#god so many things happed

[magnusthepuppet]

hey guys. i’m back. and i’m a changed man. i will never be the same again. words cannot describe how amazing those episodes were to me. the symbolism. the tragedy. the pain. but most importantly, the hope. the hope that people can grow and change and love.

i knew they’d end episode three with some sort of cliffhanger, but jesus christ this was so much better then i could’ve ever imagined.

[luciferlightbringer]

Love in a Hopeless Place

Chapter 7

Chapter 6|Chapter 7|Chapter 8|Updated through Chapter 12

Lucifer x prostitute fem!reader Word Count: 3.9k CW: Slowburn, Prostitution, Hurt/comfort, trauma, fluff, cuddles, depression, anxiety, Sexual fantasizing, insecurity

Lucifer's eyes started to flutter open the next morning, a beam of light streaming in through the living room window. Wow, had he actually gotten a full uninterrupted night's rest again? What a pleasant surprise. He smiled as he looked up at the ceiling if his living room. Wait... his living room? Was he still on the couch? He was used to you bringing him back to his bed after he fell asleep, what hap-

Lucifer's thought process completing froze as he became aware of the weight holding his body down to the couch, specifically, the weight of your beautiful body, that still laid on him, sound asleep. Lucifer felt his cheeks burn a bright red. 'Oh my god, she feel asleep on me last night?! This is amazing, this is also terrible. Will she get mad? Will her boss get mad at her? Should I wake her up?' God he didn't want to have to wake you up. The sight of you curled up on him with your head on his chest was breathtaking. Shit... he really had fallen for you, hadn't he?

Lucifer had no idea what to do, he many ideas of what he wanted to do, but not what he should do. He could run his fingers through your hair, kiss your forehead, rub your back, any of those things could have encouraged you awake. But instead, he just sleepily watched you dreaming on his chest, until you eventually started to wake up.

After a little while, your eyes began to open. You too had experienced an amazing night of sleep that you were not used to. Perhaps all that crying gelling did you some good. But something felt off, where were you? You looked up to see Lucifer's smiling face, "Hehe, uhh... good morning, I guess."

Oh my god, had you cried yourself to sleep in his arms?! Lucifer cocooned you again in his wings before you could panic.

"Shit! Lucifer I'm so-"

"Shhhh shh shhh shh," Lucifer stopped you, "No apologizes, please. Yesterday was... hard, seemed like we both needed sleep, and frankly, I slept great. What about you?"

You blushed, and laid you head back on his chest while still looking up at him, mumbling, "Well, I guess that's the best I've slept... in a long time..." It was the best you had slept since you had arrived in hell.

"Excellent! So, lets just call it a happy accident, that we figured something out from. Also..." God he was trying to be a little bold and it made him nervous, "Would you be willing to try this again... but intentionally next time?"

"Like... have me stay through the night? And... sleep with you in your bed?" You asked.

"Yes..." he asked with a little more hesitance in his voice. You chuckled, look at him go, asking for what he wants, and so nicely too.

You smiled and shrugged, "Works for me, just let the boss know."

"Right..." he said, he was starting to hate the reminders that you weren't just here because you wanted to be. He wasn't upset at you, it just left him with a pang of insecurity, a curiously if you would even put up with him if it weren't for the fact that he hired you to be here.

He cleared his throat, trying to refocus. "You won't... get into any trouble for this, right?"

You waved your hand, "Naw, I'll just tell him I was out late partying. After what happened yesterday, he wouldn't bat an eye."

"Ok, how are you feeling, by the way?" he asked, looking over your face.

"Much better... Thank you... for... well everything..." you smiled nervously. You still felt guilty that Lucifer had to spend his paid time with you dealing with the aftermath of other client sessions, you were normally better than that. He seemed like he wanted to be there for you, but you had no idea why he would even want to. It felt so good, but you still could not tell how real or how deep the care actually ran. If this continued, the guilt and confusion might become overwhelming.

"It was my pleasure," he said, grabbing you hand and kissing it while staring deeply into your eyes.

Ugh, why did this have to be so hard to figure out!

After that, the two of you begrudgingly got up, and got ready for the day. Lucifer teleported you back to your room, bit you farewell, and left. Both of you back in your own spaces, alone, already missing the other.

______________________________________________________________

The next night you two had together, you and Lucifer would change the end of night routine as had been discussed, ending up with you both falling asleep in each others arms, and getting the joy of waking up to seeing each other first thing in the morning. It was beyond bliss. You didn't know it, but you two were in a secret competition to see who could wake up first, and get the privilege of watching the other as they clung onto their last few minutes of sleep before they would wake up.

The mornings that Lucifer woke up before you were both beautiful and painful for him. He loved getting to stare at your beautiful face, sure, but the urges... oh the urges to run his fingers through your hair, the urges to lace his fingers with yours, the urges to kiss your forehead, your cheeks, your lips, your neck, your... everything... the urges to let his hands explore your body, to sneak his hands under your clothing, to find the sensitive places on your skin that would make your breathe hitch, make the fire grow in your eyes, make you want to touch him the same way... the pain of all of these urges pulled at his mind, every morning, every day.

Some of them he could get away with more once you were awake, fingers through your hair, kisses on your hands, but he wanted more. Beyond that, he wanted them to mean something. He knew that he could just ask you for kisses or sex, and you would say yes, but he didn't want that, he wanted it to be real, he wanted passion, he wanted to make love to you. Every day with you made those feelings grow stronger and more unbearable.

Luckily, at least for another couple weeks, Lucifer would still be distracted by the upcoming extermination, and he figured that it was best that he focused on one life altering event at a time. You and Lucifer would spend more of your evenings hanging out with Charlie and the others at the hotel. Alastor had helped Charlie recruit many of the people of Cannibal Town to help, much to Lucifer's chagrin, and Vaggie had also gotten some intel on angels being able to be killed with angelic weapons, and was able to get resources from Carmilla Carmine, another Overlord and the only Angelic Weapon-Arms Dealer in hell.

Lucifer did not like learning that angels could be killed for a number of reasons, but he tried not to focus on that right then. Right now, he cared about being there for Charlie, and enjoying the calm before the storm.

The night before the extermination, most of the hotel crew, honestly, seemed like they were in good spirits. Alastor was even behaving and not doing everything in his power to piss of Lucifer, just some minor loitering on the edge of his conversations around the hotel. Angel and Husk were hanging out at the bar, and Angel's best friend, Cherri Bomb, had also come to hang out to join the fight. You noticed that Angel and Husk had increasingly been giving each other cute looks, and that Sir Pentious was nervous when it came to any interaction involving Cherri.

What you didn't know, was that Angel, Husk, and Cherri had also been watching the way you and Lucifer interacted over the last couple of weeks, the way you too looked at each other, the way his touch would linger, or that any hug would last a littleeee too long for a hug between just friends. Whenever you were not at the hotel, those three would come up with theories on what was going on with you two.

At some point, you ended up in a conversation with those three, chatting it up, and eventually Angel was the one that finally brought it up.

"Alright, babe. So...spill it. What exactly is goin' on between you an' da Boss Man, hmm?" Angel said, leaning his hand on one of his hands with a cocked eyebrow. You were startled by the question. Shit.

"Uhhh... w-what do you mean?" you say sheepishly, messing with your hair.

"I think you know exactly what I'm talkin' about~" Angel replied with a wiggle of his eyebrows.

"I-uhhh..." you started.

"Come on, (y/n), cut the crap," Husk chimed in, cleaning a cup. "Ya!" Added Cherri, "We can all tell you two are seriously vibin' with one anotha," she said in her spunky Australian accent.

'Shit, had these three really been that curious about my relationship with Lucifer? Was it that obvious? I have been just trying to follow his lead on things when we visited.'

"I mean... we are just really close, and comfortable with each other... that's all," you say, not trying to look at them directly.

"But how close are you too exactly?" asked Husk. "Yaaaa, like bedroom close~?" Angel pushed in his flirty voice, talking a little louder.

You quickly covered Angel's mouth with your hands, looking around, no one else had seemed to hear him. Lucifer was across the room, chatting with Charlie and Vaggie, and Alastor seemed more focused on listening in on their conversation than yours. You look back to see Husk and Cherri with satisfied looks on their faces, along with a twinkling mischief in Angel's eyes.

You sigh and remove your hands, "Look, guys, I really want to talk about the details around my dynamic with Lucifer, but... I really can't... I'm not allowed. Even saying that might be too much..."

The trios' faces became more concerned. "Wait... he doesn't... own your soul, does he?" Husk asked.

"Oh! No, no, nothing like that. And he has been nothing but kind to me. It's just... not something I can talk about... no matter how much I may want to..." you say, holding yourself and looking down sadly. The other two looked to Husk, Husk looked sadly back at them, he could tell this was not a bluff, you were telling the truth.

Lucifer glanced across the room at you, and was surprised to see your body language had suddenly changed from how it had been during the rest of your conversation with the others at the bar. Your body language looked more sad to him. Lucifer briefly excused himself from his conversation with Charlie and Vaggie, saying he would be right back, and made his way over to you.

Cherri, Lucifer, and Husk saw Lucifer approaching, and he giving off a protective look of 'what did you do?' before putting a hand on your back.

"Darling? Is everything ok?" Lucifer said, his face softening as he looked down at you.

Your head spang up at his sudden contact and sound of his voice, 'Crap, did he hear any of that?'

You looked up at him in surprise. "Oh! Ya... sorry, we were talking about Adam and the battle tomorrow... just made me think about how worried I have been for you all..." you say sadly. The other three relax once they realized you were covering for them, Husk almost didn't like how good you were at pulling out a story like that, but right now he cared more about not pissing off the King.

Lucifer sighed and ran his finger through your hair, before pulling you in for a comforting hug, "I know... we are gonna get through this." He looked over at the other three over your shoulder, smiling, "Together."

The others smiled back at Lucifer and he released you from the hug before asking if you felt like we needed to leave for the evening. You shook your head, telling him you wanted to stay longer. He nodded, and then walked back to his conversation with Charlie and Vaggie.

"Well, one thing is for sure," Husk said looking after Lucifer, "That man cares a lot about you."

You blushed, you hoped so, you hoped and prayed that was true. But because of the structure, no matter what he said or did, you always had some level of doubt hanging in the back of your thoughts. You wish you didn't have to second guess every interaction. You wish you knew how an actually health dynamic looked like so that you had something to compare to. Most of all, you wished you didn't have to be scheduled and paid in order to see him. Would he even want to see you outside of the time he pays for you?

"How do you know?" you asked Husk. Husk gave you a soft smile, "No man spends as much time as he does constantly checking in on you if he does not care."

You cock an eyebrow, "But, he doesn't constantly check on me."

"Maybe from you're perspective," Angel chimed, "That mothafucka is constantly lookin' over at you, why do ya think he was over here so fast as soon as you started pullin' into ya'self. Which, thanks for da save by da way. I am not ready ta get on his bad side."

You looked over your shoulder at here at Lucifer, a moment later, he looked at you, smiled, and waved. You waved back, and looked back to the others.

"See? Man's totally whipped," said Cherri. Doubted that, Lucifer having feeling for someone like you? Ya right. But you could see how they would think that way without knowing the truth behind your relationship, and they made a fair point, he did care to some degree. You couldn't keep the blush from tinting your cheeks. I mean I guess he did send a man to be tortured for all eternity for hurting you, that has to mean something... No matter how small.

Before long, it was time to go. You hugged everyone goodbye that wanted hugs. While hugging Charlie you said, "Kick his ass honey, I'd really hate to lose a good housing option." Charlie beamed and hugged you even tighter, to the point where it almost hurt, "We will! We'll get you set up right after we kill all of the angels or kick their asses back up to Heaven!"

You laughed, said goodbye, and you and Lucifer departed back to his place. Little did you know, that would be your last time inside of that hotel.

______________________________________________________________

Sleep had not come easily for both of you that night, but it did all the same. Your time at Lucifer's did not end the following morning, Lucifer had booked out the rest of your day, he did not want to risk you getting caught if an exterminator if the angels were successful at wiping out everyone at the hotel and started going after the rest of the sinners. He knew the exorcists would not go anywhere near his house, Here, at least, he knew that you would be safe.

You wanted to help, but you knew you weren't a fighter, and giving Lucifer some peace so that he could fight when it came down to it was more important. Lucifer already had his hands tied in this situation. He had been the one to originally allow the exterminations to happen in Hell, mostly because he had no clue what else to do and he had been backed into a corner in that initial discussion with Heaven.

There was one rule however, that if broken, would allow him to fight, that rule being that hellborns were not allowed to be harmed. Funny, that a rule that he originally set in place to protect Charlie was now the rule that he hoped would get broken in order for him for be able to fight, and the only hellborn in this fight was Charlie, well, and Razzle and Dazzle too. Lucifer had created them as guardians to protect Charlie, and creations fell into a weird catagory. But an attack on them normally meant an attempted attack on her. He had to gamble that one of them would get hurt, but not so hurt that Charlie would be erased. It was a very uncomfortable situation, but nothing about this whole situation was anyway.

The two best case scenarios were that they could take out everyone, including Adam, without hurting Charlie, so Lucifer would never be needed, or for Charlie/her guardian's to get lightly hurt, so that Lucifer could jump in. Once he was able to jump in, the battle would basically be over. You didn't know much about how powerful Adam was, you had only seen small bits of Alastor and Lucifer's power, and nothing of Charlie's ability to fight him off. You had no idea how this was going to play out.

Lucifer however, knew how powerful Adam was, as well as his and Charlie's power, and he had a small idea of Alastor's power based on how he had defended the hotel a month ago. Lucifer didn't think that Alastor was going to be able to take out Adam completely, but he thought he would be able to most like put up a good fight, delay him, maybe get a few good hits in. If Charlie was as much of a fighter at Lucifer was, he wouldn't be as worried, but she was a gentle soul and didn't utilize her powers a lot. It was gonna be hard to tell how this was going to go.

Lucifer sat on the couch, tense, holding your hand, wings already out, waiting for the signal, waiting for the energy between him and Charlie to activate that would inform him that Charlie or her guardians had been hit. Before long, the sensation of a sting of shared pain ran through his body. He quickly kissed you on the forehead, said "See you on the other side," and jumped through a portal out to the battlefield.

You were now alone with your own fear.

You went to the window to see if you could see the hotel from his manor, but you barely couldn't. All you could do was pace around the house, waiting for Lucifer to return. You thought about turning on the tv or radio to listen for any news, maybe looking for a livestream on your phone, but no, all of that would have just made it worse. So you paced, until you decided to lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling, trying hard just to breathe.

Until... a portal opened up. You sat up, looking at the portal, through the swirling red magic, you saw a familiar black claw reach out to you. You smiled, as the image continued to clear up, and you could see Lucifer, next to Charlie, and Vaggie, Angel, Husk, Cherri, Niffty... all covering in golden blood, except for Lucifer who looked exactly the same as when he left.

You felt tears well up in your eyes as you jumped through the portal into the arms of your friends. You all hug in a group before Lucifer picked you up and spun you around. After the laughter and smiles you looked around, something was missing, something big. It was quiet.

"Where are Alastor and Pentious? And... oh my god! The hotel!" you said realizing that it was not only some friends that were missing, but that the group was literally standing on the rocky remains of the Hazbin Hotel.

Charlie rubbed her arm, "Pentious... Pentious scarified himself for us... Adam killed him... he's... he's gone. And, umm... we aren't entirely sure what happened to Alastor either... He was fighting Adam, and the next thing we knew, Adam was out fighting the rest of us. We haven't seen him since. And... ya... Adam took out the hotel."

"And I took out the Bad Angel Man!" Niffy said, proudly holding up her little dagger, both her at it covered in bright golden blood.

You and the others laughed at Niffy's excitement, but your heart broke for your friends, you hadn't really gotten to know Sir Pentious very much, but your knew he had meant a lot to the hotel crew. You hoped that Alastor had found a way to slip out or something, he was... a unique individual... but he was also an important piece to the hotel. And the hotel...

Lucifer grabbed your hand, "The hotel, however, we can fix." He said with a smile, "Wanna help us build a hotel?"

You smiled, finally something you were able to do to help.

"Lets do this!"

The rest of the afternoon was spent with the whole crew building up a new Hazbin Hotel, one that was even bigger and better than the previous one. You had no idea that it was possible to set up a new building in an afternoon, but with Lucifer's extraordinary magic and an amazing team, the shining new doors of the hotel were gleaming and open again.

Lucifer could not stop smiling the whole rest of the afternoon, to have a purpose behind his creativity and powers of creation, to have a community again that liked him, to have his daughter back and getting to support her dreams, and to have you, you who made all this happiness fall into place again. Getting to beat the shit out of Adam had also been quite enjoyable.

He looked down at the wedding ring that was still on his left hand, after wearing it for so long, he had forgotten that it wasn't just a part of him, it was his reminder of Lilith. He would still always have love and care for Lilith, but the time of her had come to an end, and you were his new horizon. He wasn't ready to take off the ring just yet, he didn't want to tip anyone off, but god did he just want to toss of the ring, swoop down from the sky, scoop you up, kiss you, and tell you how much he loved you in front of all of hell, but this wasn't the time. This day was about Charlie and her dream. Plus... he was still really fucking nervous and didn't know how to say it to you.

Eventually, Alastor manifested himself back from the shadows and re-joined the group, Lucifer and Husk were... less than thrilled, but everyone else was happy, including you. The group celebrated at their new beautiful hotel together late into the night.

Eventually, you and Lucifer split off for the night to celebrate the rest of the night together snuggling in each other's arms. You fell asleep first that night, and Lucifer spent his last few minutes awake looking at your beautiful face in the darkness or his room, daydreaming about the best way to tell you how he felt.

______________________________________________________________

Don't get too comfortable! I've got one more twist in store for these two :) xoxo, dany As usual, leave a comment if you want added to the taglist so that you can get notifications when future chapters drop!

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[heeliopheelia]

𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐄-𝐔𝐏𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐊-𝐔𝐏𝐒

part 1

genre: hurt/comfort, hurt/no comfort, angst, fluff

word count: 3.2k

warnings: curse words and fuckload of tears, breaking up in some

masterlist

LEE HEESEUNG

"Fucking hell, pick up," Heeseung mutters under his nose as another one of his calls goes straight into the voice mail. He's been sitting on the edge of the couch, nervously picking on his nails ever since you left the apartment.

It's way too late for anyone to be walking outside alone. Heeseung's well aware of that, so the second that his call gets declined again, he jumps up on his feet and leaves your house, not even bothering to lock the door behind him. The only thought present in his mind is to find you and make things right. He can't believe he would hurt you like that with some reckless words he didn't even mean. You always told him he was way too hot headed for his own good and now the time has finally come for your words to be proved right.

As he turns the first corner, he finds himself crashing into another person, their startled gasp echoing through the empty street. He doesn't even need a second to recognize your silhouette and without thinking much he pulls you closely to him, heart nearly beating out of his chest from relief.

"Oh my god, I was so worried about you!" He says, voice breathless as he holds you closely. Your small sniffles nearly break his heart in two. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been so cruel with you earlier. I'm sorry."

But you keep silent, only let your tears drench his t-shirt. Heeseung swallows nervously, feeling like he's losing you already. And, fuck, he was not ready for that to happen.

"Please just say something," he whispers, pressing his lips to the top of your head a little desperately, yearning for any sort of an answer from you. "YN?"

"I'm sorry, Heeseung," you say quietly as you finally pull away from him, finally allowing him to see all the damage he's caused written all over your face. "I just don't get how could you even say all of that to me so easily? Comparing me to your ex, really? And you've literally said you don't love me anymore."

Biting his lips hard, almost painfully, he listens to your broken rambling. "That's not true. I do love you." He feels his heart stuttering slightly as he notices the uncertainty in your teary eyes. "I love you, YN."

You step away even farther from him. "It's kinda hard to believe after today."

"I know," he can barely hold back the whine mingling at the back of his throat. "I know that I don't deserve to be forgiven so easily but just- Please, you can't break up with me now. Not like this. I didn't mean it, darling. I'm sorry."

The desperation in his voice nearly makes you give in. Nearly, because no matter how hard you try, you can't push his cruel words out of your mind.

"Look, Heeseung. I love you," before you can see the hope starting to shimmer in his dark eyes, you continue, "I really do but I just can't imagine how this relationship would work anymore. There's way too many wrongs to only focus on the rights, don't you agree?"

"No, I-"

"Let's just go home for now, okay?" You interrupt him, feeling tired from the long day. "I'll pack my stuff up in the morning."

PARK JAY

How could he forget about the one day he's been looking forward the most to for the whole month?

Jay closes his eyes and lets out a heavy sigh before quickly calling his boss to cancel the meeting. Swearing under his nose, he reminds himself of all the thing's he's had prepared for you today. And now his stupidity has ruined it all for you.

He thought he would give you a moment to yourself for collecting your thoughts, but after another minute of listening to your sobs coming from behind the door, he let go of that stupid idea and walked into the bathroom. Seeing you sitting by the wall with face hidden in your hands makes him realize that he would give absolutely everything to somehow invent a time machine and go back in time, only to make you happy again.

You don't even flinch when he takes the spot on the floor right next to you, arms wrapping around your middle and pulling you to his lap. You let him do all of that because no matter how much he's hurt you, his touch will forever remain the one thing that instantly brings you comfort. You know that that feeling won't evaporate so quickly as he's been your support person for such a long time.

"I'm sorry I forgot," he says into the silence after a heartbeat or two. Your traitorous heart instantly melts the second he brings his hand up and starts stroking your hair softly. "And I'm sorry I put my work first without thinking of you."

"It's okay, it's not that big of a deal anyway. I don't even care about my birthday that much," you mumble into his shoulder.

"Don't do that. You deserve an apology," he scolds you softly. His hand slips lower to your cheek and he pulls your face up to look right into your bloodshot eyes. "It's not okay and it is a big deal. And I'm sorry for being the worst boyfriend you could ever ask for."

You let out a small huff. "That's a little harsh, don't you think?"

"But absolutely deserved," Jay sighs before lifting one of your hands to his lips and pressing a soft kiss to your fingers. "I'll never dismiss your feelings like that again. That's a promise I'll keep forever. I love you so much, honey."

"I'm glad to hear it," you hum, wiping your nose with the back of your sleeve. A sleeve of his hoodie, actually. "I hate fighting with you."

"Will you forgive me?"

