#i need to figure out how to draw weapons so i can give them laser guns

[negativezerohues]

drawing your favorite characters kinda slutty is actually a form of therapy

chopped up img under cut

[anxiousbread]

Tips & Tricks: Splat Charger and E-liter 4K

(Apologies in advance if it's formatted bad, this was written and posted on mobile)

Hi! I'm the person who got 3-star freshness on every weapon in Splatoon 3. Through my experience, I've picked up little bits and pieces on how to play the game better. So, why not share some of that knowledge?

Today, I'll be talking about Chargers. More specifically, the Splat Charger and E-liter, and their Scoped variants. Why talk about them both? I feel they're similar enough that the advice I'd give for one can more or less be applied to the other. That said, I will still talk about each kit individually.

The advice I'd like to give is to learn and remember three key points: Aim, Awareness, and Aggressiveness. Or – as an easy to remember acronym – AAA.

Aim is the most important, and the first thing you should try and learn. Aim is good for every weapon (but especially chargers) as you are limited in how fast you can take another shot if you miss. As a charger, you have a really powerful weapon that is outranged by very little. However, if you can't hit anything with it, it's not very useful. The laser sight can help you Aim, but remember that everyone can see it. Something you could do to help improve your Aim is going into the lobby (or the training room, by pressing Y when selecting a weapon) and practicing hitting the moving targets. Or, if you have a friend, you could set up a private battle, and just have them run around while you try to shoot them.

Awareness is also incredibly important, but it can take a bit longer to pick up on. Awareness includes things like tracking where your enemies are, and being able to figure out if you should keep fighting, or backup and regroup. Again, it's good to have Awareness with other weapons, but as a Charger, most times you'll be the backline. You'll be a high priority target for specials, and usually the last one alive on your team. I don't have as much advice for Awareness, because it's a harder thing to practice. Things to look out for are splashes in the ink that show where someone is swimming, or the UI at the top of the screen that'll show who's alive, and who has a special charged up, waiting to be activated. It'll also show if someone's an Inkling or an Octoling, but that isn't as important. Also, if you're using a Scope, you'll need to be a lot more aware. This is because when you're aiming, you'll zoom into a first person view.

And lastly, Aggressiveness. I wouldn't try learning this one until you've at least got a grasp on the other two first. Aggressiveness is how much you should move around, because if you stay in one spot the whole game, you won't do a whole lot. As a Charger, you have a lot of range, so finding unexpected angles where you can hit people from can end up drawing your opponent's attention – and sometimes, their resources – away from the objective. This can allow your team to swoop in and overwhelm them. An important thing for being aggressive is to always have an escape plan. Either make sure you have an easy path out, or you have a lot of Quick Super Jump on your gear. If you don't have an escape and you get surrounded, you'll leave your team at a disadvantage, unless they help you. The best way to practice this is to just go into a game and mess around. Things that have helped me be more aggressive are when there's another backline on my team, which forces me to play in different spots; or when there's a good Charger on the other team, which means I need to be able to find places where I can hit them easier than they can hit me. Remember to be aware if you're playing in a more risky position, so that you aren't just throwing yourself at a brick wall and ending up going 2-16.

Now, on to how the kits can influence your playstyle.

Splat Charger and Splatterscope come with Splat Bomb and Ink Vac. Splat Bomb is always nice to have, and it can help if you need to get someone out from behind a wall, as Charger shots always go straight. It will take 70% of your ink tank to use, though, so I would recommend using a little bit of Ink Saver(Sub) if you plan on using it. Ink Vac is good for helping protect your team-mates, but you need to be close enough for it to actually have an effect. If you're too far back, you won't be protecting anything, but if you're too far forward, you can get punished when your Ink Vac ends. And, you can't forget, you'll get a strong explosive shot when either the special ends naturally or when the Ink Vac is filled up. It'll scale with how much Ink you sucked up, so try and at least get a little bit of Ink in there before it ends.

The alternate kits are Z+F Splat Charger and Z+F Splatterscope. They come with Splash Wall and Triple Inkstrike. Splash Wall is great for being aggressive, as you get to block some shots to give you enough time to shoot back. Try and learn the spacing for how far out you throw the Splash Wall, so that you can maximise your effective range while being safe. Remember that Splash Wall has a lot of Ink Recovery Lag, so try not to throw one out unless you need to. Triple Inkstrike is a great Special for a backline weapon, as you won't be in nearly as much danger when you activate it, and you'll be able to have a good spot to throw the Inkstrikes without having to back up or throw them up higher. Use the Inkstrikes to block out a space, forcing people into your line of sight where you can Splat them, or forcing them back into an unfavourable spot, where they won't be able to affect the match much from.

On the E-liter side, we have the E-liter 4K and E-liter 4K Scope, equipped with Ink Mines and Wave Breaker. Out of the 4 Kits I'm talking about, I see this with the least aggressive potential. That doesn't mean it's bad, though. I think Ink Mines are a good sub for E-liter, as you can set them up on a flank and be alerted when an enemy tries to go through there, really helping with your awareness. You can only have two active at a time, and if you place any more they'll explode so that there are only two, starting with the oldest. Wave Breaker can help you keep or gain control of an area, by locating anyone nearby when it's first placed or when they're hit by a wave. The waves will also deal 45 damage, so you don't always need to use a full charge if someone is hit by a wave. If you can figure out how people act when they're tracked, you can predict what they'll do when the tracker goes away, and catch them when they think you don't know where they are anymore.

The alternate kits for E-liter are Custom E-liter 4K and Custom E-liter 4K Scope. If you pick one of those up, you'll find yourself with Squid Beakons and a Kraken Royale. Squid Beakons are nice for not only you, but your whole team! Try placing them in spots where you'll want to go, or places that are out of the way. Without any Ink Savers, you'll be left with one shot after placing one, so remember to recover your ink when you do place one. You can have three active at once, and, like Ink Mines, they'll destroy themselves if too many are placed, starting with the oldest. I recommend using Sub Power Up, as it decreases the Super Jump time when Jumping to a Beakon for everyone. Kraken Royale is a fun special. On E-liter, it's good for if you are getting rushed down. Activate it before they get to you, and you'll be able to easily fight back. But remember, it has a long start up and long end lag to make up for the fact that you become invincible when using it. It doesn't last for too long, however, so make sure you have an escape planned. Your Beakons may be able to help with that. If you want your Kraken to last longer, use Special Power Up.

That's all I have to say about those two Chargers for now. Hopefully you can learn something based on what I said, and let me know if you'd want to see more of these! If you want, suggest a weapon and I'll try and give my advice in either another post similar to this, or I'll just answer directly.

Also, if any people who actually main these weapons want to give advice, you should probably listen to them instead. They would understand the weapon a lot more than I do.

Until next time!

[h-worksrambles]

One counter-argument I’ve always had when characters in popular franchises get labelled as ‘overpowered’ or a ‘Mary-Sue’,/‘Gary Stu’ is that a character being overpowered is not inherently a bad thing if you make that the point of the story.

Take One Punch Man for instance. Saitama is straight up too powerful to lose a fight. Every action scene with him is a curbstomp. He can’t be physically challenged. But that IS the conflict, that Saitama is bored with always winning and desperate for one good fight (plus this story is a comedy so him decimating villains in seconds is treated as joke). That crazy level of strength is the source of his ennui and dissatisfaction. And the fact that no one takes him seriously despite that level of power just further feeds into that. Likewise, Mob Psycho 100 is by the same mangeka as One Punch Man and does a great job with the idea of: ‘you can have all the power in the world and it won’t fix your emotional problems’. Mob is encouraged by Reigen not to treat his powers as a substitute for self improvement, a lesson even more pertinent during adolescence, that period of figuring out who you are. Shigeo learns that his powers, while he certainly needn’t be ashamed of them, also do not, and should not, define him.

Or, if I may indulge as a Classics grad, take Achilles in the Iliad, a character who is literally invincible to the point that weapons bounce off him. There, the conflict of the story isn’t a physical one, because it can’t be. It’s about how Achilles’ almost god like level of power (combined with the fact that he’s just generally kind of a shitty person) others him from the people around him. His stature as an invincible hero draws a line between him and the army. By the end of the poem, he establishes himself firmly as the most powerful warrior by killing Hector. But that power and glory won’t bring back Patroclus, the only person he ever really connected with.

This also why Sword Art Online Abridged works and the original doesn’t. What the original SAO was going for was having a main character who was incredibly skilled at the game, but had zero social skills, which naturally is only going to get you so far in an MMO. So the intent is clearly that, while he dispatches enemies with ease, his actual character arc is about learning to open up and work with others, with the romance with Asuna being the culmination of that. Problem is that the show forgets Kirito’s social issues very early on, and not in a way that feels like authentic development. By the fourth episode, he’s just hanging out with people, helping whichever new marketable anime girl he comes across, and we’re just left to assume he outgrew his flaws during the time skip. Without those flaws he just becomes boring OP harem fodder. Abridged doubled down on the poor social skills thing by making him in a complete asshole, which makes for good comedy and gives him plenty of room to grow. It puts power in the hands of someone utterly unworthy of it, which is peak comedy of errors. But it also commits to giving him a long, substantial journey to overcome that. And it makes the whole story, including the romance, feel so much more earned.

Basically the topic of ‘overpowered protagonists’ is one I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. Not every conflict needs to be physical. If you can write good enough emotional conflicts to make up for the lack of a physical one, then by all means make your character as absurdly powerful as you want. Demonstrate that those powers can be both a blessing and a curse, and that the ability to shoot lasers from your eyes is no substitute for proper self reflection.

[five-rivers]

Green Sky Highway

Phic Phight Phic for @deuynndoodles

.

The Fenton Ecto Cell Bettery (aka the Better Battery) was designed to draw power from not only an internal, pre-charged store of ectoplasm, but also from ambient, atmospheric ectoplasm.  This meant that it would never run out of juice so long as it was in the Ghost Zone.  The Specter Speeder was designed to travel in the Ghost Zone.  Thus, the Betteries were the perfect power source for it.  In theory.  

In practice… Well, that just wasn’t working out, and Maddie didn’t know why.  She gripped the underside of the dash and tried to push herself deeper beneath it to get a better view of the machinery.  

“Maddie?  You see anything?” asked Jack, who couldn’t fit under the dash.  He’d been inspecting as much of the engine as he could from the inside, which wasn’t much.  The Speeder wasn’t designed to be serviced while free-floating in the Ghost Zone.  

Which, now that she thought of it, was a serious oversight.  

“Everything looks fine,” said Maddie.  “Except that it doesn’t have any power.  Nothing’s lighting up, but all the connections look good. You?”

“I can’t get anything to work.  Anything.  It’s like… we’re in some kind of technological dead zone.  But that doesn’t make sense.”

Maddie pulled herself out to see Jack vigorously scratching his head and shedding dandruff everywhere.  “Ghosts do tend to disrupt technology.”

“But we fixed that.  We designed all our weapons to work with that.”

“We know there are things we don’t know,” said Maddie, “and it’s always good to find new things!  Though not pleasant to find them out like this…”  They should really test their inventions more, honestly.  

But it had been over a year of testing since they opened the portal.  They had to jump in at some point, didn’t they?  That was the whole point of the portal.  

She sighed.  “Well, we didn’t have a lot of forward momentum when the portal cut out.”  She looked out the window.  “We could see if we can get out and engage our jetpacks.”

“Uh, about that,” said Jack.  He swung open the door to the jetpack cabinet.  The empty jetpack cabinet.  “I may have forgotten to put them back after refueling them.”

“Jack…”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

Maddie massaged the bridge of her nose with her mostly-clean knuckles.  This was a repeat of the handle inside the weapons vault.  At least he wasn’t pushing the blame for it back onto Danny or Jazz.  That would definitely have started a fight.  

On the other hand, there really wasn’t any guarantee the jetpacks would even still be functional, so maybe it was for the best. For certain values of best.  

She groaned.  

There was a knocking sound.  “Is that coming from the engine?” Maddie asked.  

“No…” said Jack, slowly.  “I think it came from the door…”

They both turned to stare.  Something moved outside it.  They shifted to get a better view out the window.  

Phantom was out there, tapping on the door with a ten-foot pole.  

“That little unnatural abomination,” cursed Jack under his breath.  “He’s going to scratch the paint!”

Phantom apparently saw them and waved.  “Hey!” he shouted, just loud enough to be heard through the walls of the Speeder.  “Do you guys need a lift?”

Jack and Maddie turned to each other.  

“How did he know we were here?”

“I don’t know,” said Jack.  “Do you think he followed us?”

“It wouldn’t be difficult, but I’m surprised he didn’t show up on our detectors.”

“He does seem to have the ability to drop off of them.”

“True,” said Maddie.  “So, how do we handle this?  Fenton bat?”

“I don’t know, Mads.  He might be, uh, sincere?  That time with the ectofiltrator he did help me.”

“That’s one, single, datapoint.  He’s a been a menace every other time we’ve encountered him.”

“I don’t know that we have much other choice,” said Jack, nodding towards the dead engines and the empty jetpack cabinet.

Maddie huffed out a sigh, then looked back at Phantom, who waved again.  

“Fine.  We still have to decide how to deal with him while we’re cooperating with him.  Or if he decides to show his true colors.”

“Good idea.”

.

Danny knew this had been a terrible, terrible idea the moment his parents opened the door to the Speeder armed to the teeth.  Why did they always feel the need to do that? None of the weapons, with the possible exceptions of the Fenton Bat and the Fenton Crowbar could even work here.

How his parents had, on their first jaunt into the Ghost Zone, managed to run smack into the Time Locked Lands was beyond him. They had to go to the one place in the Ghost Zone that the Speeder wouldn’t work and after coating the Speeder with some kind of anti-ghost spray that Danny absolutely refused to touch again.  Ever. Especially in ghost form.  Except with a ten-foot pole.

(If they’d left the spray off, he could have just pushed the Speeder back out of the Time Locked Lands.  But, no, they had to make everything as difficult and painful as possible.)

“I am not carrying all that,” said Danny, flatly.

(Especially because it would all turn back on once they left the Time Lost Lands, and if there wasn’t a Specter Deflector under all that, he’d eat his own belt.)

“Then we aren’t going anywhere with you!” proclaimed Maddie.  

“You’re stranded in the middle of the Ghost Zone. I don’t think you have a choice.”

“We do!”

“I could literally just fly over there and snatch you right now.  Plus, again, stranded.  Do you even have any food in there?”

“Of course we do!” said Maddie.  “We aren’t incompetent.”

Jack looked guilty.  Danny decided not to bring it up.

“Okay, but still, you’re going to run out eventually, and then you’ll still be floating in the Ghost Zone with no way to get out.  You aren’t going to get another friendly ghost coming by.”

“I’ve never seen a friendly ghost to begin with!”

“Maddie…”

“I can just leave, you know,” said Danny, planting his hands on his hips and bluffing for all he was worth.  He was not leaving his parents here to be used as hostages or who knew what else.  

Hopefully, they wouldn’t call the bluff.  They shouldn’t.  No sane, reasonable person would.  He was their only way out of this mess.  On the other hand, his parents had never been completely sane, reasonable people.  

Danny thought his odds were about fifty-fifty.  Which meant he could hope.  

Jack and Maddie had an intense, whispered conversation. This, thankfully, lead to them divesting themselves of most of their visible weaponry.  Which meant that they still had more guns on them than most professional soldiers during a firefight.  

Well, it was better than he’d expected.  But it was still too many.  

“Take the Specter Deflectors off,” he said.  “What do you think will happen if I try to carry you and you have those on.”

There was muttering.  

“Come on, come on,” said Danny, snapping his fingers. Which really shouldn’t work through his gloves but did anyway.  

Sometimes ghost nonsense was good for making lasers fly from your hands, and sometimes it was good for tiny aesthetic breaks in physics. It was a grab bag, really.  

“Alright,” said Danny.  “I’m going to fly over and pick you up.  Don’t hit me.”

Oh, jeez, he was not looking forward to carrying them all the way over to the portal.  Sure, he could bench press a school bus, but there was a difference between holding up a school bus for a minute and carrying two people who hated his guts a mile through enemy territory while flying slowly enough not to give them windburn.  

Sure, it’d probably only take a few minutes, even then, but those would be the longest few minutes in his entire life.  Not counting his actual death.  

.

Being carried by Phantom had to be the single worst experience in Jack’s entire life.  

It wasn’t the speed or the lack of control – he loved carnival rides – or the height – Jack couldn’t tell you how many buildings he’d jumped off in pursuit of ghosts – or even the fact that Phantom was a sinister specter, and ectoplasmic emanation, a putrid piece of protoplasm – he’d been carried by ghosts before, usually ones who were a lot more upfront about wanting to kill him.  

Actually, Jack didn’t know why he didn’t like it. He just didn’t.  

Maybe it was just how uncomfortable it was?  But Jack did way more uncomfortable things. Like interacting with his sister-in-law. Brr.  

Maybe it was the lurking feeling behind every interaction he ever had with Phantom that there was something he just wasn’t seeing, some hidden truth that would make everything about Phantom, every contradiction, every confusion, make sense.

Nah, that couldn’t be it.  Maddie would have figured it out by now.  That’s why they made such a great team.  He noticed the things she didn’t, and she noticed the things he didn’t.  

“You’re going the wrong way,” snapped Maddie.  

Just like that!

Wait.  That was a really bad thing.

“I’m not going the wrong way,” snapped Phantom.  “I’m avoiding Walker’s prison.  I don’t know how he didn’t catch you on your way out, but I’m not eager to be thrown in jail for a thousand years.”

“Ghosts have jail?” asked Jack surprised.  

“Depends where you are,” said Phantom.  “Walker isn’t really a sheriff, though.  There’s no government behind him and he just makes up rules randomly so he can lock up anybody he doesn’t like.”

“Like you,” observed Jack.  

“Why doesn’t it surprise me that you’re even wanted by whatever passes for the law here?”

“First, rude.  Secondly, there are realms in here that are just as organized and civilized as any country on Earth.  Just because you opened your portal into the equivalent of post-apocalyptic Detroit doesn’t mean it’s all like this.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Maddie.  

“I could arrange that, you know,” said Phantom, stilling.

Jack laughed nervously.  “Maybe another time?”  The ghost would do what it would do, but they didn’t need to encourage him to bring them even deeper into the Ghost Zone.  They were currently banking on Phantom’s obsession with heroics to get them home, but if they changed the equation…  Yeah, Jack didn’t want to deal with the consequences of that.  

Ghosts were like computers that ran only one program. One homicidal, destructive program.

It was like that thought experiment about an AI whose job was to maximize the number of paperclips.  It’d just keep on making more and more paperclips until nothing was left.  Which was why they had to be stopped.  

Easier said than done, as Jack and Maddie had learned.

“You don’t have to be so freaked out,” muttered Phantom. “It isn’t like I’m going to kidnap you or anything.”  He pretended to sigh.  

What was the point of that?  He had to know that Jack and Maddie wouldn’t fall for his tricks. Actually, come to think of it, he was miming breathing, too, and had been the whole time.  

Maybe that’s why Jack was so uncomfortable.  The constant undercurrent of deception.  

Hmmm… something to think on.  

“What’s that?” asked Maddie, pointing.  

“Uh,” said Phantom, who did a double take.  

Ooh, that wasn’t reassuring.  

.

Danny clenched his teeth, his parents’ reactions to him weren’t reassuring, and even less reassuring was the way Pariah’s Keep had moved from its usual creepy location and to this new creepy location. Not that there were any non-creepy locations in the Ghost Zone.  It was part of the place’s charm.  

No, really.  Some part of Danny craved the creepiness.  He was half-ghost, after all.  

(Even if his idea of creepiness was, according to his friends, sort of lame.)

But back to the main point.  The keep really, really shouldn’t be here.  And it was creeping him out.  

It should be okay to just… fly past it, though, right? Just being in its airspace in the past hadn’t done anything bad.  So, flying by with his parents in tow shouldn’t do anything either.  Right?

Danny put on more speed, just in case.  This coincided with a bunch of large ghost ravens (or were they crows?) dive bombing them and forcing him to land to defend himself and parents.  The only land around being the rim of the island that supported the keep.

He knew something like this would happen. Maybe not exactly this, but he just knew he’d be attacked and everything would devolve into nonsense, and—

Huh.  The birds weren’t attacking him, just his parents.  Oh, these were racist (mortalist?) birds.  Gross.  Trust Pariah Dark to have bigoted birds.  He called up a shield to protect his parents.  Whereupon they shot him in the back, shouting about how he betrayed them to the birds, because why not?  

Why was his life like this?

He pushed himself up off the ground.  Starbursts twinkled behind his eyes.  Neither his parents nor the crows were in sight.  The crows could have gone anywhere.  His parents on the other hand…

There was only one place they could have gone.  

Well.  At least none of the nonsentient traps would work on them, seeing as they were humans. What were the odds that they’d run into one of the sentient defenders?

Well… considering the ravens?

Yeah.  That’d be about one hundred percent.

.

“Maddie, I don’t know about this…” said Jack, examining the tall, vaulted ceiling.  

“We had to get away from Phantom.  This was the only way to go.”

“But he came here for a reason, Mads,” whispered Jack, tip-toing.

“Yeah, this is definitely a trap.  But what can we do?”

“Jack?  Maddie? This is not a place you want to wander around in! Oh, holy—” There was a loud thump.  

Maddie grabbed Jack’s hand and pulled him forward. “We have to get away from him.”

“Come on!  This is a floating island!  I’m your only way off!  Why are you like this?”

“He has a point,” said Jack.  

Maddie stopped.  “I guess he does.”

“This is literally the worst place you could have picked to run away!”  A sound like a very large door opening and closing reached their ears.  “This is Pariah Dark’s place!  Where did you even go?”

“Mads?”

“Yeah?”

“Who’s Pariah Dark?”

“I think that was the name of the ghost that sucked the town into the Ghost Zone a few months ago.”

“Please, guys!  I’m trying to help you here!  This place is ultra-dangerous!  You could accidentally – yikes! – wake up Pariah Dark.”  

“Maybe we should…”

“Yeah,” said Maddie, “maybe we should.”

“Phantom!” called Jack.  “Phantom!  We’re over—” The floor opened up underneath them and they fell into the dark.  

.

Maddie woke to a dark room, tied to a chair.  She noticed the faintly glowing ghost in front of her and jolted backwards.

The ghost wore a set of painted and engraved plate armor, a pair of lavender-white eyes glowing from behind the slats of its visor.  A knight, of sorts, Maddie supposed.  

“You…” droned the ghost in a painfully stereotypical ghostly moan.  “Enemies of the king… why have you come here?”

“Huh?”

That was Jack’s voice.  He was tied behind her, apparently.  

“We don’t have anything to say to you,” snapped Maddie.

“Uh,” said Jack.  Something twisted behind Maddie.  “Are you a friend of Phantom?”

“A friend?  A friend?”

“I’m going to take that as a no,” muttered Maddie.  

The door of the room flew off its hinges.  “Fright Knight!” shouted Phantom, pointing a glowing finger.  “Wait, you aren’t Fright Knight.  Who are you, and what do you want with my- With, uh, the Fenton ghost hunters?  Who I don’t know very well at all. Promise.”

“What,” said the ghost.  

“What,” said Maddie.  

“What,” said Jack.  

“Okay, forget everything I just said.”  He gestured at the ghost.  “Who are you?”

“My name is Paladin, my liege.”

“Okay, okay, cool, cool.  I- Wait, what?  What did you call me?”

“My liege?”

Phantom looked like he was having an existential crisis.  

“Maddie was right!” exclaimed Jack, who couldn’t see Phantom’s face.  “You did lead us into a trap!”

“What?  No?  I’ve never even met this guy before!  You are a guy, right?”

“Yes, my liege.”

“Right.  I’m going to put that on the backburner and freak out about it later.  How are you- Why are you—” Phantom shook his head.  “Why are you here in Pariah’s Keep?”

“It’s your keep.”

“Since when?”

“Say what now?” asked Jack and Maddie at once.  

“Look, this is news to me, too.  But, back to the question.  You.  The keep. Why?  I mean, you weren’t here before.”

“That is because Pariah sealed me, my liege.  When you defeated him, I was released and immediately swore fealty to the true king.  You.”

“I am so freaking out right now, but we’ll revisit that. Later.  Right now, I have to get these guys home.”

“But they have hostile intentions towards your person, my liege!”

“Everyone has hostile intentions towards me.  I’m honestly surprised you haven’t attacked me yet.”

“Ah.  My liege, perhaps you should seek the services of a priest, if all your experiences with new people are such.”

“Is that the medieval equivalent of a therapist?”

“I fear I do not know what that is.  Why do you ask?”

“Because the last time I talked to one of those, they purposefully picked at every one of my insecurities and then tried to murder my, uh.  Someone close to me.”

“An evil counselor, then,” said the knight, gravely.

“I want to agree with you, but somehow I feel like you’re talking about something completely different than the image in my head.”

