke hastily corrected himself when Kie tilted her head, looking puzzled.

Kie's eyes widened slightly with surprise at the mention of her son's name. "That's really kind of you, but all the gift sets from our White Day shelf are more elaborate and expensive. They're better suited as romantic gifts. If you're looking for something to express gratitude or friendship, you might want to choose something simpler."

Inosuke looked at her with confusion. Why was this so complicated? He just wanted to give the best chocolate he could buy.

"Maybe you can tell me what you're trying to convey, and I'll help you choose something suitable," Kie suggested.

Inosuke felt a lump form in his throat. He had only wanted to buy some chocolates, not have a conversation about his feelings. Besides, his gut feeling told him that this was the perfect present, and he didn't want anything else. Four pairs of eyes stared up at him, making him feel even more uncomfortable. Inosuke wished that Hanako and Takeo would go back to their homework.

Nezuko came to his rescue. "Inosuke and nii-chan do everything together, and nii-chan always shares his lunch with him and treats him to stuff. That must be why Inosuke wants to get him something in return!"

"I see." Kie smiled. "Tanjirou talks about you a lot, Inosuke. He enjoys spending time with you and doing things for you. So, the feeling is mutual. You don’t have to feel like you owe him anything or get him something special."

"Really?" Inosuke's heart swelled with happiness at the thought of Tanjirou having mutual feelings for him.

Kie nodded. "That’s right! So, I'll exchange this sunflower basket for a simpler packet of chocolate cookies. I'm sure Tanjirou will be happy with anything you get for him."

As Kie made to take the basket back, Hanako and Inosuke yelled "No!" in unison.

“Mum! It’s my first sale!” Hanako protested.

“It’s okay, Hanako-chan. Someone else will buy it. Don't make Inosuke spend more than he should."

Inosuke appreciated Kie's kind gesture. He knew Tanjirou liked doing things for people and giving people things, but he never expected others to go out of their way for him. It must be a trait he learned from his mother, who seemed to feel bad that Inosuke wanted to get such an extravagant present for her son.

“I’m getting it!” Inosuke insisted.

“But…” Kie began.

"Tanjirou's making a ton of chocolate in the home ec room now! I need to find something good enough to trade for it all!"

Nezuko and Kie exchanged perplexed looks.

Inosuke took a deep breath and tried to explain. "White Day's about giving back to those who gave to you, right? I want to trade this chocolate for all of Tanjirou's so he won't give any to anyone else but me." He punctuated his explanation with exaggerated hand gestures, hoping they would get his point across if his words could not.

Kie furrowed her brows, although her face remained kind and patient. “Is there a reason he shouldn’t give chocolates to other people? He got a lot of chocolates on Valentine’s Day so it’s only right that he reciprocates. Takeo’s bringing chocolate cookies to his school tomorrow too.”

Inosuke's mind raced as he tried to come up with a response that would make his argument convincing, but he couldn't refute what Kie said. He reluctantly conceded defeat with a huff.

"Whatever, he can give chocolates to anyone. But I need to give him something bigger and better than the other girls' gifts. I need to show him I'm the best. Got it?"

The Kamados looked at Inosuke in anticipation, waiting for him to elaborate. Inosuke groaned internally. Why were they all so clueless? Tanjirou was oblivious to his feelings, and Nezuko was oblivious to Zenitsu’s aggressive pursuit. It probably ran in the family.

Suddenly, Hanako clapped her hands together and squealed. “You like nii-chan!”

Takeo’s mouth formed a comical ‘O’, and Nezuko put her hands to her mouth. “I knew it! I always thought there was something going on between you two,” she exclaimed.

Inosuke's face flushed red with embarrassment. His attempts to choose a gift for Tanjirou had turned into a bigger ordeal than he had anticipated. He had only wanted to emphasize the importance of getting a worthy present. Why did Hanako have to expose him like that?

"N-No, you've got it all wrong!" he stammered.

But Kie's smile broadened as enlightenment dawned on her face. "So you're getting this because you want to confess your feelings for him!"

“Of-of course not! As I said, you’ve got it all wrong! Why would I do a dumb thing like that!” Inosuke sputtered, feeling his face and ears go hot. He didn't want to confess his feelings, he just wanted to prove himself to Tanjirou.

"Liking Tanjirou isn't anything to be embarrassed about," Kie said, stifling a chuckle as she patted his shoulder.

"Our nii-chan is popular, you know," Takeo chimed in, sounding offended.

