#i have more than one moot in mind but ash came to mind first so

[pandorafallz]

Ashes in her wake | C2

Alma sipped slowly from her cool cup of herbal tea, her head still feeling foggy and tired but far better than she had been in the last couple of days since waking up after her transfer. Her body was healing well, according to Okul who had been tending to her more often and had the singular daily visit from Anufi to verify all was on track. Her visits were often very short.

Her burns were still bad and had another week to heal with dressing before she’d have to let it breathe and heal for a few days without, and her broken rib was still healing. It was estimated to be about two weeks before she’d be able to be more physically adventurous. A human bone, or rib, would take over a month to heal but Na’vi and Dreamwalker bodies were more resilient and coupled with efficient Na’vi medical treatments, the time was far shorter. The bruises looked bad but healing around the edges now. Most of the stitches from the debris had been removed this morning so she was feeling a little drained from that experience.

She had been left to rest in a quiet area of the Hollows, away from the people and she was thankful for the privacy when possible. She had been resting mostly when children would try and sneak in before their parents quickly pulled them away. Alma knew why; they had never seen a Dreamwalker before. Innocent souls with vast curious minds but she often remained posed as asleep so as to not make it awkward.

Still, the privacy had its… odd lonely tendencies when Okul wasn’t around so she kept herself occupied when not asleep with a few simple tasks, like spinning flax which was the easiest thing to do in her current state. Before Raj had joined the resistance on the second visit, Alma had to make or alter her own clothes for her avatar, a skill she had picked up after her first meeting with the Aranahe but she was no expert. She had learned it mostly to talk to the weavers and to get to know the clan better but it didn’t last. Spinning she could do, sorting fibres and combing it was another so it filled the hours without being too adventurous.

At least the tea was good. It helped bring down the swellings since. Her threadwork was set aside for now as she rested.

“<Dreamwalker,>” Okul appeared around the entryway quite cheerfully with a new set of bowls. “<I have brought food. Anufi is back. I believe she’ll join us soon so, while we wait, you should eat. A full belly is a happy one.>” They set the bowls down, simple meat and mushroom stew and took one to eat themselves to sip.

“<Thank you.>” She set her tea down, shifting the blanket from her legs and slowly reached forward and pulled it towards her, inhaling the savoury scent that drifted up.

“<How did you sleep? Resting well?>”

Alma took a hearty sip, chewing down slowly on a large piece of white mushroom with a stilled expression. “<Not really. Small dozing is dreamless.>” Fragments of memory always seemed to resurface at night although it was mostly Nor’s stabbing of her that replayed often, leaving her waking up at odd times shivering with phantom sensation down her right side. Resting during the day gave her some reprieve but… it hadn’t helped clear her head. She was fine. She could handle it.

It took years to stop seeing the Moot in her nightmares. Life had been easier once that had stopped. Something else now just took its place. She was sure Okul might have something to induce a dreamless sleep but that was a question for later.

“<Ah,I suppose that is still expected.>” Okul didn’t sound surprised, “<It has only been six days since…>” They trailed off but they both knew their implication.

“<I am aware.>” Her hand came to her side, not touching over the dressing too hard. “<how is the clan? It’s been very quiet. Only one child seemed to wander in earlier.>”

“<Very busy with the resistance. I don’t know too much myself but it seems very big and the Zeswa are very unhappy since the sky people brought down the celebration arches—>”

Alma almost choked on her stew, her eyes widening in alarm as she stiffened up. “<The RDA brought down the arches?!>”

Okul blinked in surprise at her outburst. “< A terrible event but the site was shut down by our Sarentu friend, they were there and saw it happen. The Upper Plains should not be attacked again with such horrible machines.>”

“<Is.. is she okay?>”

“<Of course, the Sarentu is a very good warrior. I do not know what has happened since but do not worry.>” Okul said, very firm in their belief and assurance.

Alma’s heart hammered before she forced herself to take a steady breath. Because… like it or not, she knew Kìoetey was a good warrior and no doubt had it handled and she didn’t doubt her skills but… she worried. Perhaps it was the maternal side of her that never had much of a chance to bloom due to Mercer’s interpersonal restrictions between her and the kids (and other personal reasons). Kìoetey was fine, they said.

Still. The Arches collapse was no small event either; the Zeswa were probably foaming at the mouth for revenge. At least The Resistance had all the tools to help warn and aid the Zeswa in achieving it without it turning into a one-sided slaughter against the Na’vi. Maybe she could help once she was cleared by Anufi somehow?

“<Relax. You’ll hurt yourself.>” Okul’s hand touched her wrist, reminding her of her bowl before she sat back with a huff.

“<I... I should be allowed to return to the Resistance now. I can probably be more helpful there than here.>” She could actually talk to So’lek and her people again. Socialise, even. It’d be pleasant to talk to them and she was sure a shared task would make it easier. She didn’t doubt the spread of gossip but it was probably worth the trip.

“<You’re not healed. You’d hinder them more than help in your current state, Alma.>” Okul said

“<I… I have to do something. I am part of the resistance.>”

“<You are doing something. Resting.>” Okul stated, “<You cannot fight and you have the concentration of a child and the sleeping pattern of a baby. I don’t believe you’ve fully realised the extent of what truly happened to you. It’s not quite there.>” They tapped their temple.

Alma shot them an annoyed look. “<My head is getting better.>”

“<Better does not mean healed. You’ve endured a significant trauma to not only this body but to your spirit; your spirit must rest to heal from being severed from your sky-people body and replanted into this. A few more days at the least before we can consider allowing you to roam free as a Meer deer. A sick or separating spirit can lead to never waking up. Are you willing to risk such a possibility?>”

“Ugh.” Alma groaned into the bowl, taking a less heartfelt glug but there was clearly no way to convince the Tsakarem here to allow her out. Their heart and mind was clearly set. At least the food was nice.

Okul sighed deeply. “<I know you are anxious to return but you must think of yourself as well. Once you’re done eating, I can show you where to put the threads you’re spinning to use.>”

Alma threw a glance at her basket but begrudgingly nodded. “<Okay.>”

She supposed it would be useful to know more things if she was going to be like this for another few days. She had no idea where her clothes were so she was given a spare waistcloth and top for the meantime which took some getting used to but she looked forward to returning for her old clothes. Maybe Raj could help her get something together as well? Increase her wardrobe. She’ll see, she supposed.

Alma eyed Okul’s clothing for a moment, on what inspiration she could draw from them, however, her curiosity piqued as she noticed the strap around their chest. She had seen them before, but… they did look good; very well crafted.

“<Those bottles you have on you, did you make those bottles yourself?>” She hadn’t seen many Na’vi wear them so… maybe that was more worth learning about as well.

Okul looked down to their chest, where the string lay crossed to their left side. They hummed curiously and pulled out forward. “<This interests you?>”

“<Yes, our bottles are made of glass or metal. I’d love to learn more of this… if you’d show me>”

Okul hummed far more cheerfully, their eyes lighting up excitedly. “<I’ll get the supplies. This will be fun>”

-

Okul was a good teacher, and it burned through time as they let her craft with them but she had only made one successful bottle, made from Meer Deer horn, twine and various plant saps that were heated at a few different temperatures to achieve different goals, such as waterproofing, glue and means of sealing the bottle of leaks. All fascinating.

She was quite proud of her bottle, just smaller than her palm but she let Okul fill it with some painkilling medicine so she painted a cross on its front in green paint with her little finger since it was the only colour on hand.

“<What is that symbol?>” Okul asked as she set it to dry.

“<It’s a Cross symbol. Sometimes religious in a human context but a red cross is a human symbol of healing, impartial humanitarian care and neutrality. Earth has a group devoted to care and this symbol is used to signify It.>” Alma explained, “<The group does not exist on Pandora so a cross, regardless of colour is more generic and often found on our medical packs to simply signify medical aid.>”

“<Fascinating.>”

“<If you’re curious, Kìoetey might show you where they are in abandoned sky people camps. I noticed she carries the gel packs from the kits for and from her missions.>”

“<Perhaps. I did not realise symbols like this carried weight.>”

“<Humans have had a written language for thousands of years, the symbols we have on boxes are often text to describe the group who owns them, the weight and size, the content and potential hazards>” Alma explained, “<I should probably draw out the symbols if you continually poke at sky people stuff… so you don’t hurt yourself.>”

“<I doubt that will be necessary but I appreciate your suggestion.>” Okul declined but finished up with the thread and took the bottle from her hands and showed her how to wrap the bottle and secure it. Hot wax was used to hold it into place before it was returned.

“<Thank you.>”

Alma slowly helped clear up with Okul, wincing a few times as she did so and Okul carried the tray away before she was left alone. Her fingers playing with her bottle, debating on if it was worth taking another nap because she was feeling tired now. The craft session had been fun but now… she was drained.

She sighed deeply, moving back into the blankets on the floor and lay back…

…

…

“<Alma. It is time for you to wake up. >”

The noise was abrupt, pulling her mind from the blissful dark within a couple of moments, her resting heart picking up quickly and her eyes snapped open to the hazy few of someone leaning over her. She groaned, blinking rapidly and rubbed her eyes before she realised it was Anufi.

Anufi was looking tenser than she had seen her before but clearly ready for something. She handed over a vial. “<Drink, this will provide you more energy.>”

Alma blearily held it, taking note of the tear-shaped bottle and tasselled stopper before she pulled the top off and down it. The taste was bitter and salty, but she felt the immediate surge of energy; her sleepy mind sharpened and her heart seemed to pick up fast within her chest. “Woah…”

Anufi’s head tilted, her hand coming to her chest first to feel her heart then pulled her hand up to the slight shake the new energy was giving her. Not quite like an adrenaline shot but it certainly felt like it. “<I should have allowed only half, I didn’t realise you’d absorb it so quickly. My apologies.>”

“<I’m a rapid metaboliser… the effect may wear off sooner than usual>” She had that as a human too but it was only ever prominent when drinking coffee… or back when she had an epidural for the C-section. She was surprised Anufi hadn’t clocked on sooner but… she supposed the daily visits weren’t enough to see. Okul knew given how many times they upped her medicinal tea strength the last week.

“<Then take a moment. The Sarentu are here and I feel your spirit is settled within this form enough to share your memories with them.>”

“<What? Today?!>” Alma couldn’t shake the alarm in her voice. “<I thought I had more time…>” She suddenly felt under prepared. Surely there was a few more days or hours for her to get mentally geared for this.

“<There is much happening that you do not know of and the Sarentu have waited long enough.>” Anufi said, not uncaring but stern in her words. “<I am not asking you, either. I did not tell you earlier so as not to get you too riled with anxiety or attempt to escape.>”

Alma swallowed thickly, her gaze dropping. “<I wouldn’t have run>” Not just on the basis of having a broken rib that was still healing but she couldn’t do that to the kids. The truth was coming out and she accepted that… just not suddenly and then and there. It was suddenly very overwhelming.

“<I can’t know that. You kept them in the dark for sixteen years and asleep for fifteen more. You have not been honest.>”

Alma sighed deeply and slowly scrambled out of her blankets, pulling her waistcloth straight as well as her top, her side aching uncomfortably so she kept her hand pressed softly to the dressing. Her tail didn’t settle and swished continually as she nodded for Anufi to lead the way; best to get this over with, right?