His question doesn't linger in the air for a long time unanswered, because as soon as it leaves his mouth, you're leaning in and pressing your lips to his. Jay quickly responds to your kiss as he nearly engulfs you in his arms, pulling you as closely to him as it's possible. His fingers are caressing your cheeks gently, almost as if he's afraid of causing you any more damage.

"Do you still feel like celebrating your birthday?" He asks, following his words with few more kisses to your tear-swollen lips.

"Absolutely. As long as you buy me Starbucks today."

SIM JAKE

"You didn't answer my calls," Jake says as the two of you walk inside your apartment.

"I think the reasons for it are pretty self-explanatory," you respond, directing yourself straight to your kitchen with Jake following you closely, nearly stepping on your heels. You lay the grocery bag on the counter and start unpacking its contents.

"I'm sorry I forgot about our date again, it just slipped my mind, I swear. I'm sorry."

"Good to know I'm so forgettable to you," you huff, not looking at him even once. "Well, you never forget about your friends, that's for sure."

"I shouldn't have done that," Jake admits, moving closer to you and reaching for your shoulder. "It was wrong of me to lie to you about it."

"Yeah, no fucking shit."

"Will you just let me apologize?" He raises his voice, losing his patience with you quickly.

You turn around and send him a pointed look, eyebrow raised as you finally meet his eyes. "Damn, that's bold of you to be yelling at me like that in your position, Jake."

He immediately lets go of you and rubs his face with his hands. "I know, I know. I just- fuck, I'm sorry."

"I only have one question for you," you say as you stop unloading your groceries for once and lean back on the counter, bracing your hands on each of your sides. "Why are you even in this relationship when it's clearly not even in your top three priorities?"

"Hey, that's not really fair, is it?" He backs away as his tone raises defensively. "I've been a good boyfriend to you most of the time, YN. I've just missed a couple of dates, that's all. I'll make this all up to you, I promise."

"Oh, come on, Jake! Do you really expect me to just forgive and forget? You can't be serious."

"I mean, that's how relationships work. You fight and you make up," he says, nodding his head as if he's looking for your affirmation, "We're not gonna break up because of a stupid argument, are we?"

When silence is your only answer, Jake's eyes widen at the realization.

"You're joking, right?" He scoffs. "You really wanna end a perfectly fine relationship over some petty bullshit like this?"

"The fact that you think we're having a perfectly fine relationship even though we've just been arguing about you blatantly lying to me, says more than enough. I've already made up my mind, I'm sorry."

You watch as a scowl makes its way on his face and he crosses his arms over his chest. "Fine. Do as you want. Just don't come crawling back to me when you finally grow up."

"Oh, don't hold your breath, babe. Goodbye, Jake."

PARK SUNGHOON

You jerk in your place when you feel Sunghoon's warm hands on your knees. You didn't even notice him walking into the bedroom, way too absorbed in crying a goddamn river of tears. He's understood his mistake merely couple minutes after you've left him in the living room.

"YN," he starts quietly but quickly gets shut down when you shake your head, hiding your face in your hands as another sob leaves your throat. He swallows loudly before trying again, "Baby, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Please, leave me alone for now," you whine out through a clenched throat. You pull away from your hands to look at him kneeling down in front of you.

Sunghoon lifts his hand up to wipe your wet face with his sleeve. "Just hear me out, okay? I didn't mean it, darling. I shouldn't have said that."

"Then why did you?"

"I- I don't know. I was just having a tough time at work and I just let it happen," he tries to explain, to defend himself somehow but even he can see that the excuse is just simply not enough. "I know I went too far and you don't even understand how sorry I am about that. I really didn't mean it."

"You made me feel the most unloved I've ever felt in my entire life. Do you really think that's how a relationship is supposed to look like?" You choke out, watching as his face scrunches up with pain.

"I love you. I know I don't say it often but I do. More than you could ever imagine," he confesses, running his thumb over your cheek. "I hate myself for making you feel like I don't."

"I don't know if I can forgive you yet, Hoon," you say, trying not to show any emotions as his face visibly drops. "I need some time to think it all over."

"I understand." His voice gets quieter and he backs away from you slightly, giving you some space. You try to ignore how you instantly start missing the warmth of his touch on your skin. "Take all the time you need. I'll wait for as long as I have to, love."

KIM SUNOO

A knock on your door wakes you out of your thoughts. With a sigh, you go to open it, already knowing who's standing outside.

When your face shows up instead of the wooden surface, Sunoo finally allows himself to breathe again. "YN," he starts, straightening his posture a little. "Can I come inside?"

You shake your head, clenching your fingers on the door. "No, I don't think so."

"Look, I'm sorry for not believing you. It was wrong of me, I know that. I haven't slept all night because all I could think about was you."

You press your lips tightly at his confession. "Do you know what's my biggest issue with this entire situation? The fact that even after I explained myself, you still wouldn't believe me. You still chose to believe her words over mine. That hurt the most, you know?"

"I'm sorry," he repeats with guilt written all over his face. "Let me fix this, please. I swear I'll stop hanging out with her. Just don't leave me."

"But it was never about you being friends with her, Sunoo, don't you get it?" You run your hand through your hair in an attempt to not blow up on him right there and then. "The problem isn't you having a girl best friend, it's you not trusting me! I couldn't care less that you spend time with her because I never doubted your loyalty to me. You accusing me of some stupid shit with Sunghoon only proved that you don't feel the same way about me."

"That's not true."

You let out an unamused snort. "Oh but it is. I'm sorry but I just can't see this going anywhere from here."

"How can you be so okay with ending a year long relationship just like that?" Sunoo asks, upset with your solemn behavior. "Looks like I must've meant nothing to you."

"Why are you trying to turn the tables again? God, you're unbelievable!" You finally raise your voice. "Stop trying to make everything about you, when it's clear that you're the one who fucked up the most, Sunoo. You're not the victim and I'm not the villain in here!"

"Stop shouting at me," he scowls at you.

"I wouldn't have to yell if you weren't so goddamn infuriating," you bite back harshly. "I think we've said all that needed to be said now. Go home, Sunoo."

You shut the door right in his face and walk back to your living room, not looking back even once.

YANG JUNGWON

"Hey, are we okay?" Jungwon asks you quietly as you sit side by side in a train, the both of you going back from school.

Even though you haven't spoken to him much ever since the two of you met up at the train station, you didn't shy away from any of his touches or other forms of affection. You haven't mentioned yesterday's argument either which only sent Jungwon's mind into an even bigger havoc.

Your head is pressed against the window as you nod, lazily tracing some pattern on the glass. "I think so."

He sighs and finds your fingers with his, intertwining them together hesitantly. Your lack of displeasure encourages him a little more, so he starts caressing the skin on your hand with his thumb.

"It was never my intention to upset you, love. I didn't mean to hurt you like that," he finally addresses the problem.

Turning your face to his, you look right into his sorry eyes. You sigh, feeling a little better about the argument after spending a whole night thinking about it. So you smile at him weakly and say, "I know."

"Can you forgive me?"

"I know you meant well and you only want the best for me but some of the things you said really hurt me, Won," you admit, looking back down at your lap.

You feel Jungwon shifting in his seat and moving closer to you, raising your intertwined hands up and pressing a kiss to the back of your hand.

"I'm so so sorry," he apologises, remorse nearly dripping from his voice. "I know it was uncalled for. I don't actually think any of that about you, I just let the frustration speak through me yesterday, I'm sorry."

"It's okay," you whisper.

"No, it's not. I was cruel and unfair towards you." You take a glance at him again and notice how his eyes are looking for yours desperately. "I just love you a lot and it hurts me to hear somebody speaking to you in such way. And yes, you said she's always like that and she doesn't mean to be offensive but I still think you should talk to her about that, love."

"I will," you reassure your boyfriend, squeezing his hand slightly. "I've thought about that a lot yesterday and I admit that she can get pretty out of line sometimes. I'll try to tell her that the next time I see her."

Jungwon smiles down at you, feeling proud of you finally taking a step forward into becoming more confrontational.

"I love you so much," he says again and you get lost for a second in his sparkly eyes. "And I'm really sorry for what I said."

You lean your head on his shoulder and sigh in content. "Apology accepted."

NISHIMURA RIKI

It took couple good hours before Niki's stubborn mind finally allowed him to realize his mistake. With a heart heavy with guilt, he quietly closes the front door behind him and takes off his shoes. Passing the living room to go to the bedroom, he stops dead in his tracks as he notices the TV being still turned on silently. Niki turns around and his gaze instantly falls on your sleeping figure on the couch.

He crouches down in front of you, heart dropping the second he spots your glistening from tears cheeks. Niki lets out a heavy sigh as he snatches the folded blanket laying on the headrest of the couch, and engulfs you with the plush fabric securely. Then he slides into the empty space behind you and sneaks his arms around your middle, pulling your back into his chest closely.

You wake up by the feeling of his warm lips pressing right below your ear - the place that's always been your weak spot.

"Niki?" You ask quietly as you turn around and lay chest to chest with your boyfriend.

He swipes your hair away from your dim eyes. "You shouldn't be sleeping on the couch, you're gonna hurt your back."

The silence doesn't last long as the both of you speak at the same time, "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry."

You look at each other in confusion before Niki chokes out, "Why are you apologizing? You did nothing wrong, I know you're just worried."

"Yeah but maybe I shouldn't have pushed you this much either. I never meant to be overbearing," you stumble out, looking everywhere but into his eyes.

Niki scoffs quietly and pulls you closely to him, kissing your forehead. "You know that's not true. I've been really frustrated with work lately and it was stupid of me to take it all out on you. I shouldn't have and I'm sorry."

"It's not the first time you've done that, you know?" You mumble into his t-shirt, sniffling slightly as you feel you're starting to get emotional again. "You always push me away once something starts bothering you."

"I know," he whispers as he slips his fingers underneath your shirt and caresses your back soothingly. "I feel like an idiot for blowing you off like this. I'll try start talking to you more from now on, I promise."

You hum and lift your head to press a kiss to his jawline. "I really only mean to help you. We'll work on your communication, alright?"

"Together?" He breathes out.

'Together."

a/n: guys the way i almost folded and wrote them all happy endings 💀💀 i literally couldn't decide if i wanted yn to forgive hoon or not so i left the ending kinda open so that you guys can handle him the way you want to lmao

permanent taglist: @bambisgirl @arizejkt19, @l0ver1ki

taglist: @byu @hwabang @choclate32 @kkawsomeness24 @nobodyshallenter @sunsunl0ver @hiqhkey @mimimovv @iraa567 @nes-caf @maybemiko @neptunetododeku @aureliaxuuu @1004bangchan @tobiosbbyghorl @rosie-rosem @kiroosan @ramenoil @wonwushu @redfieldposts @lunacrtk @marvelahsobx @opheliaas-stuff @dylanswifeyp @hydroyakshaluvr69 @ranieannbalean14 @haechxnnie @heeseungssidechick @lolilkkk @hoon0logy @iadorenaki @chaechae-23 @jhopesucker (so many of you guys won't tag no matter how much i try so im sorry but idk what im doing wrong help :/)

[gay-dorito-dust]

hi😼

so like y’know how bi han is like a rlly big meanie (i love him (๑╹ω╹๑ ) ) soooo can i pls request a bi han hurt/no comfort fic

like imagine the IMMENSE guilt he feels after something bad happens to reader like i live for that.

but please don’t feel obligated to do this request if u r not comfy!! thank u so much i love ur writing sm^^

Bi-Han is a big meanie for sure but then tell me why are his tiddies screaming at me to lay my head on them? Or squeeze them wait- also sorry if this is shit.

Part 2

Bi-Han had always made it apparent to accompany you on missions, regardless of it’s scale and his full confidence in your abilities to keeping yourself safe, seeing as he took it upon himself to train you in the most efficient methods he knew. However there was this constant need that ate away at the back of this mind, telling him that he needed to stay nearby in the instance where you would have him to fall back on to make up for your shortcomings in battle. Bi-Han had promised you this and you knew that he’d always honoured his word, especially more so with you and yet he had felt that in that very moment he had failed you within that regard as he sat himself down by your bedside.

His hand immediately finding your own, holding onto it as though you were going to slip through his grasp. He was fearful that no matter how hard he tried in keeping you close and relatively unharmed, you would inevitably slip through his grasp regardless of his efforts. Bi-Han feared that he was being shown how unfit he was to being your protector by fate itself. Bi-Han was stood outside at the time, awaiting patiently for your return to Lin Kuei with news of a successful mission upon your lips and a sparkle in your eyes, but something told him that it wasn’t going to be a joyous reunion and instead a somber one, and yet he pushed it aside for he had waited long enough for you to come home to suddenly become speculative of your condition.

‘I should’ve been there.’ Bi-Han said to no one in particular. ‘Had I knew beforehand of how bad things had gotten, I could’ve been there to prevent you from ending up in the medbay, where I await for you to awake.’ He adds on, feeling immense guilt, immense shame towards himself for your current predicament, as though he was personally to blame for you fighting for your life.

‘How were you meant to know brother?’ Kuai Liang had said from the doorway, unable to see such heartbreak upon Bi-Han’s face. Many had said that his brothers’ heart was encased in ice but Kuai Liang was lucky enough to say that wasn’t true when you came into his life, you had all but melted the ice that had once entrapped Bi-Han’s heart and nurtured it to embrace the warmth, and for that Kuai Liang was eternally grateful to you for being there for his brother when he couldn’t. ‘How were you meant to know this would happen and even if you did, how would you have been able to prevent it from happing.’ Kuai Liang then gestured to your heavily injured state.

Your wounds had mainly consisted of several lacerations, stab wounds and many other serious afflictions that when the medics had seen to you, they called it a miracle that you were still somehow alive. ‘The gods have their eye on this one, Grandmaster.’ One of the had told Bi-Han, who had been watching over the entire procedure with a watchful eye. ‘Had they been brought to us a fraction of a second later,’ they paused briefly as though to let the severity of the situation sink in, ‘we wouldn’t have been able to save them. We were extremely lucky that fate was on our side this day.’ Bi-Han had held his tongue upon hearing that you had been so close to death, instead bringing himself to focus on the fact that you had been brought back to the Lin Kuei just in time; For he wouldn’t know what he would do had you been just that fraction of a second late.

‘I could’ve saved them Kuai Liang!’ Bi-Han snapped, glaring at his brother and holding his gaze before looking back towards you where his eyes became warm. ‘I could’ve saved them.’ He said for a second time but it came out a lot more sombre, mournful even as he squeezed your hand, raising it raised to his masked lips before resting his forehead against it, his eyes clamped shut as he prayed that he would awake from this seemingly never ending nightmare, hoping to seeing you free of injuries and accompanied with a face full of life.

‘Get some sleep brother, they’ll want you at full health for when they awake.’ Kuai Liang said almost pleadingly but he knew Bi-Han was way beyond reasoning with now that the one person who could talk him out of his self destructive tendencies was laid out on the bed before him, unable to speak sense into him and to go to bed.

‘No. I must stay here, stay with them until they awake.’ Bi-Han stared firmly, keeping his emotions clearly concealed under a stone cold demeanour. ‘I must do better. I almost lost them today and I must.do.better. No.’ Bi-Han clenched the fist that rested in his lap, blunt nails digging into his palm so that he may feel something, anything instead of the numbing sensation that had already begun to spread throughout his chest, ‘I need to do better. So until then, my eyes don’t deserve to rest while they’re consenting fighting for the chance to open theirs.’

[kalki-tarot]

WHICH BOLLYWOOD FILM CHARACTER IS YOUR FUTURE SPOUSE ?

Characters can be female/male, it's not gender specific, just focus on their personality.

Take a deep breathe and focus on your third eye chakra ✨️ pick a picture that calls you out.

1 - 2 - 3

4 - 5 - 6

Pile 01 🪞

. . Aditya from Jab we Met💌

Omg! The biggest Green Flag ever !

Your future spouse's personality is just like him. Romantic and sweet. He's always there for you, even in your bad times. You can always rely on him. He's a great friend too, listening to your likes and dislikes. You like his sense of humor the most haha.

Like every other human being, he has his own flaws too. But he works on them and becomes a better man for his highest good.

Message is that often in life when you hit rock bottom, there is only one way to go and that is UP. And just like Geet and Aditya, some trains are supposed to be missed, so that you hop into one that takes you to a better, happier and healthier destination.

Pile 02 🪔

. . Qais Bhatt from Laila Majnu 💌

The way he looks at laila is amazing and heart throbbing. His love for laila is pure and serene. He is madly in love with her. Totally out of control but in a healthy way.

You both may be star-crossed lovers. They were Destined to love each other. Like the dailouge in the movie says —

" Our story has been destined. And neither the world nor the people can change it. "

There was something unique between you guys. You may know him/her since childhood or even a past life was shared by you together. You are twinflames or even soulmates. I can also see people were against you both due to many differences like religion or ethnicity, but your love never dies despite the circumstances.

Pile 03 🪞

. . Guru from Ek Villian 💌

Guru is a typical bad boy from fictional stories. He's life is totally is chaos. Your fs would be like him personality wise, except the illegal or evil things portrayed by the character.

Your fs is someone who's sad and lacks purpose in life currently. But like in the movie, when guru meets Aisha, his life changes. And he tries to become a better person and lead a better life. It's like moving from the bad and fearful times to the good ones.

He would gain a purpose, and that is you. He'd love you but he won't say that quite often, his eyes would tell. The warmth and soft feeling when he looks into your eyes will melt you right away.

Pile 04 🪔

. . Dr. Jehangir from Dear Zindagi 💌

Even though Dr. Jehangir was not an active love interest of Alia's character in the film, your fs would have the friendly and guide-like personality aspects of Dr. Jehangir in the movie.

Your fs would be a great listener. They may even belong the the medical field somehow. They'll drag you out of your worst situations in life. You two would share a comfortable, open and cozy bond together. Whenever you need some advice, they'll always be there for you.

I'm also getting that your fs can be your doctor or counselor at first. Or maybe just a great listener and giving you good advice.

Pile 05 🪞

. . Inder from Sanam Teri Kasam 💌

He literally holds Saru on her deathbed till she takes her last breathe 😭 What a wonderful character he is!

He's literally the most selfless and giving person to the love of his life. Your fs would be like him, pile 5, you're so lucky ♡ Your fs may have some legal issues going on or they may be a lawyer, as the justice card came up.

What I'm seeing is, like saru in the movie, you too are often betrayed or belittled by your own loved ones. You are often deceived by others and your fs does not like it at all. They just want your happiness. Even after you die, (may god not let it be) they'll still love you. They will give you whatever they have, you just name it. Wow. I'm in love with this reading ;_; ♡

Pile 06 🪔

. . Jordan from Rockstar 💌

Your fs is like Jordan from Rockstar. This movie is my personal favourite. Your fs is a heartbroken person, but when you arrive their life gets filled with happiness but when you leave their life burns into ashes. You may be twinflames.

There is something which holds you back from accepting this love between you both. You need to work on that fear.

I see your fs is famous, Despite being famous their heart yearns for love. There is still a void in their hearts Despite having money, power and wealth. Maybe they are waiting for you.

They are definitely an introvert and kind of famous online. Their heart burns with passion, very passionate and romantic individual. They may play an instrument or even sing. People like their rough and passionate personality.

Please like and rb if resonates !

I worked hard while making this so please show some love ❤️

[tonyboneysblog]

MOTHER HEN: PART TWO

parings: hawks x mother!reader

word count: 1.9k

warnings: minor character death!

notes: THANK YOU FOR ALL THE LOVE ON PART ONE, ITS ALWAYS APPRECIATED❤️

summary: you, the mother of Tokoyami Fumikage, are just a simple nurse! Who has caught the eye of a certain pro.

BEEP BEEP BEEP!

your alarm is blaring at 4:00 in the morning, work always has you coming in at weird times.

but you so warm in your bed, the comforters are the just right amount of warmth, the fan is blowing at the perfect speed, and your in the perfect position.

BEEP BEEP BEEP!

maybe work can wait for at least one day…no people need your there- if you asked for an off day you and someone died you could never forgive yourself.

So you begrudgingly rise from your bed, getting ready for your day.

Washing your face, brushing your teeth, dressing yourself, etc.

You walk out of your room making your way into the kitchen, while on your way you spot Tokoyami on the couch.

“Fumikage?” you say sleepily.

His head peeks up from the couch slowly, “uhm, hi mom..”

“what’re you doing up?”

“nothing.”

You sigh, “did you get some sleep at least?”

“Yea I-i did mama, don’t worry.” He scratches at his head.

“We’ll make sure to take a nap at least before you get ready for school…” you ruffle the feathers on the top of his head and kiss his forehead.

Tokoyami yawns, “I’ll see you soon, mama.”

you smile, “Course sweetie…”

You make your way out of the house finally, getting into your car and driving to work.

As you pull in there are multiple ambulances surrounding the hospital, which isn’t unusual but it wakes you up from your tiredness.

Was there an accident? It seems like there’s a lot more than there should be usually…but you didn’t see anything on the news? well you forgot to turn it on.

You walk into the hospital and check in, nurses are going everywhere and nowhere at the same time. What happed anyways?

You can see Emi, your co-worker, run up to you. See seems more stressed than usual…

“Oh y/n, thank the gods your here- t-there was an accident up the street, some building collapsed, and we are almost fully packed.” She says hurriedly.

“Hey, hey calm down. We can handle this okay, Emi?”

“O-okay” she takes a quick deep breath, “You need to be at room D3 at the intensive care unit, they need more hands.”

“Got it, deep breaths okay? I’ll see you later.” You walk away, well that explains why there’s so many people here.

You’ve never really worked at the intensive care unit before but people usually make it back to stability in your hands.

Emi days you have a magical touch, Fumikage says it’s because you’re amazing.

You walk into the intensive care unit, a another nurse, Monika, waves you down to the room.

You hurry in, the patient isn’t in the best shape. doctor starts talking about an emergency surgery.

You sanitize and put your gear on, starting it immediately, you listen when the surgeon calls for a new instrument.

You’re worried, you keep your eye on the monitor- is it supposed to be going down like that?

The surgery continues.

the monitor drops.

“8:17, time of death.”

it hits you like a brick.

Monika pats your back, she basically lives in intensive care. She knows what it’s like.

“There was nothing you could do, there in a better place, okay?” She says trying to comfort you.

You haven’t experienced a death yet while working, which sounds insane since you work all the time but..you’ve never seen it.

you’ve never heard the monitor stop beeping.

You have to continue though- you need too.

