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unproduciblesmackdown · 1 year

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reread the rest thus far of lackadaisy and there's the both v easy & difficult task of gathering a shit ton but only a shit ton of excerpts (like every single page is a highlight i'm not exaggerating)

and every single element is superlative and the way it all only becomes More So....already mentioned the way the like smooth gradient shading made the successful evocation of 3D Shapes more noticeable, along w/the consistent geometries of character design & details in fabric folds; the way Lighting & Coloring only goes on to become more prominent elements only enhances that further. the compositions, backgrounds, pacing, angles....everything is so dynamic & expressive, such as including the expressions which you know i also Love / absorbed

going "hell yes for people to discover this superlative comic" then having to occasionally refresh past site traffic overloaded server errors like "nooo" but actually yes

whilest clapping & cheering for the fun of everyone who's been here a minute. My God the invigorating reward when again i started reading in '07 & the concept of rocky & freckle on a "proper" run had only manifested via fun official bonus art, then a literal decade later as it was actually happening in the comic like screeeeaammm i can feel it coming in the air tonight oh lord etc....i've loved following it, again, if i see another new comic page. i am going to be Enriched

i also really was right on the ball myself this time around like okay okay yep i have picked up on Everything, at least to the degree i can lmao. i love the mysteries. i love how Character Focused it is too ofc and there's no characters i'm uniterested in / dislike. you gotta point to one of them, truly, and i have been a [pointing at freckle] enjoyer these fifteen years but fr i am a connoisseur of everyone, i love that so many characters are a weird mysterious chaos element story driver in their own right. i considered mordecai more intently than ever, love his like ultra mystery (and that we leave off on him doing some detectiving even) and truly fun that like, the source of the more Immediate problems he keeps having in every damn interaction isn't the like [wow mordecai with the just diving into the hatchet murdering] factor so much as it's that he's generally like "i am just standing here" and is not nt in any way that matters and people insist on fucking with him on that front. the peak tragedy of him in a bonus comic getting bullied into having to dance with someone to Be Polite like i'm so sorry i wish you could be that ficus too. anyways intrigued with the marigold &/or mordecai mysteries including that it's like, how coincidental is it that he talks about marigold having a thorn in its side & the savoys' nickname for him is peekon = thorn. there is so much to consider, love that for us truly. and i'm rooting for mordecai & nicodeme's dynamic out here, is another conclusion....very enriched by comparing & contrasting that serafine nicodeme mordecai triumvirate with the rocky ivy freckle one, to be sure. im enriched

i'm also enriched by every footnote that's got like historical facts / research notes / [this is inaccurate for xyz prioritization but here's the disclaimer] explanations. i Love information. and everything else like i loooove this comic it's Soooo Fucking putting my hands to my temples and inhaling at length through my teeth

#first time i've really taken tumblr up on that new thirty image limit expansion; bit of a surprise maybe lol #put your back into autism acceptance month &/or press j; scroll fast; read through it actually; filter the following:#long post //#learning abt the overwhelming popularity of baby ruth candy bars from lackadaisy footnotes? relevant to gtm:pota aficionadoship at one pt #remember discussing what i learned from another footnote abt some christian denominations / other religions being very Anti Prohibition #every time i use the word cagey i think of lackadaisy. cagey thing... we've all been there #fantastic time revisiting and i love to be considering all these characters all the further / with reckless juxtaposition #especially the two triumvirates as mentioned. rooting for them all #rooting for mordecai to be relieved of that v realistic [ppl sensing a Mess With His he is not nt in any way that mattersness Free For All]#either let him be or start shooting at him lmfao. but i Love that the gang had that pleasant nonbrunch together & no shots exchanged yet #more brunches! and i think nicodeme could be mordecai's bestie or w/e he wants. turn out to be Supportive in any way that matters #they are more so the ivy and freckle of their group after all lol. slightly would-be Unlikely coupling there as well anyways; and yet!#i am as enriched and intrigued and appreciative and etc as ever #and reminded that in my rereading i haven't yet gone over all the bonus material lol....#also stumbled across that sungwon cho had fandubs of lackadaisy comics posted like 9 yrs back??#which means i probably saw one or two; think i remember one being shared and checking that out #like hey didn't know i'd encountered you before like; vines & oh the lamps are fucking & etc. and now there he goes voicing mordecai yaay #lackadaisy

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thewatermelloncat · 2 years

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i just realized that that came across wrong :( i love your fics so much, but i would love if i got to see more of the person behind them, if you were interested in posting more about yourself! good luck in uni this year, i wish you the best in all of your classes <3

Haha all good, that also makes sense. Sometimes I want to post random thoughts and stuff but I always end up deleting them because I feel like I would just be screaming into the void, you know?

For some fun facts I complied some ask game questions I found with the help of a number generator.

What is the meaning behind my URL?

It came from a Neopet that I had with my sister.

How tall am I?

I think I’m exactly 175cm, which is about 5.7-5.8 feet.

Do I want tattoos or piercings?

I don’t want a tattoo because I feel like I would see it and get freaked out that it’s always on my skin. But if I were to get one I would get the Rhythmic Gymnastics symbols tattooed on my wrist because that was a huge part of my life for awhile and I used to draw them on my wrist all the time.

I only have my earlobes pierced once each, but one day I might get more so I can do that cool size gradient thing with earrings.

What is my favourite kind of music?

I will listen to just about anything but I particularly like alternative/rock and 90s-2000s rap music. Right now I’m really vibing with songs from Chase Atlantic.

What is my favourite film?

Hands down the Lord of the Rings series! I’ve been watching it since I was 4 years old and I can basically lip-sync the whole script for all three films. It was a huge inspiration for me wanting become a costume designer. Also, being from New Zealand it blew my little mind when I found out it was filmed in my country, so there is definitely that little element of patriotism in there too. Though to be specific, the Two Towers is my favourite film.

Feel free to ask me more of your own questions, or I can find an ask list if you want to know more.

And THANK YOU for the best wishes! I need them because… fuck!

💚

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quad-weave · 6 months

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Fallen Guy

I am awful at the Fall Guys collab event... which is no surprise, given I was never great at the original Fall Guys LOL. Thankfully, the event is also generous with its currency, so I've made good progress in getting the rewards.

I like the hoodie a lot more than I thought I would lol--the gradient is neat, and I like the soft glow on the back. So, I made an outfit around it!

Body - Gentlebean Parka in Rolanberry Red Hands - Summer Sunset Wrist Torques Legs - Baronial Culottes in Snow White Feet - Eastern Lord Errant's Shoes in Rolanberry Red

Earring - Benemoth Earring

These pictures are taken in the new Fall Guys area with Candle's Happiness Gameplay shader!

#ffxiv glamour #eorzea collection #ffxiv #ff14 #final fantasy xiv #final fantasy 14 #ffxiv screenshots #ffxiv gpose #quad glams

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vagabondreamer · 3 years

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After the Fall (1)

Pairing: Lucifer x Angel! Fem! MC

Word Count: 2.5k

Series Summary: Angel! Fem! MC is part of an exchange program that sends her to the Devildom for a year.

Chapter Summary: MC has a rude awakening when Michael orders her to go to the Devildom. Some pleasant and unpleasant first impressions of the brothers.

Author's Note: My story will follow some events from the Obey Me! game, but will deviate since MC is an angel.

***

You march into Michael’s office unannounced, a small letter in your grasp.

“Michael, what is this?” You hold up the paper to show him.

“MC, it’s rude to enter without knocking,” he scolds you. “It’s an exchange program. You’ve been chosen along with two other angels to go to Devildom.”

“Yeah, I can read that! Why do I have to go?” Michael sighs and meets your upset gaze.

“It’s to improve relations. And as Lucifer’s replacement it’s your duty to engage in these politics.” Michael places his hand on your shoulder in a friendly manner. “I know it’s been tough, and I know you’re still learning, but you will go.” His tone changes, much more serious this time.

“Yes sir.” You turn to leave his office.

“Oh and MC? Check up on Lucifer for me.”

“Yes sir.”

You left his office, and started towards your home. There was so much to do, but so little time; Michael must’ve sprung this up on you so you wouldn’t get much of a say. You looked down at the letter to see who the other angels were: Simeon and Luke. Simeon was a familiar name, you never got to meet him, but you knew he was close to Michael. Luke, on the other hand, you had no idea who he was. There were thousands of angels in the Celestial Realm so that wasn’t too surprising.

You packed your essentials, and said your goodbyes to close friends. Michael said he’d take care of your duties - which worried you. Were you not doing a good enough job? Was he going to replace you? Shaking your head, you told yourself not to worry. You only had to get through one year; and one year was nothing compared to the lifetime you lived.

One year in the Devildom.

One year with Lucifer.

***

It was early morning, the sky was bright and the air was fresh. Rolling to your side, you saw your luggage sitting next to the door. You jolted up.

“I thought that was a bad dream.” Rubbing your temple, you get out of bed and quickly get ready. There wasn’t a time written on the letter, but it was safe to assume you were already late. You rushed to the gates, and saw the other two other angels.

“I can’t believe we’re getting sent to the Devildom! There’s demons there!” The small boy complained.

“Well, demons need a home, too,” the other one teased.

Michael was also there.

“Ah, MC, you’re late.”

“I’m sorry. I -”

“This is Simeon and Luke, you should get to know them,” he interrupted you.

You shook their hands and introduced yourself. Never having met either angel, you were surprised with their looks. Simeon was absolutely gorgeous - formed by God himself. Luke, well, he was much younger than you anticipated; he must’ve only been a thousand years old - if that.

“Alright, it’s time to go. Be on your best behavior, you three represent the Celestial Realm.”

Everyone nods, and heads into the portal, one by one. You look back, saying a temporary goodbye to your beloved home.

Stepping out of the portal, the first thing you notice is how dark the environment is. The second thing you notice is that you’re in a large council room with a group of young men.

“Welcome to the Devildom,” a handsome man with red hair says. “I’m Lord Diavolo.”

You nod, giving a small smile, your stomach is doing flips.

“This is Lucifer -” Lord Diavolo continues his speech, but at the mention of Lucifer you tune out. Your eyes travel up and down him, trying to engrain his image to your brain. Never had you met him, only hearing the stories about him and his brothers. He looked mean.

“MC?” Lord Diavolo calls out again.

“Ah, yes?” Your cheeks light up, he kindly chuckles at your embarrassment.

“I was asking about what you do back home?”

“I-I’m a seraph.”

“You look young to be a seraph,” Lucifer responds boredly. Holding back the urge to roll your eyes, you cross your arms.

“I was created right after the war. In fact, I’ll be promoted to an Archangel after my training.”

Lucifer scoffs at this.

“You really think Michael would make you an Archangel?”

“I am your replacement, after all.”

He didn’t have a comeback for that, and by the look on Lord Diavolo’s face, he was not to continue quarreling. You meet the rest of the brothers: Mammon, Levi, Satan, Asmo, and Beel. Perhaps your memory was jumbled up when you walked through the portal - you swore there was another brother. They have interesting personalities to say the least, you were glad you didn’t need to interact with them that much.

“Lord Diavolo, where will we be staying?” You assumed you three angels would be lodged together - oh how you assumed wrong.

“Right, well, there’s another exchange student - he’s a human. He’s requested to stay with angels so that he can learn more about them.”

“Okay, that’s no problem.”

“The problem is Purgatory Hall only has three rooms. And I’ve been told that Simeon is Luke’s guardian. I doubt you’ll want to share a room with another man, so the only other option is the House of Lamentation.”

“House of Lamentation?”

“It’s where we reside,” Satan speaks up. “Oh and it’s haunted.” Was he trying to scare you?

“It ain’t haunted! Stop talkin’ like that before you invite spirits in!” Squeals Mammon.

“Both of you, enough.” Lucifer grabs Mammon by the collar. “You’re going to look after her, and make sure nothing happens to her, do you understand me?” Mammon mumbles complaints but is otherwise compliant.

“I don’t need a babysitter. I can protect myself.”

“You’ve never met a demon until today, you will be escorted for your duration here.” You disliked his smuggish tone. He thought he was better than you. A smart retort would have come out of your mouth had it not been for Simeon.

“MC, I’m going to take Luke to the Purgatory hall, I’ll see you later.”

“It was nice meeting you both.” You say your goodbyes and follow Mammon. The walk to the House of Lamentation was full of fussing coming from your demon counterpart.

“I can’t believe I’m stuck babysitting a dumb angel.”

“I’m not exactly thrilled about it either.” You mumbled. “In fact, there really is no reason for you to watch over me. After all, I am a powerful angel. Simeon doesn’t need a babysitter so I shouldn’t either.”

“That’s right! I just need to show you how to get around, but you can totally take care of yourself. Huh, you are smarter than you look.” He’s one to talk.

Mammon showed you around the town real quick and then led you to the House of Lamentation. You had gotten quite a few stares, your outfit made you stick out like a sore thumb. Your body was adorn with a flowy white dress with gold accents, and a gradient teal cape draped over your shoulders. You made a mental note to go shopping for clothes as soon as you could.

“Alright, this is it.” You entered through the front door - the house was grand, it was more like a mansion. Mammon led you to your room, said ‘see ya’, and left just as quick.

Sighing, you sit on your bed. The covers were pink, you wondered who was the last occupant. The day had barely started and you already felt overwhelmed. Had it been up to you, you would’ve just stayed in your room and avoided the brothers all together. But a single knock at your door ruined those plans. Getting up, you reached for the door knob and opened the door. In front of you was a giant - his name was Beel, right? You were having trouble keeping track.

“Hi, MC. I was wondering if you were hungry.” At that moment, your stomach started to growl. That’s right, you were in such a rush this morning that you didn’t get to eat. In response, Beel’s stomach growled right back. A small blush covered his cheeks. “Want to go get lunch?”

“Sure.” You followed Beel not knowing where he was taking you; he went on and on about Hell’s Kitchen and how delicious their food was, so it was safe to assume you were headed there.

The restaurant was fairly busy, and you could’ve swore you heard the staff groan when you both sat down.

“Do you come here often?” You cringed at yourself - that sounded like an awful pick up line. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Oh yeah, I know the menu by heart. And when they come up with new stuff, I’m always first in line.”

A waitress came by to take your orders. Beel ordered the whole menu and then some, the waitress then looked at you; you weren’t sure what to pick, so you guessed and hoped it would taste good.

“So, tell me about yourself Beel.” You placed your chin in your hand, giving him your undivided attention.

“Myself?” He ponders for a moment. “I’m the Avatar of Gluttony.” You nod, encouraging him to continue. “I’m the sixth-born. And...I have a twin brother.”

“Twin? Which one?”

“Belphie...you haven’t met him.” Your brows furrowed in confusion, so there was another brother.

“Where is he?” Beel adjusted in his seat and avoided your eye contact.

“I can’t say. Just don’t mention it to Lucifer, he’ll get really mad.” You decided to drop the topic, and just in time the food was being brought out.

***

The plan was to avoid the brothers, but after hanging out with Beel you decided he could be an exception. When you got back to the house everyone was actually there this time. As you walked back to your room, another demon stopped you - this time, Asmo.

“Ahh! You look so gorgeous! You must tell me your skincare routine right now!” He practically drags you to his room, not giving you a chance to protest. He sits you down at his vanity, poking and prodding at your cheeks. “You’re not wearing any makeup?” He gasps.

“No, Michael doesn’t really allow it. He says being too vain is a...sin…” You shut yourself up, quickly realizing you’re in front of the reason Michael says that. Asmo laughs.

“Well, Michael can’t tell you what to do down here. Please let me do your makeup!” Asmo has a good point - Michael wasn’t down here, and a little makeup wouldn’t be as sinful as he says.

“Okay, sure!”

Asmo worked on your face for about an hour and a half - to say he was a perfectionist felt like an understatement. You weren’t even allowed to look at your face until he was done; right then and there, you promised yourself to never let Asmo do your makeup ever again.

“Ta-da! I’m all done.” Asmo spun you around so you could look in the mirror. To say you looked beautiful was also an understatement.

“Wow…” You didn’t know what to say; your skin was flawless, your eye color popped, and your lips looked kissable.

“You look absolutely radiant.” For a moment you forgot where you were and you forgot who you were with, but you engulfed Asmo in a big hug - making sure not to ruin your makeup. “You’re welcome!”

“Would you want to go shopping one of these days? I really should get new clothes.” Asmo’s face lit up at the mention of shopping.

“Of course, darling! But what’s wrong with what you’re wearing now? I absolutely miss wearing my angel garbs.”

“It just grabs a lot of attention.” You hold up a hand to stop Asmo from interrupting. “I know what you’re going to say, attention isn’t always a bad thing. But, I just don’t want a bunch of demons to know I’m an angel.”

“Well the problem isn’t your clothes, MC.”

“What do you mean?”

“You literally radiate purity. All angels do. You can be dressed like a whore and they’d still know you’re an angel.”

“Oh, I suppose you have a point.”

“We can definitely still go shopping though!” You nod in agreement.

“That’s great! Well, I should probably go look for Lucifer and actually discuss what my day-to-day routine will look like.”

You gave Asmo a goodbye hug. Beel and Asmo would be the only two boys you don’t avoid - at least, you kept telling yourself that.

***

Walking around the house, you looked for Lucifer’s office. Michael always complimented Lucifer’s work habits - something you lacked in comparison. Now, you definitely weren’t lazy and your tasks were always completed, but because of Michael everything felt like a competition with someone who wasn’t even competing anymore.

