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puffin-smoke · 3 months

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Two days ago y'all saw Duarte at their lowest. Duarte trying to fix a mistake they had made years ago and being met with a brick wall. So let's see what got them here. Let's talk about:

Natalie Rollins and the Worst Mistake Duarte Ever Made

please ignore my theatrical ass, i'm very excited :DD

Duarte first met Natalie a month into their hunting career. They were bright eyed and bushy tailed, earning the nickname Lightningbug at every turn. She'd only done a few successful hunts, and for half-bloods that had bounties worth as much as dirt, but she was trying to claw her way to notoriety nonetheless. And for that she needed one big job.

She strolled into the inn where notices and bounties were posted one evening. She knew there'd be a notice up for a newly spotted electric eel half-blood, who had supposedly been electrocuting any hunters who got close. Perfect for Duarte. But when she got up to the notice board there was no poster in sight. She looked over to the barkeep, who was in charge of putting up the posters each day.

"Where the hell's that new eel poster? You not put it up yet?"

"Already taken, kid." They didn't look up from the glass they were polishing. They gestured vaguely towards a table on the far side of the room. "You still want it, take it up with her. She snagged it the moment I put it up."

Duarte followed his hand towards the table. That was where Natalie was sitting. Duarte swore and a few patrons gave her the stink eye.

Natalie was a well established hunter. She'd been in this game since she was eighteen and had built up a rapport with the other hunters over the years. So naturally she wasn't the biggest fan of Duarte. She tended to have that effect on people.

Undeterred, or maybe just a bit stupid, Duarte walked up to her and took a seat, grinning. She propped her boots up on the table. Just play it cool.

Natalie gave her one annoyed look over her drink and that was it. No other acknowledgement that she was there.

"So, Nat! How's your evening been?"

"Firstly, don't call me that. Second, just cut to the chase, I know why your here." She sighed and pushed Duarte's feet off the table. "And the answer is no. This is my bounty, fair and square."

Duarte drops the smile. "Oh come on, this is a big job- you can't handle this! "

Bad move. Duarte knew that. Natalie scoffed. "And you can?"

"Course I can!" She replies, entirely earnest. She was a damn good hunter, who just needed some good luck. She slowly leans towards Natalie,trying to inconspicuously snatch the poster and make a run for it. Natalie moves it away, unimpressed.

"Go find something else, Lightningbug."

"You know I hate being called that."

"Then leave."

And so she did, grumbling and swearing the whole time. But she'd be back. Duarte knew that Natalie liked to plan out her hunts in detail, and thus she'd be back on that table to flesh out her plan. Duarte still had a chance.

It'd be simple. Turn up the charm, befriend the hunter and snag the case. Easy. She could be charming. Probably. Maybe she could just bug her into handing it over.

So she shows up the next day, finding Natalie at that same table, nose deep in a book with sea creatures etched into the cover. Duarte pushes the book down so she can meet her eyes, and grins. Natalie looks back at her, unimpressed.

"You're back. Why am I not suprised?"

"I'm here to see if you've thought anymore about my offer?"

Natalie nearly laughs. "Your "offer" was you insulting me and trying to order me about. Not very convincing."

The conversation doesn't go anywhere from there and eventually Duarte leaves.

The next day is alot of the same. Natalie had a new book that was somehow thicker than the last volume, and Duarte once trying her hand at either annoying or persuading the hunter.

"...so, if you're so intent on doing this job, then why haven't you already?"

"I'm not about to get myself fried by going in half-cocked." She gestures to a diagram in her book. A detailed map of all of an electric eels organs and what they do, how the electricity is discharged, with several handwritten notes peppered around it. "Everything has a weakness. "

Duarte cocks her head, still not entirely sees the point. "Couldn't you figure out that by actually going to fight the damn thing?"

"I could also die. Not intent on doing that any time soon."

"Hm. Not what I would do."

"I'm sure."

After a few days of this, Duarte shows up early, and takes a seat before Natalie can get the chance. Natalie arrives a half hour later, her arms filled with parchment and a new book, this one a very uniform teal. She surveys Duarte critically.

"You're in my spot."

"There's room next to me, if you'd like."

Natalie for a moment looks as though she's assessing if she could throw a book hard enough to kill Duarte. Seeming to decide that would be too messy, she dumps her books on the table and takes a seat. "Fine. Don't touch my stuff."

Duarte nods and grins. Natalie spreads her papers across the table, each one of them with more detailed diagrams that Duarte didn't understand. Might as well find out. "What's all this for? Find the weakness yet?"

She'd meant it mildly mockingly, but Natalie didn't seem to take it that way. Or maybe she just ignored it. She ignored alot of things Duarte said. "It's the electricity that's tripping me up... it'll make it harder for me to grab them, and knives are out of the question."

Their mind whirrs. "What about blunt force? One knock to the back of the head, they'll be out like a light."

Natalie nods, as though conceding a point to her. "Could work. It's getting close that's the problem; this thing releases electrical impulses, so the half-blood'll probably do something similar."

"Hm. So what's the plan?"

For the first time, Natalie looked confused, but quickly set her features back, that stern, unreachable expression. "Well, I'm going to have to find some kind of insulator." Her eyes go back to scanning the parchment, the book. "It can't be wood- that's too clunky, this guy'll probably be slippery. I need to be fast."

Duarte noticed the emphasis on certain words. It was fine. It was a reminder. She was getting to mixed up in the fast pace of the conversation. It had been nice, a break from the hostility she treated most hunters with. Duarte swallows and snipes. "That'll be a first for you then. Sure you can handle it?"

"Oh fuck off." Natalie bats them in the chest, playfully yet spiteful. "If I couldn't handle it I would've given the job over to you, Lightningbug."

Duarte was half tempted to hit her back, but lowered her hand. "There's still time for that."

The hunter laughs. It's short, restrained, but tunic. "Still no."

Duarte sinks down into their seat, defeated. "Fine." A thought crosses her mind. A solution maybe. "Would leather work?"

Its a throwaway thought. Just her thinking out loud, fully prepared to be shot down. But Natalie doesn't. Her face, at times, is easy to read and this is one of them. Her eyes widen for a split second, the corner of her lips cinch. She's fascinated. Suprised. "Shit."

"Shit?"

The hunter stands. Thoughts flicker behind her eyes, a mile a minute. Duarte can't help but watch them. Natalie begins to collect her things, dumping them into her bag at random. "No- shit- that could work. That might work- how the hell didn't I think of that?"

Duarte smirked and set their hands behind her head, lounging as much as her chair would allow her. "That's just what happens when you work with the-"

She stopped mid sentence when she realised that Natalie was already gone. "Oh." She sits there for the next twenty minutes, feeling too embarrassed for her liking, shame colouring her cheeks. She was gone, off to plan and read diagrams that Duarte didn't understand. Duarte didn't want to look into why she felt so annoyed with herself.

The next night Duarte sat alone at the bar. She'd checked the notice board a dozen times by now, searching for something to peak her interest. Nothing. So she sat alone, barely touching her drink, planning her next move.

That was when she felt a tap on her back. "You gonna sit there moping all night? We've got a job to do."

Natalie?

Duarte spun in her seat, whirling around to face her, almost falling off her seat in the process. She scrambled to regain her composure, but nothing could hide the surprise in her eyes. "The hell are you doing here?"

The hunter squints at her as though it were obvious. "Getting you." She throws what initially looks like a rag to Duarte. But she looks a little closer and it's anything but. It's essentially leather overalls, stitched together roughly, as though done with shaking hands. There's a mask and matching gloves in the pockets. "Now come on, this is a two person job."

Duarte shouldn't be sitting there slack-jawed but she is. Natalie, mildly concerned now, pokes her. "You suddenly not want this? I can always go to someone else-"

That gets her to stand up. "No!" She yells a little too loud. She cringes at herself. "I mean, no. We're splitting the reward right?"

"There you are, Lightningbug." The hunter laughs again, once more tight and short. The note of a song cut short. She sighs. "And no need to get ahead of yourself."

And with that she leads Duarte out of the tavern, and the hunt is on.

The pair throw the majority of their weapons into a bush: Duarte's harpoon, Natalie's crossbow, the combined sum of their knives. Anything that had metal. Their only weaponry was a finely carved wooden stake and a thick wooden club. They donned the outfits and began to stalk through the swamp. The plan, which Natalie explained in unsparing detail, was for Duarte to come at the half-blood from the front and Natalie from behind. Easy.

It didn't take long for them to find the half-blood, perched at the edge of a brook. Gills flexed and twitched as the half-blood drunk, webbed fingers let them catch more water in hand. Scales ran across their skin, dark and glittering. Duarte took one deep breath. She looked to Natalie, who nodded and continued onwards.

With that, Duarte smiled underneath the mask. This was going to be fun.

To summarise, the hunt went off without a hitch. Duarte had been annoyed that she had to be bait at first, but it had only taken a moment for her to fully sink into the role. While she came at the half-blood from the front, Natalie snuck up from behind. One hit from the bat and the half-blood was out like a light.

Duarte would eventually look back on this night and want to vomit. But that's neither here nor there.

For a moment the pair of hunters stood in silence, the quiet only interrupted by laboured breathing. Duarte was the first to speak. She grinned.

"Told you that you needed me."

Natalie rolls her eyes. "Don't get cocky." She nods towards the unconscious body. "Now, grab their legs. Let's get 'em to the arena."

And they do. The half-blood is disposed of, the reward is split. This was when Duarte had planned to leave. To go back to ignoring Natalie, to their own self imposed isolation. This was exactly what she needed, the big job. A big enough notch on her belt to give her the notoriety she deserved. She could go back to normal.

But she doesn't. She finds Natalie at that table the next day. And the next. It was a game to Duarte. Life was always a game to her.

"What's the point of this again? I'm pretty sure we could take this bozo on in our sleep."

"Mhm, and I don't want that sleep to last forever. So shut up, I'm tryna read."

Trading snipes and taunts came easy to Duarte, and even easier with Natalie. It was comforting. Exhilarating. But above all it was fascinating to learn more about her hunter. She'd previously seemed so untouchable, so above it all. A personality hidden behind intelligent blue eyes. Slowly that gruffness was stripped away, and Duarte could finally see what was underneath. The sparkle in her eyes when she has an idea. The way her jaw sets when she's frustrated. The way her laugh is like a silver bell.

"Fucking hell- someday I'm not gonna be around to save you, y'know that?."

"Oh, thank the divines, I can die in peace."

It was all a game to Duarte. A wonderful, fascinating game.

The first time she kissed Natalie was a game as well. And it had been fun. She'd thought about it for so long. Looking into her eyes from up close. Losing herself in them. Running her hands through her hair.

A game. Only a game.

It was a cold day in December. The windows were coated with a thin layer of frost, painting the outside world blurry and cold. But it was warm inside, it was safe. Duarte was staying with Natalie, who was renting out a room in town from some kind old lady. The two had just caught wind of a particularly interesting bounty; a hawk half-blood who'd recently escaped the arena. Some idiot had upped it's dose of Malesycthe and it had gotten loose. Right now they were running wild through the swamps, lost, confused, deranged.

Thus the two had gone to work immediately, books and files all spread across their bed with both hunter's perched on either side, looking for an insight. A weakness.

The two had been joking around, shooting the shit as they always did. It was normal. Duarte called Natalie a bookworm, Natalie called her a regular one. They did this everyday.

"oh my god- shit, I could get used to this."

That wasn't. That wasn't normal, that scared Duarte.

Duarte laughed. "The hell do you mean?"

There was a smile on Natalie's lips. "Just... this. You and me."

Duarte knew what came next. Those next three words. She could hear them.

And for some reason it fucking terrified her. The warmth suddenly felt choking, the safety like an iron grip. She couldn't do this. Natalie kept talking, kept smiling. It was beautiful but it was unknown.

"I just... I think this is the best it's ever gonna get for me. I-"

Duarte stood. "I- I've got to go."

Natalie's face fell. Some of that steeliness returned to her eyes, as though to fight off the shock that invaded them. "What? Why, did something-"

Duarte couldn't let her finish the sentence. "No. I mean yes. I can't do this- I have to go."

With that she turned on her heel and ran, sprinted. She didn't look back. She exploded down the stairs, almost tripping over her own feet. Where was she going? She didn't know. Just away.

It just made it all feel so real, so vivid. This was just supposed to be a game, a way to have fun and unwind, to propel her career forwards. It was just a game.

She still has the wanted poster in her hands. She must have grabbed it on her way out. She examines the crude drawing of the half-blood, the feathered skin, the beady eyes. She shrugs. "Might as well."

So she heads out later that night, harpoon in hand. She stalks through the woods, mildly lost, until she hears it. The shriek of a hawk, shrill and grating. It echoes through the night, silencing the chirping crickets and the whispering trees. The noise gets closer and closer, a scream, a war cry.

Duarte is knocked to the ground, talons raking across her skin. Her head hits the ground with a crack, and blood begins to run down her neck. She clambers to her feet, her vision for a moment blurry, gripping the harpoon in her hands.

The figure standing before her is bigger than anything the poster could have depicted. Feathers are draped from its arms, dirt and blood ridden. Talons like knives, gleaming in the moonlight, shimmering in the darkness. Long and slender. Its eyes were wild, bloodshot, its pupils pinpricks.

Staring right at Duarte.

Crap.

For a moment the two circled each other, a stalemate. The half-blood's mouth was foaming, drool hanging from it's jagged teeth. It's fists clench, it shifts onto it's back legs, rearing up to pounce. To lunge. A voice cuts through the tension.

"Oh shit- Duarte, you fucking idiot-"

Natalie. She runs in from the woods, crossbow in hand. With shaking hands she loads a bolt into the bow, movements somehow still precise and sharp. She-

The half-blood turns from Duarte to Natalie and lunges. It throws her to the ground, knocking her crossbow across the grass, out of arms reach. She desperately tries to throw the beast off of her, kicking, slapping, biting, screaming. It's no use. It's frenzied eyes have no mercy in them.

A bloodcurdling scream rings out across the swamps. Blood is splattered across the grass, dying it a deep crimson. Blood flows from the wound in Natalie's throat like water. A choking noise replaces the scream.

All Duarte can do is stand there. Frozen. Watching.

The half-blood looks up from its meal and turns to Duarte for a split second. It's eyes a threat. A promise.

Duarte doesn't know much but she knows she doesn't want to be next. So she runs. She runs and runs until she's back in town and can regret it.

But her mind hides regret and shame with a blanket of embarrassment and fear. A mound of what ifs. Justifications for what happened, for what she did. Her mind was good at that, always doubling down and convincing her she was in the right.

Natalie survives the attack; she managed to grab one of her knives from her boot and force the half-blood off that way. She ran home, hand plastered against her neck, desperately trying to staunch the bleeding. By the time she got back to town, all she could do was collapse onto pavement into a pool of her own blood. Someone was kind enough to help her, and smart enough to know healing magic. So Natalie survived. She couldn't speak for six months, couldn't hunt for eight, but she survived.

Still Duarte never spoke to her again.

Something within her didn't see the point; everything had worked out in the end. Natalie was alive, the half-blood was dead, and Duarte was back to doing what they were good at. Rushing into hunts the moment she could. It was efficiency. She never got a chance to speak to Natalie, and it seemed she didn't want to be spoken to. Every time the pair's eyes met, Natalie looked away, something sad washing through her eyes. Maybe some of the embarrassment Duarte herself held.

Eventually she quit hunting for good and moved away. Duarte never saw her eyes again but dreamt of them constantly, an anchor in the wave of reasoning in her mind. A true north.

But it was just a game to Duarte Cardoza. One she would never change her strategy for.

-----

And that's it! That's why Natalie hates Duarte, and slapped her in the face. Same girl, same.

Here's the letter Duarte sent her, the one that she mentioned in the scenario post.

Dear To Natalie Rollins

I know this letter will probably come as a shock to you, and maybe an annoyance. But I need to talk to you.

I know I don't have the right to ask anything of you after how things ended and how I acted, but could we please talk? I need to know if you could ever forgive me for what I let happen. Please

From, Duarte Cardoza

She rewrote that letter twenty times.

#so uhh yeah Duarte's type is grumpy fuckwads but nobody tell her that you will be mauled #also no this is not a day late whatareyoutalkingabout #bug army #the bug army #gator boys #obsidian lantern #might post another thing later #who knows #i certainly don't

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teamsunfluff · 2 years

Note

(@ask-a-staravia) "Do you have any friends here in Cosmos town?" Mukudori asked the pair of Shaymin. "Or, um, at least Pokemon you know? What are they like?" He added hastily at the end.

"Oh yeah, we know a fair amount of residents due to how involved the whole town is with the refugee program here," Kaji said. He gestured towards the bar across the room, where a Tinkaton was cleaning out some glasses. "We already introduced her, but that's Ilva. She's the owner of this café, The Gigaton Brew. She can come off as a bit brash at first, but she's just very passionate about her job and confident in her craft.

"Then there's Prisca. She's a shiny Mightyena Absol crossbread who is a traveling merchant that comes by Cosmos Town every once in a while with rare materials. She really enjoys spelunking, so she finds all sorts of stuff, ranging from evolution stones to maps for other dungeons, the works. Normally she only stays in Cosmos Town for a week before she heads out again, but due to the recent incident at Sky Peak, she's settled in for a time until the guild can ascertain how safe it is to venture out of the town's radius again.

"Speaking of the guild, the Cosmos Town guild is run by a shiny Rapidash named Hrímfaxi. Guildmaster Hrímfaxi is a pretty stern guy, but I think that comes with the territory of being a seasoned explorer. He's seen some things and doesn't want to see those mistakes or tragedies repeated. He's also in charge of investigating what happened at Sky Peak, which is why we're staying at the guild currently. We're key witnesses," Kaji explained.

"He's tried to be gentle with us though, I can tell," Avin cut in. "The incident was... extremely traumatic, so while he definitely wants information from us, I think he's trying to let us adjust to being here first before he does any sort of interrogations."

Kaji nodded. "Much to the chagrin of his vice guildmaster, Mefitis. The two of them were apparently famous explorers once upon a time as Team Midnight? We'd never heard of them but when the Rapidash Scolipede duo opened up a guild, their reputation was enough that they had people in a line out the door and down the road. Or so Ilva says.

"We've also met a fair few of the guild members. Not all of them, since a lot of the teams operate out of their own bases, but the apprentices and staff all stay on site so when we were first given a tour we got to meet all of them.

"Firstly, there's six main staff members: Circe, Otrera, Cluri, Arnold, Roksana, and Kiko. Otrera is the primary doctor on staff, with Circe being her apprentice. The two of them make for a great healing duo since Otrera has natural healing abilities as an Audino, while Circe can handle some patients that Otrera can't, like ghost-types or ones who can only be reached via flying. They usually stay on site but sometimes are sent out during major disasters, like at Sky Peak," Kaji elaborated.

"Cluri is the main chef for the guild. Supposedly her name is short for something but in all candor, she kinda scares me. I can’t decide if it’s just the creepy vibes she gives off as a Morgrem or if it’s because she seems to intimidate the other recruits too, but, she seems like the type you don’t want to mess with, at least in my opinion.

“Arnold and Roksana are the tag team that handles sentry duty. That Boltund Watchog duo can't be beat! They're also an exploration team that graduated a few winters ago, which probably explains why they have such good synergy. Supposedly they caught a couple outlaws who were trying to mascarade as a guild team last year, all because Arnold recognized their scent!