“That may be true, my liege.  Doubtless, you are very wise.”

Maddie was… lost.  

Very lost.  

Even so, her prerogative was escaping.  She started twisting, trying to get to the knots around her wrists.  

“Did you, uh, pilot the castle out here?”

“Yes.  I sensed that mortal enemies of the king, that’s you—”

“I will debate that as soon as my brain stops screaming at me.”

“—had entered the Realm.”

“Right.  Yeah. Thank you.  But I can handle these guys.  And I need to get them home.  Please. I made a deal with them.”

“With these?”

“Hey!” said Jack, offended.  

“I mean, I use the term deal pretty loosely.”

“Hey!”

“But yes.  Please.  Just.  Dang.  How did you tie them up that quickly?”

“It’s a hobby.”

“Do you mind if I take the chairs?”

“They are your chairs, my liege.”

“I’m still not used to that.”

“Are you quite certain you want to take them?  And just… Let them loose?  The dungeon here is very functional.  We even have an oubliette.”

“Raincheck.  But thank you.  Really, I mean it.”  Phantom flew behind Maddie, and she protested as the chair she was in was yanked upward. “Uh… I might have gotten turned around a time or two, so if you could…”

“Of course!  The keep does seem to have sustained some damage, so we will have to take some detours.”

“Phantom!  Phantom! Put us down and untie us.”

“Nah, I think I like this better.  Your kids can untie you once I bring you back!”

“You’re going to drag us all the way through the Ghost Zone?”

“That’s the plan.”

.

The rest of the flight was surprisingly pleasant. No one attacked, and his parents were much easier to carry in the chairs.  Sure, they struggled, but the struggling was much more manageable than the wriggling from before.  

They were mad at him.  But they were always mad at him.  So.  

No loss, really.

With the utmost carefulness, Danny set them down in the middle of the lab, still tied up, and then began zapping then tossing their most troublesome inventions into the gaping maw of the portal while they screamed at him.  

Normally, he wouldn’t do this, especially after successfully rescuing his parents and hopefully raising their opinion of him, but some of those inventions were painful.  Like.  A lot painful.  And dangerous.  Also, he was doing his level best to avoid thinking about the whole ‘king’ thing.  

Which he couldn’t do forever.  

Especially since Jazz walked down the stairs, probably drawn by the screaming, to see Danny shoving half of the Ghost Catcher through the portal sans-strings.  

“Uh,” said Danny.  

“Get that ghost, Jazzy-pants!”

Danny vanished and fled upstairs.  

.

Jazz had seen many strange things in her life, but that scene was one of the weirder ones.  

It took some time to untie her parents, longer to extract herself from the ensuing rant and their attempt to salvage their equipment from Danny’s all-too-explicable rampage.  Honestly, she was surprised Danny hadn’t snapped earlier.  

She opened the door to his room.  It was empty.  She squinted. He was not just leaving her hanging like that, with no context to what happened other than their parents’ ranting.  She opened her door.  

Danny was lying on his side on the middle of her rag rug, hugging Bearbert Einstein.  

“A ghost told me I was king and that I needed a priest.”

Oh boy.  

[batgurl1989]

A Wolf In Toussaint Chapter Three

Summary: After being summoned by the Duchess, you and Geralt head to the Palace of Beauclair with some trouble on the road.

Word Count: 2120

Warnings: spoilers for the Blood and Wine DLC

A/N: I know this is so soon after the last chapter, but I was too excited not to post it. Taglist is open, requests are open.

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five

Taglist: @rmtndew @henrynerdfan @princesssterek @seanh-boredom @djinny-djin-djin @diegos-butt @cynic-spirit @daddys-littlewhitegirl

"Younin! Watch out!" Geralt growled a warning at you as you dodged a stream of caustic acid an Archespore shot at you. Where Igni hadn't scorched the ground, the large plant-like monsters' poison had. Geralt slashed at one of the large plants, trying to sever it's head.

You tried to stay to the edges of the battle zone, drawing on the smoldering embers for power as you kept fire shooting from one hand at the plants. You didn't have any silver weapons on you, which would have to be remedied as soon as possible. You knew Geralt was worried about you, and that was causing him to be distracted. It had only been a few days since you woke up, and this was the first time you had had to fight since the bandits on your way to Novigrad. You knew it was a risk to draw on the fire, as it was the hardest element to control, and the chaos was weakening you at an alarming rate. But right now, you didn't need to control where it went as long as you aimed wide of where Geralt was.

"It's multiplying!" You called out over the din of the fighting. Buds were springing from the ground. Though these weren't full blown monsters yet, the vibrations of the fire and the fighting were agitating them. One burst close to you, spitting acid in all directions. A droplet landed on your boot, sizzling as it ate through the leather. "Shit!"

Geralt was by your side in a flash, pulling your boot off before the acid could make it to your skin. His eyes met yours for the briefest of moments, concern and something else flashing in the golden depths. You nodded that you were alright, and he was gone again. He swung his heavy silver sword deftly into the monster, his energy seeming to have jolted back to full now that you had come close to being hurt.

Turning your attention to the buds, you carefully stepped further back, out of range of any shooting poison. With your boot off, the rocky ground bit into your sole, but you couldn't think about that now. As long as you avoided the acid pools, you could handle it. Eyeing up the buds that seemed ready to burst, you unleashed a stream of fire, using all your concentration to aim true. The blooming plants burst into fire, sizzling as they wilted to the ground, their poison remaining inside and lighting up with the petals.

Your head snapped around when you heard hissing and squealing. Geralt had slashed through the bud that served as the monster's head, ending the monster's life, and stopping it from creating more buds. He carefully wiped his blade off before returning it to it's sheath alongside his steel blade.

With laser-like focus, he stormed over to you, his hungry eyes raking over your body in such a way that your breath caught in your suddenly dry throat. The tip of your tongue darted out to wet your lips, his eyes tracking the motion like a starving animal. You heard a low rumble deep in his chest, and it set all your nerves on fire, ready for him.

When he reached you, he pulled you roughly into his arms, his mouth covering yours with such force your teeth clacked against his. A long low moan escaped you as you pressed against him, desperate to get closer. The adrenaline from the battle still coursed through both your veins, and it needed an outlet. His hands spanned your back, pressing you tightly against his armour, his fingers gripping the linen shirt you wore for the road. You clutched the grooves of his armour, standing on your toes to kiss him deeper, your tongue delving into his mouth to tangle with his own.

His hands travelled lower, gripping your arse before he lifted you off the ground. Instinctively you wrapped your leather bound legs around his waist, your arms going around his neck to steady yourself. With one arm banded under your legs, his free hand dove into your hair, pulling it free of the ponytail you had tossed it into. Your red hair caught in the breeze, fluttering around both your heads in a curtain of fire, blocking out the world.

You pulled away when breathing became a necessity, resting your forehead on his. His golden eyes searched yours, but you didn't know what he was looking for. You breathed deeply his scent, the adrenaline leaving your system, and your nerves calming. This man drove you wild and seemed to centre you. It was a complete whiplash effect, and had your head spinning, but you wouldn't give it up for anything.

"I suppose we should find the horses?" You whispered, not wanting to destroy the mood of your little world. Geralt chuckled softly, before kissing you all too briefly one last time. Slowly, he let you slide down his body until you were on solid ground again. As your foot hit the rocky ground, you remembered you only had one boot on. "I don't suppose you packed extra boots in my size?"

"Sorry, it was a vast oversight on my part." Geralt shook his head, going to retrieve your boot. He examined it quickly to make sure there was no acidic poison left on it, and to make sure the hole hadn't ruined the integrity of the boot. "You should be able to wear it until we get to the city. I promise to buy you a new pair."

"You don't have to do that. I can buy my own." You blushed as you sat on a nearby log to pull your boot back on. The hole wasn't any larger than the size of your pinky nail, and as long as it didn't rain, you would make it to the city. "Could we also stop by a blacksmith, and see about getting me a silver sword or at least a dagger?"

"Of course." Geralt nodded, offering you a hand to help you up once your boot was laced again. You took his rough hand, but didn't let go once you were vertical. He raised his eyebrows at you, but a small smile played at his lips, and his grip tightened around your fingers. "But first, horses."

It didn't take you long to find the horses. They had run off at the first sound of trouble, but these were Toussaint horses, and were used to being ridden into battle, so they hadn't gone far. They were munching grass as though bored, which you couldn't help but laugh at.

"Dandelion is bringing Roach and Marabelle when he comes down. He sent a letter while you were sleeping." Geralt explained once you were back on the road to the Palace of Beauclair.

"So the King let him go?" You were surprised that you hadn't been worried about it until now. Sure you had been busy being captured and then healing and regaining your strength, but your friend's well-being should have come to mind before now. You mentally kicked yourself for being so selfish. "Do we know yet what went wrong?"

"From what Yen could figure out from her sources, the King of Beggars is either working for someone who wants you and he was delivering you to him, or he was trying to get you away from the person who wants you." Geralt fought hard but ultimately failed to keep the edge off his tone. You weren't the only one jealous of an ex. "One day, you will have to tell me what he means to you."

"If that's what you really want." You had nothing to hide, and if Geralt needed to know for his own peace of mind, you wouldn't keep that from him.

"I'm not sure that it is." Geralt grumbled, adjusting the reins in his hands. "But it might be something that can give us a clue as to what just went down."

"Perhaps when we get back from the Palace, we will have time." You nodded. You knew how hard it was to ask about an ex, and if Geralt wasn't sure he was ready yet, you weren't going to push it. The King meant literally nothing to you other than as a friend, but you weren't sure Geralt would believe that without hearing the rest of it. "So is there anything I need to know about the Duchess?"

"Other than she likes things done her way and quickly, not really." Geralt shrugged. To him, the Duchess was no different than any other client, other than she had the army to back up her demands while farmers and villagers barely had the coin to get his services in the first place. "She can run a little hot and cold, but that depends on how grave the job is. If there is no job, she is actually quite pleasant to be around."

"Oh?" You raised your eyebrow at the Witcher, your voice dripping with unimpressed sarcasm. Knowing him and his past, there was only one conclusion that jumped out at you after what he said.

"Not like that, I swear." Geralt laughed deeply, warmly, in a way you rarely ever heard. Then his face grew serious. "Her sister, however..."

"You're joking! You have to be!" You blinked a few times, trying to wrap your head around the fact that he slept with the Duchess's sister. You were pretty sure she was dead, but didn't know if Geralt had a hand in that or not. "Are you joking?"

"I don't kiss and tell." Geralt winked at you but remained silent. Frowning you tried to think of a way to get him to talk, but knew that once he set his mind to it, there wasn't much you could do to change it.

"Fine. Keep your secrets." You mock pouted, turning back to the road ahead. The palace and the sprawling city across the river from it had come into view, and it took your breath away with its beauty.

"Like nothing up North, isn't it?" Geralt commented, watching you take in the fairytale-esque scene in front of you. The towering palace with its spires and arching bridges. Tall trees and rooftop gardens painted the scene with every shade of green. The lake shone like a fiery sapphire as the sunlight reflected on its smooth surface.

"Definitely not." You couldn't tear your eyes from it as you continued to ride towards it. You didn't remember making the decision to kick your horse into a gallop, but sound the wind was whipping through your loose hair, pulling it behind you as you raced toward the city. Geralt kept pace with you, smiling as the joy inside you bubbled into laughter at the freedom you felt in that moment.

At the city gates, you slowed your horses. Unlike in Novigrad, the guards at the gate were mostly there to keep the peace. No one was checking papers, or questioning anyone about whether they were magical or not. Everyone was free to roam in and out of the city as they wished. The atmosphere was completely different than what you were used to, and you felt almost giddy about it.

As you rode through town, your head was constantly swiveling to take in the sights and sounds of the lively city. Artists advertised their skills and their work outside brightly lit shops. Bakers were rushing to keep up with the demand for their pastries. Florists boasted about the colours of their most recent blooms, ready to steal the hearts of those who received them. Fresh fish was brought in from the river, the catch of the day being shouted to draw in more customers. There were few street walkers and even fewer homeless people. The cobble streets were wide and clean, nothing like what you were used to in Velen.

Geralt watched you with an amused look, indulging you when you wanted to stop to watch a street performer either sing or dance. He handed you coins to give to them when the performance was finished as you clapped loudly. Your heart sang out in happiness that he was showing you this part of his world and his life. You could see yourself easily settling in at Corvo Bianco, making wine, traveling to the city when you wanted to take in some art and culture. You found yourself wondering if Geralt would ever retire from the Path, and settle down here for good. But you shooed that dark cloud away before it could rain on the brightness of your day. You didn't know what the Duchess wanted, and that was as much darkness as you wanted right now.

[damnzawa]

henlo i'm not sure what your rules are for requests so i'm sorry if i'm doing this wrong i just love your writing uwu 👉🏼👈🏼 aizawa with an hero!s/o turned into a neko because they got hit by a quirk after fighting some villain? 🥺👉🏼👈🏼

(CAT)ASTROPHE — A. SHOUTA

Note(s): OMG ?? I ?? AM ?? SO ?? FLATTERED ?? THAT ?? YOU ?? LIKE ?? MY ?? SHITTY ?? ASS ?? AND ?? CLICHE ?? WRITING ?? also i live for these types of scenarios SO EFF YES

Warning(s): Poorly written fight scene, Aizawa having a mental breakdown, Cat Fluff

...

Being a pro-hero comes with a lot of pros and cons. For some, the pros may outweigh the cons and vice versa. Some even has a healthy balance of both. While you, you were one of the people who have pros outweigh the cons.

You weren't really the pro-hero to compete for the spotlight but you still had a good number of people who knows of you and what you could do. Though, you aren't as flashy as the others, you had a unique charm to you that draws people's attention towards you.

It was that charm that drew the infamous hobo man of U.A. to you, all in his yellow, shining (not really) sleeping bag glory. Though at first, he was irritated at the fact that you were just a natural at everything and everybody just seemed to love you. But as time went by, he realized that this charm of yours has truly captivated him. You weren't like the other pro-heroes he had met. No. You were unique. One of a kind. Genuinely different from the others.

After months of (silent) pining, he decided to just fuck it and ask you out on a date, in which surprisingly you happily agreed to. As time progressed, and two dates became 3, 4, 5, and counting, he got to know more sides of you. More characteristics to add to your charm. And by the time you reached your 2nd year anniversary, you guys decided to move in together—which was by far the greateat decision you and Aizawa has ever made.

Your charms are a part of your pros. It's what makes you, you. But unfortunately, you had yet to learn that it was one of your cons too.

It was the usual night patrol. Check any suspicious activity, check if anyone's doing crimes, check up on the stray cat on the alley, repeat. Honestly, some times patrols can be quite a bore. But you didn't mind. It was part of the job after all.

Cautiously walking down the street, you suddenly heard a scream from one of the alleys nearby. You quickly sprinted into action, not sparing another second as you rushed into the scene of the crime.

"Please! Don't hurt my child!" The woman screamed as the villain inched closer to them. Silently creeping up on the thug, you noticed that the villain had a weapon—a gun to be exact which was gonna be a pain if they ever shot the woman and/or his child. "Please! It's all I have! I promise!" A robbery? In the night? Typical villain move.

"Step away from them." You commanded the villain as you activated your quirk. A force field acting as a shield appeared out of nowhere, protecting the woman and her child from harm. You could tell that the woman was relieved, however, the child was still crying.

The villain chuckled as he turned around to face you, your hero name rolling off his tongue in a sinister way. "Well, well, well. If it isn't the saviors of society! The heroes! Protecting the world from evil doers such as myself." You could feel a speech coming. You honestly could feel it. "At least that's what you think. You heroes think you're good shit after taking down some bad guys but do you ever wonder about those who also suffer because of you?" He pointed the gun towards you making you squint at him. "I lost my family! Because of you guys! Because of that stupid Endeavor! You don't really care about the people! You just care about the fame! The money! The recognition you'll get after locking us all up in jail!"

"I assure you, heroes are not like that. Sure we have our own ambitions, but we all protect the people. That's our number one priority." Your response made him snarl. "And as much as I would love to stay and chat..." You activates your quirk once again, this time making whips out of light. "...It's time to pay for your crimes." You attacked him with the whip to which he skillfully dodged. He appeared from place to place with a blink of an eye, making it hard for you to apprehend him.

'Shit. A teleportation quirk? That's gonna be a pain in the ass.'

Dodging his punches that came out of nowhere, you kicked him in the gut. After reading watching his moves while dodging, you figured out that he has this pattern. He would first attack you in the back—which caught you by surprise the first time—then he would go for your front then your sides. It was the repeating pattern he used on you, so after getting used to it, you finally had the upper hand.

He was thrown a bit from the force of your kick but quickly recovered from it. He attacked you with another punch on your left which you countered by grabbing on his arm and twisting it until you heard a crack.

'Well now he certainly can't punch with that one.'

"You bitch!" He pulled out his gun and repeatedly fired shots at you. Every shot was a miss and then finally you encaged him in a box of light.

"Sweet dreams." And with that, you knocked him out with your quirk.

After putting on quirk nullyfing cuffs and a rope made out of light around his body, you checked up on the victims. The woman was repeatedly thanking you while the child was still shaken up.

"Hey now kiddo. It's alright. You're safe now." You approached him with a gentle smile on your face. You were about to place comforting hand on his shoulder when he suddenly shot up.

"No! Get away from me and my mom!" A sudden force emitted from his body as he pushed you to the ground.

"Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry about that!" You stood up and brushed yourself off as the woman repeatedly apologized for her son's behavior.

"No ma'am. It's alright. I'm fine, no harm done. See?" You flashed her a smile. "Kiddo, it's alright now. I'm a pro-hero. Police are on the way. Can you stay for a bit and tell them what happened?" The boy reluctantly nodded which made you smile even wider. "That's great then! You were brave out there kiddo."

"I'm sorry for using my quirk on you..." The boy muttered. You ruffled his hair and told him that it was alright. Though, you would surely see a paramedic later.

After the police arrived and collected your statements, you headed home with a headache. Apparently, the woman and her child doesn't know what his quirk actually is. The robbery might have triggered his quirk and you were the first one to be hit with it.

Great.

Just great.

You just hoped Aizawa was home too. You clearly need some of his A+ cuddles to ease the pain.

You arrived at your shared apartment shortly, but before you could even reach your shared bedroom, you blacked out.

...

Aizawa Shouta wasn't having the greatest day of his life. An eventful and rowdy day at U.A, then an eventful and extra rowdy patrol at night all while running with 3 hours of sleep? Yep. Not the greatest day of his life.

The grumpy man groaned as he remembered the stack of papers waiting for him back home. He could already feel the pain he was about to endure for the greater good of the future heroes he was teaching. He frowned as he imagined Kaminari's sloppy handwriting—and a possible doodle of him—in his homework, he could also imagine the cluster of words that didn't make sense brought to him by Mina Ashido.

But he could also imagine you greeting him with a kiss as usual. He could imagine your arms wrapped around him in a loving embrace, washing out the stress he previously had. He could imagine you rolling your eyes at him as he complained about you not getting enough sleep. He could imagine you helping him grade those forsaken essays he made his students do.

Well, maybe this day wasn't so bad for him. After all, he had you to go home to.

After opening the door, he expected you to greet him with open arms and ask him how his day went. He expected you to make fun of his struggles as a teacher and remind him that it was his choice to teach to begin with. But instead he was met with silence and no you.

To: Y/n

From: Shouta

Are you patrolling late tonight?

He waited for a few minutes but he didn't recieve a reply. He sent another message, and another, and another, until he finally decided to wash up and wait up for you just incase anything happens.

Just as he was about to enter your shared bedroom, he noticed your hero costume on the floor, a lump of something breathing underneath it. He lifted your hero costume, revealing a (h/c) cat—who stirred at his actions—sleeping peacefully. His hand instinctively reached down to pet it, feeling the smooth fur on his fingertips. The petting caused the animal to wake up, it's tired eyes looking at him with such warmness it was almost so familiar yet he couldn't remember where it's from.

"Shouta?" Aizawa froze on the spot as he heard your voice leaving the cat's mouth. He blinked owlishly, trying to process what the hell happened. Did the cat just speak? And did the cat sounded just like you?

"Why the hell are you so big? Did something happen?" You—the cute cat infront of him—asked as you unconsciously started to rub your cat chin into his shoulder.

"Y/n, I should be the one asking you that." You perked up at his response, head tilting as you waited for an answer.

"What do you mean?" Oh god you were giving him the cute eyes.

"Y/n, you're a cat."

"I'm a cat." You repeated. "Wait—what?" You blinked as you realized what had happened. Oh. So this was that child's quirk. "Shit."

"Shit indeed." Aizawa picked you up gently and placed you on the bed. "Mind telling me what happened?"

"Ok so..."

...

Aizawa secretly carried a laser on him the next day. You were dismissed of your hero duties for a week (because that's how long the quirk's gonna last) and was stuck in the apartment all day so he figured you could use a little fun right?

Right...

You greeted him as usual, but instead of human you, cat you is rubbing your body around his ankles and making a '8' shape as you circled his feet. It was quite cute to be honest. He had a soft spot for cats and you after all. He tried his best not to melt then and there.

"I've got something for you." Your ears went forward and your tail erected with it's fur flat at the statement. Clearly, you were happy. Aizawa brought out the laser thingy he had and started pointing it towards the wall, to which you suddenly leaped for. You followed the dot everywhere it landed and Aizawa couldn't help but smile at the sight infront of him.

...

"Shouta." You poked his cheek. "Shouta." You poked it once again. Why were you poking him exactly? Well, you were hungry and it was in the middle of the night. You couldn't reach the pantry nor the fridge handle so you reluctantly asked Aizawa for help. Somehow, he wouldn't budge. After poking him a couple more times, he opened an eye that showed that he was clearly annoyed by your behavior.

"What?" Came his gruff reply.

"I'm hungry." Aizawa sighed as he stood up and blinked the sleep out of his eyes.

"Fine." Sluggishly walking towards the kitchen, he looked at you silently trailing behind him. "You want tuna?"

"Haha, very funny Shou."

"Is that a yes or a no?"

"Yes please."

...

You purred as Aizawa rubbed the spot behind your ears. It was becoming a habit for Aizawa to pet and rub you like this and honestly, he was enjoying it—not that he'd ever tell anyone about it.

You insisted to not cancel your annual dinner date at your shared apartment which consisted of eating takeouts and watching whatever was on Netflix. You and Aizawa happily ate your food—you ate tuna... again—and now, the both of you were watching some Studio Ghibli film, well atleast you were supposed to.

You quickly got distracted once Aizawa started petting you, leading to you not focusing on the film at all. Aizawa's eyes was still on the film playing but you were sure he was also distracted. You found it a bit weird that the both of you quickly adjusted to this cat life and that neither of you freaked out at all. Maybe it was the pro-hero sides of you, who knows. But it was nice to see Aizawa helping you in any way that he can.

His petting abruptly stopped as he stiffled out a yawn. You looked at him and saw that he looked completely exhausted. More so than usual.

So, you hopped out of his lap and switched off the TV as you nudged Aizawa's leg with your paws.

"Come on Shou. Let's go to sleep."

Aizawa did not decline your offer and gladly followed you out of the room.

...

By the end of the week while having breakfast a loud 'poof' and smoke suddenly covered the whole room. After the smoke cleared, it revealed you in all of your naked human body glory.

"Welcome back, Y/n."

"Oh shut up, Shou."

ADDITIONAL NOTE(S)

This was fun to write! I hope I did this right though lolol. Also, requests are open!!

[iffeelscouldkill]

TSCOSI Matrix AU

A/N: *offers up* Matrix AU?

Call trans opt: received. 3-6-91 13:24:18 REC:Log>

“Yeah?”

“Everything in place?”

“You weren’t meant to be relieving me.”

Trace program: running

“I felt like taking a shift.”

“I think you like it. Watching her.”

“Piss off, Ricky.”

“We’re going to kill her. You know that, right? It’s what we do.”

“We don’t kill people. Not if we can help it.”

“You really believe that?”

“Do you have a point here?”

“Just making polite small-talk.”

“…Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Are you sure this line is clean?”

“Yeah, of course I’m sure.”

“…I’m gonna go.”

---

They had the hotel room surrounded.

The door was made out of scratched-up chrome, identical to every other lining the long hallway. Only the number above it distinguished it from the rest: 303.

The squadron of officers assembled, guns at the ready. At a nod from the commanding officer, one of the men placed a small device on the lock that fried its internal circuitry. The lock gave a beep to signal that it was open, and the officers slammed into the room.

“Freeze! Police! Hands on your head!”

Inside, the room was empty except for a single occupant, sat on a chair with her back to the door. She was dressed head to toe in black leather, a pair of heavy combat boots on her feet. She made no move to comply with the command, or even acknowledge their presence.

The officers advanced slowly. This was a wanted terrorist, and despite how harmless she appeared on the outside, they’d been briefed to treat her with extreme caution.