You saw a door slightly cracked and peered in. Just your luck, it was Lucifer’s office. Barging in without knocking first, you find him at his desk full of papers.

“Hey, Lucifer, I’ve got a couple of questions about my time here.” You ask as you get a little too comfortable in one of his chairs.

“Do they not teach manners in the Celestial Realm anymore?” You recalled Michael always nagging about you barging in unwelcomed. Old habits do die hard.

“Oh, right. Sorry.” You sit up straight, feeling like you’re about to be scolded. Instead, Lucifer sighs and puts down his pen.

“What kind of questions?”

“Well, what am I going to be doing?”

“You’ll be attending RAD, just like the rest of us. You’ll learn the history of Devildom, law, potions, just like any other school.”

“School?” Your body slumped in disappointment; you had graduated and become a seraph what felt like only a few years ago, you really had no interest in RAD whatsoever. “What about meetings with Lord Diavolo?”

“What about them?”

“I was sent for relations, not academics.” Getting up from your seat, you move to stand in front of his desk.

“This is an exchange program. You’ll go to school and when Lord Diavolo sends for you, I will personally tell you.” He picks his pen back up and continues his work.

“Michael said I was here to talk politics.”

“I’m sure he did say that.”

“Then why are you treating me like a child?”

“Because you’re acting like one.” You scoff at his response. “Honestly, I can’t believe they created someone like you to take my place.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Childish, impatient, insecure, self-important, oh and you have no manners. You’re nothing like me.” Your hands balled into fists in anger.

“News flash, Lucifer, there’s a reason I’m not you. They don’t want another...incident.”

The pen he was holding snapped into two pieces. Maybe it was the way you said it, or perhaps that you were a reminder of his worst memories, but Lucifer subconsciously turned into his demon form. In retaliation, you turned into your angel form. You only had two wings, compared to his four - another way you were inferior to him.

“Get out.” You stood there, processing what was happening. “NOW.”

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marmaligne · 3 years

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Hey yo! :D For the requests: how about a vld post-canon fanfic in which the reader helps Lance to move on, while still remembering Allura with respect and fond memories, which ends up in a sweet love confession? :3 If you need more details, please don’t hesitate to ask. Thanks, and have a good day!

[Lance McClain] “Under The Sun”

———————————————————————

“It’s been quite awhile now, I wonder when Lance is coming home?”

You pondered without so much as a doubt that he’d be back eventually, but you were a bit worried about your long-time best friend. It was late into the summer evening now, and the gradient dark blue was only just beginning to peek over the horizon. He was out late far more often now, though you supposed it was because Allura’s death had hit him hard, but you were in disbelief in seeing the usually peppy and flirtatious boy so…. depressed. It was heartbreaking to witness.

Staring out the farmhouse window, you watched the tall grass sway in the fields beyond and the slight breeze ruffle through the distant image of an apple orchard. The sun was nearly set by now, and soon the stars would be clear in the sky—a constant reminder of the paladins journey across the galaxy.

Knowing that there was so much life out there beyond the Earth you knew, you could barely comprehend just how significantly small your life was in comparison. You hadn’t travelled with the paladins or engaged in conversation with Allura beyond briefings during the Galran invasion, but you understood that the universe they witnessed was oh-so-incredibly vast and endless.

And now you felt oh-so-incredibly lonely in it. You weren’t close with many of the other paladins, besides Hunk and Pidge of course. Shiro had his new husband, Coran was too iffy for your tastes, and Keith…. well he was always off and away. With Altea restored to its rightful glory, commerce and politics between itself and Earth were bustling and swell, never better, and many of the paladins, including Lance from time-to-time, were busy making deals and new friends.

And you felt left out and abandoned because of that. It wasn’t fair that you hadn’t been accepted into the space academy, only because there was a limit to the number of accepted students, and it wasn’t fair Lance left without a single word to you, on some grand adventure for years on end without so much as a word, and it wasn’t fair that you were helpless in all things besides cooking or cleaning or feeding the animals out in the barn, or giving Lance a hug when he needed one, or looking after his siblings while his parents were gone or just—being there. It just wasn’t fair that they’d all experienced so much of life, and you hadn’t done anything in the meantime. Your meagre living was nothing in comparison to their heroism and praise. You felt selfish for thinking this way, so you never voiced your concerns to anybody, especially Lance.

“I wonder what he’d think of me, thinking this way,” you looked out unto the glimmer of stars appearing beyond the clouds, “he’d look at me and think ‘Life is never fair, you should deal with it.’ What a joke.”

You suppose you were satisfied for now with just being able to be near Lance, as a friend and support for when he needed you most, even if he didn’t know it.

“Oh Allura,” stepping outside, your eyes had an even clearer view of the skyline, and the sunset appearing within your vision, and you could almost feel the expanse of the universe looking down upon you, Allura among the vast amount of stars blazing within it, “tell me what I should do to help him. Tell me how I should be there for him, in the same way you were and in ways otherwise. How can I make him happy now you’re gone?”

Of course, you would never receive an answer beyond a pregnant silence, and the echo of your own voice over the hills and through the house where the children were asleep. You kept your eyes on the stars, hoping they’d give you some form of sign, an astrological message that could guide you, a vision of some kind, but there was only emptiness, the soft yet visible twinkle of each individual sun, burning lightyears away.

Sigh. You really should’ve expected this you suppose.

“Speaking to the sky, I’m selfish and an idiot!”

You gripped your [H/c] hair and yanked it downwards, chanting ‘idiot’ over and over again, like a mantra or a prayer, hoping it would relieve some of your many frustrations, until you heard a small sound from a hay bale around the side of the house, near an old trough used to store feed.

“Hello? Anybody there?”

Silence was all that answered at first, but then a small series of whimpers came from the area. You grabbed a pitchfork and slowly made your way over to the bale, creeping closer and bringing the pitchfork up to your chest, ready to strike.

“AAAAAAAAAAH!”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

A terrified Lance dunked himself into the trough, getting his backside stuck before tipping it over and having it land on top of him while attempting to crawl away.

“Dios mío [Y/n], you scared me!” Lance stood up and dusted off his jacket and pants, rubbing at his eyes and making an awful attempt at hiding his face away from your sight.

“Well I’m sorry, oh merciful Lord Lance, but you being secretive and not answering me when I asked has a lot to do with that.”

He looked away from you for a further moment before responding.

“Well, I uh…. just wanted to be alone for a minute y’know? All my siblings and family n’ stuff, kind of makes my back stiff and mind numb from time-to-time.”

You watched solemnly as he tried to laugh it off, sitting back down on the edge of the trough, head leaning in his hands and staring off into the distance, obviously bothered by something. You were curious, but you didn’t have any right to pry if he didn’t want to tell you first. You’d respect his wishes if he really did just want to be alone.

“Well, alright then,” you smiled softly at him, forcing yourself off your knees and turning around to head back inside, “if you want to talk, I’ll be back inside. I’ll be in my room if you need me.”

You began to walk away, adamant on getting back upstairs to the comfort of your bed and laying awake all night, when you felt a small weight on the back of your shirt. Lance’s hand had managed to grasp the fabric while you were walking away, and though you turned around to ask him why, he had barely moved from his position on the trough, only gazing at you with unshed tears in his eyes.

“Can you stay for a moment,” he pleaded, “please? It’ll only take a minute [Y/n], I swear.”

‘Allura give me strength’ you thought, letting out an exasperated sigh and seating yourself beside him on the ledge, barely glancing at him again, preferring to turn your sights to the horizon once more. You knew it’d be another nightly session of listening to his fears and sorrows, meanwhile drowning in your own self-doubt and anxieties. This also meant that tomorrow you’d wake up questioning your worth again, comparing yourself to the woman you’d come to respect and admire, and a woman who was now gone off to the afterlife, long before you.

“Tell me what’s up Lance. What’s eating away at you this time tonight, huh? Lemme guess, is it your girlfriend again?”

You watched as Lance fiddled with a piece of straw, rolling it back and forth between his palms, keeping his gaze on the sunset ahead.

“No,” he muttered, “more of an apology really.”

You nearly did a spit take, staring at him like he was a chicken with two heads. You never thought you’d be hearing an apology from the Casanova himself, let alone one aimed at you. Usually he was too cocky to have second thoughts.

“Sheesh Lance, what’s gotten into you? Did your mom finally drill some manners into that peabrain of yours?”

You jokingly put him in a headlock and started ruffling his hair, Lance desperately trying to remove your arm so he could fix his ruined part.

“[Y/n] c’mon! I styled my hair hours ago, I nearly kept it perfect for the whole day!”

He began running his fingers through his hair to put it back in place. Concentrating on perfecting it once more.

“Oh Lance, what kind of farmer like you needs styling gel? It gets greasy in a couple minutes anyways so why even bother.”

“It’s the thought that counts [Y/n]!”

You snorted as he huffed at you, the two of you quipping at each other reminded you of the days before he left off to the academy. Then you remembered,

“Oh right, the apology. Glad to see you learned some common courtesy, but what’s this all about Lance?”

You really needed answers. He suddenly went quiet and seemed to contemplate something for a moment. He worried you, and he knew it too, that you were expecting an explanation for an apology he probably wasn’t ready to give.

“Well you see [Y/n],” he stared directly at you, “I know that I’ve been down recently, and that you’ve always been…. there, I guess, for me when I needed you to be. And I know that I’ve never even thanked you or given you something in return, and that by using you as a way to escape my own problems, I’ve given you some of your own,”

He stopped for a moment to see if you were still paying attention, and seeing you looking at him with encouragement, he continued,

“I’m so sorry, [Y/n]. Really, I am. I was being dumb like always and pouring out my feelings onto someone who had difficulties of their own to deal with, and I never really thought about how I was hurting you…. I’m sorry. When Allura was here, and I was back out in space, battling alien hordes and saving the galaxy…. I felt like everything was right in the world, and that I was living my best life, being beside all the people I cared about, with friends I could trust. I didn’t realize until later that I completely forgot about you in the process, the best friend I left behind, who mattered maybe even more to me than I thought. I never meant to forget you, and I never meant to hurt you.”

He began to get nervous, losing the cocky persona he developed over the years completely, turning downtrodden and forcing out a final “I hope you can forgive me.”

Then he went quiet.

“….I never hated you, y’know,” you began, finally responding, “I never once despised you for leaving without me. I knew you’d come back someday, when I heard a lion took off from the desert that day, I just didn’t know when.”

You kept going, “If anything, I hated myself sometimes, for being selfish and wanting you to come back sooner, or blaming you in my mind for not taking me with you. It always felt unfair to me, that I was stuck here in a constant cycle of boring life, while you were out patrolling the universe, fighting Galra and going on cool missions-”

“-and nearly dying, like, 50 times!” Lance interrupted.

“….and nearly dying 50 times, yes.”

The sun was nearly gone now, disappearing quickly before you, clocking the time you’d been outside conversing in the summer heat—the pale moon climbing the sky behind you.

The stars shone ever-brighter, and the breeze had settled down, the grass at your feet stamped in and no longer swaying, and the crickets in the field were chirping, with the cows grazing in the meadow below, almost ready to head in for the night.

“I’m jealous Lance. And frustrated. But I never spoke a word of anything to you, because I loved you too much to bother you with any more problems than you already had. Nothings your fault, I was only emotional, and I have no disrespect for any of your friends or partners, including Allura. I only wish that you could’ve been happier.”

Ending your rant, you faced Lance again and shrugged, acting nonchalant, like nothing you said mattered at the moment. But he knew that whatever he said next would make a large impact on you.

“You loved me?”

You relaxed a little, “Still do Lance, never stopped even after you left. But, you came back with a space alien girlfriend, I knew I had to let you go.”

Allura was the light of his life, and he was the happiest you’d ever seen him in the weeks before her death. If she hadn’t needed to make a sacrifice, they would’ve probably grown old and had a life together, a family too, and he would have become the Altean King, with you far out of the picture. The little markings on the ridge of his cheekbones still detailed just how loving of a relationship the two were in. Even after her passing, you wouldn’t make a move when Lance only thought of you as a friend.

Both yourself and Lance were gazing at the sky now, completely silent, and yet there was an underlying comfort in the stillness, one which permeated through the air around you and invited a conversation to be had. Lance seemed to wish to speak in order to break it, scratching at the markings whilst trying to find the words to talk to you.

“Oh quiznak, words are too hard!”

Lance reaches across the trough to grasp the hand you’re using to stable yourself on the ledge, bringing it up to the space between the two of you and wearing the most serious expression you’ve ever seen on his face.

“When I was in third grade, I ran into a small child in the hallway and accidentally spilled their thermos of soup all over the floor. That tiny [H/c] kid became my desk-mate for all of third and fourth grade, and I remember having to give them my baloney sandwich because they wouldn’t stop crying till I did. In fifth grade, that same kid switched our lunchboxes because I had the better pizza pops, and in sixth grade, while taking a math test, they threw up all over the floor and I laughed like crazy; ended up going with them to the office because the teacher ‘didn’t like my attitude’. In seventh grade, I went to their birthday party and popped all the balloons, I stole half the cake and made off with three goodie bags before anyone could catch me. In eighth grade we became friends, and played pranks together on the other students during April fools, tipped an outhouse, and did each others homework because we both sucked at school. When I was in ninth grade, I gave them a Burger King crown and told them they ruled my world…. I know you know who I’m talking about.”

You began laughing the hardest you had in years, looking back on all the memories you and Lance had built up over the years, times when neither of you knew what would happen, and had big dreams and hopes for the future. The future had turned out to be far different from what both of you had expected.

“To be fair Lance, you were the one who threw up during that math test, not me. You cried for your mom all the way through the school and passed out on a couch in the lobby.”

“Shut up [Y/n], I’m attempting to be sentimental!”

When the laughter died down, and the world was quiet again, you gazed down at the entwined hands that rested between you two, and lazily swung them back and forth to see if he’d let go. When he didn’t, you smiled a bit,

“So what, this means your willing to try? To move on from Allura just like that? Forget everything you had with her and stick with me for awhile?”

He smiled brightly at you, as bright as the sun that could barely be seen, the final slivers fading away over the prairie.

“Allura’s not entirely gone,” he taps his markings, “these babies are a constant reminder of that. I’ll never forget the happiness she gave me, but I don’t want to keep dwelling on the fact that she’s gone. You’re here with me, more than anything, and I hope that we could stay this way for as long as we can.”

“I’d like that.”

It’s far too late to keep outside you realize, and the night brings with it a chilling cold that practically freezes your clothes to your skin, and tinges the air with frost. The fall season is coming, and summer is nearly over, and with it comes the colourful leaves, and the frosted grass, and the wilting flowers. You stand up, dragging Lance with you, and dust off the seat of your pants, preparing to head inside to bed.

Now the darkness has settled, the sun is gone. You take your hands and guide Lance around the house to the doorway. The door creaks open and shuts behind the two of you, and as you say your goodnights, you head off to your room. And as the glow of the moon enters through your window, enshrouding the walls in a pale light, you lay there and ponder.

Truly, you hope that you can spend many more days with Lance down in the fields, and with the cows and the tall grass, and out in the apple orchard, where the two of you will lie, down in the top soil, under the sun.

———————————————————————

BONUS:

“[Y/n], know that you’ll always be my Burger Queen.”

“Lance please. Shut the fu*k up.”

———————————————————————

✨ Hope you enjoyed ✨

#lance mcclain #voltron #vld #vld lance #vld fandom #vld allura #vld x reader #voltron x reader #lance x allura #lance x reader #reader insert #x reader #writing

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clavicuss-vile · 2 years

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25 Days of TES Cheer #13 - Feast!

As always~~ props to @korvanjund for the prompts!! this has become such a fun staple part of my day i am going to be heartbroken when it ends </3

TW FOR BLOOD! This is about vampires so there's a fair bit but its just saying like "blood-infused wine" that kinda stuff, so nothing graphic!

TLDR: Nephthys' first feast as a fledgling member of the Volkihar Court. Also note: Molag Bal does not exist. they were made by Azura instead :) (more on that here) This is also kinda long but i'm very happy with it JSHDHSDH pls enjoy <33

It was surprisingly warm within the large stone halls of Volkihar Keep. Nephthys had expected cold that chilled him to the bone, especially given it's location in the Sea of Ghosts, but the temperature was quite agreeable. He considered that perhaps, the castle was cold, and it was the new vampiric blood coursing through his veins that had acclimatized him to it so quickly.

The dunmer inhaled with shock as he stepped from the dark corridor into the dining room. The main hall had been lavishly adorned before, when he had returned with Serana just as Azurah commanded, but now, the servants of the court had clearly prepared it for dinner. Gradiented banners of red, orange and purple adorned every wall, window, and table. The tables themselves were laid out in two long lines running parallel through the great hall, made of rich, dark wood - he assumed a strong oak, or perhaps a mahogany - and atop them rested finery of the highest quality he'd seen in his life. Goblets, plates and cutlery of the finest, most intricate gold lined the tables, with enough space to comfortably fit every member of the court. The newest member, he remembered, being himself.

He stood awkwardly in the doorway, gazing at the plentiful selection of seats. Out of everyone who had congregated for the feast, he only knew Serana; which, even then, had only been from a few days travel from Dimhollow. However, he was snapped out of his awkward shuffling by a shout from one of the tables.