"Then there's Kiko. She's in charge of changing out the job mission and outlaw boards. Apparently she's got a cousin who changes out those requests at a guild in the west too? She often talks about how cool it is that she can go into the ocean when he can't. I'm not really sure what she means by that, but if it makes her little Wiglett-self happy then so be it!" Kaji said with a laugh.

"Oh and then," Avin interjected, "There's the other apprentices. Besides us, there's eight other apprenticing members at the guild that make up three teams. There's Team ZipZop, which primarily focuses on water rescues and missions. Cosmos Town is really close to the ocean so having a team consisting of largely water-types is handy for that. Being a Dreepy, Lich is really fast so they're able to scout out ahead for any danger or people in need of rescue! Then Dre, Rami, and Ju can come in and perform the rescue itself. Between Dre's flotation devices, Rami's schooling ability, and Ju's swift flying and diving, they're able to pretty quickly get people out of the water and to safety!

"Then there's Team RockyShock. Their leader is Fen, an older apprentice at the guild, who took Deli and Vulcan under his wings to form the team. And I do mean that literally, since Fen is an Oricorio. They're currently operating mostly in the Northern Desert region, since Deli and Vulcan are rock and ground-types respectively and still need to get used to the ins and outs of exploring. It's a bit rough on Fen, but he says they're doing pretty well for being newer apprentices.

"Lastly, there's Donahue, a solo explorer and the only member of Team X-Scissor. You wouldn't think a Ninjask would be able to hold his own, but Donahue's a really skilled fighter and rescuer. He's also the apprentice that's been at the guild the longest, so all the others sorta look up to him. I think he's set to graduate soon too? I'll need to ask him more about it."

Kaji lightly smacked his paws on the table in excitement. "Oh! And of course we can't forget-"

"Adam!" Avin said excitedly. The two Shaymin laughed together before turning to Mukudori. "Adam was one of the first non-guild members we met in Cosmos Town. He actually really wants to be part of the guild, but he's failed the entry exam three times already because he gets too scared and runs away. We were thinking of offering to help him train to see if it would calm his nerves down a bit."

Kaji nodded. "He seems like a really nice guy. You wouldn't think a Garchomp would be so easily intimidated by the entry exam, but given we didn't technically take it ourselves... well... we don't actually know what it entails, so best we can do is help him train and hope it works, right?"

"Sorry, I know that was probably more than you were expecting," Avin said with a chuckle, "Did you want to ask about any particular details?"

Ask Hints have been Updated!

#shaymin #teamsunfluff #ask a staravia #pokemon mystery dungeon #written ask blog #pokemon ask blog #avinshaymin #kajishaymin #chrono #thanks for the ask!

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stringeralong · 1 year

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Netherlands Tues 27th June - Wed 28th June

Long story short, Spiritbox were on tour and I was working away during the London and nearby UK dates. So I thought it make a little trip out of seeing them.

Day 1

My day started at 3.30 in the morning, violently awoken by my alarm. I had managed to get a few hours in before I had to be up at the literal crack of dawn. I was cursed with a (self-described) nosey Uber driver for the 30min drive, in which he asked if I was ‘old enough to work’, and jokingly offered to drive me all the way to Rotterdam.

I shuffled around security, was rudely ignored and told to keep moving when I tried to ask staff a supposedly inoffensive question (I just wanted to know if I needed to take my toiletries bag out). I breezed through passport control, flashing my Irish passport like it’s an AAA pass. Then I headed straight for coffee.

Iced oat vanilla latte and mozzarella + tomato panini £9 | Station Pantry

Obviously, I was desperately early for my 6.16 train, as I was done eating about 5.20. I sat around for a bit, until they opened the gates and let us board.

Unfortunately I was sat in a four, with three others. I tried to get a nap in, but my opposite neighbour didn’t understand personal space and kept knocking my feet. Mind you, I was very much in my own space, didn’t even dare to cross the invisible line under the table. After enduring about 2 hours of the most aggressive footsie, with several glares but not a SINGLE apology, I managed to move to a duo seat once we had departed Brussels Nord.

At 10.34 local time, so 09.34 GMT, we pulled into Rotterdam Centraal. Now, unlike my usual self, I hadn’t actually planned anything to do before I moved on to Eindhoven. I suppose I could have gone straight there, but I thought I’d give TripAdvisor a chance to prove to me that Rotterdam was worth a quick looksie.

Number 2 on the TEN BEST THINGS TO DO IN ROTTERDAM list? The Zoo. How could I resist? And once I realised they had an Aquarium, I beelined (shark-lined..?) for it right on the opposite side. It was glorious, and honestly I would have been more than happy to pay the entrance fee for the aquarium alone. I spent about 20 mins sat in the water tunnel watching the sharks, fish, and turtles swim around, probably grinning like a giddy child. I have no idea why I adore sharks, I’ve certainly been questioned on it many times, I just do. *shrug*

27.00/ £23.21 | Blijdorp, Rotterdam Zoo

When I decided the sharks were probably sick of seeing my face, I reluctantly moved on. I had a semi leisurely stroll back to the entrance, spending a few moments with some of the animals, such as a very sad looking polar bear amongst the grass, some elephants, rhinos, and of course I tried to communicate with the local magpies. They must only speak Dutch.

I could have easily spent all day there, as many of the reviews suggest you do, but it was passed 12.30 (locally) and my stomach was rumbling. I had already set my heart on some very specific pancakes in Eindhoven, so I sauntered back to Rotterdam central and bought a ticket.

An hour(ish) later, I had arrived, and went straight for Coffee Lab. I had definitely made the right decision as I munched away, watching people run for their trains.

Bacon, cheese + maple syrup pancakes and homemade iced tea €15.30/£13.15 | Coffee Lab

Once I was full, it was just about that time to check in. So, apple maps chatting away in my headphones, I headed to my hostel. I always use my headphones to appear inconspicuous about having to use maps to get around. Most people will look at me and assume I’m listening to music, it helps you blend in and you don’t have to have your phone out to be easily snatched. I don’t expect to become a local, but I don’t want my vibe to be screaming ‘I’m a tourist’. Unfortunately, one downside to this is that people ask me directions because I just look like I know where I’m going. I should really get a badge that says ‘Sorry, I’m English’. Or maybe a hat....

After a roughly 20 min stroll from the station through a shopping area followed by several bars and restaurants, I arrived at Backpackers Bed and Breakfast.

The person at the desk was super nice and informative. They gave me a little map of the building and was even nice enough to waive the towel rental fee which saved me a sweet €4.

I got given a bed in a women’s room of 4. When I got in, the bottom two bunks were taken so I reluctantly took a top. I had to make my own bed, which would have been fine if I hadn’t done it home the day before.

I had a quick shower in the bathrooms, which were all downstairs. After I got ready, I sat in the main area charging my phone for a bit, with a €2.50 beer!

First port of call once my phone was juiced up? Dinner. I wandered back towards the centre and up to De Effenaar, the venue, just so I knew where it was. Then I headed back to a restaurant I had passed for some katsu.

€19.80/£17.02 Chicken Kara Age Katsu with Miso Soup and Seaweed Salad + Bottled water | Takumi Ramen

After I was very very fully, I sauntered back to the venue for about 18.15, with doors being at 19.00, expecting quite a crowd. However there only seemed to be about 20ish people waiting in a line. So, without much else to do, I joined in.

This meant, that when the doors did open and the fans flooded in, I got right up to the barrier.

I made a barrier buddy, who was unfortunately named Isis (her words not mine). The first opening act weren’t quite heavy enough for the vibe and the second opening act were too heavy. But Spiritbox, Spiritbox was perfect.

I walked back to my hostel, a little giddy and snuck into my room to grab my stuff. I had a quick shower because I was ridiculously sweaty. It didn’t take too long for me to fall asleep after that.

Day 2

9 am alarm. I spent a little while shoving everything back into my bag as I had decided that taking it all out was a good idea. I was rushing myself as I was very hungry and I wanted breakfast. I checked out, and returned to CoffeeLab.

Avocado Toast with Bacon + Iced Coffee €16.00/£13.79 | CoffeeLab

Then, I hopped on a bus and headed to Nunen, known as the Van Gogh village.

Return ticket Eindhoven to Nuenen €7.55/£6.50

After a short walk from the bus stop, I arrived at the Van Gogh Village Museum. I can’t seem to find a receipt for how much I paid (there’s no price on my ticket), but in my bank statement I found an £11.75 charge for Cm Global Ticket followed by a 35p Non-Stirling transaction fee. I must have used my main card rather than my Monzo. However the website says tickets are €6.50. I’m guessing I might have paid for two which would be €13.00 and could possible be exchanged by my bank at £11.75…. Whoops.

The museum was great! Fairly small, with not too many actual works (most of the key pieces being in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam), but they have some really creative displays and interactive sections. The audio guides were free, and super informative. The main focus of information was talking about Van Gogh's time in Nunen, where he famously studied 'peasants'.

There was a dark room which taught you about colours and let you play with light which from a technical point of view was very interesting but not necessarily Van Gogh specific.

After, I decided to wander around the village to try and spot some memorable sites. I struggled a little to find a map that highlighted these, or even a list that would help me out. Eventually I found an app called GPSmyCITY which had a map with some points of interest. The app markets itself as a place to find and download walking tours of various cities.

I used it to help me navigate, and eventually I stumbled upon some information points. Some of them played audio, some didn't work.

It seems like I could have followed them in order to create a special route, but I couldn't figure out where to go to get to the next one.

Spotted some familiar looking statues, then caught the bus back to Eindhoven.

Once there, it was time for a spot of lunch.

Ham + cheese toastie and a cola €11.30/£9.74 | Lucifer Coffee Roaster

As I was snacking away, deciding what to do next, I spotted the Phillips Museum on the map. When I’m not exploring the world, I’m a full time lighting technician so I did legally have to go look at light bulbs (we call them lamps….)

€11.00/£9.48 | Phillips Museum

It was quite an interesting museum, it had old advertisement posters, various info about various factories across the world and many old products. Not as many lamps as I hoped for, but still worth a visit. They also had an interactive section (thank you xbox Kinect)

After that, I still had a bit of time to kill so I stopped off for some bubble tea and cake.

Choc Milk Tea + Red Velvet cake €11.00/£9.48 | Moge Tea

Then I got the train back to Rotterdam, hung around a little for Eurostar security to open for my train, hopped on the train and headed home.

Total Cost: £347.40 (approx with some leeway due to exchange rates)

Transport: £168.75

Eurostar London to Rotterdam return rickets: £93.00. I used Pay Pal pay in 3 for this

- Pre-booked Uber to St Pancreas: £41.56

- Rotterdam to Eindhoven train: €22.10/£19

- Bus journeys: €7.55/£6.50

- Eindhoven to Rotterdam Train: €10.09/£8.69

Hostel: €43.50 cash on arrival (approx £37.38)

Concert ticket: €27/£23.20

Activities: €51/£43.81

Food + Drink total: €86.39/£74.24

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wild-aloof-rebel · 5 years

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Hey, I often read that the timeline doesn't always makes sense in sc and now I'm curious! Do you have some examples??

oh absolutely. i’ve discussed it with various others in various posts across my blog, but let’s see if i can get most of the highlights in one post.

most of the confusion centers around the timeline of s4, including david’s birthday (and thus the start of his relationship with patrick), a couple throwaway comments about summer, and jocelyn’s pregnancy, so let’s start with that.

this discussion nearly always starts with david’s pin in “moira’s nudes” because he indicates that he uses his birthday as his pin. what he types into the atm is 1282, which would make his birthday either jan 2 1982 or feb 1 1982 depending on whether that’s month-day-year like in the u.s. or day-month-year like most of the rest of the world. HOWEVER, what he tells the teller is 7283, which would make his birthday either jul 2 1983 or feb 7 1983. she does tell him before that that he needs to pick a new pin, so you could assume that 7283 is the new pin and not his birthday, but after he says it out loud, johnny says “what about my birthday?” which implies that what david just said is indeed his own birthday. (plus, i trust a number written into the actual dialogue—and therefore officially part of the script—to be more accurate than whatever dan happened to punch into the machine while filming.) anyway, the point is that we’re already starting from a place of confusion, where we have four potential options for david’s birthdate. so which one is it?

we know from “grad night” that david’s birthday is on the same day as alexis’s high school graduation. in canada, the school year ends in late june, so it would then make sense for “grad night” to take place in late june/very early july. three of the options for david’s birthday are in january and february, which leaves us with july 2 as the only birthday option that makes sense to be on the same night as alexis’s graduation. okay, cool. that means david’s birthday–and thus david and patrick’s first date–is on july 2. we’re getting somewhere.

in “pregnancy test” jocelyn finds out she’s pregnant. it’s clearly been long enough for her to have noticed and thought she was maybe going through menopause instead. david and patrick have presumably been dating for at least a week or two at this point, though possibly a bit longer. either way, this is most likely still in july (or possibly very early august), and jocelyn is likely about 2 months pregnant at this point.

in “asbestos fest” alexis says “is this the number? it’s the middle of summer.” middle might be a stretch, but feasibly yes, this can certainly still be summer.

in “open mic” jocelyn and roland find out the sex of the baby, which typically happens around 4 to 5 months. that puts us about 2 to 3 months after “pregnancy test” which would mean that the open mic night is taking place in probably late september or into october. so far so good.

“the barbecue” rolls around, and it’s david and patrick’s four month anniversary. that makes it november. weird time of year for a barbecue, and they’re clearly having unseasonably warm weather, but alright, climate change etc etc. we can make this work at a very long stretch.

stevie says david waited “a full week to forgive [patrick]” which means “the olive branch” is a week after rachel shows up. however, stevie also says “you’re wearing a leather sweater in the dead of summer,” which… what?? that can’t be anywhere close to true.

after that is jocelyn’s baby shower, which is typically around the 6 to 8 month mark of a pregnancy. if she was 4 to 5 months in open mic, that puts us somewhere between november and january for the shower.

“singles week” rolls around and jocelyn goes into labor “a few days early” according to johnny. therefore it’s been pretty much a full nine months now. if “pregnancy test” was in july, that puts jocelyn giving birth in about february. which would be fine except…

roland jr. is clearly no more than a few months old in “merry christmas johnny rose.” this definitely can’t be the following christmas or he’d be closer to 10 months old (there’s no way the baby in the carrier is that old). but it also can’t be the preceding christmas because there’s no way he was born then.

since that doesn’t work, let’s say we shift everything back to david having a january birthday instead, which pushes everything up by six months. that means roland jr. is born in august, which makes the christmas stuff work out a bit better. it also makes stevie’s comment about the leather sweater in the dead of summer better because now it would be taking place in may, when it could theoretically be hot enough out to be considered summer. but then you’ve got the issue of alexis somehow graduating in january, which doesn’t work at all, and you’ve got asbestos fest taking place in february or so, which is by no means “the middle of summer” as alexis says.

the only way that both asbestos fest and david’s olive branch can both take place in summer is if one is at the start of the summer and the other is at the end. if we say then that “the olive branch” takes place in august, that puts david’s birthday and his first date with patrick in april. that gives us roland jr being born around november, which works with the christmas special sort of okay. this is probably the timeline that works best, but it only works if you completely ignore the whole pin situation because NONE of those indicate that david’s birthday could be in april.

everything about the timeline works like this. you have to pick and choose what aspects of it to ignore to make the rest work. david can be born in july if you ignore stevie’s comment about summer in “the olive branch” and roland jr. somehow being born before christmas. david can be be born in january if you ignore asbestos fest taking place in summer and the timing of alexis’s graduation. david can be born in april if you ignore alexis’s graduation and “moira’s nudes” which means ofc assuming that he doesn’t know his own damn birthdate.

i think we’ve collectively mostly decided from that to stick with july 2 even though it causes issues (as all options do) because a) it’s the pin that david actually says aloud, b) it really is the only one that works with “grad night," and c) since it’s the one he actually says aloud, that means it’s [presumably] what was written into the script

that same principle applies elsewhere too. like moira’s career.

she says in “ronnie’s party” that she had a 6 ½ season television career.

in “wine and roses” johnny mentions her being on seasons 3, 4, and 5. that puts her on the show somewhere between seasons 1 and 9. if she started in s1, she was on it through part of s7; if she started in s3, she was on it through part of s9. (all of that is presuming that her seasons were consecutive, of course.)

in “rock on!” we see a training video that was clearly made in the 80s where moira is looking for a tape from s21 of sunrise bay. if we say the training video was made in ‘89 at the latest with s21 having aired that same year, that puts s1 as taking place in 1968 and thus moira having acted on the show somewhere between 1968 and 1977.

in “a whisper of desire” moira says she was cast in cabaret in 1979 at the age of 17 (david says she was not actually 17, and therefore she was probably at least a few years older). either way, this seems to be her first acting job (or at least before she hits it big in any way) as she says she was working at a gas station at the time. but if her big break came in 1979, she definitely couldn’t have been on sunrise bay prior to that. to compound on that, even if she was a few years older than 17 at that point, that would still make her a teenager during at least part of 1968 - 1977 and from what she’s said about the plots on sunrise bay, it seems unlikely that she was a teenager when she was filming it (she played her own father, for instance). that means she must have been on sunrise bay sometime after 1979, but then there’s no way that s21 would have happened sometime in 1989 or earlier OR moira was not on s3, s4, and s5.

just to throw an extra wrench into all of it, in “rip moira rose” they also indicate that she was projected to be nominated for 12 daytime emmys, which doesn’t really work with only having been on the show for 6 ½ seasons. (some of those could be for guest star work on other shows perhaps, but that’s a whole lot of guest roles to be nominated for, especially since nothing else she’s ever said about her career indicates that she did that at all)

just like with all the stuff with david’s birthday and roland jr., you can make some of that work together, but you’re gonna have to pick and choose what to ignore in order to get there. that’s the kind of stuff we mean when we say the timeline is a mess. in the broadest of strokes, if you squint, it all kinda comes together. but when you start looking at the details of it, you can’t get all of it to fit neatly into place

#anon #replies #timeline #every show has timeline problems to some degree #because it's not real life #and even if it were people's memories are fuzzy and they say things that aren't totally true #but this show just has a lot of those details that don't work #and it makes it hard to put together any kind of logical timeline #and i didn't even touch the open mic posters in this one #which i know really bug some people #i'm sure i'm also missing things for both of the discussions i did highlight here #i want to see this board where they supposedly have it all mapped out #show me the timeline daniel #sunrise bay

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thelovelylolly · 3 years

Text

Spy on the inside

Requested by @starseed-elise : The reader is a spy for the resistance and encounters StarKiller base, Kylo being the first she meets after stepping on board as part of her mission to spy. She’s able to fool him by convincing him to let her join his side and when he does, they both gain a little bit of feelings for each other. He doesn’t find out that she’s a spy until she makes her escape with the crew Leia sends. Maybe instead of Poe getting shot in the arm, it’s the reader’s arm that gets shot during her escape. Kylo ends up reaching to her before she can make the full escape and helps take care of her wounded arm?

Warnings : Mentions of violence, fem reader (she/her)

Notes : Is the title a hamilton reference? Perhaps (also thank you for your requests love! i really loved this one and i got into it while writing lol)

You were one of, if not the, best spy in the resistance's ranks. General Leia trusted you to go in, get the job done, and get out. You got your job done with efficiency and no one could or would see you coming. No one could tell you were a spy until you were done with your work but even then, they couldn't do anything about it.

