#i only know how to take care of maybe 5 reptiles tops

[beware-of-you-98]

henry’s dragon (jj x emily)

there’s a lot of reptile talk and i’m only slightly sorry about it

It's not that they hadn't been expecting the question; after all, a pet had been on his most recent wish-list to Santa Claus. It wasn't that they didn't think Henry was irresponsible: he got fantastic grades in school, kept up with his sports and helped out enough around the house. He was even the one that took up most of the chores when it came to Sergio (he insisted). Really, there was no doubt in their minds that their son wouldn't take responsibility in taking care of another animal.

But it was too soon, and neither Emily or JJ wanted to start a habit of buying an animal on such short notice without instilling some kind of boundaries.

First and foremost, since everyone at the house had busy schedules, the new pet couldn't be something that require attention 24/7.

No mammals or birds—nothing that would be affected by significant spending some time alone.

Since the boys time was split between two houses, the animal had to be something that either JJ or Emily could easily take care of in Henry's absence.

No spiders or bugs and it had to fit in an enclosure that they capped off at 50 gallons—hey, they had to draw the line somewhere.

After months and months of researching, Henry finally decided between either a corn snake (only if it was on frozen thawed mice), a crested gecko, or a leopard gecko. Last week for his eleventh birthday, JJ and Emily had surprised him with a twenty gallon tank that would house either animal of his choice quite comfortably for a while and several necessities like a heating pad and a basking light and bulb.

To top everything off, Spencer and Penelope had surprised the boy with tickets to a reptile show that was taking place the following weekend so he could go and pick out his new pet.

(Whatever Henry decided to get, he could also get the appropriate hides, water bowls and supplements with the money his grandparents had given him.

Emily and JJ collectively agreed to pay for the animal as an additional birthday gift.)

They had both been immediately thrown out of their element when they walked into the convention center lobby and found people crowded around the hundreds upon hundreds of tables full of different animals.

"Look, momma, a dinosaur!"

Emily peers up briefly to follow the direction Michael is pointing in with a fond grin, an amused chuckle escaping her mouth as her gaze lands on the clear acrylic tank with a colorful lizard basking under a heat lamp. The blue sharpie on the tank advertises the species in quick-scrawled handwriting: "Uromastyx". Right below the name lists the price in smaller, more legible numbers: "$225".

She hums, giving Michael's ankles a gentle squeeze as she adjusts her hold to keep him from toppling off her shoulders or over her head. The lizard's face can really only be described as dinosaur like, face round and snout short and stubby with tiny black eyes that reflect the light from the bulb above. The animal's scales are mostly bright blue and green, bright yellow and orange spots stamped down the spine, visually leading to a long tail covered in stubbed spikes.

"It does look like a dinosaur, doesn't it?" she agrees with another chuckle, turning her head and resting her hand on Henry's shoulder when he comes bounding up to join them at the table, JJ not too far behind. "What do you think, Hen? You want to adopt a dinosaur?"

Henry pushes his glasses up his nose, eyes lighting up in excitement as he catches a glimpse of the lizard. "An ornate Uromastyx, cool!" he exclaims before turning back towards his mothers. "Did you know they have basking spots of up to 135°?"

A brief pause as he thinks, head tilting up to look at the ceiling. He scrunches his nose and giggles when JJ playfully sticks her tongue out at him.

"And they're mostly herbivores!" he adds as soon as he remembers.

JJ gives his shoulder a loving squeeze before glancing over at the tank. "It is a pretty lizard," she admits.

"It's too expensive," Henry shrugs, not too affected by the fact he probably would be leaving without the Uromastyx. "And I didn't research them enough. Besides, he would out grow the tank I have at home and I don't have the right things for him," he reasons.

A young woman working the booth shoots the family a polite smile before walking over. "Hey, there! Can I help you guys with anything?"

"No, thank you," Henry declines politely. "We're just looking!"

"Interested in Uros?" the woman asks Henry in attempts at conversation.

"They're neat!" he nods enthusiastically. "But not really for beginners."

The woman smiles, looking impressed. "From what I overheard, someone did their research." She glances up at Emily and JJ, politely offering her hand. "I'm Courtney," she introduces herself.

"Jennifer," JJ replies, shaking Courtney's hand with her practiced "liaison" smile, grazing her free hand in Henry's hair as she briefly introduces him, "Henry," before resting it on Emily's side. "My wife, Emily, and Michael."

"Hi," is Michael's shy greeting, lifting his hand before resting his chin on top of Emily's head as the brunette shakes Courtney's hand.

"Pleasure meeting you. First time here?" Courtney guesses with a knowing smile.

"Uh-huh!" Henry nods.

"Neither of us never been to one of these before," JJ explains. "We're not really sure where we're going."

Courtney nods in understanding, reaching under the table and pulling out a small stack of maps with the vendors and tables located on it. "This should help you guys out!"

Emily takes one of the maps, flipping i over and scanning the schedule on the back before giving the woman a grateful smile. "Thank you!"

"Not a problem at all," Courtney assures. "These can get a bit overwhelming the first time around. What are you guys looking for?"

"Geckos!" Henry supplies. "Or corn snakes."

"You'll find plenty of those around here," Courtney smiles at him before leaning in towards the family and muttering softly, "Between you and me, don't buy from that guy." She points to a vendor on the map.

"Bad rap?" JJ assumes.

"Sells sick, over priced animals," Courtney confirms just as softly. "Best vendors for geckos usually sell here..." She points to another space on the map. "And this group right here," She uses her pointer finger to gesture to a few vendors a few tables down. "Sell snakes that only eat frozen thawed, if that's something you're looking for."

JJ lets out a small sigh of relief. "Thank you so much."

Courtney shakes her head and holds up her palms with a warm smile. "Hey, not a problem at all. Just wanted to give you guys a heads up." She hands Henry one of the business cards and a sticker from the table. "You get some more experience with reptiles and ever want to get a Uromastyx, you know where to find us."

"Thank you!"

"You folks enjoy the show!" Courtney waves them away, giving them all warm smiles before heading off down the table to greet another person at the table.

"This place is awesome!" Henry exclaims, spreading out his arms to gesture around the room, eyes shining with glee.

JJ tears her gaze away from a massive Burmese python spotted like a cow, smiling down at the child and nodding in agreement. "It's something else."

"I'll say," Emily murmurs, turning the map in her hands with a small frown, bringing it closer to her face to make sure she's reading correctly. "Hey, Hen, what are "hots"?" She peers down at him, stopping briefly when they come across a table covered in plastic containers sealed shut with red electrical tape. One look at a container holding a white diamond back rattlesnake and she lets out a silent "oh" in realization. "These must be hots."

"Whoa!" Henry gasps in wonder, but stays back where he is. "Cool!"

JJ rests a hand on his shoulder, peering over him at the hundreds of venomous reptiles displayed on the table. A part of her is honestly surprised with how easily someone could come here and purchase some of the deadliest animals on earth. She personally doesn't see the appeal, but hey, to each their own.

"Am I crazy..." Emily leans in towards JJ's face and murmurs. "Or are some of these things kind of adorable?" she continues, discreetly pointing to a container labeled "gaboon viber".

The snake itself is gorgeous, short, stocky body curled over in a "C" shape. Bright orange, yellow and brown diamonds line down the serpent's back. The eyes are positioned almost directly on top of its head, one looking towards the right and the other facing the complete opposite direction. The goofy eyes, along with the chubby cheeks (most likely swollen with the venom glands) and a small horn at the tip of its nose make the snake look like a funny cartoon character.

"No, they're definitely cute," JJ easily agrees, finding another snake in a clear container with black electrical tape. The lid labels the snake inside as a "plains hognose". This snake has the same chubby cheeks as the viper and a little upturned snout, with eyes JJ can really only describe as "puppy like". "In a weird way."

"Moms, can I get a cobra?"

Glaring playfully at Henry, who points to a white monocled cobra with a shit eating grin on his face, JJ smirks, "You most certainly can not get a cobra!" 

Emily reaches over and ruffles Henry's hair when he pouts in exaggeration. "Sorry, babe, your mom's the boss." She drops her voice a few octaves, smile light and teasing as she faux whispers, "Between me and you boys, I would have totally been okay with a cobra as long as you cleaned up after it."

JJ gently whacks Emily's side with the back of her hand, grinning when the brunette grabs her hand and links their fingers together. "Don't conspire with the kids to get venomous reptiles behind my back," she chides playfully.

"Busted, boys. No cobras," Emily sighs dramatically, her own smile wide when Michael giggles from above at her. "What a shame, too. I was going to name him Mr Sparkles."

"Mr Sparkles?!" Michael repeats incredulously between giggles.

"Yep, Mr Sparkles," Emily confirms firmly, grinning as they walk down the table and inspect more of the animals. "I was going to buy him a little leather jacket studded in rhinestones and everything."

"You're so weird!" Henry laughs, shaking his head before leaning into Emily, resting against her arm as they move.

"Proudly!" She grins, heart feeling so incredibly full with Henry leaning on her, Michael above on her shoulder and with JJ at her side. It felt right, so simple and so domestic to be like this. It's as if this was where she was meant to be all along. She feels even more content when JJ leans up and presses a soft kiss to her cheek as if to silently confess her own happiness.

It's perfect.

The family steadily makes their way down the rows and row of vendors, stopping every so often when specific animals catch their eye. There's a small vendor selling small exotic mammals that they spend a while at because the woman running the booth has a sugar glider on her shoulder. Michael and JJ are completely transfixed on the small animal, even more so when it decides to hop on top of JJ's head. She squeaks in surprise, while Emily and the boys laugh, the brunette quickly whipping out her phone to record a video to send to the team group chat later.

They stop at another vendor selling sulcata tortoises a few minutes later, the vendors allowing the boys to feed the giants a few leaves of romaine lettuce (another video recorded, but this time for Penelope because Emily and JJ know she would want to see as much of this as possible next girl's night).

It's nice to see how interactive some of the vendors are with the boys. Some allow them to pet certain display animals and talk to them about each one. Michael yelps in surprise when he pets a large tegu because the lizard flicks its tongue out lazily at the boy. Henry is a bit wary of a scaleless bearded dragon and corn snake, wrinkling his nose when he tentatively touches the animal with the vendor's approval.

("It looks like a ball sack," Emily whispers to JJ, eyeing the animal with as much distain as Henry. "It probably feels like one, too." Her own nose wrinkles at the thought, but a smile forms on her face when her wife laughs at her. "What? It's true! Probably!"

“Touch it and find out,” JJ challenges, laughing again when Emily shudders at the thought.

“Yeah, no thanks. I’ll pass.”)

They take plenty of pictures and videos of the boys, mostly standing back and letting the boys enjoy themselves. Though, the boys do convince their moms to participate in petting or holding certain animals. It doesn't take JJ much convincing to hold a tiny banana ball python (she thinks it's really pretty) and a pied ball python whose body consists of huge white spots (she refuses to believe it's real because what?!?) that just fit in her palm. Emily gets suckered into holding a massive carpet python with Henry, tensing only slightly when the snake flicks its tongue in her face.

Henry keeps an eye out for his perfect pet, regarding some of the corn snakes and crested geckos at some vendors with some interest, but moves on otherwise. It's not until they get to a table with a vendor selling leopard geckos that he really pays attention.

Henry looks at the animals in the tupperware containers, each shallow cylindrical container slotted perfectly in a custom black foam board. It made a lot of the animals' colors pop, especially the bright yellow, orange and white geckos in the middle of the board. The women note how Henry's gaze keeps going back to the row with several of these white and yellow geckos, obviously having peeked his interest the most. The last gecko in the row is a stunning bright orange, the tail thick and animal alert. The green marker on top of the lid lists the gecko as a "sub-adult tangerine 25% het temper $75" with the symbol off to the side listing it as a male.

Emily kneels down beside him, peeking between Henry and the gecko. “What are you thinking?”

“He’s pretty,” Henry says in awe. “His tail is thick and he looks really healthy.”

“You guys need any help?” the young man running the booth asks, coming up towards them from behind the table.

“Can I ask a few things about him?” Henry asks, carefully pointing out the orange gecko.

The young man replies with a warm smile, nodding. “Sure, go ahead.”

Emily holds her palms up in a peaceful gesture, letting Henry take the reigns. She stands up behind him, reaching out and grasping JJ’s hand when she comes up to her side with Michael on her opposite hip. “What’s happening? Did he find one?”

Emily smiles fondly at Henry, who’s asking simple, yet crucial, questions about the gecko with the vendor. “Yeah, I think so,” she replies quietly to her wife. “He really likes the orange one.”

The conversation seems to flow naturally between Henry and the vendor, the man periodically peering up at the women to engage them in the conversation about the animal, too. He asks Henry a few questions, nodding in approval when he replies with the information he learned while researching leopard geckos. “That guy right there is one of the friendliest geckos we’ve produced,” the guy adds, nodding to the orange gecko. “Really handleable and calm.”

With that confirmation, Henry turns his hopeful gaze up to his moms, silent question in his eyes.

“You guys can buy him and we’ll hold him back here if you need to pick up some more things or want to look around more so you’re not carrying him around all day,” the vendor assures.

JJ rests her hand on Henry’s shoulder. “This guy, huh?” she asks softly to confirm his choice, small smile on her face.

“I really like him,” Henry confirms with a nod.

“That settles it then,” Emily grins, slipping her wallet from her back pocket and handing over the cash for the animal, sealing the deal.

Henry beams as the man takes the cash, carefully sliding the gecko from the foam board and setting the container behind the table. Henry throws his arms excitedly around both women. “Thanks, moms! You guys are the best!”

Emily smooths her hand through his hair lovingly, smiling warmly as JJ bends and plants a kiss on his forehead.

“You guys can come back here and get him when you’re ready,” the vendor confirms for them, picking up a business card and handing it off to Henry. “If you guys have any more questions or if anything pops up, give us a call and we’ll help out, okay?”

“Thank you!” Henry says genuinely, clutching the card tightly with a grin before turning and tugging on his moms towards the back of the hall.

“Thank you so much,” JJ repeats towards the vendor, smiling warmly at him before allowing Henry to tug her towards the vendors selling supplies.

“See you soon!” the man calls out, waving to them before tending to another customer.

They look around at some more vendors, Henry stopping at a few to buy what he still needs for his new gecko along the way. Michael’s back down on the ground, following his older brother with the same enthusiasm. The two chatter amongst themselves excitedly. JJ and Emily fall in step behind them, watching on with fond smiles that never seem to leave their face even as they leave the convention hall with a new addition to the family in tow.

Emily looks back in the rear view mirror at the boys, smiling to herself as they lean their heads together to look at the gecko in the container secured on Henry’s lap. She turns when JJ leans over and presses a kiss to her shoulder, linking their free hands together in the space between the front seats, a comfortable silence falling between them. The drive home is filled with the excited chatter of their boys from the backseat, the distinct scent of the fast food they had quickly picked up for an easy dinner swarming the car.

It’s oddly comfortable in a way, Emily thinks to herself as the sun starts to set over the horizon. She’s never felt more at peace than she is right now, listening to the boys chatter in the background and feeling the warmth her wife provides as she leans her head on her shoulder.

It’s dark out by the time they get home, just ten minutes until the boys’ bedtime.

Henry and Michael immediately bound up to Henry’s room, the older boy setting the container down gently. He puts the small coleny of dubia roaches into a critter keeper with the food and gel water cubes before setting them off the side. Then, he begins to put the finishing touches to the tank, adding the hides and a small, shallow dish that he fills with calcium powder. Emily trails behind, helping out any way she could and taking the bottle of water JJ hands off to her from behind to cap off the water bowl.

The two women take a seat on Henry’s bed, watching the boys as Henry carefully lifts the container and sets it in the tank. He opens the lid and removes it from the tank, snapping the lid back in place. “We gotta let him come out on his own and get used to it before we pick him up,” he softly tells his younger brother, taking a step back from the tank and joining his moms on the bed. He climbs up between them, smushing himself at their sides and leaning against them. Emily hoists Michael up on her lap, planting a kiss on his head as they all watch the gecko slowly climb out of the container and begin to explore his new environment.

JJ plants a kiss on Henry’s head, reaching over and laying a hand comfortingly on Michael’s back as he leans tiredly against Emily. “What do you think?”

“I love him already,” Henry admits quietly, eyes following his new pet as he explores his tank.

“What are you gonna name him?” Emily wonders, rubbing Michael’s back soothingly to convince him to go to sleep.

“Mr Sparkles,” the toddler tiredly mumbles, cracking a smile at his own joke.

Henry giggles, sounding just as tired as his brother. He lets out a yawn, letting his head lean against JJ’s side. He brings up his hand, moving his glasses out of the way to rub his eye with the back of his hand. “Smaug,” he decides sleepily. “His name is Smaug.”

JJ reaches down, carefully removing his glasses and setting them on his desk before running her fingers soothingly through his hair. “I think that’s a perfect name,” she murmurs.

Her eyes flicker back to the tank, watching the gecko until she feels Henry’s full weight leaning into her. She turns to Emily, who silently confirms with a nod that both boys are asleep. She shifts Michael in her arms, pressing a kiss to his cheek and cradling the bak of his head as she stands. JJ slowly moves herself from the bed, managing to grab Henry in her arms to move him up towards his pillows. She flicks off his bedside lamp, blinking in surprise when the basking light to the gecko’s tank also goes dark before remembering that it’s on a timer. She leans down, pressing a soft kiss to Henry’s forehead and murmuring an “I love you” on his skin before moving for Emily to do the same.

They shuffle out to Michael’s room, JJ carefully and quietly shutting Henry’s door behind her. The routine is the same with Michael, laying him down in his bed, giving him a kiss goodnight and murmuring quiet “I love you”s on his skin before sneaking out and closing the door behind them.

JJ leans up, pressing a tired, soft kiss on Emily’s lips in the middle of the hallway, hoping to convey even the smallest amount of affection she holds for her wife with the simple gesture. Emily gently cups her face between her palms, melting into the gesture as she always does. “I love you,” she hums quietly on the blonde’s lips, smiling wide when she feels JJ smile against her.

“I love you. So much.”

[creweemmaeec11]

My favourite prompts:

A list of my favourite prompts that I’ve posted in the past, all curated into a huge list just for you guys!

1

Finally, the day has come. The villain is thought to be dead. The hero has won.

Until suddenly the hero learns the villain left them EVERYTHING in their will. Made them the owner and operator of all their illegal business.

Obviously, the hero plans to shut everything down immediately. But they quickly realize just how many people the villain employed… how many family’s they fed…

2

“You kissed me,”

“I did… and?”

“What-!? What do you mean and!?,”

“What more do you want?”

“An explanation would be a good start!”

“…or I could just do it again…”

*other person turns bright red,*

“Or… or that, I suppose,”

3

“What the hell are you doing here!?”

“I think the better question would be what in the hell are you wearing,” the villain replied, amusement clear on their face, like they were struggling to keep from laughing.

“What- it’s-” the hero blushed, remembering what they were wearing, “their pajamas! What are you-!”

“Oh my god…” the villain replied, like they were struggling to come to terms with what they were seeing, “the hero of the city not only own, but wears a onesie,”

“Excuse me!” The hero snapped in defence, “They’re comfortable!”

“They? You have more??”

4

“I gotta say hero,” The villain mused as they casually moved toward the cell bars, “I’ve been called many things in my life: monster, villain, outcast, loser, scoundrel,” they tilted their head, examining the hero before them, “but ‘our last hope?’” *clicks tongue* “that’s a first,”

5

You live in a world where anyone born with superpowers must become a super hero. It doesn’t matter what the power is, or how small it is, it is mandatory. It was deemed that having anyone with superpowers work alongside regular people was “unsafe” and “unfair.” Every year, dozens of superhero’s with powers useless for fighting are killed. You’ve managed to make it this long with nobody finding out you have a superpower. But how much longer can you hide in plain sight?

6

The city’s villain mysteriously disappears and hasnt been seen in a week. The people are celebrating, but the hero is worried. What if the villain is planning something big? Determined to stop whatever evil plan is brewing, the hero tracks the villain down, but they dont find what they expected. Instead of evil plotting, the villain:

-Has been taking care of a sick pet -Come down with the flu -Been helping arrange a friends wedding -Found out they were pregnant -Is getting married themselves -Mourning the death of a loved one -Has adopted a young pet and been occupied taking care of them -Has been helping one of their lackeys who’s in a desperate situation -Has been feeding the homeless and offering blankets

7

You’re the most wanted villain by all highest ranking authorities, but all the heros “just can’t seem to catch you” (they always let you get away) because all your crimes are things like stealing expensive medication and then donating it to hospitals, robbing toy stores and donating to orphanages, robbing banks and giving to charity, robbing grocery stores and feeding the homeless, ect

8

A hero/villain with the power to materialize their own tattoos. Got a wrench tattoo? Now you’ve got a wrench. Got a tattoo of wings? A bomb? A get away car? Well…

Dragon tattoos have always been popular, havent they?

9

Write about a genius inventor villain who, while watching the news, learns about a sick child in hospital doctors arnt sure they can cure. The villain realizes something theyve invented could cure the child. Now the hard part is convincing them to let the villain help.

10

The villain starts to notice the hero is feeling more down the usual, so they start leaving the hero little notes to cheer them up. All is going well until the hero figures out who is sending them.

11

In a world of magic users where everyone is divided into the 6 eye colours, and the colour of your eyes represents what your powers are. Each colour has an elemental power, can talk to a certain type of creature(Invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals), and has 3 other powers. For example, blue eyes control water, can commune with fish, etc. Everyone in the world has either red, orange, yellow, green, blue or purple eyes. Except for you, you were born with black eyes. Everyone is afraid of what your powers will be, but they should be more worried about the kind of creatures you can talk to…

12

A hero and a villain (and maybe their sidekicks, up to you) trapped in a haunted house or haunted location.  

