#glad other people thought a bit like me with familial gt

[awkwardgtace]

Secrets Exposed

Day 31 Free Day. Well I am insane so here's the first one of today's stories. thank you @skmayor for giving me an idea that I wound up wanting to do as both familial gt and romantic gt!

Rhys has a secret his foster parents just saw so he runs

Secrets Exposed

Rhys had to run. If he didn’t get away they’d find out too much and they couldn’t find out any more. His body had started to burn long before he got to the woods. He was going to lose it soon. It would leave everyone upset. No one could know what he really was. They almost caught him, well they did catch him. So he had to get away.

“Rhys stop!” Vitus called. Usually he would stop, but he couldn’t. They would hurt him now. Everyone always hurt him, he didn’t belong. He never belonged.

“Rhys! Let’s go home!” Dabria yelled. She sounded wrong. Her voice was wrong… It was too close. He had to move faster.

Thunder crashed from the sky. The storm would make it easier to lose them. He’d hide, this wasn’t the first time anyone saw exactly what he could do. It was the first time in a foster family. Up until now the other foster parents would just complain about his behavior. Too destructive and always disappearing. It wasn’t on purpose. Sometimes they just made him so angry and then he’d get big… Or they’d make him so scared and he’d get too small.

A branch brushing against his head made him gasp. He was too big again. If he didn’t get smaller it would leave too much of a trail. It was hard to calm himself enough to get small. They would find him, they might hurt him. It almost felt like he’d found a family this time. Brothers, a sister, and parents…

“Rhys, please!” Dabria called again. 

Rhys tripped over his own feet. A scream escaped him as he fell to the ground. It should have been a quick fall and back on his feet, but his power decided to work again. He fell and fell and fell until he landed heavily on the cold dirt. It was hard to push himself up, but when he did he saw the same tree he’d touched towering far overhead. Tears fell from his eyes, he’d been doing so good too.

“Rhys!” Vitus’s shout vibrated his body. If they found him now how would they act? Kill him? Someone else tried once, but they failed. He was lucky it had already hit a point where people thought they were insane. He was just put in the foster system. Thankfully all their claims were ignored.

It felt like a miracle when he was sent to Vitus and Dabria. They introduced him to Felix and Ryder right away… The three of them would be brothers. Then Delphia… She was older than him, but acted like he was the big sibling. It was almost like she knew there was something about him that was different. She would just smile and check on him. Ask him if he was ok, it made him feel wanted.

Another crash of thunder deafened him. Using all the strength he had he pulled himself towards some tree roots. Things were going so well. He fought with Felix sometimes, but it was always fine in the end. Felix even helped him fix clothes he ripped… He helped without asking anything. Even the times it was clearly a tear that didn’t make sense.

More thunder, Rhys whimpered. Ryder would play games with him. Video games and anything he came up with. It was so fun. Ryder had a bunch of fake weapons for them to use, he made a lot of them too. Felix was going to help them make costumes to go to events…

A crash that was too close, one that couldn’t be thunder. Rhys tried to disappear into the tree. Dabria would have him paint with her. They’d spy on the others sometimes too. The best were the times she’d let him grab a snack before dinner. Usually it was when he’d grown that day, it always left him so hungry. Dabria didn’t even care, she would just smile and make him promise not to tell.

A series of crashes that surrounded where he was, they couldn’t find him. Vitus was nice too. At first Rhys thought he was terrifying. Eyes that saw too much, Delphia had them too. It was wrong though, Vitus was nice. He’d help when Rhys struggled with homework, and that was a lot. The few times he broke something Vitus would fix it before anyone else found out.

“Rhys!” Dabria and Vitus called his name at the same time. The loud voices were right around him… Right above him. They’d kill him if they found him. He was small and vulnerable. He held his breath to try and stay hidden. Not a single sound. It would be fine.

“Damn it,” Vitus growled. Rhys almost yelped when a loud slam shook the tree he hid beneath. “Where did he go? His steps stopped here.”

“We’ll find him,” Dabria’s voice was still wrong. Almost… sad. “We’re not letting him run away.”

Rhys hugged himself. They were going to hurt him. If only he hadn’t gotten comfortable. Everyone was supposed to be out. He wasn’t supposed to have anyone else in the house. He wasn’t even supposed to be home. It was the perfect time to just let go a bit, get a little bigger. Just big enough that nothing would break, but he wouldn’t feel tense. It would be obvious when anyone got home and he’d be the right size again.

Another set of crashes near him. Muffled voices and someone running off. Maybe he could wait them out. He closed his eyes. They weren’t supposed to be home. It should have been fine for him to sneak out of his room for a snack. Size didn’t matter when no one was home. He hadn’t calmed down since they said his name… since they saw him.

“Where did you go…?” Vitus mumbled again. A new crash as the man sat on the ground nearby. That didn’t make sense. They should keep looking. If he was alone he could try to get bigger and run. Avoid being big enough to leave tracks… He was stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

A new bang of thunder caught him off guard. A shout left him and the world stopped. Maybe Vitus didn’t hear. Maybe… maybe the thunder was too loud or they’d think it was impossible. He was supposed to be big, not small. A new crash, a crash way too close landed near him. A new scream came out. There wasn’t an escape. Not when the crash came from the hand near him.

Rhys curled up as small as he could. The hand would come in and grab him. Squeeze him until he cried. Then, if he was lucky, he’d get a chance to get big again. A chance to run. Heat from the hand came close, he couldn’t stop his tears as fingers started to close in. If only he wasn’t so stupid.

“Rhys?” Vitus’s voice was quiet. Rhys knew it was a lie. If he answered, the massive fingers would close around him. Squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until- “Are you hurt?”

It had to be a trick. He wouldn’t be stupid again. They would hurt him, kill him… He lost the first family he thought he had in a long time. All because he decided to be home when he let go for once. He should have just run the first time someone caught on. It would be smarter to give up on living with normal people.

“Can you move? Should I grab you? I don’t want to hurt you more if you got hurt.” The steady rumble was cruel. He heard how angry the man was before. The tree shook from his anger. It didn’t matter. A sigh actually blew over him and convinced Rhys to look at the human near him.

It wasn’t what he expected. The green eyes were filled with worry. The white hair had come undone and fell into the mud. Rhys didn’t even realize the rain started. Slowly he looked up, the fingers weren’t prepared to grab him. They gave him a shelter of pale skin as rain pelted it. Keeping him dry.

“Rhys, what’s going on? You can talk to us,” another rumble of the commanding voice. It couldn’t be real. Still Rhys was going to be stupid again. He sat up, only noticing then how bad his ankle hurt. The big worried eyes didn’t move. “I can get Dabria back here. I know she’s easier to talk to.”

It was stupid. Rhys was stupid. Yet he shook his head. He stared at the worried eyes for too long. Nothing changed. Even as the mud grew worse, sticking to the clothes and hair of the normal sized man. It was stupid. Rhys was stupid. Yet he put a single hand on the fingers around him. Yet he pointed to his ankle… Yet he was going to let a giant hand hold him.

“My ankle hurts,” he said. Green eyes went wide. He tensed. It was stupid. Rhys was stupid. He’d get hurt. The one who tried to kill him was nice. Talked him out of a hiding spot. Acted concerned. Then they hurt him. Called him a monster. He’d been lucky.

“Can you walk?” Vitus’s eyes stayed kind. Rhys shook his head. Narrowed eyes before they disappeared. A hand replaced them. It would be like he expected. Rhys was stupid. The hand stopped near him. Warmth radiating, warmth he was tempted to reach for. “Can you climb on my hand? Do I need to pick you up?”

Rhys tried to stand on his feet, falling instead. His ankle hurt too much. He stared at the pale flesh… As big as trees and yet offering a way out. He shouldn’t trust this. It was stupid. If he followed they’d turn on him. He’d be hated, ousted. That was if they didn’t kill him. Yet…

“I can’t stand!” he shouted. It came out like a whine. It wasn’t how he meant it. Yet the hand in front of him was pulled away. The eyes came back to stare at him. His shelter from the rain moved closer. It could crush him.

Instead the fingers currently bigger than him slowly wrapped around him. Gently moving to encompass his tiny form. The warmth was nice and that only made it worse. The pain that would follow would be worse. Except… the pain didn’t come. The fingers stopped, holding him loosely against the palm. That made even less sense.

“I’m going to pick you up, let me know if I’m hurting you.” 

The voice vibrated Rhys again. The fingers around him pushed the strength of the voice into him. He hated this. It was a lie, even if he screamed the gigantic fingers would only get tighter. The loose hold grew tight enough he was pressed firmly into the palm. Slowly, maybe even carefully, the hand turned on its side. Rhys was forced onto a palm through gravity and he wished it worked the other way around.

All the work he put in keeping his tears back died. It didn’t matter. He was too scared to get big. They’d get to do whatever they wanted to him now. As Vitus pulled his hand back Rhys begged for things to move quickly. He expected the rain to pelt his face, but instead a shadow that radiated warmth came from above. Vitus was still protecting him.

It didn’t change anything as the hand holding him left the ground. He was brought up and up and up until the green eyes were in front of him. He couldn’t stop himself from shaking as the fingers holding him down moved. It was almost instinct as he sat up, matching the movement of the uncurling fingers.

“I’m glad we found you,” Vitus said. The expression on his face was soft, but Rhys wouldn’t trust that. “Once we get home and take care of your ankle we’re going to have to talk about this.”

“Wh-what do you mean?” Rhys was trying to sound confident. He was good at lying, pretending it was fine. Acting like he was in pain from a stunt and not being one size too long.

“I mean,” the hand moved until he was in front of a broad chest, “you shouldn’t have felt like you had to run for being different. We’ll figure this out.”

Rhys was moved slowly towards the chest. Plenty of time to try and get away or call out for this to stop. Instead he let it happen. Let Vitus press him over a giant pounding heart. Let his tears fall more as he grabbed the cloth of the man’s shirt. As he buried his face against the giant and wailed. Even if it turned out he was stupid, this would be worth it.

“Vitus!” Dabria’s shout reminded him there wasn’t just one normal person looking for him. He started shaking all over again as the heavy crashes of footsteps came close. When the rain pelting down disappeared, hitting what sounded like an umbrella. “It didn’t look like he’d gone home. What if he doesn’t come back all night? I don’t want to send a search party out if he was scared of us seeing him. I don’t want our son getting hurt out here.”

“It’s ok, he’s right here,” Vitus’s hand moved a bit after the rumble of his voice. Rhys looked up to see ruby eyes staring down at him, shining. Ebony hair sticking out of the tight ponytail it was tied in, that it wasn’t in when he ran. This was stupid. He was going to be killed for sure.

Hands with fingers just as big as the ones around him slipped around him. He was pulled away from the shirt he clung to. The little bit of comfort he found disappeared. It was better, he shouldn’t let himself hope. He tried not to let his fear win as he was brought up and up to her standing height. As she stopped with him near her mouth. As a host of fears he never considered entered his mind… ones that came from movies he saw living with them.

The hand holding him moved and pressed him firmly to her cheek. Salty water landed on him and made him sputter. It tasted weird. He was rocked as a sob escaped Dabria. The pressure behind the hand holding him to her face increased. It scared him, but it wasn’t painful. It was warm and soft… and something he didn’t think could be real.

“Rhys I was so worried,” she sobbed. “I thought you might get hurt out here on your own.”

“I-I… My-my ankle is-” he tried and failed to say. The hand holding him pulled him away from her and in front of her eyes. 

“Your ankle!? What happened? Did you fall? Was it us? I’m so sorry you thought you couldn’t be honest with us. We’ll talk about this when we get home and I’ll make those cookies you love too.”

“I…”

“Dabria,” Vitus’s voice was firm. Too firm. Rhys would be killed now. Dabria’s hands moved again until he was dropped back on Vitus’s palms. He’d die… “Rhys… can you go back to a bigger size? I don’t want us hurting you on the walk back.”

“Why…”

Dabria’s finger tapped his head. He looked at her, finding a warm smile. “Because you’re our son, of course we want you safe.”

“Aren’t you mad at me? I was… I’m a monster.” Fingers curled up around him and he was forced to stare into green eyes.

“No, you aren’t. You’re a child with some special skills. That’s all.”

Rhys’s lip started to quiver. He wouldn’t cry. They had to be lying. The nice room they gave him. The smiles and laughs. The fun adventures. All if it had to be a lie. He wasn’t what they wanted and now they’d make him go away. Just like everyone else. They’d find out the times he broke things were him being big. The times they couldn’t find him were when he was small.

“Liar!” he shouted. The tears fell. He couldn't hold it back anymore. Everyone who found out about him hated him. This couldn’t be the truth. They would hate him and yell at him and send him off again. The anger he was able to build up let him get a bit bigger. Big enough he was taller than the fingers around him.

“Rhys, why would he lie to you? We haven’t done anything to hurt you, have we?” Dabria asked. Her hand came close and, as much as he didn’t mean to, flinched away from her. He got smaller again too. “Oh, sweetheart…”

“Rhys, has someone hurt you because you can do these things?” The fingers curled up, he got smaller again. He was back to smaller than when Vitus picked him up. They’d hurt him soon. The niceness wouldn’t last as they realized what he could do. Despite that, despite his past, he  wanted to trust them. They were so nice before so… so maybe it wouldn’t change.

“The one before you… they said I’m a monster, because I am a mon-” Two massive fingers covered his face. He’d grown again without noticing it. Enough that they only met half his face, his eyes were left clear. Clear enough for two sets of eyes, both burning with anger, to stare into his own.

“Don’t finish that sentence Rhys.” Tears dripped from the ruby eyes. “You aren’t a monster just because you can do something special. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“We will talk more at home. Once you’ve gotten cleaned up and we’ve taken care of our son’s ankle.” Steely green eyes. “Are you comfortable at this size?” Rhys nodded. “Alright, then let’s head home.”

The hand he was on moved down to Vitus’s chest again. He wasn’t small enough for the fingers to cover him anymore, but leaning against the man’s chest felt nice. He’d forgotten about the rain until Dabria held the umbrella over them. At some point the two had moved beneath the branches. That was probably why Vitus called her name. The steps they took reached him on the hand. It was strange. Rhys had felt steps on the ground before, but not when someone let him lean against them like this. It reassured him.

The entire time Dabria kept glancing his way. It felt nice. Like someone wasn’t seeing anything wrong with him. For the first time in his life he kind of liked being small. Held by people who cared about him… People who saw him as their son… Held safely by parents who wanted him.

The steady beat mixed with steps had his own heart calming down. It started not to feel stupid to try and trust them. Maybe this time it would really be ok. Maybe they could be trusted. He could have parents, brothers, and a sister. Maybe Felix would keep helping fix the clothes that ripped when he changed sizes at the wrong time. Maybe Ryder would keep playing games and they could use his size for them too. Maybe Delphia would actually accept what he was and let him be a big brother in the only way he could.

“Hey Vitus!” someone called just as they left the woods. Rhys tensed, he didn’t want anyone to know about him. About what he could do. Would the people he wanted to trust show him off? Someone else tried to do that once too…

The nerves died when Vitus moved. Turning to face Dabria who had her own palm near her heart. Rhys was nudged off one hand onto the other without a word. He scrambled to face Vitus, curious about the look he shared with Dabria. Then the green eyes were at his level. Warmth was in them.

“I’ll be right back,” Vitus mumbled. 

Before Rhys could think the man’s face came closer and he got a kiss on the top of his head. Vitus had done that to Felix, Ryder, and Delphia a lot. Something Rhys wondered about for a while, but he thought wasn’t for him. He wasn’t important enough to have that bond. Another hand came up to hold him against Dabria as Vitus walked away.

“You know, he’s been wanting to do that,” she whispered. Her voice didn’t vibrate like Vitus's; it was something softer, cooler. “He was worried you weren’t happy with us. You always seemed so nervous. Like you didn’t feel comfortable in your own skin. Maybe he was right. I should probably listen to him more.”

Dabria laughed as they waited for Vitus. They were worried about him. Chased after him when he ran in fear. Kept asking if they were hurting him. It was nothing like he expected. He was positive that if this family learned about him they’d never accept him. They were proving him wrong. 

Vitus was walking back already. Rhys couldn’t tell how much time had passed. Exhaustion hit him, too many size changes too quickly. When Vitus got back he took the umbrella. A soft smile sent down at him as they kept walking. He was so tired.

“...can I…” he started. The idea was stupid. He couldn’t ask them that. They would change how they were treating him.

“What is it? You can ask us anything,” Dabria’s words were so kind. Too kind to doubt.

“Can I call you mom and dad?”

Vitus stopped walking and Dabria followed. Rhys was nervous as the tall man crouched a bit to look at him. A hand came close. He snapped his eyes shut, but a single finger rubbed his head instead.

“Of course you can,” Vitus mumbled. Rhys reached up to grab the finger and hug it to his chest.

“...I’m really tired, can I…” Rhys took a deep breath, “Can I sleep with you tonight? I don’t think I can get big again… I get scared on a bed alone when I’m small.”

Vitus stood back up. Rhys watched his parents, his first parents who liked what he did, share a look. Then smile down at him. It was followed by the two massive heads nodding. He knew tears fell again as soon as their expressions changed. He knew he didn’t need to cry, but this wasn’t how he ever expected this to go. They don’t mind, they still care, and they want him around.

“Thank you,” Rhys mumbled, turning to bury his face in  his mother’s shirt. For the first time in his life he fell asleep around other people without fear he’d wake up the wrong size. His parents didn’t seem to think he had one.

[neonthewrite]

Shoot the Breeze

I have another GT July Prompt ready! The next up was "Secret" and I'm not sure why, but I really wanted to return to our little buddy borrower Chase. Takes place directly after Lies Under Duress. Can he actually keep a secret? Let's find out ...