“Do it! Do it now!” barked the commanding officer.

Slowly, the woman got to her feet and raised her hands in the air.

---

On the street outside the rundown hotel where the notorious fugitive “Arkady Patel” had been cornered, a dark car drew up and two identically suited figures got out.

“Lieutenant,” said one of them, severely. “Our division gave you some very specific orders.”

The lieutenant on duty immediately bristled. He hated being talked down to by these goons. No-one seemed to know exactly what it was that their ‘division’ did, but they walked around like they owned the place and they seemed to be everywhere. All of them looked the exact same. And if you criticised them too loudly within their hearing – which also seemed to be “everywhere” – you could get reassigned or even find yourself jobless without warning.

If it was going to happen to him, he would at least give them a piece of his mind first.

“Listen here. I don’t know what it is you Inter-Government Response thugs think you can do here, but this is my jurisdiction. I’m just doing my job.”

“The orders were for your protection,” Lead Goon said, with that creepy, deliberate enunciation.

“Protection? I sent two units,” the lieutenant, whose name was Johnson, scoffed. “They’re bringing her down now.”

“No, Lieutenant,” the IGR goon replied calmly. “Your men are already dead.”

---

This was an exaggeration. Despite what her reputation might have suggested, Arkady Patel wasn’t one for excessive violence or force. Of course, when she was being rushed by five heavily-armed cops she couldn’t guarantee that things weren’t going to get ugly, but half the time that wasn’t even her doing. People were just idiots.

As the first officer approached her she whirled around, quickly breaking his arm and then slamming her foot into his face, sending him staggering backwards into one of his colleagues. She took the opportunity to draw her gun and fired several quick shots, hitting each of the officers’ gun hands with precision and making them drop or fumble their weapons. One of them got a shot off, and she saw the bullet make its slow-motion approach. Arkady ducked it easily and then kicked upwards at the man’s chin, causing his head to snap back.

She moved among the remaining officers with what would seem to them like preternatural speed, delivering swift blows to their windpipes, incapacitating and disabling. She grabbed a chair that was sitting off to the side and swung it into one of the officers, then used it as the pivot for an upwards flip to avoid an attack. Soaring in a perfect arc downwards, Arkady landed with both booted feet on the chest of the man who had been behind her, then lashed out and pistol-whipped the final man across the face.

Silence reigned.

Looking around at the motionless bodies sprawled on the floor, Arkady uttered the first word she’d spoken since the door was kicked down.

“Shit.”

Bringing one hand up to her ear, Arkady activated her comm. “Sana, the line was traced. I don’t know how.”

“I know,” came Sana’s voice in her ear, grim. “They cut the hard line. There’s no time – you need to get to another exit.”

“Agents?”

“Three of them.”

“Goddamnit,” Arkady cursed.

“You can make it, Kady,” Sana said in her Captain voice, strong and sure. Arkady almost wished that voice didn’t work on her, but she felt her breathing ease a little in spite of herself. “There’s a store you can use; second cubicle from the end has an active connection. It’s at the intersection of Rosalind and Jemison Street, opposite the security consultancy.”

Arkady barked a laugh. She couldn’t help it. “Nice.”

“I’ll see you on the other side,” Sana said. “Go.”

Arkady was already moving. The quickest way to reach the intersection Sana had described would be across the rooftops. She strode to the window and, with no time for finesse, jammed a knife into the lock, severing its wiring. The lock emitted a high-pitched beeping that signalled an alarm was about to go off. But it wasn’t like they didn’t already know she was here. Arkady climbed onto the window ledge, bracing herself against the frame, ignoring the phantom tug of Matrix gravity with practiced ease.

Two grav tubes for emergency access to the various floors of the building ran alongside the window: one up, one down. There was a hatch that was supposed to only open to authorised personnel. It was more sophisticated than the window lock, so Arkady used precious seconds on a different approach: using her comm, she played a range of different frequencies until she found one that imitated the sonic key the hatch had been programmed to respond to.

She heard the clatter of boots in the corridor outside. Agents – and more cops. There wasn’t a way to prevent them from knowing her escape route, but she could at least get a head start. Arkady pried open the grav tube hatch, and risked a brief glance over her shoulder. Two identical IGR Agents, followed by about half a dozen cops, rounded the corner and saw her through the open hotel room door; she shoved off the window frame and into the grav tube as they raised their guns to fire.

Arkady twisted upwards in the grav tube, eyes on the patch of night sky she could see at the top of it. Suddenly she heard a crackle, followed by the smell of burning plastic, and cursed. The goddamn fucking Agents were using fucking lasers. And they’d burned a hole in the grav tube, disrupting the pull. Arkady could already feel the upward force weakening, but she ignored it, concentrating on the feeling of flying upwards.

None of it’s real, she reminded herself, thinking of her early experiments in the simulator, the way she’d learned to soar through the air in defiance of physics. It’s all just programming. You can hack it.

The tube slanted forwards and Arkady braced herself for her exit onto the rooftop, turning her forward momentum into a roll and then jumping up and sprinting towards the edge of the roof. She only had a few seconds’ head start on her pursuers, but without access to the grav tube, they would have to take the emergency stairs up. Sure enough, Arkady could hear the clanging of the metal stairs, the Agents no doubt leading the way with their enhanced speed. She fixed her eye on the building she needed to get to. It was a small jump from here to the next building, and from there – a bigger jump.

Arkady accelerated towards the edge of the rooftop and jumped just as the Agents’ boots sounded on the concrete. They were close, so close and her mind kept trying to dwell on it, to sink into panic and visions of what might happen if they caught her, but she refused to let it. She landed on the next roof over, knees bent, and ran for the other side. This roof had some kind of goddamn ornamental garden on it with shrubs and benches, forcing her to weave around the obstacles. There was another crackling sound, and Arkady dove behind a fake bush just in time; the laser bolt singed the leaves off the bush and travelled until it hit a satellite receiver, which burst into flames.

Laser gunfire was Arkady’s weakness; she could easily duck and avoid regular bullets, but laser bolts were so fast as to be almost instantaneous – faster than she could move, even in the Matrix. The Agents knew that. One of them was still coming, and Arkady fired a couple of shots from behind the bush before diving back into the open, deliberately picking the route most filled with obstacles to throw off the Agents, leaping over benches and pot plants. The edge of the roof was getting closer now, and beyond that, the void between it and the next building over. Further than a normal human bound by the laws of physics could jump. Arkady had cleared jumps like this easily dozens of times before, but in the back of her mind there was always that nagging voice, wondering if this was the time that gravity would reach out and claw her back down.

She shook it away, focused on the memory of Sana’s voice saying, “You can make it, Kady.” Arkady jumped.

There was a suspended one, two seconds of the wind rushing past her and then she was coming down hard on the rooftop, rolling forwards, then quickly throwing herself around the side of a protruding structure that might have been an observation point or the exit for a rooftop elevator access. She needed to get down to street level, but an elevator was not the way to do it. The odds of finding another grav tube were slim, but an outside stairwell – and not all buildings had them – would be too exposed. Every second here she wasted in indecision was another second the Agents had to catch up with her.

She heard the heavy thud of boots landing on the rooftop and knew she’d lost her lead. Arkady could hear the shouts of disbelief from the cops in the distance, no doubt from seeing the Agent fly over that gap. They wouldn’t bother chasing her any longer; but they’d never been the real threat. This showdown had always been between her and the Agents.

Arkady quieted her breathing and listened for the tell-tale sound of footsteps approaching. There’d been two Agents leading the pack of cops, but only one of them was on the rooftop with her. Had the other one peeled off to join its friend at street level? Were they staking out her possible avenues of approach, cutting off her escape route? But whatever was waiting for her on the ground, it couldn’t be worse than staying up here to be hunted and eventually fried with a laser bolt. And that was honestly the best-case scenario for what they might do to her.

Arkady’s foot nudged something that glinted – a piece of broken metal. She silently stooped to pick it up, and considered keeping it as a weapon before she alighted on a better usage. Would the Agent fall for that? Only one way to find out.

Arkady flung the piece of debris away from her with all her strength and saw a laser bolt leap out to incinerate it as she ran hard in the other direction, towards the edge of the building. She’d thought of a way down that they wouldn’t expect. But she’d never done anything like it before, even in the Matrix, and the odds were pretty good that it would end with her splattered on the concrete.

No time to second-guess. Putting one hand down on the rooftop, Arkady vaulted over the edge and into the open. She anchored her hand in place through sheer force of will – it’s not real; you can hack it – and used the momentum to swing herself down, arcing through the air and driving her feet through a windowpane in the building’s top floor. The window shattered; Arkady landed on the floor in a crouch, half-expecting the crackle of laser gunfire to follow her, but there was nothing

Did they see where she went? Were they setting a trap for her at the exit? She had no way of knowing. Part of her wanted to call Sana and ask if she had any intel, but – the Captain had other things to worry about. And she’d trusted that Arkady would be able to handle this.

Arkady moved quickly and quietly through the building, which was a deserted office block; all of the doors opened easily, no card access required if you were leaving. And there was no night security – only security cams, which would pick her up as a dark shape in the shadows. Come the morning, they’d never be able to trace her.

Arkady slipped out of a side exit and stood for a second in the shadow of the building, getting her bearings. The intersection of Jemison and Rosalind was just ahead; she could just make out the sign outside the security consultancy, which meant—

There was a movement in the shadows across the street, an Agent materialising from nowhere – Arkady bolted, and realised too late that she was reacting to a window reflection. She ducked as the Agent shot at her, feeling the heat from the laser wash over her – that was way too close­ – and firing blindly backwards at it as she careened towards the intersection. She could hear one set of footsteps, two, three – two more Agents were closing in on her from left and right. Breath searing in her throat, Arkady veered at the last minute through the door of the store she needed to get to, crashing through the entrance. She could barely stop to look at the signs, running blindly towards her target – there was a crackle, and Arkady ducked behind a counter, dived and rolled.

She’d landed weird. Her shoulder hurt. There was no time – Arkady staggered upright, and finally saw it – a sign for the dressing rooms. She flung herself towards the doorway and ran desperately down the row of cubicles, looking for the one that was lit up – where was it, it had to be here – there.

Arkady threw herself through the curtain and put a hand to the mirror just as the lasers incinerated the fabric behind her. She could feel the Matrix dissolving around her, giving way to hard reality. In that space between the two worlds, she had enough time for a single thought: How the hell did they trace us?

---

The Agents stepped into the wreckage of the dressing room cubicle, looking at the smoking hole in the mirror where their adversary had disappeared not a half second before.

“She got out,” said one, whose name was Agent Baumann.

“It doesn’t matter,” said another, whose name was Agent Goodman.

“The informant is real,” added the third Agent, whose name was Agent Cross.

“Yes,” agreed Agent Goodman.

“We have the name of their next target,” continued Agent Baumann.

“The name is Violet Liu.”

---

A/N: My abiding love for Starship Iris and cyberpunk continues xD Believe it or not, I started writing this a full year ago - I was on a Matrix kick, and as I watched the film I suddenly thought... a dashing crew of daring rogues fighting against The Man: who does that sound like? Honestly, the parallels are just too easy to draw. I decided that I wanted to write a version of the opening sequence with TSCOSI characters, but for some reason I never finished.

Coming back to the doc for the first time the day before yesterday, I saw that it was last edited 8th August 2020... it felt like a sign. (Also HOLY SHIT IT’S BEEN A YEAR, WTF). So happy anniversary, WIP doc: your present is publication!

[artnerd1123]

Among Us: CR3WM8TS

Docked and Loaded ——————————————

The ship finally arrives at the newly established Sector G base on a new planet. Hopefully, start of work goes smoothly. Hopefully the logs are functioning well, too... 

Among Us archive/askblog Fic chapters post

——————————————

once again i am chopping a chapter in half to keep it from getting too long. anyway!!! more normal crewmate troubles n dorkiness with some ominous vibes for Flavor (tm).  hopefully the next part will come out sometime soon! enjoy this for now!

                                                 ===+===+===

Mission Log 10

Ship Model: SKELD D34-H120 Designation: SUPPLY TRANSPORT, EXPLORATION AND DOCUMENTATION OF SECTOR G PLANETS Crewmate Count: 9 Crewmate Colors: DARK GREEN, WHITE, PURPLE, DARK BLUE, YELLOW, RED, LIME, BLACK, PINK

Location: SECTOR G Ship Status: IN TRANSIT Course: PLANET 326-OCE-894 - SECTOR G Systems:

Navigation: COURSE INLAID / STABLE

Engines: UPPER - ONLINE, TANK 0.86 / LOWER - ONLINE, TANK 0.83 / OUTPUT ALIGNED

Reactor: ONLINE / FUNCTIONING OPTIMAL

O2: STABLE

Electrical: STABLE

Communications: ONLINE

Shields: ONLINE / FUNCTIONING OPTIMAL

Weapons: ONLINE / FUNCTIONING OPTIMAL

Security: CAMERAS ONLINE / ALL FUNCTIONAL

Administration: MAP ONLINE / CONNECTION SECURE / SHIP FILES UP TO DATE / ALL CREW ACCOUNTED FOR

Medbay: EQUIPMENT ONLINE / FUNCTIONAL / CREW FILES UP TO DATE

Supplies: [ONE] CRATES SHORT  

Storage Chutes: CLEAR

Vents: CLEAR

Notes: Updates by PINK still taking well to system. Travel into sector G uneventful. Crew bonding time worked into today’s schedule, all crew in attendance for at least an hour. Crew performing normal activities.

                                                ===+===+===

Mission Log 15

Ship Model: SKELD D34-H120 Designation: SUPPLY TRANSPORT, EXPLORATION AND DOCUMENTATION OF SECTOR G PLANETS Crewmate Count: 9 Crewmate Colors: DARK GREEN, WHITE, PURPLE, DARK BLUE, YELLOW, RED, LIME, BLACK, PINK

Location: SECTOR G Ship Status: DOCKED AT [PLANET 326-OCE-894 - SECTOR G] Course: N/A Systems:

Navigation: COURSE REACHED / STABLE

Engines: UPPER - ONLINE, TANK 0.72 / LOWER - ONLINE, TANK 0.68 / OUTPUT ALIGNED

Reactor: ONLINE / FUNCTIONING OPTIMAL

O2: STABLE

Electrical: STABLE

Communications: ONLINE

Shields: OFFLINE / FUNCTIONING N/A

Weapons: OFFLINE / FUNCTIONING N/A

Security: CAMERAS ONLINE / ALL FUNCTIONAL

Administration: MAP OFFLINE / CONNECTION SECURE / SHIP FILES UPDATING FOR MISSION / ALL CREW ACCOUNTED FOR

Medbay: EQUIPMENT ONLINE / FUNCTIONAL / CREW FILES UP TO DATE

Supplies: [ONE] CRATES SHORT  

Storage Chutes: CLEAR

Vents: CLEAR

Notes: [SKELD D34-H120] docked at [PLANET 326-OCE-894 - SECTOR G] successfully. No transport issues to report. All supplies for transport intact and in transfer process to base. Mission files currently integrating to ship system. Crew integrating to mission base to assist in tasks, exploration, and supply dropoff. Weapons and shields offline to align with docking procedures. Course will remain unlaid until HQ supplies further information.

                                               ===+===+===

It had been a good long while since Bunbun worked on an exploration ship. She’d been stuck updating supply line SKELDs for awhile, and got bogged down repairing virus bound code in defensive SKELDs for longer. Exploration ships were like little breathers in the middle. It meant she just had to worry about one ship, once all the updates were done. She could sit and watch the stars. Make a friend, if she was lucky. And, on days like these, it meant she’d be helping out with something bigger. Planet 236-OCE-849 was a gorgeous world. A new one, too! Sector G was largely new to HQ. They had high hopes for the planets and inhabitants. This one in particular was the first they’d set up a base on. Crashing waves and strange colorful formations were the source of many rumors across the airwaves. Bun had been unable to see the planet’s surface as they descended, but the views before they made landing preparations were breathtaking. Most of it was enveloped by an ocean. The water bound world was like a painted marble, little bits of vibrant colors poking through. She’d never seen land so vivid. It made her all the more eager to get down to the surface.

The door of the ship opened with a loud hiss of pressurized air. Metal clanked against itself as the two halves pulled themselves apart, the groaning making everything in the vicinity go still. Of course, what happened afterwards was anything but. The gangplank was already lowered, so the cooped up crewmates came scrambling out. Captain Groud was first, their voice echoing back towards the ship as they called for the Mission Lead. Silk trailed after, one of xyr robots hot on xyr heels. Rose and Laser went off as a pair, aiming to tend to any wounded and check how defenses were going. Nanner emerged with supplies already loaded, a couple crewmates from the planet coming to help her transport them where needed. Lemon and Junior were off to check the base’s energy status, the son sticking anxiously close to his father. River, to no one’s surprise, sauntered off the ship to go find somewhere to lounge. Groud said he’d help when they needed him, but from the looks the rest of the crew gave, there was probably a fat chance. That left Bunbun walking down the gangplank last. She was glad now that she’d pulled down her solar visor. The light outside was nearly blinding compared to the ship’s lobby. Around her she could see miles and miles of open sea, the bluish purple waves almost hauntingly familiar. Like an echo of the blue green waters she had back at home… I wonder why the water here is more purple… I bet Rose might know. She only took her eyes off the ocean when something crunched under her boot. She drew back hastily, afraid she’d stepped on some planetary inhabitant- only to draw in a sharp breath from surprise. The ground she stood on was a bright pastel orange. Upon closer inspection, it looked to be made out of some sort of… finely webbed rock? Coral, she realized, eyes widening. Her gaze snapped up to the island they’d landed on. The whole thing looked like a fractured rainbow, colors radiating across the ground. It was all made of the same webbed rock- coral, as she’d remembered. The realization had her bouncing on her heels. I’m standing on an island made of coral!!! She took another hesitant step. It crunched again under her foot. She couldn’t keep herself from giggling as she kept moving, feet dancing over coral that shifted from orange to yellow to green to purple. A myriad of colors, and all so bright!!! She’d never laid eyes on anything quite like it. “Enjoying the scenery?” a voice called, snapping Bun out of her happy dance. She froze in place, instantly standing to attention and trying not to drop her tablet. Another voice laughed, the sound carrying closer as her face flushed. When Groud’s star patched green and Silk’s beat up purple came into view, she let herself breathe. Ok. So. She hadn’t entirely made a fool out of herself. These two, at least, knew who she was. “M-maybe a little, Captain, eheheh,” she called sheepishly. “I’ve never been on a planet with coral islands before.” “Well, it’s a treat for you then!” Groud laughed. “Hey, if you’re not busy, why don’t you go head down to the power room?” “Oh, are the base crewmates busy?” Bun blinked. “Yeah, a little,” Groud nodded. “There’s a lot going on. Lots to update and lots to move.” “That, and Lemon ‘n Junior said they might need some help,” Silk added. Between you and me, I think they just want someone they can rely on to help figure the energy out.” Bunbun’s face flushed again, the warmth from Groud’s voice and Silk’s visor-shadowed smile buoying her mood higher. She’d only been with this crew a few days, but they trusted her this much? … Honestly, she couldn’t tell if that was foolish or not. But things needed fixing, and her crewmates needed help. So, off she went.

The base layout was pretty standard. It was a bit compressed to fit the strange coral island, but they’d managed to fit everything in about the right place. Lucky for Bun, she didn’t have too far to go. The building to the gangplank’s right would give her access to Electrical’s courtyard. The crunching of multicolored polyps beneath her feet made her smile with giddiness, picking up the pace to get inside the base. The door was already left open- standard procedure for operating periods- so she strolled right through. Nobody seemed to be waiting for her in the building’s lobby. She’d guess they were all outside, if it weren’t for a few voices. She could hear a couple people down in the security area. River and some other security crewmates, if her auditory memory served. They were talking pretty boisterously. She hooked a hasty left out towards the courtyard, eager to move on before one of them noticed her. The courtyard was once again standard. Four generators, one control panel along the outside wall, and cagey wire fencing around the edges. Bunbun found herself wondering once again what that was meant to keep out. On a new planet like this, nobody really knew what to expect. It could be anything. Images of creeping beasts and flashing eyes started to bubble up, so she shoved the thought out of her mind. It was fine! The fence would do its job, surely. Just as she would do hers. It’s fine. Lemon and Junior were standing before the control panel, their confused chatter making Bun glad they enlisted her help. From the frustrated looks on their faces, they needed it. They should teach more cross system repair in the academy… oh dear… “You two need some help?” Bun called, striding over to the panel. The pair looked up, relief instantly appearing on their faces. “Bunbun, thank fuck,” Lemon sighed. He leaned against the wall, pulling his goggles back up over unruly red hair. “we’re really goin through the ringer here…” “Y-yeah, uh, any help would be really appreciated,” Junior added sheepishly. He fiddled with his tablet, nervous fingers closing out a couple HQ manual tabs. “Of course, guys,” Bunbun smiled shyly. She tilted her head at the open panel, a mess of wires greeting her. Well. That was. Not encouraging. Her brows furrowed the more she looked, eyes trying to trace input to output and back. “... ok. I uh. I see several problems here.” “That’s an understatement,” Lemon snorted, shaking his head. “I don’t even know where to start.” “Did you make sure to take the relevant systems offline?” Bun asked. “Already done,” Junior nodded. He held up his tablet, a couple tabs pulled up to show electrical systems operating on reserve. “We can’t keep it offline for too long, or else the lights are gonna go out. Which, um, wouldn’t be super fun.” “Right, we’ll have to move fast,” Bunbun replied. “I think I can manage that.” Rubbing her hands together, she eyed the mess of wires before them. She’d handled worse, right? This wouldn’t take too terribly long. It was only when she remembered the other two were watching that her confidence faltered. Was she supposed to help? Was it even ok to take over here??? “... Is, um, is it ok if I… uh… manage it…?” She chuckled timidly, scuffing a boot on the ground. “By all means, dear,” Lemon chuckled, giving her a little dramatic bow as he moved back. “I’ll give you all the space you need.” “Just remember we’re here to help if you need!” Junior offered, scooting back to his dad’s side. He smiled nervously, the sun flashing off his visor as he shifted a bit in place. Gathering courage, if his next little quip was anything to go by. “We might, uh, know the reactor better, but we still know our way around a pair of wire cutters! Eheheheh...” Bunbun smiled gratefully at them both. “Of course, thank you. I’m, um, gonna get on this as fast as I can.” With that, she fixed her attention on the wires once more. Whoever set this base up hadn’t been picky about organization. She could fix that easy enough. She’d just… start by sorting the colors. Taking a breath, the electrician hefted up her tablet, free hand reaching carefully for the nearest red wire. Yeah. This would be over in a sinch. And maybe later, she could go explore a bit more. The thought made her grin wide, fingers flying between wires even faster. Oh, yes. Seeing some more of this beautiful planet would be worth any circuitry headaches. She’d just have to remember to add this to the ship’s log later…

                                              ===+===+===

SHIP SYSTEM REALTIME LOG: System setting: DOCKED [STORAGE AND VENT MONITORING]

Location: SECTOR G Ship Status: DOCKED AT [PLANET 326-OCE-894 - SECTOR G] Course: N/A Systems: 

Supplies: [ONE] CRATES SHORT  

Storage Chutes: CLEAR

Vents: CLEAR

…

Supplies: [ONE] CRATES SHORT  

Storage Chutes: MATERIAL BUILDUP DETECTED  

Vents: CLEAR

…

Supplies: [ONE] CRATES SHORT  

Storage Chutes: CLEAR

Vents: CLEAR

[milstrim]

There is Good in the Dark

Chapter 3--The Crack in the Truth

The night was eerily bright, the streets of New York City shining with the harsh yellow of apartment lights and buildings and bright, obnoxious billboards. As always, the City that Never Sleeps was alive with the honking of passersby, the sirens of harried police cars, and the whooshing of large metal wings.

The man steering the wings thumbed a flash drive clutched in his hand importantly, sticking close to the shadows. He was clearly in a hurry, his eyes darting for the nearest way out of the city without alerting the Squadron Supreme. Don't get him wrong, Sam Wilson was no coward, but he knew how to pick his battles, and fighting an entire team of heroes by himself was something he was smart enough to avoid. At least until he could get the information he'd taken from the FBI out of the city and to the admittedly shady company that had hired him across the country. Thankfully, he'd managed to not trip any alarm or even be noticed.

A red laser burst in a straight line in front of the Falcon, who spread his wings forward and forced himself upwards in a strange spiral to avoid the blast of heat he could feel hot against his skin even a few feet away. His goggles scanned the street in front of him, but he didn't need them to spot the bulky red and gold figure standing straight, arms crossed, on the building across the street. The red glow in his eyes had yet to recede, a triumphant smirk plastered to his face.

"Falcon," boomed Hyperion. He flew over, still standing straight and moving across the sky effortlessly. "You are under arrest."

