#i just hope it doesn’t get misplaced by the warehouse like what happened with my first order

[accio-victuuri]

and so the bottled joy cpn saga continues….

started from them using suspiciously similar bottles from the brand and both with lemon water on it. then it continued onto other things that made turtles 🤨. apparently it doesn’t end there and they have no chill. i’m still 50/50 on these but i won’t say that i don’t appreciate it.

so it all started up with a post done by the brand that featured some of their products last 5/23 ( ai zhan ). two of those are color red & green — which is the combined fan colors of xz and wyb + what looks like a yellow one? some turtles were clowning lightly ( joking — why are you posting our family picture? ) but apparently, these upset a few so/os to the point that one complained and the brand ( through customer service most likely ) apologized. which is pretty standard tbh. it doesn’t prove any “loyalty” to a fan group or what. tho i’m pretty sure the brand appreciates so/os — it’s kinda expected that they will apologize for any “inconvenience” they caused a customer no matter how ridiculous it is.

anyway, going back. people discovered that the day before the video, they posted an article of their collab with li-ning ( which zz endorses ) at 18:23 ( yibo ai zhan ) — then as if that wasn’t enough, a collab with loreal with a blue bottle ( which is the sort of the color of the container in loreal pro ads ). i doubt the endorsers get much say in this kind of business of collabs but the fact that it’s both theirs is a nice coincidence.

you would think that they will stop with anything that would associate wyb with xz or cpfs but they didn’t.

5/29, they posted on Weibo, specifically about putting fruits in drinks. “fruits” is a term that cpfs call themselves. So is this an acknowledgement? What’s hilarious are the comments on the post. It’s all BXGs showing support and sharing photos of their purchases.

5/31, they decided to play it up with what WYB said on his Chunzhen live event. So they posted a video featuring a drink with frozen lychees ( which wyb said he enjoys ). all good right??? not really. the bgm they used is titled you who love heartily 105 degrees. It is a lot of people’s favorite song but why that? 105. 10/5. plus later, they showed another drink, this time with frozen bayberry which is another popular bjyx cpn. I mean. Are these all coincidences?

and well this ( painting of xzwyb) — i’m just…🤦‍♀️😂

they are clearly not helping themselves here…

most recently, they shared another video using the same filter as ybo’s douyin post. which a lot of cpfs were happy about because of the colors ( which is a cpn i’m not buying cause it’s a popular filter & totally yibo’s style ) — so this is taken again as being in cpf’s favor. 😌😌😌

-END. ❤️💛💚

[obsidiancreates]

Freezer Duty (Part Two)

"Okay, okay!" Cheyenne shouts. Everyone is gathered in the warehouse, shouting and holding money. "Guys, settle down! This is simple, okay? If you think Jonah is a vampire put your money in this stupid fedora-"

She holds up said Fedora, a hat that Jonah has tried many times to wear and has been relentlessly mocked for each and every time.

"-and if you think he isn't a vampire, put your money in this crazy big mug!" She holds up a novelty mug that says 'My hair is as slick as my moves'.

Bets are placed, and the games truly begin.

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Jonah looks at the customer and nods as they drone on about... something. He's trying very hard to focus on what, but it's just impossible. His lunch was completely unsatisfying, and he's still tired as hell.

"-so then the bagel caught fire-"

He just feels groggy and sick. And he's freezing! He even put his jacket on under his vest, and he's still cold! If only he had one of those cardigans from college with him...

"-and anyway, I just hope this won't turn out the same way."

Jonah nods along for a minute more before registering that the "conversation" is finally over. "Okay, well, good luck with that, ma'am," he says with a tired smile.

"Thank you, um... Joe-neh.”

“It-it’s Jonah, actually- and she walked away. Okay.” Jonah sighs and yawns, stretching his arms. He accidentally swings then out too wide, and knocks something over right onto the ground.

He jumps at the sheer volume of the impact! “WHAT IN THE-”

A barbell in a box smashes against the ground, denting the floor.

“How did- who- where-” Jonah looks around, trying to spot someone who would misplace a barbell into grocery!

He kneels down to take a look. It’s cracked the floor significantly.

He looks at his hand. It’s not even red where he accidentally punched the absurdly heavy weight. He struggles with grocery bags more often than not, and yet this- whatever this even is- happened?!

“Gotta be at an angle,” he mutters to himself. He puts his hands on the shelf, rubbing it, crouching down and examining it closely. “Just slid off at the lightest touch, clearly.”

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“Wow.” Mateo looks at Brett. “How did you even get that over there? It must weigh like, a million pounds.”

Brett gives no reply. Nor any indication that he heard Mateo at all. 

“Fine then,” Mateo says, offended. “Well, that’s a point for the ‘vampire’ better for sure.”

“Totally.” Cheyenne is already marking it down in her notebook.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dina watches Jonah on the security cams. “Let’s see how you like this one.” She pulls out her walkie-talkie. “Do it now, Garrett.”

“This is crazy. You know that, right?”

“Just do it!”

At the customer service desk, Garrett sighs and pulls out his phone. He taps an audio file, and holds it up to his mic.

Dina watches Jonah like a hawk.

First his head lifts up, clearly confused, and then after a moment he claps his hands over his ears. Over the camera she hears him shout, “What the hell is that?!”

Customer turn and looks at him with bewilderment, and looks around. 

Jonah looks around too, somewhat distressed.

“Ha!” Dina stands up a little and points at her monitor. “Superhuman hearing!”

“Hey, Dina?” Garrett says over the walkie. “What is this supposed to be doing, exactly?”

“That’s a frequency human ears can’t hear, but Jonah just did,” she says happily.

“Are you serious?”

“Always. He’s freaking out in the middle of grocery,” she says with a laugh.

“Okay, turning this off now.”

“No! I want to see how long he can handle it first, for future reference.”

“Yeah, well, I bet against him being a vampire so this doesn’t benefit me at all.”

Garrett lowers the phone and turns it off. Dina watches Jonah drops his hands from his ears with a small gasp of relief. She plops back into her chair with a disgruntled sigh.

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“Hey, Sandra? Um, so, we got a complaint,” Glenn says, trying to get Sandra’s attention, “Someone said that a bunch of bats flew out of the hole in the ceiling and started trying to rip their hair out? Anyway, uh, we can’t call animal control without corporate approval, so I need someone to handle that...”

Glenn waits for a moment, and then clears his throat. Sandra is still focused on something else. He clears it again, more insistently. Still nothing.

“SANDRA!”

The shrill shout make Sandra jump. Glenn smiles pleasantly when she turns around. “I need your help with something- ... wait a minute...”

Sandra is holding a spray bottle, garlic powder, and real garlic. “Um, I’m... restocking,” she clearly fibs. Glenn raises an eyebrow.

Sandra deflates. “We’re playing a game,” she admits. “To see if Jonah’s a vampire or not. Since garlic might kill him Dina and Marcus are making me wear garlic perfume, which is just garlic in water, to see if it makes his nose bleed or anything.”

“What?”

“I know we shouldn’t be playing a game at work-”

“Who cares?! Jonah might be a vampire?”

“Um... yes?”

Glenn shouts fearfully. “But-but vampires are damned! Jonah’s soul might be damned?!”

“... Yes?”

Glenn quickly runs away. Sandra waits, shrugs, and goes back to spraying garlic-y water on her neck.

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“Jerusha? We’re gonna start up a new savings account! ... Well, Jonah might be a vampire, so I think we’ll need to pay a heavy fee to get him into Heaven! ... Of course we have to do it! He probably can’t even think of Heaven now! OH! I prayed for him this morning, what if that hurt him?! Oh, god... I need to call Pastor Craig about this! Oh- hmm? Oh, yeah, I can bring home Italian, what do you want?”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jonah leans away from Sandra. “Yeah, uh, it’s-it’s certainly... pungent.”

“A good signature scent?” Sandra asks meekly.

“It... leaves a strong impression,” Jonah assures. And a strong headache...

“You don’t think it’s too strong?”

“Well, um... now you mention it, it... might, be a little... much. Uh... garlic-ish. Kind of.”

“Oh. Do you not like garlic?”

“I love it! I love garlic, just... not as a perfume.”

“You’re not allergic?”

“I just said I love it, so... no.”

“Okay. Um, thanks.”

Sandra walks away, leaving Jonah thoroughly confused.

“What was that about?” Amy asks, walking up.

“I think Sandra got garlic on herself and is trying to convince everyone it was on purpose,” Jonah says, slightly distracted sounding. He looks at Amy. “That or she genuinely wants to smell like garlic all the time.”

“Huh. ... I bet it was Carol.”

“Oh, that’s a good guess!” Jonah exclaims with a smile. “Why didn’t I think of that one?”

“Mmm, you’re off your game today. Anyway, I asked Glenn and we think insurance will cover a basic checkup if you think you need one.”

"Good, good, because I had another thing happen.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, I started hearing this like um, this-this ringing sound, kind of? But I don’t think anyone else heard it. ... Everyone sort of looked at me like I was that guy from last Halloween...”

“Oh, yikes.”

“... Anyway, I’ll call at the end of the day.”

“You’re sure you don’t need to go home?”

“Well I’d like to but our insurance is so bad our boss thought I might die, so.”

“Right.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Alright, Garrett-”

“Whoa, where the hell did you come from?!”

“The cafe. Here.” Dina tosses a pack of toothpicks to Garrett. “Hold one of these up around Jonah’s heart and see if he panics.”

Garrett looks at her skeptically.

“It’s the closest thing we have to a wooden stake! I mean, I could carve one, but we’d lose a chair or two.”

“Yeah, Dina,” Garrett pushes the toothpicks back over to her. “I’m not doing that.”

“Why? Scared you’ll kill him by accident? You can’t trip, it’ll be fine.”

“No, because this is stupid. And because if he is a vampire, I don’t want him to think I tried to murder him!”

Dina considers this. “... Alright, fair game. I’ll find someone else to do this.”

“Wait, really? Just like that?”

“Yeah. Any idiot could hold a toothpick to someone else’s heart.”

Dina walks away, huffing, as Garrett is left with an odd feeling of dejection.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jonah pauses as he walks past patio. He doubles back, and spots Marcus using one of the grills.

Marcus looks up and grins. “Hey! Feeling peckish?”

“Um, are you allowed to be- isn’t that kind of dangerous, actually?”

“No, no, it’s fine. I uh, get special treatment after cutting off my thumb,” Marcus brags.

“Oh... kay. Um...” Jonah looks at the steaks, mouth watering. “I guess... I could use a snack.”

“Great! How rare do you want it?”

“... Do you mean how well-done? Just- usually people don’t start with the assumption of rare...”

“Well, a lot of my friends like their steaks bloody.” Marcus laughs, and then looks at Jonah very seriously.

“Oh, um, that-that’s... cool.” Jonah looks at the steaks sitting on the plate, in a pool of red, metallic-smelling, warmed blood...

He wipes his mouth. “Um, medium rare,” he says quickly. “And I’m just- I’m going to head over to the um, I think I saw a spill! In isle, uh... yeah.”

Jonah quickly walks away, and Marcus pulls out his phone to text Cheyenne. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Hey, Glenn, I was thinking and I think we should send Jonah to- whoa.” Amy stops in her tracks, standing in Glenn’s doorway completely still as her boss tries to quickly hide the fact that he’d been crying.

“Um, go on, Amy.”

“Glenn, are you okay?” Amy closes the door and sits down.

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine,” Glenn waves off. “Just worried about Jonah, you know?”

Amy sighs. “Yeah, I am too. He said he heard a ringing in his ears, so I think maybe we should send him to the doctor and just use the jar method-”

“NO!”

Amy startles at Glenn’s shout. “Why?”

“Because he’s a vampire now, and-and who knows what the scientists will do to him!”