-One is scared so the other comforts them. They are both scared but trying to act like they aren’t. -One doesn’t believe in ghosts, and the other has the power to communicate with them or see them. -Ghosts aren’t real, but one continues to try and freak the other out, who claims they aren’t scared. -Ghost wingman. I need’ d say no more -One gets possessed, so the other has to do the whole ‘kiss to break a curse’ thing to bring them out of it. -The classic Person A thinks ghosts aren’t real so they prank Person B to scare them. Then shit gets real, but person B doesn’t believe person A, thinking its just another prank.

13

“I trusted you! You promised!”

“I kept my promise! I got you your results! Don’t question my methods from a top that high moral horse or yours, especially when the only reason you made a deal with me in the first place was because you were too much of a coward to do what needed to be done!”

14

The local wildfire has been growing out of control, forcing the city to have to evacuate. Suddenly, the villain with water powers shows up to lend a hand to fire fighters.

15

“Tell me hero,” the villain spoke, chains jangling from where they hung on the villains wrists as they walked up to the bars of the jail cell, “If you wanted to skip a press conference, could you?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re sisters getting married, but your needed for a big event at the hero academy that day. Would you be allowed to attend the wedding? What about if your brother stole a pack of gum. Could you let it slide? Not would you, but could you?”

The hero paused. Could they? They had responsibilities! They had commitments to the city, and to the serving of justice!

The villain laughed at the heros silence, “I may be in jail, but you’re more chained then I’ll ever be,”

16

“So tell me,” the villain drawled, dragging a finger across the heros skin, making them shiver, “what changed your mind?”

17

Hero discovers the villain has a day job. It isnt at all what they expected. (Day care, animal shelter, etc)

18

“What are you going to do if you beat me, and suddenly the city dosent need a hero? What are you going to do if you get hurt and can no longer fight, and the city forgets about you just like all the heros before you? Who will you be when your legacy crumbles under the weight of all those who follow? Will you take up knitting?”

The hero stared unblinking and frozen as the villain took a step forward.

“Sure, your a hero. But what are you without that?”

The villain took another step forward.

“Your nothing, heroism is all you have. That pathetic title you curl up to every night. But without it?” They looked the hero up and down, “Absolutely nothing…”

19

A villain retires from villainy and gets plastic surgery (or simply never showed their face) so they can live a normal life without being recognized. While living their new life, they bump into the hero, and the two start falling for eachother. But the villain is terrified of the hero finding out the truth

20

The hero slammed their front door as quickly as they could, eyes wide, heart pounding.

The villain. The villain was outside their door.

“Well that was rude,”

21

A hero with magic powers, in a world where magic is unheard of. They have always kept their powers a secret, fearing they would be shunned, or tested on. They never use their powers in battle.

One day, while practicing their magic alone in the woods, the villain appears out of nowhere. 

Before the hero can explain, the villain asks, “you have powers too?”

22

A hero dies. Or at least, they think they do. The next thing they know they wake up at their own funeral. And the only person there? Is the villain.

23

“The worst part, is you had the nerve to call it love”

[is-nino-actually-luka]

Top 10 Ninos in Miraculous Ladybug

Hey Everyone! 

Ever since Stormy Weather, Miraculous Ladybug fans around the world have always wondered who the best Nino is. However everyone knows Top 10 list are 10x better than that so we’re doing this instead.

In this list, we used a complex equation to calculate which Nino has the greatest combination of friendliness, superheroics, musical ability, directorial inability, loyalty, and that special something that makes them Nino.

This list had a lot of competition, so don’t feel too bad if your favorite Nino didn’t make this particular list! Plus if you guys reblog this with an essay telling me how wrong I am, the tumblr algorithm will actually promote the post!

10. Shell Shock

In 10th place, we have the superhero turned supervillain Shell Shock! Now although you wouldn’t think he has the qualities of being a Nino, considering how betraying your allies isn’t very friendly, but in his defense akumatizations are no ones fault but Hawkmoth’s. 

Plus this betrayal was the impetus for the Nino Retrieval Arc, which is fondly remembered as having some of the best fights in the show, including the very famous scene where the random citizens in a window drop their training weights and unleash their true power so they can restrain him and 2 other akumatized superheroes with little to no effort.

But the real reason he’s so low is because he’s just Carapace but Red, and turtles aren’t red. That’s silly. Shell Shock is just so silly

9. XY (Ripping off Luka)

On the surface, XY appears to be a talentless hack who clearly doesn’t care about music and is only in it for the money, and he is. But in his defense it’s also pretty clear the dude is obviously a product of his environment since his Dad is clearly the mastermind and even he doesn’t seem to think very much of XY.

Honestly the dude ought to become a better person and one of the best ways to change is to stop emulating his father and find better role models. So if he’s ripping off Kitty Section, specifically Luka, then maybe this could be the first step in the journey to becoming a better person like Luka.

Anyways, XY makes number 9 because of his potential 

8. The Right Half of Oblivio

Alright let’s address the elephant in the room about Super Penguino. It’s pretty obviously a stand in for something else, but the show couldn’t exactly say it explicitly since it is a kid’s show after all.

Super Penguino represents how Alya and Nino are mobile gamers.

Honestly considering that their best friends are console gamers, it makes sense that they may try to hide their hobbies, and as a console gamer myself, I agree. They should be ashamed.

But then again I thought it was a cool episode so it’s number 8 even though we barely see Nino until like the last minute

7. Boy in Spanish

Niño takes the number 7 spot on this list for obvious reasons

6. Silencer

Silencer may be a supervillain, but he’s more of an anti villain if we are being honest. Like honestly he was only trying to steal voices from bad people like XY (Who stole his music and insulted Marinette/his friends), Bob Roth (Who encouraged XY to do that and he is literally everything wrong with the music industry), The Mayor (Who is notoriously corrupt), and Ladybug (Remember when she killed Chat Noir during Hero’s Day on live TV?). 

Plus he was only really doing this to help his friends, which is pretty Pog.

Actually the only reason he isn’t higher is because he tries to silence people and that was literally the same thing the bad guys did in Footloose so not very Nino-like if you ask me

5. Bubbler

The Bubbler was literally only akumatized so he could throw his bro a party, and isn’t that the most Nino-like reason ever? Plus it was because of Gabriel Agreste, so can you really blame him?

Although we have to dock points off because he did send all the adults to the sky which is pretty messed up considering I am technically an adult now. Honestly the Bubbler sounded a lot more reasonable when I watched the episode in high school

4. Carapace

Taking number 4 on the list is everyone’s favorite Captain America Ripoff.

And his debut was really something! He actually 1v1ed an akuma without superpowers! He clearly took Ladybug’s advice to heart when she told him that “When you're facing a supervillain, strength doesn't make a difference. Courage and determination do.”

Plus his power is to protect his friends, and can you tell me a more Nino-like power than that? And his transformation sequence and music is a headbanger so it’s pretty obvious to tell that Nino’s under that hood.

Also he’s green. That’s the color turtles are supposed to be.

3. Viperion

Viperion barely edges out Carapace on the list since Viperion doesn’t need to protect his friends from danger. Instead, Viperion can stop the danger before it happens! It’s like Minority Report, and we all know how good of an idea it was in that movie!

It kinda sucks we didn’t get to see more of him in his debut episode, since Ladybug had to sideline Luka at first since she said “When you're dealing with a supervillain, it's better to have a partner with superpowers.” Although he was a hard carry once he did get superpowers! Literally Hawkmoth and Ladybug consider him the biggest threat when facing a group of heroes!

And like any good Nino transformation, the music is a bop, and having an instrument as a weapon really helps on the Nino ranking

2. Luka

The caring older brother who moonlights as a temporary Reptile Hero, Luka isn’t the only musically inclined friend of Adrien who had a crush on Marinette!

Honestly if you didn’t know any better you might think that Luka is actually Nino!

Luka is in almost everyway the best Nino, and he was a very close second to first. Honestly I had some trouble deciding between the two of them, but I think the number 1 pick is pretty unanimous in everyone’s minds

Before we get to the number one pick, let’s take a look at some honorable mentions

Nino Rota: An famous Italian composer whose work includes the Godfather Trilogy’s Score. However the fact he does not appear in Miraculous Ladybug disqualifies him from the top 10.

Saint Nino: Honestly idk anything about her but she was a Saint so I guess she was important. However the fact she does not appear in Miraculous Ladybug disqualifies her from the top 10.

Nino from Fire Emblem 7: She’s doing her best. However the fact she cannot read disqualifies her from the top 10.

1. El Niño

El Niño is a weather phenomena that occurs about every four years and is associated with a warm band of water in the Pacific Ocean which is accompanied by high air pressures in the western Pacific and low air pressure in the Easter Pacific.

It is also the first thing that comes up in Google when you look up Nino.

Honestly I debated putting it this high up on the list, but Nat Geo told me the El Niño in 2016 was associated with coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, severe droughts in Africa, South America and parts of the Pacific and southeast Asia, and wildfires in Indonesia and Canada. I don’t live in any of those areas but El Niño scares me and for my own safety I decided to appease it by giving it the number 1 spot in this list. 

So did any of our choices surprise you? Make sure to leave a like and comment below your favorite Nino!

[plasticnightmaredoll]

Mortal Kombat (2021) Review

Well, well, well....here we are, a Mortal Kombat movie -- not the first, obviously. I will say, it's much better than both films from the 1990s. I will also say that, for the most part, I enjoyed it more than "Mortal Kombat 11" and its garbage DLC "Aftermath."

Come for me all you want, but I am standing by my thoughts on that game and its DLC.

Overall, I did like this new "Mortal Kombat" movie. It was entertaining. However, I have...a lot of issues with it, too, pertaining to lore, acting, and special effects.

What was the best part of this movie? If I had to pick one? Oh, definitely Hiroyuki Sanada as Hanzo Hasashi/Scorpion. He is one of the best Japanese actors working today. He's one of the best actors working today. Having him play such an important character was probably the best choice the producers made.

Also, quick side note: Hiroyuki is 60 years old. HOW?! I mean, he doesn't look 20, but 60? I have my doubts.

Also, this is the first time I've heard him speak English. Interesting.

Another wise decision the producers made for this movie is casting Josh Lawson as Kano. I don't like Kano. He's a dick, but Josh gave the idiot a sort of douchebag charm that you couldn't help but be amused by.

So, what did I like, broken down:

Josh Lawson and Hiroyuki Sanada

The opening scene and final fight were the best scenes in the movie. Fantastically done, both of them.

Some cute little references to MK lore: a picture of Nightwolf, the use of "flawless victory," the use of "fatality," some suspiciously MK-sounding music cues, the massive statue of Shao Kahn...There were some nice fan service moments.

The fights, even the training ones, were all entertaining. Kind of like with "Godzilla vs Kong," the action is one of the strongest points of "Mortal Kombat" (2021).

The concept of the dragon brand to indicate who would fight in MK tournaments was actually a great choice. It does give the writers an excuse to not worry about including EVERY MK character; only the ones who have been "chosen" can fight at this time. It makes sense, it works, it's intriguing.

Kung Lao slicing Nitara in half (Sorry, Nitara -- love ya, Girl!) with his "spinning hat" technique was probably the most Mortal Kombat kill of the movie. It was extremely graphic, bloody, gross, over-the-top...it was perfect.

Hanzo toasting Bi-Han with his classic fire breath was a badass move if I ever saw one.

I did like how Mileena's mouth "worked" in this movie. She had sharp teeth and reddened skin(?) around her mouth to indicate that there was something not quite right with her face. Then she gets pissed later in the movie and opens her jaw completely, revealing an almost snake-like mouth, the skin tearing in the process. It was pretty badass. I liked it.

I actually liked Raiden a lot in this movie. I don't particularly like him in the games (don't come for me -- it's just my opinion) but I thought he was awesome in this movie, a truly intimidating but wise presence. His lack of full assistance made more sense in this movie, too (again, don't come for me because this is just my opinion).

The special effects were sometimes quite good. Sub-Zero's ice powers were well made, for example. Another example is Goro, who was fantastic (so much better than he did in the 1995 movie).

The backstory behind the main weapon of Hanzo was a pleasant surprise: it was a gardening tool to being with, and he just so happened to find it and turn it into a weapon.

Mixed thoughts:

The acting was decent overall. The only two I thought did great were Josh Lawson and Hiroyuki Sanada, but everyone else was ok. Some of the performances got a little hammy at times, but...I'm not going to take too many points off for that.

I liked Mileena but also was disappointed. She wasn't as malicious and flirty as she normally is; like she was watered down in this movie for some reason. However, she still was a dangerous fighter and her mouth was crazy! 👄

What I didn't like:

Some things didn't look so great. When Jax lost his arms, it looked...well it looked like blatant CGI. The lighting barrier Raiden created to protect his fighters from Shang Tsung looked pretty cheap as well. Some set pieces looked a bit too much like set pieces. I know we're on a set because this is a movie. However, when it looks kind of obvious, it really distracts you. I know this is a Marvel movie or something, but I think the special effects and sets could have looked a bit more refined.

I preferred the Quan Chi twist in regards to the death of Hanzo's family. It provided a much more complicated revenge story, and...I just think it was a better choice than making Bi-Han the murderer, like in this movie. I get that if they did use the Quan Chi twist, this movie would have become, like, 5 hours long or something, and would have had yet another character to develop (or attempt to develop). Still, it's not my favorite take on the Sub-Zero vs Scorpion story. So...meh.

Reptile looked impressive. He was more like a ... reptile than usual, you know, as opposed to a humanoid reptile creature. However, he didn't speak and didn't wear any armor, and his role in the movie seemed forced. It felt more like a badly executed fan service moment, like, "Heeeyyyy, it's Reptile, Guys! Ok, kill him because we have too many characters already...."

Cole was a likable guy, but I didn't see a point in his character being in the movie. He isn't an MK character from the games, and this just doesn't seem like the time to make a new character for the franchise. There are so many more MK characters to choose from, I think they could have avoided making up someone.

At the same time, though, this movie does suffer from having too many characters to focus on: Cole Young, Kano, Sonya Blade, Jax Briggs, Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Reptile, Mileena, Reiko, Kabal, Shang Tsung, Raiden, Hanzo Hasashi/Scorpion, Bi-Han/Sub-Zero, Goro, Nitara...I mean, damn, that's a bunch of characters to cram into one two-hour film. People who know little to nothing about MK may not be bothered by this, but fans like myself most likely will feel disappointed with how certain characters were handled in the movie.

Reiko, what...did they do to you? Did...he even need to be in the movie? I mean, he was just.....there.

Having the concept of "arcana" was just...I don't know. It wasn't a terrible idea but it also made things even less believable. No one got their unique traits due to some sort of weird-ass prophecy or whatever in the games. I suppose the writers used this "arcana" thing as a way to keep the movie flowing and avoid having it be hours long. However, it just didn't sit right with me.

I know this movie is only two hours but I would have liked a little more development for Mileena, Reiko, and even Kabal. Kabal gave us the short version of what happened to him but, again, it was so quick. Like, blink and you'll miss it. I think Mileena and Kabal are two very interesting characters in MK, and having them be so one-dimensional was disappointing.

Hanzo was barely in this movie. It seemed....weird to me. Bi-Han was out there wrecking everyone's shit and Hanzo was somehow trapped in the Netherrealm until Cole was forced to fight Bi-Han one-on-one? I mean, eh? They chose the absolute best actor to play Hanzo but didn't use him much.

I was so disappointed to see Kung Lao killed off. I mean, characters that die in MK games don't always stay dead but still....he was so much fun in this movie (as he should be).

I didn't care for the portrayal of Nitara at all in this movie.

I didn't hate "Mortal Kombat" (2021), but I didn't love it, either. I'd watch it again, and I would watch a sequel, but there is definitely room for improvement. There is a lot of potential for the next MK movie(s) to be much better (this movie had clear potential, too, to be honest). I just hope that maybe the writers will realize this if a sequel is made.

Final grade: C+

[skzsauce01]

Normal Pt 1

Description: For more skilled maneuvers, dragon shifters need a rider to help them out. After rejecting multiple riders, Hyunjin, a traumatized and handicapped shifter, is assigned to you. To add a cherry on top, you’re deaf, so how are you supposed cast spells to free him from his limitation, let alone the anger in his heart? Some HTTYD influence.

Warning: none

Word Count: 3.8k

Pairing: fem!reader x dragon!Hyunjin

Pt: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5

“You have got to be kidding me.” Hyunjin can feel his eye twitching as he looks at you, his new rider. If he’s being honest, he’ll admit that you look familiar, but it doesn’t make him hate you any less.

“If you have complaints, then maybe you shouldn’t have mistreated your previous rider until he quit,” the professor seethes and begins walking away. “Remember, this is your last chance or we have to expel you.”

“Professor. Professor!” the young dragon-shifter calls, but his pleas fall on deaf ears. With a sigh, he turns to you, the one with literal deaf ears.

“Stay out of my way,” he growls and pushes roughly past you.

You tilt your head to the side, unable to comprehend his moving lips. He seems displeased, but still, you want to make a good first impression, so you run up after him and offer him a red pouch.

“What do you want?” he frowns.

You open the bag for him to see the appai berries inside, his favorite fruit. 

“Oh, wow, for me thanks!” he grins happily, making you smile as well. You beam at him as he takes the gift from your hands. However, you don’t expect him to then spit into the bag and shove it back into your face with a scowl. 

“You really think I’d say that?” he scoffs and continues stomping down the halls of Sheng Academy, shaking off the feeling that he’s seen you somewhere.

“A deaf handicap! Can you believe it?”

“Hyunjin, calm down,” his friend and roommate, Changbin, sighs.

“Easy for you to say; your rider is head prefect,” Hyunjin grumbles at the other shifter.

Changbin just lets out another sigh and focuses his attention on his dinner.

“Who says we need riders anyway?” Hyunjin continues. “We can fight and fly perfectly well without them!”

“You know that isn’t true.”

“I’m a Twilight Terror,” he hisses.

Changbin rolls his eyes at the mention of the superior dragon breed. “I’m going back to the dorms now. You should find her and get some practice in before the great ‘Twilight Terror’ falls face first into dirt in class tomorrow.”

“Like claws I will,” he curses while taking the unfinished custard from his friend’s plate.

It appears that you have the same idea as Changbin though. As soon as Hyunjin puts his tray onto the collecting belt, you walk up to him.

‘Practice?’ you sign. 

“I can’t understand your stupid hand dance,” he snickers and pushes your forehead backwards with two fingers.

You figure out what that meant, so you pull out a notepad and write your question onto a sheet.

With the same cocky smile on his lips, he leans down towards you and exaggeratedly replies, “Nnnnoooooo.”

Despite his answer, Hyunjin makes his way to the training grounds after he has lost you. It is actually a commonality for him to practice whenever he has a chance. By himself, that is.

“Face first?” Hyunjin mocks. “We’ll see about that.”

After a quick chant, the pendant around his neck glows and turns him into a gorgeous, deep purple reptile. Hyunjin lets out a majestic roar and takes off into the air.

He loves the feeling of the night air under his wings and the feeling of control as he maneuvers around the training course. Over the horizontal beam, around the rotating spikes, toss a fireball at the target, through the-- Bang! His tail accidentally slams against a pole, sending him face first into the sand below.

“Claws…” Hyunjin groans internally, picking his head off the ground. 

Fustratedly, he thumps his useless tail against the ground repeatedly until he feels an extra weight trying to hold it down. When the dust cloud he created settles down, he nearly gasps when he sees you clinging onto him with wide eyes.

You shake your head and make a thumping motion with your arm. ‘Don’t hurt yourself,’ you sign regardless of his understanding. 

Hyunjin blasts a breath of hot air into your face before flinging you off of him and flying away as quickly as he can.

Once alone again, Hyunjin curls up into himself and paws at his left tail fin, or rather, the lack thereof. He can still remember the day he lost it like it was yesterday. He can also still remember the man who took it from him. The man he called his rider.

Hyunjin knows deep down he cannot maneuver as fluidly and precisely without the spells of a rider even if he had a functioning tail, but he would rather keep trying every night by himself than admit it. Speaking of spells, how are you, a deaf rider, supposed to control him? You probably cannot even enunciate the most basic of spells, he realizes with a scoff. He realizes his hypocrisy when making fun of your handicap when he has one as well, but he would rather disregard that thought too.

“We’re going to be having free practice for class today. Remember, the New Year Race is in just over three months!” your professor announces. 

“Are you competing this year?” a she-dragon asks, bumping her snout against Hyunjin’s wing.

“We’ll see, Hye Ji,” he replies, hiding his tail even further between his two front legs. Hye Ji sighs at the response and flies off with her rider to find a training spot.

You cannot tell what the dragons are saying even if you can hear, but you can clearly see her intentions. You give Hyunjin a suggestive nudge, and he growls dangerously at you.

“Now, now, Hwang,” your professor chides. “Be nice. Maybe L/N can take you to the Race this year.”

“I don’t need a rider--”

“I’m sure you don’t.” Turning to you, she signs and vocalizes, “Ready?”

You nod, but Hyunjin lets out a grunt. To no one’s surprise, he starts to stalk off. As he does so, he feels a sudden weight overcoming his head, causing it to drop onto the ground and halting his movements. Angrily, he turns to the professor for using a spell on him. To his surprise though, her necklace wasn’t the one glowing; yours is. 

“How?” A spell like that is difficult and even more so when used on a dragon who has not accepted you as its rider yet, not to mention the even greater increase of difficulty due to your inability to have even heard the words to it before. Still, the white shine of your pendant is unmistakable.

After you release your spell, his curiosity bests his pride, so he stays where he is, watching your every move. You walk over to give him a few gentle strokes along his side-- a friendly, and non-invasive spot to pet.

‘I’m going to get on now, okay?’ you sign. 

Your professor translates, and Hyunjin lets out another grunt and flies off.

“What did I expect? I really hope he comes around before he can’t graduate,” your professor sighs and goes to check on her other students. You’ll figure it out, she hopes.

Flying alone makes him feel weightless and free. Although your earlier spell was impressive, it scared him, knowing there is someone who can control his muscles like that. So what if he isn’t able to make quick turns or fly in the same spot? He is a Twilight Terror; he can just blast away anything in his path.

He flies towards a nearby pole to prove his point. He gathers all his frustration and insecurity into a ball of plasma and condemns the approaching obstacle into obliteration.