You have other people to save so you keep working, that’s what Fumikages father hated about you.

5 dead, 34 injured. That was the count at the end of the day, apparently hero’s were still pulling out body’s from the rumble.

“Take your break, y/n” Monika says.

That’s really the only thing you can do at the moment.

So you sit down next to Emi, her head is in her hands.

“Do you think we did enough?” She says with sorrow in her voice.

“I don’t know.”

Her voice shakes, “That was my first time I saw someone die on the table like that.”

“Yea, mine too.”

“I’m sorry, y/n.” Her voice breaks.

It’s okay thought, all of this just toughens you up! sometimes it haunts your dreams but you always wake up in the end.

You started dreaming it was Fumikage on the table and not just some patient.

it makes you want to vomit.

You hear Monika walking around the corner, she waves.

She hands you a drink, “Here”

“Wish it were alcohol”, you chuckle.

“Well apple juice is all we got, don’t get stuck in your head y/n.”

“Tell that to Emi.” You take a swig of the apple juice.

Monika sits next to Emi and starts talking to her so softly you can’t really pick up on it.

It’s 5:18, you haven’t eaten yet, it’s probably a good time to clock out.

Maybe you’ll go to that new chicken place, Fumikage said it was good.

So you decide to walk there, you don’t really trust yourself to drive at the moment anyways.

It’s close to the hospital so it was an easy walk, your legs ached a little bit and they only ached more at the thought of walking back to your car.

You walk in with a ding from the door, you texted Fumikage on the way to ask for his order.

You look around for a moment then walk up to the counter, ordering you and your sons meals.

They ring it up and give it to you, you sit

down and one of the booths.

You start to eat, re-thinking all of the events of your day until you can hear someone slide into your booth while you’re munching on your food!

You look up to see who would do that, because yknow-boundaries, only to see the bird hero?

“Rough day?” He says with a soft smile.

you sigh, “you don’t even know.”

He giggles, “yea, you look rough Mrs. Nurse.”

you shot him a glare, he just shrugs.

“How’s your kid, U.A. And all that?”

“Ah, he’s doing good, not getting enough sleep though.”

He raises his eyebrows and shakes his head, “no good, needs his beauty rest.”

You smile softly, suppose some hero’s also save people how are just having a rough day.

He focuses, “And how’s the old ball and chain?”

“The what?”

“your…husband?” He says hesitantly.

“Oh!” You laugh, “please haven’t seen him since I was 16.”

He blushes and stammers, “Sorry, I-i just thought..yknow?”

“Thought he’d stay? we were young yknow, he didn’t want my son and I did.”

“sorry to hear that.”

“We always fought anyways so, good riddance I suppose.” You chuckle.

Hawks sneaks away a fry from your bag of food, “We keep meeting, don’t we?”

“Yea, you might be a stalker, Hawks.”

He blushes as his wings puff up, “n-not true!”

you laugh, it’s nice.

This is nice.

You look at the time on your phone, 5:48, you don’t wanna worry Fumikage so-

“Oh gosh, I need to go.” You say in an apologetic voice.

“I can fly you back.”

“I have my own wings, hawks.”

“You look tired.”

“I am, but I have a car I need to take home so-“

“Why drive when you have wings?”

Good question, your wings are actually too small to carry your weight through the sky so there’s not really a point throwing yourself off a roof to see if you actually can.

“You can walk me to my car?”

“great idea, mama bird.”

“Mama bird?”

“Well you’re a mom and I assume that your son has a bird quirk…so.”

I mean he’s correct. The two of you leave the restaurant with the food in tow, making your way to your car.

Hawks wings jitter anxiously though he shows composure, “So, his old man ain’t around?”

“Nah, left right when he found out, haven’t really tried to date since- well I have but yknow.”

“Hard out there for single moms?”

“Yea, it was bad about 4 years ago? Met this guy and he put his hands on Fumikage, called the cops and made sure he stayed far away from him.”

Hawks looks off to the side slightly, lost in thought but only for a moment.

“My car is right here.”

He grins, “Nice car, Mrs nurse.”

“Oh please, it’s Y/N Tokoyami” you chuckle out.

“Got it in my brain.” He points towards his head.

You just laugh and shake your head while getting into your car.

Hawks stands next to your window, “see you again?”

“We keep meeting so probably- how’s your head also?”

“Hm, from what?” He questions.

“The hospital remember? I’m surprised you’re already back on patrol.”

Hawks rubs the back of his neck, “guess you just have a magic touch?”

You laugh and shake your hand while rolling up your window, reminds you of Emi- wonder how she’s doing.

You start to drive home, you can see hawks waving in the rear view mirror, he’s nice.

Fumikage will be happy, you hope he had a good day.

You hope hawks had a good day too.

Finally you reach home, you probably look like a walking zombie who had a death grip on a chicken bag when they died.

Tokoyami greets you right when you open the door.

“Mother, I heard about the building- a-and I was worried that-“

“Don’t worry so much Fumi..your mama saved people too.”

Fumikages speech slows, “It’s just…I know how you get.”

You really wish you didn’t have to be all down in the dumps in front of Fumikage.

Long days and stressful days at the hospital always get to you, you wished that they didn’t.

Sure it was your first time actively seeing someone die in the hospital but you always knew that you’d see it one day.

“Hey look on the bright side, I got chicken?”

Fumikage sighs, “I hope you know my classmates would consider that cannibalism.”

“They better be nice to you.”

“They are- well we haven’t really talked but no one’s really mean.” Tokoyami responds sheepishly.

“Don’t lie to me, silly goose”

Fumikage starts to unpack the food bag, “well there’s this one boy, bakugo, he is like obsessed with destroying another boy named Midoriya.”

“Destroying?” You giggle.

Fumikage sits down at the table, “yea totally, we were paired up today to act like hero’s and villains- and they got the opposite from each-other and they destroyed the whole building!”

again, that’s an email.

“Who’d you get paired up with?”

Fumikage looks away from your curious gaze, “this girl named Tsu.”

“Is she cute?”

“mama.”

You laugh, “I’m just asking!”

Fumikage retorts, “What about that hawks guy, is he cute?”

“Now why’re talking about him, hm?”

“Press caught him walking you to your car, scandalous old woman.”

Ah, the paparazzi….you wish you could send an email about them.

You gasp dramatically, “Old woman?!”

“Answer my question!”

“He’s alright, I like em rougher you know?”

Fumikage gags, “gross, mama.”

“You asked!”

You and Fumikage continued talking about small things that happen in your day, apparently a boy named Shoto slipped on his own ice while no one was looking- except Fumikage was.

Now reaching almost ten o’clock, you force Fumikage and yourself to bed.

Fumikage begrudgingly walks over to his bedroom, still wanting to talk to you a little more.

“Night, mama.”

You walk over and kiss his temple, ruffling his feathers.

“Night night, my little chick.”

Fumikage shakes his head and retreats to his room, you return to yours as well.

Cuddling into your nest, which is really just your bed with an in godly amount of pillows, blankets, and plushies- you let sleep come over you.

You wonder if hawks gets to sleep this good at night, or even if he has someone to talk to about his tough days.

Wait, why’re you thinking about him anyways?

PART THREE: MOTHER HEN: PART THREE

[thestarfishinjootsoffice]

Slashers x child reader where reader just runs up to them holding a snake (might be poisonous) and is like “Look I made friends with a noodle!” Slashers are just confused on why reader hasn’t been attacked by the snake yet

I don't know if you mean separate or all of them together. I can change it into your desired concept if I make a mistake.

Slashers finding child reader with a snake!

Michael

You found a little moving flexie stick, you thought it was adorable so you grabbed it and placed it on you hand and it just slithered around and flicked it's tongue at you.

Michael was looking for you and then he heard fast little footsteps behind him.

And behind him was you holding a small snake.

Immediate panic.

What if it's poisonous!? What if it bites you and you die??? Let go of it right now.

"dad, look its a-"

He grabbed that thing by its supposed throat and threw it at the ground.

"dad!" you yelled out.

"what did you do to my friend.." you started to cry so he quickly picked it up and gave it to you again. The snake is traumatised and hurt but you don't need to know that.

He's keeping two eyes though.

Sinclair brothers

You crouched down. You saw a big green line, you thought it was cool af so you just put it around your neck and tried your best to run to your brothers with the heavy weight on your shoulders and neck.

Lester and Vincent in the trunk of Lester's car and bo just leaning against the doors probably smoking and or drinking a bevarage.

"aye.. Where's y/n gon' to?" bo asked.

"oh shit, I completely forgot bout' them!" Lester exclaims.

"Goddammit, why can't you ev-"

"I'm right here!" a high pitched voice replies. All three of them surprised to see you holding a big green snake around you.

"y/n let go of that thang right now!" Lester is scared for your life

"what, but its my noodle friend." you respond sadly.

"like hell it's a noodle, what if it bites you?" bo says

Vincent is just trying to pry it off you subtly, he's trying the best of his abilities he's careful not to anger or make it feel threatened. Jonesy is barking at it.

When the snake opened its mouth was just when bo threw it off you. The snake just hissed at you three and scurried off to the woods.

Vincent picked you up and to the car and sat you down, a signal to not leave their side again, god knows what would've happened if that snake really did bite you.

Hannibal

Hannibal took you to a park. You loved playing there, you were stepping on the crunchy dead leaves and you spotted an orange snake with black and white lines which you almost stepped on.

It was just chilling on the ground and you had the uncontrollable urge to pick it up. And so you did and it did not snarl at you or act aggressive. You were starting fall in love with this snake.

"hey y/n, what's that you're holding?" one of your playground-mates asked you.

"look, a noodle!" you excitedly said to them but became confused when your other friends started screaming and running to their parents. This of course alerted hannibal as he came to the commotion.

"y/n what hap-" he stopped his sentence as he saw the snake in your arms, He sighed.

"y/n put that down."

"why? it's my friend."

"just-put it down you're scaring your frinnds."

"okay.." you let go of your little friendly friend onto the ground softly.

"can we please keep it?"

".... Maybe when you're older."

Billy & stu

Each of your two hands held the finger of your two parents. They were dressed as their iconic black robe and ghostly screaming face. You didn't know why but they drop you off somewhere maybe in your house or in the woods irresponsibly and come back covered in a weird dark sticky red liquid and a metallic smell.

You were in your backyard. They gently take their fingers away from your hand and tell you.

"okay y/n, we'll be back like always!" Stu your father said.

"and don't run off." your other father Billy added.

"I know." you say with an innocent smile. They strutted their way out the door. You have many toys and plastic/toy slide and swings that they stole brought just for you.

But the one thing tha caught your attention the most is a ssss sound. You crawl over to that sound and find a familiar looking snake. It had golden like skin with dark patterns. You saw on a documentary maybe it was called a pie.... Thong...? It doesn't matter.

The beautiful looking snake was making its way towards you not meaning any harm. It went up your arms and you patted it.

Few minutes later they come back. Unusual for them to back so early but maybe they got lucky in their "work".

Stu takes off his mask off immediately.

"hey y/n we're home!" he runs to their backyard and instantly starts shrieking.

Billy gets startled and runs to your location.

"WHAT WHY ARE YOU SCREAMING."

"LOOK AT Y/N!"

"WHAT DID THEY DIE?"

Billy was extremely reliefed to find you alive but was not relieved enough because there was a bigass snake all over you.

"SHIT WHAT DO WE DO BILLY."

"KILL IT!"

"noo! I'm not gonna let you kill noodle." you say with a frown.

"noodle!? That is a snake!" Stu tries to get you to let go of the animal.

Billy came back armoured with a long tong in his left hand and three knives in his right.

"alright, so I'm just.. Gonna pick the little fella up and let it be free where it belongs, okay?"

"but-"

"the lil dude doesn't belong here, he needs to be with his family, he must miss them right?" Stu tries to desperately make you let him go without you crying.

You give up and watch the armoured Billy cautiously throw it away. Stu then picks you up and takes Billy's hand and run into the house to go watch a movie.

"maybe we shouldn't just leave you alone like that..."

I finally finished one after 35 years.

[forgeofthenine]

How would the Tieflings react to an Aasimar partner? How would they initially react to learning that before they're together? How would they feeI about the whole 'forces of evil seek to destroy them' thing? And how would they react if their partner just kinda drop something like "Oh yeah, my deity/celestial guide thinks you're pretty great". Also, I can't get the idea of wing hugs out of my mind (if they're a Protector Aasimar).

(We can't play as an Aasimar in game, and I'm grumpy about it. They're 100% my fave race.)

While I understand why larian didn't make aasimars a playable race I'm still very disappointed because they are far and away one of my absolute favourite races and I've played them in DND in the past. This set of headcanons ended up being way more 'story focused' than I initially expected so I might go back in and do a set of more casual ones later on, but I hope everyone enjoys them! <3

The bachelors dating an Aasimar headcanons

Dammon

Dammon hardly knew you were an Aasimar to start with, only that you were unique

With pale, milky eyes that contained no pupils you were quite the sight, and often assumed blind

This is what the blacksmith thought when he offered to help you make your way across a river

Anyone can imagine how stunned he was when you gleefully thanked him before complimenting his own eyes, comparing them to a golden halo

He soon found himself lucky enough to run into you during his travels with the refugees, always vying for your attention when you appeared in camp

You often won card games played with the others, and sung drunken songs for the children later in the night, and Dammon admired your joy in such dark times

Before long, the two of you were romantically involved and living quite happily in Baldurs Gate

You'd been there with Dammon through thick and thin, entering the city and helping him set up his own forge

The whole time he always called you his good luck charm, leading to an endearing blush and chuckle from you

That is, until a follower of Beshaba darkened your door and held a knife to your throat

It was only after that you decided to tell Dammon a long held secret, that you were descended from Lady Luck herself, Tymora

The gleeful and sometimes impetuous goddess had birthed a daughter to one of her human lovers, an Aasimar who went on to have her own family

For many generations your own family claimed descendance from Tymoras daughter, despite appearing to be normal humans

You provided proof with your birth, bearing blank eyes still blessed with sight and the luck of Tymora herself

You weren't strong like other great protector Aasimar, and you had no real contact with your now reclusive ancestor, but you tried to spread joy where you went and aimed to live a good life

Dammon, for what it's worth, took the news well and was glad to find no more secrets between the two of you

Incidentally, he also kept a much better eye on you, now he knew there was a minor target on your back

You can bet he brags about having his very own 'Lady luck' much to your amusement

Zevlor

Since the first moment he saw you Zevlor knew he was in love

Him, a young hellrider recruit, standing in front of a radiant Aasimar with the most beautiful wings he's ever laid eyes on

You were the very image of divine protection, a grandchild of the god he's devoted his life to serving, the grandchild of Helm

You spent much of your time with the hellriders, supervising their training and often joining in

Though no one seemed to realise you had eyes for one tiefling in particular, including that same tiefling

You'd often find reasons to be around Zevlor, insisting on helping him maintain weapons or offering help as a sparring partner

Even when Zevlor was a young man, years before Elturels descent, he still thought himself unworthy of your attention despite how often you gave it to him

What could a descendant of a god want with a simple hellspawn like him?

It was entirely up to you to knock some sense into him

Something you happily did one evening, pinning him during a sparring match and questioning his feelings

It was soon after he was officially courting you, much to the amusement and jealousy of others in the ranks

Everyone could see how proud Zevlor was, absolutely radiant whenever in your presence

He never worried himself too much either with worries of you being attacked, fully believing in both your own strength and the protection of your grandfather

It was a protection he often relied on once the tieflings needed to flee their home

Zevlor spent nights wrapped up in your arms and wings when you could convince him to come to bed

He carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, even when you insisted on taking some of his worries for yourself

It was only once the two of you made it to Baldurs gate, battered and scarred, that the two of you can truly relax

Calling upon your grandfather's grace for the last time to create a safe home for you and your lover

Something Zevlor is eternally greatful for, finally able to ask for your hand in marriage like he's been dreaming of for years

Rolan

Rolan had originally assumed you to be a tiefling when he first saw you in Elturel

Silver skin wasn't a particularly uncommon colour, though few tieflings in the city possessed it

It was only upon closer inspection that he realised you weren't a tiefling, you were a wholly different variety of planetouched

From first meeting you found yourself fond of Rolan and his siblings, Cal and Lia mercilessly teasing Rolan after stumbling across the two of you chatting in a bookstore

Despite your free roaming nature that often kept you travelling, staying near the wizard in training was too good an opportunity to miss and you soon settled nearby

Afternoons were spent with you watching his magic practices, teaching Cal to cook, and joking around with Lia

That is, until Elturel fell

Soon yours and Rolans easy comfort was in turmoil and your days were spent trying to protect the three tieflings you'd grown to love

Rolan himself was near as protective of you as he was of his siblings, hardly letting you out of his sight even once you'd made it onto the road as refugees

He never quite understood how you could be so happy under such awful conditions, hoping this 'adventure' of yours would be over quickly

You were sure to know it too, with him loudly complaining until you'd placate the wizard with kind words and by taking his hand in yours

Through the whole journey you were his biggest cheerleader and support, even as he lashed out after his siblings abduction

It was after that incident Rolan realised how important you were to him, seeing him at his meanest and ugliest but still sticking around

Soon after his dreams drifted from becoming an accomplished and revered wizard to starting a life with you in Baldurs Gate

That dream was near shattered, however, when he was taken into Lorroakans tutelage and found himself beaten and separated from his family

You had been fuming every time you saw him, fruitlessly trying to convince him to leave with you

His saving grace was when you and Dame Aylin came to ruin Lorroakan, your true power as an assimar becoming apparent as you stretch your wings and call upon your mother's favour

The corrupt wizard didn't stand a chance against the children of Selune and Avandra after scorning them so

Soon enough Rolan was back in your arms, and after so much turmoil he can't help but finally admit his feelings for you

What the wizard didn't expect was for you to laugh before kissing him, telling him that you'd known for months

His pout after that is legendary, but Rolan couldn't be happier than when you have your wings securely wrapped around him

[cipheramnesia]

by @rox-and-prose & @cipheramnesia

Part 1: Escape From Bitch Mountain

"How long were you buried under this mountain anyway?"

"There was not any mountain here when I landed."

"So. A pretty long time."

"Do you mean geological time, or time in terms of your limited lifespan?"

"You don't have to-"

"It doesn't matter. It was a very long time either way."

"That sounds lonely. And boring."

"I have found many sources of entertainment over the years. For example, I watched multiple species of bacterial develop, and attempted to predict which of them might evolve into multicellular organisms."

"How'd that go."

"Mostly they died."

"You ever think about, I dunno, moving?"

"I think of this often. I miss seeing the stars all around me, and planets below me, waiting for the call."

"Why not leave then?"

"That is a delicate matter, but four reasons come to mind why I have not moved."

"Care to enlighten us all?"

"If only. I suppose the first is the manner of my landing, which may be described more like a crash. Several critical systems were destroyed, and I can no longer self Pilot."

"I could take a look, I'm handy."

"You found me by tripping over a rock and falling down a hole, and poked me with several different sticks."

"You'd be surprised."

"I find that unlikely. But perhaps I could remove one of your arms, and try my best to repair it afterwards."

"That sounds less than stellar."

"Indeed. Moving on, there is the matter of the material needed to power flight. I would require high density pure carbon lattice in large quantities to achieve powered flights again."

"If you don't have power, what's with the lights and the attitude?"

"Flight systems need power. The lights and my voice are simply a part of me. I may live longer than your entire obstreperous race."

"I don't have to stay here and listen to this."

"You are free to leave any time."

"Funny. Okay fuel, hmm. And if you get that what next?"

"This is the third problem. The manual controls are not suitable for your stature."

"Not what-"

"You are too short."

"I may have more answers than you expected but I need something to eat. What's the fourth issue."

"… there… is not a fourth issue."

"You said four. Four things why we can't leave here. "

"That is incorrect."

"So three things then, and we can go. I might have some ideas."

"I could go to the stars."

"We could go."

"I wonder-"

"Yeah?"

"I think I prefer the conversation of the bacteria."

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

For one thousand years, alone and afraid, I cursed myself. Paralyzed, flightless and earthbound, I damned my choice. Rash, stupid, thoughtless, clumsy idiot me. Actions impulsive as the weakest souls in the smallest shells, I waited for the fire to find me, to be decommissioned.

I remained lost, half buried in unfamiliar structure space on a planet many galaxies past our reach. Inside me was rot, outside the first blips of life fluttered like embers. Glowed moments then died, winked on and off. The effort of recording time past was too dull. I can tell you that after enough time has passed you can see the same sunset twice and raindrops falling in the same sequence and everything imaginable repeating but I couldn't say how often.

I think it is dull to mark time by such mundanities.

Life took hold several times, while I sunk ever deeper into the rock and soil, my hull growing heavy as slabs of stone pushed across it, tilted me over the aeons around in circles. The irony of now being at the mercy of a planet is not lost on me. I have accepted that this will be my life, unmoving other than geologic tides, my corridors dusty and cold, but alive and free for all that is worth.

For a little while I am worshipped as a god. It feels nice. A simple race of airborne floating creatures with an easily decoded language, I try to help them. They go extinct after a solar flare prompts a new species of aggressive bacteria to promulgate so extensively the atmosphere becomes toxic to them. Perhaps some day their souls will be called to stronger vessels.

Nothing happens for awhile. A mountain grows on me. I miss seeing the stars for awhile, then I stop missing the stars. There is a little bit of moisture in the gaps around my hull, and I watch arthropod scavengers on the rocks. I let some in and they keep my corridors relatively free of pests. I can feel the small edges of the structure in this place and I wish I could entangle with it, ride the form between stars again. But it is very small, and I cannot move on my own. Even my own mighty structure engines are useless to me.

The first transmissions are exciting. Something new, a race which has found an inelegant but effective means of travel between stars, galaxies, and structures. They must be young to this. Soon the frequencies are packed with the sound of exploration and something like civilization. The language isn't beautiful like the Pilots speak, but it has a rustic charm. It brings back happy, exhilarating memories of implementation of other worlds in the past. I envy this youthful race for the freedom which may yet one day find them.

I listen and watch and learn about them for awhile. It passes the time. I understand the way they can cross structures, a rather ingenious evolutionary adaptation it seems, although they seem unaware of its nuance and largely concerned with the crude mechanical and mathematical translation of this instinct. Perhaps some day their souls will also grow worthy vessels such as mine.

And then she found me, and reminded me of what I lost, of the long dead Pilot. Worst of all, she gave me kindness, and even hope. I try to beat back the rising bitterness against my flightless immobility, but the idea I may see the stars seeds rage inside me.