So that's why General Leia sent you into the First Order to get information about a new rumored base. The base was supposedly a similar design to the Death Star, but bigger and more powerful. Leia knew sending in a whole squad to get information would be too risky, too noticeable. The general decided that you would be the resistance's best bet to get information.

You were dropped off on a First Order star destroyer. Poe helped you sneak in with his ship in stealth mode before flying away safely. You quickly navigated the hangar and found a small closet. You locked yourself inside before quickly changing into a First Order uniform you had packed. Once changed and making sure the coast was clear, you quickly made you way through the halls of the star destroyer.

The halls were shiny and all black, but you didn't get confused. You had seen schematics of the ship before going on your mission, you knew where you were going.

The bridge would pretty empty at that time, it would be easy for you to go in and get the information you needed. You would hide in plain sight and get your mission done.

Until you turned the corner and ran into Commander Kylo Ren.

You quickly backed away and ducked your head down, muttering a quick apology. Kylo Ren tilted his head to the side, almost studying you.

"I haven't seen you around the ship before. You're in a ranking officer's uniform so I should have-"

"General Hux has been keeping me busy," you quickly cut him off. "I've been meaning to speak with you, if you don't mind, Commander."

You found a new objective : get close to Kylo Ren and get even more information about the First Order.

"Speak," Kylo commanded.

"Stop me if I step out of boundaries, but I believe that my skills could be put to better use."

"How?"

"By being your spy for the resistance," you whispered. Kylo looked at you, his mask's visor staring down at you. "I no longer believe in what the Resistance is meant to be but I have plenty of information and experience that I believe I could prove useful to you."

With all your years of spying, you had lying down to an art. You could lie about the smallest or largest things and people would believe you either way. The only thing that worried you was if Kylo Ren could read through you with the force.

"Hm, you do intrigue me. What information do you have that would be useful?"

"Maps, locations, battle plans, supply counts and chains, anything you'd want."

Kylo thought for a moment, before asking for your name. You gave it to him, then he started to walk past you, motioning you to follow him. Once his back was turned to you, you smirked and quickly kept up with him. You had the commander wrapped around your finger and he didn't even know it.

----

A usual mission last you a couple of weeks at most, but it’s been two or three months since you’ve arrived on Kylo’s ship. You gave the resistance updates frequently at the start of the mission, but soon they became every other day. Then twice a week, then once, and now you gave them updates irregularly and not frequently either.

The reason? You were crushing over Kylo Ren.

It seemed silly at first. You? Falling in love with someone who is suppose to be your enemy? All while on one of your biggest missions of your career? That just sounded like a bad rumor made up by Poe as a joke. But it was true, and you couldn’t believe it yourself.

After a while of feeding him fake information about the resistance, the two of you started to warm up to each other. He promoted you (in a way) to be his personal assistant. You were by his side almost the entire time either of you were awake.

It took him a while to get comfortable enough to take his helmet off in front of you, but eventually he started taking his helmet off more and more. When you first saw his face, you adored him. He was handsome to say the least. His dark hair and equally dark eyes. His pale skin was freckled with marks here and there. It also didn’t help that when he got comfortable enough, he was actually a sweetheart. He treated you with respect and, surprisingly, kindness.

How couldn’t you develop feelings for him?

Lucky for you, or unlucky since he wouldn’t tell you, Kylo had feelings for you, too. At first, he just saw you as another person in his grand plan of taking down the resistance. But he stopped asking for information and started just talking to you about anything. He was curious about you, intrigued by you.

Which is why he ordered the ship to go to Starkiller base. He wanted to show you this massive project, he trusted you enough to show you the base. But as the ship reached the planet-destroying base, your heart started to break. You knew it was your mission to get information on the base, but now it would hurt Kylo.

The ship was still outside of the planet’s atmosphere, preparing to land soon. You were at your desk, completing some simple forms, when Kylo quickly walked over to you. “Do you mind if I pull you away from your work for a moment? There’s something I want to show you,” Kylo asked.

“I don’t mind at all, work is getting too repetitive,” you answered with a smile. Kylo took your hand in his and led you out of your office, down the many halls of the ship. Eventually, he stopped in front of a large window in a empty hallway. You looked out the window and there it was.

Starkiller Base.

You gasped, genuinely surprised. All the schematics, all the plans, all the conversations you’ve seen while working on the ship have been downplaying the massive base. The weapon was implanted in the actual planet, and much, much larger than the death stars.

“I know, it’s very impressive,” Kylo replied to your gasp. The two of you stood next to each other, but Kylo didn’t let your hand go. You didn’t pull it away either.

“I never....this is...” You were so taken back that you couldn’t even form a sentence. You wanted to know how it worked. You wanted to know where the core was. You wanted to know so many things, but you couldn’t ask Kylo for it. You didn’t want to ask Kylo.

Kylo Ren was distracting you from your mission, but you didn’t mind at all.

After a few minutes of silence, Kylo looked over at you, still wide eyed at the base. He laughed quietly and stepped closer, wrapping his arm around your waist. “I know you’ve seen the maps a hundred times now, but would you like a tour when we get down there?”

“Yes,” you answered quickly, not even thinking. Kylo smiled and cupped your cheek, making you look at him. The two of you studied each other, silence taking over for a few more moments.

“I don’t understand it but, you intrigue me, dear,” Kylo started. “Anytime I try to pull away from you, I get pulled back in. It’s like I cannot separate myself from you.”

“Then don’t. I can’t pull away either, Kylo,” you replied quietly as you leaned up and tilted your head to the side. He leaned down and pressed his lips to yours.

The kiss was sweet, full of love that had been building up for a while. But it was cut short by someone clearing their throat at the end of the throat. You pulled away and took a step back, shyly tucking some hair behind your ear. Kylo quickly turned around to see General Hux waiting for him at the end of the hall.

“Commander Ren, if you’re done here, we need you on the bridge,” Hux said, his arms behind his back.

“I’ll be there in a moment,” Kylo replied. He turned back to you with an annoyed sigh. You shared a look with him, both annoyed that Hux interrupted your kiss. Kylo pressed a kiss to your cheek before leaving with Hux.

You stood there in front of the window, watching the planet below and touching the spot on your cheek where Kylo had kissed you moments ago.

----

As promised, Kylo gave you a tour of Starkiller base. Obviously not every single nook and cranny of the place, but the important areas. Including the central control room.

Lights out on base was the perfect time to gather the information you needed. You snuck out of your quarters, which were right next to Kylo’s, and snuck down the halls. You only memorized the way to get from your room to the central control room. Plus, you knew that even when it’s lights out, the night shift in the control room would still be working.

So, when you reached the central control room, you walked in like everything was normal. Like you weren’t about to steal as much information as you could and pass it off to the resistance.

You found a pretty empty corner with a console and made a beeline to it. You quickly accessed the console and stuck in a data stick, all before uploading all the information and files you could. But as you watched the little upload line slowly make it’s way across the screen, your mind went to Kylo.

He was asleep in his quarters, blissfully unaware that you were going behind his back, betraying his trust and love. It hurt you, but this was your mission. You were just distracted for a while and now you were back on track.

But his lips on yours and your cheek. His hand holding yours. His arm around your waist. Him. You were completely smitten with Kylo Ren.

Your mind had wandered for a while so when you finally focused back in on the console, a little complete symbol was displayed on the screen. You quickly pulled out the data stick and exhaled before leaving the control room.

You quarters on the base were pretty basic, all black and gray to match the First Order color scheme. You kicked off your boots and fell back onto your back. Your mind wandered again. You had to complete your mission, the resistance and systems across the galaxy were counting on it. But you couldn’t just betray Kylo like that, you cared and loved him too much.

Just the thought hurt your heart.

Finally, you made up your mind. You grabbed your hidden communicator and activated it for the first time in at least two weeks. “Come in, this is agent Y/N reporting,” you said quietly.

The communicator’s signal was hidden from the First Order’s since it was masked to looked like one of their’s. A few moments of static later, a voice came in. “Good to hear from you again. What updates do you have?” Poe’s voice came in through the communicator.

“I’m on Starkiller base and I have all the information we needed and more.”

“So, do you need a pick up?”

“Yes I do.”

“I’m sending a squad right now, I’ll make sure to alert General Leia as well. See you soon.”

“See you soon, Poe,” you replied, turning off the communicator. You laid, spread out on your bed and closed your eyes, trying to get some rest before everything hit the fan.

----

Alarms blared and woke Kylo up. He got out of bed and pulled on his helmet, securing his lightsaber on his belt. He left his quarters and went to your quarters but when he knocked, he didn’t get a response. He knocked again and once more but when he didn’t get any reply, he used the force to open the blast door open.

Kylo was met with an empty room.

Panic ran through him. He didn’t know where you were and someone could’ve gotten to you, could’ve hurt you. Kylo turned and raced down the halls, trying to find you. General Hux found him though, but Kylo couldn’t care less. He just barked out orders to Hux all while trying to find you.

Poe met up with you, leading you back to the hangar where his ship was. Leia ended up only sending him and not a squadron. You weren’t surprised, Leia wasn’t one to risk an entire squad on a pick up operation.

You and Poe rounded the corner and was met with a group of stormtroopers. The two of you started shooting but were very out numbered. One of the troopers somehow had a decent shot and hit you in the arm. You and Poe hid behind a wall, taking shots at the troopers. “We’re out numbered, Poe. We have to split up,” you said.

“Alright, I’ll meet you at the hangar,” Poe replied. You two nodded at each other before running in separate directions.

After you separated from Poe, you felt the pain from the blaster shot. You gripped your arm as you groaned, leaning against the wall. You took a few moments to catch your breath before continuing to run towards the hangar.

With one last turn, you had a straight path to the hangar and you could see Poe’s x-wing. You were almost there, almost out. Your mission was almost complete.

Then Kylo Ren stepped out.

You stopped where you were, your heart sinking. “Kylo...”

“So you lied to me?” He asked. “I should’ve known, but I wanted you more than I wanted to get the upper hand on the resistance.”

“Please Kylo, if I really didn’t care about you I would’ve been gone a long time ago but I’ve been here for months because I love you.”

“Then why did you lie to me?”

You didn’t have an answer. Kylo’s hands reached up to his helmet and took it off, dropping it on the ground with a thud that echoed through the halls. There were tears in his eyes. “Answer me, darling.”

“I don’t know why, Kylo,” you answered.

The alarms continued to blare and Poe’s voice came in through your communicator, telling you to hurry up. But you and Kylo ignored all the noise.

His gaze dipped down to your wounded arm, which you were still gripping tightly. He quickly made his was over to you and gently took your wounded arm into his hands. His large hand covered the wound and you felt the energy transfer from him to you. A force ability no doubt.

When he pulled his hands away, you saw your skin was back to normal and there was no more wound. You looked up at him, tears in your eyes. You kissed his cheek as a thank you.

“Go,” he said quietly so he wouldn’t cry,

“What?” You asked, matching his quietness.

“Go,” he repeated, this time louder. “Before I change my mind.”

You wanted to kiss him and tell him you’d come back someday, but you knew that you couldn’t promise that. Not with the two of you on opposite sides of this war. So you simply ran towards the hangar, leaving Kylo Ren standing in the empty hallway with his helmet on the ground and tears slipping down his cheeks.

#kylo ren x reader #kylo ren x you #star wars x reader #star wars x you #ben solo x reader #x reader #ben solo x you

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hopeymchope · 3 years

Text

Initial “Danganronpa S” Thoughts

I got the game on Saturday night (12/4/21), so I’ve only played it for about six or seven hours so far. And I already have a lot of thoughts.

Intro Stuff

- When you first boot it up, you have to go through a number of scenes that set up the story of what our crew of students are doing and why, etc. So don’t expect to just jump right into the gameplay like in Ultimate Talent Development Plan. You won’t actually see the title screen for like 15 minutes, and after that you still have some additional exposition/tutorials before you can get into the actual gameplay

- If you’ve never played a Danganronpa game before this or skipped any of the other games before this point, 1) How did you even find this post? 2) You really shouldn’t play Danganronpa S until you’ve played through 1, 2, and V3. I know that’s probably fairly obvious, but on the off-chance that the “Decadence” pack is your introduction to the series, I just wanted to make it clear. Allusions to canon events abound in DRS. Hell, the entire game map is rife with DR2 spoilers.

- Since we’re in a Despair-free reality (...so far?), we’re told that Komaru met all of the Ultra Despair Girls characters while on a field trip to Towa City. If you’re wondering why Togami and Toko and Hiro’s mom were there at the same time, you should either A) keep wondering or B) write your own justification, because I don’t expect any reasons to be provided in their routes through the board. But at this point, I might still be proven wrong. I've only played as Komaru out of the various UDF characters.

The Main Game Board

- It appears that a significant number of the Friend Event/pop-up event cut scenes focus on pairing characters who never spoke to one another before now. So if you’re a fan of a ship where the characters haven’t really interacted in the canon or in UTDP, like Kirizono for example? I’ve got good news for you. In fact, Kirigiri and Maizono share multiple scenes in this. And they get along pretty well!

- I’m not seeing a lot of shared plot threads between characters yet. Makoto and Kyoko shared one subplot, at least (although I haven’t yet seen a resolution to that dangling thread). But there’s definitely no underlying network of connections to a new Despair plot just waited to be discovered ala UTDP. In fact, if you play as Junko, you may be surprised to learn that her storyline actually has her attempting to give up Despair for a while because it’s grown too boring and predictable for her.

- Each character gets a Hope Fragment upon playing through the board once. Since the goal of the whole thing is set up as being “collect all the Hope fragments” and “defeat all of Monokuma’s boss monsters with the grimoires,” I’m assuming that some kind of Ending Scene awaits if I can do one or both of these things. So for now, I have like five fragments. Out of... um, a lot. Supposedly, every 10 fragments unlocks a new “episode” of the storyline. Yeah, this may take a a while.

Despair Tower

- The “Despair Tower” has no map to walk around; it’s just waves of battles per floor. I miss the actual layouts of the Despair Dungeon that you walked through. :( But at least this way, I won’t be suddenly jerked into “random battles.” I always know that battles are coming as soon as I start a floor.

- Even with my current party of four fully developed U-ranked characters, I’m still encountering challenges/goals I can’t seem to complete in the lowest tier of the Despair Tower. That’s... that’s just embarrassing. But I guess I’ll probably do better once I get the bonus multipliers that come with every 10 Hope fragments.

- You get three silver monocoins every time you complete all three challenges/goals for a given floor in the Lowest Tower, and once you get them, you can’t earn them again. Ergo, there seems to be a set number of monocoins available outside of random drops on certain floors. And the odds are always against those drops.

Microtransactions

- You might be wondering if I splurged on the microtransactions. And, well... LOOK, getting any three characters I want in their U-ranked versions for just 99 cents was too good to pass up. It’s also only available once. After you do it once, the only options remaining are a leap in price that I don’t see myself going for if I can help it. But I did give them one (1) dollar to have Naegi and Kirigiri unlocked at their highest tier ASAP. I then used the third credit on a U-tier Komaru.

- I’m still pretty early into this - I’ve only played as five characters so far on six playthroughs. But at this point, does it seem like the game designed to encourage microtransactions? Honestly, I think YES. There doesn’t appear to be nearly enough silver or gold monocoins available via quest goals, and random drops are precisely that - random, and the drop rates can get pretty low. It sure seems like they’re trying to funnel people into buying at least some of the characters. :( As I keep bouncing back and forth between the Despair Tower and the Board Game, I’ll get a better sense of how necessary additional cash really is. But it’s not looking very good.

#danganronpa s #danganronpa s: ultimate summer camp #dr1 spoilers #danganronpa

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damn-stark · 4 years

Text

Telepathy and Telekinesis

Diego Hargreeves x Fem!Reader

Requested by @rachelcarrol1819 “Hi can you do a imagine where the reader is number 8 and has the power over telpathy and telenkies and ends up in a relationship with Diego please and thank you”

Warning-violence, swearing, sort of long.

Episode- 2x10

————

“No, Diego’s mind is like,” you pause and pretend to be in deep thought, tapping your chin with your finger before extending your hand out and leaving your palm open as you used your power to snatch the bag of chips from Klaus’s hand and welcome it to your hand with a smile that slowly turned into a grin as you continued teasing Diego. “It’s like those big boards the police use to map out their evidence and information.”

‘Evidence board’ Diego corrected you inside his head.

“Exactly.” You blurt out, “an evidence board!”

Diego’s head snapped your direction to shoot you a burning glare. “Hey! I said out of my head!”

You shrug, “sorry.”

Klaus snickered and a confident smile grew on his lips, “you could never get into my mind—”

You snort, “actually yeah I can, you know that already, yours is the easiest one. Your thoughts are loud and all over the place.” Klaus lets out a small huff before he snatches his chips back from your hand; “The only person's mind I can’t read anymore is five’s.” You lean forward and rest your arms on the back of his seat while your chin rests on your hands. “Indulge us for a moment, no?”

At your suggestion the rest of your siblings inside the car turn their attention to Five and you, watching curiously and with an amused look decorated on their features.

Five on the other hand just looks forward and doesn’t bother to look back to answer bluntly, “no.”

You smirk and lift your head from its resting position so you could move one of your hands towards his head to make it easier that way, but he catches on to what you were trying to do without a single look and swats your hand away. “I’ve spent years building my own immunity to keep you away,” he pauses for a couple seconds and you could practically hear his smirk, “you could never get into my head.”

‘Maybe not when he’s sober.’ Diego thought, this time in a loud manner where he knew you had caught his secret comment. Even though it contradicted his previous complaint—he only hated it when you got into his mind without him knowing or at all actually. It wasn’t like before when he used to stutter where he would prefer using your telepathy to talk; he would let you read his thoughts and would let you share your own in his mind.

Now it was rare the time where he would let you know what he was thinking, and usually when he did it was to share small comments like those. It made you happy when he did because it gave you assurance that he and you still shared that same bond that you didn’t have with the others

You smirk and lean back in your seat, suppressing a laugh before sharing your thought response to Diego, ‘exactly. How much do you think it would take to get him drunk?’

‘Have you seen his little body? Not a lot.’

This time you’re more unsuccessful at keeping your laugh a secret and let it slip, receiving odd looks from the siblings around you, something you now knew how to ignore, just like the very general thoughts that came with a look as quizcall as the one they shot you now. Just like how you knew how to block out everyone’s thoughts, it had taken years, but it was something very appreciated since there weren't constant loud thoughts swirling around you anymore. It was irritating to say the least.

Now using your telepathy was a choice. Not like riding in this car with all seven of the other Hargreeves. They all may get annoying at times, but sticking by their side when one of them needed it was never choice. Especially not when it came to Diego.

“Is it just me or did it just get cold all of a sudden.” Klaus complained.

You shrug and are about to turn down his comment, but the sudden cold wave then hits you too, causing chills to crawl up your spine—“no not just you.” You shiver and see the puff of air come out of your mouth as you talk.

“Is that,” Vanya speaks up, leaning in her seat to get a better view out the windshield, “a snowstorm?” She pressed on the gas pedal further down to speed up the car, turning into a driveway of a farmhouse where the big grey cloud storm was raging over.

Vanya stopped the car and everybody began to get out, the attention all on the snow falling and the cloud above, causing Diego to to question it first before anyone else could. “You think whatever’s going on inside is causing the cold front?”