Wait. Approaching?

Hyunjin’s eyes widen as he realizes that the pole is only one of many rotating ones on a gear-like contraption, and the next one is coming faster than he can react on his own. Suddenly, his muscles feel a sharp burst of energy and pivots his body just barely under the incoming barrier. His tail is left behind, however. It jerks uncontrollably behind him as the situation becomes more dire. 

Hyunjin lets out a worthless roar in your direction, demanding that you get your spells together quickly. You cannot hear him, but you understood his message. Honestly, you are disappointed with your lack of ability, but you simply are not used to working with a dragon with only half its fin, especially from a distance. Still, that is no excuse for you not to be able to save him. 

At the last Hollywood-like second, you manage to get Hyunjin out of harm’s way. He looks at you incredulously before flying a clear path towards you and turning human just as he lands. It’s only then that he notices how pristine your white riding uniform is. The underside of your coattails, the area most easily burned during fights, flaunt a brilliant crimson colour. Either you’ve just purchased the outfit or you are just that good at riding. 

With your professor gone, Hyunjin snatches the notepad from your coat to communicate.

‘How did you conjure spells like that?’ he scribbles and pushes the words into your face.

You take the pad back. ‘Let me on your back and you’ll see.’

Hyunjin scoffs at the idea. ‘Why didn’t you use them on me last night?’ he asks, referring to your rather pathetic attempts of holding his tail down with your physical body.

‘It wasn’t time yet. I don’t control dragons when I’m not supposed to. That’s abusive.’

Abusive? Hyunjin narrows his eyes, unsure whether or not you are lying. Why not use your powers when you have them, especially when you can control dragons who haven’t sworn their loyalty to you and from a distance no less. 

‘Who are you?’ he decides to ask.

You smile when you read his words. Eagerly you scribble your response. ‘Your friend who’s going to take you to the Race!’

Hyunjin rips off the page once he’s read it, crumples it, and tosses it at your black boots. “I’ve not entered that thing once in all the years I’ve been here,” he snarls in your ear, not caring that you can’t hear him. “No rider has ever been able to be my rider, let alone a friend.”

As he tries to walk off once again, you pull on his sleeve.

“What?” he whips around angrily.

You reach forward to press something into his mouth. It doesn’t take long for him to recognize the familiar sweetness of an appai berry. You hand him the page he threw at you, now with the words ‘good work!’ written on the back, and walk off the practice grounds, leaving him behind this time.

“Where did you get that?”

“Get what?” Changbin asks, popping another berry into his mouth and swirling his blue necklace around idly. A familiar red pouch sits besides him.

“This!” Hyunjin exclaims as he snatches the pouch before his roommate can grab another one.

“Dude, chill. It was just hanging on the door knob when I came home. Are they yours?”

“No,” he replies curtly.

“Hey! Then give them back!” yells Changbin after his friend as the latter makes his way back out again.

It doesn't take long for Hyunjin to find your dorm room. The look of excitement across your features when you open the door to see him only fuels his anger. 

“What is this?” he yells. “You think bribery is going to work?”

Your blank stare causes him to drag his hand down his face in frustration. Without a choice, he writes on your white board, ‘I don’t want any of your bribes’ and tosses the pouch at you.

You grab his wrist to prevent him from leaving as you write, ‘If you don’t want bribes, then earn it.’

“What?” he vocalizes. You understood that.

‘Earn the berries like you did today.’

‘This is ridiculous. I’m not a child.’

‘Then think of it as an add-on. You want to know how I work my spells, don’t you? Just try letting me on you, and you’ll find out AND get appai berries. It’s a win-win.’

‘Don’t you get it? I’m NOT letting a rider on my back.’

‘I’m not asking you to swear loyalty to me. Consider it a favor.’

‘And what makes you think I’d do you a favor?’

‘Because we’re friends! :D’

Hyunjin wipes away your emoji with his hand. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

For the next few days, while you are trying to coax him into a ride, Hyunjin has been trying to figure out your spellcasting methods by himself in the library. By his reasoning, there aren't too many riders who can control dragons who don’t let them, so the school journalists must have done an article about you somewhere sometime during your career at Sheng.

“Changbin, can you get the door?” he calls with an arm full of borrowed newspapers and magazines.

“Yeah, sure. One second.” 

“Thanks,” Hyunjin nods once the door swings open. He nearly drops all the manuscripts once he sees who else is inside the room though.

“What is she doing here?” he gestures accusingly at you with his head.

You wave innocently at him then beckon Changbin to sit back next to you.

“I’m helping her sketch a blueprint of a model of your tail so that she can practice on it since, you know, you won’t let her practice on you,” replies Changbin.

‘Thank you,’ you sign.

‘My pleasure.’

“You sign?” Hyunjin scoffs.

“She’s taught me a few things,” the other male shrugs. ‘He’s such a soggywog,’ he signs to you.

You giggle, which surprises the Terror since it’s the first sound he has heard from your mouth. It’s more pleasant than what he imagined a deaf person is able to muster, but again, it’s another fact he would rather not dwell on.

“What did you say to her?” he demands, to which his roommate shrugs and shares a knowing smile with you.

‘I think it’s about as good as it can get,’ Changbin writes, turning back to the blueprint. 

‘I’ll get to building it then,’ you write back and give him a quick hug as thanks before signing your goodbyes.

“You two sure got close,” Hyunjin notes as his friend closes the door behind you.

“She’s nice, so why not?” Changbin conjures a red pouch of berries from seemingly nowhere and starts munching on one. “They’re mine this time. Hands off.”

Hyunjin waves him off and spreads newspapers on the desk you have just vacated. “Anyway. I’m trying to figure out how Y/N is casting her spells. Want to help me?”

“Nope! She’s also going to constrict half of my tail and practice riding me, so I’ll find out sooner or later.”

“And I don’t suppose you’ll be telling me afterwards.”

“You’re so smart, Hyunjinie~” he coos mockingly.

“I’m telling your rider you’re cheating on him with another rider.”

“Oh, Chan already knows,” Changbin tells him. “He’s riding with her in case something goes wrong.”

“When did this happen?” the younger one wonders aloud.

“When you were busy avoiding your rider,” Changbin answers. “Not that I understand why. She’s so nice and pretty.”

“She’s not my--”

“Oh right, it’s cause you already have Hye Ji!”

“Seo Changbin!”

Hyunjin isn’t curious about what you can do about a broken tail like his. He isn’t! The only reason that he is hiding in one of the corners of the practice grounds is because he likes it there. Yeah, totally!

He sees you and Chan step back from Changbin as the dragon takes on his reptilian form.

‘Beautiful,’ he sees you sign towards the Death Fangs and get started fitting a contraption that will constrict the movement of the left half of his tail.

Chan helps you up and then gets on behind you himself, and your white necklace begins to glow as Changbin lifts up off the ground. Hyunjin frowns when Chan laughs upon figuring out your trick. Your lips are moving but not in a way the common spells would require them too. If you aren’t saying the spell words, what are you saying? 

Just then, your magic flickers a centimeter too far to one side, sending Changbin into a spinning spiral. Hastily, you pull on a string to release the constriction and increase your magic to steady the dragon. Chan helps, and a mix of blue and white ribbons of magic surrounds the three of you until Changbin is upright again.

During your increase in powers, Hyunjin can make out your chants. No, not chants, singing! How has he not noticed how you place a hand over your voice box to feel the vibrations as you ride? Rather than using different words for different spells, you use different frequencies! 

Chan has Changbin land with his arms around you much tighter than they were before the accident. Given the possible outcomes of what just happened, the tightness is warranted, but not in Hyunjin’s opinion.

‘I’m sorry,’ you sign once you have dismounted. 

‘No worries. It’s why we’re practicing,’ Chan assures. 

Of course the prefect knows how to sign too.

Changbin lets you reattach the constriction, and you are in the air again in no time with Chan right behind you. By the end of the session, you are able to maneuver Changbin through the easy course without any incidents. With satisfied nods, the three of you decide to make your way to the dining hall for dinner together while Chan bombards you with questions about your technique.

Hyunjin steps out of his hiding spot after you have left nothing but the memory of the white of your uniform behind. He doesn’t even realize how sore his legs have become from standing in the same spot for so long until he moves. Something about your riding is that enchanting that he forgets just how much time has passed. He wonders how you haven’t been able to find a single article about you yet.

“Hyunjin?”

“Hye Ji? What are you doing here?” He whips around to face the yellow dragon.

“Just out for a little air,” she replies with a sweet smile. “Want to fly with me?”

“I, uh, just finished training. I was just heading in for a shower,” Hyunjin lies.

“Come on, just a little bit?”

“I’m really tired, sorry,” Hyunjin tries, unconsciously moving the muscles that would hide his tail behind his back if he had one at the moment.

“Then I’ll carry you!” offers Hye Ji. “I tried it with my girl friends once. It’s really fun.”

“Your rider’s not here!”

The girl shrugs. “We can take the easy course. Come on, please?”

Before long, Hyunjin finds himself on top of the dragon fifty meters above the ground. 

“Hold on!”

She is right about one thing: this is really fun. Until they fly a little too close to a beam for his liking.

“Watch out!” Hyunjin yells. 

If he had been flying by himself, he would certainly not have been able to avoid it. Just then, he imagines you are sitting behind him, taking him from harm’s way as Hye Ji swoops naturally over the pole. Then suddenly, he is you. He is seeing the exact path you took not minutes ago with a broken tail swaying in the wind behind you. He looks to the side at how comfortable Hye Ji’s wings are without having to compensate for an imbalanced tail. 

He then closes his eyes and feels the wind blow effortlessly pass him. It’s a nostalgic feeling-- one he very much enjoyed years ago. He remembers flying without a care of where he is or where he’s going. He remembers flying without having to prove anything to himself or anyone. Most of all, he remembers flying with the laughter in his ears. Laughter from his--

His rider.

The thought jolts Hyunjin’s entirety. Being unaccustomed to riding, the motion jerks his body to the side of Hye Ji where he loses his footing and slips and begins an all to familiar journey to the ground. 

He chants the transformation spell to soften his landing with his wings.

“Beautiful,” Hye Ji breaths at Hyunjin’s deep purple scales. “I-I mean, I’m sorry about dropping you!”

The male shakes off the dust and returns to human form before she can see his tail, especially after she has just witnessed him face planting into the floor. Again.

“It was my fault,” Hyunjin says with a shake of his head. “I think it’s time I go back for that shower.”

“Wait! Don’t you want a ride? The dorms are very far from here,” she offers.

“No thanks. I’ll walk back.”

“I said I’m sorry!”

Hyunjin turns around to give her a small smile. “Don’t worry. It wasn’t you; I just have a few things to sort out myself.”

“I think I’m in love.”

Hyunjin raises an eyebrow at his roommate who’s sprawled across his bed. “Just from one ride?”

“She’s just… that amazing, you know?” he sighs exasperatedly.

“You’ve fallen one too many times today, haven’t you?”

Changbin sits up. “I’m just kidding, you know.”

“Good. You had me really worried there for a second,” Hyunjin chuckles with a shake of his head and turns back to his math homework.

“You don’t have to worry. I’m not going to play Chan dirty like that.”

Hyunjin looks up at his friend. “What about Chan?”

“S-M-I-T-T-E-N. She’s going to be in a lotta trouble with his fangirls. You know, since he’s head prefect and all.”

“He’s known her for one day,” Hyunjin objects with the shake of his head.

“At least he doesn’t avoid her like the plague.”

“I’m not trying to cozy up to that rider.”

“YOUR rider.”

“She’s not my--”

“Seriously, Hyunjin?” Changbin snaps. “How long are you going to go about that idea? You realize that riders get graded on how well they control their dragons, right? You might not care about not graduating or whatever, but have you thought about them? Do you know how many riders quit this school because they’ve been paired with you and your attitude? Do you realize how many of their hopes and dreams you’ve ruined?”

“I--”

“Yeah, sure your future isn’t what you want it to be because of your tail, and I’m guessing it’s some rider’s fault, but don’t you see that you’re doing the same thing to other people?”

“So what if I’m projecting my pain onto them?” Hyunjin retorts. “I’m a selfish, vengeful, futureless dragon. Maybe I should drop out myself to spare some rider from a poor, unfortunate fate of flying a half-tailed lizard!”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“You’re right, it’s not. You just want to protect your rider’s little girlfriend because she’s strong and pretty and bribes you with berries.”

“No, I want to protect you, Hyunjin,” Changbin states plainly. “Y/N is unlike any rider I’ve ever seen before, and I really think she can help you feel like who you were before. Just give her a chance.”

Hyunjin opens his mouth but is unable to find a counter reply. Changbin sighs and ruffles the younger dragon’s hair before heading to bed.

~ ad.gold

[crystal-moon-101]

My redesigns for this popular trio!

The Secret Generator 10 (Or Celebrity Trio but that doesn’t really work for me because of Zak...) I’ve been meaning to get around to doing this, since I am really fond of these three boys. With Zak and Rex both being part of my top two shows of all time. Sorry Ben....

-Zak Saturday-

He was the most fun working with. His warm colour palette isn’t something I work with often, but I think I did alright. He also as some small details you might notice, like the fangs, eyes and scales.

Notes:

14 Years Old

5′5 (Will only grow to be 5′8. Which confuses him since both sides of his family have very tall genes. Ulraj pokes fun at him, saying all that height is going towards his ‘Kur Form’)

Dead on the inside.

Aggressively Pansexual

His human side has been growing reptilian features. Noticeable fangs, scales growing around his lower neck, around his chest and upper back/shoulders, pure orange eyes with pupils that can become thin slits and a slight forked tongue. 

Even also displays some reptile behaviour. E.g, soaking up sunlight on a rock, alert nature, able to stand still as a statue. (He’s done these things since he was young. His parents just thought it was something he picked up from Komodo.)

The light that forms around his eyes when using his powers have darkened the skin around his eyes. (Suggested by my friend)

He is oddly thin and lanky, but it’s often hard to see because of the baggy clothes he wears.

That being said, he’s a lot stronger than you think he is. Can easily lift people twice his size.

Constantly has to get new hair ties. They keep breaking because 1. Every time his powers cause all of his hair to flow, the tie snaps. 2. Working out in the wild, it keeps getting snagged by tree branches or slipping off when he tumbles downhills.

While quiet and casual outside of battles, he will become a lot like his mother on the field.

Has freckles from his maternal side. His mother doesn’t have them, but Doyle does.

Will casually mention his ridiculously and scary adventures like they’re nothing, not because he’s bragging, but because he truly doesn’t understand what normal really is.

So use to being grabbed by the scruff of his shirt that he will always go limp when you grab him like that, much like a baby animal. 

While he can act very eerie and strange, he’s a very sweet and understanding guy. 

That being said, he can be hella scary when he wants to be.

Don’t mess with his family or he will send an army of Grootslangs to your house.

Still trying to figure out his placement in life and what Kur was really meant to be.

After being taught by his family and uncle, he went to Tsul 'Kalu to be his new mentor.

-Rex Salazar-

I think I changed him the least, but I added extra details and made his shirt, pants and shoes into a one-piece suit. It always baffles me how he can pull off this colour scheme so well.

And while I didn’t draw it here. I would definitely make his pure EVO form a lot smaller. Make him come across more like a monstrous zombie robot thing. The reason why is because those EVO forms he had just felt like they belonged to different shows, like transformers. A more creature design would fit better, I feel.

Notes:

16 Years Old

6′1 (Will grow to be 6′5. Yeeeeeee, he’s a big guy.)

Lady killer~

Best wingman and even offers pretend dates to help you.

Can always hear and feel the technology around him. Strange to everyone else, but he’s learnt to live with it. Even comes in handy when trying to find a good wifi connection.

Knows when to cut the bullcrap.

He does have a bit of a science brain, but he uses it differently than his family had.

Constantly jumping between worlds. Sometimes even tossed by someone.

Talks in his sleep, mostly reciting nanite binary coding.

Lonely lad and child solider, great mix, right?...

Goes all out with holidays. He once, somehow, got real snow in Providence. No one knows how to this day.

Hates lightening.

Has nearly called Holiday and Six mum and dad multiple times.

Has a lot more abilities he has yet to discover. (Including turning people EVO.)

Never asked for any of this, but, eh, what ya gonna do

Is always overexcited when doing normal things. (Werids out Noah a lottt.)

You’re endangered if he decided to use his full raw power. (Key signs to look out for is a large amount of circuit patterns covering him, glowing eyes, tips of his hair glowing too, sharp metal growths and technology around you flashing like crazy.)

Loves Imagine Dragon.

Sharp eyelashes.

Just wants hugs, give him hugs!

Always frustrated when someone from his past tries talking to him about the past. Sometimes he wonders if people forget.

Skilled drawer and smooth singer.

Has an EVO pet (Her name is Siri, Btw)

Some have compared him to being a living, breathing nanite. 

Eager to have family game nights! “Poker doesn’t count, Bobo...”

Once had a malfunction, his whole body was out of wack. (Noah laughs about it and even has some recordings, much to Rex’s dismay.)

Has a civilian outfit that Noah put together. (He refuses to take off his goggles, however.) 

-Ben Tennyson-

Now, I already made a redesign for him, along with Gwen, Julie and Kevin (Both for teen and kid versions). I used the same look, just adjusted some details and colours.

Notes:

15 Years Old

5′9 (And he stays that height. He peaked in height very young, but stop growing quickly. This does annoy him.)

Dumbass with bad impulse control.

Even he’s confused by how he keeps attracting women.

Had a rather lonely childhood with many bullies. (It’s why he often seeks attention, he’s afraid of being alone and forgotten again.)

It’s also what made him jealous of Gwen when they were young. Most treated her like the better of the two.

Pretty crap at sharing his feelings. He would rather play it off as a jerk, then go and drown himself in smoothies...

A secret momma’s boy. “Benny Bear” As his mother likes to call him.

Has an interesting dynamic with Azmuth. Despite their arguments, they balance each other well. Others have even seen them taking care of each other (Almost like father and son), but the pair will always deny this and say it’s ‘strictly’ professional.

 Surprisingly great with kids. (This was truly noticed when seen around his 14 baby chills.)

In the future, he will have a nasty wound on the battlefield, which will result in the Omnitrix becoming his new arm and merging with him.

When he takes thing seriously, you know shits going down!

Has a german shepherd name Boston.

 Likes to call Vilgax ‘Calamari’.

Has grown to be close to most Tennyson members. (E.G Camille, who was actually his babysitter after she joined the family.)

He doesn’t like peacocks after...an incident at the zoo. His mother still apologizes to this day.

Decent singer and very skilled at the guitar. 

Has picked up combat moves from Tetrax.

Has always felt like he’s nothing without the watch. Others have said otherwise.

He knows how to speak certain alien languages, Galvan being one of them.

His schedule is a nightmare, because something is always popping up that involves him. This means he sometimes forgets to eat, sleep or even wash. It’s why he’s often caught napping.

Sometimes wonders if he’s human or alien at this point, maybe something else entirely. 

Very soft poofy hair.