The stares were lingering, burning as she passed the people and some, she was glad did not notice her as they were too busy with their own work. She was led down and out of the main left-side structure and down past Heykinak who was crafting a new bow.

“<… is Anufi really letting a Dreamwalker into the Circle of Ancestors?>” A Kame’tire whispered of soft disapproval to her friend. “<It’s not right.>”

Alma stamped down her feelings in regards to that and instead focused ahead to see both Kìoetey and Ri’nela waiting close to the whispering Greatcaps.

Both looked a little mentally preoccupied but Kìoetey was crouched and content. Ri’nela was pacing a little, not so at peace but both turned their way at their entry into the circle. A few woodsprites bouncing close.

Kìoetey spared a look at her then away, then sharply back as if suddenly recognising her. “Alma?” She asked, her eyes dropping down to take her in fully. “You’re wearing Na’vi clothes?”

Alma’s arms came and wrapped around her chest, feeling a little self-conscious at the attention. “I didn’t have my clothes coming here. It was this or my underwear.” She felt the heat flood her ears and cheeks. At least her hair was the same.

“Ah,” Kìoetey nodded, “I forgot about that. Sorry, I should have asked So’lek or someone to bring some down.”

“That doesn’t matter right now,” Ri’nela spoke, drawing their attention. “<Now is the time for answers.>”

“<Indeed. Connect with Eywa, all who wish to see. I will stand by should you need me>” Anufi said, offering a space near the mushroom.

Alma’s stomach churned with dread and anxiety as she knelt by the strand of the Greatcaps, cool to touch with her fingers as she pulled it towards her, her other hand finding her kuru slowly but she found herself staring.

A hand touched her shoulder, almost burning but there was a soft squeeze. “<No more stalling.>”

“<I know…>” but she was scared. She knew she must tell this truth but… what would come of it.. she had no idea. Of course, she knew it’d only be worse if she kept finding reasons not to do this; the Sarentu wanted their answers. She couldn’t hide it forever.

Alma took a final breath before she let the end of her kuru curl around before she felt the familiar wash of white….

Then the next she found herself standing in the middle of a forest tunnel. Familiar in terms of a path once walked; the tunnels of the moot site. Eywa’s construct to house her memories in this visits to transverse rather than jumping to memory after memory. Allowing an ease of observation. Her memory was hazy but clearing the longer she stood there. Distant memories she had tried to suppress seemed to bubble and settle in the conceptual forest around her and waiting for her steps.

Them. Their steps

She wasn’t alone but she could feel Ri’nela and Kìoetey behind her close.

“Why is it dark?” Ri’nela asked. Her voice rang in her ears.

“I suppressed a lot of my memory,” Alma admitted. “I... I wanted to lock it away. From myself. From you.”

“To make it easier for you?”

“Guilt and shame will do that. It was my coping method. Now it all lies ahead of me.” She stared down the tunnel but found the strength to move and take the first few steps. “I know I have to show you the truth.”

The tunnel seemed so long and yet, she soon found herself at the first scene she had seen of the clan, the people so happy dancing around the fire and she felt… surge of memory resurface from the dark, the blue haze lightening with colour that made the two behind her gasp as she saw their people move and dance, the echoing drums.

“I’m starting to remember… back then, I was so thrilled at the idea of meeting the Sarentu. What that could have meant for us… me. I told myself we were doing a good thing but… that’s not how it ended.”

Ri’nela stepped forward before their vision was swamped with a new vision, flooding with the scene from the ship above. Watching from the outside, she saw the ship of soldiers; herself clinging on with uncertainty.

“This is where Mokasa told me to find the Sarentu but—”

“Hey,” Mercer’s tone was sharp, cutting her hesitant statement short. “No time for cold feet, now.”

“We’re just talking to them.” Her memory counterpart echoed, her tail lashing softly, “Do we need this many soldiers.”

“This is our last chance. They’re too primitive to understand what we can do for their children.”

Memory Alma looked more swayed at the latter of that statement, “It’s for the children…” her tone far softer.

“Exactly!” Mercer jumped onto that, “ Just think about what we can achieve. Finally.”

Airily, Memory Alma nodded, “We’re helping them. They’ll see it. In time…” Trying to sound hopeful.

The scene returned back to the clearing of dancing and celebrating Sarentu, but she couldn’t look at them as she led the way through. “It used to be beautiful here.” Alma said, “Then we came.”

Kìoetey tapered off a little to look at the group of children… then to paintings on the rocky wall. “That mural… I’ve seen it before. The colours are so vivid…”

Alma didn’t linger but her eyes came to the foggy shapes of humans, armed and the distant sound of their echoing, breaths that rasped through their mask filters.

The two Sarentu needed no context as to why they were there so they walked silently through these stilled moments. Dread settling in her stomach at what was next, the dark was heavy but she had little choice but to move on towards the clearing. Then they were lurched into a horrific scene.

“No! What are you doing?!” Memory Alma screamed out, amongst the soldiers who fired on the Sarentu. Bodies fall every few seconds from the flickers of metal. “Let me talk to them!”

“Don’t let them run!” Harding’s voice echoed the loudest. “We can’t find them in the forest”

“<Please, stop running! Don’t fight them!>” Memory Alma spoke in Na’vi as if that would stop the shooting. Two more Sarentu fell behind, fires no longer in control and spilling out…

“Harding. No one gets out.” Mercer called.

Memory Alma continued to look out at the scene in horror, helpless.

Then they were back… but the dancing scene they had started off was now a scene of death. Bodies laid as they fell.

Her mouth felt dry, a temporary numbness settling in which allowed her to speak. “I... I always said I didn’t know. But I did.” She admitted, leading on over the bodies because they could not stay here. “I hungered for glory… recognition at any cost. But our dream started with a massacre.”

She walked past the barrels of toxic chemicals, used to cover up and dissolve the bodies. Hide the evidence from the outside world. But the next and last clearing had her falter a little… little Aha’ri in her Sarentu clothing, crouching down in front of Colonel Harding… terrified and traumatised to have witnessed her clan’s demise. Her own mother’s death.

“No, Aha’ri…” Alma whispered with regret. She took a heavy breath to carry on, the guilt and the grief of her actions felt so tight around her ribs and threatened to choke her. “I had to focus on you. The children. Protect you… but now I know we’re the ones you needed protection from. We… We wanted our school. Our program. So we stole you. Your clan tried to stop us… so we killed them.” There was no denying her part in it. “My human death is no absolution to the crimes we committed here. I understand that…”

Memory Alma was kneeling now, almost defeated amongst the horror of the unexpected death and destruction. “The Na’vi will never forgive us. Never.”

“The Na’vi will never know,” Mercer said, cold as ever.

Memory Alma’s head bowed in shame, her shoulders sinking down.

“Here, take this.” Harding’s voice was bored.

 Memory Alma turned to see and her attitude changed to something soft as she rose carefully to Aha’ri who was more or less pushed her way. “Don’t worry, little one.” She pulled the girl close as if to shield the six-year-old’s view of the burning and death around. “I’ll protect you.” The loudest sound was the little doll Aha’ri dropped onto the grass…

She found herself back out of the memory, lingering for a moment before she felt Ri’nela and Kìoetey disappear from the memory… the clearing. Leaving her alone without a word. She swallowed thickly before she felt the grass under her real body return and the other hand touch hers…pulling her hand and kuru away.

The scene around was replaced by the Circle of Ancestors… Anufi stepped back to allow her space.

Alma’s head turned but she had no words to speak as the two Sarentu looked at each other, tears in their eyes but there was more to it. No words needed to be spoken as Kìoetey rose to her feet, jaw tensing and loosening. Ri’nela was quick to follow but first to leave with clenched fists and nothing said.

“K-Kìoetey…” Alma tried, her voice cracking.

“No.” Kìoetey shut her down instantly, not even looking at her before she more or less stormed from the circle…

Alma stared before she ducked her head, regret once again filling her stomach.

“Come, back to rest in quiet; they need time to comprehend what they have seen.” Anufi was stern, pulling her up to her feet but she had no strength to fight her on it; to try and chase after and explain but… her head felt funny. The energy she had had was fading fast and she felt the new dregs of tiredness behind her eyes.

“<Are-Are you gonna see too?>” She asked, allowing herself to follow.

“<Not today. I have seen enough pain and death. Hear me when I say this, do not mistake the care we provide as anything less than duty. As you’re part of the resistance, you’re an ally of Kame’tire and privileged, despite the blood on your hands.>”

Which as Alma understood, was the only reason she was still not shoved out into the cold like Mokasa. They held the same crime but Anufi knew the connections were thin between the human side of the Resistance and the clan; she was treading carefully to not snap those bonds when they needed them. A political move, so to speak. Mokasa on the other hand had no ties to protect him.

“<When can I go? Return to the resistance?”

“<Tomorrow>”

Alma nodded. “<Okay.>” She had time to plan her next course of action. She hoped Anqa would pick her up otherwise it was going to be a very long walk.

[abarbaricyalp]

@sambuckylibrary

SamBucky Halloween Prompt 8: Horns/Wings/Claws/Glowing Eyes (I went four for four)

Just an angel and a demon blending in

Rated M: I feel it gets a little spicy and intense so just an excerpt this time (AO3 link in the notes)

Keep Thee In All Thy Ways

Bucky was just about thrumming out of his skin. Not entirely figuratively.

Sam, beside him, was much more composed. But there was a ready grin on his mouth that he usually kept a little more hidden. All the promises in that grin were not helping Bucky keep himself contained. They sought these events out like a challenge, chances to be their true selves without attracting too much attention. Or, at least, the bad kind of attention. Krampus celebrations and monster conventions and horror movie events all kept them sated throughout the year, but Halloween and haunted houses were easiest. And parties like these were Bucky’s favorite.

“Can we?” he asked, looking up at Sam with clear blue eyes. Early snow had started to filter down around them and melted instantly on their skin. The party below continued to rage. There were so many moving bodies and fires that Bucky wasn’t sure they’d even noticed the flurries yet.

Sam nodded his permission and Bucky stepped back. He rolled his shoulders back in his perfect coat and brought his hands up to smooth his hair from his face before relaxing enough to reveal the large, curling horns over his head. They always came out first, the hardest thing about himself to hide. He shook the humanness from his arms until the one turned into a gnarled hook of a hand and the other grew claws straight from the skin. By the time he looked up at Sam, his teeth had sharpened and his eyes had gone black. Natural. Easy "Too much?" he asked.

It was a moot point. As always, Sam was more impressive, with his dour massive bloodied wings and dozens of white glowing eyes. Some hung in the air around him, some traveled the length of his cheeks and neck. When he unbuttoned his shirt, several more blinked from his shoulders. The extra arms, dripping molten gold, antler and bone protruding through dark skin, were always a favorite that Bucky somehow forgot about year to year. Above everything, a gold and blood halo curved from Sam’s temples to the air over his head, almost taller than his wings.

“Come on, take off your pants,” Bucky goaded as his hands fell to his own sharp pressed slacks. A smooth, dense black fur pelt ran over thick thighs and narrow shins to fiery hooves. It was always the same for him. Sam could choose any animal he wanted.