Sam hesitated, glancing around. His eyes narrowed as he spotted the other figure hiding in the shadows. Only one more. "Hurts to know I don't get the whole entourage. And weren't you supposed to go after Stark first?"

"They're dealing with him as we speak, so don't go calling for help," Hyperion said, coming closer. Sam lifted an eyebrow in confusion. Like he would call Stark for help.

"Noted. So we're going with the regular gig, hands in the air and all that?"

"New orders, Wilson. We're not just taking criminals in anymore."

Sam barely managed to dodge out of the way as Hyperion burst forward in a blurry red flash. The hero crashed into the wall that Sam had been hovering in front of barely a moment before, the building trembled underneath the alien's force. Without a second thought, Sam zoomed off, searching desperately for an escape as the red and gold figure refocused its attention on him, accompanied by a shiny green blur on that stupid fucking hoverboard.

""Hands in the air, Falcon!" would've been enough!!" Sam yelled, thundering through the streets. Sam was fast, but Hyperion was faster. Barely a minute zipping through the air and there was a heavy resistance. A tug on his wing, yanking powerfully.

The metal snapped and suddenly Sam was plundering, twisting and spinning in the air. He tried to right himself as he approached the ground, but the wing still attached to him encumbered his success. Even as he reached up to snap it off he knew it was a lost cause, the ground was so close and the air so cold with fear he was--

Sam let out a strangled yelp, his face only feet from the rough pavement. His breaths were quick and panicked, but he swallowed the fear down, instead twisting his head to see what had stopped him from splatting into a puddle against the ground. He'd been expecting Hyperion or Osborn to grab him--perhaps this had been a fake-out and he was just going to a SHIELD prison--but instead he was met with weirdly familiar narrowed eyes and a chipper attitude.

He groaned, "Not you."

"Yes, me!" the kid responded. Spider-Man began to swing, Sam along for the ride as he was pulled along by the leg. He was about to protest, but saw the growling expressions of the two heroes that had tried to kill him and thought better of it.

Instead, he asked, "Have you got a plan for them, hotshot?"

"Yep."

"Mind clueing me in?"

"Nah."

"Real helpful there, thank you," Sam said drily.

"No problem, dude." Spider-Man swung higher, steadily growing height, but Sam didn't think he'd get away quick enough. Hyperion was zooming forward in a bright blur, and Sam twisted, sure that they were about to be hit by the approaching figure--

A silver blur collided with the red one barreling towards them. The two zipped off to the side, the silver figure overtaking the red one and managing to slam them into the nearest building. Sam's eyes narrowed as he identified the figure. Spider-Man didn't slow down as Iron Man and Hyperion slammed into each other, just continued swinging higher. Sam looked away from the hero and villain to glance up at the kid carrying him.

"Where the hell are we going!?" he yelled up, frantic.

"Here!!"

Spider-Man looped one last time into the sky in a great arc. There was nothing that indicated what the villain was talking about, and then there was a gap in the sky. Sam's eyes widened before squeezing shut in anticipation as they dove through, landing heavily on the inside of a plane. An invisible plane. Of course Stark had an invisible plane.

"Thank you so much for dropping in, Mr. Wilson," greeted a cocky voice as Sam stood up, brushing himself off. He looked at the pilot's seat in confusion, glancing down at where the hangar had closed, hiding the silver suit from view. Stark stood up out of the seat, stepping over to him with a confident grin. "Oh, that wasn't me in the suit. It'll break itself apart in about three, two, and one--and I bet Hyperion's really angry about that right about now."

"What's your game, Stark?"

"Game? Why does it have to be a game?"

"Because I feel like I've died and gone to pompous jerk land."

"Is that any way to talk to your new partners in crime?" Spider-Man popped up. Sam raised an eyebrow.

    Clint stalked forward in the shadows, his feet crunching softly against the gravel. He moved onto the softer grass the moment he could, keeping his bow angled downwards as he approached the nondescript building. A smirk grew on the archer's face as he stepped through the door, raising his bow in anticipation and then lowering it when there was nothing to be found.

"Bingo," the runaway grinned, catching sight of a weapon hung on the wall.

The core of it glowed with the promise of power. The lead he'd gotten--from a SHIELD agent just an hour ago who'd bargained the information for her life--had promised of a powerful, alien powered gun. It was supposed to neutralize unaware alien Hyperion and annoyingly otherworldly Mysterio, and after the jackass' promise on the news just last night he was anxious to get his hands on it. At the very least, it'd give him some time to escape whenever the team of heroes came after him.

Clint retracted his bow, placing it on his back and reaching up with hesitant hands for the firearm. Just as his fingers glanced with the cool metal, there was movement reflected in his glasses. His eyes narrowed and, quicker than a shot, he swerved around and drew his bow in one fluid motion, pointing it at the woman just feet from him.

"Well, if it isn't the Itsy Bitsy Spider."

"How are you, Tweety Bird?" Romanoff responded, her arm outstretched threateningly, the gauntlets on her wrist crackling with electricity.

"So? Deathmatch for the weapon?"

Romanoff responded the way she usually did, with a shot. Clint barely dodged out of the way, tucking and rolling. He carried the momentum and shot an arrow that whizzed from his bow fluidly. Romanoff shot her own burst of electricity at it, combatting the arrow and forcing it to stop and drop midair. The weapon now equal distance between them, they glanced at the firearm, each other, the firearm again--they both made a grab for it.

Romanoff tugged it off of the wall before he did, positioning it in her arms, ready to shoot even as Clint drew back an explosive arrow, when the weapons crumpled in her arms. Caught off guard, the woman glanced down at the broken metal pieces, the powerful core dimming to nothingness.

"What is this?" Clint asked at the same moment Natasha muttered, "A setup?"

Before they could do anything, there was a tearing noise above them, the ceiling screeching and screaming. Clint and Natasha glared up as a piece of the metal roof cut, a copper blade poking through, before being peeled back and revealing gleaming green eyes and a cocky, vile grin. Natasha's arm outstretched at the approaching figure, their hooked tail clinging onto the ceiling as they prepared to dip down.

"A fake weapon to draw us out, huh?" Clint asked.

"Worked like a charm," laughed the Scorpion. Mac Gargan, Clint's brain supplied. "Bullseye said you'd be stupid enough for this, Barton, but I'm surprised at you, Romanoff."

"Yeah? I'm surprised you were dumb enough to come out here all by yourself," Romanoff dared, tensing ever so slightly.

"To take down two unpowered outcasts?" Gargan grinned. His tail crackled with red electricity, his foot stepped over the side of the hole he'd carved into the side. "I'm sure I can handle you--"

Clint held back a flinch as a dark blur, really only visible by the blue glow on the chest, cut across the copper hero. The man was swept aside in a thundering force, out of view of the two spies left confused and waiting beneath the makeshift skylight. Hesitantly, Clint exchanged a glance with Natasha, raising his brow in confusion at the yells of annoyance and anger above them.

Barely twenty, very awkward seconds later, a head popped over the side. Clint groaned immediately, dropping his bow and reaching for his hearing aid as he recognized the young villain. As his hand grazed against the device in his ear, vying to turn it off, there was a quick thwip! and his hand was pulled away from his face with an indignant, "Hey! I just saved your asses!"

"You don't think we could have taken that jackass?" Clint dared.

"Definitely not you."

"Excuse me--"

"Shut up," Natasha ordered. Clint glanced at her in annoyance but otherwise did as told. "What are you here for, Spider-Man? The weapon?"

"You," the kid answered simply. "C'mon. Pincer here's all tied up and the jet's gonna pick us up in two minutes."

"What? Did Stark drop you off to get your ass kicked by the two of us?" Clint teased.

"Other way around. He's getting two more."

Clint glanced at Natasha. She looked up at Spider-Man and said, "Two more what?"

     Tony was both relieved and annoyed that he'd ended up with the two meatheads. Part of him thought it would've been better for him to take care of the two spies while Peter got the people more around his strength levels, and the other part of him knew that the moment the kid saw Thor he would drop everything and beg the god to take him to Asgard. The kid would need close supervision if he was ever going to be around the Asgardian.

So, that led the man to where he was now. Hovering, a hundred feet in the air, as thunder rolled across the sky in swirling roves and the ground splintered and cracked, an alien and a beast wrestling below. Iron Man barely dodged out of the way as a lightning strike beat down a few feet away from him. He glanced back over at where the two had broken apart, desert dust rattling around them in their wake.

Seizing the lull, he dove down, planting down firmly between the two and extending his palms in either direction of the villains. Hulk growled and frowned, but Thor smiled and chuckled, the electricity crackling in his eyes fading but his eyes remaining just as light a blue.

"Stark!" the Asgardian called out, "What is the meaning of this?"

"Relax, blondie," he responded. Hulk sniffed. "You too, Green Bean. I've got a proposition, a little information. Just follow me and I'll explain."

"How do I know this isn't an offer, Man of Iron? Or a plot to distract me from beating the Hulk. Once again. I win all the time."

"No you don't!!" Hulk practically roared. Tony closed his eyes, able to practically feel the yell from even where he stood, feet away.

"It has to do with the Squadron Supreme, and taking them down." Despite their well known rival, Tony could see Thor and Hulk exchanging doubtful glances. He sighed. "And I've got a lot of snacks--look can you just get on the plane?"

"What kind of snacks?" Hulk asked.

"Whatever the hell you want. Plane. Now."

It worked. Eventually.

     Peter leaned lazily against the back of the pilot chair, eyes roaming over the plane full of villains in carefully concealed apprehension. He didn't understand how Tony, who'd left Friday to pilot the reflective jet, looked so at ease. The suit remained stationary as Tony paraded around the room, somehow confident enough to leave himself practically defenseless. There was a pleased grin on his face even as the Black Widow scowled at him.

Despite the teenager's desperation to meet Thor, and his assurance in his own abilities, he still found himself tense. At first he'd thought it was fear at being in such an enclosed space with people whose kill counts ran higher than the number of kids that had gone to Midtown High. Wait--Midtown High? Spider-Man's eyes narrowed in confusion. He didn't go to high school. He'd learned basic math and reading when he'd been trapped in SHIELD and Tony had taught him the rest, but the name was eerily familiar.

Familiar. That was the strange word that Peter felt could describe the atmosphere in the room. After about ten minutes flying, the boy had come to realize that fear hadn't been what had been making him tense. It was unrecognizable recognition. It made the hair on his arms raise and the back of his head rattle with suspicion. With wrongness. Yet, despite the odd comfort of the world's most wanted all individually mingling in an invisible jet, something was missing.

Peter thought that this was what Tony would define as an 'itch.'

After a few more minutes of tense silence, Barton spoke up from where he was twirling an arrow between his fingers. "Alright, enough already. Where are we going, Stark?"

"Well, since you asked so nicely," Tony grinned. He gestured to the front of the jet, where Peter was standing, and out the window. The teenager turned as his dad instructed. "Go ahead and take a look outside the window and look for yourself."

The villains moved to huddle in a loose circle around the front of the jet. Peter stepped aside as Tony came up with them, plopping back down in the pilot's seat. There were pursed lips and squinted eyes as gazes peered out the glass.

"Is that--?" Wilson asked, screwing his eyes in an effort to make out what even Peter was having trouble distinguishing. Thankfully, the teenager's mask managed to pick it out of the sky for him.

"I do not understand, Stark," Thor said. "Why is the sky acting up? And where is our destination?"

And then the endless blue was interrupted by a shimmering ripple. Peter's eyes widened as he took in the Helicarrier, shining and silver with the Stark logo branded to the side. Peter blinked, a sliver of an unconstructed backstory. There was a swirl of copper, swimming, practically fighting for life to not be drowned in the pool of eerie light. A face flashed across his memories, kind and familiar. A hurtful scrap of grief and love.

"Welcome," Tony announced, "to our new headquarters."

The swirl of copper was overwhelmed by a blue sea of lies. The face and the memory of it were gone, leaving the teenager nothing but the underwhelming feeling of confused and unknowing grief. A crack he didn't understand. Peter blinked, refraining from shaking his head as he stared out at what the other villains were watching curiously.

"Our?" Romanoff asked.

The Quinjet turned gracefully in the air, planting itself onto the no longer cloaked Helicarrier, the hull of the smaller ship opening to allow the villains to exit onto the platform. Nobody moved just yet as Tony stepped out of his chair like nothing even mildly important was going on. In contrast, a shiver ran up his spine.

"If you choose to accept."

Hulk grunted in annoyance, practically throwing himself out the plane, awfully restrained from killing everyone for throwing him around a plane. Everyone followed. Peter stayed as close to Tony as he could justify as he stepped off of the plane with him as well as trying to figure out what was setting off his senses. He peered around the flat and empty surface of the Helicarrier, but found nothing.

"What exactly are we supposed to be accepting?" Sam asked gruffly.

"Yes," Thor agreed. "You have dragged us through the extent of the Nine Realms and back without so much as the simplest of explanations, Stark."

"That's what we're here for. I thought you'd like to see what we're working with, and since the Squadron ordered hits on all of us, I felt like New York was out of the question. For a little bit, at least."

There was debating silence. Barton gruffed, "Y'know, he's got a point."

"Of course I do," Tony said, leading them to the nearest building where a door slid open for them. "Now just follow me. We'll need proper space for what I want to explain."

Peter looked at Tony questioningly. His dad had given him the barest of explanations as he'd told him they were collecting everyone else the Squadron had ordered a hit on--save for the Captain, who he'd just said would be here soon enough. How, Peter didn't know. Not that he was particularly excited, but he couldn't deny he was nervous. This all felt like so much. He liked it when it was just him and Tony.

Tony gave him a reassuring glance back, but said nothing. Peter straightened, mentally noted that his mask was still snugly slipped over his face, and followed.

Another copper swirl.

     Tony watched with critical eyes as the assholes he'd collected milled around the table in the middle of the room, clearly still wondering what this was all about. Peter was doing the same, and though he was wearing a mask, Tony could tell the teenager was continuously glancing at him for answers and reassurance. He'd been trying his best to give the kid something to grasp onto, but with everyone else--well, almost everyone else--all around, there wasn't anything he could do but just start.

The villain waved his hand over the table, which burst into bright blue light under his ghost of a touch. The recording of red and broken reality burst up in front of everyone. All eyes, confused and interested and flashing with guarded emotions, turned to look at what had appeared in front of them.

"Ever had an itch you just can't scratch?" Tony started. Hulk nodded and he had to keep back a smile of amusement. "I had a crack at Mysterio's stone. That was what came out."

"Do I really look like that when I smile?" Barton joked. "Remind me to never do that."

"Done," Romanoff said. Barton sent her an annoyed look.

"So what?" the archer shrugged, unbothered by the video playing on repeat in front of them. "So, the wizard's stone created a vision to another world. Or a mass hallucination or something. Why does it matter?"

"Because it did make a mass hallucination, and we're living in it," Tony said. There were blinks all around, confused and incredulous. Even Peter, who had been endlessly supportive and backing him up without question, gave him an odd look, one eye of his mask narrowing in bewilderment. Still, he pressed on, confidence in only half of his words. Everything had felt so wrong for so long now, and maybe this was it. Or part of it. "This crack is the truth. What if we were once a team of villains so strong, the Squadron tried to wipe us from reality?"

There were glances all around.

"This is crazy talk, Stark," Natasha said.

"How so?" he challenged. Peter--Bless him--chimed in.

"Yeah! We're standing in a room with a ball of green radiation and a Norse god from legend. Mysterio's a sorcerer from another world, who says he can't change bits of reality?"

"But, us. Be a team," Wilson said. "None of us even know the word. And for us to not remember any of it?"

"Don't you think everything's been a little odd?" Tony countered, because it had been. It had been mind-bogglingly strange and unsettling. Something was missing, and it kept him awake at night, making him feel incomplete. Sometimes Tony would say things or do things--corny lines and dumb decisions like sending robots to destroy the city on nothing but an incomplete whim--that he didn't mean to do. They'd just come out like--like someone had put them there.

And that wasn't the only thing. His little mansion hideout in New York, and even this one buried in the ravine of the Arizona desert, they weren't him. They weren't a place that would be considered home, with blinding white halls and bright blue lights that burned at his eyes and left him nowhere nice to just be Tony. The only place that was even relatively homey in his home, was Peter.

Peter was the only thing that had felt right for weeks, and even then...

The way that Peter would light up a room and tear a smile from his face with an overwhelming wave of fondness, homey dinners had in his cold lab, tussling a hair through his hair in passing--that was definitely real, but the circumstances were wrong. Tony didn't know for how long that he'd felt this way, but more often than not the supervillain would stop in his tracks with the notion that he needed to pick Peter up from school (even though the kid didn't go to school), or chaperone a movie night on a worn leather couch that he didn't possess. Or that there was a hand he was supposed to hold, two arms slung over his kid's shoulder. A half that was missing during the night...

Tony mentally shook his head, forcefully rattling the missing thoughts from his head, to change and examine the room. Surprisingly, he found himself reflected in their eyes, all so startlingly blue. The same confused, far off look that indicated something was missing.

As Tony came to, Sam cleared as well, shaking his head and staring directly at him. There was a guarded understanding reflected back at him darkly. Tony cleared his throat and said, "Only one way to find out. Get that stone from Spectrum. Who's in?"

Barton started, "You want us to attack the Squadron, because you have a warm and fuzzy feeling we were once teammates?"

"Yep."

"Sorry. I'm out," he snapped.

"Are you joining?" Thor asked, pointing his hammer at the Hulk. He shook his head with a grumbled, "No." Thor turned back to Tony with a bright smile. "Then count me in."

Peter practically vibrated next to him, and it was all he could do not to roll his eyes at the kid. "We've got one. Who else?"

Sam spoke up, considerate and sarcastic all at once. "So things are a little odd, what's your plan?"

"Well, we need all of us here, first of all," he responded, nodding his head at where the video of the Captain stood in horribly bright colors, defiance clear in the fractions of his face.

"The Captain?" Clint laughed. Even Hulk's lips curled in amusement. "Good luck with that. No one's ever seen him, and he definitely wouldn't leave whatever the hell he's doing to come to this shithole of a meeting."

"Let's find out."

Tony raised his gauntlet, pointing it directly at Sam and letting the repulsor whine. Immediately an arrow from Barton was raised towards Peter in response, threatening. Everything went by so fast. Sam yelled in indignation, Barton grumbled out a panicked warning, Peter held out an arm, flinching backwards as he prepared for a fight all while the repulsor grew and then shot--

There was a shwing! and a glint and a gruff statement of pain that pushed against his armored chest, forcing him to stumble back in response. Tony's heart was beating wildly as the sharply bright red and black swung back to the shadows of the door. The room was baited breath as a boot stepped out of the shadows, followed by icy blue and sunny blond.

Tony stared at the Captain as if a rip had been sewn back together.

// Ch 1 // Ch 2 // Ch 4 // Ch 5 // Ch 6 // Ch 7 // Ch 8 //

[storiesof-humanity]

Feral pt1

Its been 7 years since the coalition fought the humans. 7 years since they released a virus that killed all the humans it came in contact with.

When humans had pushed them back to their home worlds ready to wipe them out but then they released the virus.

It killed every human it came in contact with in 2 months all humans died living nothing. As if the civilization never existed.

The only remaining humans where isolated and where prisoners held in zoos/prisons for the amusement of the races that fought as part of the coalition.

But now the coalition found the human home world a blue, beautiful, pearl in the edge of the galaxy that is as beautiful as is deadly to aliens.

After pressure from scientists to go exploring the world of a once powerful civilization as while as pressure from the military to discover any hidden weapons humans left behind the coalition government agreed to let an expeditionary force to go search the human home world.

________________________________________

Upon arriving on earth orbit the coalition fleet ran into trouble. An automated defense system destroyed 1/3 of the fleet before the system could be shut down.

Coalition forces looked down on the planet in amazement with cities so big that they could be seen from orbit like mountains but closer scans showed that they are nothing but metal shells of what they once were.

Then the landing came a force of 1,000 soldiers and 50 scientists were sent down lead by Dr. Vir.

_________________________________________

Upon landing in an open clearing the scientists started setting equipment and the soldiers set out to start setting up defense and a perimeter that can be used as staging area for future troops and supplies.

_________________________________________

Its been 57 days and nothing exciting has happened troops go on patrol except for rain a few insects bitting troops leaving them to die in pain a group of huge quadruple animals walking by the clearing with horns and ramming the gates a couple of times before leaving leaving the base on lock down.

But the next day patrols reported movement in the tree line over the radio.

"Sir our devices are sensing movements in the north what should we do?" A soldier over the radio said.

"Keep moving it most be a animal or someth-"

"WE HAVE CONTACT WEST OF US!"

"Soldier stay calm down what are your coordi-"

"OH NOVA THEY'RE BEHIND US!" *Laser rifles firing* "THEY'RE ON THE TREES THEY ARE EVERYWHERE-"

Everyone in the control room went quite as the communication cut out.

"Do we know their location?" The officer in charge asked.

"No sir the communication was cut out before we could close in on the signal." Someone in the control room said.

"Someone tell Dr. Vir we are on lock down till we figure out what happened."

_________________________________________

That night as the officers and Dr. Vir met to discuss on what to do a voice over a radio said there was movement on the tree line.

As everyone reached the gate a battared group of coalition soilders walked out of the forest 4 of them carrying 2 badly injured soldiers and 2 carrying something in a bag that was thrashing and kicking.

Once inside the base the 2 injured soldiers were rushed towards medical while the 6 soldiers ran towards a cage that were set up to hold any animals they came across.

Once the soldiers set the bag down they ran towards the exit.

Only 4 made it. The other 2 had been so badly hurt that they were not able to run. The 4 closed the gate door and turned to watch with the rest of the doctors and officers as the creature emerged from the bag looking around before locking eyes with the 2 soldiers left inside the gate.

The creature stood up and ran towards the soldiers that were at least 2 feet taller than the creature. The creature jumped on the back of one the soldiers who let out a scream of agony as the creature tore into the soldiers neck with its mouth.

The second soldier who was frozen in fear finally reacted by kicking the creature sending it flying towards the other side of the gate slamming against the bars.

For a moment everyone just stared at the none moving creature they did not even notice the wounded soldier's wound started to boil and eating away at the body.

As soon as everyone thought the creature was dead and let out a sigh of relief the creature stood up slowly looked at the soldier with cold green eyes and then ran at full sprint towards the soldier.

Before the creature could get a hold of the soldier he was grabbed by the shoulder and thrown out the cage before the door slammed shut.

"What in the 7 Suns is that thing?!" Dr. Vir said clearly shaken by what he just saw as while as the other young soldiers and officers.

"That thing Dr. Vir is one of the most dangerous creatures in the universe" General Limung said in a calm voice of what is to be expected from a war hero.

"This one right here is a rare one from what I've heard Dr. Green eyes, red hair these are pretty rare even before the war Dr." The general said as he kneed down and stared at the creature and the creature staring back never looking away.

"Genral in the name of Nova what is that thong?!" The Dr said as he cowered with the others in the corner from the creature.

"Well Dr that right there is a human and a young one at that maybe 12 to 14, female by my guess."

"But aren't all humans the remaining locked away or died from the virus 7 years ago?" One of the soldiers said.

"Most did yes but there's been rumors that young humans around the age of 10 and younger were able to adapt fast enough to the virus that they became immune to it." The young human now played with the died soldiers blood drawing on the ground as if though it was bored now.

"Mean, clever, tough creatures young humans. Who remembers all those casualties we had when we retook the planets that had human cities?" The general asked to no one specifically.

"Well mostly all adult full grown humans died but the young ones just like that one." He points at the kid. "Those put up a fight. It took an entire battle group to clear up any planet." The general said turning back to the kid who was now kicking the dead soldiers body to pulp.

"When older humans are out the equation and aren't around to raise the young to mold them into what human society wanted a proper human to be they turn into what nature in their world meant them to be, to go back to their most primal dark parts of their minds with no filter that adult humans put there or what humans called it, "going feral"."

The Dr now looked into cage to see the kid struggling to break one the legs of the soldier that was at least the same size as the kid. Turning around the Dr and the General give their backs to the kid to discuss on what to do.

*Crack*

"How do we deal with it?" The Dr asked the General.

*Crack*

"We have 3 options Dr."

*Scratch*Scratch*Scratch*Scratch*

"We can kill this one and move on and take our chances well we continue with the mission with more out there."

*Scratch*Scratch*Scratch*Scratch*

"Second option we can leave abandon mission and bomb this planet and lose all the knowledge humans had and move on."

*Scratch*Scratch*Scratch*Scratch*

"Not an option General" the Dr said. "What's the 3rd option?"

*Scratch*Scratch*Scratch*Scratch*

"The only thing that can deal with a young human is a fully grown one Dr" the General said.

*Scratch*Scratch*Scratch*Scratch*

"In name of Nova if a young human can do all this imagine what a grown matured human can do?" The Dr said looking down at a piece of paper with their options.