Is hated by almost all his villains. He just loves pissing them off.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #449-450

(both from yesterday)

What do you dislike about the house you live in? It's in the suburbs. Have you thought more about your funeral, or your wedding? My hypothetical wedding. Dinosaurs or unicorns? DINO BOIZ. What do you think of Maroon 5? I like some of their old stuff, and one or two of their newer songs, like "Payphone." What about Coldplay? I enjoy them. Fall Out Boy? Love 'em. Katy Perry? She's okay, I guess. There are a few songs I enjoy. Have you ever snuck into an R-rated movie when you weren’t old enough to see it without parents? No. What is your favorite Disney show? I don't have the slightest clue what's on Disney nowadays. What do you miss most about elementary school? Digging tunnels in the sandbox during recess with my friends. :'( When was the last time you saw the person you had your first kiss with? The start of February 2017. Hard to believe it's been four whole years... Is there anything hanging from the doorknob in your room? Ha, yes. Mom got me a little sign that says, "If I can't wear my flipflops, I'm not going," lmfao. All I wear are flipflops. What's your opinion on wearing pajamas in public? Do you yourself do that? I LITERALLY couldn't care less. I wear pjs in public sometimes; it really depends on where I'm going. What was the most severe punishment your parents gave you when you were growing up? Taking away technology was the worst. Do you usually fill up at the same gas station? Mom goes to a few different ones, depending on proximity and price. Have you ever owned any pet birds? What kinds/colours? I have not. I used to want a cockatiel for a long time, though. Do you pay much attention to your YouTube recommendations? If so, what was the last video that caught your attention? Kinda, I guess. I'm not sure what was the last recommended video I clicked. What has been the happiest time of your life so far? It's complicated. Most of my best memories are from high school with Jason, yet at the same time I was HORRIBLY depressed. I think my most pure happiness when I was really progressing with recovery. Moving on from him, losing tons of weight, feeling motivated... Have you ever had a crush on a celebrity? Who? My two biggest celebrity crushes ever have been/is Link Neal and Mark Fischbach. Do you have any fears you would rarely admit to anyone? Nah. Admitting fears isn't a big deal to me at all. What website do you spend most of your time on? YouTube. What did you have for dinner last night? A chicken sandwich. What could you talk about for hours? Meerkats, Silent Hill, Mark... Do you have a lamp beside your bed? Yes. What's your favorite ice cream topping? Chocolate syrup. What was the last TV show you binge watched? Avatar: The Last Airbender. Would you rather eat burgers or tacos? Oh, burgers for sure. I don't likes tacos. Did your mother change her maiden name when/if she got marred? Yes. Do you use TikTok? Nope. Are you closer to your mother or father? Mom. Do you own any costumes? No. Would you care if your SO went to a strip club? Hm. So long as they're not laying hands on any of the strippers and they ASKED me first, I don't think I'd care? I'm pretty sure I'd also only be okay with that if we were a long-term couple where very strong trust has been built. How helpful are your parents to you? Would they help you to pay for your first apartment? College? Where does the line end? They are so, so very helpful and I'm pretty sure would go to the ends of the earth to help me in any way they could. I know they WOULD help pay for the things you mentioned, but it's not something I want them to do. I want to be able to financially provide for myself, one day... Have you ever had to evacuate due to natural disaster? No. What video games did you have when you were growing up? LOADS. I looooooooved video games. What was the first election you ever voted in? This last one, actually. Can you hear anything right now? Yeah. I'm watching Gab play the Resident Evil 3 remake on hardcore mode. What's the coolest, most unusual pet you can think of? I've always thought sugar gliders were quite interesting as pets. I wanted one for a looong time, but I am not informed on how well they do in captivity and if it should even be legal for me to truly want one anymore. Have you ever seen a UFO or other weird object in the sky? By definition, it was a UFO. Sometimes I do even wonder if it was an alien spacecraft, given JUST how strange that shit was. I won't explain it again, just 'cuz I've done it in many surveys before. Are there any albums you know every single lyric to? I could probably nail Ozzy's Black Rain. What's your go-to painkiller? Advil. Does your mom have a celebrity look-alike? No, but there's a celebrity with her exact name. Do you think it’s pretty when 100s of balloons are let loose into the sky? NO NO NO NO NO that shit is SO upsetting. Where do you think they end up??? It's littering. Animals get choked and tangled by them all the time. What do you draw more than anything else? Definitely meerkats. Have you ever visited someone in a psychiatric home or ward? No, but people have visited me in one. Have you ever received a parking fine? No. Are you in any group chats? Who's in them? No. Do you have a lisp? No. Do you have an Instagram account? Do you use it often? I have three, but one's pretty much dead. I don't post stuff regularly on my other two either, really... Can you parallel park? I would absolutely hit another car. Have you ever played paintball? Did you get hit? No, that shit's dumb. You can get really hurt. What was your favorite fairy tale when you were a kid? Maybe Little Red Riding Hood? Are your parents still together? If not, do you know why? No. Mostly financial disagreements, but I know there's stuff I don't know. Have you ever been evicted? Why? Yes, because we couldn't keep up with rent. Have you ever worked as a manager or supervisor? Noooo. What was the last thing you voted for? So Snake Discovery (a reptile channel I love) hosted an enclosure build-off recently, and the winners were selected by fans via voting. The guy I voted for got 3rd. What's the most amazing animal you've ever seen in captivity? I've been very close to an elephant at a zoo once. They're magnificent. Having been to Sea World as a kid (I would NEVER go now), I also saw the killer whale show. As much of a spectacle as it was, it was animal abuse regardless. Do you like white chocolate? It's okay in small doses. Have you ever eaten snow? Yeah. Do you talk to your pets? Um, duh. Have you ever adopted a stray? (Cat or dog?) Cats, yes. Do you read about any mythology? (Greek, Roman, Norse, Egyptian, etc) No, not by my own will. I DO love mythology, I just... don't read it. Do you ever use bath bombs? No. Have you ever gotten angry at an employee and complained to the manager? No. Have you ever sent your food back at a restaurant? Yes, because they got my meal wrong. I was REALLY shy to do it, but I made sure to do it politely and apologetically. Do you sleep in a bra? What mad lad sleeps in a bra???????????? Has your ex ever gone out with someone close to you? No. Can you suggest someone funny on YouTube? I'll go for someone what isn't my obvious vote, ha ha. There are truly so many, but Garrett Watts is high on the list. Elena Bateman, too. Can you do a handstand? No. Has anyone close to you ever been suicidal? Yes. Have you ever broken someone's heart and didn't care? Tyler sure acted like I did, and to be entirely frank, I didn't care very much, but only because it was a HUGE overreaction and I knew he'd be fine quick. What color is your hairbrush? It's just a white comb. Who was your most recent call from? My psychiatrist. Have you ever watched someone die? Only animals... It's the absolute worst. Are you currently "seeing" someone? No. Are you friends with someone who's autistic? I might be, but I know my niece is on the spectrum. Do you like humans? To be entirely transparent... I think I wish humans were never a thing. We've done so, so much harm to the planet, some things irrevocable. Earth would be a much healthier, far more peaceful place if we'd never existed. Do you like pandas? I love pandas. P.S., fuck outta here if you're one of the people who don't support conservation efforts for them. That shit blows my mind. What do you think of Evanescence? They're great. Amy's voice is absolutely incredible. I don't even think that's an opinion, but global fact, ha ha. What do you think of Avenged Sevenfold? I like some of their stuff. I haven't heard a whole lot though, honestly. What do you think of Halestorm? ^ Do you think you are attractive? God no. I don't see me as an attractive person at all. Do you like dinosaurs? I love 'em; I was OBSESSED as a kid, and my first aspired job was a paleontologist. Do you like lasagna? No. Do you share a room? No. When was the last time you climbed a tree? Never, actually. Have you ever been hospitalized for more than 2 weeks? I think my longest was three. What can you do that none of your friends can do? I dunno. Why did you last go to the airport? Mom and I were dropping Sara off so she could go home. Who was the last person to see you in your underwear? My mom. Who’s the most attractive female you’ve ever seen? Maybe Alissa White-Gluz from Arch Enemy? Or my friend Alon. I'm certain there's more, because women are just so fuckin beautiful asdkfajlwejkrjqwe Red, white, yellow, or pink roses? I actually like the original, rich red. Do you think someone would ever want to marry you? Well, two people have, but one absolutely doesn't anymore and the other knows that it's not healthy or emotionally safe for either of us to imagine that at this time. I don't know if anyone ever will again. Do you like Thanksgiving? No. Like I enjoy the focus on thankfulness, but the history isn't right and I don't enjoy the food. Do you ever wear colored eye liner? No. Have you ever used a darkroom? No. Have you ever been "popular"? No. Has someone ever tried to convert you? Yes. Have you ever been told that you dress like a slut? No, not that how someone dresses has any relevance to their sexual activity. What’s your most recent obsession? Final Fantasy X jfccccccc. Video games or board games? The former. Are you scared of tarantulas? As much as I talk about them... you can probably tell I have a massive interest in them, ha ha. However, even though I love them, they're still sorta scary. Like, threat poses are no joke. And it's terrifying on the very rare occasion they hiss. During Covid, do you wear a mask or no mask? I'm fully vaccinated, and yet I still wear a mask because I'm a considerate human fucking being. Do you have a PlayStation 4? No, but I reeeeaaally want one. :/ Have you ever played Fortnite? Nah, not my type of game. Do you like anime? Yeah. Have you ever been on a boat? Yeah. I was always SO excited as a kid when Dad would take the boat out for a fishing trip. Have you ever played Kingdom Hearts? I've played some of it with Jason. I wasn't a fan of it. Have you ever built a snowman? Yes. DC or Marvel? I don't really have a preference.

----------

Do you prefer your nails long or short? Why? Short, because I can't keep my nails long for the life of me. I pick/peel my nails badly. Do you have any vinyl records? No. Are you still in touch with your best friend from high school? No. Have you ever visited any celebrity gravesites? No. How do you feel about archaeology? It's extremely fascinating. Would you have a big cat (like a tiger) for a pet if you could? No. I could never provide the environment they need, and it's simply not safe. They are not domestic animals, and even the ones that seem most tame can surprise you. What are your favorite smells? Cinnamon rolls, coffee, lilac, fresh baked bread, barbecue, etc. Have you ever had to block people online for harassing you? I'm not sure, actually... What is your favorite thing to do on The Sims? Surveys have a lot of questions about those games... I only ever played the ones that focused on animals, and I think I most enjoyed breeding them and naming the bbz. :^) And watching their behavior. Which hair color you've had has been your favorite? Red. If you were stupid-rich, would you ever actually want a mansion? No. I do not need all that room, nor am I wasting my money on such excessive space. What drinking games have you played? None. Do you take lessons for anything? No. Has something really heavy ever fallen on you? No. If you wear makeup, what colors do you usually wear? Only black. Does your shower have curtains or a glass door/wall? Curtains. If you have more than one pet, do they ever get jealous of each other? One is a snake and the other is a cat, so. Is there a room in your house that you don’t like going in? No. Besides salt and butter, do you put anything on your popcorn? Nothing besides what you mentioned. Are you lonely? I'm way too lonely for it to be healthy. Do you like pineapple? Yep. Have you ever seen fireflies? Yes; they're endemic to here. Have you ever trespassed? As a kid, yes. Do you raise your hand or participate in class? I did sometimes. Are you afraid of heights? Yes. Are you afraid of the dark? No. Would you ever be your school’s mascot who wears that costume? No. Have you ever written a poem? I've written a lot. Would you ever be a tornado chaser? FUCK TO THE HELL NO. What is your favorite thing to eat with bbq sauce, if you even like that stuff? I hate bbq sauce. Have you ever had to do a class in summer school? No. Have you ever been to the rainforest? No. Ever thought about writing a book? Yes. Have you ever had a dream where you killed someone? Yes. Have you ever solved a Rubik’s Cube? Nope. Have you seen all of the Jaws movies? No, only the first one with Tyler. It was aight. Have you ever had a black eye? No. Is your ex sexually attractive to you still? I haven't seen a picture of Jason in years, and I don't want to. Not because I care about how he looks now, it'd just be extremely triggering to see his face. I still find Sara gorgeous. Have you ever been to couple’s counseling? No. How often does your employer ask you to work overtime? N/A When was the last time you were scared? Ummmm I really can't say I know. What’s your favorite song by Rihanna? "Disturbia" is where it's AT. There's this synthwave edit of it that I positively adore. Can you speak binary? No. Have you ever had a pet that you disliked? A family pet, yes. Do you like boys with long hair? UGH yes. Do you like root beer? Not really, no. Do you like ice cream cake? Not really. Do you ever dream of yourself dying? That's not all that rare in my nightmares. What song always makes you sad? I think two songs are tied for what makes me most sad: "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin and "Eternally Yours" by Motionless In White. Were you mean as a little kid? No; I was a sweet kid. Have you ever tried spam? No, it looks SO gross to me. How fast can you run? This is pathetic, but I don't think I CAN run. My knees are too weak. I think my weight coming down on them would just make me crumple over. Have you ever bought something from Spencer's? Yeah. Have you ever been on a diet? I've tried diets many times. Do you prefer light or dark jeans? Dark. When you listen to music, do you generally sing along, or just listen? I almost always just listen. Do you have any of your exes as friends on Facebook? Yeah. Who was your first love? Do you ever miss that person? Jason. I miss his memory every day. I say "memory" because it's been years, and I have no way of knowing who he is today. How many cars are parked at your house right now? One. Has anyone ever told you you’re a control freak? No. Do you know anyone who has gone missing? If so, were they ever found? Not personally. What was the spiciest thing you’ve ever eaten? Some wings with extremely hot sauce at Buffalo Wild Wings. Have you ever deliberately tried to get someone drunk? Um yeah, no. Do you like sprinkles on your ice cream? No. I don't like sprinkles in general. Do you know how to do the moon walk? No. Has anybody ever told you that you have a good singing voice? Yes, somehow. Onion rings or french fries? French fries, for sure. Who is the best cook that you know? Dunno. If you have your ears pierced, when did you get them pierced? When I was a kid. I don't remember the age, but I was old enough to decide myself that I wanted them pierced. If you have siblings, have they moved out or do they still live with you? They have their own places now. Do you like fried rice? Yessss. Are there any animals you refuse to touch? Some bugs. Have you ever intentionally fed a house spider? I don't believe so, no. What makes you feel lucky? That I have the family I do. What is something nice going on in your life right now? Just the gym-going, really... Who’s the worst person you’ve encountered on the Internet? An old friend I just knew as Shakes. If death wasn’t a consequence, what would you try? Maybe sky-diving, idk. Has a teacher ever told you off? No. Have you ever told off a teacher? No. Do/did you take school seriously or not? I certainly did. How do you usually cope with breakups? Not well. I obsess over how something's wrong with me and I'm not good enough for anyone. Disney princess or Disney animal movies? Animals, for sure. What's your favorite Katy Perry song? It's evading me right now... Have you ever made/tried friendship bread!? Omg, I forgot that was a thing! I actually have. I've completely forgotten the gist of it or even how it tastes, but I remember I loved it. What do you want to know about the future? If I'll ever be content and happy. What's your biggest insecurity? My weight. Ever found something disgusting in your food while eating out? No, thank god. Does the area where you live have a good or bad reputation? A very bad one. Are there any holidays that you don't celebrate? Yeah, like St. Patrick's Day, among some others. If you could find out who you're gonna marry right now, would you? Yes. Save myself time and heartbreak. How important is it to you that your partner has the same religious views? I wouldn't date someone very religious. If they're more tame about it, that's fine, but I'd prefer to not date a religious individual. Do you own a Wii? Yeah. I've kinda been wanting to play Guitar Hero or Rock Band lately on it... Do you like a lot of cheese on your pizza? "A regular, reasonable amount of cheese." <<<< This. I really don't like when things are so cheesy that it leaves a ridiculous trail when you try to separate pieces. Have you ever been made fun of because of your sexuality? Not directly to my face, but I can guarantee people I know had certain ~opinions~ on it when I came out. I also like just came out as pansexual versus bi, and I'm not even telling a lot of people in my personal life because I know they'll find the concept absolutely ridiculous. What would you do if you found an abandoned animal? "Depends on what type of an animal it was, and whether it was friendly or skittish." <<<< This. I'm obviously not going to try to usher a rabid dog over to me (I'd call a rescue or something if the animal appeared potentially dangerous), but if the animal appeared safe, my heart would absolutely lead me to try and get the animal to come to me so I could take it home and try to find the owner. Have you ever kissed someone who had a tongue piercing? No. What singer/band do you think deserves to be more famous than they are? Jonathan Young from YouTube. He is INCREDIBLE. He deserves to be picked up by a label so badly. What is your favorite PlayStation 1 game? The original Silent Hill, no competition. Do you think objectum sexuals are real, or attention seekers? I really can't imagine someone pretending to want to fuck their car for attention. I don't get it AT ALL, and it's weird as shit to me, but I mean, I don't think people can control what they're attracted to. How far out of your age bracket would you date? 21-early 30s, probs. Have you ever had an STD? No. Have you ever tried pho? No. Pick one: Crash Bandicoot or Spyro? Spyro!!!! I have the original trilogies of both series, but Spyro is where it's AT. Does your job allow piercings or tattoos? I'm unemployed, but I wouldn't work at a job that didn't, honestly. If you could dye your hair any color right now with absolutely no restrictions, what color would you dye it? Maybe like a galaxy-esque mixture of layered colors. I've wanted that for YEARS. Have you ever known a white supremacist? This region is swimming in them. Have you ever spoken to a detective before? No. Do ladders scare you? Climbing them does, yes. Do you have any tattoos on your arms? Yeah. Have you ever thrown up on anybody? Unless I did unknowingly as a baby, no. How many people have you turned down when they asked you out? Uhhh two or three, maybe? What is your favourite kind of fruit cobbler? I actually haven't tried enough to have an educated favorite, but I can say I love peach. Do you hear any other people talking right now? I'm watching a let's player play Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, so I hear her, obviously. When was the last time you started a new medication? It's been a while, idk. What is your favourite type of nut? Cashews, I guess. I don't really like nuts, but I definitely like cashew bars. Where did you eat the best pizza you’ve ever eaten in your life? ... Domino's lmaoooo. Did you ever watch The Rugrats when you were a kid? Yeah, I loved that show. I even had two video games. Do you know anyone who was adopted? Yes. Can you name all 50 US state capital cities? No. Can you tie balloons? I can't, actually. Have you had a deep conversation with anyone today? Yeah. I wanted Sara's advice on something I'm dealing with. On your Facebook friends list, who was the last person to have their b-day? One of my sisters' was yesterday, actually. What did you/are you having for dinner tonight? I had Special K cereal. Name some healthy foods that you enjoy eating. Strawberries, apples, bananas, (sometimes) broccoli, other things that aren't coming to me. Who was the last person you Facebook messaged? My friend Girt. What flavor was the last cupcake you ate? The cupcake itself was chocolate, and the icing was uhhhh... blue? Apart from sleeping, what do you plan to do tonight? I haven't done anything of note. I'm probably going to bed soon. What’s the age difference between your parents? Two years, I think. When was the last time you ate an apple? Today. I have been on a big sliced apples w/ peanut butter kick lately. Have you had any caffeinated beverages today? I have soda every day. :x Have you eaten any chocolate today? What kind? Mom brought me a Reese's home today when she went out with a friend. How many different towns/cities have you lived in? Three. Have you ever written a song or poem for someone special? Poems, yes. Are you attracted to the last person you Facebook messaged? Not very much physically. Emotionally... I don't know. Do you have any ice cream in your freezer? What flavor is it? No. Ice cream is my #1 comfort food, so that's a big "keep out of the house."

[unfriendlyamazon]

tagged in this thanks to @dominocity and i spend more time looking at my ao3 stats then i care to admit...

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

36 works on AO3, plus one on my super secret (not really) second AO3 so I don’t contaminate my fandoms.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

165,078

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Baby Dragon - jurassic park if it was a romcom

Liking You and Me - this one is one of the earliest kaijou fics i wrote (besides the one i deleted), and i don’t even know if i like it anymore... but i get frequent kudos and comments so i guess it’s good!

In Awe of Flowers - they don’t even kiss!!! also @jadenvargen drew me a comic in the comments and i never thanked him for it because i was too scared to talk to him and tagging him now so long after the fact seems pretty ridiculous but um thank you jay for real.

Sweater Weather - kaijou for when you had a bad day

A Hand to Hold - kaijou hand kink this one i am actively embarrassed of (also, before i saw the light on trans joey)

4. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I try really hard to! If the fic is really old I don’t (i don’t know why i can’t explain it), but I really appreciate when people take the time to comment and I want them to know it.

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I don’t... really have any?? I write plenty of angsty situations. Competitionverse (my duke/seto business business au) is probably the angstiest one and the one I have the worst plans for. I have some secret fanfic of 1930s gangster Joey that I’ve kind of put out in the world so maybe that?

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Haaahaha what drew me back to fanfiction after not writing it for at least a decade was domestic portraits of kaijou so, like, that’s what I write. Probably Baby Dragon or In Awe of Flowers.

7. Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

Not crossovers but I write... a lot of AUs and in fact did an entire compilation one year for NaNoWriMo I never finished. Most niche is the Black Tapes AU that yes I do have a full outline for including timelines for every characters and how they intersect with the grand conspiracy, and maybe the wildest is Long Way to a Small Angry Planet just for making Joey a feathered reptile alien.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I’ve gotten some comments over writing Duke as non-binary and kind of a weird one on my super secret FE3H fanfiction fighting me on a plot point??

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I didn’t, but now I do. I don’t post 90% of what I write, which is maybe weirder?  It’s been really good to be pushed there by friends and develop that part of my writing, so maybe I’ll post more. Probably not tho. I feel like I’ve branded myself as the KaiJou hand kink person but I still don’t write it enough to be anyone’s go-to.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No?? I don’t think so???

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No but it’d be super cool.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I guess not technically. Me and @saggiclowns bounce ideas off each other, write fanfiction for each other’s fanfiction, and have definitely developed things together, so maybe that counts? But our IP is individualized.

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I have almost exclusively written KaiJou so you think that’d be the obvious answer. I think my actual all time favorite ship that sends me to the moon is probably Marceline/Bubblegum from Adventure Time (the history!!!! the animosity!!!!! the friendship!!!!!!!), I just... don’t want to read AT fanfiction.

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Hahahaaaaaaa. I am WIP queen!! Back in the day I’d start a hundred fanfics just to abandon them! The same’s true of today I just don’t post every thought that comes into my head. Star Trek AU deserves so much more of my attention and I do have a plan for it and I bought a special little Star Trek notebook to keep all my thoughts ideas and notes in and then when it comes to writing it I struggle.

15. What are your writing strengths?

Genuinely, to toot my own horn, I feel I write very naturalistic dialogue and for the longest time writing dialogue was the easiest thing in the world to me, to the point that sometimes I would skip over anything else. Also, gosh I love world building. I could go from a blank screen to a fully articulated society complete with maps, pantheons, and intricate histories for every location. The problem is then writing it.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

I tend to get very stuck on things and struggle to skip over them. Last year’s NaNoWriMo was a testament to that, and I kept rewriting and getting frustrated and will inevitably end up trashing the whole thing. I pick up new ideas constantly and then discard them for the next thought in my head. It’s part of why I’ve only really let myself write one shots and short fic, but I do have some longer WIP I’d love to actually finish.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

This is a tricky one and I’ve read and listened to a lot of people talk about how other non-fluent languages are presented in all kinds of different art. I personally don’t have a strong opinion. Best practice is to find someone who is fluent in that language to help you translate it (and there used to be whole blogs dedicated to helping people with this, I don’t know if they’re still around), but that doesn’t mean I’ve never jammed anything into a translator.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

This... is interesting because the answer is YuGiOh. Back in my middle school days my friends were very into ygo and wrote silly like chat formatted fics that we posted on DeviantArt (???) that were just really bad and stupid and silly, and the only reason I even thought about ygo was because all my friends liked it. The first fandom I actually really got involved in was Teen Titans, and ATLA I was, like, a recognizable presence. I fell off extremely hard probably thanks to college and have spent most of my life focusing on original fiction and writing my own characters. Then my best friend sent me a piece of fanart that unlocked my childhood memories, and here we are now, in the only fandom.

19. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

I wrote Bite Hard and it might be one of the best things I’ve written... and now I’ve kind of repurposed it into an original fiction??? I think the main characters might always be buddies no matter how much I’ve manipulated them, but it’s kind of spun off into it’s own thing? That’s what fanfiction’s for! Experimentation, playing with ideas, having a sandbox to build in! And then I EL James it and make millions! (jk)

@saggiclowns doesn’t post to AO3 that much, and i don’t know if @danieco even has an AO3 but they are extremely good writers!! also if you write fic, please share your own!

[pixieungerstories]

The Captive - 5

My stories always turn up here after they are finished on Patreon. This one is a $1/month novel, so if you can’t wait, you can subscribe for the month of September and binge read the whole thing.  I just checked my stats and apparently I have over 250 chapters of assorted works up there.  $5/month will get you access to all of them.