"Young-blood, over here!" The voice came from a cheery-looking breton woman, seated towards the end. She waved Nephthys over with an inviting hand, and he sat down next to her. "Serana will be here soon, don't worry." She smiled. She had a kind face; very youthful and surprisingly gentle. She was, however, still adorned with the bright indigo eyes and black face lines running from her lips to her nose and jaws - a trait of the volkihar strain that Nephthys supposed he himself now had. He hadn't had time to check a mirror yet. Her hair was similar in colour to his; while Nephthys' had pale silver, the older vampire had pure white, accentuating her de-saturated skin tone. It was short, cut into a curly bob, with two small buns on either side of her head. She wore a beautiful layered dress of typical High Rock design; fashioned from a combination of white and pink silk and satin, adorned with silver embroidery and delicate pearls. She seemed a stark juxtaposition to the dark gothic interior of the castle. "Oh!" She gasped, loudly. "Silly me, I haven't introduced myself! I am Rosalié Estelle Maryam the third, from the - now extinct - bretonny noble house of Maryam, but you can call me Estelle. Or Rosie. Or Maryam, I really don't mind!"

"Right," Nephthys smiled awkwardly, not used to the amount of energy supplied by this woman. "Thank you, Estelle." He added after a brief second's deliberation on which of the many names he had been offered to use.

From behind them came a small chuckle.

"Now, now Mimi. You're scaring our new member of the family."

Nephthys turned in his seat to see Serana, now dressed in a dark, equally lavish gown, only of nordic design, not bretonny. He was glad to see a familiar face amongst the crowd. She seated herself on the other side of Rosalié, closest to the head of the table, which the young dunmer had assumed was reserved for Lord Harkon. He was glad the patriarch hadn't joined them yet.

"Serana!" Rosalié beamed, wrapping the lady of the court in a tight embrace.

"I suppose you've met my Rosalié now," Serana laughed pleasantly. "Mimi, this is Nephthys. Nephthys, this is... my girlfriend, Rosalié."

Ah, the demiprince thought, now the unbridled excitement makes sense. He briefly wondered if the breton was always this bubbly, or if it was purely down to Serana's return. One look at her bright eyes lead him to assume the former. "I... suppose you've never attended a vampiric feast, have you Nephthys?" Serana inquired, pouring blood into the goblet before him. "It's quite the event."

"I haven't, but most of my friends are vampires... All of them, in fact." He confessed, counting Icarus, Aries and Amaranth on his fingers. Serana cocked an eyebrow, squinting slightly.

"Oh? What's a vampire hunter doing with so many vampire friends?"

Nepthys wasn't so sure what to do here. On one hand, he felt like he could trust Serana, given that it was her Azurah had sent him to find, but, as Azurah's champion he was acutely aware of the gifts of persuasion that her strain of vampires possessed. Luckily for him, he was also acutely aware of his own gifts as a demiprince of aforementioned persuasion.

"I would rather not go into that with you, right now." He said, simply, mirroring her own words from back in the crypt. "But know I did not intend to stay. Azurah is my mistress, I follow only her will."

Serana and Rosalié exchanged a worried glance for only a second, long enough for Nephthys to notice. He had expected there was a slight against Azura occurring here; enough for her to send her champion to intervene, and he had hoped that her mention would be enough to elicit some details. It seemed he'd been correct.

"I would not say that so loud, little one. There are some here who... do not work in our mistress' best interests." Rosalié said into Nephthys' downturned ear, voice as hushed as the bubbly woman could manage. He thought to dispute the "little one" nickname, but given as she was likely centuries older than he, he allowed it. Serana hummed in agreement, and as Nephthys was about to inquire further, the servants arrived.

"Prepare yourself for the feast of your lifetime." Serana smiled, reaching behind Estelle to pat at Nephthys' shoulder. Around them, maids and butlers scurried around as if in a dance, delivering portions of beverages and foods to every seat at the tables. He had expected the blood, which they refreshed in the golden pitchers, but he had not accounted for the selection of blood-infused wines, ales, and ciders that were also being poured at incredible speed. He declined these offers, shifting in his seat at the all-too familiar scent of alcohol, before the meals arrived. All four courses were served at once, plated on massive platters in the middle of the tables, though no one made a move to begin adding the selection of foods to their plates. Nephthys' eyes glossed over the table, noting all kinds of foods - all imbued with blood, ranging from blood sausages to pancakes, soups, even a type of curry he recognized as Nibenean made its way to the table. "Don't look so overwhelmed." Serana smiled, "you don't have to eat it all."

Quiet chatter amongst the tables came to a stark halt with the simple tink tink tink of spoon on goblet. Lord Harkon strode to his place at the head of the table, and Nephthys felt himself unwillingly shying away from his presence. Rosalié seemed to pick up on this, her pointy breton ears twitching in sympathy as she rested a comforting hand on his knee. It reminded him of home in Riften, with Icarus and Aries, and he leaned into the touch.

"My court!" The Lord began, "Brothers and sisters of the blood, this is no ordinary feast. For today, my daughter - your lady - has been returned to me by our newest lion among men." He gestured towards Nephthys, and he felt his ears turn hot as all eyes turn to him. He wished desperately to vanish into shadow, to go home, or perhaps simply be swallowed whole by the ground at this very moment, plunging eternally into the endless abyss of Sithis, but he was here for a purpose. The reason, he was yet to discover, but Azurah had sent him here for a purpose. He could not leave yet, no matter how many eyes turned to him. He could not disappoint her. Thankfully, most eyes drifted back to the court patriarch as he began to speak again. "For that, I am most grateful. So, in honour of my daughter's safe return, and of our newest, begin the feast!"

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ruffboijuliaburnsides · 3 years

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I got tagged for this by the delightful @las-lus. ta, dear heart!

1. why did you choose your url?

I fell in love with The Amazing Devil (and have yet to fall out with it) and just... yeah. It’s from one of my favorite of their lyrics:

Day by day oh lord three things I pray That I might understand as best I can How bold I was, could be - will be - still am, by god still am

2. any sideblogs? if you have them, name them and why you have them.

Not really, unless you count my old blog that I abandoned due to some interpersonal fandom wank shit on a totally other website that i just... did not want to potentially have to deal with fielding on tumblr as well, and I’d linked regularly to my tumblr so I knew ppl knew where to find me. (I don’t much care any more, it’s @actuallyclintbarton)

Unfortunately for y’all, I do not give a fuck about restricting my fandom reblogs and shitposting to thematically appropriate blogs, y’all get to deal with ALL OF IT. ;)

3. how long have you been on tumblr?

2012! my original username was bemyselfloudly. (i’ve also been through shit like... whatwouldcapdo, queersuperteens, wrotemyown, actuallyclintbarton, cottoncandydumpass, and ruffboijuliaburnsides. I know I’m missing a few lmao. I don’t change my URL on a whim mostly anymore)

4. do you have a queue tag?

I’ve had quite a few! I think the one I kept longest was “always we will queue as one”, from the Avengers Assemble theme song? Mostly bc I forgot to change it for a while. currently, it’s “i promise queue i’m not broken”, from TAD’s “Farewell Wanderlust”.

Other entries: “i’ve got red in my queue”, “to queue the monsters we created monsters”, “i am not queueing away my shot”, “were queueing it man. were making it happen.”, and “abracafuqueue”.

5. why did you start your blog in the first place?

I randomly found a trans guy’s blog who was... like he wore stockings and heels and makeup and dressed really feminine but was still A TRANS GUY. And that spoke to my lil not-out-as-trans-to-anyone-at-all heart, and so the first handful of posts were probably introspective shit. And then I started reblogging MCU stuff. And then birdie got a blog and I was lost.

6. why did you choose your icon/pfp?

Oh! My icon is currently art of one of my many DnD characters, a gnomish warlock named Cricket! My wife got a commish of her and her halfling girlfriend Ambria on Flight Rising from a particularly delightful artist, and I love it dearly.

Here’s the full piece, btw (with a gradient on it bc the original is transparent):

Cricket’s whole “starting concept” is basically just “Party Girl-era Ke$ha, but a gnome, a lesbian, and bound to a warlock patron”, she has fully helped win a cage match by hitting a guy in the dick with a folding chair, and I love her constantly drunk or hungover lil ass DEARLY.

7. why did you choose your header?

It’s Joey Batey, who sang the line my url/header text is from, but also it’s fuckin HAWT.

8. what’s your post with the most notes?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAH *sob* It’s a post from February with like 63k notes about Quibi doing a quarantine home video version of The Princess Bride.

9. how many mutuals do you have?

I have no earthly idea and I have no way to check. PROBABLY AROUND 200?

10. how many followers do you have?

5,109. Gods bless you all, why are you HERE????

11. how many people do you follow?

392. I am very picky, clearly XD

12. have you ever made a shitpost?

I mean, hasn’t EVERYONE?

13. how often do you use tumblr each day?

anywhere from “no times” to “essentially constantly”. It really depends on the day and where my brain is.

14. did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? who won?

Not with any particular blog. I’ve got particular arguments I feel strongly about and will fight any time I see it on my dash, but it’s not a particular FEUD or anything. Possibly the closest is the artist formerly known as zarabitha bc I had serious issues with their headcanons/fandom policing, but that’s ancient news and I’m p sure she never recognized me as a unique individual.

15. how do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

i resent them and generally actively AVOID reblogging them. Don’t fuckin try to guilt me into shit motherfuckers, I’m not here for that.

16. do you like tag games?

Yes!!! I don’t always respond as promptly as I’d like, but I adore them!!!!

17. do you like ask games?

Ditto above. LOVE ‘EM. Not always timely.

18. which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

Probably @seananmcguire and @thebibliosphere are the closest to tumblr famous amongst my mutuals.

19. do you have a crush on a mutual?

....I mean, YEAH? it’s kinda a foregone conclusion, I crush easy.

20. tags?

WHOEVER WANTS TO. I mean this. Pls tag me as having tagged you. I just can’t CHOOSE. So fuck that. I guess specifically @jackironsides and @persony-pepper but specifically pls JUST IF YOU WANNA DO THIS, DO IT.

#meme

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mitsuaziel · 4 years

Text

Rain (Barbatos x Reader)

Female! Reader

Slight angst but with a happy ending

In the human realm there you stood, under the heavy rain that wets your figure, soaking your entire being with its polluted water but you couldn't care less about how you'll get sick afterwards. No. You stare into nothingness, the heavy rain greatly limiting your field of vision to maybe one to two meters and even so, objects are extremely blurry.

The reason why you're under the rain is because you're heartbroken. It's stupid, yes, you know but he was your fiance of three years so it's heart shattering and as if your life line is plugged out when you caught him in action with another woman, balls deep into her as her moans fill the room, clearly having a good time. The reason for his cheating is because you didn't want to have sexual intercourse with him but being the religious person you are, you stated that you didn't want to have sex until after marriage but it seems that he couldn't wrap his mind around the idea.

'He only wants you for your body', your best friend said, attempting to comfort you but it didn't do much as your mind wanders to that specific moment in your life.

'He's the one missing out! It just means that he wasn't your soulmate. God has other plans for you', then why did He has to make it so painful to you?

'Fuck that guy! I hope he gets condemned to Hell', you wish too but you try to get yourself out of that mind set since it's quite the sin to wish someone that.

All these allegations are true, yet here you are, under the rain thinking negatively about yourself. Weren't you pretty enough? Wasn't your company enough for him? Satisfying enough for him? You let out a shaky breath and close your eyes, the rain getting heavier if that's possible. You really want to disappear off the surface of the Earth but you didn't. Again, it's a great sin if you did it.

So, you resorted to just being sad and crying out your sadness all alone. It was... Comforting, to say the very least and with the rain, it's easy to cover up your tears and voice.

"ARGH!" You screamed out loud. You could barely make out your own voice. Perfect.

So you screamed again and again and again until you ran out of energy. If you can't hurt or kill yourself, you might as well tire yourself and just go to sleep. But even so, you figured that you might have nightmares regarding what happened to you just yesterday so you might as well completely drain your energy until you can't move.

With one last scream of frustration and anger, you drop to your knees and let tears flow down your face. God, you just wanted to kill yourself but you can't. Sometimes you wish you weren't that religious but it's these times that you're also glad.

How long have you been under the rain? Half an hour? An hour? More than that? You don't know nor do you care at this point. You certainly couldn't care less about your health as well. You just want to hide under the rain so when you thought the rain stopped, you were confused. It's still raining yet why aren't you under it? Then, you look up.

An umbrella.

"Wha?" You breathe out under your breath as you look at the person holding the umbrella.

Due to the darkness, you can't really see his features but you can tell that he's wearing a suit and has gloves on. His expression though empty as ever, his eyebrows are furrowed as if to mimic confusion. He holds out a hand for you to grab and for a moment, flashbacks of your ex-boyfriend doing the same fills your vision and you shake your head.

The man assumes that you didn't want help and retracts his hand. You stand up but wobbled a bit due to you kneeling for so long, causing you to accidentally grab the man's arm. He was as still as a statue, seemingly unbothered by the fact that you just threw yourself towards him. You mutter an apology even though he won't hear it and didn't bother to squeeze water out your hair or clothes.

"Are you okay, miss?" He asks.

You nod and look away, slightly embarrassed of your appearance at the moment. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'll be going now."

"Wait."

You turn to him. "Do you need something, sir?"

Lightning strikes, lighting up the darkness and you only manage to see his features clearly for a few seconds. Beautiful emerald eyes, green hair gradienting to a teal down his bangs on the left side of his face and no expression at all yet it seems to compliment his handsome features. For a moment, you forgot to breathe. How can a man this beautiful exist?

"You just seem sad and I know that I'm just a stranger, a nobody to you but I do have some time to spare before I go back to serve my master." He states.

You were suspicious. The world is a dangerous place and if a handsome man like Ted Bundy can turn out to be a manipulative murderer, then surely, the man in front of you can do the same.

When no answer is heard from you, he sighs and puts a hand over his heart before bowing down to you, much to your surprise. "I am Barbatos, the butler to my master, Lord Diavolo."

"I... I see." You weren't expecting a butler to be by your side.

"You now know my name, my occupation and my master. Surely, this is enough information for you." The butler, you now know as Barbatos, said.

"Oh, uh, yeah." You awkwardly fidget around. He's just too formal with you that makes it uncomfortable for you.

"So, may I know what is the cause of your sadness? Why are you just kneeling under the heavy rain? Are you not scared of what might happen to you if you were to stay too long out here?" He shoots you question after question.

You wanted to tell him but you're scared of the thought of him ridiculing you. Your fiance's friends did, is he any different?

Barbatos sighs once again and mumbles something before saying, "I do not wish to make you uncomfortable. I do apologize if I do happen to make you feel that way. All I want to do is lend an ear. It is not too wrong of me to do so, is it now?"

You look at the more interesting ground. "Why do you even want to listen to my problems anyway? A butler like you shouldn't help me. You must have other jobs to do and even if I tell you, it's not like you're gonna use that information."

"Maybe, maybe not. But I just want to help."

Damn, he's persistent, you thought. It's not like you're ungrateful, it's more like preventing other people from meddling into your own problems that you can handle by yourself. You didn't need or want someone else's help. You can figure everything out yourself.

And yet...

"Kill me."

The butler was surprised. "Excuse me, but could you repeat what you just said?"

"Ah..." You shake your head. What were you thinking? "I'm sorry. I'll leave."

Just as you turn away, a hand grabs your arm. "Wait."

You wait for him to talk.

"I know I have no place to say this, and it's ironic that I'm the one who's saying this, but don't do it. Life may be hard for you but surely, there must be people who love you. I don't know what happened and really, I have no say in this, if you're thinking about suicide, shouldn't you do something you love? Be with the people you love instead of suffering all alone and eventually hurting other people?"

You look back at him with tears welling up in your eyes. "This is a stupid reason and all, but I just... Can't. The person I love betrayed me. He... He promised."

Barbatos lets go of your hand. "Then, that just means he's a liar, a toxic person in your life. Is it not a relief that you found out instead of being blinded by his lies?"

You wanted to talk back but you bite back your tongue. It is true. Better now then never. You think for a while before forcing a smile on your face. "I suppose so. Thanks for... Talking, I guess. I really appreciate it."

A small smile curl his lips, enhancing his already handsome face. "You're welcome."

*****

Barbatos finally went back to Lord Diavolo's castle after buying all the necessary items from the human realm.

"Barbatos! There you are! Where have you been? It took longer than usual. Did it run out of stock or something?" Lord Diavolo asks as he goes through his endless pile of paperwork.

The butler bows down to his master as a form of apology. "I am sorry, My Lord. No, it's not because of that."

"Then, what took you so long?"

Memories of the rainy scene plays in his head but he answered differently despite knowing that Lord Diavolo can tell between a truth and a lie. "There was a fuss over a mistake I did, My Lord. Wouldn't this new generation call that a 'Karen'?"

Though he knows, Lord Diavolo was more interested in the name the humans gave for someone with such an attitude. "A Karen, huh? Call Levi here! I need to know what that means!"

The day continues on like normal but Barbatos kept on wondering why the devils did he help such a helpless human who's willing to kill themself just because of a broken heart? He doesn't understand his own actions and frankly, he doesn't wish to know why either. He's a demon, a duke, an earl, he shouldn't care so why did he help that one human?

Ahh, of course.

"Welcome to Devildom!"

"Barbatos?"

He bows down to the new exchange student and smiles at you. "Welcome, MC."

"You were a fucking demon?!" You were surprised rather than scared.

"Were?" Lucifer asks but is ignored when both you and Barbatos wouldn't answer him.