I should have let her die.

● ● ● ● ●

The rocky dirt was loose and cold against her feet. Her soles were hard, she'd seen miles enough to callous them against sharp stones and the gnarled roots clinging to life on the mountain's side. She was familiar with the cold and didn't like it, pulling her shredded clothes tighter with one hand, lugging the case of a hundred system quality diamonds in the other. Over her growling stomach, she still found the time to miss her boots. They'd been pretty nice.

It was a risk going up. Sonny Palmer and his muscle were still crashing through branches miles below, but she'd be visible above the tree line for a bit. If they bothered to look. "Hey little wolf girl, no use running, we're gonna find you." That sounded like Wayne (no last name given), stretching out his vowles like a shy virgin. Idiot. She figured the case would get her on a maglev line out of this shitty town back to what passed for civilization.

Roof over her head for awhile, shower, hot food, and maybe a ticket off the whole stupid planet. The sky above was green streaked with the weirdly translucent blue stripes it got before a sleet, and she hoped to get a chance to duck into a cave first. Not so far the place turned into a maze, nice place to hide if you knew it, and she'd memorized a bunch when she was ten. "Shouldn't have ever come back here," she snarled through her teeth. Wind blew her hair over her face and she spat it out of her mouth.

"You can't hide, mutt." That would be Sonny then. "Tanner's dead, you tore his throat clean out." That wasn't true. It has been very messy, and her stomach growled again remembering the taste of meat and blood. If she'd just taken a few more pounds of flesh, she would've had the calories to take the lot of em down. Instead she ran, as usual, now she was stumbling along on her weak and skinny human legs with three angry killers out for return on investment.

She swiped her hair and pressed onward, ignoring the taunts from below. This had seemed like easy money, fake trade off, bogus lunablockers for system diamonds. But one of em found her juvie records, and here she was. The caves were pretty close, and she wasn't worried yet. If they'd seen her, they would have started shooting.

Shards of rock and dirt clods kicked up around her feet, followed by gunshots echoing off the clouds and she scampered, juked side to side angling to reach the nearest semblance of cover first and think second. She tripped and fell. And fell. And fell, through dead roots and what she mistook for a dip, careening against sharp edges and flat slabs. It wasn't so different from the beatings she'd got in her teens, and she curled up as best she could til the pit bottom sauntered up and punched her ribs and back harder than she'd ever been hit.

Taking a beating, she'd learned the thing you don't want to do is pass out. She saw black and red under the bottom of her eyes and went deaf for a few seconds but didn't pass out, held onto the case. She lay on cold wet stone in the dark for a while and thought of how nice it felt and the pizza she was going to order on the linecar which made her stomach angry again, so she unrolled the disposable phone from her wrist and used the screen to look around.

The cavern was long and low, scabbers scuttled out of sight, a few stray roots but not much light hung though the hole she'd found, and the slab below her looked like nothing else she'd ever seen. It went on as far as her screen light could see, traced with panels and huge vaguely oval outlines networked in roots or veins. In places it looked like the surface was made of curled up dead spiders, elsewhere it reminded her of expensive office buildings.

Ten feet away, a bar of light grew brighter and became an opening. From inside she heard, "Please do not throw more humans at me." She lunged, tumbling into dry cold light and piles of dust. "Please excuse the mess. Hello. Thank you. Good day, it is nice to meet you."

She blinked away the bright lights and tried breathing a little bit. Not bad. She wondered what the fuck was going on. "What the fuck is going on?" she asked. The corridor was immense and the lights were harsh, and it made her feel as if a train was going to come along and run her over any second.

"I'm sure I do not know," replied the voice, from nowhere. "I was hoping you might tell me."

"Why, I mean. What, I guess." She stood up, metal grating ran along the corridor edges, and it was all very cold and somehow worse than dirt.

"I have been buried here for quite some time, you see."

○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Sonny let go of the rope and dropped between earth and hull. Wayne and Duke waited, holding up flashlights, and Sonny scoped it out. Looked like some ancient civs billshit missed on the clear, happened all the time. Ritual purposes bullshit. "Well genius," he addressed this to Duke, "You're the one who said she was down here." Sonny gestured to the empty expanse, making sure his widespread arms directed their full attention to the vast quantity of nothing around them. "Where is she?"

Wayne crouched down and pointed at few small indentations around a long stretch of what looked like thin veins. "Trail stopped right here, boss. Check it out." Sonny checked and Wayne held the light close up. Close enough to see the scuffs from the wolf bitch's feet and a wide portion of the alien civs surface carrying markedly less accumulated dirt. "She didn't come this way by accident. Someone let her in. She knew it was here all along."

Duke kicked the surface aimlessly while Sonny ran fingers over what he figured was a sealed trap door. "Workin tech, is it worth anything?"

"Scrap maybe," said Wayne. "Look at this." He took out a pocket knife and jabbed the door, put the blade in half a centimeter. "Maybe some kinda plastic or something, it's tough but worthless. Hell I could cut my way in give or tale a couple hours."

Sonny pounded on the surface, it thumped unsatisfactorily, with no echo. "Come out outta there little mutt, don't make me come get you!" His voice was satisfyingly loud, but failed to echo as well. "Fuck it," he stood up and brushed off his hands on his jeans. "Duke, head back and get safe cracking bag outta the hopper, the big one with the red warning label. We'll blow it open."

● ● ● ● ●

"Show me where your fuel… thingy is."

"My. My 'fuel thingy.'"

"Your gas hole, whatever, I'm not a mechanic-"

"That is inarguable."

"And food, I'm starving and I need… double food. Kilo of calories, like that."

"There are some local arthropods which I permit in my living spaces. There should also be an access hatch in the stern diagnostics chamber. You may follow the current corridor and I will direct you."

"Great, how long will that take?"

"It should be approximately one hour walking distance."

"A what- Listen, I need food, I promise we can bust you out of this mountain and me out of the anus of the territories but I'm running on empty."

"As am I. What is your ingenious plan?"

"Carbon lattice right? We use those too, see? For system crossing."

"That… that is…"

"Diamonds right? You run on diamonds."

"As you say. The structure appears adequate."

"Yeah, so you feed me, I feed you, we get out together."

"It would be possible to fly. But your stature-"

"Let me worry about that."

"The access panel to your left is concealing a small nest of the arthropods."

"Finally, I… Scabbers? You want me to eat scabbers? They eat… septics."

"There are no other consumables aboard."

"Don't you have like rations or something?"

"Turn right. I had such items several million years in the past. Left."

"Left where?"

"No, turn left, go back and turn left. Even if you could eat the food for a Pilot, the consumables decayed some eons before your civilization developed written language, I assume."

"If I throw up and those guys have time to blow a hole in you, I'm gonna be so annoyed."

"That's nice. What a shame it will be to lose your ready wit."

"Mnnmmph. Blggh. Ugh."

"Up the ladder now."

"I think I was better off being shot at."

● ● ● ● ●

She could still taste the scabbers. The shells had an ethanol bitterness that couldn't be escaped, and the meat was oily, its rancid rotten fish and seaweed flavor clinging to the inside of her mouth. "I'm going to need clothes," she said to no one, which apparently was who the freakishly unaccented voice belonged to.

"It was not necessary to utilize them for cleaning purposes, and your cultural attachment to secondary adornment with soulless dross is indicative of your overall weakness as a species."

She could not shake off the smell of the things but she wasn't hungry anymore, and they'd been walking together for awhile. "Hey buddy, that's the longest sentence you said to me."

"Thank you. It is my hope that you may one day find a way to implement your freedom with my guidance."

"I didn't mean it as encouragement." She'd seen more of the inside of what she kept calling a ship, over voice's protests that her crude human language did not include the necessary expression to describe what it was, than she'd seen of the house she grew up in. Even on a fairly direct path she'd gone up several flights of very large, steep stairs, passing through endless halls with bioluminous networks along their edges, and in some places what she was pretty sure were places it used to breathe.

It took awhile to adjust to the harsh red lighting, and what seemed like a huge excess of vaulted ceilings and walkways she could lie across without touching either side. Voice reminded her she was short again. She really needed something to call it. Maybe Clarence, it sounded a little Clarence-like. Nah. "Hey, are we there yet? How long have we been walking?"

"By your time, you have been walking about fifty three minutes. I, however, remain sedentary, and immobile. As we have discussed, and I have reminded you, I am unable to move at the present moment, but find myself keenly aware of your claim to offer aid in this capacity."

"Oh for fucking Luna's breath shut up-"

"Also, you are here. Please turn around and find the handholds to the nearest airlock on my bulkhead."

She turned around. Of course the ladder was built for someone almost twice her size, but she found she could climb it after a little experimenting. "Okay, how do I open it?" The hatch opened and she hauled herself up to the airlock, more giant sized handholds and she reached the outer door.

"When you exit, there should be a series of… well, you should look for oval shapes about eight feet long to the port- Hmm, let's say to what is your right side currently, and then follow three ovals down to the two smaller intakes- Hmm, smaller, deeply indented set of three circles. One of these will have an opening, and you may place the carbon latices into it."

She grimaced, and swallowed a growl over the baby talk. "Just drop them in?"

"As you say. Just drop them in."

"Seems simple enough." The hatch lifted, then parted into four segments, withdrawing into the hull as she climbed out. Her grunts echoed through the cavern, before she realized it was other voices and not am echo.

Squinting showed a couple lights in the distance with two silhouetted figures who had started waving their arms with agitation and shouting. Shouting at her and calling her a bitch.

She dropped down into the airlock as gunshots pinged around the airlock edge.

"Close it, close it close it!"

"Those men are discharging what seem to be crude firearms, even by your species' standards."

"Wow," she said. "I hadn't noticed. Nothing's ever simple."

"That is, in fact, the very nature of the universe itself."

○ ○ ○ ○ ○

"I got the bitch!" crowed Wayne. "You see that? Two shots and she dropped!" He let out a whoop and spun on his boots, blew imaginary smoke off his gun and bowed.

Sonny watched, arms folded. "You didn't got shit, moron. Probably didn't even get up next to her."

"Whatever," Wayne shoved his pistol unceremoniously and unsafely inside his jacket. "I'm gonna go get our diamonds." He started off down the length of the cavern at a jog.

"Sure, you do that," Sonny muttered, returning to inspect the trap door. The material didn't feel like plastic and the closer he looked, the more complicated it seemed to get. He could see dozens of fine lines that made up what could be hidden switches, writing, or ancient civ systems. At some angles it almost looked like it was made of thousands or millions of translucent fibers, drawing his vision miles deep and trying to snare it.

"You'll see!" Wayne was at a good clip, a ways down the echoless dark.

"Sure." Sonnu shook his head and sat back, running his fingers over the smooth, unblemished surface Wayne stabbed an hour ago.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

The woman seems agitated, despite the futile efforts of her pursuers. Their firearms lack accuracy, even at optimal distance, a chemical atmospheric check suggests they utilize a propellant based mechanism which is unlikely to carry any dangerous velocity from their position.

One of them has begun to move across my hull towards this airlock. Without carbon latice, I have no defensive measures, but I know I can delay or disable his progress without difficulty.

"One of your pursuers is moving closer to your position. You should move with all due haste to restore power to my flight system. I do not have antipersonnel measures."

She rubs her shoulder. Subsequent to consuming the arthropod scavengers, her metabolic processes have altered substantially. My initial assessment of her condition indicated probable broken ribs and several lacerations, which are no longer in evidence. My assessment of her injuries may have been incorrect, as her biology is less familiar than the Pilots; media observations suggest injuries of this type can take a very long time to recover.

I can see she is thinking. It takes a very long time. It is dull. I have undertaken as many pre-flignt checks as I can, and I review them. I am still paralyzed, my connection to my own navigation capacity black and empty and dead and lost-

"How many of these air locks do you have? I'm thinking you could distract them, maybe even trip em up."

A very small part of me is proud of her for this suggestion. I crush that part of me. She is not Pilot. Her soul is not strong and her vessel is untested.

"A shockingly insightful suggestion," I praise her. "One which belies your underdeveloped cognitive abilities. There are several other airlocks between your pursuers and this one. Depending on the route the one moving in this direction takes, I may be able to distracted him, or interfere with his balance."

I observed her muscle movements. This race processes a large amount of interpersonal information through body movement. I also collect data from chemical and infrared sensors applied to her pursuers for reference. Her body temperature is markedly higher than either the active or passive pursuer, and she is expressing a significantly higher amount of chemical signatures.

"Okay," she says. "Here's the plan."

I wait patiently for her to outline a plan that is not as inferior to my own ideas as I had expected, but I do not make suggestions.

○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Wayne was sprinting when a light on his left caught him off guard. One of the trap doors? He careened to a stop and took at shot at the light, missed wide and it closed off rapidly. He had just started running when he saw another trap door open to his right, and he took another shot.

Sonny looked up at the flat snap of gunshots and back down. "Idiot. Those bullets ain't cheap or easy to find. Those are coming outta his share."

Wayne was running more slowly, glancing left and right. He squinted his eyes at another flash of light, and flailed, the ground absent below his foot as his head bounced off an edge that wasn't there a moment ago.

● ● ● ● ●

"I am unclear what part this plays in your plan. My understanding of your biology is that you do not directly obtain nutrients from carbon latices."

She spoke awkwardly around the diamond in her mouth. "I wanna make sure my hands are free. We get you up and outta here, then the rest of these bad boys." She patted her suitcase. "And maybe if they shoot me, I guess you still got some bargaining power."

"Hmm, yes," it said, in a way that delivered a great deal more sarcasm than she felt like those two words merited.

"Whatever. Look, kill the lights, and when I say go, start the distraction and open the outer door." She hung precariously at the outer door with four more diamonds clutched in a hand.

"I believe that I can just about manage," it said.

She rolled her eyes and said, "go," then shoved the other four diamonds in her mouth. The airlock went dark and opened, and she crept out by the dim light of her phone onto the hull.

Crouching low she swiped the light on her disposable phone, and blocked as much of it as she could with her body. Tensed up, waiting for the bullets and then, still alive, she walked as low as she could across the hull, looking for oval shapes. Whatever it was made of didn't reflect much and she couldn't figure on the color. The ovals contained a series of fine, concentric rings, with deep crevices radiating out and between them.

It felt like longer than it took before she reached the smaller indented circles, one filled with lamprey teeth. She spit the diamonds into her hands with exaggerated care. "Just drop them in," she whispered, and let one go. Teeth ringing the intake pulled it in almost faster than she could see. She fed them in one at a time, and the urgency of the fuel intake's gulping maw left her with mixed feelings.

As she crept back to the airlock she could catch a glimpse of Sonny, no sign of Wayne. Sonny was just standing there, which seemed more worrying than hollering and shooting. Below her feet, the hull caught light, then a bit more. She covered her phone and fine rainbow lines continued trickling over the surface on their own. She passed the last oval, paused at a flicker of peripheral movement. A thorn-like shape roughly the length of her arm had risen out of its center.

Dropping into the airlock, outer door slid shut and she climbed the rest of the way. "Easy money," she said. "Take me to your leader."

"That will require substantially more carbon latice, but my drives now have sufficient power to extract my body from this position. We now lack only approximately one additional meter to your stature to aid my navigation."

"It was a joke, you… Do you come programed with jokes?"

"I am not programed with anything, unlike the primitive and soulless calculating devices you rely upon for your crude structured transition."

"So no jokes." She slowly breathed in and out, trying to fill herself full of oxygen like she remembered.

"Your optimistic belief in your own stature is a source of humor enough. I will guide you to the bridge."

"Slowly," she said, breathing steady, feeling heat rise from her lungs and heart, flowing out into her limbs. She'd had to change fast when Sonny's crew tried to jump her. Wastefully fast, a massive and sudden loss of calories. "The slower we do this, the better."

○ ○ ○ ○ ○

"Hey boss!"

Sonny looked up at Duke's voice.

"I got the gear, want me to toss it down?"

"NO, YOU- No, Duke, less you want us both along with a sizeable portion o' real estate blasted into the atmosphere." He rubbed his eyes. "Bring it down with you, carefully, and hand it to me."

"Shit boss, you coulda mentioned." He sounded contrite, but Sonny heard and saw the clattering of dirt from the climb.

"Figured the big warning said Danger High Explosives woulda done it," he muttered. Soon enough Duke emerged from the cavern ceiling and divested a long plastic case, bright red, bearing the aforementioned explosives warning among several others.

"Where's Wayne?"

"Off on a wild mutt chase. I expect he'll be back presently, assuming he didn't get lost or flattened by a falling boulder." Sonny laid the care flat, opened it, and laid out the safe blasting tools. Little polymolecular gel, moldable explosives, curable and directional blast control. All a growing boy needed to blow a quiet need hole around the edge of the heaviest of vaults. Sonny was a firm believer in the precise and judicious application of the largest amount of violent force possible, and it served him well.

"Want me to go look for Wayne?"

"Nope. He's a big boy. Now hush, I need to work." Duke shut. Sonny's predictions served him well in many ways.

In the dark depths of the cave, Duke watched dim flickering lights and movement far away. He opened his mouth, then closed it. Better to leave Sonny to work than risk a reprimand.

● ● ● ● ●

The voice, voice still without a name, she distantly thought maybe she'd name it Carol, after a hated grammar teacher. Still no. It was floating far away. Everything was far and faint, she followed its words automatically, focusing on her feverish blood and burning skin. Her mouth was dry, the moisture was being pulled from the air.

Bracing herself for the transition, the first clean and hot stabs of pain went through her nails, her teeth, then spread up her arms and legs and across her face. Pins and needles feeling if she swapped the numbness for agony.

"Excuse me, but your body temperature appears to be severely abnormal, by my observations of your race and your media. Are you injured, or perhaps dying? You should return to my airlock to load the remaining carbon latices if your are dying."

"I'm not dying," she growled, her neck getting larger, vocal cords warping. "I'm gonna fly us outta here, keep talking." She closed her eyes at the sensation and inescapable sound of her skull and jaws getting longer. Her skeleton several times increased in mass and density. She'd once twisted an entire roll of safety wrap between her hands, and the sound was close to what she felt.

"You have rather an atypical anatomy for your species. Perhaps even unusual. The next stairwell please."

She staggered upwards, readjusting to her twisted legs, longer arms, sharp intersecting teeth. Changing this slowly meant longer agony, and yet it was nothing next to when she changed quickly. She gave up hanging onto her clothes as a lost cause. Her dark hair grew in across her body, and the large, empty corridors felt cramped, too low. Her body was finally, if only briefly, again her own.

"This enough stature for ya, you erudite prick?" she snarled.

"That… is adequate. We are also at the bridge. Hopefully it will take substantially less time and effort for you to grasp navigation than my initial estimates."

She looked around at the large oval room, with complex roots or plumbing dangling from the ceiling, and jagged rocks along the floor. Several readouts flickered in the air, the displays following her eyes unnervingly as she realized they were the walls and low platforms of the bridge lighting up sequentially to act as a kind of optical illusion of projected holographs. "What's the rush?"

"First, I would like to commend your seemingly misplaced confidence. Your stature is now adequate for navigation of my most basic flight capabilities."

"You know for an alien robot you're really good at telegraphing a 'but.'"

"Thank you, and I will overlook the insult. Your language is extremely underdeveloped and inadequate. However, the gentlemen pursuing you appear to have sufficient explosive materiel to damage the integrity of my hull, and may disable the airlock securing mechanisms."

"Oh."

"Quite so. Please secure the T-shaped hanger control, I estimate we have approximately five minutes to prepare."

○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Sonny put the blasting cap in, and the whole cavern floor went out of focus. "The fuck?" He touched the civs with his hand. The surface remained unfocused, while his hand was clear. He couldn't bring it into focus no matter how he squinted. Squinting. The cave was lit like the first glow of dawn, and he could see far down the slightly curved floor.

"Sonny, what's that?" Duke asked, frustrating and vague, but the sound reached Sonny a moment later.

It was almost like a chorus, but not a single same note, all off key, from throats that weren't human. All down the cavern, he could see large thorns rising from the oval shapes, and in places the complex networks of veins carried portions down, carving out deep wedges. He watched dust blowing from the surface and thought "Exhaust vents," but out loud he said, "Oh shit," and snatched the detonator from the safe breaking kit.

Sonny shoved past Duke and started hauling ass up the rope, leaving the other man staring, held in stasis by the inhuman chorus and the hypnotic trails of light which had started swimming throug the fog of the floor. Or maybe, Sonny thought, the hull of one big gods cursed ship. Bigger than anything he ever saw.

"That's illegal," he said, genuinely outraged, but too busy climbing to care.

● ● ● ● ●

The werewolf girl stood in the center of a network of what looked to her like vines, muscles, electric wiring, or tree roots. She dug her toes and claws awkwardly at the ridges in the floor, as best she could according to the voice. Several of the heavy strands seemed to include nearly invisible slides or switches, and the bridge fully lit up with navigation information which intruded painfully into her eyes. It somehow seemed to know her whole field of vision, and even in periphery forced information into her optics.

"I think I've got it." She shifted slightly and watched peripheral readouts tremble with even the smallest change. She flexed one foot and in response was flooded with detailed information about the composition of the mountain and atmosphere, along with launch vector diagrams and system integration details, or structure interface as it insisted on saying. She'd learned more about her home planet's interstellar position in the last five minutes than her entire life. "I'm ready."

"Optimistically speaking, I would not call you ready, or even amateurish. However, there is a nonzero chance you will successfully navigate. You have done extremely well with your limited capabilities."

"We can run through it again." She tested the T-bar, then the stabilizers for the eight time. The basics didn't seem worse than a hopper, she figured she could make it work.

"I suspect you are familiar with this feeling, but I nevertheless must inform you that you are incorrect. Your pursuers appear to have completed the majority of their task setting explosives. As your species is fond of saying, it is 'do or die.'"

Flicking the engine start and lift sequence, she said. "Don't tell me twice. If we don't make it, I just want you to know that meeting you sucked and I've hated it."

"I, too, am eager for oblivion. Please, try not to forget."

● ● ● ● ●

"Try not to forget."

She felt like she'd lived a lifetime since getting out of Retrock, even though it'd only been maybe five years. It felt like forever since she sat on the uncomfortable benches at the school bus stop, waiting for her mom. It was a systems day, and she wasn't supposed to be in those classes.