*Scratch*Scratch*Scratch*Scratch*

"I have Dr I've seen what a grown human can do." The general had a long look as if remembering something. "I've also seen what a human trained for war can do. I fear if humans were to ever rise again we wouldn't be able to stop them." The general said still have the look as if he has seen thousands of battles and deaths.

"General contact the government tell them that they need to send us a grown human to calm down this young one to see what will happen."

"You got it Dr."

*Swoosh*

The Dr and the General turn on time to see a flying broken, sharpened, bone fly through the air and pierce a scientist that was taking photos of the young human through its eye.

Everyone turned to the human to see her nodding at herself laughing and smiling and she proceeded to break the other bone leg and start sharpening it on the concrete floor by rubbing one end against it as she whistled a tune. At the same time the sentries on the wall turned on their search lights and aimed them towards the tree line they saw hundreds or even thousands of young humans from different heights, sizes, to different skin, hair, eye color.

They all did have something in common. They all were whistling the same tune as the little girl in cage.

The same tune that will be played when humans rise again.

[flipomatic]

Range of Emotion: Chapter 4 - Love

Author Note: Volume 8 spoilers continue. This is non canon.

First Chapter Previous Chapter

___________________________________________________

A green fluid was dripping slowly from Penny’s chest, leaving bright splatters of neon along the ground. Ruby’s clothes were covered in it, making her even easier to track for the virus that had taken control.

They were outside, near the crater where Penny had crash landed before. Ruby stood more than ten feet away from Penny, with Crescent Rose drawn. She held it in a defensive stance, eyes wide with concern.

Weiss and Blake were nearby, with their weapons drawn as well. Ruby signaled for them to stay back, so they watched and waited.

The virus that had occupied Penny’s body wasn’t concerned with the other two. It only had attention for two things: the relic and Ruby. It had first just tried to leave the building to go to the relic, kicking its rocket boots into gear to fly through, until it spotted Ruby.

A new directive flashed; to kill the girl in the red hood. Cinder would hate it if someone else did the job before she could. Penny wasn’t sure why she had that thought, but she opposed it on every level.

Then the virus, controlling Penny’s body, attacked.

Now, as Penny wrestled to try and take back control, it whipped her blades towards Ruby. The teen dodged, using her weapon to deflect the attack. She had already taken a few hits, but still had plenty of aura remaining. At least, Penny hoped she did. She couldn’t run the scan to check, no matter how desperately she wanted too.

Even though Penny couldn’t feel her body, couldn’t feel the tightening in her chest that came with the emotion, she was afraid.

“Snap out of it Penny!” Ruby called out to her, her voice rough with emotion. “I know you’re in there!” She ducked under another attack, barely avoiding being hit.

The virus that controlled Penny didn’t respond to her. It seemed to lack the desire or even the consciousness to communicate. Instead, it brought the swords back to charge up a laser blast, aimed directly at Ruby.

Again Ruby dodged, maintaining her defensive stance.

“I won’t fight you.” The frown on Ruby’s face was more pronounced than Penny had seen before. A hint of tears glimmered in the corners of her eyes.

The virus fired the laser again, this time without having to charge it first. It struck Ruby in the chest, sending her stumbling back towards the crater.

No, this couldn’t be happening. Penny searched the virus again to look for a weakness, to try to find a way to stop it.

Penny wanted to tell Ruby to fight back, that it would be fine and she could be repaired. She was already losing the fluids that flowed through her veins, a little more damage would be fine. Especially if it kept Ruby safe.

Unfortunately, she still couldn’t find a way to take control. The virus had hijacked everything with these new instructions, keeping her locked onto those paths. Penny tried to run a code that would bring just one of her arms back, but it was rebuffed instantly.

She had no idea where this virus came from or how it had even gotten into her system. Perhaps when she jacked into the Atlas base? If so, it had taken a while to activate.

Penny could only watch as her body fired again, blasting Crescent Rose from Ruby’s hands and sending her tumbling down into the crater. As she fell, her aura flickered out. No, no no, this couldn’t be happening.

Penny’s body stepped forward to follow, but had to reconsider when it detected motion behind her.

Weiss, Penny always knew Weiss was her second favorite friend, no longer seemed content with watching her leader be attacked. She lunged towards Penny at high speed, a glyph in the air behind her. The virus, being cued by Penny’s motion sensors, dodged easily before bringing the bringing the blades around to push Weiss through.

Weiss regained her footing quickly, spinning to again face her opponent. She had her sword pointed towards Penny, but her eyes, directed at the crater and her fallen leader, showed where her attention really was. Blake had run over to the crater while Weiss lunged in, keeping a wide distance between herself and Penny.

The virus calculated the next angle of attack, not concerned about fighting both of them if it meant having an easier time achieving its other goals. The bleeding was a problem, but the program said Penny’s body could take them. That was the last thing Penny wanted.

After another moment, barely a second, Weiss leapt back into action. She lunged forward with an attack from below, which was easily deflected. The attack was weaker than usual, weaker than when Penny had trained with the team.

At the crater, Blake was leaning in to help pull Ruby up. The red hooded girl emerged slowly, but once she reached level ground she seemed able to stand on her own.

“Don’t hurt her.” Ruby said quietly, looking down at one closed fist. She left Crescent Rose on the ground.

Weiss sighed, but otherwise didn’t move. “Then what do you suggest?” While they talked, Penny tried another attack on the virus. She had to figure out how it got in, so that she could stop it. She ran a code to try and find the source, to see where it was coming from.

“I can reach her.” Ruby’s voice was stronger now, as her eyes came up to meet Penny’s. “I know it.”

Now Weiss took a step back, sword still raised. “One more chance.” She emphasized the first word.

Blake took up a spot on the opposite side of Penny, likely prepared to attack from multiple angles if needed.

The virus wasn’t worried about this. Penny didn’t think it was even capable of that kind of emotion. It just recalculated, and then raised its ring of swords once again.

Ruby didn’t move, didn’t pick up her weapon. She raised her right hand, the one that was closed, and slowly opened in it.

In her palm was a familiar object, one Penny always kept on her. It was the hair clip, which had been attached to her pocket. Ruby must’ve found it in the crater, where it fell out of Penny’s pocket as she crashed into the ground.

It still looked to be intact, which was the one and only positive for the day.

“You had this.” Ruby held up the hair clip to scrutinize it. “Since you stopped wearing it, I thought you didn’t like it.” She mused, closing her hand again around the clip. Penny wanted to say that the opposite was true, that she didn’t want it to get damaged.

The virus, not one for conversation, moved abruptly to strike. It swung the blades forward, in a spinning motion. Ruby tried to duck the blow, but it had figured out how she moved. It adjusted the trajectory to hit her in the side, again knocking her to the ground.

Penny’s body then stepped closer, grasping one of its swords to perhaps strike a final blow.

On the inside, Penny was frantically searching for a way to stop it. She was getting closer; she could feel it. She hoped Ruby would defend herself with the clip, that she would use it as a knife. It was her last line of defense.

Ruby sat up and coughed once; she still had the clip grasped tight in her hand. “I never told you what the flower means.” Her voice had weakened, but still carried her innate strength. She looked up at Penny’s body, now standing over her. “Red carnations represent affection.” Ruby’s lip raised in a small smile, as if everything was not going wrong. “And love.”

Affection and love? Penny wasn’t fully in control of her ears so she wasn’t sure if she heard that right. Ruby loved her? Penny was familiar with the concept of love, she loved her father, but she hadn’t checked it against anyone else.

What did it feel like, to be in love? Penny didn’t know that either, and she didn’t think this was the right moment to contemplate it.

In fact, she was quite short on time. The virus was raising its arm to prepare another blow, and off to the side Weiss was charging up a summon.

Luckily, due to her persistent searching, Penny finally found what she was looking for. One of her blades, the one she had lost at the Atlas base to the Ace-Ops, was emitting the virus.

The quickest way to disable it would be to disconnect from all of her blades. While booted, she could do this temporarily by resetting their program, but it would only last a minute. It would have to do for now, until she could think of a longer term solution.

Penny entered the code to reset them immediately, hoping with every wire in her body that she wasn’t too late.

As the swords reset, the ones hovering behind her dropped to the ground. As they did, Penny was finally able to move again. She opened her hand and let the last sword fall.

“Penny?” Ruby leapt onto her feet, silver eyes gleaming. “Is it really you?” Her voice broke mid question.

“I only have a minute.” Penny jumped right to what needed to be done. “It’s controlling me through the swords, we have to disable them permanently.” Think, think, how could that be done? Wait, the detach switch, that was it. “There’s a button under my bow, on the control panel. If you press it the blades will deactivate until I reattach them.” This was a safety measure after what happened with Pyrrha, though it wasn’t actually that practical. Ruby would need a long thin object to be able to activate it.

“How do I do that?” Ruby leaned forward to look on the back of Penny’s neck, squinting.

“Use the…” Penny’s voice stopped mid-sentence, as the virus started to come back and retake control. Her blades once again rose from the ground. “I…” She fought it, but again it was no use. It quickly lunged forward to try and punch Ruby, who skittered away with a shriek of surprise.

Immediately, a summoned soldier was upon her. It swung at Penny’s body to push it back, to make some distance between it and Ruby.

Blake came next, swinging around to draw the attention of the virus.

Even though the virus thought it could beat them, as Penny knew her friends were way stronger than any calculation could give them credit for.

Between the two of them, as Ruby retrieved her weapon and called for them to not hurt Penny, they were able to freeze her blades and contain her. The virus still lacked emotion, as it strived to get free to continue its goals.

Ruby approached, with the hair clip in hand. She had flipped it open to a knife, and she stood behind Penny to try and find the button she mentioned.

“This looks complicated.” Blake commented as Ruby opened the panel on Penny’s bow.

“I got it.” Ruby sounded confident, and Penny was rooting for her. She hummed quietly as she examined the interface, finally spotting the gap that contained the button. It was kept inside of a crevice, so it couldn’t be pressed by accident. “Found it.”

Though Penny couldn’t see what Ruby was doing, there was only one tool she could be using to do it. The hair clip that was also a knife was the only thing on hand that would fit.

A moment later, and it seemed like they had been successful. The blades stopped struggling to leave the ice, and Penny was able once again to feel her own limbs. The strings connecting her body to the blades disconnected, coiling into the weapons. She turned her head to look around, taking in the mess in the courtyard.

The rope from Blake’s weapon, which had been wrapped around her, loosened. Once her hands were free, Penny lifted them to look at them. They were stained green with her own blood.

Ruby stepped around her, grasping Penny’s hands with her free one. “Are you… you?” She asked, glimmering silver eyes locked on Penny’s.

“I think so.” Penny ran a system diagnostic, which made note of the steady loss of blood and inability to connect to her blades. It asked if she wanted to re-establish the connection, which Penny promptly denied.

In front of her, Ruby folded the knife back into a hair clip. She reached forward, placing it in Penny’s hands. “There, back where it belongs.”

Penny carefully clipped it back into her pocket where it would be safe, remembering what Ruby had said about it before. Love, such a foreign emotion.

Now, as Ruby collapsed to her knees and Penny wrapped her arms around her to ease her fall, perhaps she had time to consider it.

All of this time, all of these weeks, she had been fighting and struggling with her emotions. She’d felt so many different things, so much stronger than she ever had before. She’d wrestled with her decisions, with following her desires down the suboptimal path.

The relief she felt now, as Ruby was in her arms and unharmed, was also familiar.

Was love the word she was looking for all along?

Penny thought it might’ve been.

Ruby lifted her arms around Penny, holding her tightly. Penny brought one hand up to brush Ruby’s bangs, which had fallen into her face in the conflict, to the side.

“Don’t leave me again.” Ruby muttered, her cheeks tinging pink. She lifted one hand to place gently against Penny’s.

Penny didn’t have a heart, but if she did she was sure it would be racing.

“I won’t.”

[slut-kiss-g1rl]

geostorm <3

FADE IN:

INT. COURTROOM

GERARD BUTLER is at a COURT HEARING... in the FUTURE!

GERARD BUTLER

It is the future. Natural disasters have become alarmingly commonplace. Hurricanes, mudslides, floods, you name it. The level of destruction is catastrophic.

RICHARD SCHIFF

To be clear, this is the FUTURE you’re talking about?

GERARD BUTLER

The nations of the world have finally decided to take action. So, pooling our resources, we’ve invested heavily in environmental research and clean energy, and cracked down heavily on industrial emissions standards-

(laughs and laughs and laughs)

Just kidding! We’ve built a giant orbital platform that shoots the bad weather with space missiles and space lasers, of course.

RICHARD SCHIFF

So you’re the genius who built the space station. But instead of just making you the chief engineer, which would make sense, we made you director of the whole multi-national program, despite the fact that you have no administrative skills or political experience and mostly get what you want by yelling at people and punching them in the face?

GERARD BUTLER

That’s correct, you useless government fucks. You can all lick my sweaty gonads.

(moons everybody)

RICHARD SCHIFF

You’re fired and we’re giving your job to your little brother Jim Sturgess. At least he can do a passable American accent.

GERARD BUTLER

Och, ye dinnae hae ta be a deck abote et!

INT. SPACE STATION

Engineer RICHARD REGAN PAUL is aboard the WEATHER STATION when he notices that somebody has stuck a SMARTPHONE on an important CIRCUITBOARD.

RICHARD REGAN PAUL

Oh crap, somebody’s sabotaging this hundred-trillion-dollar space program using consumer electronics! I better draw everybody’s attention to this and alert my superiors!

(falls down and hits head very hard)

Duhhhh I mean I should hide this evidence and tell nobody yessss.

He stashes the EVIDENCE, but shortly afterwards the CORRIDOR he’s walking through is SEALED and all the WALL PANELS START BLASTING OFF!

RICHARD REGAN PAUL

What the fuck? Why would we design them to be able to do that? What possible situation could arise in a space station when we’d need to get rid of the WALLS in a hurry? This makes no-

(spaced)

The SPACE STATION then proceeds to turn a bunch of VILLAGERS in AFGHANISTAN into SNOWMEN.

INT. WHITE HOUSE

JIM STURGESS is having a meeting with the movie’s entire supply of Oscar-nominated actors.

JIM STURGESS

So yeah, we kind of murdered a bunch of innocent people with a giant ice ray like Mr. Freeze, oops. We need to send up an international team of brilliant engineers to the space station to investigate what went wrong, despite the fact that there’s already an international team of brilliant engineers ON the space station.

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE ANDY GARCIA

No way, Jim. As the president, I can’t have foreigners touch this station which has been funded and staffed predominately by foreigners! We’ll send up Americans.

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE ED HARRIS

ONE American. I mean if we’re going to half-ass this thing, let’s half-ass it, y’know?

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE MARE WINNINGHAM

I am also in this scene for some reason.

JIM STURGESS

Ugh fine, let’s send up Gerard. It’ll take some doing though, he and I haven’t really gotten along in the vague amount of time since you gave me his job. Seriously, the timeline is super nebulous, it could have been anything between a week and five years.

ED HARRIS

I have faith you can convince him, Jim. As your father figure and mentor, you know I support you in everything, and if you ever need somebody you can implicitly trust-

JIM STURGESS

We get it, you’re the villain, whoop-de-doo.

(leaves)

EXT. LOSER SHACK

JIM goes out to see GERARD, who is hanging with his DAUGHTER.

JIM STURGESS

Hey bro, the space laser’s been acting up. Think you could pop up to space real quick and fix it? Thanks.

GERARD’S DAUGHTER

Dad, no! You can’t go back to space! It’s too dangerous! Don’t abandon me like this!

GERARD BUTLER

OH GOD NOT THIS FUCKING TROPE. Yeah, parents should never do work that takes them away from their families for any amount of time or puts themselves at risk, no matter how important it is. I’m a shitty father because I’m agreeing to go save hundreds of millions of lives, possibly including yours. Shut the fuck up, you little turd.

GERARD immediately storms off and goes to SPACE.

EXT. HONG KONG

Suddenly the movie remembers the CHINESE BOX OFFICE and cuts to HONG KONG, where DANIEL WU is heading home with some SHOPPING.

DANIEL WU

(looks around)

Aw fuck. A famous capital city in a disaster movie? This isn’t gonna end well.

Sure enough he drops some EGGS on the ground and they immediately begin to FRY!

DANIEL WU

Holy shit the ground is apparently as hot as a stovetop! You’d think this is something the people in the street would have noticed, but uh, I guess all our shoes are made entirely of thermally nonconductive silica fibreglass?

(jumps in car, speeds off)

And our tires too, don’t forget our tires!

DANIEL drives through the streets as the pavement CRACKS and FIRE erupts out of the SUPERHEATED PAVEMENT!

DANIEL WU

Damn, the space station must have done that! Not that we ever explain how geothermal energy could possibly be controlled by space lasers!

INT. SPACE STATION

GERARD arrives aboard the SPACE STATION to meet the team of ENGINEERS.

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Welcome, Gerard! I am an asshole. A smug, unlikeable asshole. The exact kind of jerk you’d think would turn out to be the saboteur. Which is kind of awkward, because I DO turn out to be the saboteur.

AMR WAKED

It’s okay, I’ll cover for you by red herringing as hard as humanly possible in every scene I’m in.

(lurks sinisterly)

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

Meanwhile I’m the station’s commander. I exist to be your sort-of love interest with whom you never get beyond meaningful eye contact, and to make you seem hypercompetent by standing around uselessly while you do everything important.

GERARD BUTLER

Okay then, now that everybody’s in position let’s get this 2012-but-with-weather/Gravity-except-stupid-and-with-more-explosions hybrid on the road! Bring on the barrage of gratuitous global annihilation!

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

Actually there’s nowhere near as much of that kind of thing as the trailers promised. But if you like scenes where someone stares at tiny gobbledegook on a computer screen and explains what plot points it discloses, we’ve got a buttload of that!

GERARD BUTLER

(puppy dog eyes)

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

Oh fine, here’s one to tide you over.

EXT. TOKYO

Giant hail in Tokyo!

INT. SPACE STATION

GERARD BUTLER

Ta! Now let’s look at that satellite that fried Hong Kong.

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Uh, oops, unfortunately that malfunctioning satellite got smashed beyond usefulness because the hydraulic arm which was holding it malfunctioned!

GERARD BUTLER

Fine then, let’s look at the surveillance footage from when Richard Regan Paul got spaced.

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Um well we can’t see the footage of that wall malfunction because the footage has also malfunctioned.

GERARD BUTLER

Wait though, there’s still a useable recording in a leftover bit of wall that got stuck in a solar array panel! Let’s go for a spacewalk and get it.

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Sure thing WHUH OH while you’re trying to retrieve that malfunctioning bit of wall, your space suit has malfunctioned!

GERARD BUTLER

(bouncing off every part of the space station)

HEY YOU KNOW WHAT, I’M STARTING TO THINK THAT MAAAAYBE THERE’S JUST A SMIDGE OF SABOTAGE GOING ON.

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Damnit! Turns out that by the time you’re committing sabotage to cover up your sabotage to cover up your sabotage to cover up your sabotage, it starts to get kinda obvious what you’re doing.

(pause)

Nnnnnot that I have anything to do with that. Right, Amr?

AMR WAKED

(hovers creepily at the edge of frame)

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Exactly.

GERARD retrieves the DATA from the WALL FRAGMENT, but finds that he can’t ACCESS IT.

GERARD BUTLER

Oh crap, only a high-level government official could have restricted the data like this! That means that SOMEBODY extremely high-ranking is behind all this, but we don’t know who!

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

It’s Ed Harris. Everybody has figured this out already.

GERARD BUTLER

I have to tell Jim about this. But they might have bugged our comms, and my message may be intercepted by whoever the traitor is.

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

It is quite obviously Ed Harris.

GERARD BUTLER

I better use a code.

(calls Jim)

Hey there, Jim! Just thought I’d stop in the middle of this deadly crisis to randomly reminisce. SOMEtimes I think about that old WHITE porch we used to have at our HOUSE, where our pathetic inbred ASSHOLE of a father used to get FUCKED up on tequila and whale on US with a wrench. Glad that’s all OVER.

JIM STURGESS

A high-ranking government traitor? Why that could only be-

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

ED HARRIS, IT’S ED HARRIS YOU IDIOTS, THERE'S NO OTHER REASON FOR HIS CHARACTER TO EXIST

JIM STURGESS

-the president! America is soon scheduled to hand control of the space station over to an international committee. The president must be causing these disasters in order to retain control!

GERARD BUTLER

Right. Because after a fuckup of this magnitude, obviously the last thing people will want to do is remove the administrators responsible for killing everybody.

JIM STURGESS

And he’s not gonna stop with these penny-ante special effect showcases, either! He’s trying to chain a bunch of them together and bring on a geostorm!

GERARD BUTLER

You mean the tiny, ugly-ass sports compact from Isuzu?

JIM STURGESS

Not a Geo Storm, a GEOSTORM! A made-up, probably impossible meteorological phenomenon where it storms everywhere on the planet at once! According to our computers, this precise sequence of weather disasters - including the ones which the space station hasn’t caused yet - will lead to a geostorm in EXACTLY the nice, round timeframe of ninety minutes!!

GERARD BUTLER

Fuck! Fine then, let’s do an emergency shutdown of the station so it can’t frag the planet. This potentially apocalyptic orbital weapons platform DOES have an emergency off switch, right?

JIM STURGESS

Well, yes... but, ha ha, it turns out it can only be activated using the president’s biometrics. So if the most dangerous thing ever made malfunctions, it can only be stopped if you can get the president into the right specific room quickly enough.

(shrugs awkwardly)

Fortunately, I have been provided with a convenient secret service girlfriend who can grab the president for us!

ABBIE CORNISH

Okay then, I’ll-

JIM STURGESS

Plot devices don’t speak, honey.

ABBIE CORNISH

Then why does this movie have any dialogue at all?

INT. DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION

JIM and ABBIE go to find PRESIDENT ANDY at the DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION in ORLANDO. But first they run into ED HARRIS.

JIM STURGESS

Ed, thank god I ran into somebody I can trust! We need to grab the president so we can shut down this Bond villain-esque weather scheme.

ED HARRIS

Uh, okay. I have the president right here in this gun. Stand still so that I might fire him at you.

JIM STURGESS

Wha - YOU?! EVIL?!? DWAAAHHH?!?!?

ED HARRIS

Don’t patronize me. Anyway, part of my plan is to set off a giant lightning storm here and kill everybody in line of succession ahead of me, so I become president!

JIM STURGESS

Are you fucking kidding me? We’ve gone to the trouble of pointing out it’s an election year! Do you honestly expect an administration that ran an environmental program so badly that it KILLED THEM ALL to get reelected?

JIM and ABBIE grab ANDY and run for it! Then a fuckton of LIGHTNING starts DESTROYING THE DNC!

BYSTANDER

Man, those Russian hackers have really stepped up their game.

(incinerated)

ABBIE CORNISH

Quickly, we can get away using this SELF-DRIVING cab we just commandeered! Since I’m driving it there might seem to be no reason for us to point out that it’s a SELF-DRIVING cab, so I guess now the audience has already figured out we’re shortly going to be pulling some trick where it SELF-DRIVES. We’ll still act like we’re being clever, though.

ED HARRIS

Chase that cab, my suicidally dedicated minions! Meanwhile I will teleport to the road ahead of them, so I can set up a rocket launcher ambush! Nothing screams “accidental death” like getting blown up by a fucking rocket launcher. FIRE!

MINION

Uh, you sure you don’t want to wait until we can see who’s driving? Disregarding any possible self-driving tricks, cabs are pretty interchangeable and that could in fact be entirely the wrong car-

ED HARRIS

I SAID FIRE!

They BLOW UP THE CAB! But then ANDY appears and shoves a GUN in ED’S FACE.

ANDY GARCIA

That’s right, we sent the empty cab driving towards you at sixty miles an hour! And now here we are, having caught up to it on foot within the next twenty seconds. My legs are KILLING ME.

ED HARRIS

Come on Andy, you should still let the geostorm happen! My theory is that the massive catastrophe which is going to demolish the face of the planet will handily attack only our political enemies and we’ll be fine!

ANDY GARCIA

Goddamn, how is it that each new layer of your motivations is even dumber than the last?

EXT. EVERYWHERE

Meanwhile DIRECTOR DEAN DEVLIN looks under the COUCH and finally finds the movie’s MISSING DISASTER EFFECTS, and they all start happening at once! Ice storms in Rio! Fire storms in Moscow! Tsunamis in the desert!

GERARD BUTLER

Opposite weather, is it? In that case I’m guessing London is currently having a pleasant sunny day HEY-OOOHHH!

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

But we’re not doing so great here in space either. Somebody’s set off our self-destruct system, and the station’s gonna explode in [amount of time left in which the geostorm can still be averted + just enough time for a thrilling escape]!

GERARD BUTLER

Wait a minute, according some kind of plot mumbo jumbo, the only one who could have started the self-destruct protocol is... ROBERT! You little traitor, you’re working for Ed!