How have the Fates destined the both of you to meet again.

#obey me #obey me barbatos #barbatos #barbatosxreader #obey me fanfic #rain #obey me diavolo #diavolo #obey me barbatos x reader #x reader #female! reader #slight angst #angst with a happy ending

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capricornus-rex · 3 years

Text

A Shadow of What You Used to Be (10)

Chapter 10: A Home Away | Cal Kestis x Irele Skywalker

Cal Kestis x Fem! OC

Requested by Anon

Summary: There is another! Years after young Anakin Skywalker departed Tatooine, his mother Shmi delivers a second child—this time, a daughter. Whilst the circumstance of the girl’s birth remains unexplained, Irele Skywalker has yet to choose the true path between those laid out for her.

Tags: Fem! OC, Irele Skywalker, Force-sensitive! OC, Anakin’s Younger Sister, Skywalker! OC, Darth Vader’s Secret Apprentice, Long-lost Sibling

Requesting to be tagged: @heavenly1927

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Chapters: Prelude – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 | Previous: Part 9 | Next: Part 11 | Masterlist

11 of ?

The maintenance droids only needed an hour to prepare a dorm for Irele within the command ship. Not that she would need a personal room in every ship she boards, but it would help if she did in the near future. The human guards did not need to wait for Irele to come to, they barged into the cell, pulled the poor girl by the arm to stand her up and then drag her out of the prison block while she could barely use her own two feet.

Irele’s eyes have not adjusted to the changing tones and gradients of lights of each part of the ship she passes through. She thought she said the question “Where are we going?” when the guards only heard an incoherent groaning at the throat.

The way from the prison block to her new chambers was a ten-minute walk, if one marched faster it would have been lesser. Upon reaching their destination, only one escorted her into her room and sat her down on the bed—to which she immediately fell limp and ended up lying down instead. While she was out cold, a nanny droid entered her bedroom to tend to whatever it can in the quarters; it took its time, in fact, until the girl came to. The droid’s sensors picked up the spike from Irele’s heart rate from slow to normal, it briskly turned around.

“It is fortunate that you’ve come to, milady. The serum from the probe has completely worn off. Should you feel slight nausea, do not be alarmed for it is normal as well. I can administer some painkillers to you with your choice of pill or syrup.”

The droid is programmed to speak in Basic and had a rather lulling, female voice—perhaps the most appropriate if you are to manufacture and program a droid for nursing.

“Milady? What are you talking about? Who are you? What are you?”

“You are here as a ward under the strict order of Master Vader. I am HY-L33, Nanny Droid,” it brought its head into a bow, “At your service, Milady Irele.”

“Why call me Milady when I’m kept hostage here?” she sits up and examines the room.

“Oh, you are mistaken, Milady. You are Lord Vader’s ward,” HY-L33 corrects. “And I have been tasked to take care of your basic needs and whims, if need be.”

“What I need is to go home! I don’t like being holed up in anywhere!”

The nurse droid lowered its head slowly, it stayed like so for a moment; with a rather sympathetic voice, HY-L33 responds, “I’m sorry, but I am incapable of fulfilling that whim, milady. I would suggest that you make yourself comfortable in this new one.”

Irele sighed, knowing that she’s talking to a wall here. She gave herself time to calm down and breathe. She passed her hands across her face and sighed.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be lashing out to you…” Irele inhaled. “What are you called again?”

“HY-L33, madam.”

Irele quietly parroted the name, “That’s a mouthful. How about I call you Haylee, is that alright?”

“If it proves to be more convenient for you, milady. Although personally, I do adore the name you’ve given me.”

Irele hummed as she managed a small smile, she hinted the chirp from the droid’s voice, relieved that she found some company out of the droid in this inorganic, cold room, she walked around to get a better feel of it now that the serum from the interrogation droid has worn off.

“Say, Haylee, do you know where we are?”

“We are aboard the command ship Anathema, the ship is within the Ulgoro system, and we are passing by the orbit of the planet Yelen.”

“How far are we from Tatooine?”

Haylee ran a quick scan from her processors, “We are approximately twenty-five parsecs away from the said Outer Rim planet.”

Irele breathed deeply, her heart sank, “That’s so far away…”

The droid’s photoreceptors picked up Irele’s increased heart rate and temperature. The girl was manifesting signs of anxiety: shivering hands, failing voice, and cold sweat.

“You are suffering from homesickness. Unfortunately, I do not have the appropriate medication for that, milady. Neither can I administer any medication for you. This is absolutely natural as you have been extracted from your real home to your current location.”

Irele took the deepest sigh and made a mantra.

Don’t lash out on the droid, you just screamed at it ten minutes ago.

She told this to herself mentally until she’s calmed herself down.

“Yeah, I am homesick. I left my family behind and…” she trailed off, realizing that the last people she was with were her friends. “My friends. They must be all worried sick about me.”

“You will be well taken care of here, Lady Irele.”

“Heh,” the girl huffed. “No need to be so formal. Just call me Irele.”

“As you wish… Mistress Irele.”

“Droids, gotta love ‘em…” she mumbled very quietly, knowing how acute droids’ hearing could be—depending on the model, that is.

–

Fortunately enough, Irele is indeed being taken care of.

Ever since she was moved to her own chambers in the Star Destroyer Anathema, she was thoroughly pampered—more or less—than anyone else in the ship, aside from Darth Vader. Never has she ever been well-fed in sixteen years! The serving portions were generous and they were quite tasty, but she had her moments where the food somewhat reminded her of home.

A uniformed officer enters Vader’s quarters to report of Irele’s adjustment to the new environment. Most of the officers feared that they’re speaking like a broken record, reporting the same thing to Vader every week—they had probably imagined it vexed him to be hearing the same thing over and over; it did them little comfort when adding their own personal observations of her such as asking for seconds with her food and interacting with the nanny droid, since she’s still shy and cautious from everyone else on board.Additionally, she was not yet allowed to wander off alone beyond her room. So, by all means, she is pretty much a hostage still—a rather pampered one, at the very least.

“Has she stopped her erratic behavior?”

“Fortunately so, Lord Vader, she has. Perhaps about a week and a half since her extraction, she had become somewhat… docile.”

Vader paused. He had presumed it was the effects of the interrogator droid’s syringe, but surely during the time the nanny droid was tending to the girl, the substance has flushed out since. Realizing that he truly knows nothing of what kind of person Irele is—compared from his earliest reference of her—he sighs with a quiet frustration under his mask.

“Very well. We are right on schedule. Carry on, captain.”

“Yes sir,” the captain bowed and dismissed himself militarily. His true posture showed when he rejoined his companion who had been waiting for him by the door. He hissed, “I didn’t conscript myself to the Imperial Fleet to be a babysitter!”

“Be more frustrated when Lord Vader does appoint you the official babysitter of the girl.”

“She’s quite a handful, don’t you think so?”

“Temperamental, to say the least,”

Only Vader and the droid, HY-L33, know what’s in store for Irele. Very soon, the plans for her life under the Empire’s wing—unknowingly under her brother’s care, or the walking shell of him perhaps—will be put into play.

For many weeks, HY-L33 patiently watched over Irele—especially in the medical aspect—and a mandate was programmed into her that once a diagnosis of the teenager would show optimum by the end of three weeks since her extraction from Tatooine, Irele would be considered physically eligible and be subjected to training. Eventually, HY-L33 was the only companion she has ever had in this ship since day one; so in exchange for medical knowledge and advice from HY-L33, Irele repays it with stories from her homeworld of Tatooine, but knowing that the droid is under Imperial property, she was cautious of what she ought to say, and rather told her adventures she had done on her own or with a friend instead of her family life.

“It seems as though your rigorous lifestyle has contributed to your increased stamina throughout your developmental stage.” HYL-33 commented once while listening to Irele recall one job she did where she would deliver goods door-to-door across the town of Mos Espa.

“Yeah well, I had to work. Because if I didn’t work, that just meant, I’ll be sleeping hungry—or if I’m lucky, with a half-full stomach.”

HY-L33, being the medical nanny droid that she is, went on to lecture Irele that it was ill-advised to sleep on an empty stomach for it will cause ulcers. The girl politely listened and heeded the advice, until she calmed down the droid that she had been fine for the rest of the time she was growing up.

She had only been staying for a week and a half. HY-L33’s sensors indicate a lesser trace of homesickness and anxiety within Irele, her body mass index has not changed drastically at all since her food intake was increased rather than imposing an eating strike—a few of HY-L33’s references cite that most human teenagers are more rebellious, especially when it comes to being fed after being thrown into a stressful situation. However, this was not the case with Irele, which made the nurse droid’s circuits cooler.

Eventually, the three weeks were over. Irele noticed HY-L33 seeming to be in full preparation. She did not mind this, but kept a close eye, until she could find the right timing to ask. After lunch, Irele went to the bath by rote, and quickly dressed herself in a dark gray shirt, black pants, and low boots.

Irele could truly sense something different in their routine.

“Haylee?”

“Yes, Miss Irele?”

“Is there something new added into the routine?”

“Yes, Miss Irele, we are about to perform a full health assessment on you. Please follow me and I will escort you to the medical ward.”

This was the first time Irele had been outside of her bedroom. For three weeks, she had been holed up in that metal room with no one and nothing else but HY-L33—to which she had grown fond of anyway—and then she finally comes out for a medical check-up.

Along the way, she could not look into the eyes of the crew, although she perfectly blended in with her gray and black clothes. She was nervous and afraid of what they’re thinking of her—because she felt like she knows what they’re saying about her, it’s a feeling that she can’t explain but it still manifests in her. Eager to avoid the stares and attention, Irele walked directly behind HY-L33 until they got to the said medical ward.

When they got there, the interior of the medical ward was a little bit brighter than most of the rooms in the ship. The walls were still metal, of course, but it was a cooler shade of gray which somewhat eased the people who are admitted and confined here—instead of the intimidating dark grays and blacks on other parts of the ship. At the center of operations was a 2-1B surgical droid stationed by a medical bed; it was approached by HY-L33 and Irele, when the droid’s photoreceptors saw the girl’s face, a deep male tone started speaking in a monotonous, continuous fashion.

“Irele Skywalker, human female, age is sixteen standard years, height stands at five feet and three inches…”

“Okay, okay, I think we got enough of my vitals already!” Irele interrupted.

“Were you briefed of your purpose here?”

Irele made a side-eyed glance at HY-L33, who didn’t move at all, “I was only told I was getting a check-up.”

“Correct.”

The surgical droid cleared out what HY-L33 failed to when they were still in the bedroom. It started with the physical examination—taking down her age, height, and weight, until it pored into analyzing the fluid levels and vitals of her organs to see if they were normal. It was all strange for little Irele, but she held up and did as she was told. She wasn’t getting hurt by the droids anyway, save the one pinprick that they had to do in order to conduct a blood test.

From Vader’s chamber, he was receiving real-time transmissions of the medical ward’s database. Whatever diagnosis the droids encode into the database under Irele’s profile, Vader saw it all firsthand—every revision, every new entry, every number.

Midichlorian count: 20,598.

Seeing this number and then recalling his impression on Irele baffled Darth Vader.

This child has lived sixteen years in a backwater planet, with a high midichlorian count… and yet her sensitivity is dormant.

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digimonnetwork-project · 3 years

Text

Episode IV

Previous Episode

Leo’s Pride

Isamu was having lunch with the transfer student today.

Aki glanced over at Masato, noticing this fact as well. Mastato tapped his foot under the table, yeah, he knew Isamu had the right to sit wherever he wanted and talk to whoever he wanted, but he was spending an awful lot of time with the new girl.

“Do you think he’s going to stop hanging out with us?” Aki asked, worriedly adjusting his glasses with a disappointed frown, it wouldn’t have been the first time this happened to the duo.

Masato tapped his foot faster, “The least he could do is give us a proper ‘bye guys’ instead of this silent treatment.” The long haired boy huffed and tossed glare over at Imasu and Ju as they ate lunch together, “What does she have that we don’t?” He was more upset than Aki about this, he’d genuinely liked Isamu and believed that he’d stick around. After all the time they’d spent practicing for soccer and tryouts coming up soon...

Can’t be right all the time, Masato supposed.

Their comments did not go unheard, however, as it just so happened that Kaiyo Nakano was passing by their table with her bento box, “She’s got charm and wit, for one thing,” The brown haired girl said as she stopped and sat at their table with them, “And he’s smart and nice. Maybe they like each other.” She suggested.

“They’ve known each other for less than a week.” Masato pointed out, with an unimpressed sigh, “How could they possibly like each other that much?”

Kaiyo smiled and took a bite of her rice, “I haven’t known either of them very long, but I like them both just fine.” She announced.

Aki brushed some of his blond hair behind his ear, “That’s different, Nakano, you like everyone.”

“Just call me, Kaiyo. And I don’t see how that matters, there’s no waiting period to see if you like someone- unless” She started to snicker, “You thought I meant like-like!” Kaiyo giggled and broke into a laugh, “I just meant- he- she-! Haha guys and girls can just be friends you know!”

Masato and Aki stared at her, blushes rising to their cheeks as they realized how they’d misinterpreted her comment. Kaiyo wasn’t done teasing them though.

“Oh! But wait, what if they are in love!? Maybe they were star crossed lovers in a past life, bound to meet again and again in each lifetime, always to be torn apart, haha! It’s just like a Shoujo manga! Ha! Oh, don’t tell me, one of you is the reborn rival; here to win Ju away from him-wait not, it’s Isamu you’re upset about losing! Is he the love interest then?!”

“Th-that’s enough!” The pair sputtered in unison, making a few heads turn in their direction, but Kaiyo did manage to calm herself down before they drew too much attention.

Kaiyo chewed another bite of rice before speaking up again, “I don’t know Isamu very well, but when he served that detention for Ms. Mazawa, he couldn’t stop talking about meeting you two at the park. He didn’t even mention that you were practicing soccer until I asked him, he just wanted to hang out with you.”

“R-really?” Aki asked, “Soccer is his favorite thing, he didn’t mention it at all?”

“Nope.” Kaiyo answered, “I know he’s been spending a lot of time with Ju the last few days, but she’s still adjusting to living in Japan, once she’s settled maybe Isamu will introduce the three of you. Who knows? Maybe you’ll like her too. Lord knows you boys could use a girl or two in your friend circle.”

“What’s that supposed to mean!?” Masato asked, Kaiyo giggled and continued her meal instead of answering.

Isamu and Ju stood from their table and started outside without emptying the remains of their lunch in the garbage bin. Masato stood up too, and started to follow them, leaving his lunch untouched on his table while Aki scarfed down a few bites and went after Masato, properly disposing of his lunch waste as he passed the bin.

Left alone at the table, with Masato apparently not hungry enough to care, Kaiyo reached into his bento box and swiped his dessert, “Well if he doesn’t want it.” She grinned.

Aki followed Masato into the court yard where they spotted Isamu and Ju sitting on a bench, looking over a nearby bush. More than anything, Aki wanted to tug on his friend’s sleeve and tell him to go back inside- whether it was just because whatever Isamu and Ju were doing was none of their business, or because he didn’t want to find out that Kaiyo was wrong about the situation, he wasn’t sure.

But he also knew that Masato wouldn’t stop, even if he did tug on his sleeve and insist they leave Isamu and Ju alone. They’re backs were to the approaching boys, both of them had put their lunch down and it looked as if they had decided to finish eating outside while the weather was still nice. Only Ju had her laptop resting on her knees, and Isamu appeared to be dropping bits of food into the bush.

Aki heard Ju speaking, “The Admins are all Tamers too, but they don’t access the Network like everyone else, they program all city events, create new games, organize tournaments for the coliseum and monitor for bugs, all from the outside.”

“Do Tamers become Admins when they get too old?” asked a voice that came from the direction of Isamu, but didn’t sound like Isamu.

Ju shook her head, “No, Admins…I don’t really know actually, what qualifies someone to be an admin, I heard that the youngest admin is only seventeen.”

What in the world were they talking about?

Aki might have asked, but Masato was faster and bolder than him, and reached to tap Isamu on the shoulder, but in doing so came into Ju’s eye line. She gave a startled screech that made Isamu jump and shout in surprise. He whirled around, eyes wide searching for whatever had made Ju scream and his gaze settled on Masato and Aki, immediately relaxing.

However, it seemed he was not the only one looking. From the bush, three shapes leaped out at them, Aki screamed as a brown and red furry…thing knocked him to the ground, Masato gave a similar cry as two creatures, black and white dog-like animals, did the same to him.

“It’s alright Ju, we’ve got it, prepare the Digital con-” The white one on top of Masato started, but cut off when it realized that he was human and not…whatever it was expecting.

The creature on top of Aki noticed this detail too, and hopped off him, wide eyed and flashing a guilty look at Isamu. The brown haired boy fiddled with his goggles awkwardly “Er, Aki, Masato, I can explai-”

Aki didn’t give him a chance, once the initial shock was over he scrambled to his feet with a scream and made a break for the sports field. If he could make it passed to the road, maybe he could flag down a car or something. It flashed through Aki’s head that maybe he was being a bit of a wuss, but any thoughts about turning back to hear what Isamu had to say were dispelled the moment he realized Masato was running too.

Well, at least they were being wusses together.

“What the hell were those things!?” Aki shouted as he ran.

“I don’t know, I don’t care, just keep moving!” Masato replied.

Behind them, Aki heard Isamu call after them, “Guys wait!” They turned their head slightly to see that Isamu and Ju were both chasing after them, along with the three strange creatures that had jumped out of the bush at them.