Forbidden Fruit Snacks | Fried Potatoes | Minnie’s Supply Run | Nailed It | Orange You Glad | Almost a Thief | Lies Under Duress

~~~

Chase put a hand over his chest, outwardly mimicking a look of offense. Inwardly, he felt like the motion was necessary to keep his heart from fluttering right out of his ribcage. Even up on the table, even with the human sitting down, he felt so small. He’d been small for so long, but it didn’t hit him quite as hard as when he was forced to compare himself to a human. He hardly believed, in moments like this, that he used to be on the same scale. The disparity had long ago prompted him and Minnie to stop calling themselves human.

They were a world apart now. The living wall before him was proof enough of that.

Against such a foe, Chase’s only weapon was talk. “Sneaking around? You make it sound so, I dunno, nefarious or something. I just wanted an orange, man. You saw how big they are to me, you saying you wouldn’t go for a, a giant orange if you had a shot at one?”

At least the guy was easy to read. His brows knitted in clear bemusement and he even had to fight a smile that tried to come over his face. That meant he wasn’t mad, at least. “Dude, you … you keep avoiding my questions. Why?”

“Well, I don’t wanna answer ‘em,” Chase shot back, for his part letting a grin settle on his face. “If I really wanted to answer a bunch of ‘Oh my god what are you’ and ‘Why do you have my stuff’ questions I’d have let some giant someone catch me sooner.”

He saw on the human’s face that he had given something away. An instant later, the man leaned forward slightly, looking closer at him, appraising something. “So you’ve been doing this a while? Stealing stuff and hiding out right in my apartment?”

Chase shrank back a bit, shoulders inching up to his ears and stomach quivering. “Wh-who said that?” he countered, quieter but trying to keep up his relaxed tone. “You’re making the assumptions anyone would make, that’s all. Not my fault people are predictable. So I tend to avoid … everyone.”

The human’s mouth twisted into a thoughtful frown. Then he leaned back in his chair again. One hand absently drummed at the edge of the table‒Chase felt every tap where he sat‒and the other dragged through his wavy brown hair. “Okay. Okay. We’re off to a weird start, little dude. We can at least agree on that, right?”

Chase’s eyebrows shot up. Did he actually convince the guy of something? “Sure, sure, I mean it’s understandable, right? But I can get out of your way shortly‒”

“Hang on,” the human interrupted, that amusement returning. “You’re not off the hook yet. But I’ll take a step back here. I’m Jacob. Nice to meet you, maybe, if you’ll tell me why you’re sneaking around in my apartment, mister …?”

Chase pursed his lips and didn’t take the bait. “So what’s your secret, Jacob? One of your parents a, what’s it called, a bulldozer? A mountain, maybe?”

Jacob sighed. He was disappointed, but not quite angry, based on the smile that still twitched at the corner of his mouth. Chase was entertaining him, which was probably a good sign. An angry human would be too much to deal with, no matter what few advantages he and Minnie had discovered since shrinking down. Keeping the guy laughing kept Chase out of worse trouble.

The human leaned his chin on his elbow, a casual stance that loomed overhead all the same. “Something like that,” he answered. Chase hadn’t expected him to roll so well with his banter, but it made him like the guy a tiny bit more, despite everything. “Got a long, storied tradition of being mountains in the family. Are you part mouse?”

Chase winced. It was a fair turn. But having his own size pointed out always came with that old sting. “Oh he’s got jokes! Low hanging fruit, dude.”

Jacob shrugged. “You can’t reach anything higher, short stuff, might as well keep things fair, right?”

Chase’s jaw dropped in a stunned grin. “Ha! Okay! You are‒you’re funny, Jacob.” Chase was surprised to find himself really meaning it. In another life, he probably would have been friends with this guy.

“Thanks. I try. But I’m still wondering what you are, little dude. And why you’re really here.”

“Why are any of us here,” Chase shot back, though his following chuckle was a bit more nervous than he wanted. Jacob, still amused, wasn’t budging. He remained looming overhead, calm as could be but putting pressure into the air all the same, and Chase still had no ideas on how to help himself. “I mean. You said it yourself. I’m just. Just a little dude. And I said it myself. I was trying to take an orange. No big secrets there.”

Jacob pondered it, and Chase watched for signs of frustration, or maybe of further amusement on that giant face. The guy had never seemed like the angry type, from what observations Chase had made of him in the past. He might be a reasonable person in most respects. Finding some miniature thief in his home could well test those limits.

“Will you at least tell me a name? I don’t want to just keep calling you ‘little guy’ or whatever else. It’s a little weird.”

“That … is a reasonable ask,” Chase admitted. He also wasn’t sure how long he could stand the nicknames, and Jacob wasn’t demanding anything. What could he possibly glean with just a name? “I’m Chase. And it’s not because I like having things coming after me. So no cat and mouse, Jake.”

That earned a bemused frown, Jacob’s brow knitting and his mouth twisting. “Noted. Don’t think that’d be necessary, seeing as I already caught ya.” He glanced away for a moment, straightening where he sat. “Listen, Chase, I don’t think this talk is over, but I didn’t expect getting a single straight answer would take that much time, and I have some other stuff I need to do today.” His focus returned to Chase and felt like a physical weight. “What are the chances you’ll still be here when I get back?”

“What? If you just leave? Zero, buddy. Are you kidding? Soon as you’re out of sight I’m gonna bounce.” Chase’s heart fluttered again, and he scolded himself inwardly. Would Jacob have believed him if he said he’d wait? Then he could just leave anyway.

“That’s what I thought,” Jacob said, that faint smile returning. His hand approached, prompting Chase to all but leap to his feet again. “C’mere.”

Chase stumbled backwards and came up with a hundred stupid lies, all running rapid fire through his head but none of them sounding like they’d even make Jacob pause and think. He was usually so good at coming up with plans, at getting by just in time.

He was all out of close calls. Jacob’s enormous hand was upon him seconds later, fingers longer than Chase was tall curling behind him, gathering him up in a grip he wouldn’t be able to see out of if Jacob closed his fist entirely. As it was, Chase had a view of the ceiling as he was hoisted all too easily off the table, like he weighed nothing. His few ounces probably didn’t feel like much at all, really. He left the table behind, and the world lurched as Jacob stepped around the furniture towards whatever goal he’d decided on.

“Waitasecond, Jacob,” Chase said, pushing against the palm he was pinned to. “I’m totally ready to talk more. Let’s chat now, about whatever you want. Let’s, what do they say, let’s ‘shoot the breeze’ or whatever.”

Jacob chuckled and it shook his hand with the noise, enough that Chase felt every bit of it. “We’ll shoot the breeze all you want, later. I gotta make an appointment. Won’t be long. You’ll be fine chilling here ‘til I get back.”

Chase, surprisingly, didn’t doubt it. He’d be unharmed, and so far Jacob held him carefully, if securely and almost entirely obscured in a hand. But he’d be trapped. He heard a cabinet open, then close. Then another. Jacob must be looking for something to trap him with.

That sting was back, with the reminder that a simple kitchen tool would be enough to trap him.

His stomach lurched as Jacob turned, maybe towards the kitchen counters. He’d found something. Chase suddenly squirmed, tried to do something to change what was about to happen. He’d been out of his depth since the human came back and found him on the counter. All because he’d wanted to one-up his sister in a made up game that didn’t matter at all now.

He opened his mouth to spout off another protest, some more fast talk to get Jacob to hesitate, keep the human distracted. As he did, the hand lowered again, far too fast and sudden, and the only sound Chase managed was a strangled yelp while his whole body flinched from the falling sensation.

He was set down quickly on the counter top, and there was a shadow looming over him. He threw his hands over his head on instinct. It meant he missed whatever it was settling down on the counter over him, though he felt it hit the surface under his kneeling posture. When he looked up, a metal dome sat over him, pocked with holes in an even pattern all around and letting in dappled light.

 A strainer. It left him in a space the size of a decently sized room. He could even stand up if he wanted and probably not reach the top of the dome if he stretched his arms.

The light changed on one side as Jacob leaned in to peer through the holes. Small, disjointed glimpses of his face loomed just outside of Chase’s prison. “Just … wait in there for a while, okay? I won’t be gone that long.”

Chase huffed and slumped in an obvious pout. “Sure, man, I’ll just. I’ll just make myself comfortable. What the god damn hell, it’s almost cozy.”

Jacob retreated again. When he answered, that smile still colored his voice. “You’ll be okay, Chase. It’s only for a little bit.”

Chase had lost his desire to argue. He was barely sure he’d actually had a whole conversation with a human over at the table, without feeling all that much danger. He certainly felt the danger now, trapped under a strainer until whenever Jacob decided to come home. Chase had felt like he might control the conversation if only he said the right words, but it hadn’t worked. He knelt in the dim lighting and listened as Jacob left the room, and eventually, the apartment itself.

“Damn. That really could have gone better.”

[mudhornchronicles]

dreamboat | greaser!frankie morales | part two

diner cred to @thatretrobitch​

pairing: francisco “catfish” morales x reader; 1950’s greaser!frankie x reader

warnings: swearing, drinking, smoking, ya know… 1950s stuff + death and war, and being rude af

a/n: part two of dreamboat

masterlist

dreamboat: part one | part two

“If I didn’t know any better, Francisco, I’d say you were teacher in a past life.” You look up at him and smirk. He looks over to you and gives you a crooked smile. He adjusts his jacket and runs his left hand through his hair.

Frankie taught you a lot more history than the teacher. Frankie had a lot more patience and explained each topic that was covered in much better detail and simply enough to understand. Like when Hattie Wyatt Caraway of Arkansas became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate in 1932 to fill the vacancy caused by the death of her husband. Frankie compared it to the demonstration of the first long distance telephone service between New York and San Francisco in 1913 – surprising but needed.

You didn’t have Frankie for a third period, just first and fourth, but he made sure to meet you out each of your classes and walked you over to your next class. He had conversed with the boys about asking you to Rosie’s Diner on Friday night. Everyone knows when a guy takes a little darlin’ down to Rosie’s, she’s unavailable. Frankie knows you probably don’t know what going to the diner with him means but he assumes if you did, you wouldn’t go. So he decides that the less you knew the better – well at least that’s what Tom decided.

“Ya know, doll. I like the way you say my name, but how ‘bout ya just call me Frankie, huh? I don’t use the entire thing anymore.”

You cock your head to the side and your smiles turns into a slight frown. “Do you not like the way Francisco sounds?”

He tucks his hands into his jean pockets, shrugs, and looks down at his dirty Chuck Taylors. “Thanks, I do like it, but it don’t… it don’t sound cool, you know? I got a reputation to keep up – all the guys do.”

Frankie stopped using the name Francisco at the start of freshman year. Pope stopped using Santiago around the same time. Their teachers would call them Francis and Saint because they found it difficult to pronounce the boys’ names correctly. Frankie was too shy to say anything and Pope was still unsure about his accented English, so when Will laughed and told the teacher, “Ain’t that a bite? You got a degree, but can’t pronounce an ABC name,” the boys knew Will was going to be a great friend. The boys thought that would be the end of it, but then Benny decided to join his brother and say, “How ‘bout, since ya feel so high and mighty, you call ‘em Frankie and Pope? We got Francisco like that city on the west coast, so call ‘em Frankie. Then we got Santiago. You wanna call ‘em Saint, then give ‘em the highest honor.”

“Well, if it makes you feel better,” you stopped walking and placed a hand on his arm. “I like your name. I think it suits you very well.”

He smiles and nods. He doesn’t know if he’s nodding because he’s convincing himself he likes it too or if he’s nodding because he’s glad you like it too. He liked your company because you weren’t too invasive, but he could also tell that you wanted to get to know him. He knew he wasn’t the most open to people, he has his father to thank for that.

As young 19-year-old – about a year older than Frankie – his father was drafted and fought in World War 1 in 1918 as a US Army soldier and was then sent off to France a few weeks in to fight with the AEF, the American Expeditionary Forces. Because of this, Frankie’s father wasn’t the most expressive when in public but was easily the most caring when it came to his family. When Frankie was growing up, his father had spoiled his baby boy and made sure he worked hard as a welder so that Frankie wouldn’t want for anything. Frankie remembers his father coming home from work late at night, oil and bits of metal stuck to him, and always turning his frown into a smile when he laid eyes upon his son.

His father’s closure to the world only grew when he saw his family in danger. Frankie figured that by growing up within a military family, it would lead to him serving in the military as his father did before him. When Frankie was coming to the age of enlistment, he told his family about him wanting to go off to the military, but his father was very much against it. All his father wanted for his son was for Frankie to live his life the way he wanted to, so Frankie didn’t enlist. One day when Frankie was at school, recruiters came to the Morales home and were knocking the door down. Frankie’s father had informed them that his son would not be serving. He was told that because Frankie was able, male, and was soon to be of age, he had to enlist whether he was needed or not. His father complied; except he wrote his own name down instead of his son’s.

His father never regretted going to war. He still had nightmares, which Frankie knew all too well. He had met Frankie’s mother when he came back home in 1921 and after years of trying, he was blessed with a son in 1935. All was good in the world until the year 1950 – Frankie was 15 years old. In August of 1950, a letter came in the post reading the following:

SIR: FRANCISCO MORALES SR.

You are hereby notified that you, on the 21 day of August of 1950, have been legally drafted in the service to the Armed Forces of the United States of America. You are to report to the Armed Forces station below and will be transported to Daejeon, Korea.

Frankie’s father never came back.

His body was never recovered – just his ID tags. Frankie’s mother was told that the last transmission received with the whereabouts of Francisco Morales Sr. were near the Nakdong River in South Korea. Frankie always carried his father’s ID tags around his neck no matter where he went. Those tags always reassured him of himself knowing that he was doing what his father wanted him to do.

Frankie walked you down the steps of school building and stopped at the sidewalk. “Ya know, if ya need a ride, I can take ya home – aint no trouble.”

You smile and shake your head. “I appreciate that. I told my mother I’d take the bus back home.” You knew your mother would have a fit if she saw you get dropped off by a boy, but she may still be at work. You looked back at Frankie and saw that he had a slight frown on his face as he played with a necklace hidden in his white t-shirt. You weren’t sure the reason behind it, but he didn’t want to pry. “Actually, I’ll take a ride.”

His eyes lit up and nodded. “Great but I do gotta warn ya, doll. I gotta take Ironhead and Benny back to their place. Pope usually goes back to mines.” A ride home in a car full of teenage boys – what can go wrong?

The pair of you walk down to the school’s parking lot and there you see students laughing in their cars – 4 to 5 in a car – all while having a smoke and others are drinking from beer cans. You have no doubt that it’s beer cans when one gets tossed towards you with left over beer splattering over your white skirt. Frankie takes notice of the yellow stains and the grimace growing on your face. He looks over at the teenagers in a beat-up Chevy.

“Aye watch where ya tossin’ shit, birdbrain.” The teens look over at Frankie and walk over to him. You place a hand on his arm and look up at him.

“Frankie, c’mon. Let’s just go to your car, huh?” you plead. His arm tightens and as the teens arrive in front of him, Frankie protectively put you behind him and adjusts his jacket – a tick of his you’ve taken note of. The three boys who walked over to Frankie look over at you and smirk.

“Well shit Frankie, pal.” One of them takes a smoke and blows the out towards his side. “You already smashin’ up this little new betty? Don’t you work fast… first Michelle, then Tiffany, now this one?”

Frankie’s jaw tightens and his hold on your arm shifts. “How ‘bout you stuff it, Jack? You know you ain’t even supposed to be here. This ain’t your turf.”

Jack removes his hat, a cowboy hat he’s become fond of, and fixes his hair. He puts it back on and laughs. “You’re right, but I clearly don’t care. Oberyn ain’t out the can ‘till Friday, so I call the shots. My boys wanna be here and screw all these chick-a-dees, then they will. I know you ain’t gon’ do nothin’.”

“He will,” you hear a click and quickly turn your head to see Pope and the boys, Benny holding up a pocketknife. “But he ain’t doin’ it alone either.” The Bandits circle the three men and puff up their chests.

“Alright,” Jack holds his hands up. “We’re gone but trust me when I say that Oberyn ain’t gon’ be too happy to hear this.” With that he snaps his head over to his boys directing them back to their car. They turn to leave and Jack walks away backwards. When he’s satisfied with the distance between himself and The Bandits, he turns on his heel and runs to his car. He jumps in the driver’s seat, gives his girl a smooch, and revs the engine – with that he’s gone.

Pope looks at you and gives your shoulder a quick squeeze. “You good? Hope those bumrats ain’t spook ya too bad.” You shake your head and smile shyly. You look down at your ruined skirt and shrug.

“Just a ruined skirt but that’s okay. I wasn’t fond of it.” Will laughs at your comment fluffs yours skirt from the bottom, earning a nudge from Frankie.

“Let’s get her home, huh? I gotta drop off everyone else,” Frankie says. Tom tells Frankie that he’s got detention and to go on without him. Tom goes back towards the building while everyone piles up in Frankie’s Cherry Red 1945 Mustang GT – his father’s gift to him for his 15th birthday, also his last gift.

Per usual, Benny and Will leans the driver’s seat forwards and get in to sit in the back while Pope goes to sit in his usual spot as shotgun. Frankie tuts at Pope and points to the back. Pope scoffs but shoots Frankie a wink. He gets in and sits in between the brothers, being the smallest of the three, and Frankie runs over to open the door for you to sit up front. He grabs your books and hands them to Pope. As you situate yourself and buckle your seatbelt, Frankie gets in and turns on his baby. He revvs the engine and backs up out the school’s parking garage, but not before revving his engine one more time for the freshmen per Benny’s request.

On the drive to the brother’s house, Benny grabs your notebook and looks through your notes of the day. He looks through the math notes you took during 4th period and immediately closes it. “You sure are smart if you’re taking this angle stuff. I’m guessing it’s college prep?”

You look over your shoulder and nod. “I’m currently taking college preparatory trigonometry. They unfortunately didn’t have any other advanced placement for me here.”

The boys let out a harmony of “ohs” and Will shakes Frankie’s shoulder. “Frankie! She’s smart like you, buddy!”

Pope smirks and joins in on the teasing. “Lo vez, hermano! Being smart doesn’t make you un-cool. Being you does! No te hagas ver como el tonto porque no lo eres.”

You see, brother… don’t make yourself seem dumb because you aren’t.

You look at Pope and smile. “I agree with you, Santiago. Frankie is very intelligent so he shouldn’tdumb himself down because he thinks that’s what people think of him.” Pope stops and looks at you. “You know some Spanish, angel face?” You eagerly nod. “I’m very familiar with the language. They had us choose electives at my old school. I took Spanish, Italian, and French. I had a lot of a free time.”

Pope looks at you in shock but happily hollers. “Well sugar you sound pretty good speakin’ ‘em”

You couldn’t explain it, but you felt giddy. You felt happy to be around the boys and you knew you wanted to continue to be around them.

With Frankie getting out of the car and moving his seat forward, Will and Benny get dropped off first, but not without teasing him about “asking the chick.” Frankie flips them off and Pope lets out a belly laugh. Frankie apologetically looks at you and mouths sorry. You blush and mouth that’s okay.

Once leaving the brothers, Pope tells Frankie to turn up the radio. Frankie looks at Pope through the rearview mirror and narrows his eyes. “Switch to 12,” Pope says with a wink. Frankie rolls his eyes and turns the knob so the needle hits channel 12. Once Frankie hears the recognizable melody from “Takes Two to Tango” by Pearl Bailey. Frankie goes to switch the channel, but you stop his hand. He glances over to you and he sees you mouthing the words. He looks back at Pope who wiggles his eyebrows and sings out loud and to Frankie’s surprise, you join Pope singing at the top of your lungs. He laughs at your attempts at dancing in your seat and looks back at Pope who was waving his hands in the air.

Frankie thought that you’d be this proper, shy little thing but here you were having singing and laughing with his best friend. You gave him the slightest nudge and smiled in his direction. “C’mon Frankie. Don’t be a sour puss. I know you know this song!” You were right. He did know this song. He and Pope sang it so much because Pope thought he could woo some girl – he didn’t really know what the lyrics meant so you can guess what happened. If you guessed he slept with her… you’d be correct.

You poked Frankie in the ribs light enough to not affect his driving and giggled as he sang out with Pope. You liked seeing this Frankie – not that big tough guy you saw at the parking lot. He seemed like he had a big heart but was scared to show it and you were determined, but you were ripped away from your internal planning when Frankie politely asked for your address.

“It’s a shame you ain’t hangin’ longer sweetheart,” Pope began. “I think you’d like being around us two mucks. You would definitely like Frankie’s mom’s cooking. She makes the best food in town.” You smiled as the two best friends bickered about whose mom had the best food.

“I would have loved to, but I have to be home and do chores before my mother gets home.”

Frankie looks over to you and gives you a reassuring smile. “It’s alright. Maybe next time, cool?” You smile at the invitation and nod. Frankie continues to drive as you and Pope make a conversation about the possibility of you tutoring him in math. With them being high school seniors, they are not failing one class.

You feel on top of the world, laughing and talking with your new friends, until you spot the yellow Pontiac in the driveway and your mother coming out of it. Your face drops and the boys immediately take notice.

“What’s wrong?” Frankie asks. You straighten out your top and ask Pope for your books as you ready yourself to run out of the car. You look at Frankie and offer a weak smile.

“My mother won’t be happy with me is all.” You’d ask Frankie to drop you off a couple of houses before your own, but you know your mother has already seen you. As Frankie pulls up to your house, the boys’ jaws drop. You wouldn’t say your house was big, but to the boys, it was huge. Your two-story home consisted of 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. The exterior of the home was beige with dark brown trimming and the river rock pathway leading up to your home was lined with grass so green you’d think it was plastic.

Your mother, dressed to the nines in a pale pink dress and white belt, looks at the hot rod parked in front of her home and places her hands on her hips as she sees Frankie run out and open your door. Your mother would normally love seeing her daughter be treated by a gentleman, but she isn’t very happy to see that it’s Frankie. She has always dreamed of her daughter being courted by a young man in polished Oxford shoes and ironed pleated pants not a worn out leather jacket and dirty chucks.

You thank Frankie for the ride and look over at your upset mother. The boys say hello to her as she gives them the ungenuine smile of hers you have seen many times. You wave goodbye to both boys and begin to walk up to your mother. You hear whispers behind you and then you hear your mother say, “Is there something else you’d like to say, boy?”

You turn and you see Pope shove Frankie towards you. His face turns red as he sees your mother staring him down and he knows that this may not be the best time to ask you.

“On with it, young man. My daughter and I have work to do.”

Frankie once again runs his hand through his hair and clears his throat. “I- I, uh, I was wonderin’ if ya wanted to hang with us at Rosie’s on Friday. The shakes are pretty good so we could ma-“

“What’s your name, young man?” You look at your mother. You narrow your eyes at her for interrupting Frankie.

“It-It’s Frankie,” he stutters, “my name’s Frankie, ma’am.”

Your mother gives her less than friendly smile again. “Well, Frankie, you’ll understand where I’m coming from when I tell you this – you are not the kind of person I want my daughter befriending. You just don’t quite… how can I put this nicely? You don’t fit a mother’s standards.”

“Mother!”

“Quiet.” she tells you. “You will not be around these boys again, do you understand? Your father works too hard for you to just ruin your life like this. You asked to be taken out of the pristine private school we paid for you to go to and we allowed you to enroll in public school. Why are you bringing home some… some hoodlum! How can you do this to us?”

You wished this had surprised you, but it wasn’t the first time your mother disrespected your choice of friends. You huffed and you felt tears coming to your eyes as you saw Frankie’s defeated look in his eyes and Pope fighting the urge to get out of the car.

You mother calls your name, and you turn to look at her. She walks to you, heels clicking the pavement, and cups your jaw. “You will not associate yourself with these boys, do we understand each other?” You see Frankie nod to you and walk back to his car. You look back at your mother and nod. “Yes, Mother. I understand.” Your mother smiles at you and gives your cheek a pat. “Good girl. Now… get inside and put that skirt in the hamper. Your allowance is going towards a new skirt.”

She leads you into the house and you look back and see Frankie’s car is still there. You stop in your tracks and look at your mother. “Mother, may I please run back and grab a paper I left?”

“Is it school related?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Very well. Go grab it and say goodbye and come back in. We have to get dinner going.” You nod and run back to the car and your mother walks into the house.

Pope rolls down the passenger side window and both boys look at you. You smile at Pope and look at Frankie.

“Does Rosie’s Diner have sundaes?” Pope smirks and turns to Frankie while Frankie nods with a confused face. “Well,” you start, “If Friday’s invitation is still open, pick me up by the green house down the street at 6pm. She’ll be going to my grandmother’s house up north.”

“Sounds like a plan, doll.”

The light breeze surprises you as it picks up the more you walk down the street. You walk past two houses and you see the red backlights of the cherry red mustang you seemed to miss.

Your mother, thankfully, left to your grandmother’s home about two hours ago, much earlier than expected. She called not very long ago to make sure you were home and doing homework. You told her that you were planning to retire early as your homework began to give you a headache. She insisted you eat dinner and sleep as she didn’t want to see eyebags under your eyes when she got back tomorrow. She bid you goodnight and said she’d be home by tomorrow’s lunchtime. Once you hung the phone on the hook, you ran to your room and began to ready yourself for the night.

You grew giddy as 6 o’clock crept closer and closer. You had applied your blush and mascara so carefully you’d have thought you were dusting the finest of china. You did not want to wear too much makeup; you didn’t want to seem as though you were trying too hard. You picked out the pins out of the curls on your head you’d put up right when your mother left and watched as the soft and tight curls fell and framed your face. You grabbed your wide tooth comb and brushed the curls out, parting your side at a side so there was more hair and volume on one side. You sprayed a tight hold hairspray all over so you could make sure your hair stood – Frankie wouldn’t want to see frazzled hair, no man would, you thought.