Inosuke's hands waved frantically as he stumbled over his words. "N-no, that's not what I meant!" he stuttered, flustered at how his response came across as disparaging Tanjirou. "Actually, I- I think Tanjirou's amazing. He's smart, always knows what to do, and he's nice to everyone. Whenever I'm with him, I feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I just wish he would treat me more special..." His voice trailed off as he struggled to express his feelings.

A smile of comprehension played on Kie's lips. "Then you'll have to let him know. Tanjirou isn't the brightest when it comes to feelings, but as his mother, I can tell that you're special to him."

Inosuke felt a sense of pride swelling within him. Of course, he's special to Tanjirou. He's the strongest, the bravest, the smartest and the most talented. A warm feeling spread from his chest through his body, and he felt increasingly confident. There was no doubt in his mind that Tanjirou would reciprocate his feelings, no matter how oblivious he might be to them at the moment. All he had to do was help Tanjirou discover those feelings. A grin spread across his face, replacing his anxious expression.

Kie beamed. "Let's not hold Inosuke up! Give him the family discount, Nezuko!"

Nezuko grinned and tapped away at the cash machine, her fingers moving deftly over the buttons. A customer needed assistance and Kie excused herself to help.

Takeo and Hanako had their backs turned to him while they bagged his purchase. As Inosuke waited, he noticed they were whispering busily to each other while scribbling something. He was too exhausted to care about what they were up to. Confessing his feelings about Tanjirou had been nerve-wracking and draining. He was relieved to be left alone.

"Good luck!" the three siblings chorused as they handed him his purchase in a paper bag.

"You got this!" Nezuko pumped her fists and gave him a nod of encouragement.

Inosuke muttered his thanks and turned to leave, only to find a small queue of people behind him. He groaned inwardly, wondering how long they had been listening to his halting love confession. A girl in the same high school uniform who had been behind him gave him a sheepish grin. He couldn't wait to get out of there.

At least the family discount turned out to be quite significant, he thought as he gave his purchase a squeeze. He wouldn't have to sacrifice too many tempura lunch sets.

He checked his phone and saw that he had several missed calls and messages from Tanjirou. He had completely forgotten that he had stormed off earlier from the home economics room. Inosuke felt ashamed at the memory as he opened the messages. Tanjirou had sent a few apologies, although it was clear that he didn't seem to know what he was apologizing for. After all, he had done nothing to warrant an apology in the first place. The revelation made Inosuke feel even more guilty.

The latest message, sent 15 minutes ago, was a photo of several pieces of chocolate shaped like wild boars. Accompanying it was the caption, "I made these for you, they’ll melt if you don't come back!" Inosuke couldn't help but grin from ear to ear at Tanjirou's adorable creations. His fingers flew across his phone screen. "Coming through!" he texted, before breaking into a sprint to make up for lost time. He cradled his purchase in his arms as he ran, the paper bag a comforting presence against his chest.

Chapter 3

「 ✦ Please support your creators by reblogging ✦ 」

Author's Notes: I'm so happy to have the Kamado family in my fic, alive and well, and having cute and happy interactions with Inosuke. Poor Inosuke, gift-shopping is stressful enough without having half of his crush's family prying! I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Now what are Hanako and Takeo up to? Will their sneaky antics hinder or help his confession? Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed my fic, it’d really make my day if you could drop a like, reblog, and/or comment to let me know! This story is also published on AO3 where you can comment anonymously! Although I mostly write for myself, your encouragement keeps me motivated to post and share my work.

[lowkeyed1]

Six Sentence... Monday?

look idk what you want from me. my sense of time is sketchy at best. you get what you get! you can have some bonus sentences since i'm a day late, call that interest :) from my current unpublished WIP, 'What a Prince and Lover Ought to Be', a willow 2022 fanfic about airk stepping in to marry graydon in kit's place. ----- Graydon sighed, looking in the mirror. He was ridiculously overdressed. As if last night’s get-up with all the cords and braid and whatever wasn’t bad enough, for his wedding he had to wear a cape? And not any normal cape, but a floor-length cape! And a ceremonial crown that was twice as gaudy and twice as heavy as the one he wore last night. And a fucking scepter, really? He felt like a clown. Why not add some bells? Might as well put all this shit on a dressmaker’s dummy and marry that off instead. Kit would probably be more willing to have the dummy in her wedding bed.

[titles-and-pretense]

When I was younger, I fell in love with the 10th Pokemon movie, The Rise of Darkrai. Me being a depressed, lonely, undiagnosed autistic teenager. And that kickstarted my love for Darkrai and its innate ability to cause the ones around it nightmares.