Amy closes her eyes and shakes her head, trying to process that. “I’m sorry, he- what? Why do you think that?”

“Everyone does!” Glenn swings his arm out for emphasis. 

“... So... there’s no evidence, just people spreading rumors?”

“He had the two holes in his neck!”

“Okay, but, vampires aren’t real. You know that, right?”

Glenn shakes his head. “The Devil can do terrible things to good people! And-and one of those things, is turning best friends into vampires!”

Brushing past the fact that Glenn believes Jonah to be one of his best friends, Amy stands up. “Okay, Glenn, how about we go out there and look at Jonah.”

“... I’m scared to.”

“Just come on.”

Amy drags Glenn out of the office and runs into Justine. “Hey, Justine, where’s Jonah?”

“Oh, I think he’s at the grills-”

“Kay, thanks!”

She takes Glenn to Jonah despite Glenn’s protests. “See? Jonah is perfectly norm-”

She stops, and Glenn shrieks.

“Not what it looks like!” Marcus assures, fumbling with a napkin to wipe the blood off of Jonah’s chin.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*minutes earlier*

“Why do I need to be blindfolded for this?” Jonah asks nervously, fidgeting with his hands in his lap as Marcus covers his eyes.

“I want you to guess which one is cooked right without seeing it.”

“Wh-why, though?”

“Because... it’s a game!”

It’s to see how sensitive Jonah is to blood.

Marcus cuts a slice of steak, and holds it up. Jonah hesitantly opens his mouth, and Marcus shoves the steak piece in. Jonah coughs. “Very aggressive.”

Marcus shrugs, and waits.

“... Medium well?”

“Yes! Noice! My friend knows his steaks. Okay, here’s another one.”

Jonah chokes a little. “You really don’t have to shove it, in, um, you almost stabbed me.”

“Just tell me the steak...”

Jonah chews. “... Medium rare?”

“You are on fire! Okay, one more.”

Marcus shoves the fork into Jonah’s mouth. Jonah hisses in pain, biting down on the very rare piece of steak. Blood dribbles down his chin, both from the meat and his own mouth.

“Oh, shit, I am so sorry! Let me help, um-” Marcus grabs a napkin, and starts trying to unfold it.

Amy and Glenn round the corner at that exact moment. Marcus looks at them with slight fear. “Not what it looks like!”

Jonah coughs, spitting out the steak onto his lap. “This game went horribly wrong!” He takes off the blindfold and grabs a napkin himself, pressing it to the roof of his mouth.

Glenn looks like he’s about to faint. Amy holds her hands up. “What the hell happened?!”

“I was seeing if Jonah could tell different steaks apart and I kind of, uh, stabbed his mouth.”

Jonah looks at Marcus with an incredulous glare (that almost seems to have concern mixed in, but all of Jonah’s expressions look like that).

“Okay, Marcus, go back to the warehouse! Jonah, let me see- dammit, okay, lets go find some kind of antibiotic mouth spray or something-” 

She leads Jonah away as Glenn and Marcus are left behind.

Glenn looks around for a moment, swinging his arms. “So, um... how did he do?”

Marcus smiles. “Awesome,” he chuckles. “That guy is totally a vampire, I’d bet my windshield.”

“Oh.” Glenn’s voice is weak. “I-I think I need to sit down.”

Marcus holds up a plate. “Want a steak?”

“... Sure.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Amy takes the plastic off the spray and holds it up. “Okay, take away the napkin.”

Jonah takes it out of his mouth, and Amy shines a light in so she can aim the spray. “Where did he get you? I can’t see any holes.”

Jonah points. Amy squints. “No, there’s nothing. Not even any bleeding.”

They both look at the very bloody napkin.

Amy’s brows furrow. “... Sure healed fast.”

“I-I guess it felt worse than it was.” Jonah runs his tongue over the roof of his mouth. “You’re sure there’s nothing?”

She checks again, and her eyes drift to his teeth. ... Are those two actually sharper, or is she just imagining it?

“... Yeah. Nothing.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jonah heads back out onto the floor, stomach rumbling. He got two bites of steak, which just made him more hungry really.

He passes by the grills. Glenn and Marcus are gone, but a steak remains. The rare one.

He stares at it for a moment, and then gives in. He walks over, picks up the plate-

And the next thing he knows he’s holding the steak in his hands, and it’s bone-dry. He blinks, and looks up and around as though he thinks someone else could have come in and dried out the steak.

He has a metallic taste in his mouth, and he does feel marginally less hungry. Still at a stomach-growling level, but it had been starting to hurt.

He looks down at the now inedible steak. He sets it back down and walks away, trying to figure out what the hell happened and why he had blacked out again.

He passes by Sandra, who’s texting something to someone.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Another point to Vampire.” Cheyenne smugly marks it down. “Told you.”

“Alright, alright, I shouldn’t have doubted you,” Mateo admits. “So what do we do? I mean, we can’t keep working with him now, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what if he tries to bite us?”

“Ooooh. ... I guess I hadn’t thought of that. ... He’s probably going to be a nice vampire, though.”

“Sure, for now. But what if someone like, eats his lunch?”

“Wouldn’t his lunch be people now?”

“Okay, so then, what if someone becomes his lunch? ... Should we carry garlic on us?”

“Ew.”

“Super ew, but I think I’d rather stink than be dead. Which is saying a lot, when I run out of cologne I use Febreeze.”

“Which kind?”

“The sea breeze one.”

Cheyenne nods approvingly. “Well, maybe we can get some holy water? I bet Glenn could get us some.”

“Oh, I think there’s some at my house, actually. Tita uses it when we get ant infestations.”

They both smile at their foolproof plan, and keep working.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Amy watches Jonah from a distance.

He can’t be. It’s just not possible. Vampires aren’t real, they’re just in books she swipes from Emma (and reads herself) sometimes. And besides, Jonah doesn’t look like one!

Well, he kind of does, but he looked like that before this morning. Although he does look a little paler than usual...

No, no, it’s winter, of course he looks paler than usual, everyone looks paler than usual because there’s no sun.

... It was weird how his mouth was completely fine... and he has been acting weird today...

...

She plasters on a smile and walks over. “Hey, Jonah.” She wraps him up in a big hug.

“Oh! Um, hi, Amy.” He hugs back, and Amy shivers a little.

He is freezing.

She pulls away. “Just restocking the freezer?”

“Uh, no, why?”

“Oh. You just, feel really cold.”

“Yeah, I’ve had a chill all day.” He rubs his arms. “Not even coffee helped. But I don’t think I have hypothermia, so I’m not sure what’s going on...”

Now Amy feels a chill. “Well, um, how about we go sit by that heater display, then?”

“Yes, thank you, I need that.” 

As they walk, Amy tries to get a good look at his teeth. He rambles on the whole way over, but she can’t get a good, clear view. 

They sit down, and Jonah sighs. “Oh, that’s so much better. Feel less like a walking corpse now.” He laughs at himself.

Amy laughs too, forcing it out as she eyes his smile.

Those two teeth are definitely longer.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The sun sets over the Cloud 9, and Jonah sighs in relief. Finally, almost time to go home. He’s going to sleep right awa-

He pauses his mopping (someone chugged three giant sodas and did not have the stomach for it). 

Where did that sudden burst of energy come from? 

“Must be the relief,” he mutters. He finishes mopping up, and is immediately approached by a customer.

“Excuse me, but there’s a section back there with broken lights. Can you help me find my way around?”

Jonah sighs, hands on his hips, but nods. “Sure! Sure, no problem.” 

He hadn’t even noticed the broken lights earlier, he could have sworn he could see perfectly. He follows the customer over to the dim, isolated area.

And blacks out.

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“Hey, Cheyenne?” Amy walks up to the cosmetics booth. “I heard you guys did a betting pool about Jonah?”

“Oh, yeah,” Cheyenne chuckles. “It was super fun, everyone was sending me stuff all day and some of the tests were super silly-”

“How about we shut it down?”

“... But, it’s almost the end of the day...”

“Yeah, I know, I know, just, it seems in poor taste.”

“How?”

“Kind of feels like it’s making light of what happened to Jonah, right? And I mean, I don’t know how I feel about gambling about someone who has a gambling problem, you know?”

Cheyenne considers, and nods. “Well, we won’t keep it up, it was just for today. We all know the answer anyway, he’s totally a vampire.”

“No! No, uh, he isn’t, because vampires don’t exist. So he can’t be.”

“Um, he totally is.”

“But he is not, because that’s fantasy.”

“No, really! Look at all this evidence everyone sent me.” Cheyenne pulls out her phone and shows the group chat to Amy. “We would have counted you in but... well, this.” She gestures to Amy, and the current conversation as a whole.

A crowd has begun to gather. Amy turns and looks at everyone. “Okay, guys, it was a fun day but this, vampire betting pool thing is over!”

There’s disgruntled chattering. “So there’s no payout?” someone shouts.

“Nope, everyone should take their own money back and let’s leave this to rest!”

“Like Jonah?” someone else jokes. The group chuckles.

“Not like Jonah, because Jonah is alive and well!”

“Well, vampires aren’t technically alive-”

“Sandra!” Amy snaps. “He is not a vampire!”

Dina scoffs. “Come on, even I think it’s obvious, and I’m not prone to thinking stuff like that. Unlike Glenn.”

“Where is Glenn, actually, he should be putting a stop to this-”

“He went home early. Something about needing to start a fundraiser to buy Jonah a new soul. His pastor is a con artist, but I respect his convincing marketing.”

“... Okay, then, Dina you put a stop to this.”

“Why?”

“Because Jonah! Is not! A vampire! There are no such things, and-and he just can’t be one, okay? Because he is a-a nervous, stuttery, sweet little man and it’s just not possible!”

Sandra glances over into the isles, and stiffens. “Uh, guys?”

“It could all be a ruse,” Dina says with a shrug. “He’s a creature of the night now. Can’t trust him anymore.”

“No, he is not!”

“Why are you so insistent about this?” Mateo asks. 

“Why are you wearing a cross choker like you’re a teen going through a phase?” Amy fires back.

“This is to protect my bodily fluids from your ‘sweet little man’.” Mateo makes a sassy face at her.

“Guys,” Sandra says again, a little louder.

“He’s not my sweet little, I just meant he is in general a good guy!”

Garrett, highly amused, joins in the teasing. “Good looking?” 

“No! I mean, yes, kind of, he’s not bad I-I guess- how did this turn into a thing about me? Stop saying Jonah is a vampire when he is not!”

“Guys!” Sandra’s shout finally draws everyone’s attention. “Look.”

A blank-eyed customer shuffles out of the isles, a worried Jonah following. “Ma’am, please, are you okay? Do you need me to walk you to your car? What happened?”

She doesn’t reply, which seems to make Jonah more frantic. As she walks past, everyone gets a clear view of her neck. 

Two little holes, slightly bleeding.

And Jonah seems to have more color in his face.

“Ma’am, please, what happened in the isle? Did you trip? Did I trip and fall into you? Whatever happened I am very sorry-”

They both disappear out the doors. Cheyenne lowers her phone. “I’m texting that to Glenn.”

Everyone is quiet for a moment, the only sounds those of Cheyenne typing on her phone.

Finally, Dina pipes up. “I think Amy lost the pool.”

[hongism]

mists of celeste ➻ fifteen

➻ pairing: ot8 x fem!reader ➻ genre: space au, pirate au, space pirate!ateez, angst, eventual smut ➻ Word Count: 4.0k ➻ Rating: M ➻ Warnings: language, violence, guns and weaponry, blood, future warnings tba ➻ summary: Sneaking aboard the ship of a renowned space pirate may not have been the best idea, but you’ll have to make do with what fate has handed to you

⇐ previous | next ⇒

mists of celeste act two ➻ part five

​​​

He stands in the middle of the street with two pistols out and at the ready, a body at his feet that must have fallen victim to the random gunshot that echoed through the streets. Hongjoong isn’t alone though; he’s surrounded by eight thugs who seem to have the same idea. All have their own weapons pointed at Hongjoong’s head.