“I thought we could match today,” the angel said and kicked his pants aside. His fur was much thicker and fluffier, curled the same way the hair on his head did but several shades lighter. His feet were not on fire, but each step left gold and ash in its wake anyway. Bucky reached over to smooth his hand down the side of Sam’s thigh and Sam shuddered against him.

“I forget how hot you are like this,” he said, and used a lower hand to drag Bucky’s palm over his side to rest low on his belly, against the first thatch of hair leading to his legs. Bucky scratched his fingers through the thick fur to the skin below. Sam’s upper hands pulled Bucky into a rough kiss, all ancient bone and brimstone against impossibly soft mouths. After millennia of existence, Sam still managed to catch his lips on Bucky’s teeth and bleed into his mouth. Bucky figured it must’ve been some declaration of love at this point.

“Do you have a cute little goat tail?” Bucky asked, dragging his good hand down Sam’s back to his ass.

“We should go before the snow piles up. We’ll be too easy to spot if we’re melting snow banks everywhere we walk.”

Bucky pouted, though it was probably lost in the rest of his visage. Logically, he knew that they only had so much time in their real bodies before something exploded or electricity stopped working or entire towns lost their minds at once. Never mind that staying stuck in a human body for ages on end made Bucky lose his own mind.

As it turned out, those who partook in the glories of plants that tripped them the fuck out on the Earthly plane were remarkably good at not losing their mind around ethereal beings. Halloween parties designed to get people high and then scare the shit out of partiers with gruesomely realistic costumes were exactly the kind of place Sam and Bucky could stop being human for a while longer than normal. It had the added benefit of never having someone be able to seriously claim they saw an angel or a demon, plus it usually converted a few people one way or the other.

These were very good parties.

“No fucking way,” someone laughed at the outskirts of it all. It was darker out here, but that meant nothing when Sam glowed white-hot and golden from head to toe. The partier reached up and waved his hands around the floating eyes. Bucky shoved him back.

“Don’t ruin the illusion, man,” Sam laughed back and tossed one arm over Bucky’s shoulder and the other around his waist. Antler and bone sunk into Bucky’s flesh and set him alight inside. “Took me forever to balance.”

The guy held his hands together in front of his face and bowed a little. “Righteous, man.”

Bucky wanted to tell him he had no fucking idea.

In the midst of the actual party, monsters danced to shitty music and shittier live music played over the stereo. Horrific costumed faces swam in and out of focus as they came together and fell away in the firelight. Smoke was thick and potent from the fires and the partiers alike. As much as Bucky did like the smell of cigarette smoke burning into lungs, the temptation to put his arm in one of the fires was more overwhelming and he let the flames bite and burn into his bad arm.

Sam took a deep breath and leaned more heavily into Bucky’s side. “Fuck, do you remember sacrificial votives?” he breathed, all eyes falling shut.

“I remember everyone who has ever worshipped or prayed to you,” Bucky answered and drew his arm back from the flame.

Sam clicked his tongue and sucked on his teeth. “Don’t act so modest. You always got better flesh offerings than us.” He reached for Bucky’s arm and brought it to his mouth, laving his tongue over the charred skin. It flaked off in his mouth and then healed neatly behind his ministrations.

Bucky grinned, firelight catching on brimstone teeth. “We encouraged it. That’s on you for suggesting animals and money.”

“Money,” Sam scoffed and shot Bucky a baleful look from the crook of his elbow. “When offerings became truly about human sacrifice and not divine gain.”

“Mmm, you know I adore when you get traditional on me,” Bucky purred, tucking himself against Sam’s chest. He took his arm back to run his hands down Sam’s strong abdomen. He wrapped the hooked hand behind Sam’s waist and Sam stepped forward into the embrace. “Let me worship you and put your mind at ease about sacrifice and gain.”

I promise there’s more! Please read the rest on AO3!

[jjba-hell]

Fate and Fortune

Double posting- let’s go! Part 18

Here’s part 17 for a refresher but the rest of the story is in the fate and fortune tag. Head kinda empty when I wrote this, no proofreading...

Moots :3 @fyre23 and @risottoneroo

The usual tw- its still JoJo over here

Sleep alluded Vera in the early morning so instead of sulking about in her room she returned to the hospital to be with Kakyoin. The nurses objected fiercely as she simply strolled and phased through hallways to get to the redhead.

She gently knocked on the door and spoke- so as not to startle him since he was a bit more vulnerable that usual. “Noriaki. It’s me. Can I come in?”

When she didn’t get an answer she pushed through regardless.

“Vera.” The relief in her voice made her heart do a backflip. He sat up in his bed, bandages around his eyes but seeming to look in her general direction. “You’re alright.”

Vera didn’t say much as she approached his bed and took his outstretched hand. “I’m so sorry, I should have been able to help you but I-“

“No, Vera no. You had already been injured- I wouldn’t have asked the impossible from you.”

She moved in closer, gently slipping her arms in around his. “I was so scared I had lost you.” His hand tightened the grip on the shirt in her back at her words- “I thought the same.”

Fortune materialized beside her, bringing their hands to her side of Kakyoin’s head to start healing his eyes. “I guess I was so frantic I couldn’t just reverse you wounds. No going back now...”

Kakyoin’s grip on her wrist tightened. “Vera... I’ve wanted to ask you this for a long time.”

“Ask later, just let me heal you.”

“Please... wait, before you continue.”

Reluctantly, she took both of his hands in hers- Fortune stopping- and squeezed his hands. “I’m listening.”

“As crazy as it sounds... when I went under during the attack- my mind was racing like crazy and I couldn’t escape this question anymore. You seemed so tired yesterday- even as we said our goodbyes. Am I wrong to think moving time forward is strenuous on your life?”

“What? No! Where would this come from?”

“You’ve been greying this whole trip, Vera. Beautiful as you are with or without the grey... I can’t help but think you’re glossing over the fact that you’re giving months, even years of your own life for us.”

Has it really been this way? The cost was no surprise to her but... if she truly was truly simply transferring time to heal other’s wounds... “It’s my choice. I’ve always known the consequences of what I do.”

Kakyoin gave a soft smile, his hands squeezing hers tighter now. “Is it strange to think I could hear the uncertainty in your voice just now?”

“I can’t just let you suffer through the pain.” Her hand came up to cup his cheek- wishing frantically that he could see the tears she was holding back.

“Vera... I’d like to spend a bit longer than 50 days with you and Jotaro, you know. We can’t do that if you give your years away like this.”

Before Vera could move her hand away from his cheek he brought his hand to it, leaning into her touch as if he would miss it. “You’re not letting me heal you, are you?”

He turned his head so as to kiss the palm of her hand. “Nope.” He took said hand enterlaced it with his- pulling her in closer until she was back in his arms, resting his chin on her head. “I’ll be fine.”

Vera stuck around for the prognosis with the others in the room as well- she’d gotten a firm admonishment from Avdol for leaving her hospital room... not knowing what she had done in the hotel room. After explaining his refusal of her help and well wishes on the next leg of the trip, they paid the medical bills and were soon packed and off to Kom Ombo.

“So you say all your ability to move time back-“

“It’s extremely strenuous. I’ve tried reverting something as simple as my hair being dry but even that makes me feel like I had just ran a mile.”

Avdol’s held his chin in throught as Vera sat on the railing near the nose of the felucca. “All of this has changed in the span of three days?”

Vera tilted her head to the side. “Three? We arrived in Aswan yesterday.”

“No, Vera. After we had arrived in Aswan I was admitted into the hospital for observation and you were still unconscious due to the blood loss. When you woken up and they were busy with your second blood transfusion- your blood pressure had dropped dramatically for some reason and I had just been been discharged.”

Admittedly the memory was fuzzy- after being admitted into the hospital... it didn’t seem so unlikely that she had slept after going under but it was still kind of shocking.

“Which brings me to ask- why do the hospital not have record of you after 3 am?”

Vera took a drag of her cigarette, sliding off the the rail to sit where the wind wouldn’t catch her and ashing in the tray she had brought for herself. “Because I was in the morgue freezer?”

Avdol’s eyes widened. “Why?”

“I was having a pretty bad fever.”

He gaped at her in shock.

“More specifically a stand fever?”

Avdol didn’t often react in the way he did in that moment- his hands flying up to his temples as he tried to ease a headache quickly approaching. “Another stand fever?”

“I know, it’s bizarre- but Fortune is a bit different, if her change in abilities isn’t obvious and I had the strangest nightmares. I wouldn’t confuse it with another fever.”

Avdol’s shock and frustration soon turned into concern. “I’m supposing you were looking for some kind of relief. When did it end?”

“Uhh well...” she recalled her bumbling self getting dressed and calling the cab outside the hospital with the night shift nurses well asleep and her ice bath in the hotel room. “After that I went back to the hospital to be with Kakyoin.”

After a moment Avdol sat down beside her, holding his hand out for the cigarette which she gladly handed over. “Of course only you would get up to this nonsense and manage surviving a stand fever like that.”

He took one drag and took a steady exhale as the wind howled around them. “I worry about you, Vera.”

“Well I mean easier said that done but, don’t. I can handle myself.”

Avdol gave a huff of laughter, taking one more drag before handing it back to her. “There’s no shame in asking for help, though.”

At their stop, Vera had take it upon herself to stick to Polnareff for the day- stopping him from ripping up a merchant’s papyrus. “Thank you for the demonstration but he’s French-“

Before Polnareff could protest her argument he was too busy getting distracted by Iggy stealing the gum straight out of his hands. “Fuck, when Jotaro said it’s like babysitting- he meant it, huh?”

She jogged after Polnareff, struggling to keep up with the giant of a man. “He really gave the slip.”

“Of course he did, he’s only half a foot tall.” Vera followed after cautiously in the ruins- feeling some or other ominous presence look over them.

“You feel it too, right?” Polnareff slowed down a bit for their pace to sync a bit better. Vera nodded, not sure what it was but waiting nonetheless. When a man in her right fell in line with them and walked a few paces in sync, Polnareff pulled her closer by her wrist to bring her out of the way between the two men. At the stand still Polnareff confronted the guy directly, their gazes never meeting.

“Divine Anubis, huh? Y’know my dad used to be a devout worshipper himself. They actually spoke of a sword forged by Anubis himself that had been lost to turmoil and time- made of Anubis’s shadow.”

True to Vera’s suspicion- held to Chaka’s hip was a sword and maybe her hint at Polnareff would be well received but she simply knew it wasn’t.

Polnareff ordered her to stay where she was- closer to the crowd and watch as they shelled but like hell she was going to allow it.

At the first hit on Polnareff’s chest she hopped up and followed the crumbs to where the sheath of the sword laid almost forgotten in the sand. She followed the ruckus back- bringing Fortune to heal Polnareff’s chest before standing between the two.

“Now I may only have done light fencing in high school but honestly- I’m pretty sure that’s not how you wield a katana.”

At the insult Chaka moved as she’d expected- sword forward to plunge into her but with just a it of luck from Fortune the sword slid straight into its sheath and up and over Chaka’s head.

“Admittedly, it’s pretty but...very cursed.” Vera clicked the sword back into its sheath fully started carrying it back to Polnareff. “I tried to give you a hint- did it not catch?”