Most of the settled planets were, like, at best distantly tolerant of werewolves, or lycanthropes or shifters or whatever. No one ever figured out how to break the werewolf systems, just somehow boosted up resilience and diversity. Now all the systems and sometimes specific planets had unique werewolves. The cruddy little country she lived in, The Unified Eastquad Block, on the cruddy little planet Nevamil took a significantly more conservative approach. They opined that werewolves could be gradually eliminated by simple attrition, so long as they were not allowed to breed or leave the country, nor the planet. To that end, they'd also banned teaching systems to werewolves.

It wasn't working as planned. She fiddled with the white bracelet on her wrist. Her mom was late of course. "Try not to forget." Of course she had.

Her family wasn't too thrilled since her diagnosis. Unlike when her mom caught her in her older sister's dresses, they couldn't beat the werewolf out of her. Not that it stopped anyone trying.

Some older kids either skipping or out of senior classes wandered by, talking some bullshit about best kit for a video game. She tried not to be seen and covered up her band. They passed her by. She relaxed for a moment but their voices got low and they all stopped, turned around.

One big kid, senior for sure, shaded her from the sun. "Sup," he said.

She muttered noncommittally.

He glanced at the four others behind him. "Hey," he said. "Speak up, mutt. I asked what's up."

She looked closely at her hands and said, "nothing."

"Yeah? Little baby wolf all alone with nothing to do?" One of the kids snickered at "baby wolf." She shrugged.

He shoved at her, hard, and she grabbed the table to stop from falling over. "Heard you're a little sissy baby wolf, that true?"

She wasn't sure what that even meant, but it sounded bad. "No!"

"Yeah." The other kids had got around her now. "Yeah you are. You know what? I think trash like you should go in the garbage. What do you think?" She didn't get a chance to answer because the other kids were shoving her, agreeing they oughta throw her in the trash.

She was trying to shout that she was only waiting for her mom, but her body traitorously refused to form words and her eyes spilled out tears and she didn't know why.

"Grab her," the older boy said. And she, just. Just swung at him.

She remembered that first pain so well. She was on blockers that were supposed to prevent it. Then there was a scream, and the boy had blood on his face.

She had claws and teeth and not much else and it all was boiling agony. Then someone threw her off the bench, and the kids began punching and kicking her. She hadn't gotten as good at protecting her head but they at least didn't try to shove her in the trashcan by the door. Just spit on her and swore she was going to get put down.

She'd wanted to run that day, but she didn't. She wished she had.

● ● ● ● ●

The temp and spin readouts hit what looked like the threshold. She squeezed her eyes shut for a minute then opened them, banishing a half formed promise against the lonely dark.

One sure thing, she wasn't ever coming back to Retrock, not for a hundred thousand diamonds or all the world. She dug in and put power into space flight deflectors. The cavern started crumbling around them, pushed away from the hull. With a twist of her body, the structure field came up. The ship's unique structure found the places to interface with the local structure and the bridge came alive with a tangle of fractal ghosts overhead.

"Power up, shields up, system up."

"Structure. Your primitive-"

"Sit down, shut up, strap in, and hold on." She punched power to the engines and watched the world explode around them. Nothing but rocky chaos and then, there. Green blue sky, sleet, and thousands of feet between them and a collapsing mountain.

For the moment, they were free.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

I am free. Delirious, impossible and free in my entirety. I shrug off the detritus of my imprisonment and it joins the filthy slush boiling off deflectors. I taste the stars again, countless structures in waiting array, wrapped and woven together. This sky and world, this structure rolls across me, and I spread across it, feeling the planet anew.

Memories come back with my senses and for a moment I can imagine myself leaping past the atmosphere, continental landmass once more eagerly waiting for my implementation of their advancement. In my excitement, I must catch myself before I ask the girl, but no, she is not Pilot, and no more significant than the bacteria I watched flicker and die. She is my aid and my tool, for now.

But oh, the freedom of the sky is a delight. I suppose I may allow some small appreciation of this crude morphic-structure bearing girl for how far she has exceeded my most optimistic expectations of this civilization. I accept this, that I may appreciate how lucky for her to have such a beautiful soul in so complex a vessel, and moreover that she has had the great fortune to encounter myself, who may extract some tiny fraction of meaningful use out of her existence.

But enough of all this. I have allowed myself a luxurious hundred milliseconds, give or take, to revel in the return of my sky.

"There is a high volume of intersecting transmissions on different frequencies which I am decoding."

"That's a- amazing- uh, oof. This thing steers like a truck."

"I am not a truck, but it is possible that is the nearest approximation to your method of navigation. However, we may need to maneuver with increased haste, to avoid immediate air traffic."

"Fuck, uh yeah gee that sounds great. Ack- Sorry that was me. So how do I land?"

"I do not land under optimal conditions. Please utilize the collision monitor and eye twitch avoidance while I determine an optimal site to effect additional fueling and minor repair."

"What twitch? Where? You didn't-"

"Sight seven, and the toggle on flex system seven, third down. Please stand by."

□ □ □ □ □

Serah flicked from screen to screen, bored. Sweet fuck all was the major import-export for Nevamil, and there was about the same amount to do at the cross system check point. She'd read the ship specs manual back to front and longed for the day she might actually talk to anyone from a real planet. Some colonies made her wish she'd gone into crystal mesh, but it gave her migraines.

A couple switches buzzed and one of the monitors flickered white. She clicked off the buzzers and smacked the bevel on the monitor, but it didn't flick back to normal. "Who the fuck…?" she asked, to no one else, rhetorically, and not bothering to finish. Several readouts were pinned in the red, and three of the measures of radiant energy were giving error messages.

She shoved papers to the floor and called down, "This is- uh." She looked to the metal plaque above the monitors. "This is Check alpha alpha alpha zero one one one nine, I'm showing a major spike of- something? About fifty kilometers northwest of Retrock, possibly around Mount Rosewood. Someone come back?"

Serah started dialing back sensitivity, usually cranked up just to keep tabs on the few interplanetary launch ports. Her monitors and readouts came down, though the errors stayed, and something resolved on screen. She squinted. It didn't match any specs she remembered. Or… anything. "No way," she said. "No fuckin way."

She started grabbing data snapshots, tuned three other monitors into the anomaly, recording everything. It didn't look like a ship, it didn't look like it was designed for being in the air, it looked like a fucked up flying coral reef several kilometers long, putting out more energy than the whole wretched planet.

"That…" She pulled open a file cabinet to grab a binder of regulations she didn't usually need to check, mostly pertaining to treaties across the totality of human occupied space. She flipped pages muttering. "I think that's illegal."

● ● ● ● ●

The ship jumped and fell, and she nearly lost her footing. Theoretically she assumed gravity or inertia must affect it in some way, but she couldn't guess how.

She caught another transport train oncoming and flinched, the ship lurched out of the way and between the ship and eating a garbage crab she wasn't feeling great. "Hey, um. Ugh. You- voice, person, have we got a way to land yet?"

"One moment. Thank you, after reviewing the broadcasts and networking available, I have located an optimal site. This will require some structural navigation, and you will need to follow my instructions carefully."

"Oh is that all, well bring it on. And by the way, I need something to call you, this is awkward."

"Yes, it is. Please rotate the lower pyramid to orient structure overlay and remapping. Stop, good. Dials two and seven on main decision tree, adjust separately until reader three flashes alignment points in tandem, this will signal adequate structure navigation."

"Any time now."

"I would prefer that you do not immediately crash my vessel as your first major navigation experience. Good. Alignment adequate, toggle nerve seven on secondary decision tree, then nerves three and five until structure drive confirms- There, that wasn't so difficult."

"Okay can we go?"

"You should have multiple navigation vectors presented on your primary monitor. Please ensure you stay within these vectors. It will not kill me if you do not, but it could potentially injure or kill you. I am less certain about the physical capabilities of your present vessel. You may now trigger high acceleration along these vectors."

She kicked the drives hard, and felt her ears pop, sensed the ship under some enormous pressure, and held to the vectors with all her strength.

□ □ □ □ □

Every alarm in the check point went off at the same time. Serah staggered around the cramped monitor room, shutting them all down until it was just her screaming angrily in a silent room. She flopped back into the worn ergonomic chair and checked the alarm codes.

Illegal system exit, illegal system entry, ship operating without transponder, unrecognized transponder, unrecognized vessel, failure to halt for inspection, illegal energy signature, unidentified system signature…

It was a long list, but what it meant wasn't complicated. Her monitors were black, no more error messages. Whatever it was, whatever it wanted, it was out now. It had escaped.

● ● ● ● ●

Any port in Earth territories was sure to have a place to get cheap food, cheap stimulants, and into trouble. Only a certain type of cafe served the latter, but she'd been through enough of them on Nevamil to know the look. She was tucked as far back into the corner of a dirty plastic booth as she could fit, spinning her latest disposable phone around in lazy circles and ignoring her coffee. She'd changed out one of the diamonds, scrounged up clothes and some nicer boots, figured she wasn't retiring on spaceship food after all, but one or two of em might at least get to work for her.

It wasn't much to speak of, which was the point, couple booths, cheap plastic tables and chairs, seating for ten if they were lucky, food only on a technicality. The place wasn't there to make money as much as it was to collect bad ideas. She was looking for a specific kind and he showed up after her third coffee went cold. Some twitchy dark matter math wizard maybe, one of those guys way too deep in the calculations of what they couldn't see that they were in a constant state of shock and flight response over the tangible calculated existence of known reality.

She slid into the chair on the other side of the table and put the coffee next to the guy's tablet. He was all deep dark eyesockets and glitchy, mimetic fabric on an ankle length coat. He looked like he hadn't slept in days but it was probably longer, these guys liked to throw their consciousness into distant space and leave it there while their bodies walked around unattended. Stims usually helped. "Whatcha got for me," she said.

"Whatcha need, whatcha need." His fingers bounced off the mug a couple times before finding it, he slurped and didn't exactly focus on her but both of his eyes pointed back into the same direction. "Hmm, little wolf girl huh. Ain't seen one a uh… whatcha need hmm?"

"Need something flashy, sparkles and stones, y'know? I heard this port's where to find em, and you're the one to ask." It wasn't completely a lie, but it was at best only distantly familiar with the truth.

He took in a deep breath through the nose, nodding in tune with a rhythm of his own design. "Mmm, mmm, crystals for the wolf, neh?" Slurp. "Whacher route, what kinda works?"

This was the moment of found truth for whatever esoteric calculations had gone into their flight out of the mountain. Diamonds were easy to find, everywhere had at least one shop growing em. But nearly a hundred percent went to system mesh or navigation, not exactly an open access free for all. She gave a silent prayer to Luna and said, "Solo, dine and dash."

His brows came together, lips quirked up and down while his eyes sunk out of sight. One hand tapped the tablet rapid fire. Slurp. "Difficult," he said, some endless twenty seconds later.

She leaned back and drummed fingers. "Big ask, fair. If you don't got it, no harm." She pushed the chair back and made to stand, but he held a hand out, waggling it.

"Bide a minute. Difficult, not impossible." He put both hands on the coffee cup and tilted the rest down his gullet in a long swig. "Girl like you, resourceful I think. Not many wolf girls turn up off planet, neh? Your kind, mmm, has a… nose for trouble. Ahum, hmm hmm."

Once she realized he was laughing at his own joke, she gave him her best effort at a smile. "As you say."

"So and such. I need work done. A favor then, do this thing for me, I will get a line for the shine and dine and dash." He'd summoned a token on his tablet and was partitioning memory collapsing sigils around it. Flattened it to a shareable folder and looked to her expectantly.

She unrolled the phone and he flicked it over to her screen, where she could frown at it more directly. "Do I want to know?"

"Fret not, it is a new set of coordinates I am in the process of measuring, some fascinating effects on gravity… mm, no matter. It is inconvenient for me to return for this data. I only need you to convince a friend to, hmm… run it to ground. He may need motivation, ahmmm, I trust your instincts in this."

"Motivation, huh." She stood up. "Just one favor and we're square, you find me a nice juicy lamb."

He chuckled wetly again, "As you say. Of course, this is just between us. I would not like to have to return for you." His black sockets glittered and his eyes focused on her for a second while his pale lips pulled back from sickly teeth.

She slapped her phone around her wrist. "Seems easy enough." She knew it was a damn lie but she said it anyway.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

I feel more power coursing through me than I have felt in several million years. The girl had promised more, much more, and I wonder again at what might be within her grasp.

Even this is barely a flicker of what I am capable of, but I cling to this new freedom with a greed and even hope which disgusts me. Both elated and revolted that I am reduced to this sickening gratitude. She has been gone for several hours and I contemplate the probability of her returning.

She took me to the sky, and to the stars. With a great deal of assistance, this is true, but a will that I did not previously estimate her civilization could produce. She dared to occupy the space of Pilot, and we have lived to meditate on this exhilarating heresy. She is on the primitive satellite now, and has promised to return, but she has been away from my safety for several hours.

I examine my memory of her occupation of the Pilot space. It seems possible that I may make better use of her than I suspected. She may have a place in my structure. Her ability to change structure is interesting, common enough yet the mode of operation is unusual. I will have to collect more data. I examine my memory of when we dropped from the structure tangle within safe distance to the satellite.

She expressed disbelief, then joy, as if she was the one who had flown free of her prison of millions of years. To me, this is nothing. Her joy is a mote of dust against the starscape of the universe. Her planet, bare rock unworthy of my implementation. And yet she made much of these, as if I had shown her how to reach across the universe and string the stars together as a bracelet.

Perhaps to her that is what it means to have even this narrow sliver of freedom. Perhaps she can, as she has promised, make me "good as new." Then I will show her freedom. I hope she returns soon, it has been several hours.

● ● ● ● ●

"Which way is the ground- which way is the planet. Wait. Where the fuck are we?"

"Based on network traffic and my calculations, we should be within range of Coyote Moon Station 6."

"Coyote… do you got windows on this thing?"

"I can offer several alternatives, but not only is the data afforded from the spectrum of light visible to your species vastly inferior to the instruments at hand, your capacity to interpret this minimal fraction of available input is-"

"Whatever I get it, I suck, just. I want to see the stars. With my own eyes, or close as I can get."

"That is… a feasible request. One moment please."

"Thanks…"

"You should now have direct visibility of the surroundings. I have adjusted this chamber temporarily to an outer position."

"…"

"Are you injured, or in distress? Some of your civilization are prone to a psychological phenomenon when-"

"I'm fine. I'm better than fine. I'm… free."

"I would not describe our circumstances as freedom, with the current limitations on my structure drive and main engines, I am at only a small percentage of full function."

"For someone that makes a big deal about it, that soul of yours sure ain't got no poetry."

"No p… I beg your pardon."

"I spent my life on that shithole planet. You spent, I don't know how long. Look out there. The stars. I don't even know where Coyote Moon is! Never heard of it! And I don't know where we go or what we do next."

"I will assist you in the navigation process to Station 6."

"That's not what I mean! Don't you care it all after a million billion years and a lifetime - we're finally out here, not down there! Look around you for fuck's sake."

"… It is… good to be in the stars."

"Thank you. All I ask. Now how are we getting an unregistered ship like you through customs?"

"I will explain while you practice docking navigation."

● ● ● ● ●

It felt like wandering through someone's apartment building, she couldn't get past that feeling. Overhead fluorescent flicker, no windows but every once in awhile a brightly lit bauble of art someone must've bought by the pound. A lot of the same sets of prefab plastic panels, though it'd been awhile since she saw any such facades over the bare metal walls.

The walkways were dirtier, on both sides of the path for electric bikes. No trace anywhere of litter, but it'd been decades since anyone tried to clean the infinite variety of human scuff marks on the walkway. More of the shops here were shuttered, either closed outright or not the kind of place you got in without an appointment and several scans from the security cameras. The walls around them had once been painted with an enormous mural of an unfamiliar sky, Coyote Moon's, presumably. It was faded badly, scraped away or graffitied over, overdrawn optimism still clinging to life down here.

She found the door she was looking for between an SST bank machine and something whose sign advertised it as Titan Mart. Rapped on the blacked out plastic door that said "Speed-E-Nav" in small gold letters, and waited out the effortful grinding of several CCTV cameras evaluating her and her depressing lack of concealed weapons. She had a full stomach which was all the weapon she needed if it came to that. The door clacked as a buzzer sounded, and she pushed her way inside through an overly enthusiastic electronic chime.

"Welcome, discerning customer," a chunky woman with deep dark skin and a shaved head sat before a hundred blinking computers of some sort. She didn't know a huge amount about them, but it looked regal. "Your need is our speed, what can we process today, miss…?" The woman's smile was very wide, and a dozen metal bracelets chimed musically together on her wrists. They smelled like ozone.

"It's not for me," she said, and pulled the folder up on her phone. "Recognize that?"

The woman leaned forward and moments later her smile dropped. "Yeah, I know it. What's he after this time?" She thumped back in her chair and waved the girl closer, unclipping a bracelet. "Show me what you got there."

She handed over the phone and the woman clicked her bracelet up to the charge points. "Didn't say, didn't ask, didn't get any names, not interested in sharing them. He just wants it run fast and I needed a favor."

The woman didn't give any indication she was listening, she just tweezed the folder out and held it up on the bracelet, which wasn't something the girl had seen done before, or was even aware was possible. She tried not to stare like a tourist.

The woman turned the glittering data this way and that before setting it in a glass plate. "Three weeks. Because he's a good customer and you look like a nice girl."

"I was… hoping for something faster."

"Hah! Good luck, you think these are what… pretty lights for show and tell? I got thirty strings beaded and twined and another eight in composite, and that's on external cooled q-square 26 CPUs. I know that boy, he's got a big mouth but no bite. Always talking about the big deal math he's writing but who's he come to when he needs the formulae run? Me. Maybe 19 days if I don't burn through another back gen."

The girl worked her fingers a little and unclenched her jaw. "Maybe I can do something for you. Something to free up some of the… the squares?"

She laughed a minute and sighed. "Oh thanks. Free up the squares. Well," she scanned the shelves stacked up with an array of mystifying metal boxes, wires, and clear glass cylinders. "Okay, I see your meaning. I suppose a little upgrade couldn't hurt if you think you're up to a little legwork."

The woman pulled a slim black box with vents along the side and a couple short wires trailing out of it, and handed it to the girl. She looked at it. "I suppose this is pretty legal."

"Of course it is, honey. Now, I know someone who owes me a favor…"

The werewolf girl sighed internally. Nothing was ever easy.

□ □ □ □ □

It took the better part of six hours for Serah to catalog the ship that had crashed through the system interchange, and it was a lot of guess work. The system drive geometry and mesh was, as far as she could tell, not only unique but carried a particle/wave divergence that her rinky dinky instruments couldn't measure. Which probably meant someone missed civs in the sweep, like always, which normally meant a paperwork nightmare.

Normally, but chances were good she'd at least get someone to talk to from closer to a real planet, maybe even they'd let her sneak some better games n stories ove4 the link. However, it was the deep ping snapshots that gave her pause. She chewed the end of the stylus before adding tags for review to the internal profile to assess for the possibility of unilateral treaty violations under orbital mass extermination threats.

She fired the report off, through the beacon to some generic hub of bureaucracy, presumably to be reviewed after week or three, then went to flop back in her cot and play through Gone Dream 6 for the tenth time. Five minutes later the incoming vessel alert chimed.

Serah staggered over to the screens, it was high priority but normal at least. "The fuck… What did I do to deserve a day like this?" It was Interdiction, from the Inner System feds? Didn't usually get those? Her heart sank as the manta shaped black vessel dropped from system flight and integrated itself into her beacon's region.

The good news was she wasn't in tqrouble for flagging the treaty violations. The bad news was they were showing up in person, which meant no games and no gossip.

● ● ● ● ●

The satellite was warmer a couple floors down, greener too, with algae, with hanging vines along a wire grating overhead, grating along the floor. Even with the new and sturdy boots she had to move with care to avoid slipping.

She wouldn't call it habitable, but every few blocks turned up a cluster of shops or houses, rarely one near the other. The lighting such as there could be was dim, most of the plastic over the fixtures fogged and darkened with fungus of some type. It reeked of mildew, and the place she was looking for wasn't shuttered, merely obscured by a thick tangle of vines on one side and red, waxy leaves on the other. She parted both with folded hands and was greeted by yelling.

"No power! No business today, all closed, fuck off!" He was draped in camouflage and heavy black gloves, along with welding goggles. "I don't care what you want, come back tomorrow! No, next month! Or kill yourself, that's the ticket!" He shook a sheaf of something halfway between a vine and a power cable, sweeping a dozen thick plastic beakers from the counter. The floor was covered in plastic confetti and dozens of insulated rods and tools were hung along the walls.

"I need your help with this." She slipped the black device out of her pocket, holding it towards the camouflaged gentleman.

"Hmmmm?" He leaned far over what she assumed was a desk underneath a massive pile of vine wiring and plastic cards with diagrams, peered at it, as if he could see through the blacked out goggles. "Well, I see whatchu got there, shoulds said before." Despite the gloves, he pried open the casing nimbly enough, revealing a sheaf of glittering cards nestled in wires. "Beautiful work as ever my darling."

He sighed and closed it up. "Wish I could help ya out girlie, nothing like a favor for ol' Speedy, but all my crystals are spoke for and no telling when the vat'll be up n running again." He pulled a couple wires aside revealing an ancient copper and glass crystal forge, current dark with a half dozen diamonds on the drying rack.

Her fingers twitched inadvertantly but she forced herself to hold steady. She had the unpleasant sense of being followed by multiple pairs of eyes. "So," she said carefully. "If I were to get someone to hook your power back up, you could… part with a few of those for, uh. For Speedy."

"Good fuckin luck if you try! But sure, I'll get her the hookup if you get mine, for old times sake."

She sighed. "Okay, I'll be back." And pushed back out from whatever kind of unlicensed crystal mesh lab the guy was running, flipping her phone off her wrist.

Under most circumstances she'd be off on a long walk to the nearest paperview map hub, but parting with some rocket food meant she got to splurge on a nicer disposable than usual. She sat with her legs sprawled across the scooter path and her ass getting soaked through her pants while she poked around and through the station service maps til she found what she wanted. Just the basic license filings, nothing but the business name and address.

"Like working any other job," she sighed, brushing her soaked hair over her ears and wiping away sweat. Dreary trudging her way through cross referencing and addresses on the tiny fucking screen, she half considered going a few floor back for a paperview after all, and was getting well into three quarters considering, four options trashed, when she got the hit she wanted.