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Okay okay, you’ve got me, but SURPRISE I had a gun strapped to the underside of this desk and now you haven’t got me at all, HA!

GERARD BUTLER

What was your plan if I’d confronted you in literally any other room?

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Clearly I must have guns strapped underneath every surface in the entire space station.

(opens fire)

Aw yeah, no better strategy for staying alive than shooting bullets in a room which is separated from the vacuum of space by a single pane of-

ROBERT accidentally SPACES HIMSELF! The movie does not reveal whether, in his last moments of consciousness, RICHARD’S FROZEN, ORBITING CORPSE happens to collide FOOT-FIRST with ROBERT’S CROTCH, so one is forced to assume that it DOES.

INT. SPACE STATION STOPPING ROOM

Back on EARTH, ANDY arrives in the ROOM he has to be in so that he can turn off the SPACE STATION.

ANDY GARCIA

All right, we did it! I just used my biometrics to activate the thing, so now the world is saved! Right?

JIM STURGESS

Actually Gerard still has to get to another specific room on the station itself and press a big “YES” button for it to actually work.

ANDY GARCIA

OF COURSE. What was I thinking, we can’t let this emergency shutdown be activated merely by having the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED FUCKING STATES TURN IT ON WITH HIS OWN SPECIAL BODY SCAN. No, we need the extra, mega-secure step of having some engineer click “confirm”!

JIM STURGESS

Look, we wanted to do the president kidnapping scene but still give Gerard a big action climax, this was the only way.

In SPACE, GERARD and ALEXANDRA make it to the SPECIAL ROOM, shut down the SPACE STATION and SAVE THE WORLD!

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

Phew, and with one second left to go! That’s right, because we turned off the weather machine when we did all the bad weather instantly cleared up; but if it had gone on for even one more second it would have become a global superstorm which would have wiped out most of humanity. What a sensible premise!

GERARD BUTLER

Unfortunately while we were able to get everybody else off the station, there’s no time left for you and I to escape. But I knew this when I stayed behind. I may not have been a good father, but I hope my daughter can at least appreciate the sacrifice I made by dying in space in order to save-

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

Are you seriously copying Bruce Willis’s death from Armageddon?

GERARD BUTLER

Oh FUCK you’re right. Screw it, let’s just jump in a spare satellite and fly to safety then.

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

Hooray! I’m not even gonna ask why a weather satellite has room inside it for passengers!

They HOP ABOARD the SPACE EX MACHINA and fly away!

EXT. LOSER SHACK

Months later, GERARD, JIM and GERARD’S ANNOYING DAUGHTER are all hanging out and fishing.

GERARD BUTLER

Neat, our family’s come un-estranged! What a happy ending. Why if we keep the focus on stuff like this, and the fact that in Brazil the dog didn’t die, we can ignore the fact that millions of people just got horribly murdered!

JIM STURGESS

And the rebuilt space station is now in international hands as intended, and they’re gonna make sure none of this can ever-

GERARD BUTLER

Wait, what the fuck? They’re doing the space station again? After the last one turned out to be a city-destroying death ray which could be commandeered by a single nerd with a smartphone? That’s the least plausible ending this movie could have possibly had!

JIM STURGESS

Uh huh. Yeah, I’m sure in real life politicians the world over would instead start seriously committing themselves to environmental policy. Hmmm?

GERARD BUTLER

...Okay yeah this way’s more realistic.

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

>:(

[dumbfuck-mojave]

FNV Companions React to Someone Being Aggressive Towards Rex.

@spidester basically came up with this idea.

TW: Mentions of violence against humans and animals. Some sexual flirtation. Swearing is the norm at this point

Fucking IDEK if these are out of character anymore we just roll with it. Also, shitty and inconsistent writing and react length ahoy. Also yes I lied and said this was going to be out last night but I got sick please understand-

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

Arcade: Six had dragged him into Ultra-Luxe because once again, they were being stupid and trying to beat some sort of goal they had set for themselves earlier that day at the gambling tables. Rex had also come in with them, but had wandered off with his snout up in the air towards the kitchens. While Six was focusing on the Blackjack table Arcade heard a sudden yip and bark behind him and turned to see two people laughing and kicking the poor dog. They weren’t dressed like the people that would usually gamble here and they certainly weren’t a White Glove, so Arcade just assumed they were some travelers that didn’t know Six’s reputation and love for their canine companion. Also angry at the situation unfolding, Arcade briskly made his way over to them.

“Excuse me-”

“Fuck off.” 

Now, that made Arcade very unhappy. Honestly, he expected them to be rude, but was still a little surprised at how quickly they shot him down, not even trying to start an argument or anything. Yet.

“Listen, gentlemen.” Arcade said sharply, “I suggest you leave now because you’d much rather deal with me telling you how vile of people you are than for my friend over at the Blackjack table getting word of what you’ve been doing to their dog.”

“Oh, tough guy, eh? Well guess what, we don’t give a shit about what you or your idiot friend have to say!” The taller of the men sneard, getting right up in Arcade’s face. “Fucking forget it, the dumb dog isn’t worth our time. They ran out of booze a while ago anyway.”

Arcade gave them a look of disinterest as the semi-stumbled out the door. He made….. eye contact?..... with one of the masked servers when he looked away from them, who also seemed relieved that the two men were gone, probably because they had trached dust and mud throughout the entire main room.  Making his way back to Six, Arcade was going over scenarios in his head about what Six would do once he told them. Turns out one of his guessed scenarios was true. He did know Six very well after all. Unfortunately for the men, they had decided to sleep naked that night and Six had found out where they were staying through a few connections. A few hours later the men’s clothes were strung up on and lit on fire in the middle of Freeside, with the neat edition of shoving several hungry geckos into the men’s hotel room. The men ran out into the Mojave, naked and with a few flesh chunks missing from their body, while Rex gnawed happily on his Brahmin Steak in the Lucky 38. 

Boone: A Legion party had ambushed them just outside of Red Rock Canyon as they were making their way towards Vegas from Goodsprings. The system they had was working well enough, Boone had managed to climb his way up on the hill to the right of the road and was sniping them from afar while Six was up close with their ripper. It was hard to get solid damaging headshots on them since they were those dumb helmets, but if he got lucky Six would get close enough to rip one of their helmets off so he could get a clear shot through their skull. Usually, there were 4 Legionaries in a party but Caesar must have really wanted Six dead at this point, so they were currently being surrounded by at least 12, possibly even more. As Six drop-kicked two legionaries into each other, Boone noticed one of the other Legionaries targeting Rex and backing him up against the Canyon wall. Luckily for Boone and unfortunately for the Legionnaire, there was no helmet in sight. Boone lined up the shot and it entered the target’s head with a whiz and a squish. As the now-corpse fell to the ground, the group of three reorganized amongst the carnage. Rex sat down at Boone’s feet and looked up at him, mouth open and panting. 

“Don’t look at him like that.” Boone said in a monotone voice, making the Courier laugh beside him.

“Boone, you’re talking to a dog.” The Courier started on their way once again to Vegas, looking down at the dog now trotting beside them.

“You want to go see the King Rex?”

*Bark*

“Look who’s talking to the dog now.” 

Veronica and Cassidy: The girls had decided to hang out together today, without the Courier. They also had Rex in tow and were currently sitting at the Atomic Wrangler’s counter. Both of these women were at least three bottles in each already and their laughter poured through the casino as Veronica slouched over and snorted at one of Cass’ merchant stories.

“There is *snort* there is no way he did that.” Veronica wheezed out, falling into another fit of laughter.

“He did! He just grabbed that fucker by his-”

Their conversation was cut off when a man walked over to them. Much too confidently, I might add. They both looked up at him in disgust and annoyance. 

“So, what are two beautiful ladies doing out here all alone. You know, why don’t we all go upstairs and have a little *fun* together. ” The man leaned in so far he almost touched noses with Veronica. Rex had been sitting idly with his head in his paws on the floor until this moment. When the man leaned in, Rex growled and stood up, brisling at the man. 

“Dumb dog.” The man grumbled, swinging out his hand and hitting Rex in the head. Now no one knew if the man had meant to hit Rex so hard that he slammed his glass dome into the counter, but it didn’t matter now. Veronica pushed up off the counter and shoved the man back.

“Who do you think you are?! First, you come up to two ladies who are CLEARLY disinterested in you, interrupt their good time, then you have the audacity to hit our dog?!” Veronica practically yelled, drawing attention from several others in the room. Two people in particular had the look in their eyes that was almost begging to see a fight.

“Listen, girlie, I do what I want, ok?” The man growled, cut off by Veronica shoving his back against the counter, “Oh, girlie, you want to start right now?” 

“She doesn’t want to do anything with you. Nobody would.” Cass said as she finally stood up, looking over Veronica’s shoulder.

“Now come on ladies, no need to fight over me.” The man slurred, the beginnings of a wolfish grin on his face. 

Now, Ronnie may be small but she has a power fist and can fuck some people up. In a flash, the man was on his knees with both arms straining behind him, courtesy of Cass. Veronica unveiled her power fist and a spark of fear appeared in the man’s eyes as she swung it dainlity near his temple.

“I could swing my fist sideways right now.” She started swinging faster and more aggressively, “And give you a good lesson about how to treat others around you with an indent on your head to remind you.” 

“N-No!”

“Oh, come on. I’m sure it would be no trouble for my friend here.” Cass sneered, tightening her grip on the man’s arms, making him squeal out in man. 

“Please, please! No!” 

As the once confident man was damn near sobbing just at the prospect of getting hit, Veronica and Cass looked up at each other and grinned. Dragging the man outside, Veronica used her unarmored fist to hit him into a puddle of… something. The man stumbled to his feet and looked back in fear at the doorway. Then sprinted off. 

“DAMN! NEXT TIME YOU START A FIGHT YOU BETTER BE ABLE TO FINISH IT!” Cass yelled after him before they retreated into the casino once more.

. On their way back in, two figures walked out the door, following the now out of sight man. Sometimes, if you want to see a fight, you just have to start one yourself. 

Ed-E: *Pulls out laser canon* “Beep beepbeep bop'' Translation: “You bitch ass motherfucker”. Even if Rex sometimes drools on Ed-E or accidentally whips a ball at it’s shell, Ed-E will still protecc and attacc. 

Lily: Ok no but honestly and sorry to disappoint but any scenario involving her reacting to this is just them fighting, her calling the Courier Jimmy, then absolutely rocking the perpetrators shit. Like, tear that person in half grandma. I wanted to write a longer thing out….unless

Raul: He and Six had decided to stop at 188 Trading Post for the night instead of attempting to walk all the way back to Vegas. They were low on supplies, tired and hungry, and Raul’s back was acting up again. Samuel was nice enough to let Raul lie down for a bit on one of the mattresses behind the bar while Six was focusing on cleaning their weapons and bartering. Just as he was about to drift off, he heard Six’s voice speak up above the radio.

“Don’t touch my goddamn dog like that!” 

“You don’t get to tell me what to do you fucking piece of shit! Oh fuck-” 

Raul stood up and peered around the corner to see a rather interesting sight. Six was straddling some random man and aggressively slapping his hands away when he tried to reach for them, all while screaming every obscene thing they’ve ever been taught, even some things in Spanish thanks to Raul. Samuel was looking very concerned at the bar, not wanting to get directly involved in this mess while Rex was barking his head off in the man's face. After Raul managed to drag Six off the man, he found out the man was an associate of Alexander and was talking about making a deal with him when Rex came up to him to sniff his hand. Agitated, the man reached down and put his fist around Rex’s muzzle, yanking him up on his back to legs. Nothing escalated past that point as Six had entered the picture by then. They eventually decided to just walk back to Vegas that night and extend their break home, but damn if Raul wasn’t impressed and kind of flattered at the way they gracefully told a man how they were going to cut out this tongue and feed it to rats. Raul is dad.

(The insult thing was definitely a nod to one of @nuclear-reactions posts)

Thank you for reading! Requests are open!

[velkynkarma]

Happy April Fools!! For a prompt, I hope you don't mind a classic whump trope: Shiro throwing himself in front of one of the others (Matt or Keith?) to take a hit for them. Hope that's not too vague. Thanks for still writing, you're amazing!!

I really liked this prompt anon, so I went a little overboard and this is a whole fic lol. I picked Matt because I haven’t had enough chances to write him. Kind of a sequel to Break Even. Set in some handwavey time in S4, but it’s up to you if this is Kuron or some AU where Shiro came back on his own. Hope you enjoy :)

——

“I wish that noise would stop already,” Matt snaps in frustration, as he plugs his mini computer into the security panel next to the door. 

The alarm screams through the whole Galra ship angrily, blaring over and over just above their heads from one of the intercoms set into the walls and half a dozen others in their hallway alone. It’s loud and thoroughly distracting, but for Matt, it also reminds him of his escape feebs ago. The anxiety of wondering if the enemy will thunder around the corner at any moment is just as strong now as it was then, and sends his heart hammering. 

It doesn’t matter how many times Matt has done this, or how often he’s trained for it. He’s never going to forget feeling completely and utterly helpless when he hears that sound.

“I don’t think it’s going to any time soon,” Shiro says, next to him. “Just do what you can.” His tone is authoritative, but he offers Matt a brief, sympathetic look in the middle of scanning the hallways for danger. 

That does calm Matt down. A little, at least. If anybody knows what it’s like, it’s going to be Shiro. 

Their mission today was simple in theory, but more complex in execution. A Galra fleet had been responsible for utilizing a new, more powerful ion cannon against the rebels, wiping out an entire hidden base in the process. They needed to destroy the weapon itself, while simultaneously stealing any information they could about it, so they could be countered in the future.

The rebels had reached out to Voltron for assistance, and Voltron had been only too happy to help. While the rebels fought the cloud of swarming ships outside—with the assistance of Allura and the Blue Lion, as a decoy to draw their attention—the rest of the team had snuck into the ship itself to get to work. Pidge, Hunk and Lance were Team Weapon, responsible for finding it and figuring out a way to disable it. Matt had volunteered to go in on foot as the rebel representative to hack the data, and Shiro agreed to go with him for backup.

Pidge had been a little upset that she couldn’t go with Matt. It hadn’t been too long since they had reunited, after all, and Matt had to admit it would be both fun and exciting to work in tandem with his amazing little sister. But Shiro made a fair point that they needed a hacker on either team, and Pidge and Matt were by far the most efficient at the task. 

Pidge had grudgingly agreed, warned Matt to not die after all the work she put into finding him, and dropped them off from the camouflaged Green Lion on the other side of the ship when the mission began.

And it had gone smoothly. At first. They’d gone undetected on the ship for a while, with the Galra and their sentries so focused on the battle outside. But somebody—Matt still wasn’t sure if it was him and Shiro, or Team Weapon—had tripped some sort of alarm, and it had begun screeching for all it was worth about intruders and danger. 

Things had been more difficult after that. Shiro’s armor was scratched from numerous close encounters, and the energy shield mounted on his wrist flickered every once and a while, like it was damaged. Matt’s cloak had several laser rifle burns in it, and he had a new shallow gash on his arm from a too-close encounter with a sentry’s clawed hands. 

Worst of all, his leg throbbed at the left knee, aching and uncomfortable. The wound Shiro had given him more than a decafeeb ago to get him out of the gladiator arena didn’t like being pushed too hard with no rest, and it was protesting vehemently. 

Matt could fight—the rebels had ensured he could—but he couldn’t do it for huge stretches of time like some of the others could. That was why they’d stuck him at a listening outpost, and utilized his intelligence and stealth more than his combative skills. If he did fight, it was usually in a ship, where he was a decent pilot and a better gunner—and could sit the whole time. 

Maybe he shouldn’t have volunteered to do some codebreaking on the ground.

But they needed him. This had to be fast. That new weapon was dangerous, and if they didn’t understand how it worked or where they were being manufactured, millions of people could die. He’s the best hacker they have, after Pidge. He can deal with his leg killing him for a little while if it means a fast and efficient victory.

Of course, efficiency also depended on his equipment. The rebels had some decent tech, but it was nothing compared to Pidge’s nifty little wrist-mounted computer, built into the paladin armor. The technology in even ten thousand year old armor was efficient and elegant in a way that absolutely did not make Matt in any way jealous that his sister had better toys than he did, no, not at all. 

Okay, maybe a little bit. 

Matt’s mini computer does the job okay, though. He types rapidly on it as he says, “Their encryption is pretty good, and with the alarms going, the security’s beefed up a couple notches. I can get through, but it’s going to take me a little longer than before.”

“Not too much longer, I hope,” Shiro says, frowning. “We’re sitting ducks here. No cover if anyone comes around the corner.” 

“I’ll do what I can, but I’m working with pieced together equipment here. Unless…” Matt considers. “Shiro, let me borrow your arm.”

Shiro raises an eyebrow. “I thought the alarms would freeze me out of unlocking doors with my prosthetic arm?” 

“Nah,” Matt says. “I don’t want the Galra tech, I want your Voltron tech.” 

“Oh.” Shiro bemusedly extends his right arm to the side for Matt to work with, while keeping his body turned awkwardly so he can still keep an eye on the hallways. It’s a bit odd, but it does work, once Shiro brings up the displays with the internalized mental commands attuned to himself and the Black Lion and grants Matt access. 

“Much better,” Matt says, as he brings up the interfaces on the holographic screen that hovers over Shiro’s right wrist. He loved his little rebel minicomputer, but was so much faster than any tech he had access to. “I’ve got to get one of these.”

“I’m sure Allura wouldn’t mind sharing, if it means beating the Galra empire,” Shiro says, scanning the hallways over the top of Matt’s bowed head. 

“You think? This is incredible,” Matt says, as he rapidly eats his way through the Galra security with the bolstered Voltron computer. Pidge already had a number of protocols installed that made hacking the Galra security easy; just a few minor modifications here, an adjustment of code there, and he can smash through the walls like they’re made of paper. “The rebels could really use more sophisticated work like this. A lot of what they have is put together from whatever they can find, the Galra have a lockdown on supplies almost everywhere, and—”

“Look out!”

Shiro’s flickering energy shield snaps up by Matt’s head just in time to deflect a burst of energy from burning a hole in his temple. Matt freezes for just a moment, startled. 

There are three sentries pacing towards them down the hallway, energy rifles raised. Matt hadn’t even heard them coming over the blare of the alarm. 

Another fires, and the shot deflects off of Shiro’s energy shield again, which flickers alarmingly. Shiro himself has to twist awkwardly in front of Matt and extend his arm outward to provide any shielding at all, while still keeping his right arm within reach of Matt’s hacking job. 

Matt swears, and reaches down for his collapsible staff. But Shiro orders sharply, “No, keep working! We can’t hit them from here anyway.”

Matt swears again, but Shiro has a point. If they can just get through this door, they might have a breather. In an open hallway without any firearms or cover, they’re screwed. “Right, right. On it.” His heart beats so hard it hurts, and his leg throbs in time, but his hands and his voice are shockingly still and calm as he works. 

He’s almost through when another blast ricochets off Shiro’s energy field, and with a staticky shattering noise, it finally cuts out and vanishes.

Matt’s heart stops. For one horrified moment, he looks up from his work to meet Shiro’s eyes, as Shiro turns back to check his progress.

“Almost—” Matt says desperately, frantically swiping at the holographic keys over Shiro’s wrist. Almost, almost, almostalmostalmost—

The sentries fire again. Shiro moves, twisting around to raise his free arm defensively as he puts himself solidly between the shots and Matt. There’s an awful thud-crack-hiss of energy blasts on armor, and an even worse smell of burning flesh and blood. 

Shiro gasps in agony almost right in Matt’s ear, and Shiro’s weight slumps against him suddenly. It’s almost too heavy for Matt to bear so unexpectedly, and his bad leg nearly gives out on him, but he braces at the last moment and manages to hold. Shiro’s helmet clunks painfully against Matt’s skull, and his left gauntlet claws weakly at Matt’s cloak as he struggles for balance. 

“No, no, no,” Matt yelps frantically, terrified and angry all at the same time. “No, you do not get to do this again. Not again, Shiro, you hear me?” 

Shiro’s only answer is a muted groan, as he struggles to get upright again and fails. 

Shiro’s right arm had gone as limp and uncoordinated as the rest of him—his Galra arm is a terrible miracle of science, but in many ways it acts a lot like a normal limb and is just as subject to shock as the rest of the person it’s attached to. But luckily the screens from the Voltron armor had all remained active. Matt snatches his wrist, drags it close, and with a final swipe, keys in the last code. 

The door hisses open. 

Matt doesn’t have the time to really survey what’s on the other side. The sentries are coming closer, and raising their weapons to fire again. He’ll just have to hope they aren’t locking themselves in with something worse. 

He awkwardly manages to grab Shiro’s left wrist and get an arm around his waist, and winces when Shiro gasps again in agony at his touch. With Shiro more or less flopped awkwardly over his doubled-forward back, rather than in anything resembling an efficient fireman’s carry, Matt manages to drag him through the open door and slap the button to close it. 

“Sorry Shiro, I gotta—” Matt says frantically, as he drags Shiro to the panel on the door. With Shiro still balanced precariously against him, he manages to use the paladin wrist computer to seal the door shut with his and Pidge’s own controls. It won’t hold the sentries forever, but it will buy them time.

Immediate threat taken care of, for the next five doboshes at least, Matt turns his attention to Shiro. He sets his friend down against the computer banks on the far wall, and Shiro gasps again as he’s moved. 

Now that Matt can see the damage, he can understand why. The paladin armor is incredibly durable, but today it seems to have hit its limit. The jetpack set into the back is shattered, and the armor around Shiro’s back, side, and just under his arm is cracked and burned. Several of the pieces cut into the undersuit and skin beneath, drawing blood. 

But the worst injury is the shot to Shiro’s side, just above his hip, which hadn’t even been protected by armor to begin with. That is an awful, bloody hole already leaking red, with tattered burned edges and frayed bits of undersuit melted to the skin.

“What the hell, Shiro?” Matt asks, frantic. He whips off the thick cloak of his rebel uniform and hastily wraps it around Shiro’s waist and back, hoping to stem the bleeding long enough to get help. “Why did you do that?”

Shiro groans at the movement, and the pressure on his injuries, but he doesn’t complain or try to fend Matt off. Instead, he says weakly, “You had to open the door.”

“You can’t—you can’t do that,” Matt hisses, gritting his teeth. He’s trying hard not to be...something, he’s not sure what. Terrified. Overwhelmed. Distraught. His throat feels tight and his eyes prickle painfully, but mostly what it all comes out as is anger. “You can’t do that again, Shiro, not to me. Not for me. Okay?” 

He tugs the cloak possibly a little tighter than is strictly necessary in his haste to wrap the wounds properly. Shiro can’t bleed out. Not here, not now, and that wound is bad. He needs a pod as soon as possible. 

Shiro gasps, and his fingers twitch reflexively towards the wound at his side. But his eyes meet Matt’s, and they’re full of confusion. “Do what?” he asks, voice hoarse. 

“Keep saving me,” Matt says. His throat is tight as he forces the words out, and he still isn’t sure if it’s with dismay or guilt or anger. “Keep taking the hits for me. Trying to get yourself killed to get me out of trouble. You can’t—you can’t do that again, okay. You already sacrificed yourself to save me once, enough is enough.”

“Matt,” Shiro says, slowly. It’s horse and shaky, edged with pain, but he still manages to maintain some degree of calm. “I didn’t die in the arena.”

“I thought you did!” Matt says, as he finishes wrapping the wounds and ties it off as best as he can. “I thought you died in my place. I told myself nobody was ever going to die for me again, and now you’re doing it all over—”

“Matt,” Shiro repeats, with a wince. “I’m not dead yet. Calm down.” 

Shiro was like that. He was frustratingly like that, able to stay calm somehow even in the worst situations. 

Matt still remembers that day in the arena, disgustingly crystal clear. He can still smell the sawdust and old blood and stale sweat, see the blinding arena lights, feel that raw terror, knowing he was going to die. I’m not going to make it. I’ll never see my family again. And he remember’s Shiro’s answer, his quick thinking in the face of certain death. You can do this. Take care of your father. 

Matt was stronger now than he had been back then. He’d seen combat, and he’d thought his way out of hopeless situations, survived against the impossible. He was braver and smarter and more self-sufficient than that naive young kid that went all the way to Kerberos for ice samples and the thought of meeting aliens. But he’d done it all because of that very real fear that still lived in his heart, that other people would have to die for him again because he was too weak to handle it, too scared, too useless, and he never wanted that to happen again. 

And yet here they are again, Shiro facing down death in Matt’s place and Matt panicking, and maybe he never really learned anything at all.

No, he tells himself. You’re better than that. You’ve gotten stronger. Nobody ever dies for you again. 

He takes a deep breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth, and lets it carry away his useless panic with it. 

You can handle this. 