Polnareff seemed affronted at her question. “When did you throw me a hint? The legend of a sword formed by Anubis? Ring any bells? I told you it was made out of Anubis’s shadow?”

“That was the hint?”

“What? You think I just like talking about ancient rumors for fun?”

Iggy’s barking brought their attention back to the others calling the from the foot of the hill for the next stretch of travel.

“You did fencing?” Polnareff asked, looking as confused as ever.

In Endufu Vera sat on the desk of the hotel they’d be staying in, swinging her legs out in front of her as they considered the sword. “So if it’s an artifact- how did it get in the hands of a commoner?” Mr Joestar hummed as he observed the jewel encrusted sword.

“I’m guessing it has some effect on non-stand users. Is it just me but seeing an expensive sword like that I would have peddled it for money to the historica. If it’s a stand it probably has a sway of making someone become its user.”

Avdol picked up the sword- turning it around to see if it had any effect on him.

“I think the best course of action would be to hand it to the Speedwagon Foundation to lock up. Vera, think you could make the call and get it to the right place?”

As promised, she had handed the sword to the boys as she made the call for an emergency pick up. It was scheduled for about an hour so she took the time to slip into the shop- hand Polnareff the sword and tug Jotaro out for a smoke break. Or at least so she had planned.

After pulling him aside from public eye- she was about to bring her lips to his but when Jotaro’s eyes stopped at the scars running down her arms. He held her forearms gingerly in his considerable bigger open palms.

“Stop it.” Her hand shot up to hold his face to look at her but his eyes followed. “It wasn’t you.”

Those aquamarine eyes seemed to hold an unbelievable sadness as his gaze moved to meet hers. Tiredly he seemed to do all he could do- bring her in against her chest for a moment of peace for the both of them... until the glass shattered behind them and she knew it was probably Polnareff.

One heavy sigh and some nasty close calls later, the sword was sinking to the bottom of the Nile.

“So- thus far we’ve had an orangutan with a stand, a dog with a stand, a baby with a stand and now a sword... yeah if Dio had two stand would you really be surprised?”

[zafaria]

opened my eyes, fell out the sky

To get to the stuffy grey-brick tower that housed my dorm, I had to walk. I had to walk, from where I was. 

I split my nights, spending some staring at my own face in the white-blue crystals in the underground of Avalon, and I spent some time sitting in base camp on the bottom of the sandy seafloor (I would walk to the quiet corner of base, next to the half wall, and lean on that pile of sand stacked in that corner. I would allow my clothes to get ruffled, the sand to work its way between the fibers and into the pores on my skin.). And I spent some time with the dark trees of the Zocalo looming over me, stuck by the door in that cave, staring at all the little blue rectangular mosaic tiles that ran out towards the plaza and tried to guide me, nudge me along that way. But, I knew better. 

I knew that outside of the cave, the other half of all those palm trees that I didn’t see, was burned to a wire husk. That the tiles were all crushed and cracked in the plaza. That the fountains didn’t run, the smoke still hung in the air even if I willed it to dissipate time and time again.

The journey back to Ravenwood was a daunting one. Coming back before was a homecoming, an eager experience. I’d walk in during the daytime, I’d make my announcements and updates to the Headmaster, then I’d go sit in my dorm and fidget until I was called on again.

Now, I shirked from sight. I only ever came back at nighttime. I did not need to report to the Headmaster; this was moot. The flicker of red dust was so visible, so vibrant in the sky. More than anything, I did not want people to see me. Failure in my trembling, pale hands; the way I had to hold railings and stone halfways; how I couldn’t hardly get my hand around a doorknob to open it and sulk inside; the porcelain, vacant stare and the muddled mind; the knees that sometimes flittered and popped and rolled;  the missing ends of sentences in conversation...

When I did come back, finally, the streetlights cast yellow rectangles across the undisturbed sidewalk. Some of the attic lights of the houses were on, but all the ground-floor lights, the windows where people would have been able to witness me, were off. And I was thankful.

I was only noticed by those warm streetlights, between rows of silent, sleeping houses. The world was still; the noise of the birds and voices and even the crickets had slunk out of the air, sitting on the ground with the dew, waiting until morning tided over to rise again. There was only a slight rushing sound, the sound of the world still moving on. There was a coziness in that moment that I craved to feel again. I knew by now, moments in solitude would never be comfortable again. Worse than the awkward silence that mulled between a fallen-out friend and you; or even a despicable person and you; was the silence between despicable you, and you.

And did I ever despise myself. 

Did I enjoy walking home at night like that, or, well, tolerate walking home at night like that, because the empty streets and quelled voices and the breathtaking darkness reflected something of myself? Maybe I had it wrong, maybe it was the other way around. The streets were quiet and the people hidden and the air paused because I was walking in; I was only ever moved to walk at night when I could tell that the world wanted to avoid me, that the stars above wanted to burn me, that the night-creatures hidden in the trees wanted to peer into me, peeling me apart from the inside out. I didn’t make the meaning of the dark streets, the dark streets made the meaning of me.

I crawled back to my dorm. There was only a heavy feeling as my soles faintly echoed across the pavement. I thought that with every next step, maybe I would just collapse, or sink through the ground. 

During the days, I would lie in bed, and sometimes I wouldn't, but I was unable to stir. Sometimes physically, but always emotionally and mentally. I was asleep sometimes, awake some other times. I got up early, I went to bed early, I got up late,  I went to bed late, I stayed up, I stayed up. Revisited the same conversations and same memories. I talked in circles, I talked in circles. I watched for signals. Drove myself to misery, brought myself back again in an infinitesimal moment of joy, then made a game out of slowly prodding myself back into my pit. 

Sometimes I’d read, but I couldn’t focus on the words as they fluttered away once I had finished reading them. I tried to write some ideas, an apology letter with no addressee. The mail list would’ve been too numerous, and how can you send a letter to hundreds of people whose names you never collected, who you never knew? I burned every single note, every word. The grotesque parts of me hoped that all ash ended the same place, that my half-worked and grasping attempts would fizzle and go and reach the same place as all of Azteca. That someone out there somewhere still would’ve known that I was trying, and it wasn’t and would never be enough, but I was trying so, so hard.

These days, I did not announce things in the Commons and I did not fidget in my dorm. Time could not pass quickly enough, but I rarely found better ways to make it move than being stuck in broken cycles. Writing and burning and writing and burning. Standing and picking and sitting and standing and picking and sitting. Sleeping and waking, crying and nothing. Nothing I could do ever comforted myself, and I always was doing the same things.

Now, I learned to dread being called on. I was finally at the point where I had made too large a mistake. Dispelling wayward, but ultimately good souls, freeing drakes, playing into inter-family wars, not reaching Mirror Lake fast enough. All of those were early signs of my shortcomings, hints of fundamental structural failures. But all were excusable, to an extent. What would we have hoped for anyways? A child to have not been so blindly trusting of all creatures in the first endeavours outside the comfort of school friends and family? Longer legs and larger lungs to scale mountains in less time? My errors now were much more grievous, more accumulated. I lost an entire world.

So I sat in that dorm, the lights always off, and waited in my seat and avoided people for as long as I possibly could, knowing all too well that I would soon return again, that the still air and morning noise would rise again, and life would shamble onwards.

[laurelsofhighever]

The Falcon and the Rose Ch. 36 - An Sgòrgann Aigeinn

Chapter 1 on AO3 This chapter on AO3 Masterpost here 

Twenty-eighth day of Justinian, 9:32 Dragon

The morning dawned grey and cold, though dry, with the last of the rain having swept over in the early hours to leave nothing more than an angry smudge on the horizon. Bundled up in furs, Alistair gathered on the terrace with Wynne, Mhairi and his valet and found Rosslyn already waiting for him with a silent, hollow-eyed smile that no doubt was meant to be reassuring, but the Storm Giant emerged from the depths of the broch before he could even greet her. the old man passed a cursory glance over them both before leading the way out of the settlement along the headland, to a collapsed hollow on the northern shore of the island.  

The place had obviously once been a cave, eaten away by the sea until the roof could no longer be supported. A wide, shallow pool filled with broken chunks of basalt narrowed to a lip of rock that, for the moment, sat above the sea, though the black tide marks on the surrounding walls proved it wouldn’t be long before the water covered it by at least half the height of a man. Along the far wall, a cave opened in the rock, a gaping black mouth with jagged basalt teeth and limp ropes of seaweed hanging down from them like bits of trapped food.  

That would be the Swallow, then.

He stood on the lip of a knoll of bare rock that jutted out of the back wall like a stage in front of a Tevene amphitheatre, a shivering spectacle for the clan lords gathered under a canvas awning at the base of the cliffs. As he stripped, he kept his mind on his task, repeating Mac Cinaed’s words to himself to drown out the patient, unending lap of the sea. At the closing of the Storm Age, a great hero of the Clayne fought a high dragon along these cliffs. Though he was slain before he could fell the beast, his last blow dealt it a mortal wound and it crawled away to die. Its remains lie in a sacred place, beyond that opening, in a cave that cannot be reached by sea. To prove your worthiness before the gods, you must retrieve one of the dragon’s bones and return it to us.

“They could have picked a better morning for it,” he joked to his valet as he handed over his shirt. “It’s freezing.”

“It’s the lowest tide we’ll have for two months.”

He jerked as Rosslyn came to stand next to him, but her eyes were fixed on the distant horizon.

“It means you’ll have more time,” she said.

“Rosslyn, I... thank you, for –”

She cut him off with a warning glance. “I haven’t done anything.”

Her dagger sat at his hip, a reassuring weight that fended off the worst of his nerves. When Tabris had knocked on his door in the small hours of the morning, wearing a sullen, embarrassed scowl, the sight of it in her hands had been the only thing that cut through his confusion and allowed her to step inside.  

“No, of course not,” he muttered. “Forget I said anything.”

“We’re almost at the ebb, you should get ready.” She turned to leave as his valet returned with the pot of goose fat Tabris had stolen for him from the kitchens, but halted, shoulders stiff, hands clenching into fists at her sides. “I don’t care about the dragon bone,” she confessed, without looking at him. “Just come back.”

“Your Highness, it’s time!”

He ignored the Storm Giant’s call and lifted his hand to Rosslyn’s cheek. Her skin was cold. “Don’t count me out just yet, my lady. I’m tougher than I look – and besides, you promised me we would talk when this was all over. I intend to make you keep that promise.”

The ghost of a smile touched the corner of her mouth, a retort half-formed as her gaze flickered over his bare torso and settled back on his face.

“You’d better get going then,” she told him. “Because you promised me more than just talking.”

“Wait –” He started after her. “Here, will you take this?” Confusion furrowed her brows as he unclasped his mother’s necklace and held it out to her. “I’d hate to lose it getting snagged on a rock somewhere, and since I’m meant to be going into a cave on behalf of the Alamarri gods, it’s not likely a Andrastian amulet will make me very welcome.”

“I’ll keep it safe,” she promised, and closed her hand around it.

“Your Highness,” the Storm Giant called again. “I wouldnae dawdle much longer If I were you.”