You shut the door behind you and narrow your gaze on the lightning storming from the same cloud, “well the correlation is high.”

Shortly after the door sounds from the barn and a blond woman walks out making Vanya slam her car door and rush to her as she shouted her name? “Sissy! Sissy!”

The woman’s energy however doesn’t match Vanyas as...Sissy pulls out a shotgun and points it at all of you. “Get back! All of you, just get the hall back!”

“Sissy!”

You freeze in your spot next to Diego and shoot Sissy and her shotgun a pointed gaze. So much for coming to help her out.

Vanya ran up in front of you all of you and began to try and reassure the women, throwing her hand out to stop her. “Hey! Hey! What’s wrong?”

“Carl.” She deadpans, her eyes bouncing from you and the rest of your group.

You sigh and cross your arms over your chest, sharing your thoughts to Diego’s mind, ‘we don’t have time for this, we need to stop what the kid is causing before it ends badly.’

He doesn’t respond to you but he does step and say your thought out loud, “y/n is right, we don’t have time for this Vanya.”

The woman suddenly points the gun at Diego as he moves, “where do you think you’re going?”

Diego puts his hand out to try and reassure her and stop her from shooting the gun, making your eyes intent on the woman and step up with your hand on the ready. “To help your son.”

Vanya keeps trying to assure Sissy and you feel Luther's hand on your shoulder, knowing your intentions before you could even try them. You meet his gaze over your shoulder and hesitate on listening doing so only as the woman begins to lower her gun.

Sissy questions, “Were you lying to me this whole time?”

Vanya shakes her head and tries to get closer, “Of course not. Look I didn’t know who I was, but I do now. And we are not the monsters they say we are. We didn’t kill the president. We are not terrorists. We’re not here to hurt anyone.”

Sissy pants softly, “then...who are you?”

“The only one who can help Harlan.”

Well that’s putting it short.

Sissy hesitates but ultimately tells all you to follow her inside the Barn with Vanya quick to rush inside and help the family she had supposedly been living with since Five’s failed time travel. Immediately coming to see the cause of the storm. A little boy, with this energy field flying around him that caused a wind storm on the inside. Looking almost as Vanya had when she used her powers to accidentally destroy the world; only the kid didn’t turn white or have control, he floated in the air and his body shook as if he were having a seizure, right away without having to use your powers you knew he was scared out of his mind. Like all of you were when you were his age.

“Harlan, it’s Vanya! Look, Harlan, I know you’re really scared, but I can help you. I need you to listen to me, okay? Can you do that?” Vanya then turned to you, “can you calm him down? Talk to him with your powers?”

Your eyes flicker to the boy and then to Vanya, shooting her an apologetic look, “I can try, but he doesn’t know me, I’ll only scare him more, but you can, I know so.”

Vanya let’s out a shaky exhale and nods, “yeah, okay.” Her eyes then turn white and she takes a step inside the field surrounding the boy, letting the rest of you stand back and watch as she tries to assure the boy, only seconds passing before Klaus begins to call out your attention. “Uh, guys?!”

Your head snaps to Klaus and you like the rest of your siblings join him by the window to see two figures standing very menacingly in the distance. Your gaze narrows and you breath out, “who are they?”

“Ones the handler, the others Diego’s girlfriend.”

Your nose scrunches and you instantly look over your shoulder to Diego, your question coming out unnecessarily sharp “what?”

He meets your gaze and quickly corrects Five, “Lila. That’s my ex-girlfriend.”

“You know what? Doesn’t matter. They both look angry.” Luther points out.

Five agrees, “yeah.”

“Our brother has the effect on people.” Allison remarks.

“I’m gonna go find what they want. You guys stay with Vanya and the kid.”

Diego is quick to interject, “yeah, I’m going too.”

And just like that, Allison, Klaus, Luther and you are left behind. Not really doing as Five suggested, but instead walking out minutes after and stopping not even halfway.

“What do you think they’re talking about?” Allison wondered.

You shrug, “I don’t know.”

“Which one's the girlfriend?” Luther asks, again making your eyebrows furrow and your nose scrunch, an anger beginning to burn inside you at the slightest mention, leaving Luther's question unanswered and glaring at the group in the distance until your jaw dropped as hundreds of other people began to appear from out of nowhere and join the field.

You sigh, “holy shit.” You take one step forward to get ready to fight, but then the lady with the weird big hat pulls out something red you couldn’t quite make out, but you could find meaning from here—shit...without having to look at those beside you, you're quick to warn them. ‘Run!’—not even a second later shouting is heard and shooting is soon to follow. You could try and stop them, give your siblings beside you time to really hide, but there were too many and all too fast, the second you’ try to stop and try to stop the bullets you’d be dead with hundreds of holes in your body. So that wasn’t smart. Which is why you let Allison pull you behind a cart to let Luther wrap his arms around all three of you for some form of extra protection from the incoming bullets that were already getting stopped by the cart. But that too could fail at any moment, and all feelings left unsaid, unshared would be lost forever and dead alongside you.

The end of the Umbrella Academy would all come to this point, not even in your own time and yet as that came to mind, none of it mattered as much as Diego did. The concern for your well-being wasn’t as high as Diego’s who was out in the open, hopefully not dead. Of course you loved the rest of your siblings, even if you joined their family years later, you still cared for them, like they did you, they were a family you never had. But Diego, well he always had a special place in your heart that the others didn’t.

And now it was all going to be gone and left unspoken—

“Ahh,” suddenly a high pitched sound hits your ears and your hands fly to cover them, whilst your eyes flicker up to see Vanya floating out the farm, looking as she did what seemed to decades go. White and a blue hue surrounding her. Letting you all know what was to come, causing Luther to press the three of you closer to himself and try and protect you from what may come.

Making everything go silent and making the bullets stop like how they began so out of a sudden.

Letting out a relieved breath of air you let Luther's arm go and began to pull away, hearing Allison comment, “it’s over.”

And it also wasn’t.

Slowly you began to stand up and poke your head out above the hay carts, seeing the once sea of people all on the ground, the only two left just the same two women from before. Somehow.

“How are they doing that?” Luther asked what you all were thinking, all collectively noticing a blue field surrounding the two disappear and another blue source of light to appear from the woman with the dark. Again somehow.

“Shit.”

The same high pitch sounded and just like Vanya a wave of the same blue force was thrown and you all were thrown back. Your back hitting the barn wall with a loud and painful thud, surprisingly staying conscious after the outcome.

You groan, “fuck that hurt.” You slowly sit up to see your siblings are now scattered, a recognizable brunette struggling in the distance. Feeling your gaze, his attention snapped to you, calling out to you instantly.

“Y/N help!”

Jumping up to your feet you quickly rush over to him, throwing your hand out to use your powers to throw the tractor off Diego. That with really no effort at all, not like helping him up.

You smile softly, “you okay?”

He nods and cradles your cheeks, “yeah, never better. What about you?”

“I’ve gone through worse.”

His gaze lingers on your face and he smiles, “I’ve got to tell you something.”

“Me too.”

Diego swallows thickly and his thumb strokes your cheek, “I thought you were dead, which is why I got with Lila, I’m sorry. Just know that I never stopped...I-I” he pauses and his eyebrows furrow as he fumbles with his words.

A bright grin tugs at the corner of your lips, “it’s okay.” You assure him, “you don’t have to say it out loud.” Letting you read his mind, he insteads lets you read what he thought.

‘I never stopped loving you. Never.’

‘I love you too, Diego.’

Your hands hold his and just as you’re going to close the small gap left you hear the snow crunching beside you, the sight of your siblings catching the corner of your eye as they rush to come and join your side.

Diego let’s go and shares one last thing, ‘later.’

He pulls away at the same time your siblings surround the two of you.

Diego rushed up to Luther excited and very smugly, “team Zero! Unstoppable!” Diego tries to give him a high-five, but Luther instead meets his hand with a fist pump. Ultimately punching Diego’s palm and a small wince coming out his lips thereafter.

“Uh..”

“Has anyone seen five?” Allison finally asks.

“I don’t know he’s around here somewhere.” Luther again turns his attention towards Diego. “By the way your ex-girlfriend can blink like five.”

Allison nodded and added, “yeah, that bitch just rumored me so I couldn’t breathe.”

“And destroyed, like, had the farm with a shock wave. So unoriginal.” Klaus interjected.

“If she can do everything we can, she might as well just be one of us.” Vanya shared, letting a lightbulb go off in your mind at the new conclusion….

Shit…

Slowly all your siblings realizing the same thing. Their expressions and their running thoughts giving it away.

Luther chuckled nervously and then his amused grin dropped, “No, there's no way. It can’t be.”

Allison shrugs, “it’s a reasonable conclusion.”

“Eh, but there were only eight of us.” Klaus tries to dismiss.

Your eyebrows knot, “yeah, but I only came ten years later after your father took you all from your parents. So, maybe we need to consider that there’s more of us out there that ended up undiscovered at birth like me.”

Alison blinks, “are we surprised? I mean dad never told us the whole truth about anything.”

Diego’s steps up, “but she’s like y/n, right? She’s not our biological sister right?”

You blink and your jaw again drops at his cluelessness, “uh, I’m just not going to try.”—Not even try to read what he’s thinking.

Luther shakes his head and ignores Diego’s comment all together. “Okay, so, if she can mirror our powers, that means anything we throw at her, she can match, right?”

“Yeah,” Klaus agrees, “but she can only mirror one of our powers at a time.”

“You sure about that?” Allison questions.

“We can always try it, right?” You interject confidently, “nothing wrong with trying.”

——

Okay.

Well, apparently everything was wrong with trying since well...you died, but also came back to life thanks to Five. But in that, Lila also left.

So, trying, let everything go wrong.

Like always.

The only good thing that came out trying was that your siblings and Diego were all alive.

“You doing, okay?” You ask Diego softly.

His eyes blink to meet yours, sharing a small but soft smile, “yeah, you’re alive and the rest of my siblings are fine, so it’s all okay.”

You take a seat beside him and rest your head on his shoulder, “we’re finally going home.”

Diego’s arm wraps around your shoulders and he pulls you closer to him, “yeah about time.” He pauses and you feel him kiss the top of your head, “I’m ready to finally take a break, y’know. From all this, even if just for a little while.”

You grin and nod, “okay...what would we do?”

Diego shrugs, “whatever you want.”

Pulling your head away, you face him and show him your smile, leaning in to press a small kiss on his lips. “I just want to be with you.”

Diego cups your cheeks and kisses you softly, letting you once again read what he was thinking—‘sounds like a plan.’

You grin, ‘good.’

#the umbrella academy season 2 #the umbrella academy fanfiction #the umbrella academy imagines #the umbrella academy imagine #the umbrella academy #tua fanfiction #tua #tua imagine #tua imagines #tua vanya #tua klaus #tua allison #tua Diego #tua luther #diego hargreeves x reader #diego hargreeves imagines #diego hargreeves #diego hargreeves imagine #request

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pomegranates-and-blood · 3 years

Text

ἀλήθεια (Chapter 6, Vοσταλγία AU)

ἀλήθεια Masterlist

Pairing: Freydis/Reader, Ivar/Reader (past)

Word Count: 3.6k

Warnings: The usual, plus mentions/descriptions of war/battle. My endless swooning over Freydis.

A/N: So yeah, another one of these. It’s on the shorter side, and it doesn’t have much Freydis/Reader; but it is the last setup for the epilogue, so I needed to get plot stuff out of the way before we get to the good part lol. Hope you like it!

She loses count of all the months that go by, of all the flavors and scents she discovers, of all the stories you share and hear, of the vibrant and new colors she sees, of the people she meets and names she now remembers.

And she learns to speak your language of strange consonants and odd verbs, and you learn to speak hers of silent glances and smiles that feel secret. You learn to say the name of the man that you left without pain, and she learns to say the name of the man that you loved without resentment.

Oddly enough, these months teach Freydis to be almost thankful for Ivar.

Doesn’t mean she doesn’t still feel the ridiculous envy for a phantom, and that each time you and her argue about something regarding the past, she feels his mocking glare on her, as if reminding her it wasn’t him the reason she lost; doesn’t mean she doesn’t see him in every man in power she meets, especially those that linger too close to you, those that lose themselves in the curve of your smile.

She doesn’t blame them, but she hates them all the same.

But the ones she hates the most are the softer ones, the ones that are so unlike him that they make you laugh freely and don’t make you think twice about the easy affection you give away, the ones that are so unlike her that they don’t make you think of secrets and can offer you the world in a way only a man can.

But once again, Freydis is thankful for Ivar. For many things, because he taught her many things, because he brought you to her, because he freed her once. Most of all, she is thankful for what he taught the both of you about men in power.

Because when a prince in some cold land -colder than Kattegat, though she isn’t sure if distance is clouding her memories- presses a reverent kiss to your knuckles and looks at you with hunger in dark eyes, you smile with the same thing written in your own gaze; she is able to understand that your hunger isn’t for him, nor for all the worlds he offers you.

Because when she meets the last remaining man of your blood and he greets Freydis roughly in her own tongue -unaware she speaks Greek, but it is better that way, it is better they don’t know she knows many things- with a smile warmer than yours but eyes just as calculating; she can smile back and accept the warmth for a truth instead of searching for a lie.

Almost a year goes by and she finds herself enthralled in the way you make Sparta your own, the same way you did Kattegat: by letting the world around you change you just enough that you can force it to bend to your will.

And now there’s more definition in your shoulders, the lines of your back stronger, more defined; from a year training with bows and arrows alongside Lysander and Galla.

And now your anger is more subdued, the chaos kept at bay with cruel and well-placed words, but the fire is the same that makes her think of spring storms; from a year a woman free of everything except your ambition.

Freydis has changed too, she knows this. She finds herself standing taller on ground not her own; she finds herself just as aware as she always was of how they look at her, only now able and willing to use it against them; she finds herself finding certainty not in the Gods but in herself; she finds herself accepting that pain was never a gift from the Gods, and it may have marked her, body and soul, but she made herself.

And now here she sits by your side, trying not to let her thoughts linger on how you both said goodbye to Galla knowing she would return to him, to the man she supposedly loves, but here he is greeting you with a Spartan woman by his arm, a wife that isn’t the strong-willed and secretive woman Freydis came to care for in those months travelling together.

Your cousin eyes you with a teasing smile, “You are itching to return home, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know where my home is,” You correct, a tilt of your head, “But I do want what is mine to be returned to me, yes.”

“Some still say lands in Scandinavia are yours. To think you left Greece promised to a Thebesian and now you have returned, the wife to a Varangian King.”

You shrug one shoulder.

“Twists of Fate.”

“I’m still expecting him to storm our coasts to get you back.”

“You put a lot of value on my hand, Lysander.”

“Humility doesn’t suit you,” The man shrugs broad shoulders, and in the way he offers a side glance Freydis sees so much of you. “Regardless, if they do, we will be ready.”

“Of course you will be. I would hope you would ready for another battle, though.” You state, tone growing serious.

“We will retake Eleusis when the time comes.” Lysander reassures you, but you shake your head, and in your gaze all Freydis can see is…hunger.

“I am not speaking of Eleusis,” You promise, and when you smile your cousin returns the same mad kind of smile. She remembers Ivar and Hvitserk talking and boasting over the table during a feast after a victory, she remembers the mad smiles they shared with one another, and she understands seeing you and Lysander now, that there truly is a special kind of song to be heard only by those who share blood. You raise your chin, and offer, “Thebes is weakened, Lysander. And you know better than I do that to retake Eleusis we need to strike through land.”

Realization dawns on the man, who leans back and studies you in silence for a few breaths. You never lose the confident stance, though, staring him down as he considers your words.

Finally, he says, “We take over Thebes, settle your army there, and we can attack Eleusis from the North with the brunt of Attic forces, while Spartans choke their coasts.”

“And in controlling Thebes we control most of the silk trade in the Empire,” You finish, proud as you straighten in your seat, “Those priests are sure to miss their Byzantine Silk, are they not?”

Freydis is aware, in some part of her mind, that she is probably staring at you like a lovesick fool. Wide and lost smile, the faint warmth she feels on the top of her cheeks, eyes giving away every secret, if there ever was one.

You have eyes for the man across from you, gaze defiant in a way she knows well, in a way that her heart knows well too, for each skipped beat that gaze is responsible for.

Lysander tilts his head to the side, much like you do, and presses, “And who would rule? You?”

“Who else?” You retort, shrugging one shoulder, “You were never the conquering type, the Gods know you are Anax because you have no choice.”

He ignores the jab you throw his way, instead insisting,

“But you are Anassa of Attica, and I don’t think Boetians would take kindly to an Athenian woman ruling over them.”

Your mouth curves downwards, a nonchalant gesture that speaks of anything but that.

“They will, because we will be saving them. Attic or not, I am still Greek. Tis better than the alternative.”

“The Empire is not the enemy you thi-…”

“I’m not talking of the Empire. I’m talking of the Kievan Rus.”

“Oleg.” You start, and she lifts her gaze with a frown.

“What of him?”

“Do you trust him?”

Freydis scoffs, “No. And neither do you.”

Pressing your lips together, you look away for a moment, considering your next words. Freydis watches in silence, though her hands still follow the familiar motions of picking apart the flowers, stems, and leaves from the dried batch of yarrow.

“I think I do,” You start, voice quiet. “I think…I think that if nothing else, he is…direct. Reliable, in his own way.”

“He is unpredictable.”

You reach forward to correct a mistake she made, picking off a dried flower she left alongside the leaves, and say, “So was Ivar.”

“Not the same, and you know that.” She argues, leaning forward. For all the times she argued that you should have manipulated Ivar into doing your bidding, she never expected you to find the one man that outshines your husband in volatility, in chaos; and try doing so to him instead.

“He is smart, and he has ambitions that…align themselves with mine,” You insist, and Freydis accepts your words with a sigh. She doesn’t like where this is going one bit, but she will concede that this prince is a piece in the board that you shouldn’t rule out as a useful. “Do you think…?”

The words hang in the air between you, and her gaze meets yours, her answer unspoken.

“We will see,” She promises, and the smile that slowly curves at her lips is mirrored in yours. “Lust loosens a man’s tongue much more than wine, after all.”

The moment the words leave your lips silence reigns in between the people in the room, but Freydis doesn’t fail to notice how Galla is undisturbed by the mention, continuing her craving of a wooden block to make a building to add to the detailed stereographic map Lysander keeps of Eleusis. She isn’t sure if it is an act, if it is part of her pretense that she knows everything, or if she truly does.

Lysander’s broad arms are crossed over his chest, and he frowns as he looks at you.

“What are you talking about?”

Your smile is a secret in itself, but it speaks of something she knows well. Arrogance.

“A Prince from Novgorod will send an army to Thebes soon, they will be razing through Macedonia when spring comes.”

“How exactly do you know that?”

“I am a witch, I know things?” You tease with a smile, before sharing a look with Freydis and explaining, “There’s a man, a powerful man, interested in Constantinople, much in the way I am interested in Greece. He has agreed to send weak enough forces that we can overtake them and conquer Thebes, as long as we weaken the Empire for him.”

“Impressive woman as you might be, you cannot give the Rus Constantinople.”

You don’t miss a beat, answering, “But I can weaken it by taking Thebes, Athens, and Eleusis from them; and I can give the Rus standing ground on Athens when the time comes for them to invade.”