Hongjoong’s whole body is rigid and straight. Both arms are extended at ninety-degree angles, and the captain is ready to fire at any second. The silence is palpable, you can taste the tension on the back of your tongue, and no one moves. You are still at a far enough distance to be out of sight and out of mind. It leaves an opportunity. San’s little dot is still moving on your wristband, and there is a narrow alleyway off to your left that could grant you a shortcut if you decided to take it. Slowly, your right hand creeps down to the holster where your pistol sits. You drag two fingers over the metal with a hesitant touch.

You shouldn’t even have to hesitate. It’s Kim Hongjoong – The Scourge of the Black Sea. He should be more than capable of handling himself and yet. And yet. Your feet refuse to move towards the alleyway. Leaving doesn’t sit right with you, especially after Seonghwa specifically asked you to make sure Hongjoong stays safe. You exhale a huff of air, nearly rolling your eyes at your internal debate, then tug the pistol out.

You slip into view, gun lining up with the head of one of the thugs in an instant. He catches sight of you with ease, and his own weapon shifts to aim at you.

“Fuck!‌ Scourge brought back up,” he curses, jerking his head in your direction. It prompts a few of the other men to glance over at you, but Hongjoong remains rigid and unmoving. He’s almost like a statue in his stillness. Even with so many guns pointed at him, he’s stoic and unnerved. Then the dynamic shifts.

Hongjoong fires his right pistol, sending a thug cascading to the ground with a thud and quick death. In the same motion, he ducks down and sweeps his leg under the bandit next to the fallen one. As he falls, Hongjoong fires both pistols into his chest. You take the opportunity to dash forward, feet skidding across the dirt-covered road. The thug directly before you whips around and aims at you, but you drop to the ground, using your momentum to swing for his legs. He slams against the cobblestone with a grunt of pain, and you straddle his chest to put a bullet between his eyes. Your hand snaps up to fire again at the soldier above you, his gun midway to aiming for your head.

Hongjoong matches your haste, not even bothering to glance at you as you move, and the two of you dance around each other as though locked in a dangerous dance of death. Metal flashes across your vision. A blade comes close to sweeping over your chest, but you crack the flat of your hand against the owner’s wrist, and the weapon falls away uselessly. Your fingers close around that wrist and yank the body forward. You don’t have to turn to know that another thug is preparing to fire at you; his curses and shouts are indication enough. You duck behind the one you’ve got in your grasp just before the shot resounds.‌ The bullet buries itself in the chest of the thug before you, and you knock the limp body away to face the one who shot at you.

However, you don’t have the chance to fire back because Hongjoong beats you to it. Two bullets find a new home in the bandit. Then a thick arm locks around Hongjoong’s throat, yanking him back and causing one of his pistols to fall to the ground. You don’t hesitate or wait to line up a shot. Instead, you fire with confidence that you won’t hit Hongjoong, and your confidence isn’t misplaced because you hit the thug in the temple.

The shot leaves one man left standing. He doesn’t seem to know who to aim at first, glancing between you and Hongjoong with eyes blown in fear. The gun trembles in his hands, a grating rattling resounding from the weapon, and he settles on aiming at Hongjoong. Said man tilts his head to the side as he looks over the thug.

“Run,” he commands, tone icy and flat. “Before I change my mind.”

The mercy is enough for the man, and he nods hastily. His gun falls to the ground alongside the bodies. He takes off running down the street. You watch his retreating back with little interest. Then, a gunshot echoes through the street. The thug collapses facefirst into the dirt. You jerk to glance back at Hongjoong. He doesn’t speak, nor does his blank expression shift in the slightest. All he does is holster his gun in silence, then bends down to collect his fallen pistol and holster it as well.

You shouldn’t be surprised by the action.‌ The Scourge has a reputation for being cruel, but you still feel shock down in your bones at the image of Hongjoong’s lack of expression or remorse. Dangling freedom before a man like that then yanking it away in the blink of an eye. It’s almost worse than cruel.

You busy yourself by fiddling with your wristband. San’s dot has ceased its slow movements, and you tap at the screen a few times to make sure the device isn’t frozen.

“Hongj–”

“Why are you here?” Hongjoong cuts you off before you can inform him of San’s status. “And why the fuck are you here with Seonghwa’s equipment?”

“I-I, uh, Seonghwa – he gave it to me,” you stutter. “I n-needed to come.”

“Why?” The captain shifts at last to look at you directly. “I understand why you stayed last night. Your resolve is weaker than you think it is. But disobeying direct orders? Again? That’s not betrayal; it’s straight-up incompetence. Is there something wrong with your head? Is that why you can’t follow orders?”

“I have a debt to repay,” you snap back. Fists clench at your sides. A wave of heat rushes through your veins, the sensation sears a path to your fingertips. The distinct desire to punch Hongjoong in the nose rises, but you push it down by biting down hard on the tip of your tongue. “Aren’t you aware of that? You shouldn’t question why‌ I’m here when you know that.”

Hongjoong clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. His head shakes ever so slightly.

“I am not surprised that you came. My question is why are you not with San? Why didn’t you go straight to San? I could have handled a few petty thugs with shitty aim. Yet you decide to come to me first and not San. Why is that?”

The tightness in your throat stings as you attempt to swallow.

“Seonghwa, h-he asked me to make sure you stayed safe.”

A laugh tears through‌ Hongjoong’s chest. You see the whites of his eyes clearly as he rolls them back before dipping his chin towards his chest.

“Of course Seonghwa said that.” He mutters the words moreso to himself than to you, and thus you don’t respond. “He worries too much.” Hongjoong lifts his head again and looks over to where you’re standing. “Hopefully Seonghwa’s worry doesn’t cost us any more time. San has stopped moving. He must be near the warehouse already, or worse.”

Hongjoong strides off, increasing the distance between the two of you, and you merely watch him walk with head tilted to the side for a few moments. Then, his voice rings clear again.

“Are you going to pull it together or not?”

You take the words as an invitation, pressing your gun back against your thigh then chasing after Hongjoong’s retreating form on quick feet.

“Are you okay with this? I mean… me coming along with you.” You ask after a second of silence. You fall into step with the captain, and your eyes trail over his platinum hair. It is nearly blinding in the sunlight, creating something of a halo around Hongjoong’s head as he walks across the cobbles.

“I don’t have a choice. Waiting for Seonghwa and Mingi will take hours, but they’ll do the best they can. I expect the same from you as well. This is an emergency recovery mission. Get in, recover San, leave no survivors.”

You inhale sharply. Hongjoong doesn’t seem to see an issue with what he said, and you shouldn’t either. It’s a command similar to ones you’ve heard in the past – leave no survivors. Kill them all. No one left standing. Brutal, cruel, heartless.

“It isn’t your place to decide who lives and who dies,” you say, voice barely above a whisper. “That should be up to San.”

Hongjoong shifts to glare at you out the corner of his eye.

“If they hurt San, then it isn’t a choice. It’s a responsibility. For each finger they lay on him, they will earn themselves five deaths. I can only hope they have enough men for that punishment.” You can’t bring yourself to respond. Eyes wide, your steps falter and you nearly trip over your own feet.

“A-And what happens if they don’t? Uh, have enough men?”

A sinister smirk covers Hongjoong’s lips.

“I will drag out their miserable lives as long as possible so that I can exact my punishment properly.”

You answer with a few shaky nods. It’s hard to swallow around the lump in your throat, but you manage to do so despite the pain it brings. Looking at Hongjoong again is out of the question; those cruel words leave a bad taste in your mouth, taking you back to memories that are not fond in the slightest. You aren’t proud of your past, you aren’t proud of the person you used to be – and still are sometimes – and you certainly are not proud of the orders you followed without question or complaint. Yet you do the same thing now; walk alongside Hongjoong without complaint or comment. You wonder if this is any different than back then, if following these orders is just a bad as it was back then. At least you aren’t being asked to murder anyone. Yet.

Hongjoong leads the way, glancing down at his wristband every once in a while until he comes to a complete halt. His head doesn’t lift, eyes still tracking the wristband without cease, and you opt to look around your surroundings in the hopes of finding at least some sign of San.

You get your wish, but the sight of it only causes the pit in your gut to grow deeper and deeper. Realization settles in, the anxiety spikes, and your only hope now is that San is alive. A wristband that can’t belong to anyone other than San lies in the middle of the cobbled streets. Hongjoong glares at the device without moving, staying several feet away. Then the force of his body hits yours without warning. You slam against the stony ground, pain radiates through your whole form, and Hongjoong crashes down on top of you. A grunt of pain leaves you as all the air in your lungs does. He doesn’t look at you, however; he instead glances back over his shoulder towards where San’s wristband is. You follow his line of sight for a moment before there is a loud explosion and dust swirls across your vision. You duck behind Hongjoong’s form to shield yourself from the blast.

“Fuck,” Hongjoong curses under his breath. A sigh follows, and he glances down at your widened eyes. “I should’ve seen that coming. They rigged mines under the wristband. Must’ve noticed the track system and seen us coming. Are you alright?”

“Y-Yea, just fine. Not the first time I’ve had to dodge mines.” The heat of the blast and Hongjoong’s proximity causes sweat to bead on your forehead. He pulls back and sits on his heels, but he doesn’t move off of you quite yet. His eyes scan the surroundings.

“They must’ve dug up the ground some to get the mines in,” he explains as his fingers run over the pale dirt between the cobblestones. His weight disappears as he rolls off of you. A moment later, he has flattened himself against the ground and pressed his ear to the dirt. You pull yourself up into a sitting position.

“What are yo–”

“Shush.”

You snap your lips back together at the command. It goes completely quiet for several minutes. By the time Hongjoong pulls up again, your patience is wearing thin and you wish he would just move already.

“There are seven more mines,” he says, breaking the silence at last. “We’ll need to go around to avoid them. No doubt they heard the first mine go off, and they set them up along the path to the warehouse. Must’ve gotten hold of San already.”

“Or maybe he got away,” you reason. “Dropped the wristband?”

Hongjoong’s eyes find yours.

“Do you really think that’s true?” He asks.

“I have to believe it is.”

Hongjoong doesn’t answer. He just gets to his feet and stares up at the surrounding buildings. You move to do the same. As you’re halfway up, Hongjoong extends an arm to you. You take it as a signal to stop moving at first, but he wiggles his hand before your face. You take it in yours and let him tug you up, and he motions to one of the shorter buildings on the left as he helps you to your feet.

“We should climb up and move around on the rooftops to get closer to the warehouse. They’ll most likely have some sort of defense system. Maybe some snipes or turrets along the rooftops.” Hongjoong pauses, and his hand falls limply by his side. “How good of a shot are you?”

“I – what?” You blink at the side of his head with confusion painting your features. “I, well, I was the best in my unit.”

“I thought you were the best in the whole damn military,” Hongjoong says through a small smile.

“It pays to be humble sometimes,” you laugh. There is a small break of levity between the two of you, one that you eat up while you can. Hongjoong heaves a grunt as he begins to scale the building he pointed towards not too long ago. You hop up behind him, following his path up the side of the building. Your right arm is still a tad weak from not using it as much when you had your injury, but it doesn’t bother you too much and you’re able to join Hongjoong on the roof within a minute.

“Have you climbed a lot of building in your day?”

You answer with a roll of your eyes.

“Is there any sign of San?” You ask as you approach the edge of the roof. There is nothing in your view as you glance over. Just a bit of dirt and sand across the ground, buildings of varying heights, and nothing else. There aren’t any bodies in sight – certainly no sign of San. It’s a stark difference compared to the part of the city you were in earlier that held bustling streets and numerous people regardless of how early or late it was. “Why is this part so empty when all the others have been completely filled to the brim?”