Startled, Rosslyn retreated, taking the last of the warmth with her as he stripped down to his smalls. He tried not to fidget as goose fat was slathered over every exposed inch of skin. It did help cut out the chill of the wind, but it stank like old ashes and the raw, claggy feel of it made the back of his neck itch. With a roll of his shoulders, he dismissed his valet, checked the dagger sat secure on his belt, and dropped into the pool.

The water was freezing. It only came to mid-calf, but even a moment of exposure was enough to chill Alistair’s blood, and he had to grit his teeth to keep from cursing as he picked his way across to the cave. As he approached, stumbling on feet gone corpse-white with cold, the mouth seemed to suck in air and then exhale. With every breath came a plume of brackish odour, salt and rot and stone, that brought bile rising up his throat. Rationally, he knew the effect to be nothing more than a change in pressure caused by waves rising and falling against the other end of the tunnel, but this was a trial for gods, and as he ducked to pass under the first hanging row of columns, the lurch in his stomach told him those gods were hungry. He felt again for the blade on his belt and did not look back.  

It wasn’t so bad inside, when his eyes adjusted to the light. The wash of the sea faded into a background echo, and after the first few steps the cave opened far enough for him to stand up straight, while the grey daylight at his back spilled around him to lead a path steeply down. Barnacles scraped his palms. He felt his way ape-like through the gully, not trusting the seaweed-slick columns under his feet, especially since they were now so numb the only feeling that registered was the dull impact of every cautious step. For a yard or so it felt like he hit level ground, but then the wall in front of him arced sharply down and he stumbled into a pool that deepened past his knees.

Confusion halted him for a moment as he groped for a turn in the path, a ledge, anything that might show him the way forward, but nothing presented itself. Finally, he reached under the water, crouching when he found a lip in the seemingly solid wall, and then a cavity behind it as far as his arm could reach.

“Of course,” he muttered to himself as he stood. “Of bloody course.” The light was behind him; he had no way of telling how far ahead of him the tunnel stretched, but to turn back now would only doom the elves, and Highever, and possibly the whole of Ferelden.

He shivered as the air in the tunnel grew colder. Life as a soldier had been far simpler than this, with no expectations, no pretensions, no one to disappoint when he inevitably succumbed to failure. He could have lived and died by the sword, ignoble and forgotten on some mass pyre without ever having affected the world. Who was he to think he could steal a dragon bone from the seat of the gods?

The last part he thought he must have said out loud. There was an echo in his ear, a susurration more ordered than the roar of the sea, but when he turned, the space behind him was empty.  

“Who’s there?” he barked. Cold cracked his throat. no imagined thing but a palpable drop in temperature that drew out his breath in a faint plume of white steam. “Show yourself!”

The whispering itched across his neck. He was going to let everyone down, he should have let Rosslyn take his place when she intervened before the moot, Rosslyn who was brave and strong and bull-headed to a fault. Her dagger sat at his hip, a little thing smuggled through the dark with words of advice she had been forbidden to give. If he gave up now, so soon, how could he face her again?

“I don’t have time for this,” he growled, and shrugged off the icy fingers sneaking purchase on his shoulders.

With one hand on Rosslyn’s dagger, he crouched again, stealing deep gulps of air as his lungs acclimatised to the cold, squeezed his eyes shut, and dived. The whispers returned, more cautious than before, wordless voices scratching the back of his mind over the dull echo of his heart. Fronds of seaweed licked across his face gentle as a lover’s touch. When his knee cracked off a rock, he grimaced but kept going, pushing his awareness out into his hands to compensate for his lack of sight, cursing every time his numbed fingers scraped against stone instead of air.  

There must be and end soon. Please tell me I’m nearly there...

He broke the surface just as his lungs started to burn. His head bumped against the low ceiling and salt stung his eyes before he could wipe the water away, but light reached him here, and the harsh, cold saw of air against the back of his throat was so welcome it left him giddy. Gulls were calling, beckoning him towards the end of the tunnel, which opened out into a narrow, vaulted cave with a slanted floor. It was split open down the middle, as if some giant had cleft it with an axe, and the sea raged foamy white in the gap, throwing up spray with every incoming wave. The tide mark on the wall stretched far above Alistair’s head as he hunched, shivering, and tried not to think about what had happened to all the people who had come this way before him.

“And of course the dragon isn’t here. That would be too easy.”

It helped, talking to himself.

He could see his way onward, where the cave narrowed again on the other side of the gorge, another low tunnel worried from a fault in the rock. Already the roar of the water was louder than before, a latent reminder that he would have to return this way, with the water rising and no knowledge of how much further he had yet to go. Licking his lips free of salt, he edged to the back wall, where the crack in the floor was narrowest. The ground was lower here than elsewhere; water already flowed over the lip of the chasm. It washed over Alistair’s ankles as he picked his way across, every wave like a living thing trying to trick his footing before it sank back sullenly into the white, churning body of the water.

As he reached the far side, he stumbled. Tabris’ warning about not lingering in the cold came back to him, and he chafed his hands along his arms, cursing when the still-present layer of goose fat robbed him of the friction needed for heat. The circulation in his feet was a lost cause, so poor he had to look down to check they were still there, and even then couldn’t quite believe it.

“Everything’s fine,” he told himself. “Just think of warm things. Roaring fires. Lamb and pea stew straight from the pot. Fluffy blankets.”

Being under fluffy blankets with Rosslyn to warm you up.

He growled at the wandering line of his thoughts. “Find the dragon. Fantasize later.”

The second tunnel was darker than the first. The ceiling hung low, and the floor sloped upwards, so he had to crouch, but there were no sudden dips, and even when the passage narrowed so far he had to turn sideways to fit through, it stayed dry. Alistair finally edged out into a cavern so large the higher reaches of the basalt columns were lost to darkness, while muted light came in refracted ripples from the cave’s entrance, a low, yawning mouth incongruous with the gigantic space it concealed. Some of the columns were broken off, chipped long ago by some powerful force the water had then eroded away. It lapped now only a foot or so beneath the cave floor, surly but assured that it would get its due.

Have to hurry.

The path, or what passed for one, led up to the right, deeper into the gloom, and once again he had to let his eyes adjust as he climbed. He hoped it wasn’t far. His breath grated in his throat and his head was starting to feel warm, a worrying contrast to the lack of feeling in his hands. Time was slipping away; Rosslyn’s words echoed in his mind: I don’t care about the dragon bone, just come back.

“Just a little further,” he grunted, and hauled himself up another step.

And then he saw it.

When it was alive, the dragon must have been enormous. He stood on the rim of a shallow pool wide enough to berth the Siren’s Call, with the skeleton curled around the far side, pearlescent in the low light. The skull was easily as long as he was tall, with fangs that outmatched the length of his upper arm and a crown of horns that swept up and back from the orbital ridges in what must have made a frightening display when the creature was alive. It was hard to imagine anyone with strength enough to kill it.

“Or get any part of it back up into the daylight,” he muttered, wading towards what had once been the dragon’s forequarter. Maybe he could pry one of the teeth loose? It would certainly be easier than trying to haul back a femur or one of the ribs – his mind conjured an image of one of the awkward shapes lodging in the underwater tunnel, trapping him along with it until he ran out of air. No, what he needed was something small, and streamlined enough to fit in his belt.

“Please don’t come back to life and kill me,” he told the skull. He had heard stories about corpses being possessed in places where the Veil was thin, and it didn’t seem entirely far-fetched that an eager spirit might claim the bones of an ancient dragon, if given the chance.  

“Nice and easy, I’ll just take –”  

The tooth didn’t so much as wiggle. He pulled harder, the dragonbone smooth as new metal under his touch, but even when he braced a foot against the massive jawbone and tugged with both hands, he only succeeded in cutting his hand on the tooth’s serrated back edge.

He ignored the sting and pulled the dagger from its sheath to use as a pry. “I’m not giving up that easily. Come on – Just – move!”

The blade slipped. The sudden jerk sent him backwards into the pool, his grip on the hilt lost as he threw out his hands to break his fall. And still the skull leered at him with its perfect, unbroken row of pointed teeth. Fuming, Alistair shook water out of his eyes and stood, casting his eyes over the rest of the skeleton, the most robust parts of which remained preserved in place, ribs and vertebrae and dactyl-phalanges sprawled just as they had been when the dragon had drawn its last breath. He could never hope to even lift most of those, but an idea occurred to him as he tucked the dagger back into its sheath and followed the folded remains of one foreleg down towards the water – the dragon must have had toes, right?

Behind him, the noise of the waves changed; no longer the dull, rhythmic slap of water corralled against rock, but the satisfied hiss of foam easing over a conquered barrier. Every surge counted down his time, ate away the light and his patience both, but he forced himself to concentrate beyond the growing lethargy clogging his thoughts. He realised he had stopped feeling the cold.

Desperation drove him now. He combed the bottom of the pool, eyes alert for the barest shimmer of bone under the surface, stirring up coarse sand and broken bits of shell with feet and hands both, even as his mind came to delayed conclusion that after ages of exposure, the currents that had brought in the detritus around the dragon’s corpse had likely been paid in kind and stolen back the smaller bones, taken them out to sea to depths where no human would ever find them.

“No. no, I won’t let it end like this,” he snarled. “I’m here. It can’t end like this.” His head dropped into his hands, covering his eyes. There had to be something, some clue he had missed or a place he had yet to look. If only he could think.

His ears caught something. A sound above the steady hush of the water, like small stones skittering down a hill or rain tapping against a pane of glass. It ran behind him, too ordered to be random, and then over that came a chirrup almost like a bird might make, questioning – and answered by a low, grating, angry hiss that that brought every one of his cold-numbed nerves screaming back to life. Steeling his breath, he turned. His way out was blocked by about a dozen strange creatures standing on their hind legs, each about the size of a dog, with long, feathered tails and glowing silver eyes that peered out over sucker-like mouths full of teeth. They regarded him cautiously, but with the same expectant air he had grown up watching in the faces of Arl Eamon’s hounds at feeding time, and they followed the movement of his hand as he slowly reached for the dagger at his waist.

Below, the sea reared back and slapped against the roof of the cave mouth and the world went dark.

[frozen-delight]

The Vessel Issue, Take Two

 Last week’s episode made me puzzle over Nick’s completely unbelievable survival. That seems almost quaint now compared to the central topic of the latest SPN episode: the human consent to angelic possession.

In what has to be the most Cas-centric episode since S6, Cas showed himself at his very worst: lying, manipulative, passive-aggressive, completely lacking in self-awareness as well as in awareness of what his words and actions did to those around him.

While Mary, Bobby and Sam went to check out Jo’s lead on Michael, Cas was left in charge of Nick and Jack - both of whom very quickly fled from the bunker as well, driven away by Cas’s hypocritical advice and admonishments.

Jack, thankfully, is already more mature than his angelic would-be father figure, so the exposure to Cas’ drivel (including a rather startling moment of white-washing John Winchester’s atrocious parenting) didn’t do him any lasting harm.

Nick, on the other hand, went out and murdered his old neighbour in cold blood, an action that makes a surprising amount of sense once one considers his interactions with Cas in detail.

During their first scene together, Cas can’t bring himself to look at Nick.

“You don’t remember all the things you did in his thrall, but I do,” he explains to Nick. 