A sigh, and Lysander tries, voice strangely calming, “How are you certain you are not setting up the invasion of your own land?”

“I have other…safeguards.”

“Marriage?”

You shake your head with a scoff, “Nothing as fickle as that, no.”

“What, then?”

“Fear, awe. There are many things you can call it,” You state. When you speak next, there is a purposely false tone of innocence in your voice, and you shrug your shoulders, “You ought to remember, Lysander, that I am married to a Viking. And a famous one at that.”

“You divorced him.”

“But that is not a tale people will tell. Not there, for they fear his wrath too much to imply his wife has left him; and not here, for they fear the indecency of a woman capable and willing of ruling alone. As far as anyone knows, Ivar the Boneless has his eye set on the Mediterranean, and it is just a matter of time before his army gets here.”

“You cannot-…” Lysander starts, only to be interrupted.

“We courtesans are good at sharing secrets, you know?” Galla pips from her seat, dark eyes still focused on her project. “I can make sure my people spread the right secrets.”

Lysander’s eyes go slowly from the former courtesan to you, and he takes a deep breath.

“How much time will that buy you?”

“Enough,” You promise, unfaltering. “One like me never outlives a lie.”

____

The war takes a toll even on you. She sees it in the tired eyes as you offer a smile across a war table before returning your attention to the movements of the troops your commanders speak of, feels it in the loose hold of your hand in hers as you promise your goodnight wordlessly and slip away in the quiet of the night, hears it in the quiet prayers that leave your lips as you cut off a piece of your hair and let it flow with the wind that carries the ashes of those who perish in the battles.

But war, war like this, it is invigorating as much as it is debilitating. Freydis feels it, feels it in every victory that makes her smile a little wilder, feels it in every successful trick that makes Galla’s dark eyes shine with pride, feels it in every piece of land you claim for yourself that makes you a little more goddess than woman.

And before winter is upon you, the mark of battle is slowly fading from Eleusis, and you stand before a throne made of stone that they all pretend not to see the Norse runes etched on, and with your head held high, you claim the title you were born to hold.

Anassa of free Greece.

____

It is the sight in the night you offer a feast to honor the first families that are joined in marriage under your rule that Freydis notices something off about you.

Granted, a celebration in your home is almost nothing like the celebrations she participated in while in Kattegat; the games are very different and so is the music, the food is fascinatingly strange and the people less so, but still as fascinating; but she is unable to stop herself from comparing it to a feast in Kattegat, to the nights of music and loud people all around you, to the breathed laughs you’d let out and all the different smiles you would offer in the course of one night.

And while the world around you is familiar once again, and the people are warmer and kinder, and the music is more refined and the food sweeter; you…you remain distant. And your breathed laughs are mere chuckles for the benefit of others, and the smiles you offer do not stray from two varieties she sadly knows well: the false smiles and the wistful ones.

So, she approaches you. Quietly, you both know by now there aren’t words that need to be exchanged, she takes a seat next to you.

As who awakens from a dream, you turn your gaze to Freydis and offer a smile. A warmer one, a truer one, and that fills her hollow chest with something indescribable.

But instead of saying anything, or accepting the impossible calm in the midst of the chaos of the celebrations as you sit side by side, you stand up and extend a hand.

“Walk with me?”

Freydis doesn’t hesitate to take your hand, and when you don’t let go as you start walking through the balconies of the temple, she dares to intertwine her fingers with yours.

“You seem…different tonight.”

“It is strange, sitting there alone,” You tell her, an explanation, an answer to the question she didn’t need voice. “I never knew how to handle power alone. I had Narses, I had Ivar. I was never alone with power, with the decisions, with the…weight.”

“You don’t have to lose yourself because of it.”

“I don’t plan to, I just…if any of them were here, I could…ask them, I could…”

“What would you ask?”

“If hunger like this is to be expected,” You reply instantly, holding her hand just a tad tighter. You stop walking turning to look out at the sea from the stone balcony, and Freydis cannot help but feel you see much further beyond the horizon when you do. “I am not content with Eleusis, I want…more.”

Freydis smiles, proud and maybe a little mad.

“No one ever expected you to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“What is it you truly want, Freydis?” Galla asks, too convoluted of a question for this early in the morning. Though, Freydis has learned in these passing months that to what her is a morning to Galla is the middle of an afternoon.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

The other woman shrugs, full lips almost in a pout, “Everyone has ambitions. I wonder about yours.”

“If you expect me to name kingdoms, you will be disappointed.”

“I don’t.”

She adverts her gaze, pressing her lips together as she tries to come up with an answer, with a truth that doesn’t have the claw marks of her instinct that begs her to lie.

“Control,” She offers, before scrunching her face at her own words. It sounds wrong. So, she tries explaining, “I want to…for too long my life has been dictated by the choices of others.”

“Yet you follow a foreign woman to a world so far from yours, you accept her as your leader even if you aren’t of her people.”

“I need only have myself to have something to control. I’ve...learned that.”

“Will you tell me you truly do not hunger for more?” Galla insists, before being interrupted by the door opening with what seems to be a kick.

“I will kill Lysander. Mark my words, I will kill that man one day.” You complain loudly as you enter the room, shrugging off the himation with a frustrated grunt that just makes the task much more complicated for you, resulting in a little angry dance as you fight the piece of clothing that Galla snickers at.

Freydis watches you with a small smile on her lips, unable to keep herself from it. Quietly, she answers,

“We all want more.”

She searches your gaze for a few moments, before finding her words.

“If they were here, what would they say?”

“Narses would tell me to hold my ground, to wait for them to attack but ward them off by showing my strength,” You say, eyes unable to leave the blue of the sea as you continue, “Ivar would tell me to raze it all, to attack before they have time to realize I am a threat.”

“Would you do what any of them would tell you to?” She questions, even though she knows the answer.

She sees it in the curve of your mouth, feels it in the chuckle you let out as your head drops to her shoulder, hears it in the breath that leaves you.

“No, I wouldn’t,” You voice finally, quietly. “I would…I will lure them into attacking. They won’t think me a threat, no sane man would think a witch that stumbled her way into being a conqueror can protect a kingdom. When they step too close, we will attack, we will…reclaim.”

It isn’t what that fool you tricked into loving you would have done, for you aren’t standing tall like a man would and daring the world to come and stop you, because the world won’t hesitate to strike down a woman that dares do such a thing.

It isn’t what the man that offered you a heart and a kingdom yet lost you when he couldn’t give you freedom would have done, for you aren’t biting anger and bloodthirst at the helm of an army wanting to bring the world to its knees, because the anger that burns away at you is not one you will let turn you to ashes as well.

It is what you would do, with all the lessons those men and many others have left you with, but, more importantly, what all the lessons the women you have met and loved have left you with.

With your mother’s faith, with Sieghild’s resolve, with Valdís resilience, with Galla’s cunning.

Freydis doesn’t know what lessons, if any, she might have left you with. Yet as time goes by, and you both return to this same place, to this same home that isn’t the stone walls of the temple but something more, something more permanent than that; she realizes she never need leave you with any lesson, much like she refuses to acknowledge any lesson you may leave her with.

Because that would imply that one day you won’t be side by side. If Freydis accepts she leaves you with her loyalty, or her perseverance, then that means she leaves you, and she never would. If you leave her with your pride, or your strength, then there is a world possible where you are lost to her, and that simply cannot be.

I never knew how to handle power alone, you told her. But you never were. Alone, that is.

Her fingers intertwined with yours, her presence at your side, her shoulder for you to lean your head on as you both look ahead at the place where the sky meets the sea; and Freydis hopes you know that, just as she prays quietly, to whatever Gods may here, that neither of you ever know what it is like to be alone again.

____ ____ ____

Thank you for reading! Hope you liked it!

I’ll post the epilogue in a week or so, maybe earlier :)

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius @heavenly1927 @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax @angelofthorr @samsationalwilson @peachyboneless @1950schick @punkrocknpearls @ietss @itsmysticalmystery @revolution-starter @the-a-word-2214 @fae-sedai @crazybunnyladysworld @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside @aprilivar @msrawog

#freydis #freydis x reader #freydis vikings #ἀλήθεια masterlist

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detectiveidiotboy · 3 years

Text

His Time In The Commonwealth III: Deacon's Story

so as my beloved fanfiction, The Black Widow’s Waltz, comes to an end, i’ve decided that i am going to re-release the backstory chapters as their own stand-alone fic, since they read well as their own story. before that, i thought i might do a fun little thing where i release each of the companions backstories as their own post here on tumblr under the tag #his time in the commonwealth.

it is now time for part three of this little mini series i have. now that we’ve seen what happened to nick, let’s see how good ol’ deacon ended up where he is...

Deacon stood in the center of the burning remains of the Mercer Safehouse, staring at the man who set the place on fire not two hours earlier. The arsonist's back was turned, cropped black hair shining in the red-and-yellow flashes of the house fire. A woman crawled out from the debris - a synth who’d arrived just weeks before. She was shouldering a sobbing agent with cracked, bloody glasses and leg twisted backward. The man raised his rifle and gunned the two women down with an honest-to-god smile on his face.

Nate, you are one fucked up guy, Deacon thought as he stepped over the burning remains of an agent trapped under a beam.

“Deacon? Is that you?” Nate turned, eyes shining against the flames illuminating the light. “I thought I’d run into you sooner or later.”

“Yeah,” Deacon snarked, unstrapping his shotgun from his back, “I’ve been a little hard to pin down lately - Dez was always the one who assigned my ops in my downtime, but she’s been pretty distracted lately. You know, being dead ‘n all.”

“Morbid.” Nate chuckled. “I always did like your sense of humor.”

“I’ve been told I’m one hell of a comedian.”

Deacon pressed the barrel of his shotgun against Nate’s chest. The man stared at him, seeming far more interested than worried about the twelve gage of death aimed at his sternum. Nate was tough shit - but even he couldn’t survive getting all his organs blasted out by a point-blank shotgun round. At least, that was the hope Deacon clung to. “So, you wanna die here? Or is there somewhere else you want me to shoot you?”

“A surprisingly generous offer,” Nate said, lowering the gun with a finger, “but I’m afraid I have to decline. I have more important things to do than help you get some petty revenge.”

“Sorry, not happening,” Deacon cocked the gun, raising the barrel until it rested just beneath Nate’s chin. “Actually, you know what, nah - I’m not sorry at all.”

“I assumed not,” Nate said, raising his hands. “Fine, Deacon.” He said with a sigh. “If this is really how you want things to go, then shoot me - but wouldn’t you rather know why I’m doing what I’m doing?”

“Nope,” Deacon said as he blasted the fucker’s head off his body.

Except, that wasn’t entirely what happened. Nate stumbled back, almost fell over entirely, but despite the scattershot tearing through his throat just seconds before, his head was still stubbornly attached to his body. Nate laughed, slowly rolling his head forward until it was back on top of his shoulders, smiling widely. Deacon’s own vindictive smile dropped as he lowered the gun. “Shit… you really are immortal.” He said.

“That’s right,” Nate said in a sing-song voice. “Immortal and invulnerable. I’m basically the closest thing this world has to a god,” He laughed as he took a step forward, and Deacon took one back. “Now, since your idea was a miserable failure, let’s try mine.” He said, stretching his legs on the tips of his toes and clasping his hands behind his back. “Don’t you want to hear the reason behind my supposed betrayal?”

Deacon answered Nate’s question by bashing the butt of his gun against the psychotic killer’s face. Nate, momentarily stunned, staggered to the side and Deacon was able to retreat back towards the woods that surrounded the safehouse. At the very least he could act as bait to lure Nate away from any possible survivors. It was the least he could do for them, since he was the one who brought their murderer into the fold.

All of this was Deacon’s fault; he’d accepted the risk when he brought Nate on board. Desdemona had told him it was a bad plan - hell, P.A.M had reservations about it. Deacon should have listened to the future-telling robot instead of trusting his own chronically poor judgment. It had just seemed too good to be true - a supposedly immortal killing machine who resented authority and had a major bone to pick with the Institute? It was like the Atom itself had popped down into the Commonwealth and built them a savior out of clay and nuclear ash. Deacon couldn’t have let an opportunity like that go - and really, he’d asked himself, what was the worst that could happen?

Apparently, the worst that could happen was that the Brotherhood of Steel made their little savior an offer he couldn’t refuse. Now Tom, Desdemona, Glory, P.A.M… hell even Cartington ! They were all gone. Deacon hadn’t been at the base at the time of the attack - Nate had seen to that. Told him to head over to Sanctuary for a surprise. Well, surprise! Everyone Deacon loved was dead. He didn’t know - nor did he care - why he was spared; the only thing that mattered now was putting a stop to Nate before even more lives were lost, both synth and human alike.

Deacon dodged and weaved through the trees. He could hear Nate following him not far behind. It wasn’t long before Deacon’s lungs were straining and each breath was like a stab in the chest - god dammit he was a spy , not a runner. His body was not designed for prolonged exercise. Deacon’s heart was beating in his throat by the time he was forced to slow down. He’d put some distance between him and Nate, but it wouldn’t last. Nate never exhausted, Deacon had seen evidence of that. His stamina was endless - must come standard as part of the whole ‘god among men’ package.

Deacon reached into his pocket and pressed down on a button. It was the last stealth boy he had, and it wasn’t entirely full. It gave him only a few seconds to breathe while he tried to figure out his next move. To his right there were woods, to his left… more woods, and in front of him was, as one might guess, a large expanse of woods. Deacon wasn’t nearly as familiar as he needed to be with this part of the Commonwealth, his basic mental map was insufficient for a midnight life-or-death sprint.

He had less than ten seconds left on the stealth boy. Deacon could hear Nate closing in, so he did the only thing he could think of and backed himself up against the bark of an irradiated tree. He pressed his lips together firmly as Nate wove through the clearing, head swinging back and forth like an attack dog. It was as if he was tracking Deacon down by the scent of his fear. Again, considering Nate's otherworldly nature, not entirely out of the realm of possibility.

“I know you’re here,” Nate said, a manic laugh following the words. He drew a silenced 10mm pistol from his jacket pocket, showing it off to the seemingly-empty clearing. “Recognize this, D?” He said. Deacon did - it was Tommy’s gun, Deliverer . The very same handgun that Deacon had gifted Nate on his official entry to the Railroad. “Seems poetic, don’t it? Whispers died hiding in the shadows, and now I’m gonna kill you while you’re curled up with a Stealth Boy in your pocket.”

Deacon lunged for Nate just as the effects of the stealth device wore off. He caught the man off guard, at least, wrapping both arms around him in a bearhug of death and tackling him to the ground. Deacon had no idea how he was going to kill his target if even a point-blank shot to the neck wasn’t enough to do it, but at the very least he was going to make Nate suffer .

Deacon grabbed Nate’s arm and yanked, using his foot to pin down the man’s back and dislocate the appendage with a swift movement. Nate choked on a cry - it was the first time Deacon had even seen the man externally express pain. Maybe it was the first time he’d ever been hurt - good. Deacon slammed the heel of his boot into the back of Nate’s head, aiming for the spine. Nate’s good hand darted up, snatching Deacon by the ankle and pulling him to the ground.

Suddenly, their positions were reversed, and Nate was on top of Deacon, pilling him down with the gun pressed to Deacon’s cheek. The dislocated arm was already back into place, its hand closed around Deacon’s neck and choking him. Deacon clawed at the fingers, trying to pry them off. Nate was unbelievably strong - even with how thin and nimble his fingers appeared they were perfectly capable of crushing Deacon’s windpipe.

“Tsk, how disappointing,” Nate muttered, probably to himself. Deacon snarled as the 10mm dug into his flesh. “I really did hope I would have a chance with you. You have such a pretty face.” Deacon felt the silenced barrel trail down his cheek and press against his left breast, “be a shame to ruin it.”

Six silenced shots rang out. Deacon seized as he felt the bullets slide through him, tearing his heart to ribbons. The delicate organ came to a spasming, sudden stop in his chest, and before Deacon realized what had happened he was dead.

Once the spy had stopped moving, Nate put the gun back into his pocket. Deacon's fists relaxed and fell away from the hand still clutching his throat. Nate's fingers lingered on the bruises he’d put on Deacon’s neck, savoring the feel of indents on the other’s flesh. Nate reached up and gently removed the sunglasses from the dead man’s face, folding them up and putting them in his pocket. “I never did understand how you could see out of these things when it was dark.”

Deacon’s eyes stared back at him, expression still caught between rage, terror, and agony. Nate frowned, reaching over to shut Deacon’s eyes for him. “Pity. You really were cute.” Nate leaned over and pressed a kiss to Deacon’s still warm cheek, then stood to leave.

Seconds after his heartbeat could no longer be detected, the auto-stimpack anklet Deacon was wearing deployed. There was no blood flow to carry the medicine through his system, but through the power of osmosis, defusion, and several other pre-war science words Deacon didn’t understand, the contents of a dozen stimpacks made it to the shredded remains of his heart. Veins reconstructed themselves, weaving together tissue and cells to produce a mass of blood vessels that would just barely manage to function as a pump. Five minutes after the drugs did their best to fix a literal broken heart, the taser went off, sending waves of electricity through the corpse of one Johnathan Deacon and starting up his pitiful excuse for a new heart.

The first breath Deacon took after dying was both the single best, and most painful breath of his entire life. The bright lights and sense of calm that death had brought him were replaced with an agony that the words ‘living hell’ didn’t even begin to touch. He couldn’t even scream, the pain in his chest consuming him so completely that all that was left were small, gasping whimpers as he curled onto his side and clawed at himself.

Every muscle burned as his body worked to repair the damage of going several minutes without breathing along with all the other things that were wrong with him. Nearly half a gallon of blood was misplaced in him, and there were still at least three of the six bullets still somewhere inside him pressed up against his recently revived nerves. Deacon’s vision went black and every muscle in his body was tensed. Part of him wondered how long this would last before he died again because there was no way he could be in this much pain without something being vitally wrong with him. The other, much larger part, trusted his friends’ genius and reminded him to wait the pain out.

“So, you guys want me to wear this thing?” Deacon said, holding up the ankle brace that had been given to him by Tom and Carrington. “Like, on my person?”

“Is something wrong with the design?” Tinker Tom asked, genuinely concerned.

“It’s kind of a fashion disaster,” Deacon said, fidgeting with the thick, untreated leather that made up the strap.

“It is a highly advanced revival device, not a fashion statement.” Dr. Carrington said with a roll of his eyes. “Since when have you cared about your appearance anyways?”

“Hey, my appearance is my life,” Deacon countered. “You should know - you’ve done, like, at least three of my face jobs.”

“Four,” Carrington corrected.

“It’s meant to be worn under your clothes anyways,” Tinker Tom said. “The design was my idea - Carrington’s work here is nothing short of genius, but if we wanted any practical use for this thing with our field agents we needed something easily concealed.”

“Easily concealed, right,” Deacon said as he snapped the brace around his leg. “Unless I want to wear shorts. Man, there goes my summer plans.”

“Would you at least try to take this seriously?” Carrington snapped. “This is just a prototype, but if we can verify that it works it could save the lives of countless agents. Unfortunately, the only way to test it is for one of our agents to become mortally wounded while wearing it.”

“And so you’re giving it to me? Gosh, guys, I’m honored, really.” Deacon placed a hand to his heart. “Voted most likely to die on a mission by his peers.”