“You’re right,” Matt agrees. “And this time I’m going to make sure we keep you that way.”

Shiro smiles, although the expression is weak. “No argument there.”

Matt nods. His makeshift bandage looks awkward and uncomfortable, but at least it will hold long enough to get Shiro out of there. He stands, presses a finger to the rebel communicator in his ear tuned to the Voltron frequency, and opens communications. “This is Matt. Shiro’s hurt—we’re going to need an extraction, fast.”

“I can’t get to you,” Allura says, from outside. There’s a sharp grunt on her end, no doubt from an impact in the Blue Lion, and several distant blasts. “There are too many fighters. I can try to clear the area for an extraction, but there are too many on me at the moment.” 

“Same here,” Olia reports. “This warship is heavily defended. All our ships are engaged.” 

“We can get to you,” Pidge says. “If you can hang on for fifteen doboshes. Are you okay?” There’s no mistaking the worry in her tone, and Matt winces a little at that.

“I’m fine. Mostly. It’s just Shiro—”

“I’m okay,” Shiro interrupts.

“You don’t sound okay,” Lance argues immediately. “How bad are you hurt? We’re coming.” 

“Not bad enough that I can’t last fifteen doboshes,” Shiro says immediately. His voice is shaky still, and he can’t help but hiss mid-sentence in what’s obviously pain, but Matt can see how hard he fights to maintain as much normalcy as possible.

“Get there in ten, got it,” Hunk says. “On our way.” 

Shiro makes an exasperated noise in his throat, and then winces again, hand automatically coming up to press against the cloak-turned-bandage and the wound underneath. “Not like I...haven’t done this before,” he mutters, but his breath hitches painfully. “Why do they always get me in this spot?”

That sounds like a story, but for later. Matt frankly couldn’t care less right now. “Are you okay?”

“I can hang on,” Shiro says, although he finally makes a concession to his injury by tipping his head back against the computer banks, and resting wearily. 

From the door comes the first metallic bang of a sentry fist on the other side. It’s so loud even the still-blaring alarms seem quiet by comparison. 

Matt and Shiro both watch the door with growing expressions of alarm. “Can they get through?” Shiro asks slowly, after a heavy moment of silence.

Another bang from outside. “Not easily,” Matt says. “I messed with the entry codes. But that won’t stop them from physically breaking through.” 

Shiro winces. “Any other way out of here?” he asks, rolling his head tiredly to one side.

Matt glances around, but he doesn’t see any other doors. On the one hand, that’s good; it means no surprise attacks from anywhere else in the room. On the other hand, it means they’re trapped in a box, waiting for the enemy to come through the door after them, guns blazing. 

“No,” Matt says, after a moment. Then, “Hang on...” 

There’s a vent up by the ceiling. One of the large ones, probably leading to an interior maintenance route. It would be ideal for Pidge to squirrel through, but Matt could probably squeeze into it in a pinch if he had to. He’s always been skinny and small for his age, and not even a decafeeb of training alongside the rebels has done much to change that. 

But Shiro would never make it. Even if he was fully healthy, he probably couldn’t; Shiro had way too much bulk and weight, between his metal arm, paladin armor, and an unfairly huge muscles, to ever squeeze his way into that. Wounded as he is, he’d never get up there at all. 

Shiro follows his gaze, and his brows furrow. He must be coming to the same conclusions as Matt, but he doesn’t say anything about it for now. Instead, he takes a shuddering, heavy breath, and then groans, “Can you...get the data?”

The data. The mission. The reason they’re in this trap to begin with. Matt glances at the computer banks, wincing slightly at another loud, heavy bang on the other side. “Probably.”

“Do it,” Shiro orders. “If we’re stuck here, we may as well get what we came for.” 

Matt can’t really argue with that. There’s nothing to fortify with, and no way to prepare for the inevitable attack. If the doors hold long enough, though, his sister and the other paladins might get here in time, and they’ll need to make a fast exit. Shiro’s life is on the line, but so are millions of others. 

“Right,” he says, and gets to work.

He doesn’t have Shiro’s paladin gauntlet computer to work with anymore. Shiro is a little too busy cupping his wound with both hands, and Matt’s not sure if he can stand on his own for long enough to play computer for the hack. But Matt still has his little minicomputer, and he plugs it in quickly.

It takes him only five doboshes to break in and sweep the data into storage on his computer. Pidge could have managed in one and a half, with paladin tech, but five is still nothing to shake a stick at for cracking high-tech Galra software on lockdown. Especially with that anxiety-inducing alarm still blaring loudly through the whole place. When he has everything he needs, he leaves behind a few nasty surprises—viruses that will wipe out the data and everything else. The facilities will still have the blueprints, but at least this fleet won’t have access to them anymore.

“How you holding up, Shiro?” Matt asks, as he unplugs his computer and glances at the door. The bangs on the other side are getting progressively louder, and the door is starting to look a little dented. Not good.

Shiro is also not good. Five doboshes hasn’t done him any favors. His forehead is covered in a thin sheen of sweat now, and his breathing has started getting more labored. His legs are now flopped out in front of him, like he can’t hold them up. Frankly, Matt thinks the only thing holding the rest of Shiro up is the computer console he’s propped against.

“Never better,” Shiro answers immediately. His voice is a little slurred, now, like his tongue is a little too big for his mouth. 

Another bang sounds, but this time it’s followed by the unmistakable click-hiss-roar of a torch. The outline of the door starts to glow red as the sentries on the other side take the direct approach, and start cutting their way through.

They are out of time...and still with at least ten doboshes before help is supposed to get there. Five, if Team Weapon rushes, like Hunk had maybe-not-so-jokingly implied. 

Matt swallows. How many sentries are out there now? Can he take them all? Shiro’s in no condition to fight; he can’t even sit up under his own power. Can he stall, somehow? 

But there’s nothing to block the door with. No explosives or ranged weaponry or even smoke bombs he can use to help. They’re cornered in a box with no way out and no time left.

“Matt...take the data and run.”

Matt whips around to stare at Shiro. “What? No!”

“Millions of lives ride on that data,” Shiro gasps softly. “It’s not worth one. Go out the vent...you can meet up with Pidge and the others…”

“No,” Matt says, and that raw anguish-terror-anger is back. “No. I’m not gonna abandon you to die. Never again.”

“Again?” Shiro slurs. “You didn’t last time, Matt. I made that call. I’m making it now too. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!” Matt snaps. “It’s not—I promised myself nobody was ever going to die for me again, not because I couldn’t handle it. I’m not leaving.”

“I gave you an order—”

“You’re not my superior officer anymore,” Matt cuts him off. “You’re a paladin of Voltron, and I’m a rebel agent. This is a rebel mission. My call. And I’m not leaving you helpless to die or be captured again. No.” 

Shiro looks shocked, even despite his growing weakness. Maybe it is surprising. Even after Matt had been reunited with Pidge and Shiro, and met the paladins, he’d always treated Shiro with the deference due a superior officer. He’d never been the aggressive sort before, never been the kind to deliberately disobey orders so blatantly. He’d cowered next to Shiro when the Galra took them last time and knew he was already going to die before he ever went to the arena. He never fought back. 

There’s a little willingness to bend the rules for what’s right in him now, though. After all, he is a rebel. Rebelliousness is literally in the name.

He glances at the door. They’re halfway through now; he only has a few ticks left to spare. He has to move fast. So he slides his hands under Shiro’s arms and hauls him to the far corner, hopefully as far out of the way as possible from stray gunfire, and partially shielded behind the corner of the computer banks. 

Shiro frowns, and does his best to haul himself to his feet to help or protest or something. Whatever he’d had in mind, Matt’s not sure, because he gasps in agony and digs his fingers into the makeshift cloak-bandages over his wound, and immediately sinks. “Matt,” he finally chokes out, when he’s able to breathe again, “don’t do this—”

Matt settles him into the corner, as upright and as shielded as possible. “Hang tight,” he says, ignoring Shiro’s gasping attempt at an order. “We’re both going to make it. We’re both going to see our families again. They’re coming right now.”

“Matt—” Shiro coughs. It’s a disturbingly wet sound, which might mean there’s internal bleeding at work. He needs to get out of here. “You need to run.” 

“No,” Matt says, as he draws his collapsible staff from the holster on his leg. “This time, I’m going to be the one to protect you.”

And he takes his place to the side of the door, staff at the ready, watching the gleaming red lines on the outside of the door grow steadily longer.

It’s almost funny. He should be terrified. He remembers so intimately what it was like to face down certain death. And yet, although his heart thuds in his chest and his palms sweat beneath his gloves and his bad leg protests angrily, he’s focused. He’s ready for what comes, and he’s fueled by knowing he’s doing the right thing.

He wonders if this is how Shiro felt, right before he’d charged the sentry, cut Matt out of the gladiator matches, and faced down Myzax. If it was, Matt can understand a little better just how Shiro had managed to do any of that, despite facing down certain death of his own.

The sentries on the other side finish cutting through the door, and a shrieking, scraping noise assaults Matt’s ears as the now useless hunk of metal is shoved out of alignment and smashes inward to the ground. The first of the sentries steps through, gun raised.

And Matt, out of sight to the side of the door, brings one of the weighted ends of his staff swinging down at the vulnerable point at its neck.

That was the thing about building any kind of robot in the image of a humanoid: they might be more durable, made of metal, but they still had mostly the same external weak points. Joints were fair game. So were the thinner points where the frame of the robotic skull attached so it could pivot. A weighted metal staff would do a lot of damage to even a robot, applied correctly.

This robot is no exception. The skull caves alarmingly, metal screeching and tearing, before the whole thing snaps clean off. The metal head pings to the ground and rolls off with a clatter farther into the computer room, and the rest of the body starts to sag, rifle dropping from its metal fingers.

Matt doesn’t let it hit the ground. He spins the staff, catches the broken sentry at its slim waist, and uses the miracle of leverage to hurl the thing right back out into its companions.

The resulting mess is pure chaos. Metal clatters violently as the sentries thud into each other. Stray gunfire peppers the walls inside the computer room, sending sparks flying over the console, and out in the hallway as the robots fire reflexively. Two of the sentries are knocked completely over, and a third—a third, the one that must have brought the torch to cut into the room—steps back, ducking away from its weaponized companion but off balance in its haste.

Matt hurtles through the broken doorway with an angry yell into the chaos.

The upright sentry is the first to have to go. It tries to regain its footing while raising its rifle, firing its first shot at Matt. Matt ducks low, twirls the staff in his hands, and spins it out at the sentry’s ankles. His bad leg protests painfully at the sudden drop and brace, but the trick works; there’s enough force and weight in the blow for him to sweep the sentry off its feet. 

The gun goes clattering out of its hands, and Matt presses the attack, whirling the staff into an upright position and stabbing the weighted end down on the sentry’s head like a spear. The casing shatters, and the sentry twitches once or twice before falling still.

Two down. Two to go.

The two sentries left manage to shove the broken one off of themselves. One tries to rise to its feet, while the second decides to try and shoot Matt from the ground instead, providing cover for its remaining operating companion. 

Not good. He needs to control the fight better; he’s not sure he can handle a two-on-one fight for long, with the two actually cooperating. He swipes with his staff, but the narrow hallway doesn’t give him too much room to operate with such a long weapon, and he’s not close enough to connect.

Cause more chaos. Disrupt the ordered programming the AI is coded to use by doing the unexpected. Sentries are highly efficient machines, with a shockingly impressive artificial intelligence that Matt would have been foaming at the mouth to study just a few years ago on Earth. But they are still machines, and their reactions are limited. 

So he uses his staff like a pole vault, and hurtles himself at the rising sentry.

He connects with his heels as he cannons into the robot, and his old wound screams in agony. He hits the ground hard, rolling, and for a moment he’s actually scared he won’t be getting to his feet again. But he manages, somehow, and staggers to his feet, staff at the ready. 

The sentry he’d hit isn’t so lucky. Matt’s vaulted kick had hit it squarely in the chest, and sent its weapon clattering out of reach down the hallway, while it had collapsed a second time. It’s already pushing itself to its feet, reaching for Matt with one hand full of gleaming claws. But Matt bats the hand aside with his whirling staff, and brings the other end crashing down on the robot’s head. It smashes back down to the floor in a mess of parts and goes still. 

Three down.

Matt’s panting hard, now, and his leg protests angrily. His knee trembles, and he knows he won’t be standing much longer if he doesn’t finish this.

The final sentry fires at him as it hauls itself to its feet.

Matt curses, and ducks aside, trying to get back to the gouged open doorway for cover. The blasts take a chunk out of his left arm and burn several holes in his clothes, and he gasps in pain, but he keeps running. Almost there, and then he can—

His left knee buckles beneath him.

Matt yelps as he goes down, crashing to the floor and slamming hard into one of the downed sentries. He scrambles to get to his feet, but his knee sends a shock of brilliant pain through him, and he collapses again. Damn it, not now! 

The sentry raises its rifle, taking aim. So Matt does the only thing left he can do—he throws his staff at it.

It misses, which isn’t surprising. Staves aren’t exactly easy to throw well, especially in a narrow hallway like this. But it does cause the sentry to be distracted, twisting to shoot at the projectile hastily. 

That gives Matt enough time to make a scrambling dive for one of the other discarded firearms, snatch it up, and shoot in the sentry’s direction.

Guns were never really his forte. He’d trained in them at the Garrison, of course, because it was required, but he’d never liked it as much as the science and engineering aspects. He’d trained in firearms with the rebels, too, when they’d taken him on, but he’d still never really liked them.

That doesn’t mean he’s useless with them. He can certainly hit a target that close, even with a heavy sentry rifle. He fires frantically, and the sentry jerks once, twice, three times as it’s hit point blank and collapses.

Matt pants, breaths harsh and ragged. He hurts in more places than one, and he’s gonna have bruises for days. His leg is screaming for relief. 

But he’d done it. He won. 

Nobody had to die for him.

His relief is short lived. He barely manages to force his leg to take his weight—just a little more, please just a little more—when several more shots ping off the walls near him. He glances up, and down the hall are half a dozen more sentries, stomping their way unrelentingly forward with their rifles at the ready.

Matt curses, staggers along the hallway to the fallen sentry and his staff, and manages to snatch it up as he hobble-runs for the computer room where Shiro is still stashed. He leans heavily on the staff like a walking stick, and keeps the stolen rifle in his other hand. He might be able to hold them off for a little while with the gun. Maybe. 

Shiro is still conscious when he ducks inside to temporary safety, but barely. His face has gone an ashen gray color, and his eyes are only half lidded. His hands are still pressed weakly to the makeshift bandages at his side, but Matt can see the brown fabric starting to stain a darker, wetter color.

They’re out of time, in more ways than one.

“Y’r hurt,” Shiro slurs, blinking blearily at the way Matt limps over to him.

“Not as bad as you,” Matt says. “Hang tight—there are more coming.” And I know I can’t fight them all off.

“Run,” Shiro orders tiredly.

“I told you already, I’m not doing that. If we can just hold…”

Shiro hums at that. Matt has a feeling he knows how truly screwed they are, though, and it’s not a comforting thought.

The clank of sentry feet gets closer, and every metallic thud is like a death knell, underscored by the screaming alarms. Matt is scared now, but if he leaves Shiro’s chances drop to nothing. He can’t do that. Shiro’s his best friend, and had risked everything to give him a chance to see his family again. He won’t leave now. He won’t leave ever. 

So although it literally, physically pains him, he takes up a position by the door again. His leg screams in protest, and he’s shaking from a mix of pain, fear and pure adrenaline. But he holds. 

The first sentry comes into view. It raises its firearm, aiming squarely at Matt. Matt prepares to charge, spinning his staff into a ready position.

The sentry goes down in a blaze of yellow energy that cannons into it from the other side of the hallway. And fainter, but growing louder by the second, Matt can hear the unmistakable, angry-panic yell of protest as Hunk lays down cover fire and demolishes the oncoming robots. 

“Shiro! Matt!” Lance hollers over the coms, and Matt is deliriously relieved to find he can hear it in real time, too. “Escort’s here!”

“Thank goodness,” Matt pants back, lowering his staff from a combat stance to lean on it heavily again like a walking stick. “I need your help to get Shiro out of here. He can’t walk.”

“Can,” Shiro murmurs sleepily. He makes a valiant effort to rise to his feet, or at least, Matt thinks that’s what he does. His legs barely twitch, but he still groans at the effort. 

“I’m guessing whatever that was didn’t work,” Lance yells. “Hunk, I’ll cover you if more show up—grab Shiro.”

“On it!”

“Where’s Pidge?” Matt asks, worried. “She’s okay?”

“I’m guarding the rear exit with the Green Lion,” Pidge says. “We’re in camo, and your ride out.”

“Just two hallways away,” Lance adds. A blue streak of flight flashes past the doorway as Lance snipes something on the other side. “Not far, once we get you guys.”

“Good,” Matt says, relieved. He’s not sure he could run very far. Or even walk. He’s never pushed himself quite this hard before. 

He doesn’t regret doing it for a second, though.

Hunk appears around the doorway, dispelling his bayard as he steps in on the collapsed door. He winces sympathetically at Matt, and then follows Matt’s gesture towards Shiro in the corner. “Oooh,” Hunk mutters. “Is that blood? I hate blood.”

“Sorry,” Shiro mumbles. By now, he’s barely coherent.

“Don’t worry about it,” Hunk says, as he heads over to Shiro. “If I throw up, I’ll try not to do it on you.”

“Thanks.” Shiro blinks dazedly. “I think.”

“You’re welcome.”

Hunk tries to sling Shiro’s arm over his shoulder at first to help him walk, but Shiro can’t stay on his feet. In the end, he hefts Shiro into a fireman’s carry slung across his shoulders, mindful of the wound in his side. Shiro groans in protest, but goes frighteningly limp after a few moments, and Matt realizes he’s finally passed out. Matt’s honestly impressed it took so long.

“You good?” Hunk asks, gesturing to Matt and his staff-turned-walking-stick with concern.

“I can keep up,” Matt promises. “Let’s go.”

By some miracle, they manage to make it to their exit point. Pidge had kept the Green Lion in camo, while using her bayard to slice a hole into the Galra ship’s hull. It makes an unpredictable exit, which means the sentries aren’t guarding it like they are all the bay doors. That’s his brilliant little sister, always thinking outside the box.

Getting Shiro through the hole is a process, and requires Hunk to hand him through to Lance and Pidge on the other side as carefully as possible. Matt getting through is less of a process, but no less painful, and by the time he’s in the Lion’s cabin his leg has decided on no uncertain terms that it is not working any more today, thank you very much. 

But they’ve escaped, so he can live with that. For now. 

“Mission accomplished,” he radios over the coms. “Everyone, let’s get out of here.”

They do.

———

It takes Shiro almost a full day to get out of the healing pods, and everyone is waiting to greet him when he does. 

Everyone knows the story by now—Matt hadn’t been shy about sharing it—and Shiro is treated to a number of lectures and exaggerated threats about what will happen next time he tries to almost get himself killed. Even Keith, still working with the Blade of Marmora, calls back to give Shiro hell, after learning what had happened through the Blade’s impressive information network. 

Shiro accepts the threats and lectures without too much complaint, at least. He knows exactly how much he’d scared everyone, and he damn well should. 

Eventually everyone gets tired of telling Shiro off, though, and Hunk announces he has dinner waiting. Most people who leave the pods are hungry—something about the accelerated healing requiring nutrients to compensate—and it’s habit by now to at least have a bowl of food goo ready to go.

“Sounds great,” Shiro says. “Can I get a sec with Matt, though?”

“Of course,” Allura says. “We’ll be in the dining hall when you are ready.”

Everyone files out, other than Matt, who waits patiently where he’s sitting on the steps. Shiro joins him, sitting down next to him. After a moment he asks, “How’re you doing?”

Matt shrugs. “I’m okay. I used one of the pods a little bit myself, but mostly to patch up a few laser grazes and bruises.” 

Shiro nods slowly, and then gestures to Matt’s left leg, stretched out in front of him down the steps. “And how’s your knee?”

“Better than it was yesterday,” Matt says truthfully. The pods didn’t really help with healing the old wound—it had been too long—but they did help relieve some of the inflammation and strain, which let him at least walk on it again without wanting to scream. 

Shiro’s got that look again, so Matt cuts him off quickly. “We already talked about this. No apologies. I’ll take living with a chronic injury over having died over a year ago.”

Shiro sighs. “Right. Of course.” 

They fall into a companionable silence for a little while. Matt likes talking with friends, but on the months-long journey to Kerberos there had been a lot of friendly silence too, and he’s just as comfortable with that around Shiro. There’s no real rush to go anywhere, and sitting is nice. 

But eventually Shiro asks, “What was that all about, back on the ship? Why didn’t you run?” A pause. “It’s not because of that life-debt you think you owe me, right? Because I told you, you don’t owe me anything.” 

Matt snorts. “Yeah, you were pretty clear on that. But that’s not why I stayed. I mean...not the only reason.” He stares at his feet. “I told you before, I just...I can’t let people die for me anymore. I have to be better than that. I can’t just watch that happen and stand by and do nothing anymore.”

“It was a bad situation, Matt. And you would have been protecting millions of lives. I would never have blamed you if you did run.”

“Well, I would have blamed me,” Matt says. “For the rest of my life, for being cowardly enough to abandon my friend to his death again.” 

“I already said that wasn’t your fault either, Matt,” Shiro says, a little helplessly.

Matt shakes his head. Sighs. “I wasn’t ready back then,” he says. “For all this. I wanted to meet aliens, but I figured they’d be the friendly sort, y’know? ‘We come in peace.’ I wasn’t ready and you and dad ended up paying the price.” He narrows his eyes. “I couldn’t have been ready then, but I can be ready now. And I’m not gonna be that person ever again.” 

“Matt,” Shiro says, frowning at him. “There was nothing wrong with that version of you either. None of us could have seen the Galra coming.”

“You still handled it,” Matt says, with a sad smile. “You stood up for me and dad. You took my place in a deathmatch.”  

“Maybe, but that’s just because we’re different people,” Shiro says with a shrug. “I didn’t know anything about ice samples back then. Still don’t, honestly. I just drove you there, you and Commander Holt were doing all the important science stuff.” 

“Somehow, I don’t think ice samples are going to make much of a difference now,” Matt says wryly. “Other things matter more.”

“Well, you made a difference today,” Shiro says. “So thanks for that. I really mean it—I’d be dead if you weren’t as stubborn as your sister about staying behind.” He grins.

Matt smirks. “Yeah...that runs in the family.”

“I know,” Shiro says. “Three sentries on your own in crowded conditions, huh?”

“Four,” Matt says. “It’s no Myzax, but even so…”

“Still impressive. Don’t ever discount yourself, Matt. You’re a lot stronger than you think.” Shiro smiles. “And don’t discount the old Matt, either. He had that Holt stubbornness, too. That’s how you got this far.” 

Matt blinks, but then smiles softly. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“No ‘maybe,’” Shiro says, as he heaves himself to his feet off the steps. “It’s absolutely true. Anyway, we should probably get going, before Hunk hunts us down and drags us to the dinner table. You ready?” He holds out a hand.

Matt takes it, and lets Shiro help him to his feet. His left leg takes his weight stiffly, but it holds, and that’s what matters.

“Yeah. Thanks, Shiro.”

[huntsman-ash]

RWBY V8E5 LiveThoughts

And now for the last episode before the HUGE break they’re taking. Seriously, February? Damn, whats going on at RT?

It matters not. Lets see what this weeks episode has for us.

And here we see Aminety Colloseum, the place that Atlas SHOULD have weaponized the moment it rolled its way back here. Seriously look at it; floating free away from everything else...you could mount missile launchers and laser batteries and CIWS batteries on it, launch fighters from it, let dropships deploy through its base...a floating aircraft carrier of unprecidented size.

Or maybe turn it into a weapon...use its drive system to focus Dust energy into some kind of gravitational force...thats just me though.

Missed oppertunites...ah well.

You CAN see its been adjusted though, it looks less like the sports arena from its last apperance and more like a floating coms hub, with those dishes on the outside and the huge spire.

Intersetingly if you look in the upper right corner the moon is there but almost completely covered by the storm Salem summoned. Interesting.

Wait why is PEITRO out there? With like...no supports? Seems kinda dangerous to send the weak old dude out there...

...thats a bomb. A Dust bomb in pipe bomb style form but thats very much a bomb.  Yes, Penny, danger indeed.

Atmospheric orbit. Ahhh that must be the low-level orbit path that they need to ensure it doesnt loose power. The part where you coast along with almost no drag.  Like what the X-15 hit in our world, and punched through at least once.

WAIT WHAT THE HELL IS THAT. Thats some kind of loader mech. THATS A FUCKING UTILITY TITAN. WHEN DID ATLAS GET ONE OF THOSE?!

Also thats a jet engine.

And Maria’s piloting it. To quote Daimon Baird; I know wha thappens when you let an angry chick loose with a power loader.