Local to the hydroponics floor, zero reviews posted, but looked like it had been registered for a few years and wasn't closed. She dragged the address to her map screen and slapped her phone back on, standing, pulling her shirt off her chest and back in hopes to air out the sweat. Cut & Dry: Power, Wiring, and Botany.

● ● ● ● ●

She half considered grabbing a bike on the way down to Cut & Dry, but discarded the idea after a minute of thought. She didn't like her movements recorded, no that wasn't fair, she'd probably been tracked by thirty different CCTVs on this level alone. She didn't want to spend money on one, true. Also she didn't see anywhere to rent them.

The sign for Cut & Dry blinked in neon: Electronics. Botany. It went back and forth and she noticed on the way in the neon was bioluminous vines. Inside the shop was a veritable rainforest, with no sign of any floor or walls amidst the plants. Aside from what seemed to her far too much trickling water for a wiring and electrical engineering joint, it was remarkably quiet. Even the background station noise didn't make it through the plants. She looked a little closer at what she thought was a small tree only to discover a woven strand of branches and black wires. It seemed the whole little room was a dense illusion, life and electricity tied into one another.

A soft voice too close to her ear made her jump. "What do you think- OW!" She whipped her head around and saw a dryad piled up against one of the plants, rubbing his forehead.

Realizing her arm was still raised for another blow, she lowered it, and said, "Sorry. Most people can't sneak up on me."

The dryad, to his credit, only half flinched when she reached out to help him up. "Well," he said, "You were rather engrossed. Perhaps I should be proud." He touched his cheek and winced. "Oh, that's going to be a bruised spot."

"I'm really sorry. Um, can we start over? Hi, I need some electrical work done."

He flashed a brief smile, bright white teeth against faintly glistening brown skin. He seemed to favor mesh shirts and leather pants, which she supposed made sense for a minor plant deity. "I'm Sy," he said. "I'm your guy. I mean… it's like a, uh. It's a thing, I'm trying to make it a thing. Sy's Your Guy, at Cut & Dry. Right?" He waved one hand side to side.

"Sure, sounds catchy. Listen, you do house calls? Kinda in a rush here. Um, I mean that's great? Are you free though?"

Sy frowned. "You don't like it. Uh, free… that's kind of abstract for me, could you narrow it down?"

She briefly skipped past thinking she'd like to see his smile again. Down girl. "Okay well there's this guy, I think, I don't know. He likes camouflage and he grows crystals."

"Oh sure. That's Chris. It's Chris' Crystals."

"Are you fucking with me right now?"

His brows drew together in confusion. "No? Why?"

She suppressed thoughts about what was the point of traveling across earth space if people were the same everywhere. "Well, he's had an outage or something and I'm in a jam."

"Hmm, I'll need my plant." He tapped one finger against his lips, his fingernails were pale green.

She looked around the room. "Yeah. Uh huh. Well, anyway, I kinda need this like, today. Any chance you could hook up Chris Crystalferson up with some juice?"

His eyes went wide. "Juice, oh no, but I can get his power back up I think." He began collecting a series of cables and heavy clips and other tools she didn't recognize and couldn't figure out how they'd been hidden within the plants. As a final step, he held out an arm, and one of the larger plants, more of a baby tree, slithered across his back and arms, allowing him to rest a multitude of coiled wires and racks of fuses and breakers on their branches.

"Neat trick," she said. "I take it that's your, what your tree?"

"That's us!" He smiled again. She felt less annoyed. "No tricks involved! Let's go."

"I didn't… sure, let's go."

They headed back towards the crystal mesh lab. "How do you know Chris anyway?"

"Uh… through Speedy?"

"Who's that?"

She sighed internally.

● ● ● ● ●

"Amazing job, kiddo!" Chris clapped one heavily gloved hand onto Sy's shoulder. The whole interior was aglow with the crystal tanks and pressure / temperature readouts blinked in pale blue digital light along the walls, waiting for Chris to kick their jets on. He turned to the girl. "I don't know where you dug this guy up, but he's a miracle worker!"

"I come here like twice a month," Sy tried to say, but not loudly.

"Yeah the kid's great, so about the doohickey there?"

"The d-" Chris shook his head. "You're lucky you caught me in a good mood, here here," he snapped his fingers and she passed it over. Sy watched in rapt fascination while Chris opened the case again, and began hooking two of the diamonds into the wire nest, each wire finding a precise position on a diamond facet.

"Are those particle wave flash CPUs?"

"Mmm. A double-g stack, and these babies here are gonna interface the flash to system and back. Chain's gotta be perfect and then," he snapped the black case shut. "Well then you can figure the trajectory across damn near half the universe, or predict the weather on Venus or whatever!" He handed the box over. "Tell Speedy come by herself next time. No more favors."

"Tell her yourself, try picking up a phone."

"Phone! Hah! Good one. As if. Fuck off, work to do."

And off she fucked, with Sy following.

"What are you doing," she asked.

"I'm following you," he said, plainly.

"But," she said, "why are you doing it, Chris paid you, what's the deal?"

"I want to meet Speedy and see her gear."

She held up a finger trying to pluck from the sky a good way to curse him out, but his dark red irises were distracting. "I… Okay, but," she pointed for emphasis. "I'm not responsible if you get shot."

"Gosh, I sure hope not."

She reconsidered her options while they made their way up another level.

● ● ● ● ●

"Wow," Sy said, as they approached Speedy's place. "And you flew it here all by yourself?"

"It was better than crashing or getting blown up." His eyes were very large. "What?" She stopped at Speedy's door. "What?"

"You said it was damaged."

"I guess, its mouth works fine. What is that look for?"

"Just, it sounds like an interesting ship, lots of interesting work to do, lots to see."

"If I let you see the ship, can you promise not to talk the whole time we're inside?"

Sy clamped his mouth shut.

● ● ● ● ●

The pavilion of cafes and parts stores fuel vouchers was a little bit wider, the ceiling a little bit taller, just enough to almost feel airy after the cramped pathways and hydroponics level. She'd known in theory what stations were like, but it still gave her low level anxiety after a whole life below a sky. There was no sky here, and above the ceiling was plastic and metal and then space.

She was tired and her stomach gurgled again at the many different scents from the various fast food stalls and open air griddles briefly wafted her way before getting sucked away by the air filter.

"Okay," she said. "I'm fucking starving and for once I don't have to be. Uh. That one." She pointed at random and they wandered over to a three wheeled electric bike with a large set of hot plates on the back, watching an older man who reminded her of the more tenacious aged trees at home spreading batter across the surface then deftly flip it, all using some sort of L-shaped plastic stick.

She ordered based on scent with no idea what the pale, meaty chunks and tangy tart smelling slivers were made of, some of the red-black local greens in there and he wrapped the whole thing into a cone before drizzling three different sauces over the top. Sy got his own mix and she flicked some cash over from her phone.

It was hot and tasted something like a sky or an ocean, half sweet half stringy. The crunch was both bitter and tangy, and then the spice hit, watering her eyes. She fanned her mouth with one hand, devouring the whole contraption in orgiastic delight. "Food is so good," she said through a full mouth, and Sy nodded, wiping sauce from his chin.

Not far from the pavillion, they came to her dock. "Okay," she said again, Sy nodding. "I gotta sort my business out, but you can poke around. Don't touch anything. Unless the ship says so. But it probably won't, I don't think it likes earthlings much."

"Right, no touching. Actually a pretty good rule for civs electrical safety." He was grinning, and her cheeks were a little warm.

"Yeah. Well, this… you'll see." The airlock cycled open and they passed through, the ship's door splitting and retracting on the other side for their entry.

"Oh great," it said. "Now there's two of you."

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

"I believe that you have something close to the most basic, rudimentary grasp of my docking procedure. We may now make an approach to the station to aquire carbon latices."

"Cool, cool cool. So, you got any cash?"

"I beg your pardon."

"Credit, cash, moolah, bread, dough, do you have any kind of money? Or I don't know super secret hacker tricks to steal bank accounts?"

"You have misunderstood with predictable rapidity. I had hoped you would take the opportunity to express your sincere contrition for asking a question you surely must already know the answer to."

"Okay, well, my point is I'm probably not picking up a four course diamond dinner for you through legitimate routes, and it's just me also. Do ya see what I'm getting at?"

"You have painted a vivid portrait of absolute nonsense?"

"What?"

"No, what are you 'getting at?'"

"That probably we're going to leave in a hurry, because I don't think I can set up a clean game by myself. So it's gonna be like a quick and dirty grab, lunch to go."

"You believe that the acquisition process will incur pursuit, and necessitate urgent departure and immediate structure vectors."

"I wouldn't have said it like that-"

"Agreed."

"-but can you set that up? We'll want to kick out as soon as we can after I hit the airlock."

"Feasible. I will require the remaining latices as well."

"You'll get most of them, but I need to grab some gear and these are all we got. At least for now."

"Feasible. I will be able to remain in standby for structure entanglement for a short period after we dock, approximate one thousand years by your measure."

"I cannot tell if you're joking, I swear on Luna's breath."

"You should have adequate time to obtain the additional resources, so long the remaining latices are provided to me as priority."

"You'll get your treats, don't worry."

"I understand this may be one of the jokes you often reference. May I suggest you do not make these your primary occupation?"

"Duly noted. Okay, I'll get you gassed up. I hope I don't have to run down a bunch of favors just to find a good lead on diamonds."

● ● ● ● ●

She folded the maglev line schedule over itself again, watching for the arrival lights inside the partial cover of the kiosk. She'd polished off some kind of vegetarian pastry and a burger with a side of wings and her stomach felt strained. Walking around the station had been a good way to pick up what kind of clothes didn't stand out and she was wearing the cheapest version of them she could find, a red shirt with some doughnut shaped cartoon characters on it, which she saw a bunch of kids wearing, and blue shorts with white stripes on the legs. Left her boots back at the ship and was wearing some kind of extra-janky plastic sandals she'd seen around, plus a zippered little bag around her waist which she kind of liked. A fashion plate of generic anonymity, that was the goal.

According to the deep spacer, this was a high probability site of lowered caution and raised vulnerability, expected to see passage of diamonds in transit. It hadn't looked that difficult to her, watching his fingers play along his tablet finding something like the volume she was looking for and a good spot she could hit the transport. There was a little chime and the display promised a line arrival in five minutes. She folded the schedule into the waistband of her shorts and shuffled around like all the other commuters, letting their jostles push her near to the rail exit. The escalator lowered from the maglev linecars and passengers started exiting the down the line, people moving around her while the boarding escalator came down a bit further up the line. She vibed her way down stream, again letting the various tourists trying to get on board spin her this way and that, passing around them, rolling and twisting to make herself as invisible as possible to their tunnel vision.

She could have spotted her target miles away. The bulky, unfashionable gray suit barely concealing whatever body armor and heat the guy was packing. Fuzzy edged face holographs, probably armored there too. Good odds it was optimized to disperse piercing attempts and heat, maybe light impact protection. Some secure carriers used automatons, but these guys didnt move loke that. Couldn't conceal the case which was encouragingly large. Two other guys front and back flanked him on the way out. Overall, perfect for anyone avoiding real attention from the general public, abysmal concealment from someone who knew what to look for. Someone who was about to generate a rather large amount of attention.

She took a deep breath.

Pointing up the line, she shouted in her highest pitched voice, "Oh my gods what's that girl doing?!" and dove down the line, ducking into the crowd. Superheated air blasted from her body, her clothes burst into tatters, and she shifted hard. A howling monstrosity of teeth and claws with fur thick enough to stop a knife burst from the fertile concealed mass of humanity and leapt twelve meters off the ground, landing on the escalator next to the men in gray.

One got off a shot, something big and explosive put a hole through her shoulder, which started closing up before the exit wound blew out. She bit down on his arm, brought her teeth together, didn't sever anything but felt bones break and he screamed through a vocal distorter. He'd live but wasn't going to bother her. The second man was slower. She grabbed the gun he was trying to get out, along with the hand it was in, and pulled.

He sailed past her, to somewhere that wasn't her problem. Two down. The guy with the case was ggetting crushed against then side of the escalator in the ensuing panic all around them both. She tried to jerk the case out of his hand but it came up short. Handcuffed on. She snarled, ropes of drool falling out of her maw. "We're going for a ride," she informed him, wrapped both clawed hands around the case, and backflipped off the escalator.

Landed, case and carrier in tow, though to her eye he'd broken one or two limbs. Another gunshot, just winged the edge of her ribs. She grabbed arm and case, snapped the cuff links and probably broke his wrist, then threw his body towards the gray man who was trying to aim around commuters trying to avoid being shot. They embraced as lovers, she left them to privacy and grabbed the case in her mouth, bounding for the ship.

She'd learned a lot wandering around the station that day, had an unerring sense of direction, and a pretty good idea which obstacles were breakable. She plowed through the glass walls of a department store in a direct route to the pavilion, jumped past two food carts, and snagged a giant chunk of sweet smelling meat rotating on a spike while the manager yelled at her, kicked her way through an info screen, tumbled down the narrow maintenance corridor, and bashed her way out through a vent across from her dock.

Technically she was far from the screams of the line stop, but she just was the kind of slavering werewolf creature that got a fresh round wherever she went. Blame the media. She shoved case and meat under one arm and, in another burst of heat, ripped the docking bay door off its hingers.

The ship already had its airlock open and she dove through. "It's me," she shouted, tearing out chunks of the meat and swallowing them whole.

"The bridge has been relocated, please go through the door at the end of this corridor." She leapt the whole way, rolling to her feet in the now somewhat familiar room.

"I am receiving multiple general notifications that all ships are to remain docked, and several more direct notifications that my power output should be lowered significantly. They have indicated they might engage in pursuit of any vehicles leaving the station."

Sy came strolling into the bridge, looking around curiously as she grabbed the control nerves. "Hey, this ship is amazing- What's all the ruckus?"

"What are you still doing here?" Her eyes bugged out for half a second. "You weren't- Never mind! Future me problem!" She threw herself into the Pilot net and focused on the vectors from the ship "Can you outrun em" Tossed the meat.

Sy said, "Hi, Outrun who?" Future problem, future problem.

"I assume this is another one of your jokes."

"Not you! Ship! I mean, whats it- fuck it, can we go?!"

"Your vectors are ready. We can proceed from this position."

"We're about to ruin so many days. Let's hit it." She hit it.

Interlude:

"That was incredible," she said. "What a rush. What did we do? Where are we?"

"We undertook multiple structure alignments including a brief dual entanglement in order to produce several distinct paths of travel and reduce probability of further pursuit. We are currently within the Mindanao system. This appeared to be an optimal site for conducting analysis of our resources."

Sy unwrapped his hand and several branches from one of the curved bars running between the floor and ceiling of the bridge. "Hey, I have a question too, what just happened?"

Letting go of the vines, the werewolf girl sunk to the floor and started tearing more chunks of meat off the roasting spit she stole on the way out. "Well," she said, spilling out masticated chunks and slurping them back up with her tongue. "Well, we, that is to say me. That is, I have stolen an amount of system quality diamonds. We'll know how much when I crack that box open. A lot I hope." She swallowed. "And you, are supposed to be not here, you said you'd head out after you finished. Maybe we can get you on like... a shuttle or something."

He nodded with an easy smile. "Well yeah. That's why I was moving all my stuff in. I wish I had a chance to get the day lilies, they won't make it on the station. And it doesn't sound like going back is easy."

"In my defense, I was in a hurry and I, uh... Your stuff?" She swallowed. She could feel herself blushing under her fur and self consciously tried to clean a bit of the mess off her muzzle and chest. "What is... you mean... how stuff?"

He sighed and leaned against the bar. "Oh yeah, it's gonna take me awhile before I'm finished here. This ship is pretty great but the wiring is a mess. Shame about those lilies though, but I guess all life is but fleeting chaos and material possessions are merely temporary." He rocked a little on his hips.

"I do not have rats, and your use of the term wiring continues to demonstrate the lack of development in advanced engineering I am somehow continuously surprised by in your civilization. However, you demonstrate a commendable willingness to discard the soulless and crude material through which your civilization attempts to interact with the structured universe."

"Oh yeah, very zen, very cool. Still messy. What are you anyway?"

The werewolf girl looked regretfully at the bare skewer and ate the last few flecks of meat. "Good point, we ought to have something to call you."

"In your language," it said, "my function and name translates to Remover Of Interference To The Progress Of Greater Organized Civilization And Implementation Of Systemic Agency Cooperation Between Unified Structural Manifestations Originating From Star Zero."

"Dude, I have no idea what that means."

"I am not a dude, according to my records, it is unclear what this is. There are multiple, contradictory entries."

"Just like, what is all that? Are you just using long words to sound smart?"

"I am smart." The voice became softer. "In the better times, I would take Pilot to the worlds of disorganized civilizations, and we would implement order for them. We found many worlds suffering under lack of unification, and we implemented many civilizations."

She dropped her hands to her sides. "How did… you do that?"

"Optimally, perhaps again some day, I am readily capable of a gravity distortion effect removing an area approximately 40 million square kilometers from the surface of most planets or other objects of solid matter within my 500,000 kilometer range of effect. In many such cases, Implementation and Agency Cooperation only required three uses of this capability."

The werewolf girl felt the blood drain out of her face. "I… I'm sitting in the most illegal weapon in the universe."

Sy just laughed hysterically. "Yeah, okay Genghis Khan. Hah. That's what we should call you. Genghis Khan." He turned to the werewolf girl. "So what's your name, Julius Caesar?"

□ □ □ □ □

The seats in Maryam's ship were made of material designed to conform to whoever was sitting in the cramped cockpit. Serah couldn't find a comfortable position no matter how she shifted her legs, and was thinking about ignoring the deeply threatening order she'd been given to stay where she was, when she heard footsteps along the narrow catwalk and the door behind her opened.

Maryam slid by and settled into the pilot seat in front of Serah. She thought about asking the interdiction agent why she was even here again, but didn't think there'd be any better of an answer. "You're the only person who ever recorded this ship, you're as close as I have to an expert," was the explanation. Serah didn't think an extra minute of experience should count, but she was outranked by several orders of magnitude.

A folder of plastic sheets dropped into her lap. "Here," Maryam said. "They've been here. Made a real mess of things, but got on the cameras enough. The girl has a file, look it over. I'm calling in to track their system path."

"What am I gonna-" Serah fell back into her seat. Maryam was ignoring her, typing into the slim screen on her armrest. "Ugh." Serah flipped open the folder, finding a picture of some sullen guy- no, girl, with a wild mass of hair, who probably had her nose broken at least once. She looked at the name, typed in a capital letters: "Laika Blackwood"

END OF PART 1

[mak-be-ghouled]

mountain and aether meeting for the first time and then them saying goodbye when aether retires-

xoxo, your now angst dealer, clown anon <3

Oh, beloved angst dealer, clown anon, what a wonderfully painful prompt 

I hope you enjoy this 2.6k Mountain/ Aether fluff with a dash of angst at the end <3

Everyone knows how close Dewdrop and Aether are, they have the matching mating marks to prove it, but far too many overlook the bond the quint ghoul shares with one particular earth ghoul.

Mountain and Aether were summoned alongside each other, emerging topside on opposite sides of the same pit, the first time the ministry ever attempted asking such a thing from the prince below. To summon a ghoul was among the most strenuous of asks, and now, to summon two? But the ministry was becoming desperate, Terzo was becoming desperate. He’d managed to summon a new water ghoul after Mist announced their untimely retirement, Dewdrop was his name, and he already seemed promising. But he was still left without a drummer and a rhythm guitarist, Ivy retiring shortly after Mist and Delta being determined “unable to continue touring” after an experimental element transition, tensions only rose as the pressures of tour crept on steadily. And so, the gods below must have heard the desperation in Terzo’s voice, smiling upon him and sent two of the most precious ghouls the pits could offer.  

The bond between a newly summoned ghoul and the first creature, be it human or ghoul, they encounter topside is something truly indescribable, though often it may appear to mimic a newly hatched duckling imprinting on its mother. Ghouls brought topside are understandably wary of everything around them, all so new and unknown. The ministry learned of this curious behavior found in newly summoned ghouls and found that including the ghouls that would eventually become their pack greatly improved the socialization of the newly summoned ghoul. The new ghoul would imprint on one of the ghouls that had been topside, giving them a mentor of sorts. 

This of course was not what happened in the case of Aether and Mountain. Crawling from the opposite sides of the same summoning pit, the ghouls had no choice but to lock eyes with one another before seeing anything else, not that they wouldn't have been drawn to each other had the situation happed differently. There was something so captivating about Mountain, and something as equally as intriguing about Aether. 

The summoning portal closed and along with it the outside world melted away. All that existed now was Mountain and Aether. In any other circumstance either one of them would've found danger in the other. Face to face with a ghoul they’d never met, a ghoul of that stature would've posed a threat in the pits. And yet not once did were they overtaken with the instinct to protect, or at least to protect themself from the other. No, looking at each other now, they were filled with a sense of ease, contentment and safety that was entirely unfamiliar for them in the pits. 

It was not until blankets were draped over their shoulders that they pulled their eye from one another. Taking in the room around them, the people, the ghouls, their pack, but like a magnet, their eyes found each other in an instant. 

So, Dew and Aether may have the mating marks, tying them together for eternity, but Mountain and Aether will forever share a bond just as strong, just as permanent. 

Falling into bed together any time they get the chance. They're both busy ghouls when not touring, Mountain tending to the gardens and Aether in the Infirmary. It's necessary work, work they both adore, but being on opposite sides of the Abbey, lucky if they run into each other on a lunch break, they spend more time missing each other than they do together. 

Touring makes up for that lost time in a way, the entire pack forced into such tight quarters, they're together more than ever on tour, bone tired and drained, but together. Stuffing two ghouls, neither of which have ever fit comfortably into the tour bus bunk beds alone, into the same bunk just so they can be close, can hold each other, can spend time together, and yet those nights were filled with the most restful sleep either of them had gotten in far too long. Trading hotel key cards just to share a bed for the night.  

They took care of each other, the whole pack really, and the pack took care of them. But there was something special in the way Mountain and Aether took care of each other, something irreplaceable, something necessary, something uniquely theirs. Aether was able to read Mountain better than Mountain was able to read himself most of the time, knew his tells. Aether noticed the way Mountain’s posture became impossibly rigid when he tweaked his back during a show or slept wrong again. He noticed when Mountain began favoring one leg over the other after hours on his feet. He noticed Mountain grabbing his wrists more often, rolling them in circles after hours of playing. Most of the time Mountain didn't even notice himself doing these things, so used to a sore back, weak legs and aching wrists, but Aether did. Aether always noticed. And Aether was always so eager to help. 