“You are the one Dez assigns to the most dangerous operations,” Tinker Tom said with a shrug. “Don’t take it too personally. If anything, it means we want you around the most.”

Deacon couldn’t admit it, but that did make him feel a little warm in the chest area, but he and ‘genuine emotions’ hadn’t seen eye-to-eye in years, so Deacon gave his co-conspirators a wink and a smile and said, “Alright, but don’t expect me to run head-first into danger just to give you guys some data. If this thing actually works like you say it will, I’ll buy the first round of the night when I get back to the land of the living.”

“Hmfph,” Carrington huffed, predictably. Then, less predictably, he smiled and said. “I’ll hold you to that, you know.”

Deacon laughed as he came down from the high of agony that was recovering from a mortal chest wound, the sound pitiful and weak. The worst of the pain wasn't done yet, he could tell, this was just a short reprieve while his body geared up to continue its tantrum. “Carrington, you crazy bastard,” He muttered against the blood-soaked grass. “When I get to hell, remind me to buy you that drink.”

Deacon laughed and sobbed and spasmed until the sun was high in the sky.

#fallout 4 #fo4 #fallout #fallout 4 fanfic #fallout 4 fanfiction #fo4 fanfic #fo4 fanfiction #fallout fanfic #fallout fanfiction #fallout deacon #deacon fallout #fallout 4 deacon #deacon fallout 4 #deacon #my writing #fanfic #fanfiction #the black widow's waltz #his time in the commonwealth

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sergeantsporks · 3 years

Text

Swapped

Ch 3/5

Ch 1, Ch 2

Ao3

Or read under the cut

It was a small patch on his knee, like a scrape, but it wasn’t a scrape. It was stone. Blue stone.

And suddenly, worries and anxieties he hadn’t felt for CENTURIES came flooding back in a rush.

What if they saw?

What if they found out?

What if they realized that he wasn’t the real Hisirdoux?!

And now, now there were new anxieties, things he hadn’t worried about centuries ago.

What if they hated him?

What if they turned him away?

What if they never wanted to see him again?

What if Zoe’s face curled up in disgust as she realized she’d been kissing a troll mouth. Worse, a changeling mouth?

What was going on?! Why, why now, after centuries of no problems, was he turning to stone? He hadn’t once transformed back to his troll form—what if he was supposed to do that every so often, or it would start to leak through?

There had to be someone he could contact to find out. The Janus order—they’d know. Right?

So he snuck out.

When Archie’s snoring started, and Zoe’s breathing slowed down to the little puffs he knew meant she was deep in dreamland.

Douxie felt a weird ache in his chest at the thought of not hearing those little sounds again. He needed to fix this problem. Now. Before it spread.

So he crept through the streets, almost certain that he’d seen a bar with a sign that had two faces on it. Two faces. The Janus order. It was worth a shot, right?

So he went inside. There was only one solitary bar girl, and she gave him an odd glance. “Sorry. We’re closed tonight, kiddo. Reserved.”

“Gunmar,” he blurted. He didn’t know any changeling code, because that wasn’t one of the things Dictatious—Dictatious, he hadn’t thought about the many-eyed troll for so long—had told him. So he just blurted out the first thing that popped into his head.

The bar girl’s eyes widened. “Oh! Sorry. What’s the problem?”

“I’m turning to stone,” Douxie babbled, “I’m turning into stone, but I’m not trying to transform, it just happened, and I don’t know what’s going on!”

“Ooookay, you’re obviously new to this. Slow down. Show me.”

Douxie rolled up his pant leg to show her the blue stone spot on his knee. “Why’s it doing that?!”

She peered closely at it. “If I had to guess? I’d say your familiar scraped a knee. Weird. Normally the goblins take such good care of them.”

Douxie grabbed her sleeve as she turned to go. “How do I find out?”

She blinked at him. “Wow. You really don’t know anything about being a changeling, huh? Okay. Look. You can check in on your familiar any time you like. You just gotta.” She screwed her face up, made a retching noise, and spat at a mirror. Douxie jumped back.

“That’s disgusting!”

“Nah, look!”

Douxie steeled himself to look at the glob of spit on the mirror, and saw that it had transformed into an image of a little baby girl, asleep in a crib. “That’s…”

“My familiar. Cute little thing, isn’t she?” The image faded away. “You try.”

Douxie’s spitting wasn’t nearly as impressive as hers, but the image appeared. Hisirdoux was in a stasis trap, a bloody scrape on his knee. “That’s him!”

“An adult? Wow. You are a weird little changeling, aren’t you?”

“I wonder what happened…”

“Well, usually the familiars are babies. They don’t go anywhere. Yours probably just got loose, and fell before they got control of him again. If it’s really bothering you…” The changeling looked around. “Go to America. Arcadia Oaks. The leader of the Order lives there, Waltholomew Stricklander. He might be able to figure out what’s going on. Watch out, though, there’s a troll colony living there, and it is the homeplace of the trollhunter. Good luck.”

Douxie nodded and slipped away, creeping back inside the house he shared with Archie and Zoe before they woke up. It was just one scraped knee—like the changeling bar girl had said, it was probably just a problem with doing the sleeping spell on someone a little older. Nothing to worry about.

Until he woke up with thick lines of stone lashed across his chest.

No. No, no, no, no!

Douxie touched the stone lines delicately. They were just the right distance apart for a set of Gum-Gum claws. He yanked a shirt over his head, fast before Zoe or Archie saw. This was getting out of hand. He needed to get in contact with Stricklander.

Xxx

“America?” Archie asked, sounding slightly-disgusted, “Why America?”

Zoe grabbed his hand. “New York?! I’ve heard things about New York—we could be vigilantes! Do you know the crime rates there, Douxie? And we have to go to at least one rock concert, promise me!”

“We’re already vigilantes,” Douxie laughed, “Just the magical kind. What, you want to add muggers to our resume? No, not New York. I’ve got somewhere else in mind. Arcadia Oaks. Supposedly, it has a troll colony. And where there’s a colony of trolls, there’s bound to be… pest problems.” He gave Zoe’s hand a squeeze, some of her excitement leeching into him. And it was exciting! Leaving Europe for a totally new continent? Once he got this whole familiar thing sorted out, there wasn’t any reason not to have fun. “But I promise that we will go to New York and see a rock concert first.”

“Yessssss!”

Xxx

“Okay. Our first order of business ought to be looking for stable employment and—”

Douxie and Zoe both ignored Archie, hopping off of the bus and tearing around the city. “It’s so sunny here,” Zoe complained, “It’s like Italy all over again!”

“Oh, you liked Italy,” Douxie replied, “It is a bit bright, but—”

“Hey! What are you two kids doing out of school?!”

Douxie jumped as a police officer approached them. “Oh—we’re… new in town?”

The officer snorted. “I can tell.”

“I’m an adult. Actually.” Zoe offered, “I don’t have to be in school.” She pulled out an ID—when had she gotten a driver’s license?!

The officer squinted at it, then shrugged. “Alright, Miss Zoe, you’re off the hook. What about Skippy here?” He jabbed a thumb at Douxie.

“Wha—Skippy?!”

“Him?” Zoe said with a grin. “Oh, no. He’s a minor. Tiny little baby. Ship him off to school.”

The officer nodded, turning to Douxie. “And which school are you enrolled in?”

“Uhhhhh Aaarcaaadia Oaaaksss…. Academy?” Douxie tried, shooting Zoe a dirty look.

“Haven’t gotten your uniform yet? Alright, come on, in the squad car, I’ll take you to school. And you, Miss Zoe, try to be a better influence on him, will you?”

The officer dragged Douxie into the car, and Douxie mouthed “I’ll kill you” at a snickering Zoe. Actually, though, this was a good opportunity, while he was separated. “Hey, do you know anyone named Waltholomew Stricklander?” he asked the cop as he drove through the streets.

“No. Odd name. Closest we’ve got is a Walter Strickler. Teaches at the other school. Why?”

“Uhm. Just… looking for an old family friend. Thanks anyway.” Just his luck that there really was an Arcadia Oaks Academy, he thought gloomily as the car pulled into a school. He got marched to the principal’s office.

“Are you missing a new student? Possibly an exchange student?”

Right. The principal would say no, he’d make a getaway, and then he’d hunt Zoe down and throw her into the nearest body of water.

“As a matter of fact, we are! We didn’t have time to get his uniform, but…” A schedule, a map, and a stack of books was thrust into Douxie’s hands. “You should be in Calculus right now, young man.”

No way! Seriously? Douxie gave him his best apologetic grin. “Yes sir!”

Great. Now he just had to figure out what calculus was.

Douxie would have bolted, but the cop was watching him all the way to the classroom, so he edged inside. The door creaked far more than he thought was necessary, and the teacher turned to face him.

“May I help you?”

Douxie brushed his bangs back behind his ears nervously. “Um. Hello? I’m… new here?”

“Ahhhh, the transfer student! We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

“Heh. Well, try telling the cops that.”

“Hm, yes. Set your things down, and then why don’t you come up to the board and fill in the radian coordinates on this unit circle!”

Douxie could speak elvish, orcish, trollish, a number of human languages, and decipher wizard code, but he didn’t have any idea what she’d just said. He scooted ever-so-slowly to the back of the classroom and set his books down, then shuffled to the front of the classroom, taking the marker from the teacher like it was a poisonous snake. The giant circle covered in indecipherable markings loomed up at him. He hesitantly wrote a 2 on one of the blank spaces, earning a snort from someone in the front row. He ignored them and kept writing random numbers in the blanks. More snickers made his ears burn, and finally he capped the marker and set it down.

“Alright, class, hands up if you think he’s right.”

No hands went up.

“Sit back down, please.”

Douxie trudged back to his seat in what was possibly the most shameful walk of his entire life while the teacher spouted more calculus nonsense that went over his head. He tried to pay attention for a bit—he really did—but it became pretty obvious pretty fast that he was missing about 4 years worth of previous math that he should know in order to understand this, so he put his head down on the desk, praying for it all to end.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that punk’s dead?” someone else in the back hissed to him with a snicker, “Where’s your uniform?”

“Hank, shut up!” someone else responded, “I’m pretty sure he’s one of the public school kids sneaking in! His accent is so obviously faked!”

“My accent is not—” Douxie shook his head. What did it matter? He was a centuries old magician who knew arcane secrets of the universe that the Calculus teacher could never hope to understand. The opinion of a few regular human teenagers shouldn’t have mattered.

It shouldn’t have.

At lunch, he hopped the fence and ran for it, beelining for the public school. The academy kids whooped and cheered as he ran away. Excited that something interesting was happening? Or glad that he in particular was leaving? Not that it mattered to him.

He had to check in on this Walter Strickler, just in case. And sure enough, when he peered in the office windows, he could spot magical items lying about with regular things. Douxie cracked open the window and slipped inside. Wow. This guy really did have quite the collection of magic books. It wouldn’t hurt to read a few while he was waiting, would it?

He was halfway through his third book and the last school bell had rung for the day when he heard footsteps echoing down the hallway. He hastily shoved the books back in their spots and waited, suddenly realizing that if Walter Strickler wasn’t a changeling, he was going to have to talk his way out of a nasty breaking and entering situation.

But when the door did open, Douxie could recognize the changeling in him—it was something about the way he carried himself, like he had centuries of experience.

“Hey there,” Douxie said casually, “Got a little changeling question for you.”

Strickler didn’t seem too concerned by his presence, fiddling with a pen. “You are drawing far too much attention to yourself. Getting dragged off by the police? Skipping school? And that accent-! What kind of a sad excuse for a changeling are you?”

“No one exactly gave me a crash course in being a changeling!” Douxie protested, “And besides, I’m a changeling masquerading as a wizard masquerading as a human. I think I’m doing pretty well, all things considered!”

“The special assignment. Hisirdoux. I thought you were a myth. What with having no way of contacting you and all.”

“Uh—well—yeah. Not the point. I’ve got a bit of a situation. My familiar seems to keep injuring himself somehow? I want to contact Dictatious. Make sure everything is alright.”

Strickler snapped the pen shut. “Contact the darklands?!”

“Uh… yeah?”

“No one can do that! Do you think I’d be searching tirelessly for the eyestone if I could simply ring for Gunmar on the telephone?!”

“How come? Changelings seem to get in and out pretty easily.”

“It’s not the same. I’m afraid I cannot help you—it may be frustrating, but you will simply have to operate on less than ideal information. And, ah, Hisirdoux? Do try not to draw any more attention to yourself.”

Xxx

“You are not funny,” Douxie grumbled as he pushed open the door to some kind of tech shop.

Zoe grinned, hopping off of her place on a bench and going on tiptoes to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Awww, did someone not have a good day at school?

“No kisses. According to you, I’m a minor and you’re an adult.”

“Don’t be irritated at Zoe,” Archie piped up, “I’m the one who enrolled you in school.”

“You did what?!”

“There are things I cannot teach you, Douxie!”

“Like calculus?! Get real, Arch, I’m never going to need calculus! Besides, when am I going to have the time?! I’ll need a job, and—wait a second, why are you talking in here?”

“Oh, this place?” Zoe said affectionately, “This is run by hedge wizards. Aaaaand there’s no customers at the moment, so we’re good. I have a job here now, actually. They’ll be able to use more money for their magical projects now that they won’t be paying an electric bill anymore.”

“Okay. Fantastic. School, Archie?!”

“Just stick it out for a year, alright? You’re listed as a senior, so you’ll graduate, and you can do whatever you want after that.”

“Assuming I can graduate! I don’t know any of this stuff, Arch! I’m going to fail everything!”

“You’re a quick learner. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You’ve spent centuries doing nothing but bouncing around the world hunting monsters. I’m sure one year of schooling will pass in a flash.

#i am still filled with rage that i ever had to waste brain space memorizing the unit circle #toa #tales of arcadia #my oc #my writing #my fanfiction #swapped #changeling!douxie au #dalmar #douxie

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afandomroom · 4 years

Note

(if you're still taking drabble request) Scruffshipping? (ronin x dareth) maybe angst?

Hey! It's mostly Ronin backstory angst with a bit of scruffshipping comfort at the end. Hope that's alright ^^

Also, I don't write ships often so..it's prolly cheezy/not that good? I'm sorry

Warnings: Implied torture, angst

The floor creaked, as Ronin cautiously tip-toed through the hallway. He was dressed to blend in with the night. A bag containing a lock kit and knife, with room for stolen goods, hung over his shoulder. His stomach twisted with anxiety at each creaking board, palms sweaty. His guild wanted ancient artifacts, ones that held power and sold for good money. Specifically, they wanted powerful artifacts that were in the possession of a rival guild. They’d get good pay, and gloating rights. A successful thieving job against the Reapers would prove the Nightingales’ superiority, point employers in their direction. Naturally, the Nightingales had chosen the most promising thief amongst their younger members for the job. They’d spent countless resources gathering intel, prepping him, mapping out the rooms and security systems. Every detail had been looked over, multiple scenarios accounted for. So nothing would go wrong. That’s what the young brunet told himself, anyways. Ronin exhaled, having finally reached the room the Reapers supposedly kept their prized possessions in, tightening his grip on his bag as he mentally went over the room’s layout. Once he’d nabbed the goods, he just had to make his way out of the base. Which should be easy enough. A smile found its way on his face, a wave of cocky energy washing over him. He was the best of the Nightingales’ teen recruits, after all. There was nothing to worry about. His hand lowered to the door knob, turning it. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- He was shoved rather unceremoniously to his knees before the Reapers’ general; a cold woman with icy eyes and dark hair that tumbled over her shoulders. He twisted his wrists, testing the ropes wrapped tightly around them, grimacing slightly as the bonds only got stronger. He had a sinking feeling that he wasn’t getting out of this one. He had to get out of this one. Slowly, Ronin turned his attention to the General, meeting her gaze. Her eyes were narrowed into a glare, expression curled into a snarl. Ronin’s blood froze as he watched her warily. He had to keep quiet, watch what he said. “So, you’re the thief who was foolish enough to break into our stronghold, hm?” the General leaned against her desk, picking up one of the knives taken from Ronin. “You’re skilled, I’ll give you that. Where did the Nightingales pick you up, boy?” The brunet attempted to feign confusion, remaining silent as he watched the General. She simply laughed at his denial. “Oh, come now. Do you honestly think we truly had no idea, that your little guild was planning an operation?” His amber eyes narrowed, as he watched her, flinching when his knife was thrown in his direction, grazing his skin. “There’s a reason we’re the top thieving guild, don’t forget that.” The General snapped her fingers. Goons roughly dragged Ronin to his feet, as the General stalked over to him. “Since you’re young, and were operating under orders, we will be releasing you” “But, you’ll be delivering...a message for us.” An evil glint appeared in her eyes. Ronin’s heart dropped. No This, this was what he’d been afraid of. Every thief under the Nightingales had heard rumors of what the Reapers did to intruders and traitors. He swallowed, trying to find his words. “Wait-“ “You-“the General ignored the teenaged thief, looking to one of the goons. “Which hand did he use to open the doors and pick the locks? I would hope you know?” The brunet shook his head, fighting against the goons’ hold, “Please-“ “His Right, Ma’am” “No-“ “I see” A twisted grin appeared on the icy woman’s face, before she turned her back to them, “Remove the whole arm” ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ “NO!” Ronin woke in a cold sweat, what remained of his right arm aching with phantom pains. His heart was racing, adrenaline pumping. He looked around his room, his left hand clutching at his shirt as he struggled to steady his breathing. “It was just a nightmare...” He swallowed, as he told himself this, shaking. “That was in the past. It can’t hurt you...” …….. Ronin pushed himself out of his bed, suddenly very aware of the creaking floor boards, flinching at every little noise the base made. He cautiously moved through the familiar hall ways, wiping endless tears from his face as he came to stop at a door. It opened before he could knock. An overwhelming sense of safety overcame him, as he saw Dareth standing there, arms open for a hug. “I heard you shout, Ro” Ronin considered himself a tough man, hardened by years of working as a criminal. People didn’t push him around, and for years he’d done his best not to rely on others. Not after the Nightingales abandoned him. Not after…that operation. But now, now he collapsed into his boyfriend’s arms, a sobbing mess. Took solace in the comfort and support the brunet offered him, as they lay curled up in his bed. Dareth stroked the ex-thief’s hair, holding him close, humming a gentle tune to lull the haunted man back to sleep. “I love you, Ro” He whispered, placing a gentle kiss to his boyfriend’s forehead. A shaky, sleepy “I love you to” was Ronin’s mumbled response, as he snuggled closer to Dareth. He was drifting off, knowing his nightmares, his memories, couldn’t haunt him so long as he was with Dareth.

#Ninjago #Ronin #Dareth #Implied torture warning #Scruffshipping #Angst #Anon #Ask answered

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valhallanrose · 3 years

Text

Seven Devils

Astoria’s Cursebreaker arc picks up about five years after the events of Show Your Fangs, which you can find here along with the rest of their canon backstory.

Major thank you to @apprenticealec for letting me borrow some of her pirates for the next few installments of Astoria’s journey. Sorry to Rodrigo (and especially Jacqui) for getting Astoria inflicted upon them in the process.

Fic Title: Seven Devils by Florence + The Machine

2.1k. No CWs apply.

It was supposed to be like any other transport.