As you went through your closet, you decided that a dress was the best choice as it was simple enough to either be dressed up or dressed down. You went with a white collared black dress with thin white windowpane patterned lines all over. You wore your black flats and added a black shiny belt running across the waist. You get closer to Frankie’s car and you see him get out of his car – you figured he had seen you coming.

“How ya doin’ there, doll?”

“Hello, Frankie.” You wave and get closer to him. Once you’re in front of him you fix his jacket lapel and look up at him. “Aren’t you sight for sworn eyes.”

His eyes widen then starts laughing loudly and your face goes red. He nearly falls in laughter as his hands catch himself on his knees. “W-What’d ya just say?”

“I said aren’t you a sight for sworn eyes,” you frown. “Is that not appropriate?”

He catches his breath and puts a hand on his belly. He reaches over and tucks your hair behind your ear with the other hand. “The saying is a sight for sore eyes, doll; not sworn eyes.”

You feel as if your face is about to burst as you start laughing at yourself. You just cannot believe you’ve messed up your first attempt at flirting with Frankie. “I was really sure it was sworn.”

He smiles brightly and shakes his head. “Hey… can’t say ya ain’t tried right?” You giggle and nod. He look you up and down and lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“Te vez hermosa.” You look beautiful.

Have you ever had that feeling when there’s a puppy trying to get comfortable, but it can’t so it walks over to you and lays with you – falling into a deep and peaceful sleep? You know how it makes your heart feel as if it’s grown twice in size because the puppy chose you and trusted you to protect it while it slept? That’s how you felt when those words came out of Frankie’s mouth.

“Muchas gracias, Francisco.” Thank you very much, Francisco.

He playfully rolls his eyes at you and lets out a laugh. He points to the car and says, “get in the damn car.” He runs over to your door and lets you in, as per usual, and off you two went to Rosie’s Diner.

Frankie leads you into a bright neon-lit diner not very far from your home, about 25 minutes from your place. The diner stands out from the black concrete parking lot and pine trees decorating its background. He opens the light brown doors and places a hand on your lower back as you walk in – not too low or too high.

“Howdy’ho kiddos.” You’re greeted by a woman in her late 40’s or early 50s – the grey hair and sweet smile give it away. “Hey there, Frankie. Bandits meetin’ ya here?”

Frankie smiles at the woman, gives her a hug, and a quick kiss on the cheek; a kiss she smiles at and hums in content. “Hey Ro. Boys are comin’ in a while. You know they ain’t missin’ your special tonight.”

“There’s a special night every night for my favorite bandits, Frankie. Who’s this, huh? You finally bringin’ a girl for me to meet?” Frankie shakes his head from side to side smiling. He turns to you and introduces you to Rosie, the diner’s owner and one of his favorite people. “She’s new in town and I wanted to show her the best diner in the world.”

Rosie slaps Frankie’s arm and laughs. “Stop talkin’ sweet ‘fore your teeth rot, boy. You’re too pretty to be all gums now. I knew my boys were comin; your usual booth’s open, but take the table next to it, yeah. Ya need the extra seat ‘less you sittin’ the girl on ya lap.” Frankie begins to stutter a protest as you stifle a laugh.

“It’s very nice to meet you Miss Rosie. I’m in awe of your diner and excited to try your food.”

“Well it’s very nice to meet the girl who Frankie finally decided to bring to the diner. It’s a very special moment in his life ya know?” You cock your head to the side and take a quick glance at Frankie.

“Why’s that, Miss Rosie?”

As Rosie was about to explain the beginning of courtships of 99% of the teenagers in town, Frankie dragged you away with the dramatic excuse of being so hungry he can eat a horse and how he’ll drop dead if he doesn’t get a shake.

As you make it to the table Rosie had sent you to, you’d think that Frankie would have pulled out your chair, but a couple of some teens you remember seeing at school look in yours and Frankie’s direction whispering among themselves. You took a seat and looked at Frankie to ask if he knew them but as you were about to ask, you saw his face looking back at them with a deep stare. He gave them a single nod towards the door and to your surprise, they ran. Frankie scanned the room and he knew everyone would be taking in the scene. Frankie had never taken a girl out in public – especially not a girl like you. Sure people knew about other girls he’s been with, but everyone knew they weren’t together.

Frankie sat down after everyone in the diner turned their attention back to where it previously was and he passes you a diner menu, but still tense due to the eyes that locked with his back once more.

When the waitress you learned was named Vi and was obsessed with Will, Frankie had ordered a basket of fries for the two to share, a cherry soda for him and a sundae of your pick for you. Vi was also an older woman, best friends with Rosie, and had an innocent crush on Will’s blonde self. Frankie told you about the time Will brought Vi a bouquet of flowers for her birthday and Vi almost attacked the poor kid to the ground with kisses. Vi was sweet and she made you feel very good about yourself as she fixed your collar and fluffed your hair because “her Frankie needs to see what he’s got in front of him.”

You were nearly done with your sundae as you heard the distinctive pitch that is Benny’s voice as he said “What’s cookin’ good lookin’ don’t you look like a dream,” and wrapped an arm around your shoulder. You greet each and every one of the boys as they take their seats around the table – Benny calling dibs on one of the seats next to you. Benny puts his arm around the back rest of your white chair and calls Vi over to place a new order.

As the night continues, you feel free. You feel so relaxed and at ease with the boys around you that you don’t even notice the dirty looks some girls were giving you. Benny puts his head on your shoulder and give his cheek a little pat resulting in Benny playfully trying to bite your hand. Frankie clears his throat and Benny looks over at him and smirks.

“I ain’t trynna steal ya girl, Frankie. If she hangin’ with us, ya gotta get used to us playin ‘round.”

Frankie turns red as Benny calls you “his girl” and rolls his eyes with a chuckle. He looks out the window and immediately tenses. You follow his gaze and see a 1942 black Ford with some boys in it – one of the being that Jack guy from school – revv its engine as it speeds back and forth through the parking lot. He grabs the boys eyes and directs them towards the window and Benny stands up immediately. The boys follow suit and Frankie turns to you.

“Stay here alright, doll? We’ll be back.”

You turn from Frankie to the window and back to Frankie with a worried look painting your face. “What’s going on Frankie?”

“They shouldn’t be here. This ain-“ You both turn at the sound of a crash and see Pope being held against Frankie’s car by a guy in a black tee with its sleeves rolled. Frankie runs out of the diner and you run after him. You know you shouldn’t be getting in between this, but you aren’t going to let anyone hurt your new friends.

Frankie runs up behind this guy, turns him around, and shoves him away from his car and friends. The guy smirks and nods at Frankie. “Did you miss me Frankie?”

“What the hell are you doing here, Oberyn? We already told ya friend there that this ain’t your turf.”

You had to admit, Oberyn had this strut to him that showed his self-confidence and the combination of his flirtatious smile and smoldering eyes only made him more attractive than he already was. Jack came to stand next to him and as he turned to toss some keys over to another friend of his, you caught sight of the word VIPERS with two snakes on the back of his jacket.

“Yeah… he told me ‘bout it. But ya anna know what else Jackie told me? He told me that ya got ya’self a knockout.” Oberyn locks eyes with you and winks. He tries to walk over to you, but Frankie pushes back and away from you.

“Don’t get near her.” Oberyn lets out a sarcastic chuckle and gets in Frankie’s face.

“How ‘bout ya make me, Morales?”

The next thing you knew, you were yelling and crying with Will held you away as you saw Frankie and Oberyn duke it out on the concrete while Benny and Pope tried to pry Oberyn away – Jack and some other guy pushing them away. You caught a glimpse of Frankie’s bruising cheek and Oberyn’s bloody nose. You only noticed the officer’s arrival once Will dragged you back in the diner and making sure Rosie held you back as he ran back to be by Frankie’s side when the local sheriff gets out the car.

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[dbzebra]

Hey new follower and big Vegeta fan here, you say that Goku has progressed a lot as a character, want to emphasize on that? i don't doubt you at all, hell i like him a lot too, but i never got really invested so i'm actually curious, i want to hear your thoughts and open my eyes! lol

Hey! I’d be glad to.

Let me preface by just saying that I think Vegeta is probably one of the most developed in the series, and after years of dealing with snide comments/anons from certain fans about how Goku sucks and Vegeta is better and all I’m a little snippy in that regard so I hope you didn’t take that personally! Sorry lol

Goku’s growth is subtle, but comparing Pilaf arc Goku to even 23rd WT Goku there’s a league of difference despite him still being the same person.

I’ll prolly butcher this explanation cause for some reason I always blank with asks like this (not your fault lol) but oh well here we go

Goku starts off as a little kid who knows nothing about the world before meeting Bulma. He taps peoples crotches to tell if their male or female, has absolutely no self awareness and no tact whatsoever lol. But throughout even the Pilaf arc you see Goku to start to adjust to normal society and being around people. Bulma just her sicking him in people like a lapdog. But after this he’s much more pragmatic between deciding to go find Roshi and going after his dragon ball. At first for selfish reasons and later more selfless, which I personally believe is partly thanks to Eighter.

Speaking of which, Roshi/Jackie Chun’s speech to him stuck with Goku for life and I don’t think people realize that. “There’s always someone better or stronger, so never stop improving yourself.” And that’s Goku. He doesn’t do it for anything other than to improve himself, which Vegeta finally acknowledges in his monologue during the final Kid Buu fight.

Anyway Goku first hand experiences loss when Krillin dies and dudes out for blood. He ignores everyone and rushes after Tambourine not once byt twice. Never before did Goku kill an enemy who was legit running away either. After this he never does this again until GT.

For example, take 23rd WT. Teen Goku was chill and cool about seeing Jr. but Kid Goku would’ve rushed him instantly like he did when he first saw Kami. Kid Goku was super stubborn but when he got older he became a lot more levelheaded with things.

It’s in Z where we really see how he changed. Goku slacked off on his training, only improving a little bit during the 5 years after Piccolo to spend with his wife and child. (Also it’s canon Goku spoiled Gohan. The way Gohan clings to him is obvious of that to me. And the way he says “Daddy’s here!” When he goes to save him after Raditz took him.

Gokus whole character arc in the first half of Z is accepting his Saiyan heritage. He was sent away because he was trash and a low class and Goku says to Vegeta that he was glad to be sent away / deemed weak because that was what led him to being sent to Earth and led him to meet his friends and family. (It’s why I hate Minus so much, it contradicts ALL of that)

for a while he kept saying “I’m not a Saiyan, my name is Goku and I’m from Earth” but by the time he fought Freeza its “I’m a Saiyan from Earth” and then of course Goku’s I am a Super Saiyan speech

Then later on in Cell/Buu he becomes more passive and wants the next generation to take over because he’s not gonna be around forever and his sons are stronger / have the potential to be far stronger than he ever was. So he starts pushing Gohan and later Goten and Trunks, going as far as not killing Buu because “im dead, I shouldn’t be here, it’s not my place”

He spares Piccolo purely to save Kami/the DBs, he spares Vegeta cause he wants to fight him again, and spares Freeza not to fight him, but because he wanted Freeza to be humiliated and afraid. Didn’t work. Gave him energy out of pity. Didn’t work. And that final attack killed him as far as Goku was concerned.

After that he stopped trying to spare his opponents. While he didn’t spare Buu he Lowkey wanted to and admitted he would’ve liked to fight Buu as a good person which is the conclusion to that + the next gen passing the torch throughout the latter half of Z

And then in GT he’s just really mature but bored as hell. I like to think that scene with those two guys from Home Alone “kidnap” him he’s just playing along. Just watching Goku in Baby Saga especially feels like how he’d be as a seasoned fighter now master just wanting a challenge but Lowkey sick and tired of guys threatening his home and his family. Him making the deal with Shenron (which is another whole thing in itself I can go into seperately) really shows how far he came. Basically sacrifices himself to make one last wish for the good of earth. Overall Still a goofball deep down but he’s super serious and doesn’t take any bullshit. I

I’m not gonna go into DBS Goku cause well I haven’t seen DBS in years, have no interest in going back to it and well DBS Goku was OOC a lot anyway

Hope this clears stuff up :)

[gifsbysimplysonia]

End of Day Shi!t post - August 27, 2019

This post contains spoilers for the SHURI Marvel comic

Not for nothin but

is 1 helluva lineup to be staring at lol @jillybean1217 you might wanna think about updating to a more recent pic of Gates tho :P 

I have to go back to the office tomorrow and i’m very much not looking forward to it. Not only does my face still ache (it’s just a dull and steady ache) but work has been SO SLOW for us that there’s really NO point to us being in the office. Not that there is one now, mind you, as our jobs can be done perfectly from home but they make us go in. And now my poor co-worker is also injured as her shoulder bones are grinding? She went in to see the doc about it today cuz she said she felt like Quasimodo cuz her shoulder was all swollen. Doc gave her stuff to bring the swelling down and then she had to go for an MRI. We are both falling apart lol. 

This weekend my family is going to a wrestling show on Saturday I spent WAY TOO MUCH MONEY ON. And I’m a bit bitter about it cuz one of the matches we were most looking forward to seeing isn’t happening cuz someone is unavoidably injured. It’s absolutely NO ONE’S fault, but I’m just bummed and it makes the ridic amount I spent on tix to the show seem WAY LESS REASONABLE now. Luckily they have a killer replacement match and there are other matches we are looking forward to seeing. It just ... I’m not as excited as I wish I was. But I also know that has a lot to do with me just feeling bad cuz I got my tooth yanked and then got my GT right after so it’s been a super pleasant time at my house lol. 

I’m glad it’s a 3 day weekend too. Any week where I have 1 less day of work is always something to be grateful for. 

I miss writing! But every time I open up 1 of my thousands of Google Docs, my imagination won’t move on anything. It’s so discouraging. I don’t know why I bother. 

Well ... that’s a lie. I do know why. Because I feel amazing when I’m writing. When I get an idea and my fingers start going to town on a keyboard and I’m in the middle of a creative wave? It’s just ... there’s no real way for me to describe how content I am. And I don’t get that feeling at any other time in life? So like ... I wish I could be feeling that way all the time. Unfortunately my brain is fickle, I guess? And trying to force myself to write or staring at that cursor blinking on a screen only makes me feel the TOTAL OPPOSITE of that euphoria. Suuuuuuuuuuucks. Cuz I WANNA write I just ... can’t. That’s how I know I’m not “a writer.” Cuz a writer would be able to make something work. I just go devoid of creativity for long periods of time and lose the joy from that process. Such is life, I suppose. 

Panels of Clint Barton and Bucky Barnes have been coming across my dash so I finally looked up Tales of Suspense since my bro has a Marvel comics account. I just read through #100 and I’m like pissed? LOL cuz Clint is SO much more entertaining than he is in the MCU! I don’t even know how you comic fans handled the MCU, to be honest, cuz WOW is MCU Clint/Hawkeye generic and bland compared to this ONE ISSUE I read where he was an absolute DISASTER but wonderfully sarcastic and funny. And it makes more sense to me that he and Nat are exes as well. 

I always thought they’d be a thing but then the MCU tried to force Nat with Bruce? Which was THE WORST but then even WORSE THAN THE WORST was Clint’s fake family. That’s how I refer to it cuz I fcking HATE that trope so much ... oh yeah, I’ve had a family for years but all you people had no idea even though you’re supposed to be collegues and intelligence and wtf EVER. I HATE IT SO MUCH. And then that this family was used to justify NOT sacrificing Clint but sacrificing Natasha at the end of everything ... fcking ... I already got started but don’t get me started. 

Anyways, #100 of Tales of Suspense was good, I blew through it and I imagine I’m going to blow through the other 4 issues before 7pm tonight. I’m fcking annoyed that’s all they are, but I’m anxious to see how Clint and Bucky interact since they are both Nat’s exes and are both looking for her. But I got upset IMMEDIATELY and my brother was like “Your breathing changed, you sound upset” and I had to laugh that he noticed. But Clint describes Steve Rogers as the head of Hydra and I’m like nooooooooooooooooo :( I know that happened in the comics but not being a comic reader, I didn’t think I’d ever have to confront it but there was just that little bit and then it got WAY WORSE and I just hate it a lot. I don’t know when I got attached to Steve Rogers but apparently I am :S

I also read the first 4 issues of Shuri and I GOT ONE OF THE TEAM UPS I SO DESPERATELY WANTED IN THE MCU

😍 My heart is FULL!!!!

[vore-scientist]

Negotiating with Giants: A Love Story

(This is a GT story, no vore, but mind the content warnings. it’s also more of a lore dump adventure, but it includes a love story in there somewhere) 

This crazy adventure tells the tale of how Emmett (a human fire witch) meets and falls in love with Maya (a giant, ranger). And what an adventure it is! It’s got magic, it’s got dragons, it’s got schemes made by evil wizards! I pulled out all the stops!

Content warnings/description: This story contains no sexual content! The pair is F/m, but i wouldn’t label it as “giantess”.  Especially since there are a lot of giants in this story. While this story doesn’t contain any proper vore it does mention the evil wizards being eaten a few times, fatally. And by mention i mean “the wizard was eaten”. This makes it less vore-ish than the actual Enchanted Forest Chronicles, which is the children’s fantasy book series that I base the world of Mystic Woods on. And it’s only evil people, so they deserved it. 

(you do not need to know who Emmett, Maya, or their son Yonah are to read this, they are my OCs!) 

.

.

This is not a story that will have a surprise ending, only a surprising journey to get there.

It was your average day in the Ha’Esh household, located in a average village on the outskirts of the Blue Woods Tribe (your average Mountain Giant Tribe)’s territory. And the day would continue to be average, the family left undisturbed, the world around them still intact.

---

For all these things that were average, the Ha’Esh family itself was not one of them. There were three members, a mother, a father, and a son. The mother, Maya, was a giant. Not out of the ordinary for someone who is a member of a tribe of giants. The father, Emmett, however, was a fire witch. Not everyone in the tribe was a giant, but it’s rare for non-giant members to form family units with the giant ones. Their union meant their son, Yonah, was half giant and half fire witch. Though if one were more accurate, Yonah was closer to half human, having inherited little of his father’s fire witch traits.

At the time of this story, Yonah is 10 years old, and in a curious mood.

He had gotten up early, made his bed, and headed outside to collect eggs from the dire-ostritch s. Meant to be kept by True Giants, these birds were large for a half giant, and at his age, their heads were at his chest. But he was their friend, and they clucked as he entered the coop, bucket of feed over his head. It was cushioned upon his mass of curly, ink black hair.

“Alright you ostriches, who's hungry?” he cried, as if to pump up a crowd at a rock concert.

They all backawed loudly, and pavlovianly. Yonah stepped aside as they all hopped out of their nesting spots to run outside. Once everyone was out, Yonah stood in the doorway, and looked down the ramp at all the ostrich s looking back at him.

3

2

1

He thrust forward to launch the contents of the bucket outward and pandemonium ensued. Yonah used a bit of simple magic to create small gusts of wind to carry the feed all over the paddock, so the ostriches went in all directions. The thing is, they go after the first piece of feed they see, not the one easiest to get to, and they were running into each other, bouncing off each other’s plump plumage. Some would fall over and act as if it was the end of the world for all of 3 seconds before spotting another piece of food and forgetting their plight

Quickly, yonah switched the bucket for a basket and ducked back inside the coup. Dire-ostritches, even domesticated ones, don’t lay every day, usually once every week or so, which Yonah was thankful for. The amount each day was usually about the amount he could safely carry without breaking the eggs or dropping the basket.

By then the ostriches were pecking at the remains of their meal, and Yonah shepherded them back into the coup, attracting them with a treat, mainly old dried fruits and fairly old jerky that would have had to been thrown away. Basket on his head, empty bucket in his hand, he headed back inside the house.

“Ah, Yonah, you are up early today!” his mother exclaimed as he entered the kitchen and handed off the eggs to her. He barely came up to her knees. She placed the basket on the kitchen counter and picked up her son, placing him next to the basket.

This was of course, Maya, Yonah’s mother. Just over 40ft tall, skin a nice grey-ish blue, strongly built, and absolutely no hair on her head. Giants don’t have much body hair, at least, not anywhere normally visible to the public eye. They do have large pointed ears. Yonah inherited the large ears, but they weren’t pointed.

“I don’t have breakfast ready yet, but you are welcome to keep me company” she said. She pointed to the cauldron in the fireplace, which was boiling steadily with a sweet smelling porridge.

Then a large BOOM was heard outside, though far away. Maya sighed, Yonah laughed softly.

“Never mind that, could you go check on your father, make sure he hasn’t blown himself up?”

Yonah hopped off the counter and went to go find his dad. He had a work area on the side of the house opposite from the ostrich's, so as not to scare them, or end up as collateral damage. It was also where his father’s garden was, again, away from the ostriches. There was no telling what could happen if they ate any of the magical plants. This boom however, did not come from so close by, his father must be out in the forest this time.

The second BOOM provided Yonah with a direction, and he ran towards it. He didn’t smell any smoke, which meant his father wasn’t setting the forest on fire.

When he found his father, he was unconscious, next to a large boulder, that felt like faint sparkles were coming off. The remnants of a magic spell.

“Dad!” Yonah cried out, running to his dad’s side, and sitting him up. His skin was very hot, he had just produced a lot of magic.

Emmett stirred and looked up at his son, and smiled. Yonah breathed a sigh of relief. His dad was ok.

“What happened?” Yonah asked.

“‘What happened’? No, ‘are you ok?’ or ‘i’m glad you’re still alive’?” Emmett sneered.

Yonah rolled his eyes, “You’re obviously fine,” he said, still holding his father up.

“Well, I’ll be fine, I just overdid it, a bit,” he said, coughing hard.

“Can you walk on your own?” Yonah asked.

Emmett tried to stand up, but was very unsteady, “I think my boy, that you will have to carry your old man back. Sorry.”

“Only if you tell me what you were doing.” said Yonah.

“Deal,” Emmett was going to tell him anyways, he always did.

Yonah picked up his father’s limp form and place him on his shoulders. Emmett was strong enough to hold on, as long as Yonah held his legs.

“I’ve been working on a teleportation spell,” said Emmett, as they headed back.

“But you already know how to teleport!” said Yonah. He’d seen his father do it, bursting into flames and vanishing, only to reappear within a week, after he had completed whatever he had gone off to do.

“That is correct, but this is to teleport your mother,” he said, “Teleportation of one’s self is relatively easy for a fire witch, it’s mostly verbal and pushing my own magic into the goal. However, teleportation for regular people is difficult, it involves a lot of set up. Marking up the ground with magic to form your transport matrix. Teleporting others with you needs more magic, more prep, to compensate for the area the spell is going to effect and, and the number of bodies. If the other person is over 40 feet tall, the design needs to be altered almost entirely. I was practicing on that boulder. I had no trouble teleporting it away, and myself with it, but it still took a lot out of me. More than I realized. When I teleported it back, I, well you know, you found me shortly after.”

With his son’s interest in magic, Emmett never tried to simplify explanations.

“You passed out from exhaustion!” said Yonah. It didn’t happen often, fire witches were veritable fonts of magical energy. This must be one big spell.

“Exactly,”

However, Not everything made sense to Yonah, “But, giants can teleport themselves, cant they? Couldn’t mother learn and take you with”. Yonah knew that you always took what you were holding when teleporting.

“They don’t really need to, they can go pretty fast on foot. Some mages learn how, but your mother’s no mage. If we’re gonna travel someplace far, we’ve always walked. Or rather, she walked, and carried me,”

Yonah stopped, “Are, are you going somewhere?” he asked, his voice shook, “Are you leaving me?!” Was this how he was going to find out?

“Oh, oh gods, no, Yonah, of course not, we’d never leave you!” Emmett assured him, “this is just in case we want to travel someday, like take a vacation. Your mother’s been living in the mountains her whole life, she’s barely left, only to make trips into the Mystic Woods. I thought she might want to see more of the world.”

Realization dawned on him. “This is a present for mother!” he said.

“That’s right, but it’s not ready, so don’t tell her. I’m going to tell her I tried to turn a tree into gold or something,” said Emmett.

“Ok, it will be our secret!” said Yonah, and he nearly skipped back home. His father bouncing up and down on his shoulders, squishing into his hair.

—

“What on the gods earth were you trying to do, Emmett?” Maya asked, worried but not without exasperation.

She had placed Emmett in an armchair, on the kitchen table, sitting herself on a stool. Yonah sat on her lap, but to be tall enough to be a part of the conversation, he had to be on his knees. Breakfast was ready, porridge and scrambled eggs. Emmett was feeling well enough by then to use a fork and spoon.

“Magical exhaustion mama!” said Yonah, “it happens to the best of us”

“Oh, and when has it happened to you? When have you done such reckless magic?” Maya looked sternly at her son.

“I- I havent, I just mean,” Yonah tried to recover, but his mother just tousled his hair.

“You’re going to be a fine mage someday, but please be careful,” she said, “as for you” she looked back at her husband, who had just put a spoonful of porridge in his mouth.

“You still haven’t told me what you were doing!”

Yonah dearly wished he could telepathically communicate with his dad. Emmett choked, and stuttered, he had forgotten what he was going to say. Yonah had to, but they could at least have had a contingency plan. Then it came to him. He had an Idea™.

“Mom?” said Yonah, in his sweetest voice, “Dad?”

“What is it honey?” said Maya, as Emmett wiped porridge from his shirt.

“How did you and dad meet?”

There was a long silence, Yonah’s parents looking from him, to each other. Internally, Yonah was bursting with pride, the perfect distraction! And also, maybe he was finally going to hear the story.

“Havent, Havent we told you?” said Maya.

Yonah crossed his arms, “you said he saved you from an evil wizard, but that’s it, there’s gotta be more to it than that.”

“Oh there’s a lot more,” said Emmett, and his wife shot him a death glare.

“Come on dear, it’s a good story, i Don’t know what you’re saving it for, some special occasion? Why not now? In any case, I’m too weak to do anymore work today.”

“No, you’re right,” she said. And cleared her throat.

“Well, it all started because, well because I picked a fight with the wrong wizard…”

—