“You slept in today, tre- Elly,” George observed.  “The boy was quite worried.”

“Ben?  Nah.  He was fine.”

George snorted, “He does not approach the stairs that often when you are on time.”

Elly froze.  “What would you have done if he had gone up them?”

George turned to peer at her out of the darkness, his eyes glowing faintly.  There was an uncomfortable moment of silence.  “There is a chesterfield down here that matches the chair you are sitting upon.”

“Wait, who even calls it a chesterfield anymore?”

George bristled, “I do,” he said quietly.  “What do you call it?”

“A sofa.”

“If you understand the word, why comment on my choice of it?”

“Sorry,” Elly said softly.

George settled slightly back onto the floor.  “I would like you to sleep on it tonight.”

Elly blinked.  “Down here?  You can’t be serious.”

“I am.  I have cleaned the fireplace.  I will allow you to bring your horrible lights,” he conceded graciously.

“You are serious!” she was shocked.

“Of course I am.  You have not invited me into your space, so I am respecting that and requesting you spend the night in mine.”

Elly considered this.  It was dark.  It wasn’t damp.  It certainly wasn’t cold and George could easily adjust the temperature if she needed it.  Hell, he was acting as the furnace after all.  “Why did you need to clean the fireplace?  I mean, you are the fireplace.”

“It helps with ventilation and you can use it for cooking, if needed.”

Elly wondered what he thought she would be cooking overnight in her sleep.  “I don’t understand why you are asking me that.”

George gave a frustrated and slightly steamy sigh.  “I understand that you tend the shop during the day.  I understand that you do the shopping and go out for chores on the days the shop is closed.  Nonetheless the end result is that I receive only a minimal amount of your time.  You aren’t holding up your end of the bargain, treasure.”

“I am!” Elly protested. “I live here and take care of the place and I’m never out after dark!”

“That isn’t the bargain, Elly.  The arrangement has you here to keep me company.  The shop is just supposed to be a hobby for you.”

“A hobby? No.  A hobby is something you enjoy.  I’m only running the shop because I like eating food and sleeping indoors.”

George’s brow wrinkled.  “You have money, you don’t need to work.”

“What reality are you living in George?”

“The one where there is a trust set up for whoever is living here,” he explained impatiently.  “All you have to do is present with a copy of your birth certificate and sign the paperwork.”

Elly blinked.  George sighed again, noticeably raising the humidity in the room.  “If you dial the telephone for me, we can call the lawyers in the morning.  It has been awhile since I have spoken to Mr Biddu. It is probably well past time.”

She swallowed, “Maybe it has been embezzled or something.”

George’s teeth glittered in the light of the lamp.  “Oh, I doubt it.  Your law firm is in on the secret.  I have spent a lot of effort on guarding my treasure.  And whether you like it or not, that includes you, Elly.”

“This is a lot to take in,” she murmured.  “Why do you want me to sleep with you?”

There was a faint choking noise before George replied.  “You are here to keep me company.  I was giving you a chance to settle after moving to a new place.  It has been months since you arrived.  It is past time.”

Elly considered this.  “I don’t want to sleep down here, George. It’s too dark and scary.”

He didn’t reply, but just kept watching her.

“Um…  If you sleep in my room, do I have to worry about a fire?”

“No,” was the cold reply.

“Do I have to worry about getting you down the stairs before Ben sees you?”

She could swear he smirked at that.  “No,” he replied.  “I can be discreet if you insist.”

Elly pursed her lips and looked at the stairs.  “All right.  If we push the bed against the wall, there should be room for you on the floor.”

George chuckled, “It sounds like you need a bigger bed.”

“I like my bed!” she protested.

George let that one slide.  Apparently he wasn’t going to push his luck yet.  He followed her up the stairs, close enough that she could feel his breath on the small of her back.  She could hear his claws clicking on the floor as they went.

“I don’t have my space set up for … someone as large as you.  Just … please be careful not to break anything.”

“I will be very careful with your treasures, Elly.”

Elly fought not to laugh.  There were some very nice antiques that had come with the house, but none of it was hers.  She had brought a lot of books, a lot of shelves and a desk that was set up to be ergonomic for her.  It was all still in boxes in the room she wanted as an office.  She had hit the ground running here and hadn’t had a chance to even unpack her things.

Looking at him in this space she was amazed he hadn’t smashed the furniture on his way to her room.  She gave the couch a shove to make a little more room for him.

“May I?”

She looked at him watching her.  What the hell, it wasn’t her couch.  “Sure.”

George muscled it aside, widening the space behind it.  Then he crept back and moved the chairs and coffee table to keep the grouping the same.  “I liked the way Ann had the furniture arranged better.”

Elly gritted her teeth.  She should really just let it go, as long has he remembered her name, that was the important thing.  But still, “Her name was Ina.  And I don’t know how she had the furniture before, but I haven’t moved any of it since I got here.”

He went very still at that.  There was a long pause, when he spoke he almost sounded like he could cry.  It was the first emotion other than irritation Elly had seen out of him.  “Ann was before her.  She was my friend.”

Elly didn’t know what to say to that, then the enormity of it hit her.  Ina had been here for the last fifty years.  George hadn’t known her name.  So either Ina hadn’t insisted he learn or that was a really long time to be alone.

Shit.

No wonder he was so insistent on spending time with her.  How did the idea of solitary confinement even apply to George?  Reptiles made shitty pets because they were solitary creatures as compared to dogs, which lived in packs or cats which at least lived in colonies.  But was George even a reptile?  He was definitely warm blooded.  She couldn’t get her head around the temperature thing.  Or… any of it really.  If magic was just science people didn’t understand yet, then George sure as shit was a magical creature.

He was watching her.

Elly blinked.  “Um…  I guess that’s why the doors are all so wide.”  George inclined his head, giving her an off centre nod of agreement.  “I’m not attached to the furniture layout.  We can rearrange it on the weekend if you want.”

“Thank you tr - Elly.”

“Did you call Ina treasure too?”

George narrowed his eyes for a moment before he closed them entirely.

Elly hesitated before asking, “Did you actually talk to her at all?”

“In the beginning, as much as I talk to you now.  I did not demand more of her time and over the years that dwindled to her simply bringing me food, then leaving before I had eaten it.”

“That sounds lonely.”

George’s eyes snapped open and he glared at her.

Elly took an involuntary step back.  “Um!” she blurted out trying to diffuse the situation.  “We should move the bed over against one of the walls in the room.”

She opened the french doors to her room.  All the doors in the apartment where french doors, but they were all a weird size.  Each door was only slightly larger than two feet wide, so that when you opened the both the doorway was unusually wide but opening only one was uncomfortably small.  George would have no problems fitting through a wheelchair accessible door and could probably squeeze though a standard door, but watching him ease through the double doors it was clear that this space had been designed to fit him.

“You are staring, treasure.”

Elly opened her mouth to correct him on her name, then snapped it shut when she realized he was being rude to point out her rudeness.  If you would have asked her a year ago to pick a word to describe dragons, snarky wouldn’t have made her top twenty.  Big, reptilian, and snarky.   George’s back legs were short like an alligator's.  They weren’t any longer than his arms, which were uncomfortably human looking.  She was sure if he stood up he would be seven feet tall.  His face was almost human, maybe a little longer in the snout.  She was sure his skull had to be closer to that of a gorilla than to any reptile she could think of.

His lips curled back to show sharp, inhuman teeth.  “If you are going to stare at me, just tell me to go.”

“I haven’t ever really looked at you,” Elly admitted.  “I always made a point of not staring.”

“You can stop now,” he snarled.  

Elly flinched, then turned and scooped up her sleep shorts.  “I’ll go brush my teeth.  You will do a better job of rearranging the furniture than I could anyway.”

[soyeahitsmiddleearth]

Multi-Dimensional pt. 4

The Company x Reader

More humor, some spider stuff, some yelling, stealing, and lots-a fun.

---

Things all kinda just went back to normal after you had that long talk with them. 

Not completely back to normal since it seems they've become more sensitive and caring towards you, but normal enough to where you don't feel out of place or super awkward like you did before. 

Everything is easy enough now that things are cleared up about Erick. And though there has been some disdain regarding you leaving out by yourself and such after scaring them with the information that he wants to kill you, you don't feel suffocated or anything. 

All it really takes is some assurance that you won't be completely by yourself and will be keeping an eye out, and then they're reluctantly agreeing to letting you go (not that they really have a choice in the matter or anything like that). 

A part of you finds it sweet actually; how much they worry when you have to go out on grocery runs or to drop off and pick up animals by yourself. 

Having others around to care for you makes things so much easier and life feel better. It's almost like having an army of short moral supporters ready to assist you when you need it and worry for you when no one else will. 

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that it feels really flipping nice.

Aside from that, though, you generally like to consider yourself to be pretty brave now that you've started to free your mind from the clutches of that little bitch Erick. Like, you're good with all kinds of animals including big reptiles, poison animals, and pointy-teethed critters, and human interaction is slowly becoming easier... but there is one thing that you don't think you'll ever be able to get over. 

And that thing is spiders. 

The first time they noticed your fear of spiders, you were outside feeding your horses. One second you were filling up the water trough, and the next you were jumping 5 feet in the air and screaming your head off. 

Naturally, the dwarves helping you out panicked and pulled out various weapons and began asking you questions like, "What's wrong?", "What is it?", "Is that man back?", "Did you hurt yourself?", and your personal favorite, "Who do I need to kill!?" At the time you couldn't bring yourself to be funny or to joke around for you were too filled with terror to form any rational thought.

When you didn't respond to their questions they began to worry, but when you raised a shaky finger and pointed at the big yellow and black garden spider hanging on it's web a few feet away they understood. 

Of course, those spiders are harmless so Nori (one of the dwarves with you) walked over and took it into his hand and moved it somewhere else away from you. 

Only once it was gone did you speak again, but the words were not of gratitude, "If you ever touch me with your spider hands, ever, I will fucking gut you!" You had threatened, pointing at the well meaning dwarf with an accusatory finger, "Thank you! But oh my god, ew."

You were promptly and mercilessly teased for this occurrence, and while it was quite the humiliating line of joking at your expense, they were all much more considerate towards your fear of spiders. 

None of them even dared to explain or bring up the huge spiders that thrive across their own world. 

Anyway, this crazy fear of spiders has only come up a handful of times in the recent week luckily for you, but that's all about to change. 

When you first see that hairy beast of an arachnid, you aren't quite sure what it is. It isn't moving and is in the corner of your kitchen kinda just hanging out, but when you step closer to see what exactly it is, you are very unpleasantly surprised to see that it's a small tarantula. 

You jump and run away from it at full speed, jumping up onto the table next to one of the entryways as you stare it down to make sure it doesn't move towards you or out of sight. 

You aren't quite sure how long you're there, staring and panicking on the inside, until someone walks into the room and sees you kneeling on the table. 

With a quick glance you see that it's Thorin who decided to join you, and when he sees you his eyebrows furrow in confusion. 

"What on earth are you doing?" He asks, stepping closer towards the table to look at you closer. 

"This is my house, so I can sit wherever I want, thank you very much." 

There is a moment of silence where he just looks at you before, suddenly, he sighs and asks, "Where is the spider?" 

"It's over by the corner. Please kill it-" You look back over towards said corner and feel your stomach drop when you don't see the little bugger anymore. "Oh god, no. No, no no..."

You start to look around frantically in search of the small creature and feel your insides fill with panic when you still don't see it. 

Thorin walks over to the corner you indicated and looks around, not seeing said spider either. "Are you sure you saw one over here?" 

"Y-Yes! I'm 100 percent sure! No, 1 million percent sure!" You exclaim, looking around still to locate it. 

Something compels you to look down at the edge of the table, and when you do you're met by 8 black, soulless and evil eyes staring straight back at you. 

At first, you don't react, but once your mind catches up with your eyes you scream and recoil, scooting back towards the opposite end of the table. 

The spider crawls up onto the surface of the table and stands on the opposite side as you staring still with murder in it's eyes (probably). 

Thorin spins on his heel and curses under his breath, mentally rolling his eyes at your theatrics, and rushes over, "Calm down-" 

"It's trying to kill me!" You cry.

When it begins to scurry forward you shriek again and move to scramble back further, only to find that there's no more runway, and before you know it you're falling backwards off the table. 

Instead of hitting the tiles like you expected you would, a pair of arms wrap around your middle and a harder body breaks your fall. 

Normally one would be thankful for being saved from falling on the ground, but your focus is still on that evil spider trying to fucking kill you. You try to scoot back more but find that whoever was nice enough to catch you is still holding on and in your way. 

The hold on you loosens when you begin to struggle, and you take that opportunity to crawl off of said person and hide behind them when they sit up. 

You get a face full of blond braided hair and realize right away that it's Fili, but you don't thank him and instead place your hands on his shoulders and stay hidden behind him while Thorin tries to kill the quick little bastard running around your table. 

"Stay still damn it!" The king growls at the spry little monster, smacking a spatula you left on the counter around the table multiple times. 

"If you don't get that spider so help me god I will fucking kill myself!" You shout, ignoring the way the blond stiffens beneath your sharp fingers. 

It seems your words have encouraged Thorin to work harder, because seconds later the tarantula is smashed and the room goes silent save for the heavy breathing of the raven-haired dwarf and your own. 

"Oh thank god." You breathe, letting go of the blond and slowly rising to your feet. "I really thought I was gonna die there for a sec..."

"It's just a spider." Thorin sighs, placing the spatula down on the table a bit harder than he intended.

The slam of the utensil on the wooden table top makes you flinch unconsciously, but you don't say anything about it. "It was a tarantula! Those bitches are horrifying! And it was chasing me, you can't say it wasn't." 

Thorin doesn't say anything else about it and instead sighs while shaking his head, looking at his older nephew with an odd expression on his face. 

You ignore the silent exchange and zoom out of the kitchen to sit with Midnight and Mittens who are hanging out on the couch, scooping up the latter into your arms to hug her tightly. 

After your screeching and screaming a lot of them came tumbling out of wherever they were before to see what was going on, but it didn't take much to realize this was another spider incident. 

You ended up kidnapping Mittens and bringing her out to the front porch to unwind after almost losing your life to that foul arachnid, and as soon as you were out of the room Thorin pulled his blond nephew aside with a grim expression on his face. 

"You heard what she said, yes?" The King Under the Mountain asks in a hushed voice so as to not alert anyone else. 

Fili nods his head, looking out towards the window that you sit in front of. "I did. I never thought she would do something like that over a spider, though." 

"Maybe it was another one of her odd jokes?" Thorin supplies hesitantly, crossing his arms over his chest, "I will ask." 

"What if it bothers her or makes her unhappy?"

"Isn't that better than ignoring it?" 

Fili doesn't respond this time. Though he's unhappy about it, he knows his uncle is right so he doesn't say anything else about it. 

"Then it's settled." 

---

Thorin didn't go out to speak to you right away. 

It's around 5 or so minutes later when he finally go out, and when he does you're in the same position. Sitting on your long porch swing with Mittens laying idly on your lap. 

As soon as you look at him your face goes red; that whole fiasco with the spider was beyond embarrassing. 

"Thorin... hey, what are you doing out here?" You mumble, looking away from him and out at your land instead. 

Instead of responding he steps closer and gestures to the spot next to you, "May I sit?" 

You nod. 

He settles down onto the porch swing and leans back against the support while it slowly sways back and fourth, still not saying anything. 

Mittens climbs off your lap and hops onto him as soon as he takes a seat, and while that does make you pout, you don't say anything about it. 

"I have a question for you."

You turn your head and look at him only to see is gaze is already trained on you. "Um, go for it." 

"What you said in the kitchen before about, how would I say... offing yourself over the spider, it was a joke, yes?" 

Oh shit.

You forgot that they aren't accustomed to such humor, so you probably worried them, "Yeah, I was only kidding. Sorry, I forget sometimes that you guys aren't use to that kinda thing..." 

Thorin visibly relaxes and strokes the top of Mittens head gently, "Okay, good. I thought as much, but Fili and I were not certain." 

"Sorry about that..." Gosh, you always manage to confuse and distress them somehow. 

"You apologize for every little slight, you know. How many times do I need to tell you such apols is unneeded?"

God damn it. 

"O-Oh, right, sorry-" You cut yourself off and repeat, "No, no sorry I didn- shit. I'm sorry! Er, or I'm not sorry, um..." You feel yourself getting more and more flustered as you go down the rabbit hole of apologies, "Sorry-" 

He begins to laugh when your speech runs away from you and places his hand overtop yours, thus abruptly halting your frantic sorries. "Calm down. It's only me." 

You only nod dumbly, looking down at his hand on yours with a slightly warm face, "Yeah, er, you're right. I just got a bit flustered. I'm-"

He gives you a look so you refrain from voicing your regrets this time. 

After 30 seconds or so of this slightly awkward silence he releases your hand and relaxes against the moving seat with a small smile on his face. 

The two of you stay like that for a little while until he suddenly scoops up Mittens and rises from his spot, "I shall go in first." 

Without another word he heads back in, successfully stealing Mittens and leaving you rather speechless for no discernible reason.

---

Later you end up inside once more and see some of the dwarves huddled around your coffee table eating something Bombur no doubt made for them, and it brings a small smile to your face to see them so engrossed in their food.  

You nearly trip over Copper who was waiting by the door for you, and as soon as you see him you kneel down and start to rub his belly and coo about how cute he is. 

After you're done doting on your fluffer, you stand back up and head back into the kitchen to get something to eat, smiling when Copper gets up to follow you. 

Going through the fridge, you can't help but to toss your loyal boy some ham and grab a chilled apple practically calling your name. 

You walk back out of the kitchen and see that Dwalin glaring at you. 

At first you thought he was glaring at someone behind you, but when you look over your shoulder you see that there's no one there. You look back at him again and slowly point at yourself, confusion clear on your face. "Um, hi?" 

He just continues to glare, his gaze flickering down to the apple you just took a bite out of. 

"Dwalin?" You question, taking a few steps forward closer to him, "Everything okay there buddy?" 

"So we're takin' food we didn't put in the ice box now, are we?" He grumbles in a very passive aggressive manner. 

Oops. 

Instead of owning up to it you just play dumb. "What?"

His glare intensifies, and you nearly feel intimidated by him. "You find it funny, eh?" 

"What funny? I have no clue what you're talking about." Just to irk him you take another bite out of the apple afterwards. 

His eye twitches and he gets up from his spot on the couch, "You know exactly what I'm talking about." 

"Hey, woah, stop being so passive aggressive." You shoot back, furrowing your eyebrows. 

Dwalin shakes his head and retorts with irritation in his voice, "I'm not being passive aggressive." 

"You're not? Then what would you call it?" 

He wastes no time in answering. "Agressive." 

This time you don't respond and just look him in the eyes as you slowly lift the apple to your mouth and take another bite. 

"Damn it! I put that apple in yer ice box last night and ya just took it! No effort on yer part. Benefitting from my work!" He complains loudly, crossing his arms over his chest.

"My mouth slipped." You reply lamely, walking over and plopping down on the couch. 

"Yer mouth slipped? What kind of excuse is that?!" 

You shrug your shoulders and continue to eat the apple, ignoring his protests and yelling now. "Wow, these are so much better when they're cold." You comment offhandedly and very slyly, glancing at him with a small smirk curling on your lips. 

He only starts to rage and yell more. Ranting about how it was selfish and rude and all that jazz, while you and everyone else just watch and listen in amusement. 

"Are you even listening?" 

You don't respond for you've begun to write something on the back of your hand, and when you look back up there are quite a few pairs of eyes trained on you awaiting your response. 

"Huh? I wasn't listening, what did you say?" 

"Women!" He grunts out angrily, throwing his arms up in the air in exasperation. 

"Hey! Be nice to me or I'll show you the back of my hand!" 

Your threat of violence gives everyone a pause and you get several wide eyed, shocked looks, but you pay them no mind and, once everyone is looking at you, raise your hand up slowly to reveal your writing. 

In big, black sharpie ink letters it says 'Please be nice to me.'

That's what you were writing while Dwalin was scolding you on and on, and as soon as everyone reads what it says there is laughter.

A big smile comes onto your face when they start laughing, even Dwalin seems amused, and you follow suit quickly after. 

"Were you planning that the whole time?" Bilbo asks after his chuckling subsides, a big smile on his happy face.

"No, which only makes me an even bigger genius." You reply smugly, dropping your hand back into your lap and taking another bite out of the stole apple. 

"It doesn't matter! She still stole my food." 

"Hey, if we're being technical here you're actually stealing my food." You comment, patting Coppers head with your foot since he decided to sit at your feet. 

"You invited us." 

"Yeah, for free."

"Out of the kindness of your heart."

"I wouldn't go that far." 

"And now you're stealing the apple I was chilling."

"Because cold apples are great, yeah."

"Is anybody else hearing this?!" Dwalin asks incredulously, clearly growing exasperated with you. 

Everyone else is only amused though, and for a moment you feel a pang of guilt. "Hey, Dwalin dear, you don't have to worry about it. 'Cause when I go and steal their stuff next, you don't have to offer them any help." 

The slightly red with anger dwarf pauses at your surprisingly sound logic, but he still doesn't look happy. "That's a good point, but you still took my apple." 

"Just go put another one in there." 

"I put it in there last night!" 

"And now I'm eating it! So put in another!" 

He growls and grumbles an angry, "Fine!" Then stomps back into the kitchen to put another apple in the fridge. 

You begin to giggle to yourself when he gives up and storms off, finishing off the apple in peace while Copper sits at your feet and Butterscotch leaves Balin to rest on the cushions behind your neck. 

Bilbo, who sits at your left, gets up suddenly and goes into the kitchen as well, but you don't say anything about it and just get on your phone and begin to scroll through some memes. 

You get like 20 messages from an unsaved number, Erick's unsaved number, but ignore all of them and proceed to laugh at the dumb things joyfully. 

When Bilbo comes back into the room and sits down next to you, Yeti immediately hops onto the couch and lays on the poor guy. 