The sea and the sky were near perfect mirrors, as if the Fae’s Folly sailed on an ocean of stars that carried them toward the Sea Palace. It was a long journey, but one that its crew had made many times before, through the Frozen Sea and up into the Persephia when the Scourgelands were too perilous to cross by land. It was the preferred route to reach the western side of the continent, rather than risk the Strait of Sirens to the north, and they’d faced minimal skirmish on prior trips.

But the Folly was under contract, and a demanding one at that, meaning some had let their guard slip when the rare chance came to rest.

It would be too late when they heard the pounding of drums over the sea, rousing the crew from slumber and drawing them out on the deck to investigate, then sending it into chaos as they tried to open the sails and escape the ship in their shadow.

And then El Corazon Sangrante split the night with cannon fire.

* * * * *

The Fae’s Folly wasn’t equipped for conflict, and surrender came quickly - about when the captain realized the winds would give them enough momentum to keep moving, but not necessarily to get out of range. So he chose, rather than risk the lives of his crew, to wave the metaphorical white flag. He’d been instructed by the harbormaster to preserve the vessel at all costs - the goods could be replaced, or at the very least they could recoup the losses, but a damaged ship was far more painful for a trading port’s business in the grand scheme.

The captain had watched with tongue between his teeth as pirates boarded his ship, some remaining above deck to watch his crew while the others scattered across the ship to raid its cargo hold. One, a tall man with dark skin and equally dark hair, had asked him where his manifests were - information which he’d given, begrudgingly, when he eyed the hand settled on the pistol holstered at his hip.

Another would board after a few moments - wearing, of all things, a spotted fur coat - at around the same time the previous man emerged from the captain’s quarters, flipping through sheafs of paper with maps tucked under his arm.

“Jacqui, could this have been more underwhelming?” He almost pouted as he fluffed the collar of his coat, lifting a hand to keep his hat firmly planted on his head.

“You’re the one who saw a ‘big ship’ and insisted that we see if it ‘had anything good’, Rodrigo.” The man, presumably Jacqui, made air quotes as he read without so much as looking up. “Which, no, it seems you picked a common cargo ship. No matter. Never hurts to resupply -”

He paused mid sentence, eyes fixed on a line on the manifest long enough to make the fur-coated man step closer and find what had caught his attention.

- Personal gift from Baroness Canonach of Kintyre to Lady Chiara D’Oria.

Jacqui’s pistol came free of its holster as he strode across the deck, tucking the weapon beneath the captain of the Folly’s chin and giving him a stormy look.

“Tell me something.” He said quietly, gold eyes dark as Rodrigo’s hand fell to rest neatly on the hilt of his blade beneath that fur coat. “What exactly are you delivering to the D’Orias?”

* * * * *

The sun beamed across Astoria’s face where they stood at Cliffs of Balgaire, wild breeze ruffling the hem of their coat around their knees and carrying the smell of salt up from where they lashed at the base of the cliffs far below. One leather-clad hand pushed their bangs back while the other held the pages of the letter firmly in hand, eyes flickering over the ink as time ticked by.

Sachairi Canonach, the cousin closest to them in age and next in line for the barony of Kintyre after Astoria themself, had called them back to Rosinmoor. After a long-winded bout of pleasantries, he’d asked them to come when their project in the Bulan mountains had ended for the season, and that they assist him in a personal favor.

They agreed - on the condition they met near Mistwatch, for returning to the family estate meant dealing with their mother, and they wanted absolutely nothing to do with her for the time being.

So with the shadow of the ruined Canonach castle at their back, Astoria turned their face to the sun, closing their eyes to let the warmth seep into their skin. There were a few long, peaceful moments, where all they could hear was the roar of the sea and the call of the birds before a voice drew their focus back to the rest of the world.

“You know, I’m just glad we didn’t plan to meet in the castle. I know you agreed to meet me here, but this place has always given me the heebie jeebies. I’ll never understand why you loved it so much when we were kids.”

Astoria turned, smile lifting the corners of their lips as they stepped forward to meet his embrace halfway.

“You’d hate me if I gave you the history lesson.” They teased, burying their face in the tartan draped across his shoulder and chuckling as he thumped them on the back a few times.

“I probably would.” Sachairi leaned back, giving them a broad smile as his hands fell on their shoulders and gave them a squeeze. “You look well. How was the trip back? I’m assuming you took the Emerald Sea into the Strait of Seals, and then into Rosafearn?”

“Yeah, it’s probably the quickest route. Especially when my travel is funded by the clan, who apparently made it very clear to the quartermaster and the captain that the ‘heir to Kintyre was going to need efficient travel south’.”

They gave him a displeased look, and Sachairi at least had the decency to look sheepish when they folded their arms across their chest. “I couldn’t decide if I wanted to stay up north or come here and skelp you myself for pulling that. You know I hate it when people throw their titles and names around to get their way, why would you make me out to be a hypocrite by doing the same?”

Sachairi’s hands lifted in a gesture of surrender as Astoria huffed, shoving their hands in their pockets and giving him something of a glowering look.

“I know, I know, and I’m sorry, Astoria - but I promise you I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think it was necessary. I need your help with something a little time critical, but I couldn’t risk the letter getting intercepted on the way.”

“Well, start talking. Your personal favor is on thin ice for now.”

Wordlessly, Sachairi offered his arm, and Astoria tucked their hand neatly into the crook of his elbow before they began to walk the overgrown path that circled the walls of Mistwatch. They waited patiently for him to gather his words as they walked, the wind sweeping the hair away from both of their faces as he heaved a sigh.

“A few weeks ago, the baroness ordered a small shipment of jewels and ore be sent to the Sea Palace - supposedly a sampling to attract business from the D’Oria family, but I digress. It left aboard the Fae’s Folly with a full load of cargo, the rest of the shipment made up of the standard goods, but when the Folly returned to port, the captain informed us the ship had been raided by pirates out in the Sea of Persephia.”

“And you don’t believe that.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe it - the Folly’s been surveyed and definitely sustained an attack, but I’m not confident that it was a simple raid. The only things missing from the manifests were basic supplies any sailor would use, some regional maps of the Frozen Sea and the western Scourgelands, and the jewels. From what little knowledge of the family I have, I trust the D’Orias as far as I can throw them.”

Astoria let out a small snort at that, the sound swallowed by the wind as they tucked a few pieces of hair behind their ears. “If they’re friends of my mother, I’d be inclined to agree. So what’s my role in this, Sachairi?”

He slowed to a stop, turning to face Astoria with something of a serious expression on his face. His hands fell to rest on their shoulders, giving them a squeeze as he held their gaze, not even moving to brush curly hair out of his eyes when the wind blew them out of place.

“I want you to find out if the raiders were working on behalf of the D’Orias. Of all our family, I trust you most to both keep this off Senga’s radar for now, and to keep yourself safe in the process. If the jewels were stolen by true pirates, they can keep them, we have enough at our disposal to manage trade without them and I don’t want you in more danger than you have to be. But if they were stolen by the D’Orias or on their behalf, I want you to gather whatever evidence you can to prove it so that we can nip this relationship in the bud. The baroness won’t believe it unless I can put it on the table in front of her, so I don’t want to level any accusations without knowing exactly what I’m walking into.”

Astoria heaved a long breath, mulling over the proposition for a little while as they tugged on the beaded chain on their glasses.

“You do realize that this is wildly out of my skill set.”

“On the contrary, I think it’s just within it.” Sachairi chuckled, reaching forward to push their glasses back up their nose. “Have you not made a life for yourself in the pursuit of knowledge and answers? Perhaps not in this manner, but I have faith that you’ll find a way to make it work. You’ve always been the most stubborn of all of us.”

They scoffed, folding their arms across their chest and giving him a sour look, but he only smiled and took a step back to give them space. A few moments of rustling in his satchel eventually turned up a neatly folded stack of papers, bound together with ribbon and stamped with the green wax crest of the Canonachs. Sachairi held it out, brow raised and trying to maintain a stoic face, but they could see the way his lips threatened to lift at the corners in a sort of knowing smile.

“...fine. Fine, I’ll do it, but you owe me. And you have to answer to Myrna if I get hurt during this shit, because she’s not getting my hide for it.” They snatched the papers out of his hand, smacking him lightly on the wrist with them before popping the seal. Idly they flicked through them, brows pulling together as they read through the documents in hand.

“You’ve already booked my passage? What would you have done if I refused?”

“Never crossed my mind.” The younger Canonach turned, beginning to pick his way down the path that would lead him eventually back to where he left his horse. “I can always take the hit from the cost if you decide not to go, we both know that the clan has more gold in its coffers than we could spend in all our lifetimes combined. But you’ve never been one to turn down the chance for something new, have you?”

They stood there for a long, long moment, eyes fixed on the point where he eventually disappeared over the hill and travel papers clasped tightly in hand.

He wasn’t wrong, there. They’d spent the nearly five years since they’d been home traveling the world, only staying in one place for a few weeks at a time and diving straight into archaeological work that buried them up to their waist in busy work, but something like this? They couldn’t remember the last time the idea of a journey had inspired such a thrill in them, even if they didn’t want to admit it.

They still loved their job, they had no doubts about that. It was monotonous sometimes, day in and day out in burial mounds and crypts or seemingly endless hikes to the middle of nowhere, but...was that really all they wanted from life? Was that really all they wanted to do, after fighting for some sense of freedom for so long?

With a sigh, they shoved the papers into the pocket inside their coat, turning to look back out over the broad blue sea to where it met the sky on the horizon.

They supposed they’d just have to find out.

#astoria fenharrow #i'm vibrating #the brainworms are off the string and doing their dance

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flightrules · 4 years

Text

Which Kind Do You Want to Be?

Chapter 7: Last Day

Honoring trust means keeping your promises.

Summary: You’re from a deeply sex-positive culture. He hasn’t gone unarmored in front of another human in... It’s been a very long time.

This is a story about trust and kindness, loneliness and loss, belief and transgression. And two people crossing paths just long enough to find each other.

Final chapter! Want to read the rest? Previous chapters on tumblr here or find the whole story the same username on AO3.

Relationships and characters: Din/female reader (both similar age to Din in canon), Grogu, and a cameo from Peli.

Rating: Mature? Explicit? Anyhow, grown-up sexy stuff. Please be old enough to be reading this kind of thing.

Tags and warnings: Moments of angst, domesticity, kindness, explicit consent, and Din doing his best to be a conscientious parent in the midst of everything. Heads up for descriptions of canon-typical violence, mention of past dubious consent, and a moment of (unintentional) violence between our protagonists. Ending is bittersweet.

When the chrono alarm wakes you, you’re sticky with sweat. Your lips are chapped and your eyes feel stuck shut. The side of your face is pressed against his chest and you’ve got one leg thrown across his thigh, while he’s been holding you close even in sleep.

But now he’s sliding out from under your weight, tucking the blanket back around you, and going to turn off the blaring noise.

When you crack your eyes open again, he’s pulled on a pair of trousers and there’s a little green child standing next to your head, peering at you curiously.

“Hey,” the man says, crouching down to talk to him. “Let’s let her sleep. Can you stay out of trouble while I take a shower?” Those big ears perk up as he speaks. “You know the rules.”

You’re not quite ready to lift your head, but you manage to form some words. “What are the rules?”

“Don’t set the ship on fire,” he says. “Leave the hyperdrive running. Don’t disengage the life support.”

“Has he done that?”

“I turned it back on.”

“I guess I’m glad you laid some rules down.” You feel around for the bundled clothes that form your makeshift pillow. The child wanders away and starts poking at cupboard latches, as if trying to see which ones will open. “He doesn’t understand the rules, does he?”

“No.” He leans down to pick up the pile of neatly folded clothes beside the bedroll, along with the few last pieces that hadn’t gotten folded at all. “Why don’t you go climb into the bunk and get some more sleep?”

You groan into the carrysack. “I’m a mess.”

“You can clean up later. Go sleep.”

You discover quickly that it hurts to move. That vague ache in your back from yesterday has worsened, and your neck is so stiff you can’t turn your head all the way to the left. You end up wrapping the blanket around yourself so you can shuffle over to his sleeping quarters. He stops you on the way to kiss you again, and you can’t help the yelp that comes out of your mouth when, hands on the back of your head, he tips your face up toward him. “Sorry,” you say. “I’m still paying for startling you.”

A moment later he’s picked you up, deposited you carefully on the mattress in his bunk, and is bringing you a cup of that tinny-tasting water. “You should drink.”

The water feels good going down. Your body recognizes how much it needs it. Then you crawl the rest of the way into his bed. The mattress is thin and the blankets are rough, but it’s better than the floor. There’s a faint scent of the stuff he was using to polish the armor. Just two days ago, you were asking if he slept in it.

He rests one warm hand on your ankle, shaking it gently until you acknowledge him showing you how to operate the door. And then you’re dead to the world again.

When you emerge a few hours later, the blanket wrapped around you like a robe, he’s at the table, the child on his lap and several pieces of armor spread out in front of them. You sit for a bit at the edge of the mattress, trying to find the energy to stand.

He’s getting up from his chair. “We’ll go upstairs,” he says, heading for the ladder, and for the first time you’re grateful for his modesty. You’d both been to the ‘fresher in the middle of the night, and you hadn’t thought much of it at all. But right now, you’re not really up for an audience. “There should be water left in the tank, if you want a real shower,” he adds, one foot already on the first rung. “Controls on the left. It’s separate from the galley, so don’t worry if you use it up.”

There’s no such thing as a long shower on a small ship. At least, not a ship like this one. You’ve heard that the big military ships have purifiers, recycling everything back into drinkable water. Supposedly that’s something wealthy people have on board their cruisers, too, but you’ve never seen it. People with that kind of money don’t need to hire people like you.

Still, even the five minutes you get before the water runs out feels like heaven. Your hair feels properly clean for the first time in ages. The place between your legs is tender, fragile skin rubbed raw in spots, and the warm water is soothing. Even your neck and back feel better.

By the time you’ve gotten dressed, fixed yourself a cup of caff, and downed half a protein bar, you’re feeling almost ready to face a new day.

He’s flipping through maps on the vidscreen while the child sits in the jumpseat, poking at a board full of switches and buttons that look just like the ones on the Razor Crest’s control panels.

“He knows they’re not real. He’ll humor me for a while, until he gets bored and goes for the real ones.”

You lean over his shoulder. “Is that Pavotha?”

“Yes. We need to decide if we’re landing at the main shipyard, or the second city.”

“The second city’s a little seedier. More underworld. Better for me,” you admit.

He switches back and forth between the maps, studying the layout of the streets. “All right,” he says. “Probably better for me, too. Did you eat?”

You show him the half-finished protein bar in your hand.

“Good.” He swivels the chair around so he can see your face. “I need to talk to you. Come downstairs?”

It’s the first time you’ve seen the child manage the ladder on his own. You’re already down on the durasteel deck, expecting the man to be right behind you with the child in one arm. But instead, he’s waiting up top while the child scoots along one rung, wraps tiny arms around a side support, and slides his way down to the next rung. The little face is determined as he climbs carefully down, until he gets to the last step. At which point he launches himself to the floor with a happy squeal.

The man slides down the ladder after him, feet hitting the deck with a thump.

“You don’t worry about him falling, do you?”

“I worry about him all the time.” The child toddles over to where your bedroll is now folded up against the wall, tugs at the blanket resting on top, and promptly pulls it onto his head. He peeks back out from under it, ears flattened by the cloth, which he’s now wearing like a hood. “But how else is he going to learn?”

“If we have to talk,” you say, “can I make another cup of caff first?”

Your mug is sitting on the table beside the beskar backplate. He’s got the chest piece in his hands and the helmet sitting by one elbow. He’s examining the breastplate’s circuitry, holding it up to a bright light affixed to the helmet’s side.

How is he awake enough to be focusing on such precise work? His eyes look tired, but his movements are the same as ever, compact and economical.

“This isn’t talking,” you say, after several minutes of silence.

“Beskar will stand up to almost anything,” he says, turning the breastplate to examine it from another angle. “When I took the child from the Imperials, we had twenty or thirty bounty hunters trying to stop us. Without this, I would be dead. The Imperials would be experimenting on him.”

He sets down the piece in his hands and picks up the backplate. “I have to keep finding work, so we can keep moving. This stopped an MK-modified rifle bolt.”

Once, you would have been horrified at the idea that making a living meant getting shot at. “It’s good armor.”

“It is.”

You sip at your caff, the bitterness of it filling your mouth, giving you something to focus on instead of worrying about whatever he’s going to say. “Are you telling me this for a reason?”

“Thank you,” he says. “For last night.”

And now you can’t help smiling at how serious he is. “That's not the sort of thing you need to say thank you for.”

He doesn’t smile back. He looks down at his body, covered only in soft cotton and poly weave. "I said I would protect the child. I said I would find his people. I don't know how to do that, like this.”

He lays his hands out on the table, bare hands that a knife or a blaster burn would easily render useless. “I don't know how to be,” he says, “if I'm not Mandalorian."

You brush your fingertips across his knuckles, across the bruises fading now from blue to yellow. "You did say, there are different ways to be Mandalorian."

He picks up the backplate again, picks up the bright-tipped tool that was laying beside it, and tinkers for a while with the circuits.

You sip at your caff.

He finishes running the polishing rag across the armor plate’s surface, sets them both aside. "There is only one Way that I know."

You already promised you were leaving. You have no intention of breaking your word. It still feels like something is slipping away from you. But you are not the only one in this picture. “Do you want that?”

“I need it,” he says.

“Then,” you say, “what do I do to help you make that happen?”

You understand him well enough, now, to expect that he’ll tell you what he’s thinking. He might just need some time to assemble the words.

He sets to work on a vambrace, testing the seating of each of the tiny missiles arrayed above the wrist.

While he continues, you ask to borrow the datapad he and the child were looking at yesterday. That way you can be nearby, but you won’t be tempted to interrupt. You can leave him room for whatever he needs to think through.

Before long, there are little claws scratching at your leg, and you’ve lifted the child onto your knee. You find a file with pictures of animals from across the galaxy, all arranged by the sounds of their names. A bantha, a bergruutfa, a blistmok, a blurrg. The child knows how to press the button that advances the pictures. He looks up at you now and then, and you discover that if you name the animal you’ll be rewarded with a happy chirp as he moves on to the next one.

The man’s voice, quiet but clear, brings you back to the conversation. “Your people. If you made a mistake, would they have taken you back?”

You can see where he’s going with this, but you’re not sure it holds. “What kind of mistake?”

“You said they were peaceful. If they knew you fought for a living?”

“It doesn’t matter,” you say.

“Why not?”

“There’s no one left to disapprove.”

He looks down at the vambrace, at the intricate mechanism at the wrist, at the tiny explosives made to kill multiple men at one time. “Is that the only reason to believe in something?”

Is it? You’ve been angry and sad for such a long time now. You move through the world the way you do because there’s no one left to care. Your life, even the way you met this man, is deals and trades that hinge on violence.

And yet, here you are, still looking for kindness. Still trying to give it.

The child is tapping at your arm. The datapad shows a bulbous creature with rows of sharp teeth. “That’s a cannock,” you tell him. He pushes the control button. Next up is a tall, four-legged animal with a long, curved jaw. “That’s a cherfer. Don’t make him mad, you’d be just about a mouthful for him.” The child gives a little humph as if to say, that’s enough, you don’t need to editorialize, and switches the image again.