I was on a border patrol, had been for days, and nothing was out of the ordinary. New dire-eagle nests, would have to watch out they don’t steal any cattle. When I came across a wizard. He was, doing something in the forest, which was very suspicious. It took me a second to realize why he set off my alarm bells.

He was not in the garb of an academy wizard, but the two-color robes of a society wizard. The Society of Wizards, as you know, are never up to any good, always trying to further their hold on all magic in the world. And one was at the edge of the Mystic Woods, picking at the ground with his staff, with magic shooting out every minute or so.

Being the amazing ranger that I am, I was able to sneak up on him, to a point, there is only so close I can get, even if I’m unheard. I tried to get him to tell me what he was doing but he wasn’t talking. I ate him of course, and I don’t know if that was a mistake, I doubt it would have changed much about what happened next.

Whatever the wizard had been doing, he had done it, before I got there. It wasn’t even a minute after I dealt with the wizard that The air became all gold and shimmering. I raised a hand up to my eyes to try and rub my vision clear, but i couldn’t, my hand stopped.

I stopped.

I was stuck, frozen, and the air still shimmered. The wizard had been setting a trap! And I had fallen in it. I screamed and screamed, at least i could still scream, my face was the only thing I could move. But no one was close by to hear, not even a talking animal. All I could do was hope the spell wore off or to be found before I died.

—

“AND FOUND SHE WAS! BY ME!” his father said with pride, interrupting Maya.

“There I was, minding my own business, just taking a stroll” said Emmett, more strength in his voice than the rest of his body.

Maya snorted in amusement.

“Ok fine, I was out looking for a good place to settle down, you know, build my witch hut, or tower, or castle. After looking through the Mystic Woods I decided that a magic forest setting wasn’t for me. But I saw the magical field and had to investigate! I walked into the field and what do I find? A giant!”

I had never seen a giant before, and this one was asleep standing up, and in what had to be a very uncomfortable pose. Well, I went right up to her feet and yelled up.

“Hello up there!”

—

I woke up to that yelling and I tried to look down. My eyes moved but my head didn’t, and I screamed. But soon the mysterious visitor backed up enough to be in my field of vision. It was a very strange looking man with bright red hair.

/”Excuse me!?”

“Dear you had the most awful haircut”

“fair”/

I demanded to know who he was, how he got here, and how he wasnt frozen like myself, though I had my theories. I was right too, he was a fire witch, of course the magic didn’t affect him. Fire witches are immune to most magic. But they are also very good at disrupting magic. After a we exchanged names and pleasantries, I kindly asked him to get me free.

/”you demanded it, and it was right after I told you my name”

“Fine, yes, I demanded it, I was three days stuck there, you try to keep cool”

“I never do that,”/

He refused! Said it wasn’t in his interest to help a giant! He couldn’t see the benefit for him, and one less giant around was one less thing to worry about. But, he would examine this trap, it was fascinating, something that could hold a giant in place.

As you can imagine, I wasn’t very happy about this. And this, this little man was just going to let me die where I stood! If I had any tears left they would have flowed from my eyes, but they had dried up a day ago, all I could do was watch as the little ass- jerk [Maya stopped herself from swearing in front of her ten year old son] slowly paced around me.

“Say, this looks like wizard magic,” he said after nearly half an hour! “And not Academy wizardry, Society work!”

“It is” I said, though he didn’t deserve to speak to me any longer.

“How do you know that!?”

“Because,” I said, “that’s how I got stuck here, I found a wizard, and he did this! I’ve been here for three fuc- freaking days!” I think I was willing to talk only so that I could keep my mind of my own impending death.

“Three- how are you still alive?” he asked me, and he was looking at me now, really looking.

“Well, I ate the wizard, that helped, but I’m not going to last much longer!” I was pleading, how demeaning it was.

All I could do was watch him pace back and forth, thinking about something. Eventually he spoke again.

“I hate those society types, they give my cousins across the sea nothing but trouble! Always after their magic. Tell you what, I’ll try to help you, and in return, I’ll need a favor.”

“Sure, what do you need?” I asked, I had hope again.

“Oh I don’t know, I just want a favor, which I will call in sometime in the future,”

Now Yonah, understand that under most circumstances you should never make deals with strangers, especially ones where there are no terms on what the person might request. But I was desperate, I was foolish. And you father knew that. And I accepted.

“Wonderful! Now let me see,” He cracked it knuckles and sat down.

From his backpack it removed all sorts of objects, eventually getting a knife, a little brush and a magnifying glass. He went up to one of the closest trees and scraped at the bark, investigating it more thoroughly than he had before. Then he put his finger up to it and there was a burst of light, I thought the tree might catch fire, but it didn’t, instead there was a puff of dark purple smoke.

“Success!” Emmett said from inside the cloud, and then he coughed violently.

I didn’t know what he was talking about, I was still stuck! Nothing had changed. But he went to another tree and did the same thing, with less smoke this time. And then he went to a rock, and again, a puff of smoke, again smaller than the last. Eventually the puffs of smoke were all the same size, but he kept going. By now I could feel something different, almost like something was lifting off of me, yet I couldn’t move.

/”I’ll explain this,” said Emmett. “You see, what it looked like at the time was the wizard had laid down a net, it really was a trap! I had to sever each line, one at a time with my magic”

Yonah nodded in partial understanding/

Finally he came up to me again, I couldn’t see him anymore because he was so close.

“Hey, um, sorry for what’s about to happen,” was all he said before there was a huge blast of smoke and a surge of heat by my feet.

And then I was on the ground. So was the fire witch, he had been blown back, and was groaning, but he was alive. I was kinda disappointed because it meant I was still bound to do him a favor.

“That should do it!” he said, springing up and dusting himself off.

“I- I’m free?” I tried to move. After three days, I was stiff, and it hurt, but I sat up and tried to do some stretches, it helped a bit.

“Sure are! Hey you wouldn’t know if there was any free land around? I’m looking to set up shop in the mountains! Maybe start with a hovel, someday a small fortress! evil stepmothers of nobility and the men’s auxiliary of uncles would send their step-children to me to be cursed, or given quests, I can make potions, just be a proper fire witch you know? Curse anyone who steps in my garden, plant magic things that will enchant you if you touch or eat them, that kind of thing!”

My head spun as he talked, but I managed to catch the gist, “is, this that favor you wanted?”

“Oh no no no, this kind of information is not favor worthy,” he said, and began gathering up his things which had been scattered by the force of the blast.

“It doesn’t matter, I don’t know. I patrol the lands but I don’t own them.”

“A pity, well I’ll be seeing you,”

It was then that I realized that I needed to get home, and it pained me to admit that I was probably too weak to do so, at least, unless I met no danger on my way. And I had to get home and warn the others about this wizard, and the trap. Society wizards are unofficially designated “kill on sight” because of their reputation. They are dangerous.

“Why don’t you come back to the village with me?”

“And why would I want to do that?” he asked, “Just go to a giant village? That’s not exactly smart”

“You said you were heading into the mountains, well that’s where the village is” I continued to explain that  with me he’d be safe, and given food and a nice bed to rest before continuing on his journey. Hospitality is a rare find in the Implausible Mountains.

He stroked his beard, “You make a good point, I shall accompany you!”

With what little strength I had, I stood up, and I started walking, but Emmett did not follow.

“Hey, where are you going!?” he shouted at me.

I turned around, and he was just staring up at me expectantly.

“Aren’t you going to carry me?”

“Can’t you fly on a broom or something?” I spat back. Carry him! I’m not a courier.

“I don’t have a broom, and you should be glad of it! Do you think I would have walked into you if I could fly around on a broom?”

I had to admit, he was right. So I placed him upon my shoulder and headed home.

But, it wasn’t as simple as that. Running I could get back in a day, walking, 2 days. Walking at my weakened pace, who knows. I didn’t have any food on me either, and I was took weak to hunt. And your father, as talented as he might be with magic, he is no hunter. His fire magic would sooner burn the entire forest or scare off any animals than do any help.

It was the morning of the second day when, according do your dad, that I didn’t wake up.

—

Back then, (Emmett continued), I wasn’t really concerned with people other than myself. I considered just leaving her there. But, I couldn’t. Even without the promised favor, I couldn’t. I had come this far, I had kind of made a friend, we didn’t spend the last two days in complete silence. And it’s rare for fire witches to do that, make friends.

There was only one thing for me to do. I would go to the village myself! There I could tell some giants what had happened and they could get Maya. That was, if they believed me, and if they didn’t try to eat me, or capture me.

I was able to rouse Maya enough to get directions to the village.

We were closer than I had thought, but it still to me a day to get there, without stopping to sleep.

I wasn’t very coherent when I reached the village, and it was about midday. There weren’t many people walking around on the outskirts so I knocked on the first door I came across. Either no one was home, or my tiny knocks were too quiet. I tried another, still no luck. The third time I nearly got flung by the door opening. I shouted up.

And was told to f- buzz off or be killed, they don’t like strange humans in the village. Said I was lucky to get this one warning, the next person might not be so merciful.

Unable to get a word in before they walked off, I decided to just follow them. They eventually made it to the, well I generously call it the village square. It’s mostly a circular area in the center of the village with a well at the center. Going up to a random giant was clearly not the right approach, so thought of a way to get people’s attention.

First I went up to the well and got a few drops of water on my face to wake me up, and then I climbed to the top and stood on the roof of the well. I took a deep breath, and a second, and a third, and shot fire up into the air. Fire from my mouth, and my hands. It had to be big! It had to be grand and noticeable. And it was.

All traffic stopped and stared at me, I was out of breath but my hair was still fire and so I was still a beacon, even under the noonday sun. Soon the well was surrounded by giants, all eyes on me. I figured I should take the initiative here since time was of the essence.

“Attention giants! I have some important information! Please give me your eyes and ears!” I used a little spell to amplify my voice.

I paused, wanting to make sure they were listening, and it seemed like they were, if only because they were confused.

“One of your kind is in danger! She has collapsed out in the forest! I can lead you to her!”

A male giant stepped out of the crowd, he had some sort of armor on so i guessed he was a guard or something, but he came up close and looked me over. You know him, Evan, but this was years ago, if you think he looks strong now, imagine him in his prime.

“Can you now? Human, and why should we trust you? We can see you’re one of those fire witches, how do we know you aren’t trying to lure one of us out there to kill us, and use our body for your wicked spellcasting”

These giants weren’t stupid, but I had to convince them. “I, I know her name! It’s Maya, she was hurt by a wizard from The Society Please you gotta believe me, just let me take you too her”

Evan stroked his non-bearded chin, “For intruding on our peace we should kill you where you stand, but you look weary, and your voice conveys no falsehood,”

“Are you suggesting we follow him!?” came a voice from the crowd, I don’t recall who it was.

“What if it really is society wizards! It could still be a trap!” said another, who I do remember now that I think about it, it was Tola.

“It would be a very elaborate lie, such high reward but higher risk. I say he will lead us, under some conditions, which must be agreed to otherwise we will kill you,” Evan said, not taking his eyes from me even once.

Of course I agreed! I had to save Maya. But, I didn’t realize that they had an anti-magic cage built by a fire witch to hold other fire witches. I was completely at their mercy, but confident that since I was telling the truth, I would make it out of this alive.

“If you make any suspicious move, little witch, it will be your end,” was all the warning I got before being given the command to point them in the right direction. There were 4 giants in total with me, in addition to Evan there was Ozna, Regla, and Gibor, though I didn’t know their names at the time.  Heh, if I went back in time and told myself that those four would be my drinking buddies someday, I would have thought I was crazy, or tried to wake myself up from the now obvious dream I was having.

Anyways back on track.

It was humiliating. Evan held me out in front of him like I was a lantern and he an old crypt keeper. I think at that point I wanted to be able to say “I told you so” to a bunch of giants, and to hear them apologize to me after we saved Maya.

We reached her in just a few hours, and remember it took me a day! The other three giants ran to gather Maya up to be carried back, she didn’t respond to their touching or moving her.

“There, you see, I was telling the truth, you can let me -” but Evan stuck his face close to the cage.

“Silence, witch, for all we know it was you and your fire magic that managed to fell someone as strong as Maya.” He spat at me, which was very rude.

But I couldn’t do anything in the anti-magic cage, even as angry as I was, my hair would only smoke! I was well and truly powerless. So I sat down and resigned myself to swinging around in the cage, which was now on Evan’s hip since I wasn’t needed to lead them back.

When we got back Maya was rushed to a healing house, and I was brought along, though I don’t know why.

I was placed on the floor beside the pad that Maya was placed on. Evan stayed by the door, watching me, as the healer asked me questions. You wouldn’t know her she, she was old even back then, but she was kind, if stern. I was tired, and angry, so we didn’t exactly get along at first.

“How long has she been like this?” she asked me.

“What does it matter!? I don’t really know!” I was, having trouble thinking, I kinda had not eaten or slept or had anything to drink for over a day.

“Think, how long?”

“Uh, four, maybe five days,” I said.

That was clearly a bad answer because she went straight to Evan and ordered him to go fetch some things.

I can’t pretend to understand what exactly was done, but I know that the healer managed to force feed Maya something, something that smelled awful, through some tube. And I know it was risky bc it took a while to set up.

I was also given food. Stale bread rhinds and old flat beer. So far, I wasn’t impressed with the hospitality that Maya had spoken of.

I did ask why I was being kept next to Maya, if they thought I was the one who hurt her. I was told that should she die, the last thing I should think about was the one I had killed. Justice i guess, it didn’t make much sense to me.

It took two days for Maya to wake up, and she was force fed the rank broth a few more times. But it must have done something.

—

It was like coming out of a fog. I didn’t know where I was, the last thing I remember was heading home, with, with a fire witch. I sat up and looked around, I was in the healing house, and next to me was a cage, and in the cage was.

“You!” I said, my voice was wispy, I picked up the cage. The fire witch was there, in the same clothes, but looking rather haggard.

“Yes it is I, Emmett, can you please let me out?” he said, standing up putting his face up to the bars, “I’ve been in this cage for almost three days!”

Thinking back I probably shouldn’t have, I didnt know why he was caged, but I opened it, and he hopped right out onto my hand. And Then I almost dropped him as his hair burst into flames!

“AHHHH! Free at last!” He cried triumphantly, “oh, sorry, got a little, excited” he said putting out his hair, though heat radiated off of him, it felt really nice as the warmth spread from him to my hands to my limbs and my entire body felt like it was being filled with energy. And clarity.

“Why on earth were you in that cage? What happened?”

He told me, his hair flaming up when he got to the the actual caging parts. But I was not burned. Unlike the others in the village, I believed him at his first words. There wasn’t really any other explanation for how I got home.

“So, little witch,” i said, “this is twice you have saved my life, I guess I owe you two favors now,”

/”It’s so much more endearing when you say it” said Emmett,

“What?”

“Little witch”/

“Ah, I mean,” his face was now the part of his head to turn red, “consider this one a freebie, but I’d better see that nice hospitality I was promised, so far the accommodations have been dreadful”

Now it was my turn to be angry. And I called out for the healer or any attendants that might be nearby. They rushed in, but as soon as they saw Emmett in my hands, they stopped.

Tired as I was, I gave them my most fearsome glare.

“How DARE you put this man in a cage, he’s a gosh darn hero!”

“We didn’t, Maya, that was Evan,” said one of the attendants.

“Then go get him!” I ordered, and one of them ran off.  

After forcing Evan to apologize, sort of, I was told there would be a feast to celebrate my recovery. I of course demanded that Emmett be allowed to join, right before falling back asleep.

—

I was very worried they would put me back in that cage or throw me out the moment Maya couldn’t stop them, but they didn’t. Now that I wasn’t suspected of attempted murder, I was allowed to do as I wished, within reason. There wasn’t much I wanted to do, I did not know, let alone trust, any other giant in the village. I didn’t dare to even go for a walk. So I just stayed by Maya’s side.

Well, not the entire time, I did leave so I could wash myself and change my clothes after half a week of traveling and being stuck in a cage. I felt like a new man, and I put on my nicest robes in anticipation of the feast.

And if you were wondering, yes, your mother was also given a wash and fresh clothing.

Now, the feast itself. The food was, it was decent. Nothing fancy, but well spiced. About what you would expect for a feast that was prepared in half a day.

And it was held outside, with tables circling the well at the center of the village, lanterns were strung from the houses and held up on poles, everyone was talking, some people were singing, everyone was drinking. Now that I got to try the not-left-out-for-days-in-the-sun-beer, I got to try real giant’s beer. And the stories are true, it’s the best in the land. But, you’ll get to try it when you’re older. It was a good time, and no one threatened to eat me, not seriously, at least, I don’t think anyone did.

Maya had to tell the story of what happened so many times that by the end of the night she was hoarse, but after most people went off to bed, we were told to stay, Evan and a few other village leaders wanted to speak with us.

We were taken to Evan’s house. Maya took a seat at the table, and I stood on table itself, as close to Maya as possible. It wasn’t long before Evan walked in with three others, Ishka, Amir, and Adom. And we were asked to tell the story.

“Again? We’ve told it over twenty times today, I’ve counted,” I said.

“No, she has told it,” said Evan, referring to Maya, “Now we want to hear it from you, and don’t spare any detail about what happened.”

I didn’t think there was much for me to add since I had not been there when the wizard showed up, but they were very interested in how I figured out the net and how to get rid of it. Amir was the village’s most powerful mage. They wanted to know if it was hidden, if I thought only fire witch fire could break it, and if they could learn to spot them.

“Wait, you think there could be more?” I asked, and I looked to Maya, she hadn’t been paying much attention But now she looked fearful.

/”I was very tired”/

“It is pure speculation,” said Amir, “but where there is one society wizard, there are always others, and Maya only found the one. More wizards could mean more traps.”

“So what do you think we should do?” I asked.

““we”? Little witch, bold of you to assume you would remain with us much longer,” said Evan. I was about to respond but Maya spoke.

 “Good luck destroying the traps without him, you said yourself you don’t know if it can be done without fire witch fire.”

Everyone was silent for a while, and I didn’t dare make suggestions, and to be fair, I didn’t have any. Then Ishka broke the silence.

“I’m less worried about the traps as I am about the wizards. If this is the beginning of an invasion, we can’t be caught off guard,” she said, “We need to start the Implausible Connection as soon as possible!”

That didnt mean jack shi-diddly to me, but I was tired and full of ale, so I didn’t inquire any further.  

The others nodded, and Ishka continued “There’s the dragon lair close by, we could go tomorrow morning, but we should send a messenger to the nearest village tonight,”

“You don’t perhaps have mirrors? To, say, contact the village directly?” I asked.

Amir looked peeved at that comment, “no, we do not, that kind of magic has never been shared with us, you humans and other small folk keep it to yourselves.”

“Well, maybe after this we’ll get that set up,” I said, and Amir looked surprised, and then smiled at me. “That’s very generous, for a fire witch,”

“I’m not going to do it for free, or any of this, if you want my help I’ll want payment!” I said. I wasn’t interested in making a profit, but this would cost me a lot of time, energy, and supplies.

Adom glared at me and growled “we are prepared to compensate you, within reason, if you prove useful.”

The meeting concluded soon after that, and Maya and I went back to the healing house, she was still recovering, and needed to have as much strength as possible for tomorrow we would meet at least one dragon.

—

(Maya continues the story)

When we got to the dragon’s lair, it was empty. Well, as far as we could tell, so we sent Emmett in, dragons may be in length the same height as a giant, but they are smaller, and none of us could actually fit in the cave entrance, not without crawling.

But they weren’t home, that was made clear when we heard the screeching, and sneezing, behind us, and looked up to see the dragon diving towards us. They landed in front of the mouth of the cave and look at us, angry and surprised. Five horns, a male dragon. And he sneezed again.

“What are you giants doing here? This is dragon territory, explain yourselves,” his tail swished, and we saw that it was not pointed, the end had been cut off, and then the burned. The dragon was shaking, and bit of flame flicked out of his nose.

“They’re not home,” Emmett called from inside the cave, he was coming back, and the dragon jerked his head in Emmett’s direction.

“Thieves!! You brought a human to steal from me!”

Before any of could do something he released a blast of fire and we heard Emmett yelp.

“No, dragon, we are not thieves! We came to talk to you, wizards were spotted in the forest! We’ve come to invoke the Implausible Connection” Evan shouted over the screeches of the dragon.

The dragon stopped breathing fire and looked astonished, and was no longer in a rage. He sat up on his hind legs, curling his injured tail around to his underbelly, and cocked his head at Evan, and again, he sneezed.

“Wizards you say, Implausible Connection you say! Wish you had come sooner, I just met a wizard.” now that he wasn’t angry his voice was much softer, “I am very sorry about your human friend, wrong place at the wrong time, I hope you don’t hold his death against me,” he twitched his tail, a bit embarrassed at his mistake.

“I’m not dead!” Emmett called from the cave, coughing loudly, he staggered out into the light. His face was covered in soot, and his clothing was almost all gone, he was in burned rags and charred undergarments.

“I’m *cough* charging extra for the loss of my clothes,” he said to Evan, who rolled his eyes.

The dragon lumbered over on his hind legs to Emmett and put his snout near Emmett’s face.

“A fireproof human, how fascinating, unless,” and he growled deeply, “this is a trick, and you’re another wizard!”

“He’s not, he’s a fire witch” I said, as Emmett made his way back to me. I put him on my shoulder, for safe keeping.  The dragon looked at me, narrowing his eyes.

“That would make more sense,” he said, “So, it seems as though we have both had encounters with wizards, before I tell my tale, I suggest you tell yours, if you think this is worth making the Connection”

We did, and he listened with wrapped attention and when I got to the part about being frozen the dragon snarled.

“Did you get trapped too? How did you get out?” I said, stopping the story.

The dragon looked to his tail, “I didn’t get trapped. I was flying off after chasing the wizard away and then it felt like I had been grabbed by my tail. I looked down, and there was nothing, but I could feel the magic there, dense and stringy. I didn’t dare go near it, but I could not hover forever. I bit off the end of my tail, cauterized it, and then flew here.”

We all exchanged glances, and we all were thinking the same thing. There were more wizards, and more traps. This was bad.

“And you are sure it was a Society Wizard? Not an Academic?” asked Evan.

The dragon snorted, “of course, didn’t you hear my sneezing? Not much can effect a dragon, but for some reason we seem to be allergic to Society Wizards.”

This was why the Implausible Connection was needed. It was the only way to warn everyone and unite the peoples of the mountain to solve the problem. It started with telling the dragons, who could fly fast than anyone could run or walk, to spread the word. This dragon was eager to get it started.

“Can you perhaps, take us to the one you were almost caught in?” said Emmett, as the dragon was about to take off.

“For what purpose?” he asked, annoyed.

Emmett explained that he was able to disable the trap I was caught in, and he wanted to test methods of destruction, and to better investigate the magic itself. The dragon agreed, but he was annoyed that we had to walk there, when he could just fly Emmett. It soon realized that Emmett wasn’t going to be allowed to go without giants chaperoning him.

—

It really didn’t take very long to get to the spot. We were there within the hour. Of course, I didn’t walk any of it, being on Maya’s shoulder. The dragon took off as soon as it could and I started to set up for the day’s work. Thankfully my traveler’s pack was so heavily enchanted that it didn’t get burned up, I had all of my supplies.

I was the only one who could actually go into the trap itself, so I couldn’t have any help, a pity. And it was. Slow going. And to make it worse, the giants were impatient, and didn’t believe me when I said I was working as fast as I could, and in my underwear, I might add.

/”Oh gods, I had forgotten that you didn’t have a spare set of clothes with you” said Maya

“I wish I could forget it, it was embarrassing!” said Emmett, “It’s why I developed a spell to mend clothes!”/

After a few hours in which I made little progress, two dragons arrived, and not the one we had spoken to before. These two were female.

“You, fire witch,” said the larger dragon, pointing a claw at me, “You can destroy these things?”

I walked up to the edge of the trap, as long as I was in it, the dragons couldn’t do anything to me, no one could.

“My name,” I was getting tired of being called ‘fire witch’, “Is Emmett, and yes, I can.”

“Prove it,” she said, spitting some fire, pacing next to the edge of the trap.

I rolled my eyes  “I’m trying to figure out what it is, If I destroy it, I can’t learn from it!” I said.

“It matters not, witch, destroy this one, and we will provide another for your investigations,” her companion said.

“Fine,” I said, I packed up all of my things and set about destroying the net. I was quicker than before, now that I knew what to expect, and the dragons watched, barley blinking. The giants watched too, blinking a lot, or sleeping. It took awhile and the poofs of smoke lost their novelty quickly. Only Maya paid as much attention as the dragons, though I’m confident that she was watching them more than she was watching me.

I severed the last magic line and with a sickening THUD, the tip of a dragon’s tail hit the ground. I ran towards it. It was still fresh.

The two dragons didn’t like that, but I stared them down, “This,” I waved the tail end,  “is my payment, for sacrificing this trap, and for what I assume are the next ones I am being conscripted to deal with.”

“That is, acceptable,” one of them said. “Now you will come with us, do you have a broom or will we be carrying you?”

“Neither,” said Maya, standing between myself and the dragons, “The witch is my charge, I carry him, you will lead,”