Multiple bombs...wait. Thats the mine that RWBY fought in with the Aces, the one that almost blew the fuck up. They’re... Oh. I get it now. They’re gonna use the blast to fling Amneity into upper orbit and stabalize it. Clever. Not exactly SAFE, but clever. Just hope the mine doesnt go anywhere important. Those tunnels are going to turn into firestorms.

Cute, she thinks she can stay and help. Trust me, Penny. You’re better off running.

MARIA CASUALLY DOING THE MEXICAN GRANDMOTHER THING WITH HER MECH...THE HIP HAND. MY GOD.

Oh, and his chair has gravity restraints too. They...gonna handle the impact of the launch? I mean thats literally a fuel/air bomb under them. Dust/air...

Well Maria seems alright with it.

OH GOD DAMMIT. Its Cinder isnt it? Fucking bitch...

On the positive side if she DOES hitch a ride then they get a chance to give her the ol’ “Long fall special”.  Lets see your maiden powers save you from a fall from near orbit.

Well then, she burned right through the floor. Interesting. Maiden powers or her own, who knows...I do admit seeing her ride the ship in like that is kinda cool.

The eagerness in Cinders remaining eye interest me. Also, even when using maiden powers, her dead eye emits nothing. So that whole parts just gone. 

Secondary note, I think they’re standing on the...Shade emblem? Shade is the swords I think. Vale is the axes, Atlas is the staff, Havens the lamp. Doubt it means anything.

Ahhh, okay I was gonna say, that launch was...kinda lackluster. But the blast is being used as a BOOST on top of the four existing external thrusters. Like the yellow emergency turbines on the outside of the Pillar of Autumn in the end cutscene of Halo Reach

Dust explodes in its own individual colors. The blast under them looks like a Pride festival.

Also Penny just going WHAP like that amuses me, whereas Cinder just crouches. Guess she knew what was coming.

I dont see how the blast is helping through...maybe its the pressure wave and we cant see it right.

Now THAT is a command and control table!

Based on the image I can see, the map is showing “Atlas Mantle” in the middle in green, Aminety in red to the north, and the whale as its own red marker just off to the west a bit of Atlas/Mantle. So now we know where everything is stationed.

The scales all kindsa weird tho

Ah THERES the G-force. Emeralds literally stuck to the floor.

And because Cinders an unoriginal bitch, fire swords. Im not impressed ot say the least.  On a side note that DOES mean that radiobandit was right about her powers, so theres that. I’d wager this is a combination of her semblance and the maiden abilities.

For those who follow me, Cinder’s blades here are similar in look to what Ash Vulcan can summon, minus the fire. His are more of a cooled obsidian look.  They are, however, as sharp as these are, but much less sturdy. Ex; the one that pins itself to the wall by Penny’s head would have shattered on impact, which Ash uses as a secondary ability. Because no one likes a hundred glass shards in their eyes...

OH HELL YES. Maria with the mech. Now, Cinder...TASTE METAL FIST.

RT...I salute you. Angry mother figure piloting a giant robot screaming “get away from her you bitch”. ALMOST had it. Almost.

What smacked into her though. Neo?

Yes, Neo piloting their escape craft. Interseting.

Emerald looks completely useless and confused and Neo is suddenly very much in a realization shes inside a tin can and MARIA IS OPERATING A GIANT TIN CAN OPENER

Emeralds semblance works on Maria. Interseting, so it must bypass eyes. Effect the brain specifically. Note to self for Chrys on that...

WHY did Neo take Ruby’s form when shes fighting Maria? On that Maria seems very happy to brawl on the ground now. Old habits die hard, I guess.

Additional math note; “broadcasting range” is, by this numerical, 543.523 of...whatever Remnant uses as units. On Earth, the edge of outerspace is almost exactly 100 km, or 62 miles, straight up. So going by that measurement... (Doing the math here hang on)...1 km is equal to 5.43 of Remnants distance units. Lets just say 5.5. Assuming Remnants edge is the same (but everything we’ve seen so far hints that it is, or at least very close)

Alternatively, since we heard klicks used in V4, but miles used in After The Fall, we can assume this is one of those, meaning that either broadcast altitude on Remnant is ABSURDLY HIGH, because 500km is literally 5 times the edge of space on earth, and 540 miles is ALMOST 9 TIMES AS HIGH. Either way Im pretty sure this is the first measurement of Remnants units we’ve seen.

Alternatively alternatively, judging by the arrows we see, these might be required velocity to maintain orbit, which MAY make a bit more sense but it doesnt really fit. Low orbital velocity on earth for example is 17,000 KPH. Even with the math above, theres still a TITANIC difference.

And now we see the numvers going down again because CINDER BURNED A HOLE IN THROUGH ONE OF THE STABALIZERS. Bitch.

Again on th e weaponizing the colleseum; look at all this empty space. They didnt even remove it from when it was a consorse for the festival. You could put SO MANY weapon emplacements...the landing pads are still there!

Oh so now Cinders a Dawnblade from RWBY is she.

And exploding arrows too. Alright then, sure, why not.

Not sure what the point of this little bit was, aside from Penny trying to draw Cinder off and Cinder going back because...evil? Bait for Penny? Who knows. 

Oh yeah, Marias having a GOOD time. Also, Neos face when she gets kicked in it; “NO, NOT THE SANDEL!”

Also the disrespect from Maria. Yes. Suck it, Neo.

Also theres some timeskippage, as there is NOT a 2 minute gap between when we see the clock the first time and when we see it now. I dont think, anyway. Im sure theres math to be done but it serves the purpose its suppose to, for tension.

Uhhhh...Cinder, please. Your Salem’s most bottom of bitches right now. She favors Hazel and Tyrian over you.

Did Cinder really just try for a does not compute moment. Or is she just out of ideas.

Cinder stealing the maiden powers reminds me of the Grip of the Devourer perk from the Necromatic Grips in Destiny 2. Mainly the green energy flowing. I know thats Pennys aura stuff but it does remind me.

Ahhh they got a plan with Emerald then. Interesting. Also Neo taking advantage of a distraction sounds like her. 

And Penny ONESHOTS Neo. Lets be real here, without aura? She’d be LIQUID. Or maybe ash. Not sure how Penny’s funnels (THEYRE STILL FUCKING FUNNELS DAMMIT) works.

Annnnddd you forgot shes a robot and sees aura didn’t you.  Again, without aura, she’d be dead. Actually, she might legit be dead considering that scream. That sounds like the noise someone makes as their organs are fried by high intensity radiation. Not too mention the MASSIVE BURN MARK on the back wall there.

Either way; GET FUCKED BITCH.

Very dramatic, Emerald, but really, come on. Penny has lasers. You would get maybe one more shot (from a weapon that has, at best from my viewpoint) a caliber equal to MAYBE a 9mm pistol. That stuff doesnt have the penetration power required.

If Penny wasn’t nice and more interested in saving Peitro...you’d be dead. Ripped asunder and Cinder made even worse. 

A pity, really, Penny has a heart. But...hey. Real girl.

I feed upon Emeralds tears though. Mmm. Simpy.

What the HELL is hitting them. Grimm?

Oh boy here we go, more of this. Like...bruh. Just set down for a bit. Always gotta be dramatic dont ya

Aww. Touching. But pointless in the grand scheme of things.

Interesting note but she puts her gloved hand on his cheek, not the one with the glove burned off. For what thats worth again.

Holy shit, that map wasnt lying. That whale’s almost as big as Atlas is from this angle. Mind you, might just be a trick of the location but it would make sense if they were afraid of a Grimm THAT GOD DAMN BIG. I was just seeing it as like, about the size of a normal sperm whale, maybe as big as the Leviathan from the series of the same name, but even that was barely 150 feet long. This things HUGE.

Nope. Pretty sure its about the same size as Atlas is long.

Also the Moon seems smaller from this angle oddly enough.

Wait is she gonna superman this fucking thing?

Okay yes, the numbers were based on distance not velocity, as Penny is pushing the stadium UP, rather than accelerating it in proper stance.

The noises she makes...huh. Glad my sister didnt walk in on those. Sounds...not like someone straining.

Hey look, its clumsy shitface McGee. HES NOT DEAD!

Note about the message; whos the chick with the eye patch next to the faunus in the back left of Ruby.

Im going to assume the first place we see the message played is the Mistral Black Market. Seems fitting for how it is, and the design matches Havens ascetic. 

OH MY GOD THE LITTLE EARED FAUNUS GIRL IN THE HOLE. OH NO. SHES TOO CUTE.

Also in that same shot we see the old Karen from two episodes ago, a mouse girl, Fiona’s mole uncle, and someone new I think. Plus the huge eared girls mom who has a fox tail. And also one of the thirsty moms and her kid maybe?

Hey, Sun and Neptune! Out in the middle of nowhere in Vacuo. So this is the first time we’ve seen it in the show. 

And Ilia’s still alive too!

Hey and Goodwytch too. No voice, of course...she got fired ages ago.

Also hey, so this is where Ironwoods been. I love how Hare turns it off before Ruby finishes. 

I will note that technically Ruby’s not wrong. Ironwood cant be trusted. But then, he couldnt before because (gestures to Atlas’s pathetic, scraggy SOFT “military” instead of THE CHAD FORCES OF...uh...) (Rapid sounds of shuffling papers and files labeled “UNSC” “Coalition of Ordered Governments” “SRPA” “GAR” and “Yukon Confederacy” fly off the table)

Several others. Yes. Lets go with that. (Accidentally bumps paper labeled “Vanguard” off the desk)

Watts is back out I see too. 

Wait wait wait. Penny’s blades operate via chips...part of her, sure. So WHY does she need wires on them? AGAIN. WHY ARE THEY WIRE FUNNELS AND NOT SEPERATE ONES.

Interestingly the inside of the one Watts has resembles a Scroll...did Peitro commender that technology?

No focusing system for the laser. No chamber for acceleration or direction. Odd.

Salem looks oddly glad for this. Probably cause she thinks this is going to spread more fear. 

And Ruby gets to the heart of the deal. You dont beat something that cant be killed. You capture it. Hurt it. BREAK IT. A sentient being can only take so much punishment before it shatters into madness and controllable fragments. You just. Need. To. Hit. It. HARD. ENOUGH. 

Additionally Ruby’s got a point there too. Salem played the shadows until this moment when everything was going her way. So...whats she afraid of.

Annnnddd thats all it takes to hijack Penny? Seriously.

Fuckin god damn useless Atlas bullshit fucking...(LONG SUFFERING SIGH OF A TECH NERD)

Hey theres Taiyang. Where’s Raven?

Wait hold on a second. She catches fire literally two seconds after she falls? You gotta fall a bit more than that for shit to start happening. WHAT THE FUCK IS REMNANTS ATMOSPHERE?! Or is it just dramatic...

Also as a small note the way the coms between her and Peitro cut off like that is accurate to reentry; during the hottest part of a splashdown, a space craft creates such a huge trail of energy behind it, rattling and burning its way down, it creates a blackout with its own passage. So based on the massive Apollo style reentry fire cone shes already putting out shes most likely going to be out of coms until she slows down orrrrrr craters into Remnants surface with the force of a meteor. 

And no. I dont think shes dead. The fact that, DESPITE being surrounded by the kind of fireball that worked its way into the fueltank of the space shuttle Discovery and blew it and its crew to bits on reentry, she was still intact...shes probably going to be fine.

Hacked, certainly, but fine. It takes more than that to finish her. Besides now that shes hacked, she has to fight Ruby. We all want that right?

Ahh good to see Winter in full armor now. Or...close to it. Im sure some of its a support rig for her injuries but I like to think this is the start of Atlas’s Specialist Weaponization Program.

Ironwood makes a good call here. Same thought process as mine.

Salutes in this world are the same as ours. Interesting. Must change that for the HKs

Annnndd of course Watts steals the busted Scroll because IRONWOOD IS A FUCKING DUMBASS

...um.

Im...not even going to COMMENT on what the FUCK this thing is that Jaunes detachment found. 

Also why is there A TREE in the tundra?

Oh, caustic. Interesting.

Mmmm. (Pause. Fingers to lips)

Thats your plan, Salem? To literally leak liquid Grimm into Mantle.

More silence.

Ladies and gentlemen...Salem is, officially, THE WORST VILLAN. OF ALL TIME.

The level of incompetence and stupidity I have seen here today completely obliterates the LAST person to hold that title, President Snow from the Hunger Games.

The amount of unnececary back door work and seecret plotting here astounds me. Shes doing this because she can, Im SURE of it. Theres no other reason.

Unless...she kows in a straight out fight, she’d have Ironwoods metal arm up to her colon in seconds. Which I wouldnt be surprised about.

Either way uh...thats it. Thats the end of the episode. 

Nice fight, at least.

See you all in Febuary!

EDIT: NOT FEBUARY, the break is a few more episodes after this

[jedi-bitch]

Unrest (Maul/Reader)- Chapter 1

Star Wars: The Clone Wars Reader Insert

AO3 Link: (Unrest Chapter 1)

Rating: Explicit

Pairing(s): Darth Maul/Reader (Maybe Savage/Reader?)

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Tags: Reader-Insert; Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence; Nightsisters (Star Wars); Light Angst; Reader is a Nightsister; Other Additional Tags to Be Added

Summary: Nightsister!Reader is one of few to survive after Dathomir is attacked. Now, reader will work with the presumed dead Sith Lord to get what she wants.

No (y/n). Explicit for future chapters. More tags will be added.

A/N: So, originally I was just going to make a soft maul/reader one shot but here we are also listen, i made some of the nightsister stuff up, but I tried to follow the lore for the most part lmao

---

The cauldron you worked in was filled with the water of life, simmering pleasantly and filling the small tent with a calm steam. You dropped lavender buds and dried sage leaves into the pot, stirring the waters with a languid motion of your hand.

A pinch of bone ash, witch hazel, and ground shells dissolved, and changed the color of the steam, when added. It shifted from white to a gentle, but vibrant, green. It was such a natural color that reminded you of lush green forests, full of life.

The final addition was flower petals of various shapes and colors, which all wilted, giving their life as they touched the water. It was your favorite smell.

“Here, sister,” You spoke calmly, stretching out your hand to the pale woman sitting on a pelt-covered seat, “Let me see.”

She lifted her hand to rest in yours comfortably, and you examined her forearm. You carefully unwrapped the blood-stained fabric, revealing a deep wound. You hummed quietly, wiping the dirt and blood away with a clean, warm clothe.

“Rest, now,” You reassured, “You’ll feel no pain.”

With a bowl carved from a large animal bone, you collected some water, holding your sister’s arm over the cauldron. You poured the water over her wound, and it turned red with blood. You collected more water and continued to wash the wound out. As the blood dripped into the cauldron below, it evaporated into nothing.

Slowly, the flesh began to reconnect, sinew and tissue knitting itself back together. You spoke an ancient prayer, the foreign language coming to you easily as you focused. You poured your energy and deep love of your sisters into the life-giving water that cleansed her.

Once the wound was nothing but a thin scar, you dried her arm with a clean cloth, before dressing it in calendula-treated wrappings, “You live to fight another day, Ilyana.” You held her hand for another moment, before gently placing it in her own lap.

She smiled softly, “Thank you, my dear sister.” She stood, before grabbing your shoulders and pressing her forehead to yours for a moment of tenderness.

The drying herbs hanging from string, strewn around your fragrant tent swayed as Ilyana left.

Not moments later, Mother Talzin ducked through the entrance. The bones and trinkets you had hung clattered together. An omen, perhaps.

“Mother,” You bowed your head slightly, rearranging the items on your table, “How can I help you?”

Mother Talzin always seemed to know something no one else did. Nothing ever surprised her. “My sweetest child,” She pressed a thin, cold hand against your cheek, “There’s something I must ask of you. Something you need to remember.”

Your heart swelled at the thought of being a part of some larger plan, “I will do anything you ask of me, mother.” You looked up dutifully, yet your brows still furrowed, and something deep in the back of your head felt wary.

“You will be called upon soon,” Her hand dropped from your face, resting it over one of the animal skulls on the table, “To undertake a very important task.”

“Of course,” You nodded your head, eager to please, “What is it that I must do?”

Talzin was quiet for a minute, looking around your small tent. You chose not to live in the stone buildings of the fortress, instead wanting to feel the magicks of the soil against your feet. Not only were you a potent healer, but a fierce warrior, as well. Talzin had done well with you, and you could tell she was proud of her work.

As the silence began to sow doubt deep within you, there was suddenly a commotion outside. You and Talzin rushed out to see what it was.

“Sisters!” Yansu was running through the fortress gates, nearly tripping over herself, “We are being attacked! We-,” A single blaster shot brought her to her knees, as all the sisters ran to her aid.

You looked to Mother Talzin, trying to figure out what was happening. Her face told you that she was not expecting this either. You took this as your time to run to your sister’s side. You drew your weapons.

“Slip into the shadows, sisters,” Ventress instructed, pulling up her hood, “We must fight.”

You all look at each other for only a moment, before you began running into the dark forest, trying to get around the approaching enemy.

It was all droids, you noticed, your heart beating in your ears, and there were so many of them.

At first, they didn’t notice any of you slipping past them, until the first strike. Your sisters began viciously slashing at anything that approached them. You dug your feet into the soil, drawing from the magick within your planet, blocking laser blasts and other dangers.

The first sister to fall was Ilyana. She took down quite a few droids though, before falling. Your heart pulled at you to run to her side as she died, but you were surrounded.

Simple battle droids were no match for you and most of your sisters, using a combination of magick and blades. Up in the trees, two of them used arrows made of light, raining down on the droids, out of sight.

But slowly, one by one, your sisters fell, until it was just you and Ventress.

Ventress grabs you from behind, pulling you away and back into the shadows, “Sister if we stay, we will die. We must leave here.” She spoke with such urgency, desperate to save what was left, realizing the battle was lost.

“I must return to Mother Talzin,” You looked deep into her eyes, and you felt your heart drop, “Go, Asajj. Save yourself so that you may avenge our fallen sisters.”

Not another word was shared between the two of you, just meaningful glances, before parting ways.

You ran as fast and as quietly as you could, taking advantage of the deep red shade of your planet. Unsure of exactly where you were going, you let your feet carry you in the direction that felt right.

“Child, you must go now,” Mother Talzin spoke urgently as you ran to her. She was in your tent, which now just smelled like old swamp water, “You must lie in wait, for someone once thought dead. Return here, only once the enemy is gone.”

You didn’t dare speak right now, as she swirled dark things in the cauldron. You started collecting some of your more important belongings.

“You must wait for an agent of darkness and chaos that will bring Dooku to his knees. Once he arrives, I will return to you.”

She continued mixing the now black water, and you stared down into it, “Yes, Mother.”

“Now go, child. Run.”

---

You spent the first four days in a cold, dark cave, wrapped in black robes. You kept no fire, and you didn’t eat. Not until you were sure the enemy had left.

After a day’s journey back to the fortress, you were sure you were alone, only the shells of dead droids left behind.

The fortress was in ruins. Stone had crumbled under blaster fire and abuse.

All that was left of your tent was your cauldron, and a few animal bones. Even the pelts you had hoped to wrap yourself in had been burned to soot.

Collecting all you could, you found a small alcove, where a tower had fallen, creating a nice camp area. It was the most stable structure with a roof and would have to do. So, you set up your things and started a fire to cook the small womprats you had hunted on your long trip.

Your mother had instructed you to wait, and so you did. All alone.

Alone with the visions of your sisters’ deaths and the biting chill that whipped around you in the evening.

How weak you felt, unable to protect your sisters, who now lay dead in the dark forests surrounding you. It was pitiful, you decided every night, as you returned to the sparse camp you had built yourself.

Unwilling to disobey your revered Mother, you scouted and hunted at night, as your ancestors had before you. Each night, you would seek out the body of one of your sisters, to prepare them for their burial. You burned an offering to the Winged Goddess of any herbs you could find for each body as you worked. Then, you ground bones and buried the dust in the dirt for the Fanged God.

Unfortunately, most of the living things around you had been destroyed, even the grass and plants. It terrified you deeply to think of what could have done this.

You tried to keep track of the days that went by. Eventually you started thinking your thoughts aloud, just to remember what a person’s voice sounded like. You think it might have been two months that you waited alone.

Until one day, a ship landed in the distance. You put your fire out with a swish of your hand, dousing the smoldering ash to try and hide the smoke.

You pulled your hair back, frustrated at how wild it had grown, before pulling your hood and face cover up.

Deciding you needed to see who was on this ship for yourself, you started into the forest of thick trees with large fruits hanging down, hiding yourself behind the trunks as you walked on. As you got closer and closer, you could feel a dark energy pulling you forward.

It felt feral and terrified. A chill ran through you, and you swallowed nervously, but continued on, until you stood at the edge of the forest, watching.

It was a pale brown Zabrak that deboarded the ship, alone. But you knew he wasn’t the one filling you with an undefined dread.

You stared in silence as he looked around. He seemed annoyed and desperate.

Peering around the tree a bit more, you couldn’t help but notice how large he was. When you thought about it, you did remember hearing some of your sisters talking about a ritual performed on a man. A man named Savage, no less.

You were staring at him when his eyes met yours. He scowled, “Who are you? Show yourself.”

Sheathing your weapons, you pulled your hood down, and then your face covering. It felt weird hearing another person’s voice. The movement of his lips and face was almost entrancing.

You raised your hands cautiously, making slow and calm movements, “Who sent you?” You looked around, scanning your surroundings.

His eyes grew dark with frustration, and he started walking towards you.

Before he got far, a pale hand placed itself firmly on the large man’s shoulder, stopping him in his tracks, “Savage, you’ve returned. Where is your brother?”

Your heart instantly warmed when you heard her voice, knowing that the comfort of your mother had returned after such loneliness. Your ragged breathing instantly smoothed.

“He’s…,” Savage took a breath, “He’s still on the ship. He is broken, Talzin.”

“Hm,” She grinned, turning to walk onto the ship, “Well, we must fix him then.”

You felt so much fear coming from inside the ship. You didn’t know what was happening, but when Talzin returned, she looked at you, “Come, sister, I will need your help.”

Talzin started walking back towards the ruined fortress, and you watched her, your legs unmoving. Savage was looking at the ship.

A green orb gently floated out of the ship, followed by red hands, reaching for it.

Then, the rest of the creature followed. You couldn’t help but stare in a confusing mix of emotions.

A red and black Zabrak stood taller than even Savage. His face was gaunt and sallow, with deep-set, blood shot eyes. The horns around his head were overgrown and brittle, much like his nails reaching out. He would have been skinny, if not for the large apparatus that was attached to his waist. Scrap metal formed a shaky thorax, with legs that stabbed into the dirt beneath them.

You gulped, watching him as he passed by. When he stopped, turning his deep, fiery gaze upon you, your heart nearly stopped.

He scowled, looking down at you with a wildness unlike any you had ever seen.

“Come, brother.” Savage spoke, pulling the man’s attention from you, before his eyes caught the glowing orb once again, catching up to it.

You watched as the two brothers walked on, and you blinked a few times before following after them.

---

Mother Talzin had laid the man flat on a solid rock, tapping his forehead with the magick that dwelled beneath her fingertips, until his eyes closed.

She calls your name sternly, “Hold your hands here.” Grasping your hands, Talzin guides you to hold either side of the man’s head, “You need to use your healing touch, my child.”

Nodding, you prepare yourself. You dig your bare heels into the dirt, drawing power from the planet’s core and the waters of life that flowed beneath the surface.

Talzin started chanting, and the air around you moved. All of a sudden, you couldn’t breathe. When you tried to move your hands, your muscles tensed and froze where they were.

Flashes of pain and hatred flooded your head. You felt like you were on fire, and that you were no longer attached to your own body. It was as if you had been cut in half, and were in so much pain, but couldn’t will yourself to die.

The hatred and anger bubbling below your skin was unbearable, and you felt like you needed to run, but your legs wouldn’t budge.

In a second, the rage was replaced with loneliness. It felt vaguely familiar, but worse than you could ever imagine. Then, there was nothing but fear left to feel. You felt yourself shaking and your heart beat so fast you thought your chest would burst.

Then you were back in your own body, staring down at a terrifying man, your hands trembling. You had broken into a cold sweat that dripped down the back of your neck, making you shudder.

Looking up towards Savage, the man no longer had a haphazardly built lower half, but two well-formed cybernetic legs made of sleek, black metal.

When you lowered your gaze back down to the man’s face, his eyes were open, staring up at you with a newfound anger in his eyes.

Your hands were still on the sides of his head, and you frowned. The only words that came to mind were a whispered, “Darth Maul?”

Mother Talzin pulled you away by the shoulders, “Yes, child. You are now his.” She pulled you into a hug. As far as you knew, you were her only remaining daughter, “You will serve him as you have served me. Loyally and obediently. This is your task, child.”

And with that, Talzin faded into a green mist, evaporating in your arms.

Behind you, you heard thick metal land on the ground.