Said hobbit has accepted that he will forever be a seat for your big boy Yeti, so now he just wraps his arms around him and lets Yeti smother him in affection.

Anyway, you scoot closer and scoot down the couch and ask, "What were ya doing?" 

He looks over at you and cocks his head to the side, "I went to see what Dwalin was doing."

"And what was he doing?" 

"Putting all of your apples in your cold box." 

Good god, you asked for that one. "Of course he is."

---

Later that night you ended up turning on the TV and putting on a movie for those interested to watch, and you were pleasantly surprised to see that all of them stuck around. 

You weren't really paying attention to the movie, but when you would look up occasionally you would see everyone engrossed in the film. 

The Princess Bride is what you put on, and it seems that it has effectively caught the interest of every single one of them. Even Thorin and Dwalin. 

Fili and Kili sit to your right on the couch while Bilbo and Yeti sit on your left, and you have your feet propped up on the coffee table and phone in your hand. 

You're at the part in the movie where Prince Humperdinck explains his plans to have Buttercup killed to start a war, and when said plans are announced you're surprised to hear and see the shock of your dwarven and singular hobbit companions. 

"It was him?!" Kili cries from your right, shaking his head in disbelief.

"Well of course it was him." Fili whisper yells at his brother, thumping his shoulder with his fist. 

You glance over at Bilbo and see he doesn't look to shocked either, but there is still some surprise there. He hugs Yeti tighter and shakes his head grumbling to himself, "I knew it, I knew he was trouble." 

Their reactions bring a smile to your face, but you go back onto your phone and say nothing of it since you've seen this movie dozens of times. 

Around the time when Westley is revived you begin to watch and put your phone away, though you do begin to doze not long after. 

The next thing you know you're asleep with your head hanging forward uncomfortably and your hands laying in your lap. 

When Kili glances at you from the corner of his eye to see if you're still watching he sees your sleeping state and doesn't hesitate in wrapping an arm around you and pulling you towards him so your head may rest more comfortably against his shoulder. 

You mumble something in your restful state that he can't quite make out; but don't wake or move away. 

A small smile comes to his face when you continue to rest comfortably before he focuses back in on the movie. 

When it does finally end and everyone starts to get up to go to bed Kili gets some glares and teasing, but he doesn't get up since you're so comfortable at the moment. 

How long he sits there with you is beyond him, but eventually he does gently lift your head from his shoulder and lay you down on the couch, and Ori fetches you a blanket while Bofur gets a pillow for you. 

Before long you're all wrapped up and cozy, with Midnight laying on your chest and Copper at your feet, and the sight is quite a cute one. 

Everyone goes to bed that night happy. 

[coneygoil]

The Home We Built Together, part 37

Two young Vikings. An arranged marriage. Hiccup always wanted to win the girl of his dreams, but not like this. Now he and Astrid must learn to live together and maybe one day, learn to love…

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9| Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Interlude | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36

The roar echoed through the cove – snaring and furious. But it was not produced by a dragon. Toothless lifted his head, green eyes blown and ears standing on end at the disturbing noise. When he saw who it was, he grumbled and rested his chin once more on his front legs. Astrid was just as much a part of his life nowadays as Hiccup. It wasn’t uncommon for her to target practice in his peaceful sanctuary, though her practice did seem more heated than usual today.

Anger-fueled adrenaline pumped through Astrid’s body. She wasn’t sure what she expected when she woke up from the few hours of sleep she managed to snag. She hated being upset with Hiccup, but she hated even more the actions he’d taken in the past two days. He’d disappeared for another entire day after he’d promised to at least tell her if he was leaving Berk. The little twirp was true to his word about one thing. He didn’t leave a note this time.

Her axe slammed into the largest tree truck in the vicinity. Astrid needed this -- to expel the accumulated frustration that had built up. Her entire body pulsed with it. If she didn’t get rid of it soon, every fiber of her would blow at the seams. That’s why she left before the sun had awoken. That’s why she was far from Hiccup, relieving the pressure so it wouldn’t explode in his face.

She flung her axe until her arm ached and chest heaved. Astrid couldn’t tell if she felt better because of the workout or because she was too exhausted to care anymore. She made her way over to Toothless and plopped down against his side. Toothless raised his head, watching her curiously. It was odd for her to visit the cove without Hiccup. Toothless was bewildered as to why his best friend hadn’t accompanied her.

“I know you’re Hiccup’s dragon and I probably shouldn’t complain about him to you.” The dragon warbled, tilting his head at her. Astrid tapped the axe handle on the ground a few times, contemplating. “But, you’re my friend too, Toothless. The only friend that I can come to.”

Toothless stretched his neck, licking the top of her hand that rested on her knee. Astrid gave Toothless a tight-lipped smile. Maybe she did feel a little better.

“I don’t know why Hiccup does what he does,” she continued. “I thought he was finally growing up. Becoming responsible. He was showing the makings of…well, of a chief! I was seeing what he could do. What he could become.” She released a frustrated growl. “Why is he suddenly going backwards?”

Astrid turned her gaze to meet Toothless’ wide green eyes. “I’m sure you know why. Hiccup probably talks to you.”

Toothless’ nose twitched a few times, his expression one of contemplation. It was funny how such distinct expressions were noticeable on a dragon when you weren’t in the heat of battle with one.

Astrid yelped in surprise when Toothless nudged her onto his head and flung her onto his back. She barely kept hold of her axe as she landed onto the stiffness of the saddle.

“Toothless, what in Thor’s name?” Astrid exclaimed, righting herself on the saddle.

Toothless warbled excitedly and pointed with his nose toward the foot pedals.

Astrid cocked an eyebrow. “You want to go for a flight. With me?”

Toothless grunted in response.

“Okay.” Astrid sighed, slipping her boots into the pedals, and preparing for launch. Maybe a few minutes in the air would clear her head. Toothless probably learned that from Hiccup. Since Astrid couldn’t ride Stormfly during the day, Toothless was the only mode of dragon transportation.

Astrid patted him on the side. “Let’s go.” With a little crouch and wiggle, Toothless shot into the sky.  

***

This was not how Astrid pictured her day going.

“Thanks for nothing, you useless reptile,” she grumbled, using Hiccup’s exact words for anything Toothless did to annoy him. Astrid was beyond annoyed by the Night Fury as he hopped down the branches when he left her there. Now, she was downright furious.

The tree’s branches swayed every time she attempted to move, and the axe strapped to her back made her off balance. She wasn’t afraid of heights or climbing trees, but she was in such an awkward location on the tree, if she tried to climb down, she could easily fall to her death.

What was Toothless thinking stranding her in a tree!? How in Thor’s name was she getting down? She wasn’t sure how long she was stranded when she heard the familiar swoop of wings, and she turned her head to see Toothless approaching, a gangly figure riding in the saddle. Astrid rolled her eyes. This was not her day.

Astrid yelped and clutched the branch she was teetering on with her thighs as the top of the tree bent over swiftly from Toothless’ weight.

“Astrid, what’s going on?” Hiccup asked from his safe perch atop his mutinous dragon.

“Ask your dragon,” she hissed out, glaring daggers at Toothless.

Hiccup leaned over to peer into one of Toothless’ large green eyes. “Did you leave Astrid up here?”

Toothless warbled sheepish.

Astrid growled. “Just get me down from here!”

“Grab my hand.” Hiccup urged Toothless to inch closer, and he stretched out his hand for her.

Astrid fought the urge to smack it away, but she was too far away to risk shimming across the branch without assistance. Her stomach burned at the thought of needing help with something as simple of getting out of a tree.

Hiccup’s hold was firm as he steadied her to stand on the branch and climb on Toothless’ back. “You okay?” he asked as she straddled behind him.

“What do you think?” she snapped.

“Hang on,” Hiccup reminded her just before Toothless shot into the air.

***

“Toothless, what were thinking!?” Hiccup scolded, wasting no time when they hit the ground in the Cove. “Stranding Astrid in a tree? She could have fallen and died!”

Astrid paced from a distance, hugging her arms across her stomach, thankful to be on solid ground. Her knees were wobbly, and thighs burned from gripping the tree branch for so long. She didn’t notice Hiccup approaching her until he touched her shoulder from behind. She jerked, pivoting sharply to face him. Hiccup hung his head, avoiding her hard gaze.

“Astrid, I’m sorry.” Hiccup gulped loudly, fiddling with the back of his neck. “Toothless should have never done that to you. I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

The dragon in question stalked up to them, perching himself a short distance from them. He grunted, pointing his nose up in the air as if trying to tell them something. Then he turned his large eyes on Astrid as if he were pleading with her. She stared at him as her emotions buzzed through her body. It was then that it struck her.

He didn’t want them to fight. In Toothless’ own convoluted way, he was trying to get them to talk it through. Why he had to strand her in a tree for a couple hours angered her still, but she now understood his intentions and her fowl mood sobered.

Astrid sighed, heavily. “Why did you runaway again?”

Hiccup froze at her question, his hand midway in front of him. His raised features began to droop as his hand lowered. “My dad,” he murmured almost inaudibly.

Astrid shook her head, taking a step forward. “Hiccup,” she breathed out slowly, “you should have heard your dad talking about you. All that Gobber had filled him in on. He was so proud of all that you’d accomplished while he was gone.”

It was as if a dark shadow had suddenly rose between them. Hiccup’s jaw clenched. “Yeah, proud of Hiccup the ‘dragon killer’. He thinks I’m going to slay dragons alongside him. He thinks I want to chat casually about slicing off heads and cutting out hearts.” His fists clinched at his sides. “I knew nothing good would happen when he returned.”

“And you couldn’t face it?”

Hiccup nodded without speaking.

Astrid worried her bottom lip. She scrubbed her palms over her face, lost as to where even to start to deal with this situation. She knew some details of Hiccup’s strained relationship with his father but being aware of it and knowing how to deal with it were two different heads. There were no words of wisdom, no helpful advice to offer him. There was a life or death secret they were keeping stashed right inside Berk’s boundaries. A plan was being worked out to eliminate the most known dangerous threat to the Archipelago.

Hiccup stood there looking even smaller than he already was. He continued to avoid her eyes, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Astrid’s heart sank like a stone. How could she be angry with him when the weight of their world was on his shoulders? She felt sorry and regretful for not considering all that they were facing. She’d learned in the past few months that Hiccup was stronger and braver than anyone on Berk knew to give him credit for, but sometimes the strong could be dragged down by the weight they were carrying. It was an Altas-sized burden on his thin shoulders.

Astrid swallowed the lump that had gathered in her throat. “Look, Hiccup. I know there’s a lot going on in that head of yours. I sometimes forget you handle situations differently than I would. But, please—” she stepped forward and he finally raised his eyes to cautiously meet hers, “please come to me about it. I don’t know what I could do or how I could help, but at least you won’t be alone.” She grasped his hand. “We may be kids trying to figure out how to navigate life, but we’re in this together.”

Hiccup shut his eyes tight. Without opening them, he hugged her, burying his face into her neck. Astrid hugged him tight against her, closing her own eyes and releasing a deep breath. They held each other for a long while until a snuffling nose invaded their space.

Astrid pulled away first, eying Toothless as he watched them. “I’m still mad at you,” she informed him and Toothless warbled out what sounded like an apology along with a lick to her arm.

She turned back to Hiccup, resting a palm on his chest. His hand slid around her waist as he watched her with his warm, green eyes.

“I promise – really promise -- I’ll come to you, talk to you about what’s going on in my head.” Hiccup let out a humorless laugh, shrugging one shoulder. “I guess the last two days have been weird for me.”

“No matter how weird, come to me,” Astrid urged, sliding her hand to his shoulder.

Hiccup nodded. “I will.”

Astrid gave him a little smack on the shoulder, hoping her affirmation would stick in his brain this time. “Good.”

“Am I allowed back in the bedroom tonight?”

Astrid grabbed the collar of his tunic, yanking him into a kiss. She broke away with a pop and raised her eyebrows. “What do you think?”

[lindoig8]

The Camel Trek

Wednesday, 28 April – Day 1 of our Camel Trek

We were out at the front gate waiting to be collected at 7am, but it was 7.45 before Max, our chief scientist, came to pick us up. He was the Expedition Leader and everyone met in the middle of town to be introduced and to board a 4WD ‘bus’ to take us out to Base Camp. It was about 325 kilometres and took about 5 hours, including a stop for lunch halfway out. There were 11 of us in the group, including 2 extras who were sponsored – a photographer and a travel magazine editor. There should have been 3 more coming from Perth, but the sudden 3-day Covid lockdown there prevented them from coming.

Base Camp was (obviously) in the bush and there were quite a few people out there – staff and volunteers who had been setting up and ‘warming up’ the camels that had not been worked for at least 18 months. There was a big truck loaded with food and all sorts of other gear and the area was littered with stores and equipment for the rest of the 21-week season. The camels were already there of course – 18 of them, all bullocks, 3 of them new to the team and 2 others that had been hauled out of retirement to work again this season. They are wonderful big animals, quite gentle most of the time, but somewhat prone to panic if they are frightened.

We had a hot meal for dinner and everyone chatted with everyone else, staff, cameleers, volunteers and tourists alike. It was all quite comfortable and pleasant, albeit sometimes a little confusing because we didn’t know what to expect. We were each issued with our swags and shown how to set them up: also our toilet bag with instructions about that. I found everyone surprisingly relaxed about the potentially sensitive or embarrassing issue of toileting in the immediate bush, and even when I encountered one of our party in a serious state of undress while I was collecting firewood, she was seemingly unperturbed. Just all very natural and with little discomfort on anyone’s behalf.

We distributed ourselves around the periphery of the camp, maybe about 50 metres or so out and set up our swags and we all went to bed quite early in the knowledge that breakfast was at 6am next morning. The swags are heavy and difficult to set up and dismantle, but they were really very comfortable and most people reported that they slept pretty well.

Thursday – Day 2 and the start of our walk

After a breakfast of cereal and muesli, we were introduced to the camels when they lined up to be saddled and loaded. It is a very elaborate rigamarole and I could devote pages to the camels, their handlers and the process overall, but maybe that is not of much interest – although we found it all quite fascinating. Being the first official day of the season and the first time the camels had been fully laden, the staff were in no hurry. The camels learn a routine and any deviations are likely to create problems, especially at the beginning of the season with unacclimated camels. It took over 3 hours before we were all ready to start walking and with nowhere to sit, we were all glad to be walking after standing around watching for so long.

The 4WD bus took many of the volunteers back to Alice Springs at 8am so that just left the 11 trekkers and 11 staff and scientists in camp.

We only walked about 4 kilometres that day, although everyone obviously walked quite a bit more in diversions along the way. The camels were stopped several times to adjust their loads or for other reasons and we all stopped for lunch again (wraps with a huge variety of vegetarian fillings and condiments). The camels need to stop periodically because they can’t urinate while working, but they stopped for other reasons as well. The staff build a fire and make tea and coffee each mealtime so that adds to the time it takes to get from Point A to Point B, but it was quite an interesting walk anyway. There were few birds (although I saw both male and female Yellow Chats next day – lifers for us!), but enough to keep me interested – and lots of unaccustomed trees and plants to inspect as well.

We made camp around 3pm and we all set up our swags (all closer to camp this time) and helped (a little) with the unloading. There was always the promise that we could help with things but in practice, the cameleers had things down to such a fine art that we had little to do. We were allowed to hold the ropes on the camels sometimes, but that was just to discourage them from wandering away – wonderful beasts and so patient and gentle – it is hard to see them as wild feral animals. Being close to them has certainly made me view them in a very different light.

I thought the science in the process was at risk of being lost because the crew seemed intent on making it easy for the tourists. We had a botanist with us who was focussed on his work – and who took Heather under his wing a little because they both ‘spoke the same language’. We helped set up a string of Elliott traps in the hope of capturing some little rodents or reptiles – but they were all unfortunately unoccupied next morning. I appreciate that, as eco-tourists, we were funding the research, but I assumed the research would have been more visible and that we would have been able to contribute to it. In some respects, we were given a higher priority than I expected and I would have been completely happy to have had more attention given to their surveys and less to looking after we hangers-on. Given the opportunity, I will draw attention to that as general feedback to the company.

We had another hot meal at night – a mammoth feed if anyone could have managed it – a main course and dessert with tea and coffee. Of course, before the meal was ready, we all sat around the campfire and enjoyed a port – served in a delicate jug, topped up from a 20-litre jerrycan!!! The port jerrycan was yellow to distinguish it from the diesel and water jerrycans.

We all enjoyed the fire, but it had been a hot and taxing day and we all headed for our respective toilet bushes and swags quite soon after dinner. There had been a spectacular sunset over a wide, completely horizontal horizon, soon followed by a spectacular rising full moon (just a few hours past the so-called Pink Moon moment) and everyone went out like lights pretty quickly.

Friday – Day 3 and a bit of a disaster

The camels were loaded a little more quickly on the second day but they were still a bit unused to the routine and a couple were a tad stroppy so it still took more than 2 hours to get ready to leave camp. We had been able to help a little more and got close to the camels and patted them – they really are magnificent beasts, soft and gentle and ever so patient. It was a real privilege to spend time so close to them.

It was pretty slow going with the walkers well out ahead of the camels (that is where the handlers wanted us) but the camels had to stop several times and we were left out in the sun while the camels were quietened and saddles readjusted, etc. I was only about 40-50 metres away from the A-string when one of them got spooked when its load slipped and it went berserk. It was quite scary because when it started bucking and running out of line, it started panicking some of the others too and its saddle and load slipped under its bely and between its legs when it was rearing and running amok – and of course, it injured itself. It was not badly hurt, but its hind legs were quite severely scraped from its saddle and load so they gave it the rest of the day off. They left its damaged saddle and load out in the desert and allowed it to just tag along at the rear of the string but at one stage it was running wild and ended up spooking some of the B-string as well. It took well over an hour to rearrange the loads and settle both strings down and it was very hot waiting in the scorching sun while this happened. I went birding in the nearby scrub but the rest of the trekkers just tried to find a tiny bit of shade under a bush to wait it out.

We walked for another hour or two before we stopped for lunch and everyone was pretty hot and bothered by then.

It was a very hot day, particularly so immediately after lunch, and one of the trekkers who had a thermometer said it was 41 degrees where we were walking and 36 in the shade. We had walked about 10-11 kilometres on the day when Heather succumbed to heatstroke. She ‘hit the wall’ early after lunch and they called the medic to tend her. I was off on my own at the time and as soon as I heard, I ran back to her and stayed with her for the rest of the day. The medic was wonderful: very solicitous and caring. He helped cool her down (poured numerous bottles of water over her) and did several blood pressure and pulse checks but it was clear to me (all of us) that she wasn’t going to be able to continue.

Because of the heat, Max intended to call an early stop for the day so he did so virtually straight away. They made camp in a suitable place just a few hundred metres further along and when Heather was up to it, the medic and I helped her into camp where she had to lie down in some very meagre shade and received lots more attention from most people in the party.

By sheer good luck, Andrew (co-leader and chief cameleer) had cached a 4WD near where we had lunch and he had driven back to retrieve the jettisoned saddle and related gear to be used next day. He was returning to Alice Springs that night to restock some items so when he returned, we asked if we could go back with him. He agreed (of course) and it was a good job he did because the next 2 days trek were as hot or hotter and over slightly more difficult terrain – so maybe neither of us would have made it. Max was obviously aware of the challenge and called at least the next day a half-day only, and possibly the fourth day too.

It took over 5 hours to do the 330-odd kilometres back to Alice Springs and by then, Heather had recovered quite a bit, but we just rolled into bed as soon as we could after reaching the caravan – and have had a few very quiet days resting since. Our sleeping bags and some other gear had been rolled into our swags in the desert so they were delivered to us to retrieve our things next day, and another team member collected them from us a bit later.

We were very disappointed that we had to pull out of the trek, but in retrospect, we are certain that we did the right thing and felt that we had really enjoyed the experience of the desert and the camels and maybe the rest of the trip would have been something of a repeat of what we had enjoyed. It certainly was a fantastic, unique experience that we will remember for life and we have since been contacted by some of our fellow-trekkers to see how Heather is going.

[pixie-unger]

The Captive - 5

My stories are generally posted on @pixieungerstories and they always turn up here after they are finished on Patreon.  This one is a $1/month novel, so if you can’t wait, you can subscribe for the month of September and binge read the whole thing.

“You slept in today, tre- Elly,” George observed.  “The boy was quite worried.”

“Ben?  Nah.  He was fine.”

George snorted, “He does not approach the stairs that often when you are on time.”

Elly froze.  “What would you have done if he had gone up them?”

George turned to peer at her out of the darkness, his eyes glowing faintly.  There was an uncomfortable moment of silence.  “There is a chesterfield down here that matches the chair you are sitting upon.”

“Wait, who even calls it a chesterfield anymore?”

George bristled, “I do,” he said quietly.  “What do you call it?”

“A sofa.”

“If you understand the word, why comment on my choice of it?”

“Sorry,” Elly said softly.

George settled slightly back onto the floor.  “I would like you to sleep on it tonight.”

Elly blinked.  “Down here?  You can’t be serious.”

“I am.  I have cleaned the fireplace.  I will allow you to bring your horrible lights,” he conceded graciously.

“You are serious!” she was shocked.

“Of course I am.  You have not invited me into your space, so I am respecting that and requesting you spend the night in mine.”

Elly considered this.  It was dark.  It wasn’t damp.  It certainly wasn’t cold and George could easily adjust the temperature if she needed it.  Hell, he was acting as the furnace after all.  “Why did you need to clean the fireplace?  I mean, you are the fireplace.”

“It helps with ventilation and you can use it for cooking, if needed.”

Elly wondered what he thought she would be cooking overnight in her sleep.  “I don’t understand why you are asking me that.”

George gave a frustrated and slightly steamy sigh.  “I understand that you tend the shop during the day.  I understand that you do the shopping and go out for chores on the days the shop is closed.  Nonetheless the end result is that I receive only a minimal amount of your time.  You aren’t holding up your end of the bargain, treasure.”

“I am!” Elly protested. “I live here and take care of the place and I’m never out after dark!”