The dragon stood up to her full height, and still had to fly a bit to be at eye level, “This is a dragon matter, giant, we need the witch and you will give him over,”

“No, he’s ours!” and she picked me up.

This had to stop I wanted to help, but not if it meant I was treated like a tool.

“Everyone SHUT UP!” sparks were flying from my hair and I could feel it about to ignite.

All eyes were on me, and not in the way I liked it.

“Now, I should by all means leave you all in the dust and leave with what’s left of my dignity, but I won’t. I won’t. Not just because I’m all mixed up in this, but because I plan to live here someday, and I can’t do that if it’s over run with Society Wizards!” I couldn’t stop it, my hair lit up, but not as angry as I had feared, It clearly knew I wanted a bit of a spectacle. Maya yelped but didn’t drop me.

I paused to calm myself down, even though my hair wouldn’t, and no one said anything, “This, Implausible Connection, no one ever explained it to me but I think I got the gist. It’s an alliance, between all the people’s of the mountain. That means whatever you want me for isnt a dragon matter, it’s an everyone matter. Maya comes with me, or I don’t come at all. And you will honor the Connection, correct?”

The dragons conferred for over a minute, during which the other giants roused from their naps.

“We agree to your terms. The Implausible Connection has not been enacted officially, but it is likely to be soon, the Dragon Emperor is in flight. But they,” and the dragon flicked her tail to the other giants, “Stay behind,”

“Fine with me,” I said.

“Not fine with me,” said Evan, finally joining in.

“You’re no longer a part of this,” I said, and Evan looked like he wanted to rip me limb from limb.

“Evan, I can look after him, he doesn’t need four giants guarding him,” said Maya.

There wasn’t much Evan could do to stop us from leaving short of attacking Maya, so that is where we parted ways and followed the dragons.

“Oh, Emmett, your hair is still on fire,” Maya said, and before I could do anything she licked her fingers and extinguished my hair like a candle.

“Uh, thanks, for that,” I was now covered in spit, wearing burned rags of a robe, and my singed underwear. What a day, and now I was going to help these dragons, soon the everyone in the mountain would get their first impression of me in possibly the worst state I could be in.

Regardless, we followed the dragons, who we learned were named Exceeder and Perzan. They of course were leading us to another sprung trap, which I, again, almost naked, set about destroying.

“About time!” said the dragon that had been caught in the trap when it fell to the ground and stretched its wings.

“You’re welcome,” I said. This dragon had no horns, it was much smaller, a juvenile, very juvenile.

“Ah, yes, forgive my rudeness oh naked one,” they said.

“Dragonling,” said Exceeder, “You will thank this man, and be grateful he has not asked for more.”

The young dragon rolled their eyes and turned back to me, “thanksssss” and flames shot out of their mouth as they hissed.

I caught the flames, I wasn’t about to let the rest of my clothing burn away, “careful now, you might burn down the forest”

“What is he!?” the young dragon, it wasnt in anger. They got up close to me and sniffed curiously, I stepped back, getting closer to Maya, who got the hint and picked me up, away from the small dragon.

“Thanks,” I said, only so that Maya could hear.

“Listen up dragon,s I am In need of clothes, a wash, and another trap to analyze” I said.

The dragons agreed to go in search of another trap while Maya took me back to the village to get cleaned up.

/”Dear, you didn’t mention, that dragonling is Yonah’s friend, dont you remember?”

“Wait, really? That was Dragon?” said Yonah.

“I had totally forgotten it was them,” said Emmett/

But if you think it was going to be that easy, you would be wrong. Turns out, as the first to encounter the wizards, Maya’s village was now a hub of activity. There were five dragons, including The Emperor, Brazon. The Lord of the Elves and their entourage was present, as was half of the Council of Dwarves. Since there was no house large enough for everyone, an area had been set up in the town center, several large tables has been connected, and smaller tables placed on top for the elves and dwarves.

And everyone was demanding to talk to us when we got back. I was adamant, I would not speak about current events until I had fresh clothes, and a bath, please. And since I’m finally in a safe place to say it, I took my sweet sweet time cleaning up.  

“Ah, the pair of the hour!” said Evan, as Maya and I, on Maya’s shoulder, formally arrived. He held out his hand for me to step on, smiling warmly. Maya put me on the table herself, and Evan’s smile twitched. I think he wanted to give the impression that he was on good terms with me, and in a position of power in the proceedings.

“I hope everyone had been brought up to speed” I said, “I have had to repeat myself several times today already.”

“We have,” said Brazon, “Unfortunately, these giants cannot give us any details on the traps, not well versed in the arcane,”  The giants present all grumbled. “So only you can tell us how they work. What do you know?”

“Well, I would know more, but two of your subjects had me destroy two traps, one that no one was actually caught in,” I said.

Brazon hissed, “We did not ask for insults, we asked for information, witch”

“I can’t tell you much. My fire magic can destroy them, I’m immune to the effects, and I can identify the spell’s anchors,” I said. “I’m not, I’m not a wizard, I’m not fully equipped in skill, knowledge, or tools to analyze these enchantments with even a modicum of efficiency, If I just had more time,” I trailed off.

All eyes were on me, but I had nothing. Maybe I wasn’t the powerful witch i thought I was, maybe all my confidence was faked and I was biding my time until the giants realized it and turned on me. Surely now that I had stated it outright, I was to be tossed away like burned parchment. I was deflated.

But no one was angry, everyone was thinking. Finally the Lord of the Elves approached me. They had dark skin with blue-ish tones, his brown hair slightly, curled, and their deep green eyes looked up at me. They were at best 4 feet tall, the tallest of the elves present. Their garb was both fancy and armored, encrusted with jewels that reeked of charms. They reached out their hand to hold mine.

It had been a while since I’d seen hands that weren’t large enough to envelop me, and now I was going to take the hands of the Elf Lord of the Implausible Mountains.

“Mr. Ha’Esh was it?”  they said, their voice much lower than I had expected, and dripping with kindness perfected from decades of politics, “I am Lord Khelema, it is an honor to meet you”

I was shaking, and feared I was squeezing his smaller hand in mine, “I can’t imagine why,” I said.

“A fire witch? Abandoning their personal endeavors, and so quickly mind you, to help a people in need? It is unheard of,” they said

I blinked, “I, I am owed favors, and was going to be paid,” I said. The elf lord beckoned me to lean down, to put my ear to their mouth.

“You keep telling yourself that? That you are risking your life, safety, and reputation to save all the peoples of the mountains from an unknown plot by the society of wizards, for some measly coin? The promise of a favor?” they said at a whisper.

“What are they telling you!?” one of the giant bellowed, and I jumped.

“I was simply telling him that he need not work alone any longer.” said Khelema, voice booming impressively.

“I, I wasn’t working alone, I have Maya,” I said, indicating her behind me, and my cheeks grew hot as I did.

Lord Khelema took back their hands and then they, a few other elves, and several of the people around me laughed.

“Help with the magic, my good man, you need help with the magic,” said one of the dwarves, “You are still the only one who can traverse a sprung trap, but you have more resources now,”

The present company had already planned to send out spies to look for wizards and traps, as soon as I could tell them what to look for, and were pleased to know of the three dragons I had already assigned to such a task. They all wanted to know what I thought of their plan, which so far was just, well, spy on the wizards, find traps, investigate.

Just a few days ago I had been expecting to find a quiet place for myself, and hope to not transgress on anyone’s territory. Now I meeting the leaders of every mountain People, I was at the center of a war tribunal, and our foe was the Society of Wizards.

My only anchor was Maya, who stood behind me the entire time, offering support when she could.

The first step was to find a freshly laid trap, and not get caught in it, or at least, if someone was to activate it, for it to be me. I would provide notes and execute testing procedures developed by the elves, dwarves, and dragons. As a side project I would try to come up with a method to allow non-fire witches to destroy or if possible, enter a trap.

If we could capture a wizard that would be extremely helpful, but if they could be simply killed that was perfectly acceptable.

I posited that we contact The Academy of Wizards, but they couldn’t be brought into this, too neutral. And even though The Academy is a separate entity from The Society, no one wanted to deal with more wizards than necessary.

It got dark by the time we adjourned. But instead of going to the healing house, Maya took me to hers, or rather, her families, she still lived with her parents and some of her siblings. The elves and the dwarves both offered me more properly proportioned accommodations, but I was more comfortable with the one person I was most familiar with.

—

That was… the first proper night we spent together, without him in a cage or myself on the mend. Though all it really involved was Emmett being given a makeshift bed in a small box which I placed by my head. We had a lot of work ahead of us, or he did, and a good night’s sleep was very important.

We had more time to rest up than we thought, progress was slow going. We didn’t find another trap for three days, so for three days I took Emmett around on my patrols, though I knew we were followed by the elves, the sneaky little bast- folk. We saw a wizard once, but he ran before we could get to him, and there was no trap nearby.

The dragons we originally sent to find a trap were eventually successful, and that was nearly out downfall. They hadn’t been trying to sneak around, they’re actions alerted the wizards to the fact that we were mobilizing against them.

And then, out of nowhere, there were wizards. All over the mountains. It took all of our combined efforts to hold them off of, whatever they were planning. Emmett was immune to their magic, and they didn’t know we had a fire-witch, so he was constantly being called to remove the traps, and there wasn’t much chance to study them.

Even with the help of the elves, he made little progress. All we learned was the magic was old and secret. The Society of Wizards had delved into some long forgotten archive for the construction of the enchantments.

The only major development made was after two weeks, we, or rather, the dwarves, the elves, and Emmett, figured out how to destroy the traps more efficiently. And I heard them explain it enough that even I understood it.

Emmett’s magic was still the only thing that could destroy an activated trap, not that we knew how to avoid activating them when we stopped a wizard from doing so, but that’s beside the point. If you thought of the magic like ropes, you could imagine cutting the ropes with scissors. Scissors made of fire-witch magic.

And it was a brilliant solution. That cage that Emmett was held in? We took that apart and forged a few blades, these could slice right through the magic, but it had to be done from the outside in, cleaving each tether that was exposed enough to reach without getting caught in the trap. It was slow, careful going. Unless you were Emmett and could waltz into a trap and cut up the spell.

We had Emmett analyze the cage and imbue more metal with the same magic, for more blades.

/“I spent three freaking days doing nothing but pouring my magic into pieces of metal for the dwarves! I felt like I was going to die of boredom or waste away from lack of magic”/

It was the only three days where I wasn’t at Emmett’s side, and it was the worst three days of the entire conflict. I took out my distress on the wizards, so at least I applied myself constructively in that time.

The problem was, the wizards were getting smarter, and wouldn’t activate the traps if they figured out we were nearby, and we couldn’t destroy one that wasn’t activated, not yet. Because we couldn’t find them. Even if we could see the wizard working on placing it.

—

Finally we captured one of the Society Wizards before he could flee, or was killed (the dragons and the giants tended to favor eating them, the dwarves to disembowel or bludgeon, and the elves to turn into pincushions of arrows).

We took away his staff, his source of magic, and. We… persuaded him to talk. I had to be there, to counter any magic he might have kept for himself, and to, assist. I’m not too proud of what I did, but we needed to know what the wizards were planning.

It was as bad as we feared. The wizards were not placing traps, they were activating an old network that they put there ages ago. They had apparently forgotten about their plan to capture as many magical beings as possible in the Implausible Mountains, and drain their magic. They didnt know why they abandoned that plan, but they figured they could try and finish the job.

The wizard didn’t know how many of the traps existed, only that there were a lot. Each web was actually a nexus point, and if enough could be activated, it would form one giant web, trapping everyone, leaving them at the mercy of the wizards.

After analyzing the wizard’s staff, along with help from the elves, we found a spell that detected the traps. It took about a week, but we were able to copy it. The traps were very well hidden, but they were like spider’s webs, and would, collect dew as it were. Magical dew. You would let out a small amount of pure magical energy, like a mist of magic, and would see where it stuck. But you had to know the pattern it would collect in. We knew it now.

After that, well there isn’t much of note, Maya and I traveled around finding traps, sometimes finding the wizards already there, sometimes getting the jump on them. We were just one of many groups clearing the mountains, and after another month we were sure there were no more wizards and very few traps left, the very strange almost war, was over!

There was a big celebration held in the largest of the giant villages, the only one that could seat more giants than just it’s village population. Beyond the relief that we had stopped the wizards, there was a celebration of unity. It had been a while since the Implausible Connection had been enacted and the peoples of the mountains had put aside their differences and petty conflicts.

Near the end I was asked to give a speech. We were all happy and off of food and various alcohols. I knew it was coming, and knew that there wasn’t much I could say that hadn’t been said before, except for one thing.

“Most of you know that I originally got entangled in this because I was the one who found Maya in that very first trap. What you may not know is that I only helped destroy that first trap, and free Maya, in exchange for a favor. I did not tell her what the favor would be, or when I would ask for it. Truthfully, I just liked the idea of having a giant indebted to me.”

Glancing at Maya I could see she was not pleased with my honesty. I cleared my throat again, and walked in front of Maya, staring into her dark eyes, letting her presence become my world. It was easy to do, she is very large. I smiled up at her.

“Maya” I said, holding out my hands palms down in front of me.

“Would you do me the favor, of marrying me?”

And I apparated a pair of bond earrings between us.

There was complete silence, I feared I had made a fatal mistake.

“Is he serious?” I heard Evan shout, breaking the tension. I didn’t look at him, I only looked at Maya, and I nodded.

—

“Yes,” I said, and I scoped up your father and kissed his entire head.

—

“And since everyone we knew was already present, we saw no reason not to have the wedding right then and there,” said Maya, concluding the story.

Yonah had been in rapt attention the entire time. He had to shake himself out of his trance. “Wowwwww, that was the best story ever! Can I see the earring mother?”

“Of course,” she said, removing the circlet with a pleasant click. Placing it in Yonah’s hands.

“These are not in any giant fashion,” she said, “See the markings? It’s giant formal, but it’s much too curved and flowing, much too intricate, and too detailed. No giant’s hands could make details that small. I found out later that night that Emmett had been planning this for a while, back when he was enchanting the metal, and I wasn’t around, he had asked the dwarves to make the earrings.”

Yonah was studying the piece of jewelry, it was sturdy and would not break in his or any giant’s hands.

“Do you have any other stories?” he said.  

His parents laughed, his father coughed a bit. Yonah didn’t understand what was funny. He was so proud of his parents, they were heroes! Surely they had more stories!

“Your father needs to rest now, how about you come hunting with me?”

“But, you went yesterday!” said Yonah, yet a bad feeling gathered in his gut. The hunt yesterday had been very successful, 4 dire-boars, 3 deer. And he was useless at hunting!

“I should rephrase that, I’m not going to be hunting, you are. I know you have been slacking on archery practice, and it’s not right for a young giant to not know his way around a ranged weapon.” she said, ruffling her son’s hair.

Yonah groaned, he hated archery, and most combat training. He knew why it was important, and he was ok at it, but only because his mother was an expert and his teacher. He would never be as good as good as her, and he didn’t want to.  He much preferred magic, and gardening, like his dad.

“Come on, you get your father into bed, and I’ll get our supplies,” she smiled wickedly.

[FIN]

[FIN]

[Thanks for reading! Reblogs are greatly appreciated! With tags to tell me what you liked about this story! If you want a story with an adult Yonah and vore in it, go here! it’s safe vore, but does mentioned fatal]

[tigerlover16-uk]

Goodbye, GT

This is a very personal post written mostly for the sake of posterity and closure. You're free to read it if you really want, but I'd rather nobody comment or make a big deal out of anything I say here, I just needed to get my thoughts written out for the sake of moving on. So I'd rather people just scroll past.

Well, I finally finished watching Dragon Ball GT subbed. Thank goodness.

I have a lot of complex thoughts on GT, many of them very negative. I've made it no secret that I hate this series, and I have a lot of reasons why I hate it. The complete refusal to do anything meaningful with the vast majority of the supporting cast (With the things they actually do end up being very minor stuff, or downright insulting), especially the complete mishandling of Pan and Uub's characters. The boring stories, the bad designs and the general aesthetic of the show. The unengaging fights, and that utterly STUPID ending!

There were a few things I liked here and there, but in general I have a lot to complain about. And maybe if people ask me I will talk more about the show, but since this will likely be the last time I ever watch it, I felt now was a good time to really wax poetic about why I really feel so negatively about it.

Because after really thinking everything over and my experiences with GT and the franchise in general, I think I've found a more deep-seated reason besides it's own admittedly poor quality as a show. And I just wanted to get it all out for posterity's sake and so I can really move on.

I watched GT as it was airing on Welsh television as a kid, the Blue Water Dub specifically. It aired right after Dragon Ball Z finished, and the original Dragon Ball started airing after GT wrapped up. Like with DBZ, I watched every episode as it aired, and in general my childhood self enjoyed it. I was too young and stupid to really think critically about most of the media I consumed, so I never tended to notice any flaws in the shows I watched.

And Dragon Ball Z was my favourite growing up, alongside Spider-man The Animated series, so naturally I was inclined to think of everything GT did as being amazing and cool. And to be fair, yeah there is some cool stuff here, I can see why I enjoyed it. Even though now that I look back, a lot of it didn't stick with me the same way the stories, action and characters of DBZ and later Dragon Ball did.

I was confused and uncertain about the ending, but given that the original Dragon Ball started airing soon after I was never much concerned with it. Dragon Ball couldn't really be over, here was more of it showing me all that backstory and stuff that was always hinted at or flashbacked to in Z but I never saw for some reason. I quickly fell in love with OG Dragon Ball the same way i did with it's sequel series.

It was soon after that series finished airing, however, and I came to accept that Dragon Ball was over... that a powerful, uneasy feeling started to set in. While I know I hadn't actually been watching it for ALL of my life, it really did feel like Dragon Ball had always been there. A constant, welcoming, wonderful presence in my life that made everything feel so much cooler and life in general so much more fulfilling. Something to always look forward to...

I didn't dwell on it too hard at the time, but as time passed, and life generally got harder and more miserable as time went on (I'm pretty sure I was in secondary school when Dragon Ball finished, and that was one of the worst parts of my life, let me tell you!), I started to feel very alone and wistful.

To give an idea of what I was going through without giving too much away, I was losing friends, with my longest friendship ending in a great personal betrayal, my home life was an utter mess right up to and through my parents divorcing.

And between school work, undiagnosed aspergers that my teachers refused to acknowledge might be a possibility, and just realising how harsh, cruel and kind of miserable the world really was... let's just say that I became a pretty closed off, miserable person for a while.

I got better when I started going to college and life in general became more stable, but through all of that, and for the next several years after it even... the thing that made it especially unbearable, was that through it all, I felt like something was missing.

Something important, something grounding. Something that had helped carry me through life prior to all that, and give me something to always look forward to and find comfort in whenever things seemed rough.

It felt like a part of my soul had been missing for a long time, and I never understood why.

I think it was during my later years in secondary school that my family got a computer for the first time. I can clearly remember spending so many hours of my life browsing through wiki's of all sorts of shows, games and movies I liked.

One day, I inevitably started looking up Dragon Ball stuff.

I went all in trying to find as much information as possible about this series. I read all up about the behind the scenes information and Akira Toriyama's writing process. I read up on all the characters, the manga prototypes of Dragon Ball, and the reasons for why Toriyama wrote a lot of things the way he did.

I learned about all of the dub changes, and the various dubs that were out there for that matter. I used to have a laugh about some of them. Learned about a lot of the movies, games, Specials and other stuff I hadn't been aware of because I'd never seen them before.

While I didn't have any DVD's for the series available for a while and felt uncomfortable pirating the show (Didn't stop me from looking at some other things on YouTube, I notice though... I'm a weirdo :p), but I did frequently refamiliarize myself with stuff that had happened.

And when Dragon Ball Z Kai became a thing, I watched that, and I kept up with animated specials like the Yo! Son Goku and his friends return! special or Episode of Bardock (Which I actually watched before I even watched Bardock: Father of Goku, despite knowing about that special and everything that happened in it for a while, for some reason...).

I remember hearing about Dragon Ball Online and all the stuff about it's lore, and being utterly fascinated by the prospect, since I had never imagined another take on the series post-EoZ other than GT actually being presented, even though I REALLY did wish we had more.

Over time as I was doing this, the feeling of wonder and fun that I had always felt watching Dragon Ball as a kid started to come back, and I remembered why I loved this series so much. How much it meant to me... and how sad it made me that it seemed the series would never come back.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I appreciated that we had stuff like the video games, or the occasional specials, and even the SD manga when that became a thing was something I frequently read synopsis for since I didn't know where to actually read the manga for a while. I was glad there was content being made... but it was never nearly the same thing as having a proper continuation, you know.

And a lot of the stuff we got, like the YO! special, was pretty mediocre fluff in the long run. It was fun, but it didn't fill the void. And I thought nothing ever would.

I had begun to realize what that missing part of my soul had been.

I was excited when I heard about Battle of Gods being released, but I also assumed it would just be a one-off thing, something that would be great to pass the time and give me another chance to see all those characters I loved again, but it wouldn't lead to anything bigger. And despite stuff like the hints of there being multiple different universes, I was still certain by the time Resurrection F was announced that an occasional mostly self-contained movie would be the best we could ask for in terms of new Dragon Ball content.

I can't even begin to tell you how shocked... and how darn HAPPY I was when Super was announced. I never expected it to happen... I couldn't believe it was. For the first time in years... a new Dragon Ball series. One that ignored GT's continuity, and thus it's definitive ending, and opened up the possibility of more new Dragon Ball stories for many years to come.

I wanted to cry.

I didn't start watching the show until it was part-way through the Champa saga... mostly because there weren't legal ways to view it until part-way through the Future Trunks saga, and I thought I'd wait for the dub at first. but keeping up with news and spoilers about what was happening, and browsing the tv tropes pages for Super every day and watching clips on YouTube, I just couldn't control myself and started looking up episodes of the Champa saga myself.

And oh God... I felt at home. I mean, it wasn't a perfect story, really, but... it was good. And it was new Dragon Ball. Watching things unfold was such a magical experience, and when it got to the Hit fight... HOLY COW, was my mind blown. THAT... that was Dragon Ball, through and through! And then we got the Baby Pan episode, and dear God that was adorably perfect and I love it to bits. And then we found out that Future Trunks was coming back for a saga, and the new villain for it and, OH GOD THE EXCITEMENT!

Having Dragon Ball back in my life again was just... it felt just so... right. The missing part of my soul was restored. I had my childhood... I had my best friend back.

I suppose by now you're wondering about how all of this relates to GT. You're probably thinking "Oh well then, you only hate it because you blame it for ending Dragon Ball for so long!" and... well, okay, that's kind of on point. But I didn't hate it for that until after I actually re-watched the series not too long ago.

Truth is, I've always defended GT. I mean, I knew it had problems just listening to people talk about it, and remembering it for myself. I definitely agreed the ending was wrong. But... I remembered liking it as a kid. Even loving it.

I remembered there were ideas and a few characters I really liked. People complain about a lot of things in DBZ as well, yet whenever I re-watch that and the original Dragon Ball, they both hold up exceptionally well despite some issues. Better than so many things from my childhood.

So, why shouldn't GT hold up the same? I always told people that GT was okay, that a lot of people overreacted and that it wasn't anything offensive. People were just overreacting.

I strongly believed that for years. I was glad it was non-canon, because that meant there was another chance for another, better post-EoZ series that utilized the next gen characters (And the long standing supporting cast, for that matter) better, and I didn't want Dragon Ball to have a definitive ending. But I stubbornly refused to have negative feelings about GT.

I started re-watching GT when Super was about half-way through, out of curiosity and because I wanted to have an actually up to date, informed opinion on it. Especially where comparisons to Super came up.

I didn't go into the series intending to be negative, I went in with the intention of DEFENDING IT. I knew there would be stuff that would annoy me or that would be frustrating, but I wanted to enjoy it like I had as a child. I wanted to be able to say with confidence that despite it's faults, GT was a worthwhile addition to the Dragon Ball franchise and that I liked it.

And for the first two to five episodes, I did kind of enjoy it, despite some things I took issue with...

But the more I watched and was bored of the first saga, and the more I started looking ahead and really dwelling on what went on in the show. How it used the characters, how the stories were written and how it ended... after a while, I started to doubt it. I started to dislike it more and more.