“Because Cara’s crew owns this part of the city,” Hongjoong answers in a matter of fact tone. “If you’re caught in it, you die. Even criminals and pirates won’t take that risk.”

“Then why aren’t there any patrols or people looking for intruders?”

“There are, there are. The patrol in this area must’ve taken San back to the warehouse without leaving anyone behind because of the mines. That’s why no one is nearby, but we should move quickly before a new patrol comes or one returns.” Hongjoong drums his fingers along the lip of the roof. “How good of a shot are you? You never answered my question.”

“With a sniper or a pistol?” You inquire, lips drawing together.

“The latter.”

You take a moment to ponder over the question, eyes scanning the rooftops ahead of you. “With clear air and no breeze, I could hit someone between the eyes from around 300 meters.”

“And you call yourself humble.” When you shift to look at Hongjoong, he’s smirking.

“That was me being humble. Would you like for me to tell you the truth? The real distance would be around 700 meters.” A laugh escapes you, and you continue speaking with a small smile playing at your lips. “With the proper holder, any weapon can be made into a long-distance one. Typical pistol bullets will travel around 2200 meters before falling to the ground. A typical sniper could go as far as 3600 meters although the sweet spot is between 600 and 1200 meters. Though that’s just a typical sniper rifle. A higher grade one with an excellent shooter behind it could shoot a bullet and it would travel around 9700 meters before hitting the ground.”

You pause to motion out at the rooftops, and Hongjoong follows the motions with his eyes.

“From up here, the distance to the ground is increased. Depending on the height between you and the ground, as well as the angle from which you’re firing the weapon, the exact angles and calculations change. 45 degrees is the sweet spot for angles of firing. It gives the best parabolic arc – the rise and fall – of the projectile. Of course, that’s all just to determine how far a bullet goes. In order to actually hit a target, the shooter has to be in prime condition, the weather needs to be clear because even the slightest breeze will disrupt the shot. Need to be steady, of course, handle kickback of a weapon with ease, and your target should obviously not be moving or else there’s no way you’re hitting it. Is that all you wanted to know or would you like some more exact calculations and lessons?”

A laugh rips through Hongjoong’s chest. He throws his head back as he all but cackles, shoulders quaking a bit.

“If Seonghwa were here, he would certainly get a rise from hearing you talk like that.” The smile coating the captain’s lips is coy, and there’s a different meaning to his words. You pick up on it after a few delayed seconds.

“O-Oh, ha, does he… does he have a kink for talking about guns?”

“You can ask him that yourself.”

You scoff at his response and turn away from the man, eyes returning to analyze the streets below. Something darts across your vision. You draw closer to the edge of the building when you spot it. Whatever it is, it’s moving quickly through the shadows, and because of your height from the ground, you can’t make out whether it’s a person or not. Your gaze hardens on the moving figure, and it darts out of the shadows just long enough for you to catch sight of a strip of white hair.

“It’s San!” You exclaim, lurching forward to jump down from the roof. Hongjoong catches you by the collar and yanks you back. The pressure against the fresh bruises along your neck burns and stings, and you cry out in pain as he tugs you. You ignore his obvious attempts to keep you quiet and open your mouth to call out to San. “Sa–”

Hongjoong claps a hand over your mouth. His lips brush the shell of your ear as he hisses his next words.

“Are you fucking trying to get us killed?”

You tear at his fingers, prying them back just enough for you to be able to spit back at him. “I’m trying to keep San from getting killed!”

“You’ll get everyone killed if you do anything now,” Hongjoong sneers. He maintains his grip on you as he leans forward and glances down to where San is darting by. His gaze starts out with unprecedented softness, but it quickly hardens as he continues to watch San move. “What the hell are you doing, Choi San?” He mutters the question to himself. The anger melts away from his expression and unveils something almost akin to sadness. He brushes it to the side though before you can comment on it. “We should get moving.”

His hand falls away from your collar and he stands up again. You mimic his movements, keeping close to the edge of the building and trying your best to keep San in view, but you lose track of him quickly.

“No,” you say, stopping in your tracks before you go any further. “We should get San and get out.”

Hongjoong opens his mouth to fire back a response, but nothing comes out. He resorts to just looking at you with a stuttering jaw and wide eyes. He genuinely seems to be at a loss for words, and you almost lose yourself in the shock of his lack of response. You manage to reach out, taking hold of his bicep, and lean close to utter further words.

“You need to protect San, don’t you? Make sure no one lays a finger on him?”

Hongjoong tugs his arm out of your grasp. His jaw clenches, and the lost expression morphs back into a stern one.

“I’m going to do that. I can’t stop San from doing this though. If it is what he wants, then I ca–”

“You don’t know what San wants! Did you hear him specifically tell you what he wanted? Just last night San didn’t know what he wanted! How could he know now? You can’t just sit back and let this happen. I’m certain this isn’t what San really wants, there’s no wa–”

Hongjoong reels on you, and the murderous rage in his eyes causes you to cut off and shut your mouth within a millisecond.

“You don’t know San the way I do, you don’t know any of us, and you can’t pretend as though you do. The only thing you should do is learn to keep your damn mouth shut.”

The sudden shift of mood sends you reeling, and you step back from Hongjoong. You drop the expression from your face immediately, not giving him the pleasure of seeing you upset by the words.

“Right, weapons aren’t supposed to speak.”

You pull yourself over the edge of the rooftop, glancing down as you begin to make a quick descent to the ground again. Whether Hongjoong wants you to or not, you don’t know. He doesn’t join you right away, and when you glance up at the edge, you can’t see his form either.

Your feet hit the ground with a thud, and you brush the front of your shirt down before turning to look out over the streets. When you stand up straight, pressure wraps around your neck. You nearly roll your eyes, thinking that it’s Hongjoong trying to pull you back or something and you didn’t notice him come down, but a sharp pain blossoms across the side of your head. It’s a distinct feeling, and you recognize it to be the butt of a gun. Unless Hongjoong suddenly decided to get rid of you for good, it can’t be him. You swing an elbow back and hit your attacker in the ribs. In response, the person tightens the pressure on your neck. You hiss out at the sensation. You thrash under the person’s grip in attempts to spring free, but the butt of the gun hits the side of your head one more time. Your vision grows fuzzy, black spots blossoming, and your attacker only has to squeeze your throat a little tighter before you fall unconscious.

✧✧✧ a/n: eek a bit of an action chapter i was literally rushing to format asodifjiosdfj bc im getting close to 5 ahhh omg sdoifjodisfjio anyways i hope you all enjoyed this part! we’ve got a bit more action to get through before the Angst hits and i gotta apologize in advance bc it gonna hurt asodfiji

taglist: @faeriewoobin @sugarrimajins @atinyinwonderland @2504-life @lil7bluedragon @sparklychangbin @jeong-uwu @jeonartemis @anothershorthuman @xxbluestrifexx @yayhei​ @haotheheckk @noonawriter

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

[anonymouslyangsty]

Okay so I adore Kazuichi Soda, but GOD do I feel like his character is wasted somewhat in game??? I really wish he had more of an ark

(Warning, I’m going to ramble like a himbo about my Sodapop son below. It’s...way to long and has spoilers)

So, Kaz’s whole character backstory is that he was a nerdy, shy kid who got pushed around by his ‘friends’. He got in trouble for helping a friend cheat on a test, but he wasn’t upset when said friend threw him under the bus. He only got upset when that friend stopped talking to him after, which in turn encouraged him to distrust others and change his behavior and appearance to appear tough.

What I get from this is that Kaz puts on a fragile act to look tough, has a hard time trusting others, and has rather low self esteem. He acts like a punk, but the second someone attacks him, verbally or otherwise, he crumbles and cowers. 

That all being said, I don’t feel that these traits are properly handled or addressed in the game

Firstly, the whole Sonia obsession. I think it makes sense from a few perspectives. In one option, Soda could see Sonia, being a princess, as above ‘normal’ people, thus making her an object of his affections. Option B is that he doesn’t REALLY obsess with Sonia that hard, but because he wants to look cool, he pretends to like her so he can fit in with what he thinks dudes are like. 

Whatever option we go with, it’s clear that Soda has a very shallow ‘love’ for Sonia, only really liking her for her title and appearance. Whenever she expresses the darker sides of her personality (love of the occult and serial killers), Kaz always tries to divert attention from or ignore it. He doesn’t love her as a person, but as a figure. 

The shallowness of his love is coupled with her total devotion to her. Kaz makes the exact same mistake he did with his friend: he trusts Sonia irrationally, incapable of seeing any fault in her whatsoever. So, whenever she’s put into question, he jumps at her aid, trusting her regardless of any evidence. 

This also means that he’s incapable of seeing how uninterested she is in him. She never bluntly says it, but it’s clear that Sonia, at the very least, vaguely dislikes Kaz. She straight up hopes that he’s the killer in chapter 4.

But again, just like with his friend, Kaz brushes it off as nothing. Sonia could do anything to him but, as long as he has her ‘companionship’ (or the illusion of it), he’s fine. This is clearly a terribly unhealthy mentality for a relationship, as Sonia gets idolized to an uncomfortable degree and Soda leaves himself open to any level of abuse as long as he thinks he’s accepted.

Kaz is repeating the same mistake from his backstory, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. The bad part is the fact that it’s never addressed.

Sonia never tells Soda to stop, nor does anyone ever highlight the fact that Soda doesn’t really love her. He is constantly following her, but probably couldn’t say 10 things about her personality. If that WAS addressed, it could be used to show Soda that he isn’t going to make connections to people by keeping up his “cool, thirsty bro” persona, but instead by being genuine and kind, which is more align with his true personality. Honestly, I was expecting this to happen after chapter 4 but nope.

Another option, darker this time, is that Soda could find himself betrayed again. It would makes sense thematically; Kaz repeats the same mistake of blind trust, and is thus betrayed again. Maybe Sonia tries to kill someone, betraying the ideal pedestal Kaz places her on. Maybe she frames HIM for murder in an attempt to save Gundham.

Slight tangent here, but I really like the idea of a worst case scenario where Soda’s failure to learn from the past gets him killed (TLDR for the tangent, as if this whole thing doesn’t need a TLDR: Sonia and Kaz pull a DR1 first murder, but Kaz legit acts in self defense).

 Let’s say that, instead of the funhouse, chapter 4 gives motivation videos regarding everyone’s home. Of course, Sonia’s is about how her kingdom is falling into shambles. Extremely stressed, she locks herself in her room for several days. She eventually decides that, to save her kingdom, she has to sacrifice everything, even her morality. She decides to kill.

So, Sonia goes after the easiest target: Soda. Because of his blind faith in her, Soda wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever she asked. So Sonia asks him to meet her in some secluded area, perhaps the abandoned warehouse from chapter 1, sometime late at night.

Soda agrees to this blindly because he can’t EVER believe that Miss Sonia would ever do wrong. However, when he arrives, she attacks him, perhaps stabbing him in the shoulder. I know this is probably slightly underestimating Sonia, as she is trained in weaponry and could probably kill Kaz in one blow, but let’s say she’s so distressed that she doesn’t fatally would him.

Of course, there’s a struggle because, as much as Kaz obsesses over her, he’s not going to let Sonia murder him. She eventually backs him into a corner but, before she can kill him, he knocks her out with a wrench or something (he’s already established to carry one around because it comforts him, so it makes sense that he’d have it)

So now Kaz is alone, bleeding in an abandoned building with an unconscious woman at his feet. That would be a good point to wake everyone up and say what happens, but here’s where Kaz’s personality comes to bite him again. He still has faith in Sonia despite everything, unable to see her faults despite her having literally tried to kill him

So, his first priority is covering up HER crime. He hides the evidence of the attack as best as he can (which probably isn’t well given his panic and his wound). Then, he takes Sonia and carries her back to her room. He probably ties her up so she doesn’t her anyone else or herself when she wakes up. 