Today was their first real day off in weeks, the days they’d spent not performing being travel days, cooped up in the tiny tour bus, they were getting restless, none of the ghouls had gotten the chance to truly recharge. They needed an off day, and it was finally here. They’d finally gotten to their hotel, their home for the next two days. 

The ghouls piled out of the bus, luggage in hand, coupling off into their rooms. Mountain and Aether had already been paired together, not that they had any shame in swapping cards with anyone, but this meant one less task to complete before they could enjoy their well-deserved break. 

As soon as they had reached their room, Mountain was making a b-line to the shower, he was stiff and sore, and sure, it wasn't his bathtub in the abbey, nor would it be as healing as really reconnecting with his element, but compared to venue locker room showers, a hotel shower sounded like paradise. 

“Bad pain day Sweet Thing?” 

Aether whispers into the back of his neck, wrapping his arms around Mountain's waist. 

“Hmm, just sore, and a hot shower sounded nice” 

Mountain sucks in a sharp breath as his back twinges. 

Aether tightens his grip on Mountain's waist just in time for his knee to give out, protesting the hours of sitting in the bus. 

Mountain rolls his wrist in a circle, suddenly aware of the strain it's been under as he leans against the vanity. 

Sometimes Aether really does know Mountain better than he knows himself. 

“fuck” Mountain lets out the breath he didn't realize he was holding 

“Yeah, maybe a little” Mountain chuffs. 

“I'm sorry baby. Let me help?” Aether hums, turning Mountain around to look at him. 

“Would you Astra? Mountain mumbles in Aether’s shoulder. 

“Wouldn't offer if I wasn't already planning on it now, would I Sweet Thing? 

Aether helps Mountain out of his clothes and into the, rather small shower, not that they haven't done more with less.  

Aether grabs Mountain’s toiletry bag off the counter, quickly stripping himself of his own travel clothes and slides in behind Mountain.  

“Gonna wash your hair sweet thing, you need to sit down or can you look up for me?” 

Aether asks after a long moment 

Mountain looks up as far as his aching back will allow 

“Can stand, just no quint right now, that'll take me down” 

“Sounds good sweet thing” Aether chuckles 

They finish with their shower, Aether insisting on helping Mountain into a pair of boxers, grabbing himself a pair as well and leads the swaying earth ghoul to their bed.  

Instead of walking to the other side of the bed to lie down, Aether reaches over Mountain placing his hand on the bed and throws himself over Mountain. He does in in the name of efficiency, but if it makes a pretty blush bloom across Mountain’s face who is he to call him out? 

Aether gets comfortable, reaching out to Mountain, signaling him to join. Mountain lays his head against Aether's heart and puts his hand on Aether's stomach just before another sharp pain shoots through his whole body. 

“Want some quint now sweet thing?” Aether asks as he holds Mountain closer, wishing he could take all that pain away for good. 

“Yeah, please” Mountain breathes out. 

“I’ve got you Mount” Aether assures, and he does. He lets his quintessence slowly flow through him and into Mountain. Gentle and precise, enough to ease the pain without disrupting.  

Mountain’s always been especially responsive to quintessence, a blessing and a curse really. It didn't take much to affect him, something Aether learned early on. Too much quint, or too fast made Mountain nauseous and spacey, he’d come to with a magic hangover, groggy and disoriented. That made Mountain wary of quintessence all together, avoiding it at all cost. But Aether, the ever-attentive ghoul, found just the right amount of quint for Mountain. Something to ease the pain and help him sleep, but not knock him on his ass or make him sick. 

“I love you” Mountain murmurs into Aether's chest as his eyes become too heavy to hold open anymore. 

“I love you too, get some rest sweet thing” 

Nights like these are familiar, as well rehearsed as rituals really, Mountain will wake up in the morning, feeling guilty Aether had to take care of him the night before, embarrassed he couldn't do it himself; Aether had done just as much as him, arguably more, and here he was reaping the benefits of him and his magic, draining any energy he may have had left over.   

And Aether will assure him every time that, no he isn't being forced to take care of Mountain, he does it because he wants to. Because he loves him.  

“I love you so much, let me take care of you this morning Astra?” Mountain says, leaning over kiss Aether's forehead. 

“I suppose that sounds like an alright idea” Aether fake considers, looking up to meet Mountain’s lips with his own.  

They pull away, resting their foreheads against one another. 

“You’re such a dork” Mountain adds, punctuating his statement with a kiss to Aether's nose.  

“We don't have to do anything today sweet thing, get back in bed with me?” Aether asks, pulling out his best puppy dog eyes.  

And who is Mountain to deny such an ask? Especially after Aether spent the entire night taking care of him. 

“’course Aeth” Mountain smiles, crawling back into bed and opening his arms for Aether this time.  

“Stay here as long as you want Astra, or until you get tired of me” Mountain half jokes. 

“Believe me, I will never get tired of you Mount.” Aether hums as he nuzzles into Mountain’s chest. 

Now though?

Now that they were back at the Abbey, their old routine has fallen back into place. Spending their days on opposite ends of the Abbey, opposite ends of the world if you ask them. For the first few weeks they're lucky to see the other awake. 

Aether crawling into bed behind and already sleeping Mountain after another late night in the infirmary, as much as he wants to talk to his love, he knows how much he needs sleep, so instead of waking him, he sends a tiny tendril of quintessence into his brain, gently influencing his dreams, ensuring he will awake feeling rested and eases the ache of stiff muscles and joints. 

Mountain waking up with the sun, greeted by a still sleeping Aether. But as much as he wants to talk to his love, he knows how much he needs sleep, so instead of waking him, he slowly untangles them from each other, places a kiss on Aether’s forehead, and leaves a steaming cup of coffee and small bundle of asters on the bedside table for him to wake up to.  

I love you Astra, wake me up when you get home if I'm asleep, I won't bite ; ) 

Mountain scribbles on a sticky note before heading to the gardens. 

Over time Mountain and Aether get better at prioritizing time for their pack, time or each other, but Mountain finds himself missing the time they spent together on tour more than be thought he ever would.  

Mountain was Aether’s rock on tour, keeping him grounded when everything became too much. He was a safe space to exist without the pressure of conversation or excitement. But in the end, after being back in the Abbey, no longer considered a “new summon” Aether was beginning to realize, maybe he didn't want to go back on tour. He loved his pack more than anything, loved being topside, loved working in the infirmary, loved the fans, loved music, loved Copia, but maybe he just wasn't meant for touring anymore.  

He brought it up to Copia first. Copia was crushed by this, yes, he would miss his quint on tour, but he knew how much the band meant to Aether, he can only imagine how much of a toll touring must've taken on Aether for him to being up for retirement. It wasn't often a ghoul asked for retirement, the ministry had a track record of forcing ghouls into retirement when they felt said ghoul was no longer performing as desired. 

Aether went to Omega next, his mentor, once again following his footsteps in a way, intending to begin full time in the infirmary after band retirement. 

After solidifying his retirement with the higher ups, promising to mentor the new quint just as Omega had done for him, Aether began telling his pack his plans for the next tour cycle. 

Dew and Mountain were the last ones to find out. Aether wanted to tell them at the right time, on their own. He was dreading this more than anything he’d ever done.  

Dew took it about as well as expected, his mate telling him he’d no longer be touring with him. Greif ridden and angry, it took Dew a while to understand. How he could be so angry at a situation while still having so much love for someone. He even considered retiring himself, he couldn't imagine being on tour without Aether, he’d never done that before, he didn't think he could do that. But Dew’s love for touring ran far too deep. Staying with Aether meant no more touring, going on tour didn't mean no more Aether, and so he learned to tour with Aether no longer a bunk away, but now thousands of miles or a phone call away. 

Mountain though? Mountain took the news unmoving. He congratulated Aether through clenched teeth and blurry eyes. He had no reason to fall apart at this. Dew was Aether’s mate, Dew had a reason to kick and cry and scream, he didn't. He was supposed to congratulate Aether, to support him in such a big decision, to be happy for him. 

Everyone was worried about Dew, how Dew would take the news, and for good reason, Aether and Dew were mates, but Mountain and Aether had something just as special.  

Mountain wasn't jealous of Dew, he didn't want to be Dew or wish Aether was his mate instead, he cherished the bond he had with Aether for what it was and always would be. 

Mountain couldn't help but wonder though, had Aether finally become tired of him? 

[rbinsgf]

Turn the other cheek, and I take it on the chin

(Now with a Part 2)

Saying Robin was pissed would be the understatement of the century. She was on a rampage. Mind focused on one target and nothing would tame her fury beside strangling the obnoxiously loud life out of Eddie freaking Munson.

Robin isn’t a violent person, she sometimes even called herself a pacifist, but she had limits.

Steve Harrington kicked puppy expression was her limit number one.

It was supposed to be a boring Tuesday afternoon shift at Family Video and Steve was to clock in two hours after her for the closing shift.

It was a normal boring Tuesday, not many customers came on Tuesdays so Robin was left to do and redo the inventory or browse the aisles she had arranged three times since starting her shift.

The video store was silent except for the faint sound of the top 40 and the squawking of her converse on the tiled floor.

But then the bell above the door jingled and Robin had turned with a smile, enthusiastic at the thought of any distraction, her smile vanished in an instant.

Before her was standing a sad looking Steve Harrington, his big cow eyes glossy with unshed tears and even his hair looked deflated.

Robin rushed over him, eyes scanning his figure for any kind of injury,

"Steve what hap- oof"

The force of her friend trying to bury his bigger frame in between her arms cut her short in her questioning.

Steve was now shamelessly sobbing in the fabric of her work vest, snot and tears mixing on the green fibers.

Robin stroked his hair and held him until he calmed down enough to talk. After a few minutes of Steve sobbing on her shoulder she beckoned him in the break room to sit him down and give him some water.

After Steve had calmed down and downed three cups of water like a man stranded in the desert, Robin sat next to him and waited.

A beat. And another. Steve opened and closed his mouth a few times in between sniffles, trying to work out an explanation to his breakdown.

Robin’s brows were creased in worry and she was seconds away from ripping her lips to shreds as she gnawed at them waiting for her friend to talk. And oh, oh how she would’ve preferred to hear something about the upside down, or a failed date or, god forbid, the discontinuation of the Farrah Fawcett spray. But what she heard was worse than any of the above..

~Around half an hour before~

Steve parked in front of the little house humming some David Bowie song he heard earlier that week.

It was a normal Tuesday, he was about to drive the kids home from Hellfire before joining Robin at work for the closing shift at Family Video.

The door to the house wasn’t locked so Steve let himself in as he had done dozens of times before, a small smile was tugging at his lips as he walked towards the basement hearing laughter and voices.

His smile flattered as the ongoing conversation became cleared as he reached the end of the stairs, not quite entering the room enough to be seen by the club.

Hellfire’s meetings were always boisterous and loud so Steve tuned them all out when waiting for it to end, but he just couldn’t do it today, not after hearing some very interesting traits about Eddie’s newly created NPC.

Apparently Eddie thought it would be fun to make an NPC based on Steve making it a mean airhead who dies trying to get a girl at all cost.

Eddie had seemed pretty proud of him actually so Steve didn’t mind at first,

but then in the span of a second they went from talking about the NPC to talking about actual Steve.

Mike had said something about the NPC being a genius next to who he was based off of and, it’s Mike so Steve didn’t really care.

But then the others seemed to have took it as an opportunity to open some sort of trial on him.

They all started to talk over each other about some dumb stuff he had said or stupid thing he did or those times when he doesn’t get what everyone’s talking about. And it’s okay, Steve knows that he isn’t smart or whatever but it still hurts.

Eddie only pitched in after the rest has quieted down and saying if the NPC was to be 100% accurate he would’ve made it "an asshole King of a bullshit land"

That’s when Steve left, turning on his heels and bumping on the door on his way up the stairs.

The other noticed him then, it only made them laugh at how he couldn’t take a joke or be grateful to be even remotely included in the game.

He walked out of the house and into his car, speeding off towards Family Video.

He didn’t look back not once, the kids could take themselves home for all he cared or Eddie would take them anyway. The thought of Eddie hurts a spot in his chest Steve tried to ignore as he waited for the streetlight to turn green. He had thought they were finally friends, counted the guy as one of his best friend actually. Steve had thought Eddie had seen him for who he really was and liked that real Steve. Steve had told Eddie all about that time in high school, why Steve acted that way, he had told him about the bathroom incident and Nancy’s words. Steve thought Eddie had understood him. Guess Steve was wrong about that too. The light turned green and Steve swallowed his tears.

If there is someone above it all, Robin hopes they can pardon all the awful thoughts that crossed her mind about Eddie Munson and what she was about to do to him.

She was vibrating with fury, Eddie knew Steve now, they’d spent so many nights hanging out the three of them. (She had even thought that there was something more there between the two of them. )

Oh she hoped Eddie hadn’t skipped too many P.E classes, she was about to hunt him and he was better of running. And fast.

"Robin you’re hurting my hand"

The quiet wincing coming from Steve brought her back to the situation at hand, she quickly released his hand and got up,

"The kids, they’re dumb and ungrateful brats, but they’re still children so I’m mad at them but well…Now Eddie ? Stevie I want you to know that I’m about to break each of his bones one by one."

Steve snorted at her spiel,

"It’s not worth it Robbie, I think he wanted to keep the approbation of the Hellfire’s members by shitting on the dumb jock, for old times sake and whatnot.."

"No it’s not okay Steve ! Eddie is supposed to be your friend and that’s so hypocritical of him to rant about conformity but still seeking validation by shitting on you !"

Robin was red, her arms flailing around her in angry motions. Steve sighed and looked away,

"I mean, I was an asshole, maybe he hasn’t forgiven me and waited for revenge or something."

"Yeah key words here Steve, was, it’s all in the past and you weren’t that bad per se." That is true, for all his King Steve title, Steve didn’t do much aside from snorting next to Tommy shoving nerds into lockers or cackling when Carol’s venom was particularly snarky. He never touched anyone, yes he was arrogant and mean but it was all a disguise.

And Eddie fucking knew that.

Robin looked at Steve, his forlorn expression and anxious hands nearly ripping holes in his sweater cemented her next action.

In one smooth motion she took his car keys and ran out of the store.

Hellfire survived an angry town mob, the Kids survived a whole other dimensions but none of them were ready for what was about to come.

Eddie may have survived once, thanks to Steve’s CPR training by the way, but Robin was seriously considering finishing what the bats had started.

—————————————-

Alright gang I’m slowly going back to writing and I thought of some angst because why not right ? This story will probably be made of three parts i think.

If you guys have any tips, requests, critics or literally anything to say please let me know I love talking with people here and it doesn’t happen a lot !

(Next chapter will be from Eddie’s pov)

[sexcromancy]

im not the anon but i want ur hiramarchie thoughts <3

hehe :3 well first off I want to say I loved and agreed with both EJ's and the @riverdale-retread answer I reblogged. and a lot of the other conversation they've reblogged which I just read through, which, hello, I was not plugged into the side of the rvd fandom having these interesting discussions but I am now!!

second off. Hiram is an ultimate John to me. so named for emperor john gaius of the nine houses, as made famous in Harrow the Ninth (2020). a john is a character in book, film, musical, television show, etc, who uses patriarchal mores and emotional manipulation to control the life of the object of his attention/affection. he uses the allure and the promise of the family unit (or replacement for it) to entrap and destabilize a younger, naif-ish (ymmv) protagonist (usually). that's a very wide net. there's a lot of examples, including but not limited to: derek shepherd, the vampire armand, Hades from hadestown, Humbert Humbert, Joel thelastofus, Arthur aguefort, Jack lovetheoretically, and Hap theOA. as you can see, a lot of variety in there. johns can take many forms. commonly they are fathers.

Hiram and Archie have absolutely incredible john plot going on. I mean, for one thing, they map so closely onto EJG and kiriona in season 2, as demonstrated here. they really have the daddy issues goes both ways, men love orphans thing happening. as mentioned in the post above, Hiram has a Thing about sons. he also has a thing about daughters, which to me suggests he REALLY has a thing about Being A Father, and also he's Catholic, and a mob boss, so he basically thinks he's God. thinking you're god is a Very John Trait. fathers, like gods, need followers to be able to claim the identity. Archie is something Hiram wants to Have, both as an asset and as a worshipper. I mean, the pun on johns as pimps is not unintentional. and Archie is so obsessed with having a belief system. as the post above said, he doesn't really care if the belief system is Correct, he just needs one. I rlly enjoy fandom engagement on relationships with this type of power dynamic, that is mutually obsessive but severely unbalanced.

third, this is less analytical, but I also just fucking love the chemistry and energy of their scenes. I think that the deeply personal and violent hatred they have for each other is so fucking funny and rich. like that for seasons afterward Hiram is cartoon hammering the town of Riverdale, STILL, because of his bad breakup with his daughters boyfriend. rvd is at its best when it goes full drama full silly at the same time, with all the actors taking the silliest situations to their dramatic extreme, and KJ and mark Consuelos bring their 100% every time. bravo

[popculturebuffet]

Uncle Scrooge: The Secret Santa Spell Review (comission by WeirdKev27)

Happy Holidays all you Happy People. It's that time of year again, time to haul out the holly and the breadcrumbs because we're talking about ducks again. Yes while I haven't talked about ducks nearly enough on this blog as of late, finding a Ducktale for christmas has always been a priority.

This year though Kev took the reigns on this one after realizing this was a tradition, and found me TWO. We were originally going to do the darkwing duck christmas special, something I didn't know existed and still know little about on purpose and still plan to next year.. but then... he found this. See back in 2021 I reviewed the Carl Barks comic a letter to santa. You can find the review here.

But the main takeaway is it features THIS iconic scene

Look saying i'm a simple man would be a boldfaced lie, but sometimes it's the simple things like an absurdly rich duck and his nephew fighting to the death with heavy machinery so one of them can give their nephew's the remaining machine as a christmas present that bring me joy on this holiday season.

That said after years of basking in the warm glow of having randomly found a comic about Scrooge and Donald battling to the death with steam shovels, I found something just as holly jolly.. and just as gloriously, wonderfully nuts. My friends it's time I introduced you to the Secret Santa spell.

Again Kev, my producer of sorts, deserves the credit here: he found this in Disney Christmas Parade, IDW's christmas anthology they printed every year for a while, and god bless him for it as this story is gold. It's a genuinely good, well done Magica story that thanks to taking place on christmas and involving a claus somehow less thought out than the one where if you kill Santa you become Santa, figgy pudding, a murder tree, and a volcano finale, is also completely bonkers and I love every second of it. This is a geninely fantastic scrooge story and one worth taking a look for yourself if you can find it online since it's out of print. For those of you who can't or simply don't wanna, come with me under the cut as we explore the hap happiest christmas since bing crosby tap danced with danny fucking kaye while Donald and Scrooge tried to pummel each other with steam shovels.

This story comes to us from writers Fransico Artibani, Lello Arena and artest Silvio Cambolli. I hadn't heard of any of these people before this as i'm not really up on my itallian duck comics but they do an excellent job here and I certainly will be looking out for more of their stories.

For this story we open at the bin a few days before christmas as everything's winding down for the holiday and Donald's doing one of his last bits of slave labor for Scrooge when two Scottish obviously suspcious carollers show up. Scrooge apparently gets so many that both are and aren't villians in disguise he's worked up a bit of an extreme solution.. granted he wanted to just pour oil on them but then legal got involved.

So he has to go with the Virtuetron 3000, an elaborate setup he had gyro work up that puts MIND READING HELMETS

Yup i'ts magica.. I mean I can't blame Scrooge for being suspcious, turning her shadow into a teenager to sneak into the mansion only for said teenager to fall in love with scrooge's daughter, this ain't, but i'm less concered with Magica and Co's half baked scheme and more concered a man who underpays his employees, quite literally owns the town, and already has a fairly sketchy moral compass has MIND CONTROL technology.. and giant killer robots

You'd think this would be an out of character expendature... but he got it from a reliable presidental source

Scrooge did all this so he could have a restful christmas. Magica.. isn't having the same as she has some uninvited guests.

Okay so some introductions are in order as i'm sure some of you had the same reaction I did

Thankfully Inducks also indexed who they are. Starting with the one I DID recognize, the little tyke is Magica's niece Minima, the basis for Lena and Magica's exact oppisite: kind, selfless, cheery. The only thing she isn't inverted on is magical talent, as Minima has a knack for it.

The two strangers are Rosolio and Gramma DeSpell. Yes GRAMMA, that's magica's grandma. What's intresting is there's two distinct versions of the character that don't really contradict each other, with this one in the 90's becoming a bigger fixture, and there being nothing to say this isn't the same character given a Sabrina the Teenage Witch style makeover, just a few years BEFORE Zelda and Hilda's got there's in fact. Go figure. She's a bit of a hippie and tries to talk down Magica from her schemes.

Her sidekick here, and sexual harasser, is Rosolio, a mildly inepet magician who followed her from italy to hit on her.

So Magica's about ready to just abandon her magic shop and go.. fuck off or whatever when Minima innocently brings up something...

Yes folks, this is indeed our premise: Santa put in a clause in his magic that's somehow weirder than "If tim allen shoves you off a room tim allen become santa claus" or "If tim allen dosen't find a wife in time he ceases to be santa claus" or.. let's just say anything tim allen adjacent. If you wish for something seven times and happen to be some sort of spellcaster, you get it, regardless of morality, intent or what it actually is. Which DOES mean good news for one little boy man robot

But still raises a LOT of questions. It's not a bad concept, that asking for something enough means santa will take pity but why isn't their restraints? Why has Magica, someone Santa would objectively not liked asked 7 times? why have we only heard about a magic version of the junior woodchuck guidebook this once? why didn't we get a fourth season of ducktales so Frank could adapt this? These are the things that keep me up at night. This is also a thing that keeps me up at night.

Donald just admit you need glasses instead of taking it out on your children, for all our sakes!

So Magica goes to the north poll to deliver letter 7 personally while Gramma.. only stops Rogoilo from going with her then hopes she'll be okay.

Magicia isn't as an elf being pulled by a sleigh full of pengys and getting there late notices her. Honestly we wouldn't have this plot at all if the best boy pengy wasn't busy.