It is very shy, and this ability helps it stay undiscovered and safe. But it also makes others distrustful and wary around it. In the movie, a young girl finds Darkrai injured in a garden, being attacked by other Pokemon. We don't know how it got injured (it is far too powerful to have been hurt by the other Pokemon there) or why it was here, but the girl, Alicia, immediately takes care of Darkrai and tells him that it can forever stay in the garden, because the garden is meant for all Pokemon.

She plays Darkrai and the others a song on her flute and they calm down. The others are able to rest under the tree where she plays, as Darkrai watches from the shadows that it sinks into, so as not to give them nightmares. That song is later played by Alicia's granddaughter and is used to save the town from raging legendaries.

Darkrai stays loyal to Alicia and her descendants since. Just how I stayed loyal to the first person (apart from perhaps my father) who saw me as I was and loved me for it.

The towers that are in this movie, which are equipped with hundreds of tuned bells, which are later used to play the song to the raging legendaries, are inspired by Antonio Gaudi's famous Sagrada Familia. Ever since I watched that movie, I have wanted to visit it, because it looks magical to me. And finally, this week, we are going to Barcelona for a weekend and my dream will come true.

In preparation, I watched The Rise of Darkrai another time. It is a cute little movie, very simple children's story. Darkrai is still a stunning-looking Pokemon - I certainly am proud of it being my favourite. I even wrote fanfics about it back in the day.

But the music carries the movie.

The song is called Oracíon (Prayer). If you're reading this, do look it up, it is beautiful.

I hope I get to hum it, next week, in the place where it belongs. And think of lonely Darkrai, who was fortunate to find the one person who would see it as a friend. Just how I was fortunate.

[leftoverdinosaurbones]

Chapter 6: The Heist

Series: F!Reader (Dark Urge), Spawn Astarion, Haarlep, Raphael - NSFW (minors DNI)

[Major Spoilers - Set post BG3]

***

Here is the next chapter of the fanfic I've been working on!

You can start with Chapter 1 here on tumblr or read through everything here on Ao3.

Content Warning: Gore

Summary: You find yourself in the midst of Zariel's foreboding Fortress. Now, all you need to do is find the dungeon, rescue Wyll and Karlach, and get out of there. Sounds easy enough?

Chapter 6: The Heist

You are surrounded.

Sets of burning eyes bore holes into you…

No, you realize as an Imp soars right over your head. They are looking through you, past you.

You let out your breath in a sigh of relief. You can blend in - for now. You adjust the helm of your helmet as you roll your shoulders up and back, willing yourself to appear as just another member of Zariel’s ranks.

You begin to march down the hallway with an air of false confidence, attempting to match the gait of the Erinye ahead of you. They flank one of the few mortals you can see in this hallway. Imps continued to flap their wings overhead, rushing to carry out their orders (lest they face the wrath of their superior).

The hallway walls were a deep red (how original), adorned with several large paintings, similar to the House of Hope. However, that is where the similarities stopped. While the art in the House of Hope had its very valid criticisms (self-centered, perhaps on the edge of being a bit gaudy) but this… these paintings were something else entirely.

Each frame depicted a new, obscene horror. Tortured faces twisted in agony over and over again. And in each one, Zariel’s face was there. Sometimes causing the pain. Sometimes just watching. But always there, always smiling.

You clenched your back muscles to stifle a shiver that threatened to wrack your body.

In the near distance, you can see an opening at the end of the hallway. You start to quicken your steps - you recognize this space from Dammon’s map.

You step through the yawning mouth of the hallway into the large room. Hundreds more pour into the room through several converging hallways, filling the room with a buzz of impatient energy. Something is brewing here, but you don’t have time to figure out what it is.

A massive statue of Zariel commands from the center of the room, as if it erupted from the very ground. She strikes a powerful pose, with her chin pointed up and her eyes fixed towards the sky. Under her boot, she is crushing bodies made of stone…no…wait…

You stumble over your feet, drawing some side-eyed looks from a few people around you. The bodies being crushed under Zariel’s stone boot are real. Some of them are even still alive - you can see the slight movement of a fiend’s chest, taking shallow, pained breaths through their crushed ribs.

The boot groans and shifts just an inch closer to the ground, coaxing watery screams from the unfortunate few that were still alive.

You shut your eyes briefly to push away the gruesome sight as your feet continue to propel you forward.

At least now you know where the dungeon is.

***

You approach a large, wooden door with a well-worn handle. Not wanting to raise suspicion by hesitating, you push open the door and lock it behind you. You run with Astarion down the hall, feet falling lightly on the ground.

Excitement and anticipation feed into your muscles as you check each cell for signs of your companions. You see many unfortunate, trapped souls, but none of them are your friends.