While I had made up my mind about GT not being a good continuation of Dragon Ball Z by the time I finished the Baby saga, I still mostly enjoyed that saga at least, despite some glaring issues that bothered me. I was willing to say that was mostly fine. I hated the Super 17 saga a lot, but even going into the Shadow Dragons saga, I expected to like that. I tried very hard to be positive going into it... and then it kept spitting in my face.

And by the time I got to the penultimate episode, I was sick of the show and glad to stop watching it. I did something I never expected myself to do, and declared it horrible, a blight on the franchise! And I meant it, because after experiencing such a disappointing let down, and especially after that insulting final episode when I did watch it... I felt betrayed.

THIS was the show I had been defending all these years?! It was trash! People were right, GT WAS an insult to the franchise... it was an insult to me as a fan, as someone who loves this series.

And I feel this way because it feels like the series is specifically designed to annoy me. The first saga is a boring slog where it feels like nothing of actual value happens after our heroes leave earth, all for a stupid contrived premise. The only really notable episode is episode 15, and for ALL the wrong reasons! Goku is turned into a kid for no reason, which just feels wrong at this point in the series, Pan is derailed into an annoying brat for no good reason, and the only other character that comes along for the journey is Trunks. Who is one of the few characters I don't really care that much about, and he's blander here than he was in DBZ.

We get one half-decent story after that, one horrible trainwreck of an arc that did NOTHING right apart from a funny gag with Chichi and Videl, and a saga that sounds on paper like it should be the greatest thing in the world... but everything apart from Nuova and Eis Shenron's episodes was handled in the WORST WAY POSSIBLE.

The fights range from passable, occasionally good, to just BORING. While there were good jokes sometimes, the humour was usually dull. The many characters I loved either barely showed up and then only to get fodderised, have a lot of their personality drained away so they're just kind of dull, or in the cases of Piccolo and Majin Buu, get POINTLESSLY KILLED OFF! And in Piccolo's case he got shoved into freaking Hell for his troubles and never got out! What were you thinking, writers! That is NOT how you treat one of the greatest anime characters ever created!

Everything I felt could have potential to be interesting felt like it was deliberately sabotaged. Uub was shoved aside in the first episode and didn't show up until it was half over, and then despite getting a transformation all he does is have a fight with Baby that's way too short and anti-climactic and then stall the villain later on in the saga, otherwise he's so insignificant to the show he might as well never show up.

I always thought his character was very interesting and I wanted to see him be at least the co-protagonist and actually do stuff... and GT just bent over backwards to make him irrelevent, give him almost no personality or real purpose, and just generally undermine the entire point of the ending of Z...

Pan got off almost worse. She was never allowed to go super saiyan, only useful a few times throughout the show and didn't defeat anyone that mattered on her own. She got no real character development, and was mostly just a damsel in distress... because the writers LITERALLY ADMITTED that they only kept her around so she could get beat up by the villains so Goku could look better by comparison. But oh I've already made some long posts on how badly Pan was used, so I won't go on now.

Bulla and Marron barely existed as far as the show was concerned. Krillin was basically a prop that was there to be a butt monkey who disappoints his family in the Baby saga, and his only notable contribution to the story was to DIE to move the plot along.

Android 17... oh God, the poor guy. He barely had any personality left when he showed up inexplicably under Dr Gero and Myuu's mind control, that whole Super 17 fusion was stupid as all heck, and then they senselessly killed his character off for real without ever doing ANYTHING of interest with him in a really insulting manner.

Despite the brilliant premise of having all the past villains invade from hell, the show did NOTHING with ANY of them, apart from turning Frieza, my favourite villain of all time, and Cell, into a couple of jokes who are defeated in an embarrassing way.

As cool as the Shadow Dragons are in concept, not only does their explanation and build up make no sense, but only Nuova and Eis are worthwhile characters. Haze and Rage Shenron were absolutely pathetic, Oceanus Shenron felt like a monster of the week from an earlier point in the series and not suitable endgame villain material, Naturon Shenron was annoying and lost because he was the BIGGEST IDIOT in the entire franchise, and Omega Shenron was the most disappointing final boss possible with no personality beyond "Evil bad guy" and a dull final fight that just poorly rips off stuff that happened in the Buu Saga, as well as that one episode that was just pointless padding that existed to tease people who liked Nuova Shenron by bringing him back only to have his contribution mean nothing (Kind of like how Vegeta going super saiyan 4 meant nothing thanks to Gogeta being a time wasting idiot and Vegeta not even putting up a half-decent fight against Omega).

And besides that, there were only two new characters in the show besides Nuova (Who was killed off way too soon, IMO) and Eis (The only character used as well as he could have been, probably) that were any good, them being Baby and General Rilldo. And Baby devolves into discount Frieza with none of the charm halfway through his saga, and Rilldo only gets a mediocre at best fight and then gets a bridge unceremoniously dropped on him.

And apart from them? Giru/Gill was an occasional nuisance and as interesting as drying paint. Valese was awkward and pointless, Dolltaki was the WORST character in the franchise, Dr Myuu/Mu was a boring dollar store Dr Gero with a stupider moustache and nothing interesting to him at all, and none of the other few characters were anything worthwhile.

And it's not like the show did a lot of interesting stuff with the characters it already had, half the characters are barely around, with several being only silent cameos, and they don't get any development from when we last saw them. Even 18's highly touted contribution in the Super 17 saga just involved her conveniently showing up to shoot energy blasts at Super 17, allowing Goku to then do all the hard work necessary to defeat him. It was kinda cool, but it was barely anything and it still comes at the expense of wasting 17 completely.

And then that ending... that above all insulted me, because after the show went out of it's way to wreck up so many of the characters, and treat us to mediocre to horrible stories, destroy any of the potential that Dragon Ball Z left open for future stories... after all that, it had the GALL to offer up what it intended to be the definitive, no going back ending for the ENTIRE series... an ending that was out of nowhere, depressing, and overall just kind of pointless... I was so angry.

THIS SHOW... this show is the reason we went so long without another Dragon Ball series for almost two decades, outside of Kai being just a re-cut of Z. And it went out of it's way to be the worst possible send off for the franchise imaginable, and try to cut off all avenues for future series.

I was so angry over this! All those years wistfully longing to have Dragon Ball come back... all those years that I felt incomplete, like I'd lost my anchor to make life feel more bearable when things got bad... like I didn't have a lot to look forward to... all of that was GT's fault, and it was TERRIBLE to boot!

And I DEFENDED this show all that time, because I was just so clueless... I felt sick.

And yes, I know I can't blame GT for how bad life got for me, that's childish... but I really do feel like having a little hope that Dragon Ball would continue with more series would have helped through it.

Dragon Ball is not just a show or manga to me. It is my favourite media franchise of all time. The series, it's characters and it's world resonate with me like nothing else. Nothing makes me happier than watching Dragon Ball, nothing else gets me more excited. The magic I felt watching the show as a kid is something I have yet to experience from any other work of fiction, despite trying my hardest to find it elsewhere in the time since. Maybe Pokemon comes close, but it's not quite there.

Dragon Ball is an integral part of my life. And GT tried to rip it away from me. To torch the franchise and run, as tv tropes would put it.

That is why I was so happy to have Super come into my life.

Dragon Ball Super is not a perfect series, as I have stated many times before. It has plot holes, inconsistent animation quality, especially earlier on. It occasionally screws up writing certain characters like Vegeta or Goku (Even though I don't think the latter's portrayal overall is anywhere near as bad as people blow it out of proportion to be), and there are plenty of missed opportunities. The Future Trunks Saga's ending was a complete mess, some of the things it introduced didn't really pay off. It has problems...

But at the same time, it's given me more joy than any other series of the past decade. Because when Super is good... oh my God, is it good.

The best fights from Super are honestly some of my favourites in the entire franchise. Goku vs Hit, the big fight with Goku Black and Future Zamasu in episode 57, Gohan vs Lavender, Gokus first fight with Jiren, Android 18 beating Ribrianne... there are SO many good ones, and the best are so much better than any of GT's action scenes. Heck, just watching the clip of the last bout of the fight between Goku, Frieza and Android 17 against Jiren did more for me than the entire final battle against Omega Shenron did.

There are so many good jokes and funny episodes, I think I've laughed more watching Super than any other Dragon Ball series. The slice of life episodes and moments scattered throughout are wonderful, and give me such an unbelievably pleasant feeling. We see so much more of the supporting cast too, and while the show struggles with a lot of characters especially early on, they all ended up getting so much good character moments over the course of the show and especially in the final arc. It was so wonderful just to spend more time with everyone.

There were so many cool new concepts thrown in. The 12 universes, the integration of the Galactic Patrol from the Jaco manga, the super dragon balls.

And there were so many new characters that I'm actually interested in.

Obviously we have Beerus, Whis and Jaco carrying on from the recent movies, and I love them so much. But in Super we got to meet Hit, Champa, Vados, Cabba, Frost, Magetta, Goku Black, Caulifla, Toppo, Ribrianne, and so many awesome and intersting new characters, many of whom I desperately want to see fleshed out and get to do more in future series. I didn't care about anyone from GT NEARLY as much as I care about half of these new characters, except maybe Nuova.

There's just so many amazing things that have happened that I never dreamed I would experience.

I never thought Android 17 would not only come back and be developed more, but that he'd go on to be one of the best characters in the show and one of my new favourites. I never thought Frieza would make a big comeback either, but oh God was he so perfect in the Universe Survival Saga and I think I love him even more now than I already did! I never thought I'd see Master Roshi getting to be cool again and have what felt like an even better send off to his time as a martial artist than the original Dragon ball gave him, but oh lord was episode 105 so good and got me emotional.

I never even knew I wanted Pan the adorable super baby to be a thing, but oh God is she wonderful and perfect in every way and I just love her so much! Ahhh!

Already I have so many fond memories of watching Super. Sure, it's done things to upset me from time to time, but when it's good, and it is most of the time, it does more for me than most other shows I watch. When Super is at it's best, I feel the same magic that Dragon Ball Z made me feel as a child.

A feeling I never once got from watching GT.

And as much as I panicked when I heard the show was ending, we got confirmation soon after that Super would continue through the upcoming movie, and all signs pointed to a new Dragon Ball series being produced in the near future. When the final episode aired, I felt a great sense of satisfaction in how it concluded... and also excitement and hope for the future, because that last episode made it so clear that there was much more to come.

Dragon Ball GT's ending threw me out of the house, slammed the door in my face and flushed the keys down the toilet. But Super left the door open.

It wasn't a goodbye this time. It was a "See you later"

A promise from my oldest, most dear friend that we would meet again.

It was such a beautiful feeling. And I cannot wait to see what the future holds for Dragon Ball. I'm sure there'll be bad stories now and again, every franchise has those from time to time, but Toei seem to be making all the right moves to get things stable to better produce future dragon ball works. The movie seems like it's having a ton of effort put into it, at least. So I have faith. Now my dream where Dragon Ball can go on forever might finally be coming true, and I couldn't be happier.

And after all is said and done, looking back on GT... I can't help but resent it for trying to deny me that.

I can't help but hold GT responsible for all of the years where there were no new Dragon Ball series. All the years it felt like Dragon Ball would never come back for real. And for all the loneliness that caused me deep in my heart.

It had some good points. Bad as it truly was, I can't say it was the worst sequel or show ever produced, there are many works of fiction that are objectively far worse than GT, and stuff that has caused actual harm to the world.

It'll never be One More Day or Holy Terror levels of bad... but on a strictly personal level, GT causes me more anger than any other fictional work I have encountered.

Why did I bother watching it again? That was a question I found myself asking as I was binging the subbed version. Obviously the reason I started doing that was because I have a personal goal of watching each Dragon Ball series both dubbed and subbed, and I thought I might as well get GT out of the way since I'd watched it all dubbed not too long ago... but why did I keep going as quickly as I did, when watching it just caused me so much frustration to the point of feeling actually painful?

I don't fully know, but maybe deep down I just really wanted to convince myself that I was being too harsh. That it wasn't all that bad, that I could go back to liking it somewhat. Because I really didn't want to resent it so much.

Guess that didn't work out, since honestly I think the only thing it accomplished is making me all the more aware of why I dislike it.

But you know what... whatever. I could keep being angry about GT until I'm blue in the face, but it's really not worth it. Because it's not relevant anymore. As much as it still bothers me we don't have another series set post-EoZ yet, GT has officially been replaced regardless by Super. It's clear that the franchise is back, and here to stay. Hopefully for good, this time. So really, what do I have left to be worried about?

I've got what I wanted all this time. GT's attempt to end Dragon Ball failed, the story goes on. And now that I've watched it both ways, I have no reason to ever come back to GT, or worry about it ever again. I have closure.

The show is still there for people who do enjoy it, for whatever reasons I'll never be able to relate to again. But I'm free from having to worry about it getting in the way of more Dragon Ball stories.

Now I have hope again, hope that a new Dragon ball series where Uub and Pan are treated with respect will happen down the line. Hope that I'll get to see more good character development and cool moments from all the characters I love. Hope that Launch might come back, or that underdeveloped characters might get to come back and be made a thousand times better like Android 17 was.

Here's to a bright future for Dragon Ball, the story that never ends.

And so, with all that out of the way... I guess it's time to say goodbye.

GT, you were a frustrating experience. I will admit, a part of me will always cherish those good childhood memories you gave me, even if they've been somewhat tainted. I will always love Super saiyan 4, and Nuova Shenron, and there's probably some good moments I might watch again through clips if I'm bored. I'll certainly listen to that english opening song again.

As bad as I make you out to be, in the end you weren't a complete disaster, since Dragon Ball ended up coming back anyway. And while I can never say I enjoyed watching you, part of me is glad there are others who feel differently, because people do deserve to be happy, even if I can't share the experience.

Because I'm not coming back. Because unless some exceptional circumstances happen, like I somehow become a big-name internet critic and I decide to review you for views, I highly doubt our paths will ever cross again. And I think that's for the best. I am sorry we grew apart so much, but I'm much happier where things are now.

Goodbye, GT. May your memory fade with time.

[danjaley]

Reduced chance of lung cancer is a bonus as well! XD

That’s right! Although whenever I read a novel from the 19th century, in which smoking is promoted as totally healthy, I read on with the hypothesis that this book is set in a fictional world where smoking actually is healthy. In parts this is also true for my Sims game. tyrellsimsoficeandfire replied to your photoset “sillylittlesimblr: “Anastasia! Run faster, grab my hand!” ...”

@danjaley Recently, with lots of intrigue and sudden arrests happening in my game, I appreciate that posepack even more. Thank you ❤️

I learned so much about dramatic expressions and gestures from copying this one Disney film-still, it’s amazing! Also I just recently thought about what the world of Westeros would be like if (or when) it left medieval conditions behind and fought its way into modernity. I’m sure a lot of people would be pulled onto trains in a dramatic fashion! omgdoubleume replied to your photoset “They were interrupted by Ferdinand, whose conversation quickly went...”

He's just a kid after all :>

simsmidgen replied to your photoset “There is a new family living on the Island, which is my concession to...”

Oh Ferdinand, the shame ;D

From a storyteller’s point of view, I’m really proud of the built-in conflict of this family :) simsmidgen replied to your photoset “A pantomime performed in front of the restaurant. First time this ever...”

They normally set up right outside the front door of community lots in my game, handy :-}

Knowing EA, I’m sure it’s programmed that way! nornities replied to your photoset “There is a new family living on the Island, which is my concession to...”

Well, as I'm quite a "Kulturbanause" (and sadly a "Geschichtsbanause") Franz Ferdinand for me is the name of a Glaswegian Band :D I'm glad I vaguely remembered that there were some rulers by those names...

It’s just the other way round with me; I vaguely remembered there was a band, but I always assumed they were Austrian :D declarations-of-drama replied to your photoset “There is a new family living on the Island, which is my concession to...”

The dad actually looks a bit like Franz Ferdinand - The Austrian one

It’s the moustache! They literally all had the same one at the time.

Nevertheless this made me rather glad I only had to dress up one family.

[pre-scription]

Ever since New York.

‘I don’t know man, my head just been a mess ever since New York.“ Harry explained to his friend of 7 years, Louis.

“I- I just don’t understand what went wrong, I thought everything was going well?”

“It was! That’s the thing. We just…left it, like it was nothing.” Harry takes his fingers through his matted hair, trying to tame it. His legs had been dressed in the same pair of grey joggers for the past few weeks, washing them every few days just to scramble right back into them. He was a mess, a wallowing mess.

Harry had met Arabella in New York when he was visiting for his aunts anniversary with her 4th husband. He almost didn’t go, tired of the same big celebration for a wedding that probably wasn’t going to last. But oh god he was so glad he did go.

“That sucks, I’m sorry Haz.”

“I mean, it was never going to last anyway. Our lives were just… so different. She lives in New York and I live in Boston, it’s just too much.”

“Yeah… listen, just call me if you ever need anything, okay?” Louis consoled the slightly broken Harry. He was never the one to show his emotions, but you could see the pain in his eyes, hear it in his voice and even in the way he moves. No matter how hard the poor boy tried he just couldn’t escape his emotions.

“Thank you Louis, it means a lot-” Harry was cut off by a knock at the flimsy motel door, making him sit up, a little bit confused and annoyed by the unannounced guest.

“I gotta go, someone’s here.” He quickly stammered, hanging up the phone and giving Louis no time to utter another word.

He stood up and slowly headed towards the door, ruffling his hair in attempts to make himself look the least bit presentable. He smoothed out his clothes and placed his shaky hand on the cold metal handle. Harry hadn’t had real human contact apart from over the phone for the past 3 weeks, he was nervous to come face to face with a real person. Assuming it was probably just a maid or something, he flung open the door, careful to not make eye contact.

“I don’t need my room cleaned today, thank you” he quickly spoke, quick to close the door. That was until he heard the voice that he had become so accustomed too over the past few months.

“Harry-” her small voice spoke, barely a whisper. She was like a ghost, her presence barely there but there all at once. Struggling like a fish out of water. He shook his head, not believing the sight before his eyes. He must be dreaming. He misses her so much and now he’s seeing her. He’s going mad!

“You’re not really here.” He laughed, feeling the tears on his waterline but not daring to let them fall, desperate to hold on to his sanity.

<

p>Arabella watched as the boy crumbled before her. She could see how his eyes were bloodshot and puffy. How his hair was matted and greasy like he hadn’t washed ever since he left. How his hands were shaking and his knees were wobbling. She felt awful, the sadness burning from deep within her like an untameable fire. She closed her eyes, took a breath that seemed almost as deep enough to last her a lifetime before reopening her grey eyes, that once held the colour of the deepest part of the ocean.

“I’m here, Harry.” Her small voice wobbled. She watched as his eyes scanned over her. Twice. Just to make sure she was really there, that he wasn’t in fact going crazy.

“You’re here.” He spoke a little breathless. He could feel his heart hammering against his rib cage ready to break free and completely give itself to her completely. But he controlled himself, he knew that if he let his heart out so vulnerable again that it would crack and shatter, and Harry doesn’t think he’d be able to cope with another fracture in his already battered heart.

“I’m here.” She repeated, but not daring herself to look into his eyes again, afraid that she would break if she saw the pain once more. Arabella’s hands were shaking uncontrollably, unable to process the fact that she was indeed standing in front of Harry. The first boy who she fully gave herself to. The first boy that she let in and showed him every inch of herself, all her fears and secrets and the bits in between. The boy that had seen her bad days, the days when she couldn’t force herself to get out of bed as she let the sadness consume her like a tidal wave. The boy who also seen her good days where she’d dance around her apartment singing deafeningly to whatever vinyl was playing on her record player. The boy who she also let go, just like that.

“I- I couldn’t-” her words fumbled, unable articulate themselves because she didn’t really know what to say.

“You couldn’t what?” He questioned the stumbling girl, watching as she rambled her words.

“I couldn’t do it without you… it- it hurts.” She chocked, feeling the tears well up in her eyes, glossing over but never falling.

“It’s hurts?” He laughed, feeling a random burst of exasperation inside him, bubbling up and ready to burst. Harry was angry- no, livid at the fact that she was the one to be upset when she called it quits! Even though he walked away first it was Arabella’s idea all along. He remembered the conversation like it was yesterday.

“Y-yes, I couldn-”

“You ripped my fucking heart out!” He finally burst, letting his anger get the best of him.

“I know! I know I did but it hurt me too Harry!” She desperately tried to explain to the extremely angry looking Harry.

“You were the one to call it off! You were the one who fucking let me walk away and you didn’t even think twice. You may as well have fucking ripped my heart out and threw it to the ground Arabella.” Harry said, a strong feeling of disappointment overthrowing the rage.

“You think I wanted that? Is that what you think Harry?”

He could hear the crack in her voice, like she was about to cry. It broke his heart that he knew she was going to cry because all he wanted to do was hold her in his arms and tell her he loved her. He had never let Arabella hear those 3 words though, afraid that she might not love him back. He wasn’t ready to fully give his heart to hers, even though the majority already belonged.

“Of course I do! What was I supposed to think?”

“I let you go because I thought it was best for you! You…you want big things, bigger things than me. And your life belongs here, with your family, not with someone who has an unstable life.” She explained, desperate for Harry to understand.

“Then why are you here? What’s changed?”

“Because I… i-”

“What? You what?” He watched her struggle with her words, unable to accumulate a proper sentence. He knew she was nervous but he wanted to clearly understand the situation, he wanted to know if he could move on with closure instead of wondering what he could have done to make things better.

“Spit it out God damnit!” Harry shouted, not caring if the people in other rooms could hear.

“I love you!” She screamed, tears finally falling like a floodgate had been opened. Conversation quickly fell silent after the outburst. Arabella let the tears fall as she felt her heart tear into a million pieces, sure Harry doesn’t feel the same was as she did.

Harry heard the three words that he had always wanted to hear from her honeyed voice. His mind was everywhere apart from where it should be, he was happy that Arabella loved him back, he had been living for this moment. The confession was rushed and desperate and he wouldn’t have it any other way, all that mattered was that his Bella loved him, and he loved her. He quickly took ahold of her small wrist and pulled her inside the room, pushing her against the back of the door and immediately attaching his lips against her soft, velvety ones.

The kiss was messy and chaste, but it was full of unspoken words and feelings that they hadn’t had the nerve to let out. The kiss said everything they didn’t, It was all heat and gasps. Harry’s lips brushed against hers, not innocently like a tease but hot, fiery, passionate and demanding. Harry wanted to pull away before he lost himself but he could t seem to. In this moment it was as if his senses had been seduced and he could no longer think straight.

“Arabella.” Harry whispered slowly, prolonging each letter as if to savour them. She smiled, her heart fluttering at his voice as she clasped her hands on either side of his face. She was sure her name had never sounded so wonderful coming from someone else’s lips.

“I love you too.”

Harry rests his forehead against Arabella’s. They close their eyes, both breathes shaking. When Arabella kisses Harry he feels like his brain lights on fire and the warmth spreads through his entire body. After that he’s addicted, not baring to be without. The kisses was his salvation and his torment. He lived for them and would die with the memory staining his lips. He knew that if he lost her, he would lose himself. She was the half that made him a whole.

[wavesofthewest]

Chapter 17: Promises

>Fate: 10-20 coli battles

“…Thank you.”

Nameless turned to see his familiar, Leaf, look down at him from the top of the tree.

“Hm?”

“Thank you…for being as kind as you are. I’m glad to have been your familiar,” the webwing continued. “I’d gladly stay, but there’s someone else who needs the comfort of a familiar. Besides, you shouldn’t be alone for too long…gaolers always get a deputy.” Nameless smiled.

“You’re free to leave me and find a new host if you want,” he said. “You were the one who came to me, I’m not going to hold you captive.”

Leaf smiled and flew off in the direction of the clan. The gaoler watched her as she flew. It’d be a bit lonely without her but he’d promised her that she’d be free to stay or go if she wanted, and he had the full intention of keeping that promise. He didn’t mind.

Bedankt fluttered up to him, crests betraying agitation - at least, he thought so. They were moving rapidly and the fae’s words came out too quickly for him to be able to discern them.

“Woah, woah, slow down, Bedankt,” he said, interrupting the fae in her torrent of words. “What is it?” The fae swallowed, took a few breaths and started over.