The next morning, Sonia isn’t at breakfast. Given that she’d locked herself in her room for several days, it wouldn’t be suspicious. Not wanting her to stay tied up, Soda offers to take breakfast to her. Once there, he wants to talk to her and calm her down, before letting her go and never telling anyone what happened.

However, you can’t just knock someone over the head and think they’re fine. That kind of kills people, and Soda soon learns that. When he gets into Sonia’s room, he finds her still tied up, dead.

Kaz is a coward, but is shown to be kind at heard. So, while I don’t think he’d be brave enough to confess, I don’t think he’d be willing to kill everyone else. Perhaps he’d try to kill himself before the trial to spare himself from execution. However, Nagito stops him. Nagito convinces Soda to cling onto the hope that he ISN’T the killer, and instead someone came to Sonia afterwards and killed her. It’s farfetched, but given his mental state, Kaz would buy it.

This all creates something I’ve always wanted in DR: an innocent blackened. Soda acted in self defense and had no intention to kill. In the trial, he wouldn’t be hiding info in an attempt to trick everyone, but in misplaced hope that he ISN’T the killer. 

Not only that, but this outcome really highlights the error of Soda’s mentality. Because he so blindly trusted Sonia, he was easily tricked by her. Because his self esteem is so bad, he doesn’t even get mad when she tries to kill him, instead hiding HER crime. Perhaps, if he’d gotten upset and ratted her out, she could’ve gotten some kind of medical attention and been saved. Instead, Kaz bent over backwards for her, leading to their deaths.

That was a long tangent, but the point is, I want Kaz’s failure to learn from past mistakes to be addressed, either by him growing past it or being punished for it. Nether happens though. The Sonia obsession continues throughout the ENTIRE game, with it never being addressed as a problem. It’s really strange thematically and character wise, as addressing it could’ve given both characters good development.

Moving on from Sonia somewhat, I HATE Kaz’s character ark, as he doesn’t evolve, but devolves. The source of Kaz’s problems is lis low self esteem. If he cared about himself more, he wouldn’t have accepted poor treatment from his friends in exchange for their companionship. He wouldn’t have changed his appearance and personality because he thought he was unlikable and boring.

Despite that however, in the end, the lesson he learns is to trust people again. That’s not a BAD lesson, but it doesn’t solve the problem. His self esteem is still nearly nothing; by once again falling into the idea that he has to trust his friends nonmatter what, he’s setting himself up to be used again (I’m not saying anyone in the DR2 cast WOULD do that, but the possibility remains.)

By trusting again without gaining self esteem, Kaz somewhat goes pack to step one. His ark really shoud have been about trusting and loving HIMSELF before he trusts and loves others. Kaz needs to realize that he doesn’t need to put on a tough act to make friends, as anyone who requires a tough act to like him isn’t his friend at all. He needs to realize that he deserves good treatment, and someone being your friend doesn’t justify cruel behavior towards you. 

But! He never learns that!!! He just goes right back to trusting without considering his self worth. That...really isn’t healthy and I wish it was addressed in his ark.

Another thing: why doesn’t Kaz have any dead friends? The entire surviving DR2 cast has someone who they were close to that died, Akane and Nekomaru, Fuyu and Peko, Hajime and Chiaki, Sonia and Gundham. It’s strange that everyone BUT Kaz has a close relationship with someone who dies in game.

Why not make Kaz friends with Mikan? I feel like they have a bit in canon, with both being anxious and prone to being bullied. I feel like a friendship between those two could be used to show Kaz’s more genuine personality. It’d be a chance to show that he isn’t CONSTANTLY thirsty over girls, that he can talk to Mikan without a hint of lust. Instead, they could just be friends, finding comfort in the fact that there’s someone else who’s just as terrified as they are.

Also, this relationship could be used to both mess with Kaz AND make another parallel to DR1. Make Mikan frame Kaz for the killing, just like Celeste with Hiro. This would not only be super interesting, but also a MASSIVE blow to Kaz’s ability to trust, which is already terrible. Also again, I just feel like Kaz’s anxiety is used for comic relief too often. I want this boy to straight up have a panic attack in trial. Destroy him with fear. 

So uh, yeah. I feel like Kaz’s depth is sacrificed for the sake of comic relief. He could’ve been so much more, but he isn’t and it’s a shame. Also, if you read this whole thing, then you must be just as obsessed with Kaz as I am. So, send me some good Kaz fics! It is SO HARD to find a fic that focuses on Kaz instead of Nagito. Do it.

[ifourmindbeso]

A very, very Merry Christmas

Anonymous asked: Dear Bering and Wellser, I am your secret Santa. What is your dearest wish for this lovely season? I can provide fic of a fluffy or angsty flavour, and will endeavour to write to any prompt you might like to give. Ho, ho, and additionally, ho. Santa ;)

Hey there, Santa — Every year I keep hoping I won’t need to say “please, no angst; the world’s angsty enough as it is”… but every year, here we are again, surrounded by upheaval and uncertainty. As for a prompt, then, what I’ll tell you is that the brilliant poet Mary Ruefle once titled an essay “Someone Reading a Book Is a Sign of Order in the World.” Interpret that idea, or whatever constellation of ideas it represents, as you prefer… or ignore it completely and go with mistletoe! Menorahs! Mangers! It doesn’t matter to me, as long as it’s Bering and Wells. And anyway, I’m already grateful to you, whichever nerdsbian you are, for being a part of this tenacious little fandom. This little fandom that is so big-hearted: it’s a gift in itself.

Merry Christmas, Bering and Wellsers, and to you, the lovely @apparitionism​. This piece starts with the prompt above, but quickly goes off in a direction of hopelessly ridiculous. I don’t know where the inspiration for this came from, but part of it was definitely an illustration from the lovely @foxfire141​ on tumblr. I asked if she would consider drawing something for this piece, and she provided the delightful illustration that, if I have done this right, should appear in the appropriate spot in the story. I have to thank her for her incredible work on this, and for her incredible talent. It has added to this piece in a way that I couldn't have imagined.

This is a sort-of sequel to my previous fic, ‘Aye, Zombie’. If you haven’t read it, you probably need to know that the Myka in this fic (and Claudia, Pete and Artie) grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Myka is somewhat foul-mouthed but has a good heart, despite her somewhat questionable past. Helena is the HG Wells, who came forward in time because Mrs Frederic told her that Christina would die if she didn’t. Christina consequently lived to old age. I think that’s all you need to know, but you could always go back and read Aye,Zombie, if you fancy some unintelligible Irish-isms and questionable humour.

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race. HG Wells

“Now, you see, love. That’s what I don’t get. You wrote that thing about the bicycles, not Charlie, right?”

“Yes,” she said, patiently.

“So your great words to the world are that when you see someone on a bicycle, that gives you hope for the future of the human race? What about seeing someone with a book? Surely that is the thing that makes you think that, all right, maybe we aren’t going to explode in a nuclear apocalypse or die from extreme weather caused by global warming. Because people read, and they learn.”

“Well, I suppose I see what you mean,” she said, thoughtfully, looking far too fucking adorable in my opinion, “but a bicycle is a statement all of its own. It means that the person riding it prefers to travel under their own steam. Whether it’s for personal fitness, for the feel of the wind in their face, for the sake of the planet – it’s usually a good reason. A book – well, it can mean a multitude of things. If the book is the bible, well, I’m sorry to say it, but the person reading it could be wonderful, or they could be terrible. Christians come in all sorts of flavours. Evil being the one we’ve seen the most of throughout history. The book could be Mein Kampf. And again, the person reading it could be studying it, to learn about history so as not to repeat it, or they could be reading it to repeat history. Do you see what I mean?”

I looked at her, and I think my jaw fell open a little. After years of marriage – an idea I would have laughed about only a few years back – she still managed to surprise me.

“Do close your mouth dear, you look like a frog that someone’s trodden on,” she said, fondly.

I rolled my eyes. We might be in the 21st century, but my Helena was one of a kind. Victorian to the core. I expected her to say ‘spit spot’ and ‘chop chop’ at times, and then remembered that was just one of my fantasies. (I mean, Julie Andrews is hot, whether she’s in her twenties or her seventies.)

“Are you ready?” Helena asked, as we got onto the plane.

“I’m fine,” I said, scowling slightly. I hated travelling at the best of times, but flights like this – commercial flights – were the worst. You had no control, you were corralled like animals, you were shot if you moved an inch out of place… okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but it certainly felt that way. I could feel the watchful eyes of the air marshal on me and the other passengers. Thank Christ we were in First Class. At least that gave me enough room to stretch out and the attendants tended to be a bit more polite. Mrs Frederic had agreed to ship me first class after the first flight when things had gone a bit… haywire because of PTSD. But sure I’m fine now. Honest.

I drained a glass of Bushmills before we even took off our coats.

The retrieval we were going on was a simple one. People in Flippin, Arkansas were turning into their favourite foods. Like walking, talking muppet puppets in the shape of fries or a bowl of their favourite soup or a walking burger. Pete and I had arm-wrestled for this retrieval. I won, but I promised I’d take lots of pictures.

Sometimes life in the Warehouse made sense. Sometimes it really didn’t, and you had to take advantage of those times, I thought, because otherwise you would take it all too seriously and go batshit crazy.

I drank a few more shots of Bushmills, studiously ignoring Helena dropping a sleeping pill into one of them. She seemed to think that the ‘B A Baracus’ approach was the best way to get me from A to B safely. She might have been right. I had dreams about dancing ice cream cones and that time we all burst into song because of an artefact. It was not pleasant, I can assure you. Helena Wells, despite her many fine qualities, is entirely tone deaf, and Pete sounds like a bullfrog when he tries to sing. Thankfully the rest of us managed to drown them out in the ensemble pieces, but their solo pieces were… ugh.

I woke to Helena gently shaking me awake, touching my left shoulder. We had come up with a code after a few too many attempted punches of her poor face. She had great reflexes, though, and I’d never actually landed a punch on her. Left shoulder meant everything’s fine. Right shoulder meant there was trouble and to grab weapons. Anywhere else on my body – that meant it wasn’t her, or anyone else I trusted.

I wiped my face with a wet wipe before retrieving my bag from the locker and I filed out dutifully with the rest of the cattle. Our Secret Service badges got us past the security on the other end quickly, a fact for which I was grateful. Who wants to be stuck in an airport a few days before Christmas with the entire human race crowded around you? Nobody, that’s who. The entire place smelled like feet.

“Shall we check in first before we go to find our walking foodstuffs, darling?” she asked, and I was once again struck by her other-ness. She was a part of this century now, but a walking anachronism at the same time. When I met her she did a great impersonation of a human from this century, but since we became a partnership, she didn’t seem to want to hide her true self as much. I liked that, a lot.

“We should check in,” I said, wearily. “I hate travelling love, why can’t you invent a transporter? You said you made a shrink ray, didn’t you?”

“I did, but making a teleportation device is somewhat of a challenge, even for someone with my intellect. If you do as they do in your Star Wars, you disperse someone’s molecules and send them somewhere else with the aid of some unknown force. But are those people still themselves when they come out the other end? One misplaced atom could turn you into a yeti, darling, and I really don’t think our wedding vows would cover that sort of mishap. I can handle a certain amount of body hair, but that’s just a little too much for my tastes.”

I made a harrumphing noise at her, and we made our way by cab to the hotel, which was the usual Warehouse style – small but clean, close to town but not in the centre. The check-in took approximately a week and a half, or so it seemed to my somewhat grumpy self, but as soon as we had keys, we dumped our bags off, showered quickly and changed, and went to find our victims. I brought my digital camera - for purely professional reasons.