Apparently, his memory of Lucifer’s bad deeds is considerably more detailed than that of his own, or he wouldn’t be able to look anyone else in the face, ever. Mass murder, torture, megalomania - there’s very little that Lucifer has done that Cas isn’t guilty of himself. (And, incidentally, Jimmy Novak didn’t say yes to any of it when he consented to being possessed by Cas.)

Nick doesn’t remember why he said ‘yes’ to Lucifer, so Cas tells him, “You were in a lot of pain. And Lucifer saw a vulnerability and he exploited it.”

He conveniently forgets to add that Lucifer employed psychological torture tactics to make Nick consent to his possession - making him hear voices, doing everything to drive him out of his mind.

Of course, acknowledging this would force Cas to admit that the human consent to angelic possession is nothing more than a formality, which can be obtained in any number of ways, including torture, manipulation and deceit. That even children, who are clearly incapable of giving any kind of informed consent, can be possessed by angels. Something which Castiel himself has done when he possessed Claire.

Nick then learns that the person who murdered his wife and child was never caught.

NICK You know what a cold case is, Castiel? It’s a case too unimportant for anyone to care about. My wife and son are dead - gone forever. [...]

CAS Well, I’m sorry. That sounds difficult. [...] Nick, you on the other hand, you’ve been given a second chance. You’re not dead.

NICK You don’t understand.

CAS No, I do.

NICK Oh, because your body was stolen?

CAS Because I’m occupying someone else’s. All angels have to in order to walk the earth. This - this was Jimmy Novak.

NICK “Occupy”. Sounds like a cleaned-up way of saying “steal”. And, um, Jimmy - is that his name? He all right with that?

CAS Yes, he was.

NICK “Was”?

CAS Jimmy’s dead.

NICK Castiel, you’re just a stone-cold body snatcher. You’re no different than Lucifer.

CAS I need to look in on Jack. You know in all my thousands of years, what happened to Jimmy Novak and his family, it’s my greatest regret.

Cas is completely unable to show any kind of empathy towards Nick, too caught up in justifying his own actions; and the lesson that Nick learns from that is that he can’t expect any sympathy or understanding, because vessels don’t matter, unless of course they happen to be Castiel’s best friend.

Which is why after telling Nick that vessels don’t matter, because angels need to walk the earth, bigger picture etc, Cas then gets into an argument with Jack who thinks that it’s more important to kill Michael than to save Dean. Ignoring the fact that the whole discussion is moot since they don’t have a way of killing Michael, I think Jack is completely right in assuming that Dean would agree with him that stopping Michael takes priority over his life.

If Nick or Jimmy’s life were on the line, Cas would side with him too. Hell, only last week he threatened wannabe Crowley, “I will burn you to ash,” showing zero concern for whatever poor man the demon was possessing.

And unlike Dean, who has always shown awareness of their inconsistency regarding the vessel issue, Cas is completely blind to his own hypocrisy. 

But back to Nick. He was at his lowest when Lucifer came to him, and now he’s at his lowest once again, desperately clutching at straws, looking for something, anything to hold on to, and Cas gives him nothing except for self-righteous excuses.

It reminded me of the case in Mr Holmes where Holmes thinks he’s answered the lady’s question to her satisfaction, and she then goes and throws herself in front of a train.

Of course Nick doesn’t know that Cas lured Jimmy to say ‘yes’ to him with a bunch of false promises, and that it left Jimmy completely disillusioned about God, heaven and the angels, and that once he was free, the last thing he wanted was to ever be possessed again. He doesn’t know that after making sure Jimmy, his wife and his daughter were traumatised for life, Cas possessed Claire and essentially held her hostage to force Jimmy to consent to being possessed once again. He doesn’t know that Jimmy was slowly bleeding to death, that Cas didn’t lift a finger to heal him, instead threatening him with the horrors that lay in store for his daughter, until Jimmy was begging him to take him just to save Claire.

Neither does he know that despite his professed “regret”, Cas has ignored the dispair of Jimmy’s family for years, and hasn’t mentioned Claire once since shipping her off to Jody’s, never mind contacting her or trying to actively support her.

But he must have picked up on the obvious discrepancy between Cas’s “Yes, he was” and “What happened to Jimmy Novak and his family, it’s my greatest regret.” Because why the regret if Jimmy was okay with the possession? Nick would have noticed that didn’t add up.

And he would have realised that there could never be any justice for him or his family in a world where he was treated like a bad guy, and where someone like Castiel considered himself one of the good guys. In a world where guys like Cas play God and decide who matters and who doesn’t.

I don’t doubt that the following episodes will put Nick’s ensuing murder down to Lucifer’s lasting influence on him, but for me at least that won’t erase the powerful impression of a traumatised possession victim lashing out against the unfairness of the SPN universes’ treatment of human vessels.

[deviant404angel]

His and Hers: A Dance in the Vampire Bund Fic Part 1

*Set after the conclusion of Dance in the Vampire Bund: Scarlet Order*

5 years later

Quick, sharp footsteps echoed through the hall of the Tepes castle in the vampire bund just a few miles away from the island of Japan. The vampire bund, a country that exists but at the same time does not. It’s exactly what Wilhelmina Vlad Tepes aims to resolve - placing the Vampire Bund in the face of the map and the globe.

However, there are just a lot of things that refuses to cooperate with her. Her frustrations were evident on her youthful face. She just got back from the annual meeting of United Nations and presented her proposal to a bunch of stuck up politicians still wary of the fact that vampires exists. Although few of the members came out as vampires, the others refuse to do so and she knows why. Vampires are still feared and discriminated. There were some representatives that were open minded but others refuse to acknowledge her bund. She could force them but it’s always her last resort. So now, she’s bubbling with frustrations.

She unknowingly bared her fangs as she thought to the conversation she had with the whole lot of them. No matter, the meeting lasts for three days and it’s just the first day. She was tired. She needed a warm, bubbly bath.

Sensing her distress, Vera called to her. “Hime-sama. Nelly, Nella, Nero have prepared a warm bath for you.” Vera said as she stood to just inside the princess’s chamber.

“Thank you, Vera.” She composed herself. “Those fools. Nothing but stuck up politicians unable to accept the changing of times. I should ask them whose time has stopped in perpetual rest, theirs or mine?” Her eyes flared as her anger tries to surface. But then she saw her reflection on the glass window overlooking her city. Unconsciously, she brought her palm to her breasts as she mused about the reflection staring back at her. “Though I admit, it seems time is flowing for me.” She was still the same except she wasn’t. She was a bit taller now and she built up muscles. The most notable feature was her breasts. It used to be just a bump on her chest but now they filled out a little enough for her small hands to fit and cup perfectly. She wondered in amazement. “The change.” She murmured in awe. She was still half-human, it seems this change takes time. She still consumes blood but she could now taste human food. She was warm. The effect of the Aka-mi-tama is still ongoing and she doesn’t know when it will stop. She had assigned a special team to research any historh at all as to this change so she could be enlightened.

But one thing was sure right now, she was half-human, half-vampire but still a pure blood. And what’s more, since her celss haven’t finished their reconstruction process, she was in danger of actually dying. She was more vulnerable than ever. Except she could now walk in sunlight and not turn to ashes. A new evolved species. It’s still a secret because she doesn’t want to cause unrest in the bund.

She was still mulling over what the True Blood Vampire said 5 years ago - the order of the fresh blood. The scarlet order. What did that mean? Unfortunately, her father escaped before she could question him. He was almost defeated but at the last minute he escaped. She had a lot of questions.

Her eyes caught on a frame set on her table so she could always see it. It was a picture of her and Yuki. “Where are you, Yuki.” She whispered in the air.

No doubt Vera heard it. And when Akira was about to knock, he also heard it. He clenched his fist before knocking and finally entering.

“Hime-san, I’m coming in.” He announced.

“Oh! Akira. Perfect timing, come and undress me. It’s getting stuffy in here.” Mina said as she spread her arms wide and looked at him over her shoulder.

“Geh.” Akira involuntarily groaned. She saw it and laughed.

“Still a child, I see, Akira.” She smirked. Ever since her body started growing he became more and more uncomfortable. It was so much fun to tease him.

“You should look at the mirror, Hime-san. You’re the child. ” He countered even though he knew it was a moot point. She now reaches just under his pecs and she’d grown more since the incident 5 years ago. Akira could turn a blind eye more to his growing feelings for the princess before because of her body but she’s shoving it in his face more and more lately that sometimes all his supressed desires threaten to come to the surface and undo him.

Because Akira turned his face away he didn’t notice she had undressed not until he heard the zipper and the dress fell with a silent thud on the floor.

He absent-mindedly took a step back, taken aback. “H-Hime-s-san…” He felt his face grow hot.

“Oh? I thought this was a child’s body so why the reaction?” Mina turned to face him, her pert breasts standing and pointing at him. She had a teasing smile on her face. Then his face heated even more as he saw her naked body. He saw it many times already but its getting harder and harder to hide his reaction, just like another part of his anatomy. She then looked at him coyly, “Akira, you pervert. What dirty thoughts are going through mind right now?” She chuckled.

Oh, princess, you don’t even wanna know-wait that’s not it! F*ck! Thus his internal struggle began.

Seeing the princess enjoying his reaction, he gathered his composure. “Sure. Sure, whatever you say, Hime-san. Your bath is getting cold. ” He diverted the subject instead and closed his eyes as he walked towards her and when he was directly behind her he pushed her towards the bath.

2 3 4 5 6 7

[sukisdeliveryservice]

hi ash! sorry that im a little late, ive been a bit preoccupied these few days, but im glad you like talking to me :D i rly like talking to you too <3 i appreciate that you put so much effort into answering everything T-T i do have discord actually! id love to continue talking over there after this :D also this is crazy long so dont rush yourself sjhdjdjd

if you want any nct music recs in the future you can come to me 😌 i really love hello future!! i say this about every title track during every comeback but its really my favourite one right now! 