“Tale told Donder and Donder told me that you could find out who my parents are,” she began. “And it’s not like I really care that much about them, but I’m curious, you know? I know they came from water and that one of them was a fae, but that’s about it, and since it’s possible to find out who they are I figured might as well find out because there really can’t be a downside to it. Faraus thinks it’s a good idea, too, so even if I didn’t want to I’d be kinda outnumbered three to one. Sooo I was wondering - is it possible for you to find out who my parents are and if so how because the others are never going to shut up about this otherwise.”

Nameless sighed. Of course it was Tale. The young fae kept getting herself and everyone around her in trouble. It wasn’t that he couldn’t find out who Bedankt’s parents were - no, he definitely could - but he wasn’t all-powerful like he was sometimes described as. Scrying someone’s heritage was easy magic, but the further back it went, the more exhausting it was. He just hoped nobody asked him to find out who their founding god was.

The gaoler breathed in and concentrated his magic. The green stripes on his fur began to glow and soon, two fuzzy images rose from the ground between them. The shapes moulded together and became clearer, picturing -

Picturing Sage and Abstract.

Nameless stepped back, surprised. Bedankt was the missing egg. She’d come home - but her response wasn’t a very happy one. The fae seemed angry. She tried to dismiss the images by batting at them - the gaoler did dismiss them when he figured out what she was doing - and flew away quickly. The gaoler sighed.

From the corner of his eye, Nameless could see a grey figure walking towards him. Ashes. The two had spent a lot of time together recently, more than usual, which made the gaoler wonder - what was so appealing about him that made the younger dragon want to spend so much time with him?

There was something off about him today, though. The guardian was strangely quiet as he sat beside Nameless, watching the clan from afar.

“…If you loved someone, but you know they don’t love you back, what would you do?” the guardian asked. “If you tried your hardest for them, but in all the wrong ways?”

“Is this about Heaven?” Nameless replied. “Ashes, you need to let go. Heaven’s gone. There’s nothing you can do for her now. You need to focus on the living world, on what’s going on right now. She might have been your sister, but there are people in this life that need you. Like Poison. She’s drifting away from the rest of us, have you noticed that? You need to be there for her.”

“We were lied to,” Ashes said. “And she died before she could even find out the truth! She needs to know. They need to tell her - they -”

“So was Bedankt.”

“Bedankt had a loving family, she was happy. Besides, it’s not like we know who her parents are, I couldn’t help her find them even if I wanted to.”

“Heaven was happy too, Ashes. Besides, you’re the tribe’s heir. You need to think about the future of the tribe - does killing their leader really sound like the best way to protect them?” Nameless sighed.

“I didn’t ask to be heir. I didn’t ask for any of this,” Ashes said. “If any of my siblings were alive, I’d hand the title over to them in a heartbeat.”

“You could ask her,” Nameless said quietly. “Bedankt.”

“What?”

“She came up to me and asked me to scry her parents,” the gaoler sighed. “The spell showed Sage and Ab. Though I’ll warn you - she’s not happy about it.”

The guardian opened his mouth, as if he was going to say something, but shut it. They sat there, silently, waiting for the other to say something.

“She was my charge,” Ashes eventually said, breaking the silence. “Heaven. If I give up on her, what happens to me? Everyone says that if a guardian loses his charge, they fade away.”

“You could change your charge,” Nameless replied. He sat a paw on the guardian’s shoulder and looked into his deep blue eyes. “There’s nothing stopping you from changing your calling to something that calls stronger.”

The guardian smiled and stood to leave. He nodded his head in thanks, and as he left, their tails briefly touched - a shy sign of affection, which surprised Nameless. Ashes wasn’t the type to show any kind of affection. Maybe their friendship was doing the guardian some good.

As the gaoler watched his friend leave, a smaller creature came up to him, standing on the gaoler’s paw to get his attention. The creature was like a goblin, though it had fur and wore a helmet with horns that were similar to the ones he had. It held a chain in one hand.

“Took me long enough to find you,” the creature said. Its voice was gruff and rasped a bit as if it had a sore throat. Nameless was a bit surprised at the fact that the creature could talk - it was a familiar, and most familiars weren’t able to speak until they had awakened.

“Took you long enough…what?” Nameless asked. “Who are you? What do you want from me?”

“The name’s Warrior, sir,” the creature said. It sat down on the gaoler’s paw and took the chain up in both hands. “Every gaoler has a deputy, sir. The dripcave deputies are one of the highest and most regarded ones, and our entire order is dedicated to helping you contain the Shade and maintain order. Others may have other deputy orders or simply normal creatures to form the bond as general and deputy. I hope we can form such a bond, sire.”

The gaoler didn’t reply. He was even more surprised at what the creature had said. Deputies…familiar orders…he recognised the terms but didn’t know where from. He knew that his memories from his past life where blotched and kept together in patches. This was probably something that he knew about and had forgotten during the years and reincarnation.

“Okay, Warrior,” he eventually said. “Seems like we have a rollercoaster of a ride to go on.”

—–

Faraus, Tale and Arrow got the joy of entering the coliseum today, and they all turned level 4. A quick rundown of everyone’s levels (it’s been a while since some of these guys have been in the coli):

Level 1: Petal, Lost, Nera, Nameless

Level 3: Bedankt, Donder, Smoke

Level 4: Faraus, Tale, Arrow

Level 7: Blue, Abstract, Ashes

Level 25: Poison

Quick note about the familiars and talking - I headcanon familiars as regular beastclan and animals that have found a companion (host) and bond with them under an extended period of time. At some point, they awaken and complete their bond and are able to speak. The exceptions are certain familiars such as elemental creatures (usually fest familiars) and the odd species like dripcave deputies (generally when it fits with lore, they can talk regardless of bond level).

[sugirandom]

365 days of writing: day 238

Day 238:acceptance

   This morning when I woke up I finally received the e-mail from the Japanese language school in Kyoto and it was an acceptance letter with the invoice for the tuition and a copy of the CoE that will arrive in the mail attached to it. I was pretty excited to wake up to that news. I’ve already squared away the apartment too so I’m getting closer to being ready to go. I spent some time sitting with Poppy as she worked before heading to my office room to play Sims 4 for a little while.

  In my Sims game Gina had already achieved her music LifeTimeAspiration and I started a writing one for her though I doubt I’ll be able to finish that one before her natural life span is over. I haven’t been working on Goopy’s Aspiration in all honesty because I don’t care enough..I know that sounds cruel but...yeah... Anyway, I played through Heath’s childhood and didn’t quite finish his childhood creativity aspiration but I managed to make him a B student. He’s very creative but gets distracted by his love for video games so I have to balance the time he spent working on homework with drawing and playing video games on the family PC. I got him to his teenagehood and Gina’s made it to her adulthood (after Young Adult, I guess it’s sort of like becoming middle-aged). That’s pretty much where I ended the playthrough.

  Poppy and I were about to head out to go to the bank and while she was trying to take our trash bins away from the curb she ended up tripping and falling on the trash bin. I had to run over to help her because she got a pretty nasty cut on her head. It wasn’t so deep that she felt the need to get stitches but she was bleeding quite a bit. We went inside and she cleaned off and got some ice for her head. I asked her if she wanted to go see emergent care but she felt no need to and wanted to head out again after 10 minutes of resting with some painkillers in her system. I was worried about her but she seemed to be functioning fine so I didn’t bother her about it again.

  At the bank I made a transfer to the school so that I could finish paying my tuition and the man who helped me also got a card in my new name for me since the other banker hadn’t done so for us. It was a little awkward because I sort of thought he was attractive and was hoping he didn’t think I was staring at him while he was on the phone with the department in charge of wire transfers. Fortunately, I was able to look downward at the invoice slip on the table enough that I don’t think he noticed it at all. It’s so awkward...I don’t often find people just randomly IRL that I’m attracted to but when I do I just...can’t... ahh the joys of being Pan.

When we got home we ordered some pizza for dinner and I spent a few hours hanging out with Poppy while she finished work. We got some grocerries at Walmart after that and then she headed out to meet up with Marie (her current gt). They will be going to the beach for the weekend so I’ve got the house to myself for the week. When she left I listened to some music for a bit and then watched two episodes of Dragon Ball. These episodes were a tad more intense so I didn’t watch any Kakegurui. I’m starting to get tired of these fansubs man, they randomly decide to stop translating stuff and just don’t add a sub. I don’t know if they mistake some exclamations and just...the characters growling or something but this time they forgot to subtitle it when Vegeta shouted “Die!” before he killed Nappa. I mean, it’s not a difficult word and I think any beginner student who’s seen some Anime in Japanese knows the word so I think it’;s just forgetting to edit your work after it’s done and I hate that kind of laziness. Oh well, I enjoyed seeing Goku and Vegeta fight for the first time. I’m so glad I don’t have to watch Vegeta just stand there and react anymore.

  After I’m finished with this entry I have to go get the laundry from the basement that I’ve literally been putting off  getting for the last two days. The laundry’s finished, it just needs to be folded and come upstairs but my lazy butt hasn’t felt up to it for some stupid reason.I guess I’m going to cook one of the Home Chef box dinners after that even though I don’t feel like doing that either. Perhaps I can play some music on my phone while I’m doing it to motivate myself some. Alrighty, I guess I’ll end this entry here for now.

[notsolovelystories]

When I Lost You

Trigger Warning: Self harm, alcohol, mental hospital, suicidal thoughts, drug usage

Day 1

I can’t breathe. My head and heart are both pounding. The things you said- No, the things WE said are tearing me apart. You’ll come back, right? You said you’d never leave me. You said you’ll always be with me and love me. Please please please don’t tell me that changed. I’m so scared. I’m so so so scared.

Day 5

I almost called you today. Then I remembered that you hate me. I didn’t call.

Day 7

I miss you terribly. Everything I see reminds me of you. I accidently put on our song today. I remember when I put it on you used to sing it to me. I remember we used to sing it together. You used to recite the lyrics to me sometimes to remind me you love me. Loved me.

Day 9

I got drunk last night. I remember how much you used to be scared of me getting drunk. You hated drinking. The alcohol made me call you. I think you started crying. I’m sorry I turned into everything you hate.

Day 19

Hy bby i miss u lolol u hste me know thogh i now u suid 2 stp calin u when i gt drink so i txted u insaed! I stoll luv u a lit. thats never gunna chsnfe.

Day 20

Wow am I glad I’m a stupid drunk.

Day 24

I saw you at school today. You looked at me and then immediately averted your eyes. You can’t even look at me anymore.

Day 30

It’s been a little over a month. I miss you so much. I miss texting you. I miss making you smile. I miss making you laugh. I miss coming over and cuddling for the entire day. I miss our jokes. I miss our songs. I miss how much you cared. I miss how you always promised you’d be here. Please come back. Please please please please come back. I can’t stand my life without you. I always said you were my sunshine. I didn’t lie. Without you my world is dark and rainy and I can’t stand it.

Day 31

I’ve never gotten high before. I couldn’t get you out of my head. You would be so disappointed.

Day 37

Our song came on the radio today. 2 hours ago. I’ve been crying ever since then.

Day 39

My family thinks I’m going insane. My friends hate being around me. I can’t stop talking about you and thinking about you and now everything I had is being torn apart. Everything hurts,

Day 45

I cut today. I haven’t cut in so very long, and I never cut that deep. I only have one scar and it’s barely visible. Today, I cut the deepest I ever have before. Wearing jeans hurts but I don’t have a choice.

Day 49

I wore a long skirt today. It rode up a little too much in a class I have you in. You saw. You texted me today. You asked if I was okay. I said no. You asked if there was anything you could do to help. I said no. Even now, you’re still the best person I’ve ever met.

Day 53

I wish I could let go of you.

Day 58

You’re still all I think about.

Day 60

I dreamt about you last night. You told me you loved me and wanted me back. I hugged you and kissed you. Then I woke up.

Day 65

My mom saw my cuts. I can’t stop doing it. I’ve done it every night. I told her I want to die. She’s sending me to a mental institution. I leave tomorrow.

Day 66

I left today. I hate it here. I’m so scared. I wish you could be here and hug me and tell me everything will be okay. But if you were I wouldn’t be here.

Day 68

They keep telling me to let you go. I told them I can’t. They asked if I can’t or if I won’t. I don’t know the answer.

Day 70

They told me that I need to transfer schools and block you on everything. Seeing you in any way is only gonna hurt me they said.

Day 72

I’m going home tomorrow. I still miss you but not in the destructive way I did before.

Day 75

I start my new school in two days. I promised myself that I would let you go.

Day 80

The people here are so nice. I wish you were here. I know I shouldn’t, but I still do.

Day 90

I think I’m starting to get over you

Day 91

Nevermind.

Day 92

Wait, maybe I did.

Day 95

I so very much didn’t.

Day 98

I didn’t think of you at all yesterday, and only a little bit today.

Day 100

I think I’m finally over you.

Day 1460

As much as I tried, I couldn’t get over you completely. You were my everything. But things hurt a little less now. I still miss you. I saw you the other day. You didn’t see me but I saw you. You’re still so handsome. You helped a little girl find her mom. You’re still so kind. I wish there was something I could’ve done. As much as I tried, I still love you. 4 years later, and I still do. And I don’t think I ever will be over you completely. This will be my last entry. Goodbye. I love you.

---

Hi! So, this story was based off of the idea of what might happen if my boyfriend broke up with me. The ending is kind of iffy, I know. I actually cried while writing some part of this. Anyways, if you every need anyone to talk to about anything like this, or anything else, ever, just let me know! I’m always able to talk! :)

[k18fics]

Oh Brother (2)

Oh Brother Summary: A series of k18 one shots with an over-laying plot. Also featuring GCC, BV, GoVi, and more. Warning: general warning about the rating. Some chapters in this story will contain mature language, violent scenes, and adult situations. It is not recommended for anyone under 18 (not that I can stop you if you choose to read anyways.) I will warn you in advance so you can skip those scenes if you so prefer. Disclaimer: I do not own DBZ/S/GT or any of its characters. 2. Marron Saves the World

18 looked at Krillin wearily as the short warrior tied Marron's shoes. "Are you sure about this Krillin?" Krillin chuckled. "Of course 18, he did save the world a bunch of times, I think he can handle hanging out with Marron for the day." "What would they even do?" "I don't know, I just want them to bond you know," Krillin said. "He's the only family I've got." 18 smiled at him and said, "I know." Krillin stood up and said, "he's here." Moments later Goku appeared in the middle of the living room holding two of his fingers to his forehead. 18 still found it uncanny that Krillin could sense him when he did instant transmission. Not even Vegeta could sense him until after he performed the technique. "Hi!" Goku said cheerfully waving at them. "Hey Goku," Krillin said. "Uncle Goku!" Marron cried running to the Saiyan who lifted her into his arms as she clung to his neck. "Hi Marron," he said. "You ready for our day?" "What are you gonna do?" 18 said. "I'm gonna take her to the carnival," Goku said cheerfully. "Yay!" Marron cried happily. "Well have fun you two," Krillin said. "Don't bring her back too late," 18 said. "Okie doke!" Goku said cheerfully placing two fingers on his forehead. "Bye!" "Byyyyee!" Marron shouted right before she and Goku disappeared completely. They both appeared right in the middle of a giant fair but not any regular fair. The ground was an unnatural orange color and it looked like grass but the blades all pointed in different directions. The sky was not blue but pink and all the people around them varied in species. Some of them were odd looking creatures, some of them had halos over their heads, some of them spoke different languages, and many of them were flying or slithering in some way. "What is this place Uncle Goku?" Marron said. "This is a planet called Mekka," Goku said. "When I learned the instant transmission technique I was trying to get back to earth and I accidentally ended up here and I had a lot of fun. This is a neutral planet in this solar system where any creatures from the eight surrounding planets can come have fun and some of them can visit from other world, see the ones with the halos?" "You had one of those when I first met you," Marron said. "Yes." "So they are dead?" Marron said. Goku smiled at the intelligence of the little girl. He was immensely stronger than Krillin but Krillin was smarter than he could ever hope to be. He could see a lot of Krillin in Marron and he liked that. "Yeah they are dead," Goku said, "but save up their energy so they can visit here. This planet is at the border of a dimension rift so they can come here easier." "Okay," Marron said though Goku was sure the little girl understood the concept way more than Goten did. "What do you want to get on first?" ... As the day progressed the pair had gotten on nearly every ride and Goku won for her every single toy she desired. They were walking towards the petting zoo of animals that were definitely not from earth when they were stopped by a tall chameleon looking humanoid who had a small version of himself perched on his shoulder. "Goku!" Goku looked stunned. "Lepo?" "Hmm it's been a while," Lepo said. "Ever since we were learning the instant transmission technique together." Goku nodded. "It's been a long time." "I never forgot how you beat me in everything we did there," Lepo said bitterly. Goku scratched his head and laughed sheepishly. "Who's this? Your daughter?" "No she's my..." "This my son Lepi," Lepo said proudly. "I bet he's better than your kid." Goku looked serious. "I don't want to compete Lepo." It was a rare thing for Goku to say but he learned from the last time he competed against Lepo. "Let's raise the stakes," Lepo said. "Lepo no!" Goku's words went unheard  as Lepo took out a small black remote and pressed the button. The remote beeped and a robotic voice said, "bomb armed. Please set coordinates." "Bomb? What are you..." "Coordinates planet Earth." "Lepo!" The remote beeped and said, "coordinates set, 10 minutes to detonation." Goku crouched into a fighting stance. "Turn it off. Now!" "Only if you compete with me," Lepo said. "I'm here to have fun not fight Lepo, please just turn it off." "You have to prove to me that your daughter is better than my son," Lepo said, "and I'll turn off the bomb." "She's not my...." Goku was interrupted again when Lepo set his son down on the ground and pointed to the petting zoo gate. "A footrace." "And if she loses will you still turn off the bomb?" Goku said. "No your planet is not worth saving then," Lepo said. Goku growled in annoyance not knowing what else to do. If he told him Marron was not his daughter Lepo wouldn't turn off the bomb and he wasn't like Bulma who could probably figure out how to shut it off without Lepo's help. Goku crouched down and gripped Marron's shoulders, "are you ready?" Marron seemed to understand everything and set her face in determination. Goku smiled at how much she looked like Krillin when he was a child. It was the same face he made when he fought Bacterium in their very first world tournament. Marron stood beside Lepo's son who was smirking confidently. "A girl? Hmph." Marron thought about her mother at that moment. She has heard all the stories about how her mother and beat up all of the Z fighters when she first appeared and how to this day her dad and Yamcha and Tien didn't stand a chance against her. She was a girl but she was strong. Marron suddenly decided she didn't like this boy. He was probably faster than her though because she could never catch up to Goten and Trunks when they were playing. She had to think of another way to win or she would lose. "Hey," Marron said softly a blush adorning her cheeks. "You're real cute." Lepo's son look stricken as his face turned beet red. Lepo was unaware of his son's embarrassment but Goku smirked because she really was Krillin and 18's daughter, 18 had used her feminine wiles to paralyze Krillin on that highway and Krillin had nearly beat Jackie Chun by distracting him with a pair of panties. Marron knew she wouldn't beat this kid and she outsmarted him. "On your mark, get set...GO!" Lepo cried. Marron zoomed off as fast as she could as Lepo's son remained stationary still stunned from the compliment. Goku cheered Marron on as she got closer to the gate. "Lepi! Go!!!" Lepo screeched shoving his son roughly. The little boy seemed to snap out of it and zoomed towards the gate but he would never catch up even though he was as fast as any Saiyan. Marron touched the gate mere seconds before Lepi did. "Haha!" Goku cheered. "We won! Now turn off the bomb." Lepo looked deflated but he took out the remote and pressed the button. "Bomb deactivated," it said. Lepi glared at Marron angrily as she cheered beside him. She noticed that and gently kisses him on the cheek. His face turned beet red again. "It's okay to lose you know, eventually you'll win it big, just ask my dad." Lepi sneered. "Goku never loses." "Uh, Uncle Goku is not my dad." Both Lepi and Lepo screeched, "WHAT?!" Goku flew to Marron and picked her up, then turned to them nervously and said, "okay then bye!" He hurriedly rushed into the petting zoo before they could respond. "That was really fun Uncle Goku," Marron said with a smile. "You fought smart Marron, good job," Goku said hugging the girl close. "You saved the world!" Marron beamed. "I'm very proud of you kiddo," Goku said cheerfully. Marron hugged him tight. Goku laughed and hugged her back then set her down so they could enjoy the petting zoo. ... Goku arrived a bit after midnight to Krillin's home holding a very sleepy Marron in his arms. She wasn't asleep quite yet but she was on the verge. Krillin and 18 were both asleep on the couch cuddling together with the TV running. Krillin didn't have a shirt on and 18 didn't have pants and the rest of their clothes and their hair was a mess. Goku had done that enough times with Chichi to know exactly what had happened. Marron was none the wiser though and immediately made their presence known. "We're home!" 18 was up first since she was a light sleeper. When Goku smirked at her she blushed and immediately grabbed her pajama pants from the floor. Krillin woke up more slowly and didn't quite see his wife's embarrassment. He smiled at them and said, "hi guys." "Do you have any idea what time it is Goku!" 18 snapped taking Marron from his arms. "She has a bedtime." "Sorry we were just having so much fun," Goku said with an innocent chuckle. "Mommy I saved the world!" Marron said. Goku started sweating nervously as 18 glared at him questioningly. "I'm glad you had fun," Krillin said joining them while slipping on his shirt. "Well good night!" Goku said quickly putting his fingers on his forehead and disappearing into the night.

[fancycollectionfury-blog1]

best cheap cars for insurance

"best cheap cars for insurance

best cheap cars for insurance

BEST ANSWER:  Try this site where you can compare quotes: : http://freeinsurancequotes.xyz/index.html?src=tumblr 

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best cheap cars for insurance

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best cheap cars for insurance

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I need cheap car insurance keep in mind I am 19 & I need full coverage on m car any suggestions?

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What is Cheaper, Insurance Group 6E or 4P""

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My health insurance policy is too expensive. What shall I do?

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Boost Mobile Insurance?

I bought a galaxy prevail android phone, through boost mobile, about 1 1/2 months ago. at the time that I bought it, I did not purchase the insurance thinking that I'd get the money for that and get it later. Now I want to buy it, but when I went on their website I couldn't figure out how to do it and from how it looked, I could only get the insurance throughout a limited time after I bought my phone. So my question is; Can I get insurance on this phone right now or am I outta luck because I didn't get it earlier? ??? Please & thank yewws :)""

""Car Insurance..if i go out of state, but my parents pay for the car insurance and i live in another state...?""

What i meant to say was..if i have a car, it is in my parent's name, and i move out of state, is it possible to still be covered by the insurance even if it isnt from the state it is being payed for in? or do i have to get insurance and the car changed to my name in another state? i hope someone understads. thank you for you time in reading this :) 10 points to the best answers! or lets say Correct answer!""

How much should i pay for insurance of my car as a new driver in toronto?

Do the insurance companies in toronto accept my no claim record of driving from other insurance companies of the other countries or not? I have a 20 years record of driving in asia and a 10years record of no claim in my current insurance co. thanks to everybody who could give me information

Can anybody give me an idea on car insurance?

Im 18 year old and am from the uk i want to buy a mazda 2. i hold a clean uk driving liscience and would like to no if anybody has a rough idea how much per year i will pay for car insurance.

Why does insurance cost less for pleasure use rather than commuting to and from work?

Why does insurance cost less for pleasure use rather than commuting to and from work?

best cheap cars for insurance

best cheap cars for insurance

Insurance for renting a home?

I'm renting a home from a friend, and she says that she has to cancel her home insurance. Is there rental insurance, or any more suggestions.""

Insurance companies that insure homes?

Do not have change&a was wondering insurance companies that will insure my home in Alabama

""Under Obama's socialized medicine, what would happen to those that work for health insurance companies?""

What would happen to those who work in medical billing & coding, claims departments for insurance companies, underwriting, etc... Wouldn't this just raise unemployment?""

How can I get public health insurance in California?

I am a healthy thirty year old male in Marin County, but I've been rejected for health insurance twice now due to a reconstruced knee. What can I do?""

Do i need to have insurance for a motorcycle to switch owner?

So I bought a motorcycle from someone with late fees which i can pay off and was wondering if I need insurance to switch the title to me. I'm from California.

""Why do i pay $400 a month for car insurance, is it cause its my first car?""

Why do i pay $400 a month for car insurance, is it cause its my first car?""

Is Obamacare's goal to provide healthcare for everyone? or requires everyone to BUY health insurance?

Is Obamacare's goal to provide healthcare for everyone? or requires everyone to BUY health insurance?

How much of your pay check would you take out for Health insurance?

this is my first job that offers health benefits. I am new to this and having problems deciding if i need to get it or not. My company is offering both HMO and PPO for about the same price. Both cost around 70 per check, but i only make around 850. That is almost 10%. Should i shop around or should i just go ahead and get it or not have insurance at all. I dont even like going to the doctors but i would like to have health insurance just in case. My deductible for ppo is 500. I dont even know what that means. any advice would be helpful. thank you""

How much would the insurance cost for me?

I am a 19 year old boy. I got my driver license last year, and I never got ticket from police. I want to buy a Honda CR z. The car is two-door hatchback with manual transmission, which is considered as a sporty car. Besides it's a hybrid car.""

Why does health insurance not Cover dental work?

health insurance dental work