“Agent Bering, Agent Wells. It’s a pleasure to have you here in our little corner of the world.” It was the Sheriff, the fella who’d called for help with this bizarre phenomenon. He got us, ‘Secret Service’ agents.

“I didn’t like that Flippin airport much,” I said, in my best vaguely-American accent. He laughed loudly.

“You got a great sense of humour, Agent,” he said, thumbs tucked into his belt-loops, his impressive belly jiggling as he laughed. He looked a bit like Santa Claus, but without the beard.

“So, this is the weirdest thing we’ve ever seen, even in a town with a name like Flippin,” he said, scratching his head under his Sheriff hat thingie. “The weirdest thing that’s happened here is when Jerry Dorsey married his future mother-in-law instead of his bride-to-be, and that was like, thirty years ago.

“When did it start, Sheriff?” Helena asked smoothly, not bothering to try to disguise her accent. Her American accent was terrible, so I was relieved.

“You aren’t from the States?” he asked, frowning. “I thought Secret Service had to be ‘Murican.”

“I’m a special liaison from Scotland Yard,” Helena said, lying through her teeth. “Emily Lake, at your service.”

He smiled at that, tipping his hat.

“A pleasure, Ma’am. We don’t get many of the President’s people down here, so I’ll admit to a little scepticism when I saw you were coming. As to when it started, well, Billy McIntyre turned into a doughnut about… 3 days ago. Every day since, we’ve had three or four people try to come into the station. As if we can help them. I mean, how am I supposed to turn a doughnut into a human?”

“They tried to get into the station?” I asked, intrigued.

“You ever seen a six-foot wide doughnut try to walk through an ordinary doorway? Funniest damn thing I ever saw,” he said, letting out a high-pitched giggle that startled me so much I almost shot him. As it was, I stared at him, trying to work out what the fuck the noise was.

“It does sound very amusing,” Helena said, in her rich voice, touching his arm to distract him from my confused, startled face. “Now, Sheriff… Adams, was it? Could you take us to the victims, please? And then we’ll visit the local eateries to see what each person ate in the days before their… um, metamorphosis.”

“Of course,” he said, smiling at her. She was always a charmer, my Helena. I don’t know how she did it, but she charmed the knickers off anyone who looked at her for more than a few minutes. The only person I’d ever met who was even a little bit immune was Mrs Frederic, and even she had a soft spot for Helena, though she wouldn’t admit it.

I had to seriously get a hold of myself when we stepped into the sheriff’s station. We stepped into a back room, where I assumed they did their morning briefings. There were a variety of people there, all looking like they were wearing costumes of their favourite foods. Unfortunately, those people were the costumes. There was a man in the corner who was the 6ft-wide doughnut, and a woman in front of me (I assumed, because the muppet was wearing lipstick) who was a box of fries from a burger restaurant. And a dude who was a large bowl of phō, which I found even more hilarious than the others, because every time he moved, he spilled the contents of the ‘bowl’ everywhere.

We had chicken and waffles, an egg salad sandwich (and Jesus, that fucker must have been the dullest) and a tall man who looked like chunks of tofu with sesame seeds on it. It seemed even the vegans weren’t immune to the effects.

I kept what I thought was an admirably straight face as we questioned the food-people. No-one had been to the same place – that would have been too easy – but they had all eaten at various restaurants and fast-food haunts during the past week, so we made a list and split up, checking each one with artefact spray to see if anything reacted. I got strange looks from people at the diner and the Vietnamese place, and I’m sure Helena did at the burger restaurant and the large dining section at the mall. But when we met later that afternoon, we had nothing. Nada. Niente. Bubkiss. Or as we say in Belfast, fuck all.

“For the love of Christ,” I sighed. “How long are we going to be doing this? I’m fucking starving, and I don’t want to eat anything in case I turn into a giant Chicken parm sub.”

Believe me, I have no desire to become a walking kale salad,” Helena said, sighing in that long-suffering way of hers. “But we have to get to the bottom of this. It hasn’t had any negative effects as such, or at least not yet, but it could. What if one of them gets too hungry and tries to eat another? What if they really taste of the food they’re… sporting?”

“That could get a bit… unfortunate,” I said, my mind drifting back to when Helena and I met, against the background of a civil war and a zombie invasion. Sure it sounds romantic now, but when you watch your neighbours eating each other’s children, it’s… not so much.

“To say the very least,” Helena said.

We went back to the sheriff’s station and talked to the people some more, jotting down dozens of different locations, places they’d visited, people they’d seen. It was a small place, Flippin, with less than 2000 residents, so those places overlapped. A lot.

“We should go to each location and rule them out one by one,” Helena said, studiously arranging them in geographical order.

“Should we split up, or go together?” I asked.

“Together is safer, but apart means we cover more ground. My thought is that we do it apart, because things aren’t exactly dangerous. Or at least not yet.”

I nodded. We took each other’s hands for a moment, squeezing, just for comfort, and then we split up.

I went to visit the local DMV office, the postal office, a home depot-type store, and a general store. There was no dice. Nothing unusual, other than that the town was still called Flippin. Oh, and they reckoned they were a city. There were 17 thousand people in the tiny section of Belfast that I lived in when I was younger. That was a real city, and not even a big one. Flippin was not a city. Americans, am I right?

I got back to the sheriff’s station and was informed that two more people had shown up. One was a man who had turned into a roast chicken. His face was on the breast side, startled eyes with giant muppet eyelashes fluttering in confusion. He must have been balding in his human guise, because there was a ratty crown of hair that went slightly more than halfway around the body of the chicken. I took down the details of where he’d been, doing my best not to laugh, and then interviewed the other person, a woman who had become a hamburger. It was hard as fuck not to laugh at that poor girl, because her top lip was a slice of cheese, and her bottom lip was a burger. Both of which had lipstick on them, in case we should accidentally mistake the walking burger for a male walking burger. She was trying not to panic, and every little breath made her cheese lip flutter in the wind, and made me have to fake a coughing fit because I was dying.

I took some photographs, for want of something better to do, and married up each food-person with their human photographs, sending it all back to Claudia. For professional reasons only, I assure you. And then I started to worry, because Helena had less ground to cover than I did, and she was nowhere to be seen.

I called her phone, but there was no answer. I did start to get a bit worried, then, so I called Claudia on my Farnsworth.

“Hey, Sir Mykes-a-lot. How’s it going there in crazytown?” It was nice to hear another Irish accent, I will admit. The Warehouse has four of us, but it’s rare to meet the Irish while out and about in the field. I mean, I’ve met those who claim to be Irish, but 23 generations back doesn’t count. Especially not if you can’t pronounce your own name. (I’m talking to you, Ni-am.)

“I’m grand, darling,” I said, rubbing the spot between my eyebrows. “My fair lady has disappeared though, and you know it’s not like her to not answer when I call.”

Claudia’s eyes narrowed. She did indeed know that Helena wouldn’t make me worry unnecessarily.

“Let me track her,” she said, already typing away furiously.

There was a silence, and I got a little alarmed, I will admit. But then she spoke, her forehead all crinkled up.

“She’s in town. Heading your way, actually. But the signal… it’s like it’s there, but it’s not? It’s almost transparent. There’s no setting in my system for something to show up transparent. I call magical hijinks, Mykster. She’s heading up main street now; should be with you in a minute.”

I nodded.

“Thanks, kiddo. See you soon,” I said. I made a mental note to buy her something tasteless before I left town. I was pretty sure somewhere like Flippin would have some really tasteless tourist shite. My favourite thing Claudka had bought me was a Hillary Clinton lighter, where Hill’s head flipped back and flames came out of her neck. I had managed to get her a Pope Pez dispenser in a little Catholic shop in a town near the border, and was still trying to top it.

I went to the door of the station, peering out into the dark. There was a figure approaching, but it didn’t look like Helena. It didn’t look human. I took a deep breath, my heart thundering in my ears. It stepped closer, and then into the light of a streetlamp. It was… a hot dog. A walking, presumably talking, hot dog. Another unfortunate victim, I assumed, looking around behind it for Helena.

As it put its weird muppet feet on the first step up to the station, I noticed that it was a girl. Due to the ketchup in the shape of a mouth. And the long hair that covered about a third of the length of the dog. The poor girl had huge brown eyes, and dark eyebrows drawn into a scowl, and then she stepped closer.

“I swear to all that’s holy, if you laugh at me, we are getting a divorce,” my wife said, muppet eyelashes fluttering in annoyance.

I am not proud to say that I immediately laughed.

I had to be lifted from the floor by two burly sheriff’s deputies, who kindly carried me to the bathroom. I was laughing so hard that I was close to losing control of my bladder. Even as I was sitting on the loo, I was still laughing so hard that I pulled two muscles, one on my back and the other on my abdomen. Tears streamed down my face and I howled with pain, but still I laughed. It took me forty-five minutes to stop myself from laughing, and even then, I started again each time I saw my own face in the mirror. Eventually I was calm enough to send a message to Claudia.

“SOS. Helena is hot-dog. Helena pretended her favourite food was kale salad. I may need an artefact to be sent that takes away my ability to laugh. Divorce proceedings imminent.”

I made my way out of the bathroom a little while later, finding the muppet version of my wife talking to Sheriff Adams. She was trying to coax him into doing something, I thought, because her stubby little muppet hand was on his arm and her giant muppet eyelashes were all a-flutter.

I beat a hasty retreat into a nearby office until I calmed my hysterics.

The second attempt was no more successful. I thought of the saddest things I’d ever seen, tried to turn myself into a PTSD-haunted robot by thinking about things I’d done in my past, but still… muppet Helena took me down effortlessly.

Eventually I was able to speak to her without laughing (much) and we determined that there were two places where she might have been caught up in the artefact’s effects. I continued to say ‘artefact’s effects’ after that because each time I said the words ‘food muppets’ she glared, and she looked even funnier than she already did.

Hot-dog Helena had onions and mustard down one side of the sausage. I don’t know why that made me laugh harder, but it did.

I fled the station, delighted beyond measure to be able to leave my wife’s side. I could not control myself, and I knew that I was skating close to the edge of divorce and/or death by muppet smothering. I kept breaking out in hysterical little bouts of giggling, and I knew I must have looked a sight, the tall Secret Service agent who occasionally starting cry-laughing over her muppet wife.

I visited the seedy side of Flippin, finding a small illegal casino-type operation that Helena had visited, and used the artefact spray to douse everything that didn’t move. And some that did. Nothing sparked. The next stop was the town hall, where a number of people on the list seemed to have been. I visited the mayor, a young attractive redhead, who urged me to leave a Christmas wish in the jar on her desk. Something tugged at me, then, because one thing I have learned as a Warehouse agent is that wishes have power. I sprayed the jar with the goo-spray, and it sparked. It sparked a lot. I grabbed the thing, relieved, and thanked the Mayor, who looked at me in confusion when I told her I needed to take it away, for National Security reasons. I swear, you could poke someone in the eye in this country and say it was for National Security, and they’d ask you to do it again.

I brought the jar back to the station, walking along absently, giggling occasionally to myself, when I suddenly realised that I was… different. My arms seemed shorter, and… yes. There was something dripping from behind me.

Now before you get all gross, there was a trail of marinara sauce behind me, mixed with cheese. Mozzarella, a little cheddar, and parmesan. When I tried to look down, I couldn’t. My eyes were widely spaced, I’d realised, and my mouth was way further from my eyes than it used to be.

So, I was a walking chicken parmigiana sub. Because unlike some alleged kale-lovers, I told the truth about my favourite food.

I sighed, trying to take my phone from my pocket, but my pocket was gone, under a pile of bread, I had to assume. I had an urge to try and pull some of the bread off and eat it, because I smelled really nice. But then I thought… there’s always a downside. And how do you explain that you’re missing a limb or a rib because you ate part of yourself when you were a sandwich?