“That isn’t the bargain, Elly.  The arrangement has you here to keep me company.  The shop is just supposed to be a hobby for you.”

“A hobby? No.  A hobby is something you enjoy.  I’m only running the shop because I like eating food and sleeping indoors.”

George’s brow wrinkled.  “You have money, you don’t need to work.”

“What reality are you living in George?”

“The one where there is a trust set up for whoever is living here,” he explained impatiently.  “All you have to do is present with a copy of your birth certificate and sign the paperwork.”

Elly blinked.  George sighed again, noticeably raising the humidity in the room.  “If you dial the telephone for me, we can call the lawyers in the morning.  It has been awhile since I have spoken to Mr Biddu. It is probably well past time.”

She swallowed, “Maybe it has been embezzled or something.”

George’s teeth glittered in the light of the lamp.  “Oh, I doubt it.  Your law firm is in on the secret.  I have spent a lot of effort on guarding my treasure.  And whether you like it or not, that includes you, Elly.”

“This is a lot to take in,” she murmured.  “Why do you want me to sleep with you?”

There was a faint choking noise before George replied.  “You are here to keep me company.  I was giving you a chance to settle after moving to a new place.  It has been months since you arrived.  It is past time.”

Elly considered this.  “I don’t want to sleep down here, George. It’s too dark and scary.”

He didn’t reply, but just kept watching her.

“Um…  If you sleep in my room, do I have to worry about a fire?”

“No,” was the cold reply.

“Do I have to worry about getting you down the stairs before Ben sees you?”

She could swear he smirked at that.  “No,” he replied.  “I can be discreet if you insist.”

Elly pursed her lips and looked at the stairs.  “All right.  If we push the bed against the wall, there should be room for you on the floor.”

George chuckled, “It sounds like you need a bigger bed.”

“I like my bed!” she protested.

George let that one slide.  Apparently he wasn’t going to push his luck yet.  He followed her up the stairs, close enough that she could feel his breath on the small of her back.  She could hear his claws clicking on the floor as they went.

“I don’t have my space set up for … someone as large as you.  Just … please be careful not to break anything.”

“I will be very careful with your treasures, Elly.”

Elly fought not to laugh.  There were some very nice antiques that had come with the house, but none of it was hers.  She had brought a lot of books, a lot of shelves and a desk that was set up to be ergonomic for her.  It was all still in boxes in the room she wanted as an office.  She had hit the ground running here and hadn’t had a chance to even unpack her things.

Looking at him in this space she was amazed he hadn’t smashed the furniture on his way to her room.  She gave the couch a shove to make a little more room for him.

“May I?”

She looked at him watching her.  What the hell, it wasn’t her couch.  “Sure.”

George muscled it aside, widening the space behind it.  Then he crept back and moved the chairs and coffee table to keep the grouping the same.  “I liked the way Ann had the furniture arranged better.”

Elly gritted her teeth.  She should really just let it go, as long has he remembered her name, that was the important thing.  But still, “Her name was Ina.  And I don’t know how she had the furniture before, but I haven’t moved any of it since I got here.”

He went very still at that.  There was a long pause, when he spoke he almost sounded like he could cry.  It was the first emotion other than irritation Elly had seen out of him.  “Ann was before her.  She was my friend.”

Elly didn’t know what to say to that, then the enormity of it hit her.  Ina had been here for the last fifty years.  George hadn’t known her name.  So either Ina hadn’t insisted he learn or that was a really long time to be alone.

Shit.

No wonder he was so insistent on spending time with her.  How did the idea of solitary confinement even apply to George?  Reptiles made shitty pets because they were solitary creatures as compared to dogs, which lived in packs or cats which at least lived in colonies.  But was George even a reptile?  He was definitely warm blooded.  She couldn’t get her head around the temperature thing.  Or… any of it really.  If magic was just science people didn’t understand yet, then George sure as shit was a magical creature.

He was watching her.

Elly blinked.  “Um…  I guess that’s why the doors are all so wide.”  George inclined his head, giving her an off centre nod of agreement.  “I’m not attached to the furniture layout.  We can rearrange it on the weekend if you want.”

“Thank you tr - Elly.”

“Did you call Ina treasure too?”

George narrowed his eyes for a moment before he closed them entirely.

Elly hesitated before asking, “Did you actually talk to her at all?”

“In the beginning, as much as I talk to you now.  I did not demand more of her time and over the years that dwindled to her simply bringing me food, then leaving before I had eaten it.”

“That sounds lonely.”

George’s eyes snapped open and he glared at her.

Elly took an involuntary step back.  “Um!” she blurted out trying to diffuse the situation.  “We should move the bed over against one of the walls in the room.”

She opened the french doors to her room.  All the doors in the apartment where french doors, but they were all a weird size.  Each door was only slightly larger than two feet wide, so that when you opened the both the doorway was unusually wide but opening only one was uncomfortably small.  George would have no problems fitting through a wheelchair accessible door and could probably squeeze though a standard door, but watching him ease through the double doors it was clear that this space had been designed to fit him.

“You are staring, treasure.”

Elly opened her mouth to correct him on her name, then snapped it shut when she realized he was being rude to point out her rudeness.  If you would have asked her a year ago to pick a word to describe dragons, snarky wouldn’t have made her top twenty.  Big, reptilian, and snarky.   George’s back legs were short like an alligator's.  They weren’t any longer than his arms, which were uncomfortably human looking.  She was sure if he stood up he would be seven feet tall.  His face was almost human, maybe a little longer in the snout.  She was sure his skull had to be closer to that of a gorilla than to any reptile she could think of.

His lips curled back to show sharp, inhuman teeth.  “If you are going to stare at me, just tell me to go.”

“I haven’t ever really looked at you,” Elly admitted.  “I always made a point of not staring.”

“You can stop now,” he snarled.  

Elly flinched, then turned and scooped up her sleep shorts.  “I’ll go brush my teeth.  You will do a better job of rearranging the furniture than I could anyway.”

[bellygunnr]

you’d finally like to learn ch.5

"So the young Dr. Freeman has been chosen for the next HEV suit, then?"

It's a coffee break between Eli Vance and Isaac Kleiner. The two scientists sit across from each other in the confines of an unused backroom of the lab, a coffee machine sat between them. Its pot is closer to empty than full.

"Indeed," Dr. Kleiner sighs. "He's slated for the Mark IV. The improvements over the III are substantial."

Eli nods. "Well, I'd hope so. We helped design it this time."

"I just hope he's not chosen for the Survey Teams."

The coffee tastes closer to tar than a true drink. Eli pours himself a third cup anyway.

"I heard they want him in the test chambers. When does he go in for fittings?"

"They said that of our last youngster. It's about... four or five months from now, if they don't accelerate it," Isaac says, voice heavy. His already aged face deepens with stress and grief. "He's running himself ragged trying to keep up with demands."

"We all run ourselves ragged around here," Eli points out.

"I just... worry for him, Eli," Isaac says softly. "He's like a son to me."

Eli reaches over the small table, clasping his coworker's shoulder and squeezing it reassuringly. Before he can say anything else, however, there's a commotion from within the lab.

Isaac beats him out the door, the table shuddering as his knee strikes the leg.

"Is everything-- Barney! Gordon! What on earth are you two doing?"

Oh, this has to be good, Eli thinks, grinning to himself. He pushes his way out of the tiny backroom, resting a hand on Isaac's shoulder to stand beside him. The door to the lab is thrown open.

Barney and Gordon are sprawled out on the floor. He can see Gordon's glasses knocked aside and there seems to be a box involved-- wait a second, is that--

"Did you two bring a lizard in here?" Eli asks, laughing. He watches the brown reptile scramble out of the box and dart underneath a desk-- Kleiner's. "Calhoun, I think that violates a number of rules for Sector C!"

"I didn't catch it! This numbskull--" Barney speaks through gritted teeth as he grabs Gordon, knuckling his hair, "caught it and wanted to show Kleiner."

At that, Gordon stops resisting, his face going bright pink. Eli laughs harder, a deep guffaw straight from the gut.

"That man really is your son," Eli teases, shaking his head.

Isaac, for his part, looks delighted.

Gordon yanks himself free of Barney's grip and scrambles across the floor, dragging himself underneath Isaac's desk until his knees are through the gap. Barney snatches a pen full of cups before it can fall to the floor, the same moment Gordon strikes his head on the hardwood above him.

The lizard skitters away.

"Izzy, be careful!" Eli shouts, just as Isaac Kleiner lunges for it. "Jesus!"

Several things happen at once-- Kleiner lunges, scooping up the lizard, while Barney grabs up the box (throwing the pens in the process), and tries to meet Kleiner halfway. They dance around each other, which prompts Eli to grab a stack of papers and slap it on top of the box before the lizard can make another grand escape.

Gordon makes a noise of pain. A pen snaps underneath Eli's boot.

"There!" Barney snarls, red in the face.

"Good thinking, Barney!" Isaac says, beaming. "And thank you, Eli, for the quick cover-up. Let's set the poor thing on the desk there-- we'll have to bring it to the surface soon."

Eli takes the box from Barney, setting it on his own desk. The lizard scratches around inside for a moment more, but is otherwise silent.

Gordon crawls out from beneath Isaac's desk, looking suitably ashamed and somewhat like a kicked puppy. He's rubbing his head.

"Awh, don't look like that, Doc," Barney says, sounding much less frustrated all of a sudden. "Hey, I've got your glasses, you want'em?"

Instead of offering them to the other, Barney takes the liberty to slide the frames back onto Gordon's face. Then, with a gentleness unbecoming a security guard, he helps the doctor to his feet. Gordon lingers in his arms, silent.

Eli looks away, hiding another laugh behind his hand.

Those two were already something else entirely.

-

you stand on Black Mesa's surface side, an empty box at your feet. your mentor lingers at your shoulder, his arms crossed over his chest, silent as he stares into the middle distance. familiar anxiety gnaws at your stomach.

today had been a disaster.

"It's rare that any wildlife finds its way on base, Gordon," Dr. Kleiner says, his voice low and smooth.

just as you remember it. it's always been that way, since you were a boy. only now, it's tired.

"I appreciate you showing me that lizard," the man continues, smiling kindly.

you look at him, eyes wide. your hands hover at your sides.

"I was irresponsible," you settle on saying.

"Well, I'm happy to see you having fun, at any rate," Dr. Kleiner replies dryly. "You and Calhoun brightened my whole week."

fun?

you blink at the word, consequently blinking at kleiner. maybe you were having fun-- just a bit, for a while, before your anxiety came back in full force.

"It was getting tense inside the lab," you admit after a long silence.

the AnMat science team had been hard-pressed for a while. stress had been getting to everyone-- culminating in butting heads and passive aggressive friction between friends.

a part of you wanted to alleviate that, the moment you saw the reptile.

"That it was, Gord," Dr. Kleiner sighs. "Things will calm down soon, I'm sure. These things come in waves."

you stiffen as Dr. Kleiner rubs your back, but relax quickly.

"I'm proud of you, Gordon."

your breath hitches and you have to wring your hands, scratching at the back of your neck. you don't know how to reply, or react, so you fidget-- pulling at your ponytail, your shirt collar, anything, even as a relieved smile settles on your face.

it had been awhile since anyone had told you that.

[catubarca]

Harry Potter Next Generation Headcanons

im bored. im full of emotions, and am rly missing the HP world... i just want to write down my headcannons for the next gen kiddos tbh.

please remember these are just my opinions? its okay if yours are different. im just bored and want to share my thoughts,,

Teddy Lupin

his name is Theodore Remus “Teddy” Lupin. it’s just what it is

I don’t care what JKR says, to me his name will always be Theodore

i can’t do this “Edward” stuff im so sorry,,,

h u f f l e p u f f

proper school uniform? never heard of it

messy hair, messy clothes

punk rock child

we’re talking like,,,at least two (2) lip piercings ok

absolutely terrible in herbology. do not leave this child alone in a greenhouse, bad things happen

fuckin hoards chocolate

its a problem

dating Victorie Weasley

random bursts of dancing

keeps a lock of hair pink for his mother

lives with the Potters, enjoys pretending to be Ginny to ground his siblings

“Lily, why aren’t you coming out of your room? Dinner’s ready?” “You said I’m grounded! You tell me!” “What? Oh, for the- THEODORE REMUS LUPIN-“

s m i r k s

effortlessly cool,,, but so so dorky,,, in a cool way

Victorie Weasley

ravenclaw!

looks a lot like her mother, Fleur, but inherited those Weasley freckles

a little confused a lot of the time

absolute sweet tooth (teddy abuses this fact a lot)

Mom Friend™

will help you with your homework

always got a book on her

super beautiful and like,,,, the absolute nicest person,,, but

cannot dance

like at all

adores Charms class

a softie you don’t want to cross

“I’m the oldest”

Dominique Weasley

inherited the Classic Weasley Red Hair™

idolises her Uncle Charlie

“I wanna save animals and work with cool dragons, just like Uncle Charlie does!”

Bill almost has a heart attack

always bringing stray animals home

(“is that a lizard in your pocket, Dominique?” “Yes! His name is Blob.” “You know how your father’s afraid of reptiles, sweetheart, you can’t bring it inside.”)

Gryffindor child

favourite class is definitely Care of Magical Creatures, she and Hagrid like to talk about proper care methods for rare creatures

perpetual dirt stains

BIG middle child vibes

doesn’t really label her sexuality… just kinda does what she wants rly

all the pets in Hogwarts love her

rumours are she’s got an innate, natural magical ability to make them all love her

(she feeds them under the table)

it’s a mystery

big advocate for animal rights

f e m i n i s t

willing to throw hands at all times

usually all smiles though

one of those people who use their whole bodies to laugh

kind of an accidental heartthrob

romcoms

Louis Weasley

looks the most like his mother

ravenclaw

absolutely filled with curiosity. always reading or talking or learning

random facts

(how do you even find that sort of information?

you don’t want to know)

coffee boy

sort of musically talented?

he and James Sirius preach the importance of skincare to all who will listen

secretly full of sass and dry wit

vry graceful and fluid

e y e r o l l

awkward smiles? can never smile properly in photos

on the ravenclaw quidditch team

Ravenclaw Prefect

(“You might be older, but I’m taller.” “Fuck off!”)

only watches High Quality™ tv shows/media

kind of a disaster, despite the gracefulness

Molly Weasley

Classic red hair

comes across as a bit uptight, like her father

I don’t care what you think. (She really cares what you think.)

E y e b r o w s

death glares

drinks like 5 cups of coffee in the morning

studies,,, like a lot

definitely a Gryffindor though

mom jeans

always ready to debate a topic. will destroy opponents.

has been trying to start a successful Debate Club for like 4 years now

naturally falls into the position of a group leader

would be a teacher’s pet, if she wasn’t ready At All Times™ to debate the relevancy of the course syllabus or outdated teaching methods

got into a fight with Severus Snape’s portrait in Headmistress McGonagall’s office.

(Dumbledore’s portrait was laughing, until she turned and ragged on him for a bit. Minerva thought it was absolutely hilarious, so she just let Molly go at it for a while).

full of rage towards everything, but wears a very careful mask of aloofness

to calm down, she likes painting her nails

she’s very good at it

she’s also very good at painting and art in general, weirdly enough

Lucy Weasley

G R Y F F I N D O R

adores shitty puns and has a terrible sense of humour

brown hair, not red

loves to prank people, which makes her Uncle George very proud

Percy complains about her behaviour, but makes sure he knows he’s proud too

(charming all the cauldrons in the potions classroom to scream whenever they’re stirred takes a more complex understanding of spell work than one would expect).

a pit of a punk streak

rly loves hip hop

high key drama queen

does she ever stop yelling? we’re yet to find out

average grades in terms of theory, but she’s the best in terms of applying information

especially for her pranks

has allies throughout the castle, from the portraits to the students

the bigger the prank, the better

but is a firm believer in “confuse, don’t abuse”

all her pranks are mostly harmless

is a surprising lover of older literature, like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, an influence of her sister

a bit rebellious

Fred Weasley II

name isn’t officially “the second”, but it sounds cooler

James Potter, Lucy Weasley, Molly Weasley and Fred Weasley are like the Marauders 2.0

says “squad” and “lit” unironically

niche humour

hipster vibes

avid music lover

smiley sunshine child

takes after his mother the most in looks, just like his sister

a chill type of gryffindor

plays quidditch, and is an excellent chaser, just like his mother

the absolute undisputed King™ of puppy-dog eyes

just,,,, beautiful

the True teacher’s pet

hands in his work on time,, asks lots of questions,,, likes helping students understand their work,, what a boy

can hella nyoom

runs so fast

look at him go

as you might expect, loves a good prank. always down for a laugh

Roxanne Weasley

Gryffindor and pROUD

absolute Queen tbh

was definitely Head Prefect or Gryffindor Prefect at some point

loved by the school

absolute legend

G I R L   P O W E R

infectious laughter

has a soft spot for Louis Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy

these poor disaster children,,,, they need a Mother

M O M

big mom vibes

mothers the hell out of all the first years

a feminist through and through

can be found nodding aggressively to Molly Weasley’s semi-deranged, furious ranting

YAAAASS

loves slang. uses so much slang. always up to date with trends and memes

has all the gossip

becomes a mess around pretty girls

absolute blushing, stuttering disaster around cute girls oh my god

her eye make-up game is killer

sparkly

Distinguished Lesbian

Rosie Weasley

did someone say Weasley™?

red hair and freckles and curls oh my

on the autism spectrum, has trouble socialising sometimes

hella passionate about stuff

hangs out with Scorpius and Albus, the Golden Trio 2.0

f em ini st

her jokes are the best. high quality sense of humour.

Ravenclaw

likes to read. it’s quiet in the school library, which is nice.

abysmal at herbology

surprisingly good at Care of Magical Creatures though? Animals are just,,, so much easier to deal with

overall, really good grades though

bit of a silent type, but she’s actually a riot to hang out with

actually pretty good at quidditch? She’s not on the team, and she’s not super interested in playing, but?? She’s not bad??

She can land a solid hit with a beater’s bat

(eyes you judgementally over the top of a book)

dry wit humour

will throw hands over chess

Hugo Weasley

hufflepuff

unbeatable at chess, like his dad

a lost puppy

someone please help this child

softie

kind of low-key emotional

so supportive!! and loyal!! high-key best friend material

foodie. loves food. please feed him.

takes a bit more after his dad appearance wise

loves to cook. spends lots of time with grandma Molly and his dad in the kitchen

Professor Longbottom is his favourite professor, because he’s more chilled and laidback.

other professors and classes fill him with Distress™

loves astronomy too

maths whizz, so good at arithmancy

(“uh, actually-“)

a little bossy, like his mother

is trying so hard

maybe a little too hard

a bit insecure and nervous, but so soft

please treat this child carefully and with love

James Sirius Potter

Gryffindor

L O U D

a fucking disaster child

what’d you expect, putting “James” and “Sirius” together?

DRAMATIC GASPING

flails his hands around when he talks

s t r u t s

bisexual mess, had a crush on both the Longbottom children at some point

is better than you at everything

including being a different gender

fuck you that’s why

so pretty

he’s so pretty

is thIS CHILD EVER NOT LAUGHING AT SOMETHING OH My god

laughs at everything

all the time

always

high-key emotional

badly timed finger guns

looks like a model in photos? wtf?

gets invited to Girls Nights™

wears nail polish and makeup

loves to yell at people about gender roles and defying stereotypes

TEA SIS

not on the quidditch team surprisingly enough, even though he’s pretty good

prefers to be in the stands, doing A+ commentary on the games

if he can get Fred to stop mid-air due to unbearable, suffocating laughter at least once a game it’s a win in his books

has it OUT for the hufflepuff quidditch team and no one knows why??

definitely makes puns on his name

it drives everyone insane

harry always replies he’s just making his namesake proud

that also drives everyone insane

smug lil shit

Albus Severus Potter

“It’s just Al.”

S L Y T H E R I N

will always find a way to get what he wants, eventually

“dad, why did you name me this way?”

unimpressed

sigh

hella smart. is topping at least five classes

Aunt Hermione is his favourite. She’s the fucking Mistress of Magic! All that power, the ability to make change and improve the Magical World as a whole-

sass master

the reason headmistress mcgonagall keeps a bottle of scotch under her desk at all times

the only potter child to inherit The Eyes™

absolute insomniac

kind of emo, but turns into a fucking softie around Scorpius Malfoy it’s hilarious

adverse to violence. prefers a verbal beatdown method

really tall? despite having shorties for parents??? no one saw it coming

(especially not Teddy. He’s always scared of losing his last few inches of height)

Functional Gay

he’s on the slytherin quidditch team, as a seeker

Lily Luna Potter

Gryffindor

FEMINIST

do not mess with lily luna potter

she may seem cute and sweet, but she will destroy you

inherited her father’s black hair

disaster lesbian

transfiguration is her favourite subject, by far

has no idea what she wants to do with the rest of her life.

Existential Crisis Father-Daughter Bonding Time™

do you ever sleep?

takes after Ginny the most in personality

also, kind of the most like James Fleamont Potter in personality, too?

Loves to help her brother out with pranks, laughs at him when he gets caught and she gets away with it

The only one of the Potter Children who hasn’t got into a fight with Severus Snape’s portrait

because she just ignores him instead

loves talking to the portraits around the castle

Super good at Quidditch, is on the team as a Chaser

Quidditch Captain at some point

adores Hagrid, but who out of the Potter children doesn’t?