It was the one that had landed on Aki, the cat-like animal with a red mohawk that shouted at them, “Watch out for the Digital gate!”

The what? Aki saw Masato turn his head back, and skid to a halt, but Aki wasn’t fast enough to stop and ran into him. The force made them both tumble forward, into a strange distortion in the air he hadn’t seen until they were right on top of it. “Guys!” He heard Isamu shout before all sounds were cut off entirely.

Masato’s face planted into the ground, and was smooshed deeper into it when Aki landed on top of him. Dazed and confused it took Masato a moment to realize that he was not on school property anymore. Aki gave a terrified gasp at their surroundings.

All around them was blackness, a series of lines and dots lit the floor, going through a slow rainbow gradient. What Masato initially thought was a building, on closer inspection just seemed to be a block with no doors or windows. It almost looked like a Microchip. In the distance, Masato could just make out an outline of what appeared to be real buildings, a city of some sort.

Aki squeaked suddenly as Masato stared in awe, “Yeah, I’m seeing this, where are we?”

“N-no, Masato-” Aki tugged his sleeve and pointed across the strange space where a large furry creature stood glaring at them, “What is that thing?”

In response, the monster snarled, “Call me a thing, do you? I am Apemon! And I will crush all human parasites in the name of my Lord Nabermon!” The monster rushed them, as his name implied he was very apelike with wild yellow fur and a large bone strapped to his back.

“Masato!” Aki cried, clutching his sleeve.

The longer haired boy yanked him to his feet, “Run for it Aki!” He yelled, dodging to their right as the monster leaped into the air and brought his bone down like a club, completely obliterating the section of the floor they’d dropped onto only seconds ago and revealing more circuit-like lights underneath. Masato pushed Aki ahead of him, ducking behind one of the smaller block structures for momentary cover. “Go that way, I’ll draw it’s attention this way” Masato told him, pointing off in the direction of the distant city “When it’s clear you head back toward that gate thing Isamu mentioned!”

“”What about you!?” Aki gasped, clearly already out of breath from their previous flight.

Used to running for far longer, Masato waved his hand, “I can outlast you any day of the week, if I stay behind I can buy you enough time to get home and get help.”

“Like Isamu and the transfer student?” Aki asked.

Masato remembered the creatures that were with them, Isamu and Ju hadn’t seemed bothered by the presence, and, now that he was thinking about it, they must have been feeding them behind the bushes. Maybe those creatures could help. “Yeah, go find them, they can’t be far behind us.”

Right on cue, as if summoned by their names, Isamu, Ju and the creatures that accompanied them appeared through the gate. Apemon still stood between them and the two boys.

Isamu looked around in awe, “Is this the Digital world?” he asked.

“No,” Wemicmon replied, and pointed toward the far off city, “That’s the Network, over there, this entire plane is the dimension between our worlds. The Digital World is below us somewhere, I think.”

“Actually,” Ju corrected and pointed to a gateway across from the one they’d just come through, “The Digital World would be through there.”

Both of them fizzled in the air for a moment, they would close soon. Isamu feared for a second that if they missed their chance they might get stuck, but remembered that they could return to the real world through the Network.

“Where do you learn this stuff?” Isamu asked, quirking an eyebrow at her.

“I’ve been a Tamer for three years.” She reminded him with a smirk. “Don’t worry, you’ll pick it up.”

There was no need to open a Digital Construct in this space, so Isamu and Ju kept one eye on the battle while they searched the nearby area for Aki and Masato. It didn’t take long to find them, and give a brief explanation of where they were and what the Digimon were.

“But if we’re friends with these guys, why does the big one want to kill us for that lord Nabler- Nobba…” Aki struggled to remember the name that Apemon had called out earlier.

Isamu didn’t have the first clue what he meant, but Ju’s eyes narrowed as she thought about it, “Nabermon?” She asked.

“Yes!” Masato nodded, “That’s the one. Who is he?”

Ju didn’t answer, just pointed back to the Gate, “You two need to get back to the real world now. Isamu, you and I should lure the Digimon closer to the Network so we can call for backup.”

“What? Why, what’s happening?” Isamu asked, pulling down his goggles to scan the enemy Digimon.

Apemon was a champion level Vaccine Digimon, who used the bone club as his primary weapon. He didn’t seem that much different than the first enemy he and Wemicmon had faced together.

“Because if he’s with the Court of Demons we can’t afford to underestimate him.”

“The Court of what?” Masato asked.

“I’ll explain later, just get to the Gate!” Ju lifted her D-Gauntlet and punched in a code, activating a speed boosting item she had won in the Network. Cannismon and Leptomon began running faster, easily dodging Apemon’s attacks.

Isamu punched in his own code, he’d only played a few games at the City and mostly got more Digicures, but he did get one item that would be of use at the moment. Apemon wasn’t stupid, and realized that he would never catch the twins and turned on the much slower Wemicmon, the bone club swung down on him, but Isamu’s item activated a shield that deflected the blow.

The inventory menu on his D-Gauntlet had told Isamu that the basic shield item he won was only good for a single use in battle, he hoped they could get help on time.

“Fever claw!” Wemicmon shouted, slicing Apemon across the face and leaving a mark over his eye.

“Moon Surge!”

“Sun Blast!” The twins attacked from either side of the yellow animal Digimon.

Their team attack usually worked like a charm, since their target could not defend against both attacks at once, but Apemon ducked low, “Metallic Fur!” He snarled, and the hairs on his body hardened to needles, shooting out and knocking the two canine Digimon out of the air.

Still on the ground, Wemicmon was spared the assault, but was also helpless to do anything to help his friends as Apemon’s fists caught flame next, “Magical Monkey Punch!” He shouted as he pumped them with his fire attack.

“Cannismon! Leptomon!” The golden haired Digimon shouted, his whole body began to glow “Lynx Fla-”

“Mega Bone Stick!”

Too slow to get out of the way in time, Wemicmon was thrown to the side by the blow. Cannismon and Leptomon were pinned to the ground by the needles and with Wemicmon out of the way the path was clear for Apemon to reach the children.

Wemicmon hopped back to his feet and dashed back toward the battle, but his Tamer knew he’d never make it in time.

Isamu swallowed hard, “Run!” he urged the others.

He grabbed Ju’s hand and dragged her away, they didn’t have time to call the Network for help they needed to get out of here and find a place to hide.

There wasn’t time for that either, and Isamu knew it, but if he could just buy a few seconds, maybe Aki and Masato could make it out. Apemon’s shadow loomed over him, he pulled on Ju’s arm and threw her ahead of him, hoping that maybe she could get out too.

“Isamu!” Wemicmon shouted, and his claws lit up for an attack but Isamu knew he was done for. He raised his hands to hide his face, it wouldn’t help but some instinct deeply rooted into human nature made him throw his arms up to block the attack. He knew he was going to die.

At least until his D-Gauntlet started reacting!

The light from his D-Gauntlet blinded Apemon, and the large Digimon stumbled back away from it. The device beeped wildly, and the boy shut his eyes against the light.

“Isamu! What did you press?” He heard Ju call over the beeping.

“I didn’t press anything!” He answered, Masato was running back toward them, reaching to pull Isamu back so they could escape, but Aki was staring out passed Apemon.

He pointed out where Isamu had last seen Wemicmon, “What’s happening to the cat guy?”

Isamu squinted, trying to see Wemicmon through the light of his D-Gauntlet, but couldn’t see him anywhere. It took him a moment to realize that the reason why was because Wemicmon was now glowing the same as his D-Gauntlet.

“Wemicmon Digivolve to…!”

A shape grew out of the smear of light that Wemicmon had become, growing taller, and bigger, the light quickly faded to reveal a new creature, similar to what Isamu had seen become of Scrofamon his first night in the Network.

“Nemaemon!”

The light faded from Isamu’s D-Gauntlet, and even Apemon had turned to see the new Digimon. He was the same color as Wemicmon, larger with a full mane, looking more like a lion. He had a belt wrapped around his torso that was keeping shoulder armor on Nameamon’s left arm, clothlike tendrils sprouted from his back between feathery patches of fur.

“His horn disappeared.” Isamu gaped, noticing that Wemic-no, Nemaemon’s face was far more cat-like than ever.

“Not going to comment on all those belts he’s suddenly wearing?” Ju blinked.

“How about that he’s got to be like ten feet tall!?” Masato shouted in a near panic.

This detail was what Aki noticed too, and he shrunk back, “He’s not going to hurt us, is he?”

Apemon seemed to lose interest in the humans at the sight of the new challenger. Isamu dropped his goggles over his eyes again to read the scan data on his partner’s new form. Nemaemon, mythical Digimon, Data type, Jungle Troopers. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, this was Wemicmon? How cool!

“Metallic fur!” Apemon shouted, shooting needles toward Namaemon, who simply ducked low and his new shell deflected the attack.

Nemaemon rushed the enemy, dropping to all fours and now fast enough to keep up, “Inferno Bane!” He said, body slamming the other Digimon, raising back to two feet and holding Apemon down while breathing fire into his face.

Apemon grunted with pain and picked up his bone.

“Mega Bone Sti-”

“Eclipse Snare!” Everyone had been watching Nemaemon in awe, and hadn’t noticed the twins recover from the attacks they’d endured. Apemon was bound tightly by the beams of light and darkness that Cannismon and Leptomon wrapped around him, “Nemaemon, now!” Cannismon hissed.

The lion-like Digimon didn’t need to be told twice, “Leo’s Pride!” He raised a fiery fist, the flames shot out and took the form of a lion, running toward the trapped digimon and engulfing him in the fire.

“-Lord Nabermon, grant me-” Apemon dropped midsentence, knocked out completely, Isamu raised his D-Gauntlet and entered the sequence to convert Apemon to scan Data.

The Digimon pixelated and was drawn into the device, but more than that, the computer voice of the D-Gauntlet had an announcement, “Conversion completed. Map piece detected, would you like to view?”

“Um, not now.” Isamu said, Nemaemon stomped over to them and shrank back down to Wemicmon.

Isamu was a little disappointed at seeing his partner return to normal so soon, but at the same time, he knew he was having a hard enough time hiding Wemicmon, he’d never be able to keep Nemaemon out of sight.

He scooped up Wemicmon, “Let’s get out of here!” He said.

Nobody argued, Ju led the way out and the Digital gate closed behind them.

After the kids disappeared, a set of shadowy figures looked down at the former battle field, “You weren’t ever going to grant him the blessing of a Demon Lord were you?” The female figure said, almost with a laugh.

The bestial Digimon only grumbled in response, the clearest no that he could be bothered to give. That seemed to be enough because the woman did start to laugh.

“I thought so. So his mission was nothing but a wild goose chase them?” Again her companion did not give a real answer, but that didn’t seem to matter to her, “Oh well, those Tamers didn’t seem to be too experienced. Only one of them evolved their partner. A Digimon who cannot beat such fledglings is not worth of the scum beneath our feet, let alone our blessing”

“Indeed” The other replied, speaking for the first time, and turning away, “Come then, Mephistomon will want a real candidate selected soon…”

Back in the real world, Masato resisted the urge to drop to the ground and start kissing the grass after their close call. Aki said nothing, but his face was still white as a sheet, so Masato put on a brave face and was the first to speak as they started to wander back to where Isamu had Ju had been feeding their Digimon.

“So...A Digital Gate, huh?” It was sort of a pathetic question, but at least it wasn’t total awkward silence.

Isamu continued to carry Wemicmon, who yawned sleepily in his arms, “Yeah, they connect our world to the one we just came from” He said, and nodded to Ju, “She knows more about it than I do, I’ve only been a Tamer for a little while.”

“That’s pretty much the gist of Digital Gates. It's kind of weird, though...” She commented, “I’ve never seen two Digital Gates open up so close together. Back in Beijing they always appeared months apart.”

They reached the bench and Isamu set Wemic down so he could rest after his battle. He lifted his D-Gauntlet in amazement, he’d been able to make Wemicmon Digivolve to champion. That was incredible! Ju said that she’d had her partners for three years and she hadn’t been able to do that.

The corners of the screen glowed in sequence, a new code he needed to memorize, Isamu mouthed along with it, top right, top left, left, bottom right, top loft again.” He fished his pen out of his pocket and wrote that sequence down on his hand so he could transfer it to his notebook later.

He’d ask Ju about that after school maybe, but right now they had a lot of questions to answer from Aki and Masato, and not a lot of time to explain. Lunch break would be over soon. Even with the two of them telling the story together it was clear that the boys didn’t fully understand, Isamu didn’t blame them, he had first had experience as a Tamer and he still wasn’t sure he understood it all.

“Could we be Tamers?” Masato asked excitedly, as he paced back and forth in the courtyard “Where do we find Digimon partners?”

“How do we get the D-Gauntlets?” Aki pushed his glasses up, showing extreme interest in this, which was sort of a surprise for him.

“There’s always Digimon in the Network who are looking for Tamers.” Ju said, “Maybe you could talk to them sometime this weekend, you might get lucky.”

“Can they get into the Network without an ID?” Isamu asked as Aki and Masato quietly celebrated the idea of maybe becoming a Tamer like their friend.

Ju shrugged, as they reached the bench they’d started at “I don’t know, but I didn’t want them running off to go looking for a partner. We have until the weekend to figure something out.” She checked the time on her D-Gauntlet and slung her bag back off her shoulders, pulling her laptop out to check her email.

“So what kind of Digimon are there in the Network?” Masato asked, “I want to partner with someone cool, like Nemaemon.”

“Aw, shucks, I’m not that cool.” Wemicmon blushed, Isamu rolled his eyes and ruffled his Digimon’s mohawk earring a squawk of protest.

“All kinds of Digimon,” Ju shrugged, “But remember I said you might get lucky, just because you meet someone cool doesn’t mean you’ll get to be partners. I’ll talk to a few of them tonight and see if anyone’s interes-” She cut off suddenly and her eyes narrowed at the sight of something on her screen, “Isamu, have you checked your email recently?” She asked.

“No, why?” Ju pointed her screen toward him, Aki and Masato exchanged confused looks.

Isamu read the email out loud.

Urgent, do not enter the Network. All Digimon and Tamers be advised that the Court of Demons is planning a strike against the Network this week. A new Firewall is being programmed to shield most damage, but as a precaution, if you are not an Admin, please do not put yourself at risk by coming to the Network.

Gray.

He glanced at Ju, with a startled blink “Gray, like, as in the legendary Tamer, Gray?”

She nodded, “This is the same email he contacted me from three years ago.” Ju went back to her inbox where several more emails with subject lines warning them to stay out of the Network were waiting.

“The Court of Demons,” Aki repeated, “You said something about those guys earlier…who are they?”

The bell summoning them back to class rang, cutting short their conversation. Ju stood up, closing her laptop and putting it back in her bag, “The bad guys.” She said, “No one’s going to the Network until we get an all clear. Being a Tamer isn’t a game, so you’d better think hard about if you really want to do it.” She added with a note of finality and packed up so they could go.

Aki and Masato turned to Isamu for an explanation, but this was the first he had heard of this Court, the Digimon looked frightened though.

“We should head back.” he said, moving Wemicmon back into the bush,Cannismon and Leptomon ducked into it too, where they would hide until school was out and their Tamers came to pick them up.

As they passed by the fountain in the middle of the courtyard, the trio continued to talk quietly about the Digimon and failed to notice a small shape swimming in the water. A small furry face poked out to stare after the group, at a particular boy.

“I found him!” A feminine voice said, and brown eyes sparkled happily, “My Tamer!”

Next Episode

#Digimon #Digimon fanfiction #Digimon fanseries #Digimon FDD #chapters

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written-musings · 4 years

Text

Obi-Wan & Padmé post-episode 1

It was a beautiful evening as colorful fireworks exploded and illuminated the night sky of the Naboo, the bursts of the lightshow intertwining with the shouts of glee from the partying crowds dispersed through the depths of Theed below the Palace. The turquoise roofs of the entire city glowed, reflecting the sparkling lights of the show and the gradient pastels of the sunset that ended yet another day as the cool winds from the hills and mountains drifted through the crevices of the capital, greeting one’s face with a comforting embrace of peace. Music echoed through the alleyways up the walls outside of the Palace, the positive and uplifting melodies permeating the air and traveling with the breeze, waltzing away.

Yet young hooded Obi-Wan Kenobi stood outside of his room on the balcony that overlooked the endless stuccos of brick and façades adorned with pillars and carved intricacies, and despite all of the joy and peace that surrounded him, he was full of insurmountable sorrow that seemed to follow him everywhere he went.

Who could blame him? He had watched his Master die and burn before his eyes. He had a new Padawan to teach. He had someone he loved far away. Yet someone was near.

He could feel it.

His elbows rested on the cool stone as he leaned on them, inhaling a deep breath as he absorbed all the emotions he felt from within and right in front of him. Satisfaction should have overcome him, since he was the first to kill a Sith in a millennia, but it did not feel like enough. He had saved millions of lives, but why was the death of a single person such a burden on his heart? It was his fault in his eyes, and it would take him many years to realize that it, in fact, was not.

When there is a battle between light and dark, death is inevitable – because it is merely a shadow that hides between both entities, sneakily snatching their victims until they are satisfied.

Don’t dwell on your feelings.