I knocked on the door of the station, and a startled deputy let me in. He managed to keep his face straight, to his credit.

“Can you grab me my kit from the other room, son?” I asked him, vaguely aware that I had a bouncing crown of curls that had just drifted into my eyeline as I moved. I wondered exactly how ridiculous I looked, and stood there, waiting. The young man came back, his face purple, and I asked if he would take out the goo cannister.

Before I dunked the jar, I asked him to take a picture of me. I’d taken approximately 43 thousand of Helena, already, and turnabout was fair play. He did so, still managing not to laugh in my face, and then I dunked the thing. It hissed and it sparked, and still… marinara sauce dripped onto the floor.

“Shite.”

The fella ran off, howling, as the giant chicken sub swore. I didn’t blame him.

I went into the room where the rest of the food-afflicted were, finding Helena reading a book, holding the pages down with her muppet-fingers. I waved at her with my muppet fingers, and she laughed, and she laughed.

And she laughed.

It was possibly the stupidest thing that had ever happened in my life, and that included fighting with a group of inter-dimensional crime lords who started a zombie outbreak. It was hard to be professional about it, I had to be honest. I knew that, because there’s always a downside, it was potentially much more serious than it appeared – which was, of course, not remotely serious. I challenge you, however, to do any better, when faced with a roomful of muppet foodstuffs.

Having tried the obvious solution, to neutralise the artefact, I knew I had to contact the team. But my cellphone was somewhere in the in-between, I supposed, along with my Farnsworth. I grabbed Helena, and we made our way ponderously into the other part of the station, searching out the Sheriff. Sauce and cheese sloshed behind me as I walked.

Once Sheriff Adams stopped laughing, he set up a video conference with the Warehouse. I would have done it myself, but my arms were too short to go around my giant chicken sub body, and I couldn’t reach the keyboard.

Helena laughed about that until she wept ketchup.

We got no sense out of Claudia, none at all, and the poor girl’s mascara was everywhere, so I yelled for Arthur, and he, thankfully, just scowled at us.

“You both got whammied?”

I tried to shrug. It did not work, given that I appeared not to have shoulders.

“I found the artefact and neutralised it. I was wearing gloves, Arthur. But you know how these wishing artefacts are.”

He scowled harder, his eyebrows scrunching up like scary caterpillars, and he said nothing for a moment.

“Go sleep. Get some food. It can’t get much worse, I wouldn’t think. So eat something and sleep, and we’ll research tonight, and we’ll come back to it tomorrow.”

“All right then,” I said, rolling my eyes. Or trying to. I dread to think how it actually looked. Could my eyes even move? I wasn’t really sure; the perspective made everything look weird.

We went back to the room where the other foods were hiding out, and the Sheriff agreed that he’d get us some food, since we had neutralised the problem but were still stuck. It couldn’t hurt, right? We had pizza, all of us, and it was amusing to watch an eight-foot-wide pizza eating a pizza. The sheriff got us a load of yoga mats and big blankets, and we all settled down to sleep in our various food guises. When I lay down, my sauce stopped dripping everywhere, but the poor dude who turned into phō had to sit upright so he didn’t drown us all.

When I woke the next morning, I tried to jump up, and ended up just flailing like a turtle on its back. I had no idea where I was, I was trapped and I was ready for murder. Thankfully, I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was Helena’s muppet-self. That brought me from murderous to hysterical in seconds, and I lay there, helpless, legs and arms flapping as I tried to flip my sandwich-self up off the yoga mat.

“I’m normal again!” someone shouted, and I redoubled my efforts. One of the burgers helped me to my feet, and then I helped Helena, who was not exactly talking to me, to her feet. We turned and found that Steve, the giant pizza, was now just Steve again.

“We have to eat the food we’re craving!” Helena and I said in unison, and then we tried to high-five, missing spectacularly and ending up on the floor in a mess of mustard, onion and marinara sauce. It took the phō guy, Mr Egg Salad, and Doug the Cheeto to get us up off the floor, by which stage we were covered in various sauces, but triumphant.

The sheriff sent out a bunch of his deputies to fetch the requisite foodstuffs, and we took a sly picture of ourselves and the other victims to hang up at the Warehouse. One delicious sandwich (or hot dog, or potato snack, or burger) later, we all sat against the walls of the huge rooms, waiting for the magic to happen.

It took a few hours, and we were all terribly bored, but keeping ourselves going by chatting about Christmas and going home for the holidays, when there was a popping noise from Doug’s corner, and he turned from Cheeto to human. A few seconds later Phō turned to Phil, and I turned back into me. Helena, who’d eaten her hot dog slowly while pretending to hate it, was one of the last to turn back. Finally, there were a roomful of sheepish people staring at each other and wondering what to do next.

Helena, thankfully, got her human brain back quicker than I did. I was thinking about going to find another chicken parm sub, to be honest, because it had been delicious. But she stood, waved her badge around, told them all we’d been exposed to toxic gas that caused hallucinations, and one by one, our former foodstuffs made their way back to their families.

“All’s well that ends well, I suppose,” she said, sniffing, pointedly not looking at me.

“I suppose. It’s a terrible shame we have to get divorced, though. I was just getting used to being married to a Brit.”

“Hmmph,” was all she said, her arms folded, but I could see from the set of her shoulders that she was relaxing. I realised I might get out of this flippin’ town with my marriage intact, and I grinned.

We gave the Sheriff and his staff a non-disclosure agreement to sign, and gave them the usual rubbish about hallucinations and toxic gas, and they all nodded, shaking their heads. We went back to our hotel and tossed a coin for who got the shower first. Helena won, and I sat on the edge of the bed on top of a towel, so as to not get marinara sauce all over the bedding.

I sat there, glad to be human, flipping idly through channels on the television until she came out of the bathroom, naked in all her glory. I grinned at the sight, and she glared at me.

I wasn’t entirely forgiven, it appeared. I took myself into the bathroom, washed up, called the concierge to have our clothes cleaned, and then sat at the small desk to write my report on the incident. I studiously added all the pictures I’d taken, except the ones of Helena. I finished it up, scanning and sending it to the Warehouse, and then I packed up the wish jar - still inside the containment cannister – and the rest of my clothes. Then I gathered up my courage and asked my taciturn wife if she was hungry.

She glared at me as if I was taking the mickey, but I wasn’t, for a change, so she told me stiffly that she would like a salad. I am human, so I was tempted, but I ordered only a salad and did not at any point mention the words ‘hot dog’. I ordered myself a burger and fries and all the fixings, and when it arrived I scarfed it down. When dinner (which was technically lunch, given the time) was done I changed into my usual sleepwear, loose cotton tshirt and shorts, and got into bed. I pulled down the sheets on the other side in clear invitation, and Helena huffed at me, going to the bathroom again, where I heard her brush her teeth. She switched off the light and got into bed with me, and I could feel her begrudging it as she did so.

“There’s another bed, darling. If you’re really that mad,” I said, quietly.

“It’s fine,” she said, back stiff.

I ran my finger down her spine, just once. She made a huffing noise and then turned, putting her head under my chin, her arm around my waist. She was lying on my left arm, so I curled it a little, wrapping it around her body, and she sighed.

“You’re a complete arse, you know,” she said.

“I am,” I agreed. “But I’m your complete arse.”

“Hmm. What a catch.”

“Indeed I am. Catch of the century.”

“You’re a fucking pain, Myka Bering.”

“That’s Myka Bering-Wells, darling,” I said, lazily. “And I love you too.”

It was all right again after that, though she became somewhat frosty when she called the Warehouse the following morning and was greeted only by Claudia’s feet, Claudia herself having tipped her chair back so far that she’d fallen over. (I might have just sent our food-group selfie to her.)

On the flight back to South Dakota, she took my hand, both of us comforting each other as the plane took off.

“I love you, you complete arse,” she said, after a glass or two of red wine.

“I love you too, you gorgeous creature,” I said grandly, after three generous measures of Bushmills.

She sighed, took my hand, and fell asleep.

When we eventually got to the B&B after dropping off the artefact at the Warehouse, we were greeted at the door by Leena, dressed in her usual Mrs Santa costume. She looked spectacular, and Helena looked at me, amused, as I tried not to gawk. I mean, I’m married, not a nun.

Leena gestured at us both to leave our bags, handing us hot chocolate topped with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles.

“You are a sight for sore eyes, sweet lady,” I said, with a sweeping bow.

“And you are a flirt, Mrs Bering-Wells,” Leena said, winking at Helena. We made our way to the living room, finding Claudia spread out on the sofa, her head in Steve’s lap, and Pete scarfing down a plate of Leena’s chocolate Christmas logs.

“Mykes!” Pete bellowed, jumping up and throwing himself at me. I hastily divested myself of my hot chocolate and accepted his sweaty embrace.

“Bout ye, Pete,” I said, grinning as he lifted me off my feet. He put me down, none too gently, and went to give Helena the same treatment. The look she gave him would have scoured the hide off a pig.

“Hello, Pete. If you put your sweaty hands on me, I will not be held responsible for my actions, do you understand?”

Pete backed away, mumbling about crazy Brits, and I hid my smile behind my hand.

“Hey, girls! We have some lovely pictures of you,” Claudia said, grinning up at us.

“Iks-nay on the ictures-pay,” I said, behind my hand.

“Don’t worry about it, darling. I did in fact grow a sense of humour about all this, eventually. As it turns out, this century has indeed influenced my Victorian sensibilities somewhat. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that, yes, hot dogs are my favourite food, much as I wish they weren’t. That does not mean I will be indulging in them, however. I will continue to eat a healthy balanced diet, unlike my unfairly slim wife, who seems to subsist on all manner of appalling foods,” Helena said, looking at me disapprovingly.

“They’re only appalling to you, darling. I enjoy them, and so does everyone else here. And you know that Leena makes sure we get a balanced diet. It’s just when we’re out in the field that I indulge.”

She shook her head, rolled her eyes – all the usual. I just ignored her and sat down with my hot chocolate. Leena appeared again a few minutes later with some churros which I happily dipped in my hot chocolate. I noticed that my lovely wife did the same, surreptitiously of course.

Claudia, Steve and Pete were talking quietly while a horrifically bad Christmas movie played on the television. I watched Helena quietly. She was beautiful, sitting there with the light of the fire flickering in her eyes. She took the occasional sip of hot chocolate but mostly she was sitting there, looking at the fire, her eyes far away. She was exceptionally beautiful, like a marble statue of a greek goddess.

I heard the piano start up from the other room. Arthur, despite his Jewish roots, has always loved Christmas music. Claudia jumped up. She has always had a passion for music, and this was part of Christmas for her. She wandered off to find him, Steve following close behind.

“Mykissimo,” Pete said, jumping to his feet. “You can’t miss out on the yearly sing-song.”

“I suppose not,” I said, polishing off my hot chocolate. “You coming, love?”

She looked up at me.

“Just a minute, darling. I’ll be right there.”

I smiled at her and left her to it. Christmas was a difficult time for her, I knew. Her little girl had always loved Christmas time. Sometimes she needed a minute, to think about her daughter and how she’d lived to be a grand old age. How she wouldn’t have done, if Helena had stayed in her own time.

Arthur was playing “Have yourself a merry little Christmas,” and Steve was singing along in a pleasant baritone. He had a nice voice, and I loved listening to him. Claudia came to stand in front of me, pulling my arms around her neck, and I smiled down at her. She was like my wee sister.

When we were done with that song, Arthur started playing “O Holy Night.” It was my favourite Christmas song of all time, and I knew that he knew that. He turned and winked at me, and I smiled back. When I was at a Catholic school in Northern Ireland, there was a lot of emphasis on music, and the harmonies in this song and the way it all blended together had enthralled me then. It still does now.