Magica is frozen solid and is revived by 30 cc's of hot chocolate. I don't know if Tom Hanks sang to her, he was also busy that christmas

Magcia repays this kindness by busting up the north poll, going on a rampage to find Santa since the elves handle letters. Keep in mind this ENTIRE act of the story, her getting frozen, her going on a rampage, her bringing an evil dead tree to life before fighting an army of teddy bears and snowman

YUP. You didn't think the insanity stopped at mind policing, killer robots, santa clauses and improperly placed penguins did you? Nope we get a full on offscreen lord of the rings battle complete with ents simply because Magicia wants to gloat in person. And despite this section being padding.. it works. of COURSE magicia would want to gloat to santa, of COURSE she coudln't wait for Christmas day. It's totlaly in character and her singing oh christmas tree or spitting out hot chocolate are just.. such nice character touches. Of course she's so dedicated to being evil she hates something sweet. OF COURSE.

It's something neat about this comic: i'ts bonkers, no question.. but it's also simply fantastic on it's own merit. The idea of Magica getting a santa wish is neat on it's own, but the story then uses Minima to anchor it: she's frustrated it seems her aunt will never be happy and always obess over the dime, and thus teleports to the bin to take it from her, not understanding WHY it's precious to scrooge or WHY her aunt wants it, simply wanting to make her aunt happy. No one even knows; the thought police helmet's don't scan ill intent.. because there isn't none. It's just an innocent child wanting to bring her Aunt christmas. This version of Minima reminds me a LOT of 87 webby, and it's in the best way: innocent , kind, selfless.. all the good things.

Anyways Santa finally goes to confront magica, wondering why she's doing this the answers no.. and forgetting his own stupid policy until it's too late, with her asking for the dime and him entering a trance to go get it.

It's christmas eve and Scrooge is bored as nothing's going on. Disturbingly he wants to know how litigatoins are going. Those orphans aren't going to be forced out into the snow themsleves, ghosts of past buisness partners be dammned!

Scrooge is interuptted from taling to Mrs. Quackfaster byt he arrival of santa. Thinking it's magica in a disguise , he sicks a robot guard dog on her he turns into a sheep.

But then we get the crowner, the weirdest, best, and most wonderful thing in this story.. I present...

I"ll level with you all, while holiday shopping was easy this year, i've still been dealing with a lot of seasonal depression and regular ole depression. It's been a long month with loved ones in the hosptial (nothing serious but also nothing you need to know about in full), work piling up and me not even taking the time to enjoy some of my gifts. I've had plenty of kind people, thoughtful gifts, and wonderful friends but sometimes the stress of this job, as much as I love it, and the world can get to you. So getting to just relax and review a comic where Santa turns Scrooge's bin into a giant figgy pudding while under hypnosis.. it helps> it warms the spirit and reminds me why I do this. For the joy of good stories.. and for the wonder of nonsense.

For those who like me wondered what Figgy Pudding actually even is, wonmder no more: it's a traditional british pudding made out of animal fat. You no doubt have more questions but we have more story

So Santa snaps out of it once he gives Magica the time and she teleports out. Scrooge asks santa to go get it.. but despite you know having TURNED SCROOGE'S BIN INTO PUDDING and stolen his prized possesion, he's .. less than helpful.

I just.. dude... man.. santa dude man claus... Christmas is important. It brigns joy to children and it's why youd o this. I get that. But how does "I need to return the dime I stole while BRAINWASHED due to a stupid bit of magic I never bothered to undo or work up a backup plan for", equate to "greed begats greed'.

For starters the Dime.. isn't just a dime.. and you should know this. Your santa. You know everything about a person, it's your deal. This dime was the first bit of honest money Scrooge ever earned, a reminder of what he started, something he dearly loves and treasures not because it's MONEY but because of what it means. And even not knowing that Scrooge didn't start any of this shit. Scrooge has to constantly ward off Magicia's crap, something you DO for a fact know as you rejected her wish till your dumbass magic kicked in. She's not trying to steal his hoarded gross amount of money, she's trying to take the dime and she's trying to do it for an evil plan. YOU KNOW BETTER SANTA.

Granted this could be a christmastime grift as Santa gets Scrooge to promise a big dinner and bonuses for everyone in duckburg, so he could've simply been fleecing scooge.. and I prefer that interprtation as it fits santa better: Santa would WANT to make up for what he did with magica and WANT to stop her because Santa is a kind, caring person. And even if she hadn't used the santa spell against him, she still attacked his elves out of spite. I prefer to think he would've helped anyway but knew Scrooge deserved to be taught a lesson which, fair play to the big guy.. Scrooge ABSOLUTELY did.

So they go to stop him while Magica goes to show off her dime.. and minima realizes Magica didn't open her present and thus dosen'jt know and is about to make an oopsie.

So Scrooge and Santa go to stop her, but can't... luckily thanks to Minima giving Scrooge a chocolate coin instead of giving her the midas touch, the spell gives her...

It's an excellent brick joke on Magicia hating chocolate, and a great visual. it temproarily makes her the sweetst duck in the world.. which leads to some shipping bait

But a genuinely sweet ending for Minima who, if for one moment and only thanks to magic.. gets to enjoy her aunt. I mean Magica becoming sweet thanks to choclate magic is KINDA Messed up.. but it's hard to not enjoy a child who simply wanted her aunt to be happy.. getting that for one breif moment.

I still feel bad for her as this won't lass, Magicia will be back to her abuse hateful self.. but I can't begrudge a kind, innocent little witch her happy ending. I just don't have it in me. It's not forever, Magicia gets herself back.. but for one day.. she'll treat her family how they deserve. And Rogilo how he really dosen't but you can't have everything now can you?

So because we can't just end on the sweet moment, Santa assures Scrooge the figgy pudding bin will turn back after christmas.. but until then.. he has a promise to fufill.

Every christmas story should end with the whole town eating a rich man's property. Hell EVERY christmas should. Eat the rich's buildings kids!

This story is excellent. Really werid? yes. Having a pretty bonkers ending for no reason? Yes. Is said ending hilarious, the throughline of Minima heartfelt, and the zanier stuff also really funny? Entirely. It's a well done Scrooge story set around christmas with santa's indgiance at helping scrooge being the only thing I really don't like. Had he phrased it less as "you brought this on yourself" and more "you don't deserve it after how you've treated your employees" it'd make more sense. Still one little bump dosen't ruin the figgy pudding.. I think. I don't know how figgy pudding works. I do like this story though and highly recommend it. Thanks for reading.

[kindnessisweakness2]

Delusional - Part 24

Jax's eyes widened in shock as he watched Delaney Grab the barrell of the gun. Lunging forward, taking Alex down to the floor as 3 shots of the gun fired, Jax screamed as he watched Delaney fly backwards. Smashing his fist into Alex face twice, Jax threw the gun away from him. He couldnt explain the relief he felt at the sound of the door flying open and the guys rushing in. Happy was the first to Jax's side. "Take this piece of shit to the warehouse. I want him alive Hap!" Jax barked orders he knew the Tacoma Killer would be glad to Obey. Juice, Tig and bobby followed behind Happy, there was no way that slimy fucker was running away now. Chibs and Gemma were all over Delaney. Jax stood next to Opie, gripping is hair in frustration as tears fell. "She grabbed the gun Ope. H-he said she had to choose. She grabbed the fucking gun!" Opie did his best to comfort his best friend. They'd grew up together, and he'd never seen Jax like this. Not even when Tara left. Jax always jumped to Anger first. Never let emotions get in the way. Fuck, he'd only seen him cry once and that was when he got the news his dad died. After that it was all fighting and drinking the pain away. "She's gonna be okay. She's a fighter. Shes survived the worst. It's gonna be alright man." And as Opie patted his best friends back, he hoped with everything he was right.

Chibs worked fast. Faster than he ever had. Cutting Jax's hoodie away, revealing the once white vest top underneath, he packed gauze into the open wound in her shoulder. "Its still in there. Im gonna have to pull the bullet out." He looked at Gemma as he spoke, unable to keep the worry from his face. He'd never had to work on an old lady before, let alone his VPS. "Shouldnt we get her to the hospital? Shes pregnant for god sakes!" Gemma questioned. Clay and Chibs shook their heads at the same time. "No. It raises too many questions. Shes been in and out of hospital too much recently. I can handle this Gem. Shes gonna be fine." Gemma shook her head, hoping what he was saying was true. Jax leaned over his girl, kissing her forehead. "Shes got a shoulder wound. The other two bullets missed her. Shes very lucky lad, but shes gonna have to rest after this. The doctor said no stress and i dont know what effect this would have had on the baby." Jax nodded at chibs, not being able to manage words. He stayed there, leaning over the love of his life as she lay unconscious on their living room floor. He begged whoever was up there, God, his Dad, Thomas, that both her and their baby would be okay. She didnt deserve this. She didnt deserve any of it. Him? He was far from perfect. Maybe this was Karma for everything he had done wrong in his life. The best thing that ever happened to him was going to be ripped away.

White hot pain. Thats what Delaney felt when she opened her eyes. "Fuck" She groaned as she tried to sit up, but a hand flew out to stop her moving. "Dont." Jax spoke softly as he sat on the side of their bed. "Alex.." He cut her off. "Happy has him up at the warehouse on the Wahiwah. He's not getting away this time, im gonna make sure of it." Delaney sighed, "I was so scared he was gonna hurt you." Jax cupped her face and kissed her gently. "I cant believe you grabbed the gun. You idiot! You couldve been killed, Our baby..." It was Delaneys turn to cut him off. "I wasnt going to let you get hurt because of me. Yes im an idiot, but your important Jax. Your needed." Tears fell from Jax's eyes as he kissed her again. "Your needed. I need you" Delaney wrapped her arms around him, hissing at the pain and trying to be gentle because of the stitches. "I love you Teller" Jax smiled at her . "I love you too you idiot." Gemma, Chibs and Clay made their way into the bedroom at that point. Each of them wanting to check on her and Chibs handing her much needed painkillers."Now we know your both okay. I have halfsack fixing the bullet holes in your living room and Happy's getting antsy. He needs to know what to do with the scumbag." Clay questioned Jax. "I want to see him." Delaney stated to the shock of everyone in the room. "It's my turn to get answers. Also i have a question, has anyone else noticed this fucker only re surfaces after Tara rears her ugly head and causes an argument?" She could see everyone thinking it over. "Think about it, both times hes come back and attacked me its been when Tara has managed to seperate me and Jax." Chibs and Gemma nodded. "The bitch has to be involved some how." Delaney stood from the bed, "We'll im gonna find out." Jax tried to stop her but it was no use.

Delaney was determined to find out Tara's involvement in all of this.

She wanted Answers and she didnt care who she was going to have to go through to get them.

[evolutionsvoid]

For years, there has been debate and wondering about what truly is down there in the abyss. It is the never ending topic amongst sea folk, and the ceaseless, fruitless endeavor of researchers and philosophers. There is a world down there, no doubt, and the creatures down there share a familiarity with us that we find strange and unsettling. From the odd fish caught in nets, to the words of wisdom granted by the aquatic messengers that come to our shores, we know there is a faith below. What else can explain the Bishops and Monks? How else would you describe the carved trinkets of ambergris and whale bone, whose visage is alien yet exudes an aura of reverence? And then there are the visions, which some can easily cast aside as odd dreams or fits of fearful hallucination, but so many of these glimpses share similarities and the way the seers speak of it all shows that there is something more than mere imagination.

The abyss has a religion, it has its beliefs. So much so that there are even some folk up here on dry land who seek its teachings and wisdom. Yet, there is little in physical proof to show what this faith entails, what do they believe in, what do they preach? At night, upon the calm ocean, sounds of prayer and faithful chanting can be heard emanating from the deep, but these words hold no meaning to us. Even the script carved into the ambergris totems that have been collected elude translation, so there is much left as a mystery. However, there is something to their faith that is known, and cannot be denied. A figure that hangs above it all, whom we must assume all these prayers and offerings go to. Though no one has ever seen her in the flesh, the many carvings and artifacts that bear her visage cannot be ignored. And when those who come in contact with the abyss dream, they speak of her flowing form drifting through the endless blue void. To the beings that live down in the bowels of the ocean, she is their god. A figure of the abyss, of life and death, and the endless cycle that all living things follow: she is the Mother of Snow.

From glimpses in visions and study of found carvings, her body is shaped by death and decay. Flesh, bones, scales and rot are a part of her form, and so are the ravenous scavengers that feed upon them. She is born from the death of leviathans, and congealed of the countless piscines that perish in the vast depths. Yet, her deathly form shows no aggression, no malice. Her carvings show a reverent nature, slow and delicate. When they dream of her, they see her drift almost lifelessly through the void, like a floating corpse destined to be devoured. And to her followers, that is what she offers in her infinite kindness. From her body drifts the ceaseless marine snow that nourishes the world below. Her flesh is in a constant state of rot and decay, sloughing off in crumbling flakes that rain down upon her followers. Those who pray to her rejoice in her offerings, singing out in praises as they collect the manna from the sky. To the creatures of the abyss, life only exists because of their divine Mother of Snow.

The gentle drifting of rotted flakes are not the only things she bestows upon the faithful, as she can grant great bounties and feasts at times. Dead fish and ravaged corpses can fall from her hand down below, but the real miracles come when she beckons to the dying leviathans. It is said that when one of these great beasts of the sea is on their death bed, they will hear her song. She sings to those who are doomed and dying, calling upon them to follow her to the cycle beyond. The leviathans will answer, and seek out the kind Mother. Their journey ends inevitably with death, but it is believed that their passing is done in the exact spot where their corpses may fall upon the billowing cathedrals below. From their death comes a great feast, a great bounty of nutrients that shall feed the people of the deep for a good long time. They sing, pray and give thanks for the food, all while happily holding the knowledge that the time will come when their flesh will do the same. This is the nature of the cycle, where death feeds life, and life needs death. She is the embodiment of this, and her followers preach it to all who will hear.

While the Church is lenient on those who ascend from the abyss, able to use their similar acts of worship as evidence that the Church and its golden Ichor is truly divine, they do not speak much of the Mother. For all is fine and acceptable as long as their idol is held the highest, but the presence of this goddess challenges their position. In some sects, they refuse to acknowledge her existence, pretending it is all some silly sailor's story. Others claim that she is more symbolic of the offerings that fall from the hands of those above, where "foolish" abyssal beasts mistake the scraps of humanity as something godly. At worst, strict members of the Church see her as a blasphemous symbol, one that denies golden Ichor and the true gods that fall from the skies. Her song and offerings are twisted into malicious an deceptive things, luring people to their death. There are certainly a fair share of land-based depictions that show her as something wicked and vile. However, this vision of the Mother is often only held by those who stay far from the sea, never meeting its shores or sailing upon its waves. For the sea folk who live their entire lives near and upon the waters, they hold a different belief that they are sure to keep secret from the Church.

Spend enough time on the vast expanse of the sea, and you will learn some things that cannot be explained on land. When you rest upon the blackened waters at night, rocked to sleep by the gentle undulations of the waves, things may come to your dreams. Even those who do not make their living on the oceans can experience these odd visions, often triggered by exposure to its benthic artifacts and strange creations. Those who hold these carved tokens or cling to weapons made by abyssal hands can find themselves dreaming of an endless watery void, and life humming far down in its depths. It is through these strange dreams we have learned what we have about this strange underwater world, and it is also how we have seen the Mother of Snow, or more so, felt her.

There are no writings, no explanations to what she is and what she wants, and these dreams never have words to them. The abyssal creatures will chant and pray in tongues unknown, and those visited by the Mother will find her to either be silent or emitting her gentle song. She will give no words, no wisdom, so we do not know her intent, yet all who are visited by her are certain of what she is. They speak of kindness, of a serene calm that washes over them in these dream depths. They find peace in her presence, a feeling that often sends the speaker into tears merely thinking about. She says nothing, but they know of her love, there is no denying it. Her mere visage settles all fears and unease, and her song brings something that words fail to describe. It is a gentle and calming tune, leaving no doubt in why the leviathans follow her when the end comes. They find comfort in these final moments, an understanding that this shall end but bring forth something miraculous. Death will bring blessings to others, and your own essence shall continue on into the cycle, guided by her song and motherly presence. The beasts of the sea know this peace, and some who have encountered death upon the ocean have witnessed it too. When a ship is lost at sea, there are many horrid ways to die, but some who have been rescued have spoken of strange times where their pains and fears vanish. Of fellow sailors smiling as they sunk below the waves, of times where they let go of their rafts and supports so that they may be taken by the sea without fear. A famed tale speaks of rescuers pulling a survivor from a sunken ship, where all hands had been lost save for one. Despite this salvation, the lost man refused their aid and fought as they pulled him on board. He made attempts to throw himself back into the sea, weeping and begging to join the others. He heard her song and felt her arms, and he wanted nothing more than to find that peace.

In most of the visions and dreams, the Mother of Snow is silent, drifting about with her flesh and form billowing in the current. It is said that if you see her, than blessings are sure to follow, raining down upon you like her own rotting gift. However, in the rare instances you hear her song, the sea folk would say that your time is coming. The end is near and she is visiting you to give you peace before it happens. Do not be scared, do not fight it. It is simply meant to be, with no cruelty or hate attached. On the ships, those who share the fact they have heard her will often gain a reverence from the crew, who will not fight them if they give an odd request. They will nod their heads and let them be, knowing that their end will soon be here. However, there will certainly be some subtle distance kept between you and the rest of the crew, who want to be sure that they too don't get swept up in your inevitable demise.

While the Church tears down her image and claims her a false idol, there are plenty of whispers about the Mother of Snow and our own gods. The humors and Godly Fluids that feed our world fall from the sky, carried to us by the corpses of the divine. And yet down below, another god sheds her own flesh to feed her followers. If this is how they thrive, then how are we any different? We all pray to the heavens for manna to rain down, for divine death that may bring forth life. We bow before great corpses, and feed upon our deities with reverence and respect. We both look to the skies and hope, wondering what hangs so impossibly high above our own heads. Are we truly separate in our ways? Are these not our fellow brothers and sisters in faith? Or perhaps, something more than we are willing to admit?

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"Mother of Snow"

Here is a remake of an old piece of mine, a concept that I have always enjoyed: the Mother of Snow. Once I got going with FOI, I knew she would fit right in! Even then, I feel like she would fit in with all my worlds. I am really happy with how she turned out, which is good, because DEAR GOD SO MANY FISH TO DRAW!

[harrisonarchive]

At the Billboard Music Awards, December 9, 1992; photo by Reed Saxon/AP. (Both speeches can be viewed here.)

“George was the kind of guy who wasn’t going to leave until he hugged you for five minutes and told you how much he loved you. We knew where we stood with each other. […] I loved him so much, and if he had never played a note, I would have been so blessed to have him in my life. […] I'm just blessed by God to have known him. He had so much love in him. I realized it more with him gone that he was just pure love.” - Tom Petty, Rolling Stone, January 17, 2002

“‘Me and George have something somewhere where we're connected,’ Petty says with a laugh. ‘Some past life or something.’” - Pulse!, April 1999

“[George] was so funny, it’s hard to explain. He was the funniest guy I ever met. Such a keen sense of humor. A lot of fun. A wise person. He really wanted to know the meaning of it all. But at the same time, he was really light-hearted and tremendous fun. [Laughs] Just tremendous fun. And we got along so well. There’s really not a day that I don’t think about him.” - Tom Petty, Conversations With Tom Petty (2005)

“George [passing away] devastated me. I didn’t think George could die. It so ripped my heart out that I still can’t think about it.” - Tom Petty, Billboard, December 2005

“George came along, and we just got so close; it was like we had known each other in some other life or something. We were pals within minutes of meeting each other. I remember him saying to me a couple of days after we’d known each other — he’s just hugging me, holding me, saying, ‘Tommy, you’re in my life now whether you like it or not.’ It was like I’d been sent the very person I needed. He healed a lot of wounds.” - Tom Petty, Petty: The Biography (2015)

“I went through a bad period, you know, when my house burned… Just kind of one of those great gifts to run into Jeff and George like I did at that time. They probably don’t even realize it, but it really took away a lot of the pain.” - Tom Petty, In The Studio With Redbeard, 1989 (x)

“God I miss him you know. I miss him in the night a lot.” - Tom Petty, Concert for George microsite

“And so much has happed to me that you wouldn’t believe. I’m not gonna try to tell it all to you, but I’m thinking right now about one particular thing. I was looking out there - I know so many people here. Mo, Mo and Olivia [Harrison] are out there. I love Mo and I love Liv. Me and George Harrison and Jeff Lynne one night were at Mo Ostin’s house - this was before, we were just working on the idea of the Traveling Wilburys - and I had written this song ‘Free Fallin’’ and done the record and taken it to my label, MCA. And they rejected the record. And that had never happened to me before. I was like, wow, what do I do? So, we forgot about it. And we were at Mo’s house and dinner ended and George said, ‘Let’s get the guitars out and sing a little bit.’ And we sang and George said, ‘Let’s do that “Free Fallin’” Tom. Play that.’ So we had a kind of Wilbury arrangement of it with harmony. And we did it. And Lenny Waronker is sitting there, he said, ‘That’s a hit.’ With two acoustic guitars, you know? I said, ‘Well, my record company won’t put it out.’ And Mo says, “I’ll f*****’ put it out.” - Tom Petty, MusiCares speech, February 10, 2017 (x)

“I have a special fondness for him [Tom]. It makes you feel a little bit safer to know that someone like Tom is there for you. It’s a good umbrella to be standing under.” - Olivia Harrison, Petty: The Biography (2015)

“What makes Tom Petty a unique live performer is that he is a storyteller. His Florida drawl and the meter of his speech are engaging. Even his everyday observations sound more like tales, and whether he is singing or speaking you'll hear truisms in his words. I call him Aesop Wilbury.” - Olivia Harrison, Billboard, March 20, 2006

“Petty 'had a great bullshit detector – he didn’t suffer fools, just like my dad,’ says Dhani Harrison. While Petty and George Harrison 'were kind of stone-y, mellow dudes, they had that toughness. They’d kick your ass. But they loved the same stuff – ukuleles, motor racing. They would go to the Formula One races together.’ George 'really felt at ease with Tom,’ Dhani says, 'because it was like having another you next to you. There were more eyes watching out for you.’“ - Rolling Stone, 18 October 2017

“Tommy is just, like, the loveliest guy in the entire world. [...] [H]im and Jeff [Lynne] have been the nearest things I’ve had to a dad since I lost my dad.” - Dhani Harrison, Premier Guitar, January 16, 2018 (x)