Idolises Minerva McGonagall

just as oblivious as her father

Scorpius Malfoy

Actually in Ravenclaw, not Slytherin, much to many people’s surprise

abSOLUTE DADDY’S BOY

super close with his dad

Draco is just so supportive of like everything he does (unlike his father)

classic blonde malfoy looks

actually really funny?

a cuddler. loves hugs. always leeching warmth off of someone

he and Rosie sometimes finger-tip-touch which is their version of a hug, because he know’s she’s not super comfortable with touch

was basically adopted by the Weasley’s and Potter’s

James Sirius will murder for this child

booknerd, always rambling to Al and Rosie about new books coming out he’s interested in reading.

has had a crush on Albus Potter since like 1st year

always worried about making his dad proud, and keeping up the Malfoy name

sweet tooth

he’s just,, soft. just a warm, happy child. he wants love, and affection. someone tell him he’s doing okay, please.

needs,,, validation,,,

he’ll tell you out loud that he has no favourite aunts or uncles, but he secretly really likes spending time with his Uncle Ron

they had a talk, once, in like the middle of the night at a sleepover with Rosie and Al, about feeling insecure in comparison to others, and learning to be proud of yourself for your achievements

there were a few tears, but it was nice

Ron was actually the third person he told, besides his dad and Rosie, about having a crush on Al

openly a disaster romantic. trash taste in romance novels.

always welcome in the Potter-Weasley households

[skzsauce01]

Normal Pt 5

Description: For more skilled maneuvers, dragon shifters need a rider to help them out. After rejecting multiple riders, Hyunjin, a traumatized and handicapped shifter, is assigned to you. To add a cherry on top, you’re deaf, so how are you supposed to cast spells to free him from his limitation, let alone the anger in his heart?

Warning: violence

Word Count: 4.3k

Pairing: fem!reader x dragon!Hyunjin

Pt: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5

It’s New Year’s eve. Rather than counting down at home, you and about a hundred other riders and dragons are lined up at the edge of a survival course. Unlike your assessments, the Race is across all year levels and does not include proctoring. Once it has begun, you are on your own to defend yourself from more physical competitors and the beasts of the wild until you finish or the day has passed. Only the strongest and fittest take on the feat each year.

‘Ready?’ you ask your partner.

He gives a sharp nod, and hears his professor yelling “Happy new year!” indicating the start of the race. For the first few hours, Hyunjin tries to pull ahead in his dragon form, taking advantage of his natural camouflage, but returns to human form during the day. 

‘Let’s rest here for a bit,’ you write to him after you dismount, knowing how tired he must be after flying all morning. Hyunjin knew the dark is the best time for travel, so he tried not to waste a second of it, albeit from the breaks you forced him to take and the one battle someone engaged you into. Honestly, that person was a fool, challenging a Twilight Terror such as himself, Hyunjin thought haughtily. 

Once human again, Hyunjin collapses onto you.

I told you to tell me when you’re tired! We could have taken more stops! he can imagine you nagging as you drag him towards a hollowed out tree. He lets out a coughy-laugh at his hypothetical dialogue and continues the rest of the walk himself, knowing you too are worn out from using magic nonstop. 

‘I’m going to get some more water,’ you write to him, waving your empty bottles.

‘I’ll come with,’ he replies, getting up from the tree.

You shake your head and force him to sit back down. ‘Rest. The stream’s not far, and I have my daggers.’

‘Well, yell if another dragon spots you.’

You salute him, and he watches your back walk away with a tired sigh. Wearily, he leans back against the tree and looks up for any predators. He doesn’t even notice his vision growing dimmer and dimmer as the winter breeze tickles at his hairs until a voice pulls him out of his slumber.

“Hwang Hyunjin? I finally found you! This forest made it a tad difficult, but no worries.”

The Terror freezes. He knows that voice anywhere. “Lee.”

“Long time no see, my boy. Turns out you were hiding in this academy all along! I should have known.”

Hyunjin turns slowly around to see the man he hates most now with a large scar across a sewn-shut eye that was not there before. In his hand dangles a purple necklace. “You can’t do anything when I’m human,” he snarls.

Lee chuckles. “So what? You’re going to stay like this for the rest of the race? You can’t even survive like that out here, let alone win.”

“How did you get in here anyway? This is a students only event,” Hyunjin hisses.

“How doesn’t matter,” the man hums. “What matters is that I’ve found you now, and it’s only the matter of when you’re going to be mine again. Speaking of which, how’s your new rider? Pretty little thing, isn’t she?”

“You keep your dirty hands off of her!” Hyunjin hollers.

Lee only chuckles at his anger. “Oh, my dear boy. You know that you’re the only one I’m interested in, but if she can help me get to you, then I suppose I don’t mind her company again.”

Again?

“Ever wonder why my dragon isn’t here right now?”

As if on cue, a grey reptile lifts off into the sky. Between its two front paws is you, tied and gagged. Behind your back, your fingers are spelling something.

‘Run!’

Like claws he will! Not when you were attacked by goblins and definitely not now. He unsheathes a knife and makes a long cut along the abdominon of the dragon as it swoops down. It roars in pain and drops you.

Hyunjin dashes over, standing between you and the foe. Lee mounts his pet and again flies towards Hyunjin, grabbing you both between different limbs, and returns to the air. Hyunjin stabs and stabs with his knife, but with his master on his back, the grey dragon’s body is no longer its own. It can roar all it wants, but trumpets of victory is all Lee can hear. 

“So nice to see you again, Miss L/N. I’ve been looking for you too.”

Hyunjin looks at you confused. What business did you have with Lee, and why was he talking aloud to you? However, you are too occupied thrashing around to free yourself to notice your friend.

Knowing you can’t respond to him with your gag, Lee turns to Hyunjin. “So what’s it going to be, Boy? Are you going to transform, or am I going to have to kill this poor, innocent girl here?” he taunts, having the dragon fly higher and higher into the sky. “Guess you can decide on your way down!”

With that, the dragon drops both your and his bodies. Hyunjin knows that it’s all over for him if he transforms, but it’s all over for both of you if he doesn’t. The ground is approaching much faster than survivable. Decide on his way down? There’s only one option given to him, and Lee knows it.

Hyunjin pulls you into his arms, tearing away your gag and mumbling a spell. Lee cackles triumphantly as deep purple scales appear before his eyes. He flies closer to Hyunjin and casts a spell immediately, making him freeze up to prevent him from flying away. However, this means Hyunjin is continuing accelerating downward.

A dragon can survive a fall from this height, but not you who is still wrapped up in his frozen arms. Luckily, there’s one part of him that Lee doesn’t control: his white prosthetic fin. Hyunjin angles it so that he rotates just in time for him to land on his back and uses his belly to absorb your impact.

“How sweet, taking the fall for your savior this time, eh?” Lee teases, walking over to the fallen dragon. Hyunjin can only glare at him uselessly. 

Savior? He doesn’t have much time to think as pain replaces all thoughts when Lee wastes no time on his first incision, this time for a claw. He can hear you singing from between his arms where he has you securely protected between his arms, but it is in vain; even you cannot over power another magician whom a dragon has sworn to. 

“You know, maybe it was a good thing you were rescued six years ago,” Lee hums cockily, inspecting the claw he has just detached from the Terror. “Your parts are even more beautiful now that they’ve matured.”

Rescued? Hyunjin doesn’t remember any of this. One moment he blacked out from pain, and the next, he woke up at this school.

Just then, he hears a voice from above. “Hyunjin?”

On any other day, the Terror would have cursed at that voice, but today, it was music to his ears.

“Oh my claws, that’s Hyunjin!” cries Chan

“Got more friends to help you out?” Lee scoffs. “What are they going to do against a Twilight Terror?”

He forces Hyunjin onto his feet, dropping you to the side and mounting the dragon to which Hyunjin screeches in distress, but before he can see where you landed, Lee has already taken him into the air. From a distance, Changbin is zeroing in on his location.

“Fire.”

Hyunjin watches in horror as a flame erupts from his own mouth towards his friend. 

“Wanna fight?” Changbin roars, narrowly missing the attack.

“It’s my rider’s doing!”

“Rider? I thought you hated riders!”

“He’s why!” 

“Hyunjin!” Chan exclaims once he’s confirmed his identity.

“A prefect, eh? Ooh, I’m really scared,” Lee laughs.

“Where’s Y/N?” demands Chan.

“Somewhere. Don’t care. You can find her now before some wild goblins kill her, or you can try to fight me and end up dead. No guarantee your corpses would be buried together though.”

“And who are you?” growls Chan. He casts his gaze down and sees Hyunjin’s bleeding paw. “Nevermind, I know exactly who you are, Lee.”

“Surprise, surprise! I’m famous! But unfortunately for you, your time to escape unscathed has run out,” Lee snickers, making Hyunjin release another shot of fire. 

“Just find Y/N!” Hyunjin begs his roommate.

“And leave you to this man?”

“Don’t worry, Hyunjin,” Chan calls out as if he can read the dragon’s mind. “Y/N’s not that weak. Just worry about yourself for now!”

Chan avoids another fireball as he talks. Regardless of who’s controlling him, Hyunjin is still Hyunjin, and Chan cannot hurt him. He also knows that any attack he aims at Lee will just be blocked using the Terror’s body. How is he to free him from that man? he ponders, skillfully slanting Changbin to avoid a stream of flames. 

In the midst of his planning, Chan spts something grey in the corner of his eye. He suppresses a giggle when he notices it’s you on the back of Lee’s previous ride with your ability to control other dragons. You are signing a rescue plan to him, and Chan repeats it to Changbin who relays it to Hyunjin discreetly, all the while standing his ground against Lee and keeping everything under the villain’s radar.

Hyunjin wants to yelp happily knowing that you are alright, but he keeps his calm to hide your presence. He gives the slightest of nods when he’s understood the plan, hoping that you can see it. Once you’ve received the okay signal, you jump into action.

Lee is surprised to say the least. You swoop in with his dragon, biting off Hyunjin’s white prosthetic which throws the dragon off balance. Unlike you, Lee has never flown Hyunjin with only half the normal number of fins. He yells curses as his dragon begins to topple, and Chan takes this chance to attack from the front, ripping off Hyunjin’s necklace. 

As soon as he does so, Both Lee and Hyunjin begin their descent to the ground, so Changbin grabs Hyunjin. 

“You won’t succeed again L/N!” Lee curses having spotted you. Since you and the dragon you are riding are nearby, Lee regains control of it, overpowering your magic with his rights as its owner.

“Y/N!” Chan yells, reaching his hand down for you as Changbin swoops in, lifting you away from the reach of Lee. Together, you watch the man ride away with taunts of his return.

“I told them the course wasn’t ready!” Chan scowls as soon as all four of you are back on the ground.

“What do you mean?”

“Remember when I got pulled out of the winter ball?” he both sighs and signs. “There was something wrong with the force field around the course. Force fields are what keeps nonstudents like that creep out of campus, but we were having trouble maintaining the one around this course. I told them we needed more time to fix it, but they insisted that the New Year’s Race can’t be postponed!”

‘Well what are we going to do now?’ you ask. ‘Hyunjin can’t turn into a dragon for even a second, and two humans aren’t going to survive until midnight in this forest.’

“Having three people on a dragon might be dangerous especially with all these battles going on, but we can wait here with you,” Chan offers, and Changbin nods. 

‘We can’t possibly ask that of you. Besides, Lee already has his eyes on Hyunjin. He can’t keep hiding in the school forever.’

“I have a plan,” Hyunjin announces. All heads turn towards him, and he to you with his notepad. ‘I’ll swear to you. It’s the only way you can overpower Lee.’

Changbin agrees, silently surprised that Hyunjin is willing to hand himself to another rider after six years of swearing that it’ll never happen. Chan on the other hand, is surprised at how bewildered you look. Shouldn’t you be ecstatic that he’s finally accepted you?

You grab Hyunjin’s wrist and stare into his eyes. Don’t.

Your partner furrows his brows. ‘Why not?’

You look around and finally back to your partner. ‘Can we talk? Privately.’

Hyunjin nods and excuses the two of you. Once you’re alone, you start writing urgently.

‘You can’t swear to me.’

‘This whole time, I thought I was the one with a problem with it, not you.’

‘It’s just that…’ You bite your lip, unsure of how to tell him. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

Hyunjin takes your hand in his. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The first person you’ve sworn to has already hurt you. If I do it too, you’d never recover from it.’

‘Y/N, what are you trying to say?’

You pull your hand back and turn away. ‘I’m not a dragon rider, and I was never intended to be your rider from the day we were assigned to each other,’ you finally confess. 

Hyunjin puts a hand on your shoulder to turn you back his way. You can’t look at him.

‘I’m a dragon trainer. Because I can control dragons that aren’t my own, I’m hired to rehabilitate injured and traumatized dragons such as yourself. After the treatment is complete, I adjust them to a real rider.’

Hyunjin can’t believe his eyes. ‘So what are you saying? All this time, everything we’ve been through together, you did just for a wage? All the things you’ve said to me, were they all just scripts?’ Are all my feelings just bought by money? 

You press his hand down to stop him from writing and shake your head fervently. ‘I sincerely care for every dragon I work with!’

He glares at you.

‘Please believe me…’ You bite your lip. ‘And if it makes you feel any better, I’m not getting paid to work with you.’

‘Then why are you here?’ he scoffs, making you wince.

‘The girl who rescued you from Lee six years ago asked me to be here.’

‘Someone you owed a favor to or--’ He cuts himself off, and his eyes widen into round discs upon realization. How familiar he thought you looked from the start. How you knew his preference for appai berries. The unidentified girl in his flashbacks. How Lee knew who you are earlier. It all adds up. 

“It was you,” he breathes, his voice barely a whisper as memories he tried to repress come rushing back. 

“Why?” he kept roaring. “Why?” 

In his blurred vision, he spotted an pre-teen version of you, Lee’s rider-in-trainning, approaching him with a blade behind your back. 

“Ah, Miss L/N. Have you brought the other scalpels like I asked?”

You nod your head carefully having picked up a sense of what he is attempting. “What are you doing, Master?”

“Let me teach you the real reason we spend so much time befriending these beasts,” Lee chuckled. “Watch!” 

With that, he ripped Hyunjin’s fin clean off, making your heart drum in your ear with fear.

“No!” you cried. You raised your hidden blade, trying to stop your mentor. You succeed, giving him a large gash right across his eye. 

Lee screamed, and his magic faltered for just a moment. You took this chance to approach Hyunjin for his necklace, but all he saw was a person coming at him with a knife. In his fear, Hyunjin released a series of flames. You managed to rip off his necklace right as Lee recovered from the shock and as the dungeon Hyunjin lit on fire began tumbling down on all of you.

And then all was quiet.

The last thing he saw before the world went black was a girl struggling to get a pillar off of him. She was bleeding in the head right where her auditory cortexes were.

‘I was so scared of Lee, I left you at Sheng Academy and ran. I hid and got around with whatever wild dragon I can use to enter local competitions for their prize money and learned to ride without my ears until a rich lady recognized what I can do and paid me to rehabilitate one of her trophy dragons with an amputated leg. My career started after that.’

‘So I’m the one who blew out your ears?’ Hyunjin gasps.

‘That’s not the point.’ You reach up for his cheek as a single tear of guilt slides down. ‘The point is, you don’t want to swear to me.’

‘No, I can and I will,’ Hyunjin writes adamantly. ‘You can leave me, or cut me up; I don’t care. It’s the only way we can get Lee off both our backs.’ 

You disagree. ‘We can break his pendant and release you from your oath.’

‘Nothing can break a magic pendant though.’

‘No, not nothing.’

“You’re insane,” Changbin decides, demanding that Chan signs it to you which the latter refuses.

‘What are the chances of its success?’ Chan asks instead.

‘It depends on him,’ you answer, motioning to Hyunjin. ‘You need to leave now, or this won’t work.’

‘This… this is too dangerous. I can’t allow it!’ 

You look Chan in the eyes. Your charisma isn’t only limited to dragons. ‘You’re going to have to.’

The oldest male takes your hand and frowns at you. He then kisses the back of one before letting go. ‘Come back to me.’

You don’t answer.

Hyunjin makes sure Chan has left before he turns back to where they have found Lee sleeping on a field. “Okay, here we go.”

You nod and step into the clearing, carefully sliding a blade from your thigh. The winter sunset kisses your hair as you tiptoe towards the man. You let out a low note to keep his dragon asleep and hover over your target. You pull the knife back and bring it down to his neck when a hand catches your wrist.

“You honestly think that would work?” Lee sneers. “Have you learned nothing from your time with me?”

You snarl and jump back.

“Why so shy? It’s just me, Sweetie,” he hums, standing up and spreading his arms out. “But honestly, what were you thinking, coming alone at me with nothing but a dagger? What happened to your other friends? Left you behind to complete the race, I suppose? That is quite typical of prefects; they care about nothing but their image.”

Hyunjin clenches his jaw, feeling oddly defensive for the rider.

He continues. “Not answering? That’s alright. I must admit, it’s rather noble of you to try and save little Hyunjin, but as I always say, noble acts are usually the most foolish ones.”

Lee says something and his dragon awakens. It knocks you to the ground, and Lee bounds you up like before. “Now, let’s hear you scream for your knight in shining armor.”

He takes your own blade and digs it into your shoulder, staining your white coat with red. You bite your tongue and snarl at him.

“Resilient, aren’t you? That’s why I took you under my wing. Well, that and your special ability.” A round kick to the head. “Too bad your heart isn’t nearly as tough. We could have been rich, Miss L/N, we really could have. That Terror could have bought us a whole mansion with a pretty fountain in the front.” Another stab. You can’t hold it this time and let out a cry. “There it is! Good girl,” Lee approves. “You know, it’s not too late. Just give me the Terror, and I’ll let you free! I’ll even take you back and give you your own room in the mansion.” 

Lee sighs at your lack of response and motions at his dragon. It takes a step back and conjugates magic at its mouth for an attack. At this, Hyunjin cannot sit still and watch any longer. With a powerful roar, he flies into the clearing and throws the other reptile into the trees while shooting a fireball at Lee. 

“Oh goodie!” Lee cheers and grounds Hyunjin immediately. He turns to you and pulls on a rope which tugs you up so that you dangle from a tree. “I’ll tell you how this is going to work this time, Hyunjin. I am going to light this tree on fire--” he does so-- “and going to take, oh, just some of your parts. If you cooperate, I might finish in time for what’s left of you to save her before she burns to death! Isn’t that fun?”

Hyunjin roars in protest, but stays still for his master. He keeps his eyes on you as you thrash around in attempts to save yourself from the incoming flames. He doesn’t even feel Lee's knife entering the second part of his tail; all he can hear are your panicked gasps, and all he knows is that Lee is going far too slowly for him to finish on time. Forget his threat, Hyunjin has to break out of his hold now or you’re dead!

But how?

He catches sight of your eyes that are filled with tears from ash irritation and fear of your impending doom. Your gazes lock together and you stop squirming. Slowly, you let a small smile spread over your lips. 

That smile. He has seen that smile before. It’s the one you gave him before saving him from the goblins at your own expense. It’s a smile of gratitude for the time spent together and apologizes for the time you’ve cut short. It’s a smile of hope for him and resignation for yourself. It’s a smile of peace. A smile of acceptance. A smile of farewell.

“Hyunjin...” 

The voice. His name. It’s softer than a feather yet stronger than a storm. It pierces through his heart and awakens something in him. He wants nothing more than to hear it over and over again. From you. From you when you’re happy, from you when you’re mad, from you when you’re excited, from you when you’re alive.

“NO!” he bellows, watching your coat catch its first flames and your body going limp.

Hyunjin wills his front arm to move to crawl to you, and it does. 

“What are you doing?” Lee shrieks as his purple necklace begins to vibrate. “STOP!”

Another step. It’s now enough for Hyunjin to crane his neck up off the floor. 

‘No, not nothing,’ you had told him. ‘A dragon’s loyalty oath puts its master before itself. We just have to find something you want more than Lee when you swore to him. We just have to find something you want more than yourself.’

Hyunjin unflurs his wings and Lee’s necklace shatters into his face, piercing through his brain. This goes unnoticed as only one thought resides in Hyunjin’s mind, body, and soul: hearing you say his name again.

Without either of his tail fins, Hyunjin can no longer fly. He opts to climb through the flames and rip you from the ropes with his jaw. When he succeeds, he falls to the ground and rolls around to put out the flames. 

Hyunjin immediately returns to human form and begins resuscitation on you, ignoring the burns he’d just received himself.

“Come on, Y/N, come on!” he cries. “I did not just agree to your stupid plan for you to die on me!”

He pinches your nose and blows twice, making sure your chest rises each time. On the second one, you suddenly cough, spraying black saliva everywhere. 

“Hyun…” you try before being interrupted with another cough attack.

When you turn back to face him, you see him with the widest smile you’d ever seen. He lets his head collapse onto you and soaks your chest in tears. Weakly, you bring your hand to his head and stroke his hair.

“... jin.”

‘So this is it then? Really?’

You press a new white frame onto his pendant. The second rising sun of the year casts a glow around the both of you.

Hyunjin sighs and helps you adjust your new white coat around your cast. ‘Your wounds haven't even healed yet.’

‘I’ll be fine. Promise.’

‘I know you can be, but I don’t trust that you won’t do something reckless again.’

‘Touche,’ you laugh. It’s a beautiful laugh. Hyunjin wishes he could record this one. ‘Make sure you graduate, okay?’

‘I won’t let you down,’ he promises. ‘Have you told Chan?’

‘Why would I tell Chan?’

He rolls his eyes. ‘You know he has the biggest crush on you.’

‘He deserves someone who’s not trying to get herself killed every week.’

‘Sounds like my kind of girl,” Hyunjin winks. 

You scoff humorously and toss a red bag at him. He catches it and knows exactly what’s inside. 

‘Good work, Hyunjin!’

He shakes his head and pulls out a piece of paper from his pocket, and unfolds the crumpled parchment. He shows you the back of it which reads ‘Good work’ then folds it before flipping it over so that all you can see is the word ‘friend.’ It’s the note you had given him during your first practice when he asked you who you are.

You place a hand over your heart, touched.

Hyunjin walks over and pulls you into a hug. “Thank you. For everything.”

~4 years later~

You wipe sweat from your forehead and look up to the new school you had built for disabled dragons and riders alike. There are still a few odds and ends you have to sort out, but you cannot be more excited for the opening. 

Just then, you feel the snap of a twig from someone approaching you from behind. You whip around to confront the intruder, but before you can, he speaks. Or rather, signs.

‘Are you hiring? I have a degree from Sheng Academy,’ the man signs fluently.

Your aggravation melts into joy. 

“Hyunjin!”

--end--

~ ad.gold