He released a big sigh as his gaze adverted to the waterfalls that mirrored the pink and purple hues that brushed the dusk sky, bearing the stars of the entire galaxy. But he closed his eyes, thinking of each and every one he could, allowing their light to fill him as the cool, moist, aromatic breeze of roses permeated his skin through his thick robes and suddenly that pained sigh transformed into a sign of relief.

Suddenly, before he could even sense it, a voice greeted him. “Am I bothering you?”

The new Jedi Knight twirled around to find the face of the young, optimistic woman before him with cups of steaming caf in her hands, her face completely bare from the caked makeup she had on during the ceremony just an hour ago. He had excused himself from the festivities of Freedom Day to meditate and not let his intense emotions of sorrow to consume him. But he was glad to see her face, the face of the young woman, not the Queen of Naboo that reverently ruled her people with a sense of pride and advocacy, qualities in a politician he had never quite seen before.

He straightened himself as he spoke, attempting to hide the blush on his cheeks, “Not at all… milady.” She laughed as he emphasized the last term, “Or should I say… Your Highness?” He lowered his hood, revealing his shorter hair and the Padawan braid that trailed his shoulder.

She shot him a look, the look where one narrows their eyes to nonchalantly pierce into their soul – that makes one laugh yet shudder from their grasp...

“I thought I told you not to call me that…” Padmé Naberrie Amidala grinned as she neared him, handing him a porcelain cup of caf, the aromas of the roasted beans filling his nose and making him feel warm.

He took a sip, allowing the dark, hot liquid to linger on his tongue, “I know, Padmé. But I just couldn’t resist.”

Sipping the caf, she joined him on the balcony overlooking the city of her people, the glimmering lights reflecting off of the contours of her face – the twinkles dancing on her cheekbones up to her nose and glimmering on her eyes, then her lips… She leaned against the balcony with her elbows, too, her right only inches away from his left, just two good friends sipping caf on a lovely evening of light.

“If we are using formal pleasantries, then you are Jedi Knight Kenobi, am I wrong?” She turned to look at him with a large smile beaming from her supple lips, the happiest he had seen her since they rode back to Naboo from Tatooine after she finally put Anakin to sleep. This was when she introduced him to caf for the very first time, when they were cold in the depths of hyperspace, warping the dimensions of space and time in the entire process.

“You are not,” he sipped the caf again, clearing his throat with a snarky smirk on his pink lips.

Then there was silence for a while. It was not awkward or uncomfortable at all, but more satisfying, fulfilling as both of these humans were absorbing each other’s presence for all long as they could before they would be apart for however long that would be. After the celebrations, all of the Jedi and Republic dignitaries would vacate the planet and return to Coruscant – where their responsibilities were waiting for them. Padmé had a recovering planet in her hands while Obi-Wan was tasked to train the so-called “Chosen One.” Leisure trips between the two worlds were impossible and both of them knew it.

“Thank you,” she nearly whispered, holding the cup of caf in her hands, watching her reflection slowly dissipate as the sun slowly set beyond the mountainous horizon.

“For what?” He looked at her, his Coruscanti accent emphasized in the last word.

She nonchalantly chuckled under her breath and took a sip, “Thank you for talking me into having the Freedom Day ceremonies despite all the chaos of the galaxy that abounds. You were right.” The woman paused, allowing him to focus on the dark, thick curls on her head that he had not noticed before – they were beautiful.

Tucking some locks behind her ear she continued, “You were right because we cannot dwell on the past. We must continue to walk on our paths for the sake of not just ourselves, but others.”

He did not speak for a moment, only sipping the hot beverage as he was deep in his thoughts. “It’s what Qui-Gon would have wanted.”

Padmé sighed, taking the last sip of the caffeinated treat before placing it on the balcony edge. Turning to him she spoke, “Obi-Wan, I know we have been so busy with our own duties but I never got to pay my respects to y–.”

Interrupting her he shook his head, his eyes wide and serious, “No, no. You do not need to do that. Really.”

She hesitated, wondering what to say. What could she say at a time like this? Jedi don’t die of unnatural causes often, especially from the vengeful hands of Sith lords. Not many Jedi lose their Masters this young. Yet these situations were right in front of her and she had no idea how to navigate them, especially since the person she cared about was right in front of her.

“Obi-Wan… I know you do not want to talk about it and I respect that. Therefore, I will refrain from discussing it. I know that Jedi teach that one should not let their feelings cloud their judgement. However, that does not mean that you should suppress them and compartmentalize them away – not at a time like this.”

“I’m fine, Padmé, I promise.” He still faced the city, not meeting her eyes to hide his tears. He could not break in front of her, he could not.

She somehow felt the brokenness in him, a wound so fresh that it would take time to heal. Not many others saw this, and she saw the façade when Obi-Wan discussed future plans with Anakin during the funeral of the Jedi, the fire supposedly burning all senses of sorrow away. He was composed, stoic, devoid of any sense of emotion. But here, now, in this moment, he was far from apathetic, indifferent from the universe around him. In fact, he was quite the opposite. Padmé could not really see it on the expressions chiseled into the youthful lines of his face, but she tasted the bitterness he had toward himself and the burning pain that accompanied it. It hurt her to see, no, to feel him this way. Grabbing his sleeve, he turned toward her as the dams he created were so close to breaking.

He was stronger than this.

He had to be.

Yet her presence, by some means, was some sort of weapon that made him most vulnerable and he hurt even more when he saw the concern etched in the crevices of her face.

Before tears could overflow from his eyes, she pulled him close to her in a warm embrace. And suddenly the sorrow and pain diminished as she held him, frozen from surprise by her actions as he felt her head brimmed with curls that rested on his shoulder. He did not know what to say as this warmth filled his entire body from head to toe; it was almost like he had been waiting for something this tangible his entire life and he had been ignorant before this very moment. Inhaling the sobs in his throat away, he smelled the aromatic fragrance of sweet roses and hints of hairspray. Regardless, he somehow felt at… home.

He never really had one.

His arms soon wrapped around her frail frame as he held her closer than he had ever held any other person – and it was the first time he had felt alive in a long time.

He never touched her… Satine… Yet she was far… Far away.

Pulling away, he grasped Padmé’s hands, surprising her as she looked up at him, the lights from the fire show radiating from his blue eyes. “Thank you….” He paused as he never broke his gaze into her caf-colored eyes, the hot, caffeinated, tempting liquid beckoning him, yet he restrained himself. “I have not had someone to truly confide in in quite some time.”

She blushed lightly, “But you did not say anything.”

He shook his head with a coy smile across his lips, “But you understood enough. You reminded me to feel the light.”

She beamed, radiating happiness, filling him with even more light. “I owe that advice to the person who gave it to me and he happens to be right in front of me.” She bore her bright white teeth with a smile he would mentally capture and hold in his heart for quite some time. He did not want to let his friend go.

“Would you like to sit?” He asked, trying to buy time and looking around the grand room only to realize there was nowhere to sit but his bed.

She took her hands from his and spoke, “Are you sure you do not have anywhere to be, Jedi Knight?”

He laughed, his voice so bright and light – it was merely like a leaf drifting in the breeze as it slowly trickled toward the ground to its final resting place. “I should be asking you that question.”

“My decoy is giving me a much needed break for the night. She said saving our planet from invasion and handling the consequences with the Republic have proven to be exhausting. Thus, handling the festivities would be an opportunity for me to rest before I continue on with my term.”

“Ah,” he responded as he gestured to the bed for them to sit, only he plopped himself on the bed to prop his head back against the regal headboard, placing his hands behind his head as his elbows were acute to the side. “You think your people will be like me and notice?”

She snickered as she sat on the side of the bed, “I honestly do not think so…” She was playing with the fabric on the bed before looking up at him with a big smile. “I say you were an exception to the plot… Well… Besides…” She stopped herself and opened her mouth to apologize, but he spoke before she could.

“He did not know that I knew.” He jeered, before he sat up, “So it’ll be our little secret.”

She tilted her head, narrowing her eyes suspiciously, “Of course only Qui-Gon knew.”

“Do you think he knew that secretly communicated with the comlink I gave you – so you could tell me all the background information while you were trying to find help on Tatooine?” Obi-Wan cheekily grinned, his mouth opened wide and bearing dimples on his face.

She shook her head, “I most certainly hope not…” Giggling, she looked up at him again, forgetting all the pain that came with the invasion, the torture of her people, specifically the two handmaidens that stayed behind, risking their lives to protect her. Now she was here laughing, and that little thought hurt her a bit. “Obi-Wan?”

“Yes?”

“When did you find out?” She asked him, referring to the moment he found out that she was the queen.

He pondered for a moment, his eyes drifting to the two empty porcelain mugs that rested on the edge balcony barricade then back on her, “I think I realized it when I was looking for Anakin… When I stopped by now Palpatine’s quarters to find a queen preparing for her appearance to the Senate. I must say the Queen of Naboo was quite surprised to see me considering I had barely said a word to her.”

“Really?”

He nodded his head, “Really… Your stuttering, ‘O- oh. A- Ani is not here at the moment’ followed by subtle giggles from the handmaidens. It was quite the show.” He mimicked her flat voice almost perfectly.

She looked away, embarrassed, the warmth of the blood rushing to her cheeks.

Let us be quite honest, these young humans felt many things during this night together. In fact, they felt many things they did not want to acknowledge themselves. But each second they spent together, they relished every little fragment they could. If anything, Obi-Wan Kenobi learned not to take things for granted especially after he had met Duchess Satine Kryze years ago, when his commitment to the Jedi Order prevented him from pursuing anything further. He did not really realize it, but it broke him in some way. Padmé did not know very much, other than the fact that she had dedicated herself to politics at such a young age, whatever she had with that artist years ago had diminished into nothingness, leaving the two souls together as the rest of her homeworld celebrated liberation, freedom, peace. They did not know what the future or the Force had in store, only that they had each other during this time.

They conversed, unbothered and undisturbed, for what felt like hours to the point that the evening chill had filled the room and they had to light the fireplace in front of the bed. Both of their faces were bathed in the fire light as they laughed and joked with one another. It was this small period of time in their lives where they forgot who they were and the horrors of their pasts – they were just Obi-Wan and Padmé, two friends who had met by chance during a planetary invasion. Yet despite their idea of friendship, they had fallen far deeper than they had realized. Soon the giggles and non-pleasantries had turned into stories of their pasts, their aspirations, their dreams, then transitioning into hums of exhaustion as their backs rested on the cushions of his bed, their eyes gazing at engraved flowers of the ceiling as the caffeine wore off and they truly felt the burdens that were placed on their shoulders that allowed them to mindlessly drift into an inevitable slumber.

Together.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13543652/1/Isolated-An-Obidala-Story

#Obidala #But Obidala makes the prequels great again #obiwan #obi wan kenobi #kenobi #padme x obi wan #obi wan x padme #padme amidala #queen of naboo #star wars #star wars fanfiction #only obidala shippers see this

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damienthepious · 4 years

Text

tuesday...... i’m back on my old schedule where i’m only gonna have sundays and mondays off again, hopefully i’ll still be able to keep up the Lizard Kissin’ Pace dlkfasd;kfja

Won’t Break (Chapter 2)

[chapter 1] [ao3]

Fandom: The Penumbra Podcast

Relationship: Lord Arum/Sir Damien/Rilla

Characters: Lord Arum, Rilla, Sir Damien

Additional Tags: Second Citadel, Lizard Kissin’ Tuesday, Established Relationship, Declarations of Love, Miscommunication, (very mild), Communication, canon typical Arum ignoring feelings

Summary: It is far too soon for such words, isn't it?

Chapter Summary: A shift in perspective.

Chapter Notes: An author I loved deeply when I was younger once described a fic as a "stepladder" fic, and I realized halfway through this particular chapter that I had cribbed a very little bit of that structure for this. :D i love it. anyway. please enjoy, I am vibing.

There is no door, to slam behind Lord Arum as he makes his escape. He is simply there, furiously scrabbling across the wall, ticking as he goes, and then the monster is gone, slipped through some near-invisible crack in the woven-vine structure of his home.

And Sir Damien is alone.

He inhales, and then he presses his lips together, presses a hand over his mouth, and tries to hold back the ocean in his lungs.

Foolish little honeysuckle, the mocking voice in his head croons. Did you truly think-

He shakes his head.

"Too soon," Damien murmurs through his fingers. "It is only- I knew- I knew it was too soon-"

He turns, stumbling a step or two so he can lean on one of the thick-trunked support vines.

Too soon. Always, Damien thinks, always his heart races away, sprinting past his own sorry position, bolting beyond the feelings of those around him, always he feels too much too fast and then-

Arum's violet eyes, confused, wide and terrified, stunned, suspicious, furious, and then gone.

"I…" Damien stands a little straighter, forcing his weak legs to hold him steady, and then he turns towards the door. "I should apologize. Certainly I should- but," he pauses halfway across the room. "No. No, I cannot do that, can I? Cannot say- say what? I am sorry I said I love you? I cannot say that! Sorry? Sorry that I love him? No-" he turns again on his heel, slashing a hand through the air as he strides quickly to the other side of the room. "I could never be, never, and I cannot apologize for- for what? For speaking my heart? For saying the truth? But… but…" his footsteps slow, his voice trailing off.

The Keep creaks quietly around him, the low song of the swamp drifting in through the windows, and Damien knows himself a fool.

"But he does not feel the same. His truth- Lord Arum's truth does not match my own. His heart does not… my heart, my heart, my heart has… has stumbled again, has raced too fast and tripped and tumbled down the hill to bruise itself in the rock-strewn valley below and-"

He sucks in a breath, holds it, and the corners of his eyes feel too hot.

"He does not feel the same," Damien repeats, and then he gives a mournful little laugh. "Of course not. Utterly impossible for anyone to keep pace with the rush of your heart, Damien. He may care for you, may want to touch you, may wish to try this but how else did you expect him to react? Fool, you fool…"

He realizes belatedly that he had paced another circle around the room, that he has made no progress, has recovered nothing from this fumble of an encounter. Not his dignity, not his heart.

"Fool," he murmurs again, and then he startles as a vine touches his arm, one of the drifting not-quite-hands of the Keep reaching out to tap against his skin very lightly. "Ah-"

The Keep sings around him, and it sounds very gentle though Damien, of course, cannot understand.

"Er- I am- I apologize, Keep, I- I did not mean to upset him. I hope I have not-"

The structure sings again, the vine curling lightly around his wrist. Damien has seen the Keep reach like this, in the past, but only for Arum himself. Only when the monster is upset.

"I… I should not be here. Not… not now. I have overstepped, have pressed past where our relationship truly lives in my haste, and- and I should give him time, I should give him space in which to breathe without my rushing and smothering and-"

The Keep squeezes his wrist, pulls him gently towards the door, towards the rooms more deep in the interior of its structure.

Damien shakes his head, his chest squeezing in panic, and as gently as the Keep is pulling him, he pulls back, carefully slipping his wrist away from that grip. "N-no, no, I'm terribly sorry but I can rather safely assure you that he does not wish to see me. He-" Damien laughs in a strangled sort of way. "I will be quite lucky if he wishes to see me again for- for a while, I should think, he seemed- furious with me, in fact. In fact, I should- I should-"

The Keep does not try to pull him again, but it hums a soothing gradient of sound, even more songlike than its usual form of communication, and it drops another vine so it can very lightly touch the backs of both of his hands.

"I'm sorry," Damien says again, quietly. "I'm sorry I have- I have made my own burning feelings a burden for him. I should have known better. I should not linger here, I think." He pauses, swallows, and then he attempts a weak sort of smile. "Thank you for- for comforting me? If that was your intent. I could be mistaken, surely, and I would not like to assume, but- regardless of intent, I find myself… comforted. To what degree I find I can be, just at the moment." He shakes his head. "But- of course, I should not linger. Please, Keep, I… a way back to- to Rilla's hut, please. If- if you would." Damien swallows roughly, pressing his lips together tight.

The Keep- pauses. Damien is unsure how he knows that this is what the structure is doing; there is no change in the momentary lack of song, but he knows nonetheless. Perhaps there is a new layer of stillness to the vines brushing his hands, he cannot say for sure. It sings again, after a moment, and Damien knows the hesitance its song voices.

"Please," he says again. "I know… I know perfectly well when I am not wanted."

Another moment of pause, and then with clear reluctance the Keep pulls a doorway from the ground, and Rilla's hut is visible through the threshold, familiar and safe, and Damien's heart lurches with love and pain and-

And the Keep grips both of his hands, squeezes very, very gently, and croons a low song.

Quiet, pleading, persuasive. No words, but-

Damien understands, regardless.

The Keep opened the way for him. It will not stop him, it will allow him to leave if he chooses to do so.

But it is asking him to stay.

Damien hesitates, and then he squeezes the Keep's vines in return.

"But… he cannot wish to see me, can he? He was- so angry, when he left…"

The Keep lilts gentle, gentle, and it sways the vines holding his hands, something distinctly parental in the motion, and Damien buries a laugh.

"You are certain I should stay?" he asks, and then he feels foolish because of course he will not know what the response is, not truly.

Or- he assumed that he would not. It squeezes his hands again, sings a quick bright pair of notes, and the intent is so clear that Damien cannot deny it.

Damien is still uncertain, his heart still thrumming with hurt, with the sting of misplaced vulnerability, and he wants to run or hide or weep , but- but this creature has become something safe, to him, and he trusts it, and- and Damien hears Rilla in his mind whisper breathe, Damien. Breathe, and think.

He exhales, too shaky, and he tries.