Finally, you see a brighter light at the end of the hallway, shining into a clearing. As you race closer, some contraptions come into view. You see a table with straps on each corner, a small tray with various sharp implements, an upright post with hanging straps…

You glance down at your hands. They are intimately familiar with these tools, and what they can deliver. You run your fingers along the stitching of your shirt, in an attempt to ground yourself, and drag your mind away from the past.

As you cross the threshold into the torture chamber, you begin to draw the hammer in anticipation. Your eyes run along the massive expanse of a room until they land on some shackles affixed to the wall. Following the chain, you see Wyll, standing with each of his arms restrained and extended tightly.

“Wyll?” You whisper.

His eyes raise to meet yours and flick rapidly through a series of emotions: shocked, thrilled, and then…scared?

“Soldier! Watch out!”

A weak voice tries to gasp out a warning to you from overhead. You glance up at the familiar sound and see Karlach, hanging from the ceiling in a cramped metal cage. Her wrists are clasped together and chained to a tight metal collar around her neck, squeezing her vocal cords.

How hard she must have fought to be in such a prison.

As your eyes shift back to Wyll, someone else steps in front of you to block your path.

“Hmm now someone is being quite naughty.”

Mizora stands just inches away from you, wings outstretched and burning hot. You can feel the intensity of her anger in her simmering presence, though her voice doesn’t yet give it away.

“And just how did you get in here?” she asked, her words dripping with malice.

Mizora grips your chin, her pupils blow. Her claws pierce your skin as she forces you to look at her.

“If you don’t want to tell me now, we have some delightful ways of loosening your tongue.”

You follow her gaze around the room, which is now filled with a small gang of her fiends. A few Imps hover around, giggling at your predicament while several Erinyes and Cambions flash their weapons at you with vicious smiles.

With Mizora’s touch, your presence is made fully aware to Zariel. Your mind is flooded with grotesque scenes. You see Astarion, his skin carefully, deliberately flayed from his body before he is roasted on a pyre. The screams ripping from his throat sound as real as the vision feels in your head.

Mizora pulls away her hand. She mutes the visions in your mind but only slightly - she intends to make you fully regret your decision to come here.

You steel in response to her threats, blinking away the tears brimming in your eyes. You summon up your strength as your oath bolsters your resolve to your very core - even in the face of a devil.

“Enough, Mizora. You have taken enough from us, from Wyll, from Karlach.”

You step fully into her space, your skin feeling the blazing heat from hers. But you are unwilling to relent to her pressure as your own unmitigated rage urges you forward.

“You will not threaten me again.”

“Oh,” Mizora purrs. “I can see now. I can smell him on you.” She sneers at you, disgusted.

“You entered in another contract with him?” She let out a dark laugh, too long. “If I had known how easy you were, then perhaps I should have brought you here instead. It wouldn’t have taken me very long to break you at all.” Mizora runs her finger down the front of your armor.

“Meanwhile, these two souls have been here, enjoying my thoughtful care for months before you sauntered over here to try to save them. How long did it take for you to give in, hmm? What did it take for you to make a deal?” Mizora brought one hand to her cheek to feign being deep in thought.

“Would you give me your soul for just one quick fuck?” She spit the last few words out through her teeth. “I’m sure you would,” she whispered, her voice thick with seduction. “I can smell the desperation, the need on you. How you could debase yourself for such a lowly fiend, I will never understand.”

Behind you, Astarion growled deep in his chest. He was angry, but you could also sense his hurt, raw and unhealed from your recent betrayal.

“What is this, I sense? Some trouble among the lovers?” Mizora let out a sharp giggle. “That will make this even more enjoyable.” She flicked out her tongue to lick her lips as her fiends began to chatter with excitement.

You take a step back from Mizora to give yourself space to wind up the hammer. Astarion shifts slightly to press his back against yours, looking outward to the circle of fiends that were chomping at the bit.

Astarion subtly reaches his fingers back behind him to drag briefly along your hip - one quick passing graze before we fight. We are desperately outnumbered, even with the advantages offered by Raphael. You curse him under your breath.

Suddenly, you hear an agonizing scream echo throughout the very foundation of the Fortress. Mizora freezes, the color draining from her face.

“You foul, wretched little worms! I should have known you were up to something the moment I smelled him on your skin,” she bellows in a rage. But you hear something new this time - her outburst is tinged with fear.

Mizora knew that Zariel’s forces were dwindling, and it was likely that Wyll and Karlach were captured to bolster their forces. With their skills, they could feasibly change the course of battle.

Mizora opens to mouth to speak, then quickly closes it again. She shifts her eyes upward, fear twisting her face for just a moment before she looks back at you.