Me and my dad are arguing about the cost of car insurance? Please have look?

On the final quote page it said that my full annual quote would be 611.49. I just paid a 101.49 deposit via my debit card. It says that my direct debits will be taken each month, next month 54 and then 8 months of 57. My deposit and the direct debits add up to 611.49, exactly as the quote stated. So what is that box (with the red arrow pointing to it); http://img829.imageshack.us/f/screenshotdi.png/ Can they take more money without saying? Can someone please explain what that means?""

How do I cancel my life insurance policy?

I just turned 19, my life insurance policy just started and I don't want it. I know that you can cancel it by stop paying for it, but what if it's connected to my bank account?""

Passing a drug test for life insurance?

I smoked weed rather heavily for about 5 weeks over the summer, and now i havent touched it all for about 5 weeks, am i going to be clear for it? Before those 5 weeks i smoked VERY rarely (once every month or 2 months). Also i smoked a couple packs of cigarettes in the past couple weeks...how long will it take for me to get the nicotine out of my system (also smoked VERY rarely before last couple weeks)""

Why is auto insurance cheaper in quebec than ontario?

Why is auto insurance cheaper in quebec than ontario?

Average Cost of Homeowner's Insurance for a home..?

that is appraised at 169,000 and bought for 166,000?""

Car insurance advice needed?

My nephew passed his driving test yesterday and has a P reg Volkswagon Polo for his first car. I've seen adverts on the tele for Direct Line car insurance and they aren't on comparison websites, does anybody know if they are averagely cheaper or not? Are there any other companies that don't appear on comparison websites? Thanks.""

Car Insurance Question?

Hi I was involved in a road traffic accident, I have valid insurance & my vehicle is being repaired. My insurance is registered at my current home address but I have just realised that my driving licence still shows my previous address. I am being provided with a courtesy car & have to provide my licence number, will this make my claim invalid???""

What is the best medical insurance company in illinois?

What is the best medical insurance company in illinois?

Insurance for young adults?

I can't seem to get all of my questions answered from my own research, so I've resorted to yahoo answers. My family lost my dad a few years ago, and with him we lost our insurance coverage. We currently receive social security. This stops once I graduate. Would I be able to receive any sort benefits (any sort of welfare, food stamps, etc) as a result of this? What about college grants? Also, my mom, sister and I don't have any health insurance. I want to apply for affordable insurance, but I really don't know much about it. How much would it cost, and what are my options? Thank you so much for anyone who takes the time to answer this, I really appreciate it.""

Will this help save on car insurance?

My husband and I need a second car because I got a job way across town and with school coming up, we have completely different schedules... So I was thinking of only putting my name on the title and the insurance for the new car because my husband has an accident on record and our rates went up. Secondly, would it be beneficial to take my name off our current car and insurance so that it will be only in his name? Could this help save money with our insurance? Sorry if this is a gay question, just trying to save us a little extra money to put away in savings""

About how much would it be for car insurance for a 18 year old girl?

About how much would it be for car insurance for a 18 year old girl?

My Insurance Question?

I have an insurance question for you people.I had an accident just before I sold my car.I reported it to the police,they came and did the report.I informed the owner of the other car and we worked out everything.The insurance companies know and are taking care of it.Now a couple weeks later he is saying that I owe him $500 for the deductible on his insurance policy.I have liability which fully covers the other guys car.But like I said now the guy is telling me I have to pay this extra money out of pocket to get the collision guy to start working on his car.I toldhim my insurance company is supposed to take care of it.Please tell me whether I have to take care of it or does my insurance have to pay for it.I say my insurance does because otherwise whats the point of insurance then.Please let me know thank you people.""

Can i put my 20 year old daughter on my health insurance?

MY 20 year old daughter doesn't live at home but needs health insurance can I add to my health insurance

Insurance Question??

Can you get insurance if you have a salvage title????

Pregnant? Health Insurance?

My bf and I have been intimate for the past almost 3 years, which is how long we've been together, we've only used protection a few times. I have been on BC for the past year to a year and a half, it's the generic for Tri-Nessa. About 2 weeks ago, maybe a little longer than that, I quit the BC and we had unprotected sex for maybe 3 days in a row and he came inside of me, on the third day after we had finished I got cramps in my lower back which usually is how my cramps feel a day or two before I get my period but I also had very light bleeding and the next day it had gotten heavier and lasted a couple days. Now this was no where near the date I'm supposed to get my period, which I thought was weird. I took three pregnancy tests but they were all negative, then again I took them way too soon. I have a appt with my obgyn on Monday. Also, ive been feeling sluggish, not wanting to move much, when I sit down on the couch its like i cant get comfortable and my side like cramps up. Opinions? About insurance, I'm on insurance with my mom because she has food stamps and gets a disability check, so I have united health care insurance through her. I dropped out of school, dumb decision, I know, but I found a babysitting job and I get paid $150 a week. So they didn't put me in the school program at welfare. Now my insurance will run out in August when I turn 18 so if I find out I'm pregnant would they give me and the baby free insurance? My sister just had her third and she plus my nephew had both received free Medicaid. She's 28 so does free insurance differ by age? Since she's 28 and I'm 18 is she eligible for it because she's older or am I eligible as well? My bf and I have been busting our asses looking for jobs and he's signed up for The National Gaurd. We've been together way too long and he is very happy whether I am pregnant or not, he's a good man. I don't give a crap about any rude comments or opinions, I am just looking for advice from girls with experience.""

best cheap cars for insurance

best cheap cars for insurance

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happens-my-boyfriend-driving-car-gets-pulled-over-jose-warner/"

[ethelbertpaul444-blog]

The Nintendo King and the Midlife Crisis

It was December in San Diego, the palm trees strung with tinsel in Ocean Beach. Pat Contri shuffled barefoot on the floor of his game room, pitch-black hair sodden from the shower and writhing above his eyes. He was in front of a wall of practically 1,000 competitions for the Nintendo Entertainment System, the greatest console ever secreted; the wall, flooring to ceiling, was amazing to gaze, Contri as tiny as Ahab in front of his whale. He spoke from the stickers of gray-headed plastic cartridges he’d spent two decades collecting: Spy Hunter , with its Peter Gunn theme, which he got for Christmas in 1987; Jaws , which he picked up at a flea market with his mother in Rahway, New Jersey, a year or two eventually; Zelda II , video games he had his parents order from the Sears catalog in 1988, a game he cried over because it made perpetually to arrive. The wall was both a sanctuary to his life’s pastime and the backdrop for his use. For a decade, Contri has played a reputation called Pat the NES Punk for nearly 250,000 spectators on YouTube. Supporters realise him at the airport, at the gym, at the swap meets, and he has become not only the panel of experts on Nintendo but a public look for anyone who grown up with the NES, anyone who’s worn a Donkey Kong T-shirt or who still has the Super Mario Bros . theme song throbbing in their heart. The Punk is goofier than the real-life Contri–a bit more manic, an exaggeration of his id. Games are the Punk’s life, and remembers of the NES sing him to sleep and then wake him in sweat. Almost all of his videos, which run around 10 instants, focus on the Punk’s experience with a single NES game. Each is a compounding autobiography instruction and evaluation, handed with a narrative articulation that causes Contri( as scribe, superintendent, and wizard) show off his sense of humour, his knowledge of Nintendo, and rarely even the extents of his introspection–about being boxed into an endless infancy by videogames, about the inherent sadness of trying to fill a flaw in their own lives with them. See more from the Life Issue. April 2018. Subscribe to WIRED. Nik Mirus One of Contri’s better videos, a 12 -minute piece from 2013 devoted to the rare and expensive NES game The Flintstones: The Surprise at Dinosaur Peak ! em >, starts with the Punk rustling awake from a excitement fantasy, strangling out “I need help.” And, looking at his plays: “What am I doing? They’re just videogames. I’m supporting like hundreds of thousands of bucks’ usefulnes right in my hands. That could be going to something handy, something memorable. Like a vacation! I could go anywhere I miss. Scotland. Italy. Tahiti … ” And there he pauses. “I wonder if there’s NES games in Tahiti.” It was a bit, predominantly, but as Nintendo celebrates the 33 rd birthday of its historic console–and as Contri approaches 38 — it was also a sign of the conflict within him. Like a lot of people who were born in the years just before and after the launch of the NES, he is no longer young and not nearly old-time, neither brand-new nor vintage, and it seems like he has started to feel a little bit lost in the in-between. “I don’t know if I want to be 65 years old speak about retro videogames, ” he told me. “I don’t wanted to go to be the only thing I talk about perpetually. I think sometimes,’ Is this where my flair begins and extremities? ’ ” He says he doesn’t dally NES videogames anymore–except when he’s in character–and that it’s different now: It’s work. He admits this in abdication, like it’s blasphemy, the man for whom Nintendo became a career. “There’s something a little self-deprecating about the Punk character, and about my reference too, ” enunciates James Rolfe, a 37 -year-old godfather of YouTube gamers who dallies a persona reputation the Angry Video Game Nerd and is a collaborator of Contri’s. “All these YouTube characters have some kind of component of sadness to them. Meditating back to childhood, were we consuming our times with competitions? Were we really entertaining ourselves? Were we really happy? ” Contri’s home library consists of nearly 1,000 NES games. SHAYAN ASGHARNIA Contri is a 3 7-year-old man who has been playing videogames his entire life. His cousin’s Atari 2600, when he was 4. His family’s PC-IBM XT. Then he was 7 when his mothers bought him an NES console, and preadolescent Pat started expend hours in his family’s rec room in front of a small Magnavox monitor. Later, in high school, he frisked Super Nintendo and then PC sports, and rediscovered the NES while he was in college. After he graduated, in 2002, he eventually settled into a chore in market research, acting 50 -plus hours a week in Princeton, New Jersey, and living in nearby North Brunswick. He detested it. One day in 2006, he came across the Angry Video Game Nerd’s grouchy game recollects, and the perception of a courage boozing beer and railing about video games Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest rang out to him. “I ascertained the AVGN doing well, but I discovered a lot of bad videos out there too, ” Contri says. “I’d watch them and think,’ Not simply does this person not know how to play the game, he didn’t include any history of it.’ At the least, I envisaged I could do better.” Contri became his first video, six and a half minutes of him as the Punk playing a couple of NES baseball games before acre on the best, Baseball Stars . He picked the moniker because he thought it had a ring to it, had an stance , and, well, ladies he’d dated told him he behaved like a punk. It also captivated the overwhelming compassion he got where reference is played video games; the NES compiled him glad, and the specific characteristics was a strange, joyful increase of who Contri really was. He procreated his second video a few months subsequently, about The Three Stooges , and then another one after that. He started running out videos, each loaded with enough feeling, temperament, and insider knowledge to set it apart from everything else online. In 2012, a few years after leaving New Jersey for San Diego, he discontinued his market research chore and started obligating videos full time. Related Stories Angela Watercutter I’m a Nintendo Switch N0 0b Who Just Got a Hands-On with Labo Julie Muncy Celeste Is Precisely How the Nintendo Switch Continues to Win Jim McLauchlin Oral History: How Marvel’s Creative Head Helped Bring Nintendo to America Today Contri gets flown across the country up to a dozen terms a year to accompanied videogame assemblies, where he often arrives sleep-deprived and accentuated, carving a smile in front of his followers. He schleps suitcases full of NES Punk wristbands and DVDs across dinner hallways and sits at a booth wearing a T-shirt and sandals, a guy with that everlasting five-o’clock darknes and the foppish hair, selling his product and indicating his word a hundred times on NES consoles and controllers and activity cartridges. He gives six figures a year, his receipt coming from stock and volume royalties; from YouTube ads and the sponsors of his two podcasts, Not So Common , which he hosts by himself, and the Completely Unnecessary Podcast , a testify he cohosts with a sidekick worded Ian Ferguson; from the Patreon allies whose monthly donations facilitate pay for his content. As of earlier this year, the NES Punk videos were the least advantageous and most time-consuming of all Contri’s projects. One of its recent videos, about a game called Stadium Events , made him more than 50 hours to create–much of that time spent researching the inscrutable scarcity of the game–and it allured exactly over 70,000 opinions at long last counting, earning him a little less than $400. A low-spirited income, by any measure, and he’s started to think more and more about withdrawing the character and maybe doing something else with his time. “For the last year and a half, I’ve never really known what he does for entertaining, ” pronounces Ferguson, who convened Contri in 2008. “I can’t think of one specific pastime aside from workout that he does that’s perfectly undone from slog. His drudgery was formerly his hobby, and now he’s married to that work.” Contri insists that he does, in fact, have other interests: “I like movies. I affection the zoo. I like watching boasts on Tv. I detest the Patriots, but who doesn’t? ” He’s never been married, has no teenagers, and lives alone, unless you count the Punk. “The Punk is just a reference, ” he mentions. “Sometimes people think it’s actually me. But at some phase this will end.” In the game room where he films the videos, Contri persisted over the wall of NES cartridge sports he no longer toys for merriment. “I don’t know if they give me a find anymore, ” he remarked. “And I don’t know if I’m still looking for that find. Most of us are well-adjusted adults now.” Maybe he intended the proposed establishment of adults who’d affection the NES as kids, or the obsessed beings like him who’d mustered the whole North American library( he stops three activities in a bank vault ), or the really maniac people who would want an old, mint-condition NES holographic cereal carton, which he proudly showed me. Pat Contri holding a jumbo-sized yield Donkey Kong plush from 1982 at his house outside of San Diego . div> SHAYAN ASGHARNIA Contri doesn’t know what to do–walk the Punk into the sunset, or kill the character off. Nintendo is as popular as ever, which isn’t fixing the decision any easier. The Switch–a Nintendo console designed for middle-aged people as much as it is for anyone–has sold more than 14 million units since it was exhausted last year. Stores spent a year selling out of the NES and SNES Classic. And in the summer of 2016, Contri liberated a 437 -page, $60 hardback coffee-table-sized bible called Ultimate Nintendo: Guide to the NES Library, 1985-1995 , which took him nearly three years to finish 1 . It includes its further consideration of every mainstream NES game released in the US along with information and factoids and NES curio history. He wrote 450 of the 800 -plus recalls, then compiled everything there is before publicizing it himself. It suffocated him but turned into a amaze hit–with two etch flees totaling 10,000 copies–thanks in part to his meticulous research and the upsurge in those who are interested in retro NES games. It was a big reason why he was able to buy his house in San Diego, where Nintendo is on the walls and in the bedroom, on the floor and on the shelves, in the beady plastic hearts of the stuffed swine and on his personalized wristbands and the five-o’clock darknes that his YouTube character can never seem to get rid of. Nintendo forged him and allowed him the strange bonu of internet prestige , not to mention a ton of crazy nonsense he has collected for no other rationale than that it probably fixed him feel like a kid. He has already projected a sequel to the book, a template for the Super Nintendo library that he hopes to publish next year. “I am happy, I think–I’ll surely be joyous, formerly I finish the next record, ” he alleges. Contri’s hair is get a bit gray-headed, and he mentions that maybe the Punk might endure to have totally white hair–that maybe he could still be talking about plays 30 years from now, like aged adults talking about toy set lists in the regions of pattern ballrooms. He has enough recreations to make it all last-place eternally. The Punk, an age-old guy, hunched over, still collecting, still frisking the ancient sports, still living in a house full of Nintendo. Read More Real Wedding, Virtual Space* The Pursuit of Youth* The Digital Vision Problem* The True Screen Addicts* Rebooting Reproduction* Silicon Valley &# x27; s Brotox Boom* The Next Steve Jobs* Solving Health Issues at All Stages Justin Heckert (@ JustinHeckert ) is a writer living in Charleston, South Carolina. This is his first peculiarity for WIRED . em> 1 Correction appended, 3/27/ 18, 8: 28 PM EDT: Contri publicized his record, Ultimate Nintendo: Guide to the NES Library, 1985-1995 , in 2016 , not 2017. Such articles appears in the April issue. Subscribe now . em> Related Video Gaming The History of Nintendo: By the Numbers With the announcement of the Nintendo Switch and the stop of the Wii U, let’s take a look at some of the numbers behind the mythical video game company. Read more: https :// www.wired.com/ story/ nes-punk-nintendo-gamer / http://dailybuzznetwork.com/index.php/2018/06/15/the-nintendo-king-and-the-midlife-crisis/

[dudence-blog]

Dear Dudence for 3 January 2018

My resolution for 2018 is to not change a thing because I’m awesome and totally cool with most of my problems.  With some leftover champagne to motivate me it’s time for me to get on to the questions!  Remember, if there’s anything you need to improve yourself it is to like Teh Dudence Facebook!

My cousin recently set me up on a date with a really great guy that she knew from work. At first, I was hesitant to go on a date with him as he is 43 and I am 27, however I decided to give him a chance and I was really glad I did. He’s smart, funny, and easy to hang out with. I am also very attracted to him physically.  The only bad thing, so far, is that during a text conversation, he alluded to believing that 9/11 was an inside job.

Dear Conspiracy Theories, seriously?  You met a real Truther?  In the wild?  Seriously?  Sorry, not helpful.  The other day I’d advised to not let political disagreements torpedo relationships.  While you, me, most everyone might think your date is a whack job it really, shouldn’t, by itself be a killer.  The problem will be that it’s not likely someone is only into 9-11 Truth.  There’s a whole smorgasbord of whack-job ideas you can open your mind to once you believe your government is willing to kill thousands and there are at least as many people who are willing to go along with the lie.  Anti-vax, Moon landings, Kennedy, Monsanto.  The dude is 43, he’s probably not a newcomer to this idea, so he’s an old school Loose Change-sharing, “FIRE CAN’T MELT STEEL!” guy.  I’m not going to tell you that you should cut him off over this, but it’s the sort of issue which is going to make for some awkward moments.  Some very awkward moments.  Like, imagine you told your normie friends you were dating a Scientologist.

Each year, my wife’s niece hosts a Christmas dinner for the entire, relatively large, family. Most years this is in the neighborhood of 40 people. Her mother-in-law is from another country, and they do a dinner theme around the mother-in-law’s native cuisine. The dinner and food are always very enjoyable, and we are sure to express our gratitude openly and often. This year, we received a text stating that we were required to bring $5 per person to cover the costs of the dinner.  On one hand, I enjoy the meal, and I enjoy the family time, so I have no issue paying. The $40 it’s going to cost my family is not going to break the bank. On the other hand, this, to me, is rather rude. If you do not wish to host, then don’t. If you don’t wish to host so many, then don’t invite everyone.

Dear Holiday Hosting Etiquette, I’m going to side with your wife’s niece on this one.  She’s preparing an ethnic cuisine meal for 40 people.  This is well beyond the usual family-gathering etiquette of assigning a couple someones to bring the vegetable and starch sides.  Like, right now, imagine you needed to prepare a meal for 40 people.  Do you even have enough bowls to serve 40 people cereal?  You know it would take 2 and a half gallons of milk to serve 40 people?  Now, let’s take this to an entire holiday meal.  And your wife wants to throw a hissy fit over $40?  If you don’t want to go then don’t go, but don’t go and think that “Well, we tell her how grateful we are for her work” offsets the fact she’s probably out-of-pocket for well over $5/person.  

Two weeks ago I attended a holiday party with my boyfriend and his family. We’ve been together for three years, and since we moved to his hometown, I’ve gotten to know his parents and sisters better. I forgot about new medication I was taking, had a few drinks, and became drunker than I have ever been in my life. (Counting this event, I’ve only been drunk three times, so it’s extremely out of character for me.)  I now know that I did something so horrible at the party that my boyfriend broke up with me via text and told me he has no interest in speaking to me ever again. I’m devastated. My now ex-boyfriend is the sweetest man I know, so I had to have done something cruel for him to do this. But because he won’t talk to me, I have almost no idea of what I did or said. I am really afraid that I was mean to his sister Amanda, whom I’ve never liked.

Dear Out of Character Behavior, a three year relationship ended with a ghosting because of something you did while back-out drunk.  It’s safe to say you went beyond “being mean to his sister”.  Unless “being mean” is some understated code for “I went on an Anti-semitic tirade and then tried to murder her with a cordless drill”.  You done fucked up and fucked up good.  And it might be the sort of fuck up which you’re just never going to get the closure you want.  

My youngest son has fallen madly in love with a very sweet and ambitious young woman his own age (late 20s). She has a Ph.D. in child psychology and is in her postdoc year. He’s a high-school history teacher with no debt. She’s now looking for permanent employment. But, she’s almost $500k in debt and told him it’s college loans. I’ve done some research and spoken with experts in the field, and we’ve concluded that it is probably loans as well as credit card debt. I want to have an open and frank discussion with my son about how this could impact him should he decide to marry her. But I don’t want to be an interfering mother.

Dear Son’s GF’s College Debt, too late.  You passed “interfering” when you solicited professional guidance on how your son’s girlfriend might have paid for her education.  Listen, any couple that is going to get serious needs to have a serious discussion about the finances.  I think you’d be remiss in your role as a parent to not discuss with your son the importance of such a discussion.  It’s not out-of-bounds for you to inquire about where your son thinks this relationship is going.  So open with that.  You’re making a whole lot of assumptions about where his relationship is, where it’s going, or even what he and she have already discussed.  He told you she told him it was $500k in student loans.  Maybe she told him a bit more detail but he relayed it to you as the less judgmental-inducing “Student Loans” instead of “Student Loans, Credit Card, and a Ford Mustang GT financed at 17%”.

“Eric” and I were together for five years and had a horrible breakup a year ago. While we were together I grew very close to his daughter “Amy,” and she to me. Amy’s mom has not been in the picture for many years. Amy took our breakup badly, and pretty much took my side in everything. We’ve kept in touch and often done things together since Eric and I split. We basically don’t discuss him.  I last spoke to Amy early in September. Since then she hasn’t called or texted. I’ve tried to contact her several times, telling her I miss her and asking about getting together. No response. I’m pretty sure she’s ghosting me, and I suspect Eric worked on her, telling her what a horrible person I am.

Dear Missing “My” Daughter, you need to let it go.  She’s an adult (I’m presuming because if you were sneaking a child out behind her parent’s back to maintain a relationship with them after you broke up that is a whole other level of toxic than whatever you describe of Eric) who has chosen her father over his ex-girlfriend.  Maybe it was an ultimatium, maybe you weren’t as close as you thought, maybe she has moved on and found another woman with whom she can have the relationship you two had.  Yes it sucks, just because someone you cared for has moved on from you.  But, remember, love is an open door so keep it unlocked and maybe she’ll have a change of mind.

My boyfriend eats like an animal! Mouth open, uses his hands instead of the proper utensils, blows his nose at the dinner table, talks with his mouth full—the works! It grosses me out. If we’re at home, I generally turn up the music and try to block it out, but when we’re out it’s so embarrassing! We recently traveled to a foreign country and I was so shocked and embarrassed by his eating habits, I actually left the table and hid out in the bathroom.

Dear Animal Boyfriend, so, how did the “flee to the bathroom and hide” plan work?  There’s no way that “Listen, I think your table manner are atrotious and it embarasses me to the point of retreat when I’m out in public with you” is not going to be a little bit of an awkward situation.  If your response is as obvious as you describe it, there’s also little chance your boyfriend hasn’t noticed.  What the heck did he say when the waiter asked if you wanted a refill on your drink when you were gone for 15 minutes?  You could continue to resent him his behavior and maybe up the passive aggressiveness by choosing “My Fair Lady” next time you choose a movie on Netflix.  Or you could try talking to him about what you’re observed and how his actions at the table make you feel.  If it’s something he’s done for 30+ years it’s probably not going to be something he’s going to take to quickly, but at least you can do him the favor of no longer grinding your teeth in embarrassment at being seen with him in public.

I am getting married next spring, and my fiancé and I are very excited to move to the next phase of our relationship. Wedding planning has been surprisingly easy, save for my mother. My mother has an opinion on everything in that she wants everything to involve her. She wants to pick out music for her to be seated to. She wants my fiancé to walk her down the aisle to her seat. She wants to wear a white dress to the ceremony!

Dear My Mother Is Trying to…, have you considered trying to save money on the catering by going with a couple vegetarian options over the more expensive meat protein dishes?  Before you go returning the money which makes the event you’re planning possible let’s take your mother at her word when she said “no strings”.  Tell her you don’t want her to wear white and she gets the same processional music everyone else in the wedding party does.  Well, unless she wants to walk down the aisle to “Gettin Jiggy Wit It”.  That I would allow.  If she pulls the “hey, I gave you $XX,XXX!” then you go ahead, thank her for the donation and refund it.  All that being said let’s go ahead, back up, and take a holistic look at this.  Will it actually ruin your wedding if, on the day of the event your mother gets a wild hair up her ass and decides to show up in a white dress too?  Even after she said she wouldn’t?  The only one who can make that ruin your day is you.  Having the groom walk her down the aisle might be a bit much, but it’s not unheard of.  Honestly, does anyone in the venue know any bridal processional other than The Bridal Chorus or Canon in D?  Once those notes kick off no one is going to remember that your mother entered to a different classical instrumental.