"He… I know he… he cares for me. He does. He must. If I spoke too soon- I must have frightened him, that is all. It is not evidence of some- some secret disdain." Damien pauses, laughs weakly. "My lily would not keep any disdain a secret, certainly."

The Keep gives a trill so wry that Damien laughs again.

"So. I frightened him. He-"

Arum's violet eyes. Confused, terrified, suspicious.

Suspicious? Of-

"Of what?" Damien murmurs to himself. "Why suspicion, of all… if he feels not for me as I do for him, why should that garner suspicion, rather than- derision? Humor, even, at my foolishness-"

The Keep murmurs something, vaguely encouraging, Damien thinks, and then Damien feels that pause again, that sense of thought, and then it sings a triplet and squeezes his hands one more time before it releases him, and grows another doorway opposite from the way to Rilla's hut.

Damien tries his best not to flinch, when he sees both of his lovers in the threshold.

Rilla enters first, her lip curled wryly up, and trailing behind her and clinging to her hand is their mutual monster, his face pinched in worry and discomfort.

His eyes flick to Damien, wide and full of something like fear, and then Arum sees the doorway back to the hut, still hanging open, and his face falls even further.

"I told you," he says in a distressed, half-whispered hiss, close by Rilla's ear. "I told you he would want to leave-"

"But he's still here," Rilla says calmly, not bothering to lower her own voice. "Go on, then."

Damien hesitates, lifting a hand awkwardly to press over his heart, and Rilla gives an encouraging smile before she lifts her own hand and- shoves Arum ahead of her.

The monster stumbles and hisses, glancing back towards Rilla with alarm for a half moment before his frill flutters and he stands straighter on his own. He squares his shoulders, discomfort rolling off of him in waves as he looks down at Damien, and Damien endeavors not to feel pinned by the intensity of his gaze.

"Ah, Lord Arum?" Damien greets, his tone tight and uncertain, and the monster swallows roughly, glances back towards Rilla one more time, and then takes a rather deep breath.

"I owe you," Arum says slowly, "a rather enormous apology."

"Wh-what?"

"You were being… only honest, when you spoke to me," he says, and then he ducks his head very slightly, his voice lowering further. "You… you were, weren't you? You meant it. It was not merely-"

Rilla makes a quiet noise behind the monster, an unsubtle cough into her hand, and Arum winces and shakes his head as Damien stares.

"You meant it," Arum says again, "and it was nothing less than cruel and cowardly for me to flee from you in such a moment. I… I know how important it is, to you, to speak your heart, honeysuckle. I was- with no evidence, I assumed a lie. I assumed- I was afraid that you were… that you did not truly mean it. If you said- that, to me, and you did not truly feel…"

Even now, even struggling through the confusion of what Arum is so clumsily trying to say, Damien's heart pulses wildly with affection, with the urge to reach out and hold this ridiculous, regal creature. He presses his hand down over his heart, trying to quell its racing.

"I apologize," Arum says softly, and then he shakes his head. "I'm sorry. You deserve… you deserve better than to have the gift of your words cast away. You gave me something more precious than I can say, and I- I hope I have not utterly destroyed it in my fear."

"F-fear?" Damien echoes, and Arum's lip curls into a self-deprecating smile.

"As Amaryllis will not stop pointing out," he grumbles, and then he shakes his head again. "I was- afraid that you had seen- that you knew my own feelings and- and were merely attempting to… to placate me, to humor me. Which is- which sounds-"

"Fucking stupid, when you actually say it out loud?" Rilla drawls behind him, and Arum grits his teeth with a hiss.

"Yes," he says, and the hiss carries through the word. "Obviously. Now."

"To humor you," Damien murmurs, and the implication in that statement, of course, is that Arum feels-

Well. Damien supposes that would explain the suspicion, would it not?

"Yes," Arum says again, a touch weakly. "Which is no excuse. I have treated you cruelly, honeysuckle, and I- I know that I may have- have hurt you to the point where you may wish to- to rescind your words, perhaps, and I could not blame you." His mouth curls down, clearly miserable, and Damien's heart pounds even harder. "I could not blame you in the least . But- but I hope, perhaps, that you could- that you could forgive me my cowardice. It was not my intent to hurt you." He pauses again, the misery on his face deepening. "I never want to hurt you, not ever again."

"I…" Damien stares at the monster, at the way he has dropped his eyes, shame and dread and pain in the beautiful lines of his frame. "I think… I think I understand," he says slowly, and he hopes that he truly does.

"I will make this up to you," the monster says quickly, fearfully, still not allowing himself to look up. "If- if you allow me."

Damien does not think he has ever seen someone else's heart quite so plainly. Their monster is nearly as incapable of obscuring his feelings as Damien himself is. Damien could laugh- he wants to laugh, he feels lit up with the brightness of it now, the certainty- Arum-

Arum.

Their monster, so passionate, so afraid of his own passion, so afraid to be seen in the softness he hides-

He feels as Damien does, as Rilla does.

Damien pauses for a long moment, wrangling the size of his love into something he can hold within his ribcage again. "So…" he says slowly, and then he licks his lips. "So if I speak my heart again… you do not mean to retreat?"

Arum shakes his head quickly. "No. Of course not, of course not-"

"Of course not does not seem accurate, Arum. You did retreat. My query is not out of the question."

Arum winces, and Damien feels a very slight twinge of guilt for pressing. "Y-yes. I- I apologize, again."

"Hm," Damien says. "And if I do speak my heart, you do not plan to launch yourself to the wall, this time? I need not fear a partially-vertical retreat every time I attempt to express my affection for you?" he says, raising an eyebrow.

Arum frowns, ducks his head, and Damien can tell that he's trying not to look sulky. "I gave my apology," he mumbles, his eyes downcast. "It was- it was not something done out of- of intent to harm, and … oh." He blinks, glancing up at last. "Are- are you- teasing me?"

"In retrospect I will admit that it was something of a sight," Damien says lightly. "Entirely perpendicular to the wall, your cape hanging below you as if you were some bizarre flagpole, tail counterbalancing in a wild, chaotic arc-"

"Alright," Arum grumbles through his teeth, but he's too visibly relieved for his tone to carry any true frustration. "Alright, honeysuckle. I believe we all know full well the absurdity with which I conducted myself, today." He pauses again, then rolls his eyes. "Not to say that I do not deserve some measure of ridicule-"

"So I may speak my heart to you now, and I need not fear that I will be left lonely and uncertain?"

"Damien," Arum says, quiet, and his hands flex in front of him though he stops himself from reaching. "I… I will not leave. I will not go anywhere. I- I demand no words from you, but- if you wish to speak your heart again, I would be- grateful, to hear it."

Embarrassment is a common emotion to see resting on Lord Arum's face and frame. Joining that familiar tension, though, is a meekness, an awkwardness, and almost-shyness that makes Damien feel helpless against the brunt of his own adoration. Rilla, standing behind the monster, looks quite as if she is enduring a similar level of fierceness in her affection.

"Arum," Damien says, the word slipping from him like wind through chimes, and Arum's entire frame softens, his body swaying towards Damien's like a reed in that breeze. "Oh… my lily, oh Arum, I-"

"Wait-" the monster shakes his head quickly. "Wait, no. This isn't right. I- after my own foolishness I have no right to- to ask that you speak first, honeysuckle, I shouldn't-"

"Arum," Damien says again, and he can feel his lip curling in a smile. "It's alright, clearly it wasn't a demand, I-"

"No," Arum insists, and then he steps closer at last and lifts his hands, hesitating for only a breath before he rests two on Damien's shoulders, and cups his cheeks in the other two. "Damien… I don't know if you are aware of how… how drastically you and Amaryllis have changed my life. You make me- happy," he says, and there is so much surprise in the word that it makes Damien's heart ache. "I would not have even listed that as a priority, before the both of you. I … I did not even realize that I wasn't happy."

Damien makes a small pained noise. He cannot help himself, and Arum smiles very slightly and brushes his thumbs over Damien's cheeks.

"My fear is only as large as what I know I have the potential to lose," he says in a murmur. "Affection and humor and brilliance, gentle hands and soft embrace and clever tongue. I may close my eyes with you and know myself safe and- and I wish so deeply to be that for you as well-"

"You are," Damien whispers, and Arum makes a small noise when he sees the tears that Damien can't keep from welling in his eyes. "You are."

"I love you, Damien," Arum says. "It seemed a miracle beyond what I could ever deserve to think that you could feel the same. But-" Arum pauses, laughs gently, brushes a tear from Damien's cheek. "But then, I should have known better than to let that fool me, shouldn't I? It certainly isn't the first miracle you have performed for my sake, honeysuckle."

Damien goes up on his toes, pressing his mouth against Arum's in a kiss that feels like nectar, like home, like sweetness and warmth. Arum makes a muffled noise, a warbling purr, and his hands slip back from Damien's shoulders, wrapping around Damien to pull him closer, to hold him safe until they need to breathe again.

"Love you," Damien murmurs against his lips, desperate, and then he kisses Arum again. "Love you, Arum, I love you-"

"I know," Arum says, something like wonder in his voice. "I'm sorry for doubting."

"You absolutely absurd creature," Damien manages in a shaking voice, and then he kisses him again.

"Wow," Rilla says, and Damien chokes on a laugh. He glances over to see their flower watching them, grinning with her arms folded over her chest, and Damien laughs again, delight like a cascade of bubbles rising from his lungs. "Damien gets an entire speech and all I get is an I love you too," she says, her eyes flashing and her tone dripping with playfulness, and Arum growls as Damien clings to him, shaking with laughter.

"You are going to be insufferably smug about all of this, aren't you?" he snarls.

Rilla steps close enough to press a comforting hand to Damien's back, close enough to flick the tip of Arum's snout with her other hand. "Duh," she says. "Considering that I was right about everything, I think I probably deserve it, though."

Arum's growl pitches lower for a moment, and then Rilla yelps a laugh as Arum's tail snakes around her, tugging her close enough that he can pull her into his embrace beside Damien. "Good," he purrs, nuzzling his snout into her neck and making her laughter jump even higher. "I love that, as well. Love your pride, love your brilliance-"

"Oh no," Rilla says, grinning, "looks like we popped the cork, Damien. He's just gonna be a total sap now, maybe you should defend your position-"

"I love you, Amaryllis," Arum growls against her neck, narrowing his eyes, "but I will still bite you."

"Do you promise?" Rilla says with an even wider grin, and after a half second of pause Arum bursts into his own barking laugh.

Damien clings to Rilla, clings to Arum as he laughs, and he loves so, so much that it feels like it is overflowing from him, pouring out in torrents between his ribs. Rilla makes a small noise, reaches up and brushes away the new tears on Damien's cheeks, and her smile is terribly soft as she leans to press a kiss against his mouth.

"You okay?" she says gently, and Arum's laughter subsides as he catches Damien's eye, as he waits for the answer.

"I am," he manages. "Of course I am. I- I don't think I have ever been happier, my loves."

Arum's frill flutters, his mouth tilting into a wondering, pleased smile, and Rilla kisses him again.

Arum was right. This love, this home they are building in each other-

It does, indeed, feel like a miracle.

#the penumbra podcast #second citadel #rad bouquet #lizard kissin' tuesday #sir damien #the keep #amaryllis of exile #lord arum #won't break

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snow-codes · 4 years

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Name/Alias: Snow Timezone: EST Descriptors: hufflepuff / virgo / true neutral / infp / rambles too much when excited / always lurking / trips over air / hot mess express ✌️ How long you’ve been coding: Um. 10 years give or take a few? Not a super rockstar but I get by. Coding style: Does whatever comes to mind count? Usually I get inspired by a random idea or element and it just forms from there. I would say I tend to go more minimalistic, but also I can go ham. Depends on my mood. Again, not some superstar coder so don’t really have a set style that screams me xD Favourite design elements: Ummm. I tend to unconsciously use a lot of reds and colors with red tones. I also love montserrat and a few other similar fonts. I also enjoy honeybee icons so they appear in every skin. I have a problem, I know. I also really enjoy making headers and mini’s the most, tbh. What you’re aiming to get out of the Skinathon: Gonna try to do some stuff I haven’t attempted before. But we’ll see. Really just want to make something fun that I love. Also just trying to get my name out there cause I lurk and no one knows me so hi! Trying anything new for the Skinathon? My plan is to either use some fun gradients since I think they look pretty and I’ve been wanting to make a skin with it. Or do something darker since the last 3 skins I have made are all light or in-between and just want to get my sith lord on. Shout out a code/skin/design/coder you love: Honestly, everything Essi does is beautiful? Also Monty makes some amazing stuff and they both make me cry with their talents. Hopefully during this I’ll find some more coders to love on seeing as I am not as active in the community sorry D: A gif/meme to top it off:

#jcink skinathon #jcink skinathon 2020 #chris evans codes

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songisforyou · 4 years

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Now We Sit in Your Car, and Our Love Is a Ghost (5/8)

I keep playing on repeat / the same set of memories / I’m in the passenger seat / and you are there next to me.

The first boy I date is one I learn to care for on a twenty-four hour drive to Colorado, and on seven-hour drives to and from Kentucky. I don’t think I am ever in love with him, but I learn to love asking him questions in the bubble of the front seat, the night flashing by outside. Inside that bubble, there are no secrets, nothing is too stupid to say, everything we say is full of meaning, and I get to choose the music for hours on end.

I like the way the hours slip away when they’re ours / and I like the way the highway waves goodbye behind the car.

I remember the boy distinctly drenched in the gold of sunrise on the drive back, crossing state after state until the sunrise becomes a sunset and we finally find home in the middle of the night. I sit next to him, trying to memorize his profile, wondering if he sees me the way I see him: beautiful. Wondering if he sees me the way I see him: in great detail, observing the angle of his wrist, one hand holding the bottom of the steering wheel, the way he sings along quietly when I pick the right song.

I know you like wide open spaces / and long horizon lines. / The sun sets in the rearview mirror, we’re / almost out of time.

I write songs about him. They are songs about cars, about sitting next to the driver. Of course Lorde, too, falls in love in a car, and the car serves as the vehicle to convey her love story.

The journey starts in Pure Heroine. In Pure Heroine, “400 Lux,” Lorde sings, “you pick me up and take me home again / head out the window again,” and the chorus calls to mind endless cookie-cutter blocks passing by in the suburbs, the roads “where the houses don’t change / where we can talk like there’s something to say.” She captures the magic of feeling important, of how the car can turn the trivial into the essential, the mundane into the meaningful, providing the closest thing to freedom that she can find in suburbia.

The final track of the album, “A World Alone,” opens “That slow-burn wait while it gets dark / bruising the sun. / I feel grown-up with you in your car. / I know it’s dumb.” I think of this stanza all the time. I play it on almost every car ride when the sunset begins giving way to dusk. The sentiment is the same as in “400 Lux,” where the car becomes a place where we are important. We can fall in love because we can talk to each other here, and in this car, we inhabit a world alone. Maybe it’s stupid. It’s almost unbearably tender, the simple music behind the words, the lone notes, the space around them, the gradient of soft color against the car, the lump in my throat. Maybe I look back one day and think that the things I said were trivial, not as profound as I thought, that I was just a kid—but it doesn’t matter. In those moments, we believe in what we say to each other. We hear each other.

Lorde doesn’t have a driver’s license (to this day). Like me, she is always in the passenger seat, never alone, never an independent traveler, always existing in relation. In his car, she must have felt like an adult. I wonder if she wanted to reach over the seat and touch his face, if she kept looking at him when he was looking at the road, drinking him in, waiting for his eyes to flicker toward her and back to the street, if she sang harmony along with the radio and wondered if he thought her voice was pretty (it’s unconventional, a low, alto growl, but it becomes addictive, works its way into the heart of the listener)—if she did all the same things I did, craved the same things I craved, worried, like I worried, that she was making too much of these moments. Is it stupid?

In Melodrama, we hear the aftereffects of the love, the memory of it. The two songs that mention his car are “Hard Feelings” and “Supercut,” a song about the end and a song about remembering the beginning after the end has come.

In the first, she writes “now we sit in your car / and our love is a ghost.” I swallow these words on long car rides with my ex, when we are in the same group for weekend climbing trips. In the second, the ghost is explored. A supercut is a montage, and Lorde’s is one that cuts together “all the magic we gave off / All the love we had and lost.” In her head, the same moments replay — “In your car, the radio up / In your car, the radio up.” The line repeats itself like the memories, abruptly cutting back, somewhere between supercut and short-circuit. “We keep trying to talk about us / I’m someone you maybe might love.” The song calls back to “400 Lux” and “A World Alone,” a beautiful representation of the way we remember our relationships, our habit of recalling the best parts, of getting lost in nostalgia, finding ourselves wrapped up by the ribbons that tie us to the people we loved.

The love is remembered in one car; the post-breakup recovery in another. “Liability,” one of the most vulnerable, heart-wrenching songs on Melodrama, expresses Lorde’s attempt to come to terms with her breakup, opening with “Baby really hurt me / crying in the taxi / he don’t want to know me.” She is no longer welcome in his car. He doesn’t want to know her (“he,” not “you,” a far cry from the intimacy they shared). Instead, we imagine, he has put her in a cab. A stranger drives her home. Similarly, the entire album begins with “I do my makeup in / Somebody else’s car. / We order different drinks / At the same bar.” We know from this line that she is going to the same place as he is, but she can’t go there with him. She has to take someone else’s car. To begin the album this way is to emphasize the excruciating awareness Lorde has of their parallel paths and the distance between them.