Claudia started to sing, her sweet, light little voice singing the melody. When the chorus came along, we all started to sing our parts, Steve, Claudia, Artie and me – Pete can’t sing for toffee. The chorus swelled and then it pulled back before the next verse. Claudia’s sweet voice made me smile. We reached the second chorus and I realised that I had goosebumps. I turned, finding Helena leaning against the doorjamb, watching us all fondly. The thought of her in her Muppet body did cross my mind, and I smiled to myself. That image wouldn’t be leaving me anytime soon. But the way she looked standing there in her blue shirt and jeans and bare feet, her hair loose around her shoulders, it just made something in me still for a moment. The combination of the perfect music and the perfect woman in front of me made me feel calm and relaxed for once, and if I’d been the praying type, I might have said a thank you to the baby Jesus or whatever right then. As it was, I just thanked anyone who was listening for giving me these people and this place, and letting me live in endless wonder.

Merry Christmas, everyone !

[imultifandomstuff]

A/N I am so, so sorry that I haven’t posted in such a long time. Hopefully, this will make up for it. I tried out a new writing style, not sure how I feel about it just yet, but feel free to let me know how you do! I hope you enjoy :)

Summary: Reader is Bobby’s daughter, and gets captured by a group of demons and is tortured for information on the brothers, which doesn’t sit well with them. Especially Dean.

Warnings: Torture-ish, I didn’t get extremely vivid but it’s there 

Dean Winchester

If there was one thing you should never, ever do, it'd be to mess with the Winchesters or anyone they love.

Because one way or another, they'd come for you. But, if there was one person more protective than Sam or Dean, it'd be Bobby Singer's daughter. She'd taken over the 'mother' role, in a sense, over the boys as they'd all grown up. Any time they boys were at their home, she'd made sure they were okay and fed, along with Bobby. She was their shoulder to cry on, one of the only people they felt comfortable crying too.

And along the way, she'd grown feelings for Dean.

So, when they'd taken her captive after she'd gone to the store for a supply run and demanded to know where they were, she endured the torture. She'd been there for god knows how long. Chained up, bloodied and beaten, dehydrated, half naked in only her bra and underwear, and starving, but she wouldn't give the brothers up.

She knew they'd come for her. And if they weren’t in time she’d know she died protecting them, and she was okay with that.

"You know, if you just tell me where they are I can let you go." The demon in charge of the whole ordeal spoke, arms crossed as he set his knife down. With the little energy she had left, she chuckled,"No, you won't. You'd kill me right after I told you. O-or use me as leverage to get them."

"Is that so?" He smirked. With a small nod,"So, you may as well just kill me now, because I'm not going to tell you where they are." He walked closer to her, their faces only inches apart,"Yes, you will. Eventually." Y/N glared, spitting on him, which she really shouldn't have as he immediately back up and punched her in the face. She let out a groan as her head snapped to the side, blood pouring out of her mouth.

It was just another bruise to add to the others. She had cuts, burns, and bruises all over her body. He got to work once again, torturing her in ways she'd never seen or heard of. Her screams filled the abandoned warehouse as he sliced her skin with a sharp blade.

And all of a sudden, the door to the warehouse slammed open, and in came her saviors.

"Get away from her, you son of a bitch!"

"Why'd you have to come and ruin the fun?"

As the demons and brothers began to fight, Y/N began to lose consciousness from the amount of blood loss and exhaustion from the last few days. She was cold, she could barely feel her own body, and all she wanted to do was sleep.

Y/N was ready to give up.

She hadn't realized that the boys and angel had beaten the demons, killing them all with no mercy. Feeling the chains loosen on her arms and legs, she fell into one of her saviors arms. Dean gently brushed a strand of hair out of her face,"Hey sweetheart, I need you to stay awake, alright?"

Y/N's eyes opened ever so slightly as she muttered,"I'm so tired, Dean." Dean tried to ignore how beaten she looked, but it was hard. The woman he loved was tortured all because of him and Sam. "I know, just stay awake a little longer. We're gonna get Cas to heal you."

"We've got to go, Dean." Sam said, to which Dean nodded, standing and rushing out of the warehouse along with Sam. He carefully got into the car, keeping her in his arms as Sam got into the passenger seat. Y/N's eyes shut once more, and Dean's eyes widened as he hurriedly pressed two fingers against her bruised throat to find a pulse, sighing in relief when he felt one,"Come on, open your eyes for me."

With a quiet groan, she opened them back up, staring up at Dean,"It hurts." He pulled her closer to his chest, wiping a stray tear that had fallen out of her swollen eye away with his thumb,"I know, baby. We're gonna get Cas to help you, okay?" She hadn't mentioned to him that maybe she was ready to die, that maybe it was time. She only slowed them down, she wasn't a skilled hunter like the two brothers or her father. She shakily covered her hand with his,"Dean, it's okay."

His brows furrowed as her eyes fluttered shut once more. Sam glanced over at him in panic before pressing down harder on the gas pedal. There was no chance Dean or Sam would let her die, especially Dean. The man had been in love with her since only god knows when, and Sam knew that. She was the only good, pure thing he had in his life now. He couldn't lose her.

"God damnit." Dean muttered as they pulled into the parking lot,"Cas, we need you. Y/N needs you." They hurried inside of the crappy room she had claimed for herself, Dean not letting her out of his arms as he sat down on the bed and the angel appeared out of nowhere. "What happened?" He questioned immediately, eyes zeroing in on the unconscious woman in Dean's arms.

"Demons. Heal her, please." Dean rushed out, looking up at the angel with a panicked look. Castiel nodded, walking forward and placing two of his fingers into her forehead. Her eyes shot open as she cried out in pain, any broken or misplaced bones and wounds healing. It took less then a minute, and when it was over her eyes rolled back and closed once again, her head rolling back onto Dean's arm. He looked up at Cas, fear in his voice,"What happened? Why isn't she awake?"

Castiel glanced at Dean for a moment before looking back down at her, face clear of any emotion as he examined her now non-bloody body,"The torture has taken a toll on her, and on top of that she probably hasn't slept in days. She should wake up in a few hours." And with that, he was gone, leaving the brothers and the unconscious woman alone. Dean sighed, and Sam walked over to her bag and grabbed one of her t-shirts, handing it to Dean. He gently pulled it over her body, carefully pulling her arms through before laying her under the blankets on the bed.

A few hours later, Y/N still hadn't awakened from her sleep. Dean had sat in the motel room and watched her the entire time, hardly ever taking his eyes off of her sleeping form. Sam had gone to catch up on some rest, but Dean felt too guilty to care or even think about sleep at that moment.

It was his fault that she was tortured, the demons were looking for him and Sam, so they used her to get to them.

Dean wasn't going to leave until she woke up, and even then he wasn't sure he'd leave, if he could. He stood up to grab a beer out of the fridge, only realizing that there was none; only water bottles. With a deep sigh, he grabbed one, twisting it open and taking a sip.

"Dean?" He heard Y/N croak out, causing him to nearly choke on the water as he turned around in shock. Her tired eyes were watching him as he rushed back over to her, sitting down on the free space next to her. She went to talk again, but began coughing as she felt the severe dryness in her throat after not drinking anything for the last few days.

Dean hurriedly, yet gently held the water bottle up to her lips, allowing her to drink as much as she needed. Which was a lot. When she was done, she relaxed back onto the bed, staring up at him.

He pushed a loose strand of hair out of her face,"How you feeling, sweetheart?"

Y/N blinked, all the memories of what happened surfacing once again. "Oh, uh, I'm fine Dean. How are you? Where's Sam? Is he okay?" She questioned, face full of worry as she realized the taller brother wasn't in the room. Dean shushed her,"He's okay, calm down. He went into our room to get some sleep. You've been out for a few hours now."

"You didn't stay in here the whole time, did you?" Dean shrugged,"It was no big deal."

She slowly pushed herself up, Dean attempting to help only to get swatted away,"Go to your room and get some rest. You'll need it for the drive tomorrow. I'll be fine." Dean frowned,"Why won't you let me take care of you for a change? You've always taken care of us, no matter what. I mean, I got you into this mess, it's me and Sam's fault you were tortured in the first place. What did they want, anyway?"

Y/N stayed silent, looking away from the eldest Winchester, knowing that if he knew the reason why she was tortured for so long he'd just get even more upset. She knew he cared about her. They had known each other for quite some time, they were family.

And that's why she couldn't have given them up. She couldn't risk the only family she had left dying.

"Y/N?" He spoke, snapping her out of the trance she'd gone into. Looking up at him with a sigh, she said,"They wanted me to give them you and Sam's location."

Dean's face fell, his arms widening in question,"Well, why the hell did you not give it to them? You know we could've handled them-"

"No," she snapped, shutting him up. "I didn't know that. I didn't know how many they'd send after you I don't think you get that you and Sam, you're the only family I have left. And god, if it was me who sent you to your death? Do you know how I would've felt?"

Both of their eyes were full of unshed tears as they stared at each other. It was silent for a few moments before Dean spoke again, voice soft,"Do you know how I felt knowing that I was responsible for what happened? If you would've died... I-I don't know what I would've done. Jesus Christ, I love you Y/N. You are quite literally, the only good thing in my life. I mean, yeah, I've got Sammy. But you- god.. something about you."

Y/N's heart felt like it was pounding a hundred miles of second. Her eyes were wide, and she was shocked. He loves me? She thought. A tear fell out of his eye, and he went to wipe it away, but she beat him to it. Her thumb shakily swiped it away, Dean watching her as she did,"I’m okay, Dean. I’m here, and i’m alive.” 

“Yeah, but you almost weren’t.”

He went to stand as if he was going to leave, but she grabbed his hand,"Please don’t go.. I, uh, I love you too, Dean. I- I've loved you ever since I can remember." He looked at her with disbelief, a thousand thoughts running through his mind. But he knew she wouldn't lie to him, especially not about this. So, he did what any person would do.

He kissed her.

His lips pressed against her chapped ones, one of his arms wrapping around her waist and the other going to grip her cheek. She sat there in slight shock, not having had expected him to kiss her so suddenly, but she relaxed into it not long after. It felt normal, like it was meant to be this way; like it'd happened a million times before.

The kiss was short, but it held enough passion and love to tell each other their feelings were true. His thumb caressed her cheek as their lips parted, his forehead resting against hers. A cheesy grin erupted onto her lips, so big that she had to bite down on her lip to try and stop herself. When Y/N opened her eyes, she found that Dean was already looking at her with one of the most genuinely happy faces she'd ever seen on him.

"I meant what I said, you should get some rest." He muttered, pulling back just an inch.

"Stay with me?"

He gave her a small nod,"Course."

Climbing into the slightly uncomfortable motel room bed, Dean turned the lamp off. The only light in the room being from the street lamps outside , but it was enough for them to see the outlines of each other. They lay facing each other, her hands tightly gripping his. They sat there in silence for only god knows how long, so long that she'd started to drift off.

"I'm never going to let anything touch you, not again." He whispered suddenly, causing her to tiredly open up her eyes. She gave him a small, sad smile, grabbing ahold of one of his hands in hers,"You know that's inevitable in our line of work, Dean."

He sighed. "I know... doesn't mean I can't try." She leaned forward, placing a chaste kiss on his lips,"I just got you to myself, don't go be stupid and get yourself killed." He chuckled, but deep down knew she was right. It was inevitable for her never to be hurt again, but he'd also do whatever it takes to protect her.

Shortly after, she fell asleep, still exhausted from the previous events. And although Dean was more comfortable and happy than he had been in months, and was holding the woman he loved, he hadn't fallen asleep just yet. He wanted to take this moment in while he could.

Because he knew it wouldn't last long. Disaster follows he and his brother like a freight train; it's inevitable.