YOU PLAYED DRUMS?? thats so cool :O ive always found drummers rly attractive sjshjehdjsh 

the have i evers :

i have never! been to a concert, ive just never had the chance :/

i have! sneaked out, but it was with the help of my mum where my dad didn't know lmao ehejenjdhen

i have! gone through both a one direction and bts phase. 1D came first and it lasted for almost half a year i believe? and i discovered bts in 2018 thanks to my friend, but i started exploring and eventually drifted apart from them in early 2020. jungkook still has a special place in my heart tho :)) 

i have! had a irl crush actually :'D he actually knew i liked him but did nothing at all and we remained pretty good friends, but he stopped talking to me about over a year ago, and i lowkey don't wanna admit it but i miss him sometimes :') 

i have! pets. i have 3 dogs and a cat currently, and i have 6 other unofficial dogs and a idk how many fish which are at my grandma's side :DD

i have! performed in front of a crowd, i was in a storytelling competition when i was 9 and 10, and then i learned to play the erhu when i was 12 and performed a few times :)) 

i have! fic wise, i also love by-moonflowers fics sm! T^T i read her tokyo ghoul au and i actually didn't have a clue what tokyo ghoul was, i looked it up on wikipedia before reading it djbfkdhdjd and her exes confront each other series was really amazing too. and im rambling but her jeonghan magic au, all the stars we steal, that was probably the first fic of her's i read and it hit something in me and i really wish i could read it again like it was the first time 😔 i really loved it sm. book wise, i will never forget jodi picoult's small great things. and also like any book reader, ps. i love you is definitely a favourite of mine :') it was so touching and i just genuinely really love that story. 

i have! there's quite a lot of moments like that, but this one where i went on vacation in the mountains? we stayed at a very nice place. on the first day i was really tired so i slept til the evening, and when i woke up it was drizzling and there's was quite a breeze, so i sat in front of the open door of my room. in front was a swimming pool so i just put on some music and watched the rain drop into the pool. it was the most relaxed i had felt in a while and i wish i could go back :') 

i would say i have! when we can talk anon off i'll tell you which one, but i really enjoyed writing this one drabble/oneshot and im glad other people seemed to like it as well :DD

and ofc i have! i met seventeen when i was pretty down, and i treasure them the most now. they helped me through a lot and really changed me and im really grateful to them

i wanna know your answers to these too! so, have you ever

been to a place/been in a particular mood after a specific event that you wanted to stay in forever?

written a piece of work that sparked energy within your fingertips?

met a person/have someone in your life who you now just treasure so deeply?

the next mission is out dkhdkdhfj but i'll continue for now, would you rather (pls dont hate me after this)

only listen to seventeen or txt forever

spend a week with soobin or chan

only eat bingsu or only watch 1 studio ghibli films for the rest of your life

sign with sm or yg or jyp

know how to play every single instrument or speak language in the world

be a master at something you love (singing, dancing, writing, that kinda thing) or something unique (like having a photographic memory or like ice carving? or even mouth reading)

i also suddenly remembered, but knitting is also one of my many hobbies :D

- 💎 anon loves you and wishes you a good day!

you can reply whenever you are ready anon. it excites me that we've been having a steady back and forth but sometimes life happens and you should definitely prioritize any other responsibilities you have!! i'll always be here 😌 knitting is a fun hobby anon!! i used to do that and crochet a lot too ,,, i should get back to it. what do you make?

before i go ahead and answer these can i just say how much i love that you personalized it?? that really means a lot to me <3 anyways~ here we go!! when we get to turn off anon i would love to hear some nct recs!! most of my irl kpop friends ult them and i'd love to get to know more!! and discord would probably be the best way to share because the asks just get longer and longer LOL (i love them)

drums yes!! i've been told that i look like i'd play the piano instead bahaha but i think drums are pretty neat :3 i also saw this person ask huening kai about band txt and he said soobin would play the drums :O need i say more?

thank you for your answers!! we definitely gotta talk more about them once we can chat on discord!! i loved reading them and they were just so lovely <333 for the last 3:

i don't think so? i have yet to be in a moment where i am completely lost in the energy - but the closest i've been to that level of peace would be the late nights where i'm playing my favourite music and about to drift off to sleep. i feel almost content, and sometimes wish i could stay in my dreams forever :3

my very first fic!! flights and feelings - i was writing it on a whim at 2 am? and i wasn't planning on posting it until i did randomly and now i am a tumblr writer :O

seventeen like you said! i don't think i would have made it through the rest of high school without them, and as of now they've been one of the things keeping me going :)

the next mission is out owo playlist making do i see? anyways onto these first!! how dare you write these anon my head is SPINNING

only listen to seventeen or txt forever ...seventeen, they're my ults!! but also because they have more music released atm, we have yet to see the amazing things txt have planned!! i wouldn't be surprised if i start ulting txt in the future as well :3 i...bought 3 of their albums a few days ago

spend a week with soobin or chan // WHAT KIND OF QUESTION IS THIS ARE YOU TRYING TO GIVE ME A HEADACHE (moots please look away) soobin <3 i love them both very much but i think soobin and i will vibe more maybe it's my delusions THEY'RE BOTH MY ULTS and i'm scared of talking to both D: but soobin is slightly younger than chan so that's why i think he'd be easier to talk to T_T the thought of spending a week with soobin makes my head spin

only eat bingsu or only watch 1 studio ghibli films for the rest of your life // bingsu!! i would not mind that one bit :3

sign with sm or yg or jyp // as someone who is a terrible singer and dancer, i would not survive in either of these companies. however, under the assumption that i can do these things, i would say... jyp. i don't think there's an entertainment company that treats their idols completely right but out of these 3 i feel like i'd cry less in jyp. is kq entertainment an option? idk all the details but they seem to treat ateez okay, or maybe IU's company...again i don't know all the deets

know how to play every single instrument or speak language in the world // speak every language in the world!! it upsets me everyday that i'm not close to my culture because of this :(

be a master at something you love (singing, dancing, writing, that kinda thing) or something unique (like having a photographic memory or like ice carving? or even mouth reading) // i'd say maybe something unique!! it's kind of thrilling to always be looking for ways to improve on something you love <3 so i'd go with something unique...a photographic memory would be very helpful for studying!! but maybe i'd like to have a talent in making people smile!!

thank you for these questions anon!! i'm heading out to work now but i'd love to write you some more would you rathers later on :) i should have packed more questions into this reply but i really gotta go now sorry :( so instead just tell me how are you!! also i would like to know your answers to these ones!! you are very creative with these btw :3

which of your biases would you want to spend a week with?

what food would you be okay with eating for the rest of your life?

would you rather:

sign with sm, yg or jyp?

know how to play every single instrument or speak language in the world?

be a master at something you love or something unique?

[pokemon-go-live]

Pokemon and the Nintendo Switch

Bear with me, Trainers, this is going to be a bit of an opinion piece.

We’ve sure had a fun last couple of years in the Nintendo franchise.  We saw the 20th anniversary of the Pokemon games pass us by in 2016, along with a whole year of events and the release of Pokemon Go.  There was a limited showing around the U.S. of “The First Movie,” a Mythical Pokemon every month for the XYORAS games, and a whole new focus on the world that we know and love.  We saw the release of Sun and Moon, issuing a whole new generation of Pokemon to love - not to mention Alolan forms of some of the original species, and a nod to the original protagonist and rival of the RBY series, Red and Blue.

Cue the year 2017, and we know there’s another important 20th anniversary coming up -- the anniversary of the Pokemon anime, which began in Japan on April 1, 1997.  And this year, 20 years later, the film focuses on an apparent retelling of Ash’s first adventures with Pikachu. The concept of the movie has the Pokemon fandom in a bit of an uproar -- is this just a retelling in modern-style animation as a homage?  Is it just going to gloss over Ash’s original adventure to make the current child watching the XY/Sun and Moon anime series up to speed on his history?  Is it a true relaunching of the anime?

Also, today is March 3rd -- the release date of Nintendo’s new promising console, the Switch.

I only bring up the 20th anniversary of the games and anime to highlight a point that some people are quite adamant about (me included), and some are horribly against.

What would everyone think about revisiting the worlds of Red/Blue/Yellow and Gold/Silver/Crystal as combined HD 3D remakes on the Switch?

“But, Lacey,” I hear you argue, “RBY and GSC both got remakes already!”

I hear you.  But remember, Red and Blue were remade during the Game Boy Advance era -- Gen 3, the era of Ruby and Sapphire and Emerald, which has already been remade on the 3DS.  These games are 13 years old, having come out in 2004.  There is no current, accessible way to play Fire Red or Leaf Green unless you’re running an emulator.  The GSC remakes are not much better -- having come out on the original Nintendo DS in 2009 -- 8 years ago.  Also, keep in mind that Pokemon also focuses on kids, and kids in the target demographic were likely not even born or were too young to play when the remakes were released.

“But,” you say, “RBY came out for the Virtual Console last year.  GSC probably can, too.  So you can play those games.”

As much nostalgia as I enjoyed when I listened to the old Game Boy music and watched the dated pixels, children (and adults without nostalgia glasses) nowadays are less likely to be interested in the Virtual Console releases.  The demographic here is clearly the people who played the original games on Game Boy in 1996+.  

So you’ve got an entire two generations of Pokemon who have never received full 3D graphics, which have aged likely too much for Pokemon’s target demographic.

Let’s also keep in mind that Nintendo has everything to lose this console generation, and everything to prove.  The Wii was a success in itself, but the WiiU was a comparable failure.  It sold fewer units, and had a much smaller library.  Nintendo is clearly doubling down with the Nintendo Switch and the response by the community has already seemed fantastic with sold-out preorders and hyped midnight releases.  I haven’t heard much else from Day 1 Switch’ers, however, because I assume they’re all playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which got amazing reviews.

Even GameFreak stated, back when the Switch was still the fabled “NX,” that if the console was truly a home/portable hybrid, “We would absolutely make games for that system.”

A Few Reasons These Remakes Makes Sense:

Pokemon Go relaunched the franchise into general public, not just among gamers, anime watchers, or longtime fans.

Nostalgia is obviously a moving force that Nintendo heavily capitalizes on.

Pokemon sells consoles.  

It seems like there’s an even split between the fandom, at least among vocal members, on loving or hating the idea of Kanto remakes on the Switch, based on the Pokemon subreddit communities.  The main argument against Kanto remakes themselves tend to be the following:

- Fire Red and Leaf Green exist (which I debated why this matters less, now)

- The Virtual Console games are out (again, more of a moot point)

- Kanto is boring*

- Kanto is poorly designed**

- I believe that GameFreak can only make so many games, and I don’t want them to remake a game I’ve played when they can make new content+

* Woah!  Let’s think about that for a second -- the world we know as Kanto as made in the simple engine of Pokemon Red/Blue and Yellow on the Game Boy is certainly simple.  Heck, your character doesn’t even move on the screen - the background actually moves around them.  This was an effort to save space during development.  Remember, the Game Boy is ancient in technology standards -- and the Game Boy Advance is still worlds away from the Switch’s power.  GameFreak can have all the creative license it wants to change up and add flavor to the region when especially technology limitations kept them back in the past.

** Again, see my above point -- Kanto is a product of its generation.

+ I can see this point, I really can.  However, Nintendo did something unprecedented when it came to its system -- they have now condensed the need for having essentially two development teams on separate handheld or home consoles -- they now have the one.  And yes, GameFreak isn’t necessarily a part of this, but certainly some equal ground must exist here.  Also, in developing the 3D engines in the first place, assets are more “recyclable” in this form than the old sprites, which needed to be redone EVERY. SINGLE. GAME.  Remember how often Assassin’s Creed games came out?  Call of Duty?  Madden and Fifa?  Why can’t GameFreak produce a steady stream of Pokemon games every year as they mostly have in the past?  Especially with Pokemon Bank, it becomes more valuable to have more and more iterations that touch different parts of the world and the PokeDex because the “generation gap” is not necessarily going to be more pronounced.  Collectors already pride themselves on having generation-specific movesets or rare Pokeballs on Pokemon -- this only adds more flavor as well and opens the games, past and present, to more individuals.

My proposition is to combine both Kanto and Johto into one (or two, if editions are made) games that gives you an option in which region to start.  If you pick Kanto, you select from the Kanto starters, go through the Kanto storyline, with Johto post-game.  If you pick Johto, you go through the GSC storyline, with Kanto post-game.  Of course, plenty more features could be added to supplement perceived gaps in quality.

What do you think?  Would you want to revisit Kanto and Johto on the Switch?