The recovery, in the end, requires finding a new way to move through the world. “I ride the subway, read the signs,” she sings in the second verse of “Writer in the Dark.” In real life, while writing the album, she “took lots of subway rides, auditioning rough mixes of songs on cheap earbuds, which helped give her a sense of how the music would sound in daily life.” The subway is independent, solitary. It enables her to focus on her work. It doesn’t require her to dedicate her attention to the person next to her, the way conversation in the car does. It might be something like her new life, the one where she faces thousands of strangers every night instead of facing the specific person she once loved from the passenger seat. On the subway, in the stadium, she is always on display yet perhaps often unseen, unknown. She has emerged from the privacy of a love affair (in his car) and the privacy of her own heartbreak (in another car) into the individual-yet-communal and decidedly-unromantic experience of public transit. Perhaps it reminds the girl she used to be, when she wrote, “we ride the bus with our knees pulled in” (“Buzzcut Season”) or “we count our dollars on the train to the party” (“Team”), before the complications of the relationship took over. But perhaps it is different — now, there is no mention of anyone else with her. The independence is more complete, if bittersweet.

I take the train from school back to my city. I’ve never driven anywhere alone, since I didn’t get my driver’s licence until a week before I returned to school for senior year, where I don’t have a car. Sometimes I remember the bubble of my ex-boyfriend’s car, but I also think of the way I can put in my headphones on the train and just sit with my own thoughts. It’s a lonely release, a haunted freedom.

#lorde #text post #text #writer in the dark #hard feelings/loveless #supercut #400 lux #melodrama #pure heroine #liability #green light #song is for you #five of eight

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changingourdestiny · 5 years

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Burnt Memories Part 5: These Feelings

Summary:

Blaze regains her memories of her past life - the life she had serving Uldren as a bodyguard and advisor. But the questions still remain: how is her ring linked to this, how did Uldren know about it, and how did she wind up on Earth?

Previous Part: Here

Next Part: Here

Uldren slowly entered the arena, the ground scorched by Blaze’s flames. Blaze was sitting in the centre of the arena, still with her head hidden in her knees. Uldren spoke up, being careful not to startle her, “Well…I have to say, I never expected you to be that skilled at fighting.” Blaze just sat there in silence, refusing to even acknowledge Uldren’s presence. “You know, it’s rude to ignore someone if they’re talking to you.” No response. Uldren sighed in frustration before noticing a training dummy beside him had one of Blaze’s arrows in it. He glanced between the arrow and Blaze a few times. Jolyon, who was watching from above the arena, just sighed as facepalmed, “Don’t. Please don’t.” Uldren silently removed the arrow from the dummy, aimed at Blaze, and proceeded to throw the arrow straight at Blaze. *Whoosh!* *THWAP!* *CRUNCH!* Uldren gazed in shock at Blaze. In the blink of an eye, Blaze caught the arrow without even looking behind her and crushed it in her hand before throwing it to the side. “How did-?” Uldren began but was cut off by Blaze. “How did I know you were going to throw the arrow?” Blaze stood up and turned to face Uldren. The hair that was covering her right eye was no longer concealing it. Her right eye had no pupil or iris and was just a gradient of reds, oranges and yellows. “It’s part of the curse. One eye sees the present, the other sees the future.” “Curse?” Uldren seemed confused, and a little taken aback by Blaze’s serious tone – she was usually cheerful and happy, “What curse?” “Seriously? You never once found it weird how my markings are so different to the other Awoken? I have this curse called ‘Phyonys’s Wrath’. I can react to some things before they even happen, I can see visions on the future every once in a while, and…” Blaze glanced down at the scorch marks on the ground, causing her hair to fall in front of her right eye again, “I can do that. I can create, manipulate, and even set myself on fire without getting injured. However, the latter usually only happens when I get angry. I’ve gotten the ‘affectionate’ nickname of the Phoenix of Wrath. The other guards take one look at me and bail. Nobody wants to get burned during a sparring match…or worse…” Blaze just sighed as she turned away, “Look, forget I said anything. If you want to tell Mara that you want a different bodyguard, go ahead. I don’t blame you in fairness. It was only a matter of time before you saw the ‘monster’ everyone’s so afraid of.” … … *Whoosh!* *Thwap!* “Your highness, I just told you. I can see you throwing those before you do it.” *Whoosh!* *Thwap!* “Uldren, I’m not in the mood for games.” *Whoosh!* *Thwap!* “Uldren. I’m serious. Stop.” *Whoosh!* *Thwap!* *Whoosh!* *Thwap!* *WhooshThwapWhooshThwapWhooshThwapWhooshThwapWhooshThwapWhooshThwap-!*

“UGH!!! WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?!?!?!”

Blaze spun around and lunged at Uldren in a furious rage. Uldren dodged and blocked her attacks as Blaze kept trying to land a hit on Uldren. Jolyon just looked on in horror as Uldren sparred with the furious guard, “Has Uldren gone crazy? He’s going to be burned to ashes!” Jolyon’s face then shifted to confusion as Uldren briefly shot him a reassuring smirk as he countered some of Blaze’s blows. “Just what is he planning…?” An hour later… Blaze and Uldren stood several feet from each other, facing each other, both out of breath. Blaze growled as she whipped out her knife and charged at Uldren. However, Uldren quickly grabbed her arm which held her knife with one hand and held his own knife at her throat with the other. The two glared at each other for a moment before Blaze sighed in defeat and flopped backwards onto her back. “Alright, alright…I give…” she sighed, trying to catch her breath, “Geez…what was that for anyway…?” “Well, you wanted to spar with someone, didn’t you?” Uldren asked, “Also, if this fire power of yours is linked to your anger, maybe you need a healthy outlet to help control it.” Blaze sat up and looked at Uldren in surprise and confusion, “You…you’re not afraid of me…?” “What’s there to be afraid of?” “Heh…that’s a first…so…you’re okay with a living fireball being your bodyguard and advisor?” Uldren just chuckled as he extended a hand to Blaze to help her to her feet, “I can think of worse Awoken to fill the position…” Blaze took Uldren’s hand, a small blush dusting her cheeks, as the prince helped her to her feet. “If you’re up for it,” Uldren began, “Jolyon and I are going on a…how should I put it…'secret mission'. We could use an extra hand.” “Secret mission, huh?” Blaze smirked, “Sounds like fun. Count me in!” Blaze glanced down and noticed that her hand was still in Uldren’s, causing her blush to worsen. Uldren followed her gaze and seemed to notice the same thing as the two both let go at the same time, playing it off as no big deal. Uldren cleared his throat, “Well. We leave for Mars tomorrow morning. Meridian Bay.” “Y-yeah. Sounds like a plan!” “Alright then. See you tomorrow.” Uldren turned towards the arena entrance and began to leave. “H-hey, Uldren?” Blaze called after him, causing him to look over his shoulder. Blaze smiled at him – not a cocky smirk or a playful grin, but a genuine smile, “Thanks. I mean it.” Uldren seemed caught off guard for a moment before smiling, “You’re welcome.” And then proceeded to leave the arena. After Uldren was out of earshot, Blaze let out an exasperated sigh, “Whyyyyyy? I can’t feel like this…! Ugh, this sucks!” ——————————————————————— The Gate Lord towered above them. Uldren whooped and hip-fired a couple rounds into the sand at its feet. "Can you dance, sir?" he bellowed. "Have you got the footwork?" “I think Uldren’s finally lost it.” Jolyon sighed. “I think he lost it a long time ago, Jol.” Blaze laughed. Inside the Vex entity, there are mighty algorithms constructing a model of this merely temporal place, calculating potential threat, weighing the utility of weapons discharge against the good that power might do elsewhere. This computation is the only reason Uldren was still alive. The bone mic tuned to Cabal tactical channels woke up at Uldren's throat. They had localized the sound of Jolyon's rifle and Blaze’s hand cannon and were responding. He hollered up at the Vex behemoth and started to jig. "It's going to rain on Mars! It's monsoon season in Meridian Bay! Did you see the forecast?" He grabbed Jolyon and Blaze by the hands and pulled. Together, they sprinted towards the Gate Lord and its charge. The Vex machine must have known what was coming — but it had to weigh the certainty of Cabal against the tiny possibility of these micro-biotic motes slipping into the Gate. The Gate Lord raised a weapon to obliterate them. They skidded into the Gate's threshold, and Uldren activated a deflection grenade so hard, he nearly broke his thumb. A perfect sphere of topologically defective space-time blinked into being around him. He held Jolyon and Blaze close, and together they calmed their breath. The barrier was impenetrable, but it wouldn't last long. Until then there is only so much air to breathe. Outside, the full fury of a Cabal fleet carrier landed on the Gate Lord. When the barrier faded, the Gate Lord was dead, and Uldren, Blaze and Jolyon were no longer on Mars. “Well…that worked.” Jolyon muttered. “And here I was thinking this mission would be dull!” Blaze chuckled, looking up as rain poured down on the trio, “Wow…so this is the Black Garden…we should probably find someplace dry to figure out our next move…” Blaze, Uldren and Jolyon huddled together, shivering beneath a canopy of white tongues. The rain poured down. Uldren couldn't tell where it came from, exactly — somewhere up in the green mist? But the rain fell and fell; and the three turned their heads up to drink, there at the bottom of a chasm between two flower fields, where the Garden's immaculate surface divided into tropical fetor. “The flowers here sure are pretty.” Blaze commented as she gazed at one of the flower fields, “It’s kinda odd how the Vex are machines yet this place seems like it’s full of life.” "Everything grows here," Jolyon muttered, motioning to Uldren, "Look at your nails." Uldren studied his hand. He had a dreadful image of his fingernails developing into tight down-curved loops that curled around back into his fingers, completing a hideous circuit to their root. It's awful and yet it's wonderful, in a transgressive way, in a new-born screaming way. It spoke to him of new and secret things happening there. "They're dirty," he said, "but I trust you'll forgive me on that account. Rain's not letting up. Shall we move?" “Yeah.” "Aye." Jolyon hauled himself up when Blaze noticed a fistful of slithering vines on his arm, “Er, Jol? You got a lil’ something on your…” Blaze trailed off as the vines tried to coil around Jolyon’s wrist, tiny teeth shaped like letters sawing at his skin. He stared at them and jerked his arm away. "Are you all right?" "For now," Jolyon muttered. "For now." They moved down the length of the chasm, green mist swirling overhead, ankle-deep in a wet compost of flower petals and rich black soil. Wide, flat beetles with arching horns wrestled in the earth. Uldren flipped one on its back. The beetle had no interior, seen from below, it was just a hollow shell. Blaze found a Vex Goblin head covered in moss and lying on the ground and picks it up, holding it in front of her face, as she marched about in a robotic movement, repeating the phrase “I am a milk robot! All your milk are belong to us!” while mimicking a robotic voice and noises, earning a laugh from Uldren. Jolyon pulled up a fern, and its roots were the branching metallic threads of a circuit board. Tiny squirming things shaped like wet microchips milled in the exposed soil. "I don't like this place," Jolyon whispered. "We should get back to the surface…" He meant the Garden's surface, the manicured sectors of red flowers that stretch away toward a distant mesa. ‘It's far too Vex up there.’, Uldren thought, ‘They've been in here, gardening, moving earth, making walls, building their ancient constructs of stone and light, trying to tame this place.’ "It's life," he breathed. "You're right, Jol. Everything grows here…" He cannot let this place be killed. He cannot let it be looted and overthrown like everything else that doesn't fit into the narrow binary dogmas of the Traveller’s undead warriors. Excitement seized him and he ran ahead, sloshing through the muck, laughing aloud. "Uldren!" Jolyon shouted after him, "What are you looking for?" "I don't know!" he cried back. "That's what's so incredible! I can't know!” Blaze gazed at Uldren as he ran – she’d never seen Uldren this excited about anything before. With a giggle, Blaze shook away her surprise and ran after the Awoken prince, “Hey! Wait up, you dummy! I’m not letting Mara blame me for you getting shot!” As she ran after Uldren, Blaze thought to herself, ‘Maybe…even just for a while…it’s ok for me to feel this way…just for a moment…’ ——————————————————————— Those feelings, however, never left. Blaze stared out at purple, starry sky from the hanger in the Vestian Outpost. Memories of the dreams she had when training to become a member of the Royal Awoken Guard. Dreams of sailing through the stars outside the Reef, dreams of being seen as a hero in the eyes of her fellow Awoken, dreams of finally having a place to belong. But she’s never left the Reef. Most of her fellow guards are still wary of her, some calling her a monster. And yet…she feels like she does finally have a place she belongs. Not just at the Reef. But at Uldren’s side. All the feelings of loneliness, the feelings of hatred towards herself and her curse, the feelings of fear that she’ll never be good enough. Those feelings all suddenly disappear when she’s with Uldren. With him, she feels happy, at peace, and content with herself, and the fears of not being good enough and the opinions of others don’t seem to matter anymore… …she just wished she didn’t have to leave. A few days prior, Blaze received one of her visions. It flew by in a blur, but she recalled seeing a giant ship ploughing through Saturn’s rings, a large blast coming from the ship, and hundreds of Awoken ships crashing and exploding. Even if she isn’t present or involved in the vision shown to her, Blaze can see future events at random times. However, these visions can come days or months before the event happens. But upon being informed of this vision, Uldren didn’t want to take any chances. It took a while of convincing, but Uldren managed to get Mara’s permission to send Blaze to the only place he could think of where she would be safe. The Last City, planet Earth. Uldren despised Guardians as much as his sister, but he couldn’t deny that it was currently the safest place in the solar system where Blaze could stay until the tragedy that she saw in her vision passed. Blaze’s thoughts were interrupted when she noticed a presence beside her. “You know…I’ve seen the view from here hundreds upon hundreds of times.” Uldren spoke, “Yet it never seems to get old.” “Yeah. I’m really going to miss this…” Blaze sighed, continuing to stare out at the stars, “I don’t wanna leave…” “I know.” Uldren put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, “But it’s only until the tragedy at Saturn passes. Then I’ll come find you. I promise.” Blaze smiled sadly, a small blush on her cheeks, as she faced Uldren, “You know, the view here…it’s only the second thing of everything I’m going to miss.” Uldren raised an eyebrow, “What’s the first?” “You.” Uldren seemed surprised for a moment, before smiling, “Well, it’s a good thing I got this then. Give me your hand.” Uldren removed his hand from Blaze’s shoulder and extended it to her. Blaze put her hand on his as Uldren pulled something out of a pocket on his belt and slipped it onto Blaze’s finger. It was a silver ring with a shiny fire agate stone in the centre that shone brightly like a flame. “I had this ring made for you. As long as you keep it with you, I’ll be right beside you…I promise.” Blaze gazed at the ring in awe, beginning to tear up a bit, “I…I actually don’t know what to say for once…thank you.” “You’re welcome.” Blaze didn’t know what exactly happened. She didn’t know who had made the first move. But she found herself in Uldren’s arms, her own wrapped behind his neck, as the two Awoken kissed each other, backdropped by the purple starry sky of the Reef. As the two slowly pulled away, Uldren pressed his forehead against Blaze’s, “I won’t forget you, my little phoenix.” “I won’t either, my crow.” Blaze grinned. ——————————————————————— “No! Nonono! Please, no!” Blaze panicked as she struggled to keep her ship flying as she entered Earth’s atmosphere. She had been fired upon by a Hive ship which had spotted her approaching Earth. “Come on, come on! Please stay flying!” Blaze begged. *BLAM!* The Hive ship fired once again, taking out her ship’s engine. “Oh no! No, no, no!!!” Blaze cried. Warning sirens blared in the cockpit as the ship began to hurtle towards the ground. Blaze could only watch in horror as the ground came spiralling closer and closer to her. ‘Uldren…Jolyon…Mara…’ Blaze thought, ‘I’m so sorry…I won’t be coming back…forgive me…’

*BOOM!!!*

Everything was dark. Blaze - a soul devoted to her prince; whose bravery knew no bounds; who sacrificed her own happiness to ensure she’d be able to live alongside those she cared about – had died on impact when her ship crashed several hundreds of miles outside the Last City on Earth.

It was the end of Blaze, Royal Guard of the Reef…

And the start of Blaze, Hunter Guardian of Earth.

———————————————————————

The darkness faded as Blaze found herself back on Venus, staring at her ring that lay in her hands as she heard Paragon speak, “Everyone has moments in their past that makes them happy and moments that make them sad. But the past can also help shape the future, if one decides to learn from it. You’re past didn’t have a happy ending, but it’s set in stone, unchanging no matter how much you wish it would change. But your future is still unwritten. And it’s what you decide to do here in the present that will shape it. Keep my relic with you, little Lightbearer. I’m excited to see how you’ll shape your future!”

And in the blink of an eye, Paragon was gone.

“Ah! There you are!” Blaze jumped a bit heard Rae climb onto the pillar and speak from behind – she didn’t notice that time had unfrozen, “We’ve finished cutting off the head, and Ghost is going to hold it until we get back to the Re- huh? …Blaze? Why are you crying? Are you okay?”

Blaze held a hand up to her cheek and, sure enough, there were tears rolling down her face. Blaze took a deep breath as she slipped her ring onto her finger.

“There’s something I need to tell you guys.”

To Be Continued…

#destiny #changing our destiny #blaze kiria #jolyon till the rachis #uldren sov #prince uldren #fireteam paralight #rae drakyx #paragonialiskalmai #paragon #destiny vex #vex #destiny hive #hive #cabal #destiny cabal

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