“This is beneath me. I don’t care about you, or the filth that fills these cages.”

In a puff of black smoke, she vanishes with the rest of her fiends. You can’t believe your luck - Raphael really did come through. You smile to yourself before lifting the Orphic Hammer to smash Wyll’s chains.

Wyll smiles wider than his face as he pulls you into a tight hug.

“Fuck yeah! That’s my girl.” You pull away to make sure this is really Wyll.

“Oh yeah, sorry - I’ve been traveling with Karlach for so that I’ve started to pick up on her bad habits.” He let out a light laugh as he gathered Astarion into an embrace.

You searched the room to find the chain holding Karlach's cage, and smashed it with the hammer. Wyll and Astarion gently guided the cage to the ground, finally releasing Karlach. Her bracers clatter to the ground. She steps towards you, and envelopes you in a tender hug. You can hear the tears gently roll out of her eyes as they hiss and evaporate off her hot skin.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you for rescuing us.” You hold her for a while, your hands rubbing soothing circles on her back.

Once she releases you, you finally turn to Astarion and press your forehead into his. Relief.

Read the next chapter here.

[theboarsbride]

Also!

Which character has changed the most since your first draft of them, and how?

(God sorry for sending so many questions)

(OMG NO WORRIES I LOVE THESE KINDS OF QUESTIONS PLS KEEP SENDING THEM-)

But OH MY GOD!!!!! E D G A R. Edgar from The Monster and the Butterfly is the character that I feel has changed the most since the very VERY first draft of this story. Both in design and character! He and Sophie are some of my oldest OCs, with their story existing in some way shape or form for about 10 years when I first started writing in middle school!

Be prepared for a long post because omg I love rambling about the evolution of characters and stories, I hope you don't mind!!

Also I got excited about this ask so I included a rough visual of Edgar's previous designs:

Starting in 2014 he (or rather she) was Ophelia, a witch that cursed herself with a rogue spell, and her 'beauty' counterpart was a boy named Samael that was sacrificed to her by a witch cult lol. It was very cringe, very much 2010s Wattpad content (i mean...the story literally started with Samael waking up to his alarm and mom waking him up for school)... and I distinctly remember calling this story "Beautiful Beast" because I thought I was being very original with a female beast x male beauty story lmfao (i was not)

Then around that same time I discovered The Phantom of the Opera...meaning that Edgar was going to become a poorly done carbon copy of the Phantom lol. He was like this for about a year, and across the board he was a dragon shifter for some reason? I cannot remember why lol...and also I remember in these versions of the story he had a brother named Lazarus who's FC was Robby Benson, and his 'beauty' in this version was named Kristine and she had a son (???????). Again, very 2010s Wattpad cringe, very much plagiarized Phantom X Christine fanfic (i'm very sorry)

It was around 2016 when I discovered the movie Panna a Netvor/Beauty and the Beast (1979), a very gaudy, atmospheric Gothic horror retelling of the fairytale from then Czechoslovakia. I was OBSESSED With it (and still am!) so I wanted to create a bird-like beast like in the movie. At the same time I was also obsessed with stuff like Black Butler and Penny Dreadful so I was inspired to change this story set in Victorian Era London. But this version of Edgar was VERY horrible and very much made it a tragic horror story rather than Gothic romance. He was the one behind the Jack the Ripper murders, drinking the blood of woman to satiate himself, and had very poorly-written schizophrenia as he was 'haunted' by his dead mom. I did away with this idea around the time of the pandemic because I found the idea insensitive and overly-edgy. But nonetheless this was where TMATB as we know it came to be: Gothic romantic setting in late Victorian era London with a bird-themed beast and a main female character who was into gardening in some capacity.

Then story started becoming more romantic, Edgar went through another design change to now be a fleshy vulture-thing, and was now becoming a sympathetic, gentle beast who loved reading and ornithology. Still I wasn't satisfied in terms of his design tho.

So then around 2020, after wanting inspiration to create a more humanoid-looking beast (and getting such inspiration from Brad Dourif as Grima Wormtongue in the LOTR films and Danny DeVito as The Penguin in Tim Burton's Batman Returns), Edgar's design became this:

While remaining a romantic hero, his role has become the more feminine one in the romance: he is the one needing saving, he is the one often in distress, he reads romances often intended for women, he's a very passive romantic role, etc. Also, his character is now heavily inspired by historical figures like Joseph Merrick (a.k.a. The Elephant Man) and Quasimodo from Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, so now he's a gentle, well-read, kind-hearted, traumatized emotional basket case we all love today!

I hope this is a satisfactory answer omg so sorry for the long ramble of a post!!