[thisdaynews]

Gov. Jay Inslee on holding a climate debate, Tom Steyer, Trump's foreign policy

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/gov-jay-inslee-on-holding-a-climate-debate-tom-steyer-trumps-foreign-policy/

Gov. Jay Inslee on holding a climate debate, Tom Steyer, Trump's foreign policy

2020 presidential candidate Gov. Jay Inslee speaks during an interview with POLITICO on Friday. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee spoke to POLITICO Friday as part of a series of interviews with Democrats seeking to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020.

Here are key excerpts from the hour-long conversation:

On why he got in the race

Story Continued Below

“I just want to be able, on my last days, to look at my grandkids and say, ‘I did everything possible to solve the climate crisis’…and that is not going to happen unless the U.S. becomes a major leader in this, and that’s not going to happen unless we’re in presidential leadership. So, that’s when I decided to get into the race…so, relatively late. And not just a reaction to Donald Trump, although he is a pretty inspirational and unifying figure. But it is a reaction to a crisis that threatens all of our kids and grandkids.”

On when he’ll decide about seeking a third term

“I have not established any particular day. The presumption is, if I was not chosen to help the country, I will maintain a healthy state of Washington.”

On the climate conversation among 2020 Democrats

“Well, we had one robust conversation from my efforts. And others have had what I would call ‘soft recognitions’ of the problem. But there’s really only one candidate who has taken several unique positions. There is only one candidate who has said unequivocally and constantly and consistently that defeating the climate crisis has to be the top priority in the United States. It has to be the first, foremost and paramount duty of the next administration. It has to be the organizing principle of the next administration.”

On the first debate

“We had a total of seven minutes out of two hours to talk about the existential threat to life on the planet. And that was wholly unsatisfactory for voters to have any clue about the differences between the candidates. And so, we have suggested that we have a climate debate focused for a couple hours on this subject so that the public can understand the difference between the candidates. And I think it’s the right thing for the public. I think it’s the right thing for the party, in part because the grander party is the only party that really gets it in this regard. I think we have a great party.

And I’m particularly disagreeing with a party that is blacklisting Democrats who would be willing to have a debate on climate change. And this has infuriated a lot of good Democrats around the country to put people in the blacklist, because they’ve said basically, ‘Anybody who does participate in a climate change debate cannot have access to the Democratic stage.’ That’s just nuts. So, there is an ongoing effort in this regard to have a full-scale debate. It will be voted on at the National Committee executive meeting in late August. And there’s been 200,000 signatures given to the party to move forward, there’s been nine states that have indicated they will support that. We’ll see what will happen.”

On other single-issue debates

“There’s 12 debates. It might make sense to have one on climate change and one on health care, and maybe there’s something else. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I actually think that’s better than having 12 debates where everybody gives the same answer for only 60 seconds, and nobody really understands what the real differences are. But I would also suggest that there are a lot of great issues to work on. I’ve had a lot of success on those issues: We’ve created the best financial-aid package in the United States for college students. We’ve adopted the first long-term care program in the United States for the elderly. We have adopted the first public option for the nation. We’ve got the NRA on the run with three of the strongest gun safety laws in the United States. I’ve just got the biggest teacher pay increase in the United States.

But those things cannot be solved and become relatively moot if the entire ecosystem collapses on which human life depends. This is a unique issue. It is unique because our survival literally depends upon it. And if you don’t want to have your own debate, at least allow Democratic candidates to go and have a full-scale climate debate in some other forum, which they’ve essentially tried to shut down. So, either one of those are satisfactory to me, in a sense, to better the party.”

On selling climate legislation to the public

“The public sentiment is moving very rapidly on this. And the reason is not because of my eloquent speeches, it is because people are now seeing, in real terms, the real destruction in their real lives. It’s hard to be knee-deep in Hamburg, Iowa, and watch the ashes of Paradise, California, and not think we should do something about this. So, the public now is changing fairly dramatically on this. And I would suggest we need a couple things. We need presidential leadership. And I’ve seen what that means having listened to the call of John F. Kennedy to go to the moon. I’ve seen what presidential leadership can do to spark a latent power in the American public. That counts for something. We do need some more votes in the Senate to have a majority of Democratic senators to get this job done.”

On the filibuster

“We need to take away the filibuster from Mitch McConnell. And this is something, I was the first candidate to say this. And still there’s only one senator who’s joining me in this regard. And this is a dirty little secret in the U.S. Senate. My opponents, the other aspirants in the race, have really sincere, powerful things they want to get done. None of which we have a chance in Hell at getting done if they continue to cling to this filibuster.

There is no way that Mitch McConnell is going to let major climate-change legislation to the floor of the Senate, even if we have 59 votes. He’s just not going to let it happen. People want a single-payer health care system — you think Mitch McConnell’s gonna let that to the floor of the Senate as long as he’s got the filibuster? Even if we had 59 votes for it. So, there’s a huge failure to recognize and really stand up and be counted on progressive progress by some of the most quote “progressive candidates” in this race. How the heck can Bernie Sanders say we need a single-payer system when he continues to support the filibuster? He is supporting that which makes the single-payer system an absolute impossibility.”

On how to phase out fossil-fuel production

“By stopping the unnecessary infrastructure projects that would lock us into another 60, 70 years of fossil-fuel usage. It is one of the reasons that I came out against the Line 5 Enbridge pipeline under Lake Michigan a couple days ago. We have to realize we cannot continue building new fossil-fuel infrastructure that would lock in multiple decades of fossil-fuel usage. So, one of the things we have to do is evaluate major infrastructure, new infrastructure projects, with that in mind. And in my plan, I call for a mechanism of doing that through federal regulation.”

On a green-jobs message

“When I co-authored a book about this 12 years ago — by the way, the movie rights are still available… the title was not ‘Polar Bears and Why I Love Them.’ The title was, essentially, how do we build jobs, good-paying jobs, around a message of economic rebirth through this system of job creation?

…When people are spinning carbon fiber that goes in the BMW electric car, it’s not Seattle, it’s Grays Harbor, Washington, where people are making biofuels, using feedstock from Iowa, to make biofuels. It’s out in Nevada, where people out in the desert in Nevada, are installing solar panels … And importantly, this is really important, it’s every neighborhood in America, retrofitting every building in America. This is the biggest infrastructure project since the interstate freeway system. And it’s carpenters and laborers and plumbers and sheet metal workers rebuilding our entire building style. So, every house and building you’ve been looking at right now is part of our clean energy … the reason I say this is some people think when they hear clean energy, they think just solar panels, and they think it’s physicists. No, it’s people with a hammer and a saw. So, that’s a jobs message to people.”

On Trump’s environment speech

“He showed his biggest vulnerability three days ago, because his team recognized his biggest vulnerability. The widest, most vulnerable chink in his armor, is environmental issues. His team went to him and said, ‘Donald, you are hemorrhaging voters in the suburbs of America. Particularly women voters who believe you are cratering every environmental law you ever met.’ Which he is doing. ‘You have to do something about this!’

His response … was to go out and make a fool of himself to try to argue that he’s an environmentalist just as much as he is a feminist. So, he demonstrated his vulnerability on this subject. And this is the lowest approval rating on any issue of Donald Trump, is on environmental, clean air and clean water issues. So, he has shown us the place — he’s walked around, he’s put a big ‘Kick Me’ sign on his back on this issue. We should indulge him on that request. And we should indulge him by finding our strongest candidate on his weakest issue. And I would nominate myself in that regard.”

On Tom Steyer getting in the race

“It hasn’t changed my fundamental approach. I will continue to say that I continue to be unique, as the only candidate, even now, who says this has to be the top priority in the next administration. And I will organize my administration around that fundamental principle. And I’m the only candidate who’s said that, even now.

…I haven’t talked to him since he got into the race. It was a surprise to me.”

On whether Democrats ignore the West Coast

“It would be, like, facile for me to say yes, you’re giving me a softball question here going, ‘Why doesn’t Jay swing at it?’ Right? So, let me answer your question. The answer is: It would be a good thing for the Democratic Party to be in touch with some ideas that represent the future, rather than just the past.

The West does represent a lot of things in our future, including a clean-energy resurgence and a recognition of the importance of this. The West Coast has been giving birth to leaders who actually have emphasized this issue. Not including Sen. (Kamala) Harris, by the way, who largely has not been engaged in this issue.”

On his contrast with Trump

“I would argue that my story is the perfect template for success to blow up Donald Trump’s theory of the case. And the reason is, everything he has said is bad for the economy, in job performance, going back to what your initial question was, we have shown is good for the economy. He has said, ‘If you’re raising minimum wage it’ll be bad for the economy.’ Well, we have the highest minimum wage in the United States in our state, and we have the most rapid GDP growth, the most rapid wage growth. Interesting, my state in the same week was referenced by Business Insider, Forbes, referred to as the best place to do business, and Oxfam listed as the best place to be employed in the same week.

…So, I would argue, on the fundamental message of economic growth, my state is a tremendous Exhibit A of how progressive values will breed economic growth. Others have plans, I have laws. Others have ideas, I have experience and productivity, productive growth in the real world. And I think that’s a good thing to bring to this fight against Donald Trump.”

On whether Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should criticize Democrats

“Do I wish? First off it doesn’t matter what I wish. What I would say is, I would always encourage people to find constructive ways to have that tension, even publicly, without damaging their relationships. And without damaging their abilities to get reelected. I will say that. And there are ways to do that. I encourage everybody to be a part of that.

But I would say that there is a place for different people in the caucus to have different roles that can be productive. There is a role for people to be pushing to the perfect at the fastest rate possible. That’s an important role for people in a caucus. And there is an important role for a leader of the caucus to be able to fashion something that actually gets done when it has to get done … So, the leaders’ role is very important as well. And I respect both.”

On Trump’s foreign policy

“He shouldn’t have the keys to a golf cart. No, I have zero confidence in Donald Trump. I have huge concerns about his ability to be within 1,000 yards of any nuclear weapon or command and control system. His instability is terrifying to me. He has weakened the United States’ national security every way he can by removing the ability to bring alliances to bear on North Korea or Iran or on climate change or in any direct — Venezuela or anything else. He has severely weakened our ability to be effective in protecting international security because he has eliminated virtually every alliance, to have a working relationship with every alliance we have. We are stronger in an alliance against North Korea than singularly. We are stronger in an alliance involving Iran than singularly. And he has made us a single actor. So, he has weakened our ability significantly.”

On nuclear proliferation

“I do believe that we have to expand the international discussion to go well beyond limiting the number or even type of warheads to a new discussion of the command and control systems of these systems. They’re all on a hair trigger. You cannot continue to have thousands of warheads on a hair trigger and not have, at some point, some accidental discharge. And I believe this is one of the things we have to encourage.

…I believe we have to reach international agreements, where you cannot launch without 24-, 48-hour systems, where everyone knows you’re heading to the button, so that it allows people to have some discussion before an accidental discharge. There have been two instances in the last 30 years: once when the U.S. believed we were under a full-scale Soviet attack in our command center. And once when the Soviets believed there were six warheads headed toward Moscow. Twice. That’s already happened twice. So, I believe we have to change the command and control system where it can’t launch within a reasonable period of time, and the world knows you’re heading towards a launch.”

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