The man is watching you from across the table. You haven’t answered him yet. “Most of your Creed, it’s about the tribe, isn’t it? How you are with other Mandalorians.” You’re thinking about the words as you speak them. “Loyalty to your clan. Helping each other. What if you were the only one left?”

“I suppose,” he says slowly, “I’d have to rebuild.”

“All by yourself?”

He sets the vambrace down and holds out his arms, palms up, bare of gloves and armor. “I wouldn’t do a very good job, would I?”

He would, though. You’re sure he would. “I think you'd care, and that's what matters."

“Do you think your people would forgive you?”

“I think,” you say, “you need to forgive yourself.”

Sleeping late makes the day slip away that much faster. The maintenance on the armor done, the three of you gather around the table again for a mid-day meal. The gleaming beskar plates have been carefully put away, for now, wrapped in soft fabric and tucked in a cupboard beside the armory.

The lack of sleep is finally starting to show in his movements. He’s slow to get up when the meal is done and actually yawns before reminding the child that it’s naptime. You offer to take care of cleaning cups and ration trays, and when you finish you find him leaning against the wall by the bunk, watching the child sleep.

You’re halfway across the narrow floor, meaning to slip your arms around his waist, when you remember and stop a meter or so away. “Maybe you should have a nap too.”

“Maybe I should,” he says, turning to sink down at the edge of the thin mattress. When he looks back at you, it’s still that full movement of head and upper body, as if he’s looking through a visor. “Will you join me?”

Your own face must show confusion, or maybe it’s that your eyes go to the little hammock, to the child curled up there.

“Just to sleep,” he says.

“You don’t think he’ll be upset?”

“I think he’ll feel safer. I think he likes knowing we’re friends.”

It’s dark in the small space, with just enough room for the two of you to curl up together. He nudges you over onto your side, one arm cushioning your head and the other wrapped around you.

You’re pretty sure he’s already asleep, when he speaks softly against your hair. “You helped me take the armor off,” he says. “Will you help me put it back on?”

You can think of several things you’d rather do instead, none of which are appropriate with a child sleeping in this same room. You find his hand, trace the shape of his wrist, work your hand up under the edge of his sleeve and listen to his breathing change as you run your fingers over his skin. “Of course I will.”

The ship’s chrono tells you there are about eight hours left before planetfall. You’ve had a much less eventful game of tag today, you’ve each fit in a quick workout, he’s checked the hyperdrive controls to make sure the ship’s still on course. The child's long since been tucked in for the night.

You’re dressed in fresh clothes again, hair crackling with static from the sonic shower, and you’re thinking about what you said to him that first night. About celebrating after a fight well won, celebrating being alive.

Only this time the sweat you just washed away was not from battle, but from the past few hours of slow, careful time.

Your brain’s replaying pictures that echo on your skin. His face as he leans down to kiss you. The weight of his body on yours. His hands in your hair.

At one point you let him walk you up against that wall by the galley and hold you there, pinning your body in place while he pushed into you, head bent down and face buried against your neck. When he finally let you go, his eyes were wet and his lips tasted of salt.

You’ve managed not to say the thing your heart keeps wanting. You’re leaving this ship in the morning. You won’t be looking back. The words I love you aren’t going to help anyone here, in any way, at all.

You still haven’t asked for his name.

He’s sitting on a crate in the hold, now, dressed in the flightsuit that underlies the armor. The pieces of his armor are laid out, neatly, on the surfaces of crates nearby.

Start with the boots, he said, and so you do. You wrap one hand around the back of his right calf and slide your palm slowly down the curve of muscle to his ankle where, beneath the cloth, skin lies thinner over fragile-feeling bone. When you go to settle his foot into the right boot, he sits there and lets you control the movement, knee and ankle loose in your hands. You do the same on the left side, then sink back on your heels to look at the metal clasps that hold the boots on.

“Like this?”

He tilts his head down to watch as you click them into place, one by one. “Yes.”

It’s a clever mechanism. You’ve had shoelaces come untied in a fight, and it’s not pretty when that happens.

The greave that holds spare rifle shells clicks into place over the right boot, and then the next piece is the metal guard that sits over his left knee. He shows you how it should fit, how it fastens. You push his hands away, gently, and lift the piece aside to plant a kiss over his kneecap before you settle it back again and click the fastener closed.

You can hear him take a slow, deep breath.

Fitting the thigh guards requires him to stand. You’re still on your knees, and now, before you set this next barrier between your body and his, you circle palms and fingers around his right thigh. The shapes of him are an anatomy lesson, defined hamstrings tapering to the hollow at the back of his knee. Your fingertips press along the muscles at each side of his thigh, thumbs sliding over the wiring embedded in the flightsuit.

His hand settles against the side of your head.

You pick up one of the thigh guards and hold it in your hand, admiring the balance of it, how perfectly the surface shines. You curve your other hand over the place on his leg where that armor plate will sit, feeling the cloth warm from the heat between your palm and his skin.

His fingers tighten in your hair.

When you go to set the thigh guard in place, you can’t recall exactly how the catches work. “You’re going to have to help me.”

He’s slow to move, lifting his hand from your head as though it’s gone heavy.

“Like this,” he says, fingers guiding yours.

It’s beginning to feel like a ritual. You repeat your process on the other leg, pressing your touch into his skin before setting the beskar against his thigh. This time you’re able to fasten the plate yourself. When you look up you see his hands are at his sides now, fingers curled into loose fists. His eyes are closed. He’s breathing slow and measured, like he’s needing to think about it.

You get to your feet, standing close, and place a palm flat against his chest, like you did when all this began. His heart is pounding.

Last chance. You step closer, lining your body against his, ready to move away if this isn't what he wants. As his arms come up to wrap around you, you slip your palm over his ribs and around to the middle of his back. Your other hand goes to the base of his spine. The curves of the armor plates press hard against your own thighs. His hips hit just above yours. You can feel his body responding to the closeness, but you will your own hips to stay still, don't push in against him. If he changes his mind, if he wants you to recognize his arousal, he knows he can lead you there.

The side of your face is pressed into the space where his neck and collarbone meet. You find yourself matching your breathing to his.

Measured, focused, slow.

Five breaths, ten, a dozen, until you're able to get your mouth to form the words against his skin. "What's next?"

Five breaths more until his arms around you loosen.

The next piece is a quilted gambeson, like a short jacket. Foundations for the pauldrons are embedded at the shoulders. There is a flexible plate in front that will protect him from chest to pelvis, below where the beskar chestplate ends. You examine how the plate is integrated with the fabric, a series of soft, flat buckles holding it in place.

“This isn’t beskar.”

“It’s a synthetic,” he says, his voice shaky on the first syllables but smoothing out as he settles into familiar territory. “It has to be able to bend, so I can move. It can take a couple of blaster bolts, as long as it’s not close range.”

You take his hand and fold his fingers around one edge of the quilted fabric. “Hold this for me?”

You shape your hands around his ribs, then, sliding over fabric that hides his skin beneath, then flatten your fingers across abdominal muscles, feeling the shapes and ridges there, taking time for this vulnerable place where there’s no bone to stop a knife. Those muscles move as he breathes, still deep and steady and slow.

You help him slip his arms through the sleeves. The gambeson fastens down one side with hook-and-loop tape, reinforced with a half dozen hook-and-eye closures that hide beneath the seam.

You slide one finger down that seam, closed now and holding the garment snug to his body, and feel him shiver.

The cuirass, front and back plates, is next. It’s attached to its own tightly woven vest, and like the thigh guards, it’s lighter than it looks. You’re able to hold it in one hand while you trace the outline of the breastplate on his chest. The layers of cloth make it harder to feel the shapes of him, but you find the hollow below his collarbone and then the ridge of each rib, continuing down the sides of his chest to the last curve of bone.

You place another kiss, this one against the cloth at the top of his sternum, and his breath catches but he doesn’t move, just lets you continue to touch him before the beskar hides his body away again.

He guides your hands to fit the vest in place and fasten it, so that you’re working together to get the pieces set.

“I’m sorry it’s not different,” you find yourself saying, fingers still touching his. Sorry isn’t really the right word but you don’t have a better one.

“I wish it were,” he says.

He hands you the right pauldon first. You want to press a bite into his shoulder beneath where it will sit, where the top of the muscle connects to bone, but there’s already metal over that spot for the pauldron to attach. Instead, you go up on tiptoe and run your teeth along the bare skin on the left side of his neck, then trace the same line with your tongue, and finally smooth the spot with your fingers as you click the pauldron into place on the opposite side. The sound he makes as you do--somewhere between a gasp and a groan--makes you want to rip the armor back off his body.

You trace one finger over the mudhorn signet. “It’s good that he has you. You’re right to put him first.”

Once the left pauldron is also in place, he reaches silently to the remaining items laid out on the crate beside him. He lifts the thick leather belt that’s studded with sections of metal, with more plates of that synthetic material bolted on and a flat piece of beskar between them. It’s heavy, needing both your hands and most of your attention to lift it into place.

There’s the strap like a bandolier that goes over his left shoulder, then the belt with its sturdy metal buckle. The beskar plate rests at his lower back, and at each side is protection for his hips. You have to think how to build in softness here, to make his body remember kindness with this piece, too. You slip a hand beneath one of the plates, resting light over his hip bone, and feel his weight shift just the slightest bit toward your palm.

The last pieces are vambraces, handplates, gloves. You start with the left side and weave your fingers between his, feeling the strength in his hand as it curls around yours. You’re not sure if the pulse you feel at the base of your fingers is his or your own.

But then, you need both your hands to slide on the leather glove, follow his instructions to fit the vambrace, and clip the flat piece of metal that guards the back of his hand into place.

Once more on the other side, skin to skin, then leather glove, then beskar.

You lower his hand back down to his side and force yourself to let go.

Step back.

“How does it feel?”

He breathes, breastplate rising and falling. “It feels more like me.”

Again, your body echoes his. Deep, slow breaths, and it helps you stay centered, helps your hands stay steady, helps you stay that half-meter away.

“I’ll go upstairs so you can sleep,” you say. “I can bunk down up there. Let you get comfortable again.”

“Thank you,” he says. And then, one hand half-lifted toward you, “Can I still--”

“Of course you can.”

The beskar feels cool through your thin shirt, but his mouth is warm, and his hand at the back of your neck is gentle. You sink your fingers into his hair, hands fisting in those soft curls, letting the sounds he makes vibrate against your skin.

Dawn on Pavotha is muddy-looking, the sky a dull brownish-grey. You’re standing with him in the ship’s entryway, your pack sitting at your feet. Your rifle's in its sling beside it, ready to be clipped on. It's a good system, the result of months of trial and error. You're not as quick as he is with his blaster, but that rifle draws smooth and fast.

He's suited up. The armor plates are secured, electrical connections clicked in and catches locked, rifle across his back and blaster at his right hip. He’s got the helmet in one hand.

The child is tucked into the carry-bag on his other side, contentedly gnawing at a piece of flatbread.

You crouch down to the child's level and rest your weight on one knee, careful of the healing bruise there, so you're face to face to say goodbye.

"It was nice getting to know you, kid." Big eyes look at you over the flatbread. "Take care of your dad, yeah?" The child looks up at the man, gives a cheerful chirp, and turns his attention back to eating. You run a finger along one of the wrinkles in his forehead, feeling the soft fuzz there.

The little head tilts, and then he's offering the bread to you.

"That's ok kiddo. You keep that."

Back on your feet, and now you’re meeting the man’s gaze again.

"You'll be alright out there?" he says.

"Will you?"

He laughs, and you're glad because it was a joke, a strange kind of joke when there's a perfectly fine chance that one or both of you will be patching up wounds by nightfall.

He's still smiling as he reaches out, pausing with his hand a few centimeters from your face to ask, "May I?"

"I told you you could."

His palm rests against your cheek, fingertips at your temple. You're up on tiptoe to meet him as he leans in to kiss you. He tastes like the caff you both had with breakfast.

This is making it hard to leave.

The kiss finally slows, then stops, because you both know you need to be out there in this morning, when the city comes alive. He rests his forehead against yours for what feels like minutes, and it feels like pulling apart magnets when he finally steps back.

He goes to put the helmet on.

"Wait," you say. "Before you do that."

He looks at you, head tilted, curious, and it takes you back to that night on Tatooine. "This," you say, with a gesture back into the ship, back to the past few days and so much in them. "This never happened."

He leans in to kiss you one more time.

"It did."

He straightens up. Settles the helmet in place and he’s a Mandalorian again, anonymous in the armor. He hits the control to lower the ramp.

"Good luck," you tell him, as you step off onto the scuffed duracrete of Pavotha's spaceport.

"Until our paths cross," he says.

"Until our paths cross."

#the mandalorian #fanfic #din djarin x reader #din djarin needs a hug #touch-starved din djarin #reader character also needs a hug

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diabeticlichen-thropy · 4 years

Text

Resolution Through Dialogue (and fists if needed)

Story with Diabetic OC

Chapter II - 2,777 words

Chapter II

Theo was an agent for the FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch. She had been with her department for a decade after her recruitment after finishing her PhD in Microbiology at UC Berkeley where she and Chris met. She worked as an agent within the Critical Incident Response Group where she spent most of her days working under Unit Chief Lucas Secman and with a team of five other close agents, Daniel Penzias, Annalise Olivier, Jason Moran and Hugo Stoneward as a member of the Crisis Negotiation Unit. The team was closer than most due to the graphic, intense and often strange nature of their work, coupled with their strange hours and long days.

Today Theo walked into the office to everyone crowded around Jason’s desk, “What’s going on?” She asked as she approached the crowd. “Jason is showing everyone his new kitten” Daniel told her. Her coworkers turned to face her and parted to show her, the usually stone faced Agent Moran cradling a tiny black and white kitten, smiling down at it. “You got a cat?” She asked shocked, Moran had never seen like the pet type

“I found him while I was out running over the weekend, he was starving and stuck down a drain, I couldn’t leave him. Meet Derek”

Theo cooed at the kitten, scratching him behind the ears. Moran having rescued the cat made sense, the man had a paternal streak a mile wide, it was part of the reason he was such a good agent especially in cases involving children.

The scene was interrupted when Secman’s door swung open and the call of “conference room” alerted the agents to a new case. The group filed out of the bullpen and into the team’s designated conference room. Secman took his seat at the head of the table and handed files to each agent. Theo flipped hers open skimmed the details. Her heart began to sink. They were needed for a hostage negotiation at a middle school in Utah. There were at least three armed gunmen and an additional two armed students, as well as two suspected explosive devices. There was no time for discussion on the ground as Secman told Hugo to stay behind and liaise from Washington, and the rest of the team to grab their go-bags from their desks and meet in the Bureau jet in twenty. Theo and Daniel raced to their desks, each pulling a duffel bag from their places under their desks and giving each other a look. After their many years working together they had this routine down pat. He threw Theo his water bottle and she jogged to fill both of them up while he raided the kitchen for snacks. He grabbed a couple of mini bags of chips along with a pack of juice boxes for Theo and some granola bars for himself. They met back at their desks and ran through their mental checklists. Theo swore to herself under her breath and went back to the kitchen, grabbing three insulin vials out of the fridge followed by three infusion sets and a handful of test strips and slipping them in a refrigerated bag in her bag. Checking their watches the two grabbed their bags and joined Annalise in a Suburban as they headed to the airport, the rest of the team not far behind.

On board the jet the situation was tense. Theo had sent Chris a text right before they took off, briefing him on what she could and letting him know that she may not be home for a few days. The couple was relatively used to this situation and Chris had just wished her luck and told her to stay safe and that he hoped she’d be able to call that night. Hugo had gotten some more information out of the South Jordan Police Department. The school had approximately 1,400 students and of those, an estimated 1,200 were on campus. Most were supposedly congregated in the gym but smaller class-sized groups were spread throughout the main building. The local field office and bomb disposal squad were to meet them on the scene once the CNU had arrived. The small police department had been completely overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis and with hundreds of panicked parents, the team’s skills were desperately needed. Secman was in Unit Chief mode, designating roles for each team member so that they could hit the ground running. Hugo was running intel from his office in Washington and currently video chatting with the team on board. Jason was to handle the police department and bomb squad, getting information and forming a strategy. Daniel was going to liaise with the field office, Annalise needed to see what she could get from the parents who’s children were in contact with them as well as anyone else with potential information from inside the school. Finally, Secman and Theo were to set up a negotiation strategy with the offenders inside.

“We’re unlikely to get much sleep for the next 48 hours or so, so try to use the next three hours on here to nap” Secman informed the team signifying that the briefing was over. Theo and Daniel moved away from the table to one of the sofa-like set ups that lined the jet. All of the agents on the teams had become pros at sleeping when and were they could and within 15 minutes the jet was silent as most of the team slept. Theo was dozing when a sudden aggressive beeping jolted her to alert. As she began to move the weakness that signified a hypoglycaemic event made itself apparent along with the slight shake in her hands. From across the aisle Secman, not looking up from the mess of papers in front of him, tossed her a mini packet of skittles. She checked the number on her pump, 60mg/dl and tore open the packet pouring most of the skittles into her mouth. She grabbed her bottle of water out of her bag and began to sip on it. She sat there spaced out, eating skittles for about 15 minutes until Secman let her know that she was above 70 and handed her a granola bar. She shared the data from her CGM with her whole team in case something went dramatically wrong while working a case. It gave everyone more peace of mind that she had support if she needed it. Once her brain and body were finally back online she tried to catch some more sleep for the next few hours so that she was at her best once they landed.

The jet touched down in Salt Lake City at around lunch time and the team climbed straight into the provided cars for the 20 minute drive to South Jordan. Theo found herself headed to the school along with Jason, Annalise and Secman while another car took Daniel to the local field office. As soon as the car was put in park at the scene, agents poured out of the car, pulling their FBI bullet-proof vests over their heads. Annalise was escorted by the local PD to a group of parents sheltering in a taped-off area to begin assessing the situation, Jason was taken over to the current mission control and was soon commanding the attention of the various police officers and the kitted-up bomb squad. Secman strode off in the direction of a singular police car and FBI vehicle and Theo followed behind him.

“Unit Chief Lucas Secman of the CNU” he said shaking the hands of the local Chief of Police and a few local agents. “SSA Penzias” Theo introduced herself, doing the same. “We’re sorry that this has happened but we’re here to help”

“What’s the plan for negotiations?” Secman asked, skipping any further pleasantries and getting straight to the point “According to school records we have twelve hundred students from grades seven through nine. We have been approached by an offender who introduced himself as Allen but we have yet to extend any further contact beyond acknowledging them and getting a welfare guarantee”, the chief gave them the rundown. The agents nodded, “what about the students not in the gym? Do we have anything on them?” Theo asked.

“We have information from class records that suggests that most of the science classes have been locked in the laboratories”

“Ages?” Secman asked shortly, clearly wanting to get on with it.

“Mostly eighth and ninth graders” the chief responded. Secman turned to Theo,

“Get Stoneward on the line and get him to start trying to get some sort of satellite map of classes, if he can get a current thermal image even better” he turned to the chief, “we’re going to need a phone to contact the attackers inside as well as a line to the media, Agent Penzias will handle them”. While her boss continued to issue orders and get set up for negotiations, Theo pulled out her laptop and contacted Hugo. “Theo, what’s needed?” He asked, she could see his fingers racing across his keyboard as the monitors behind him showed current media coverage as well as satellite images and the police scanners for the county. “Lucas wants current satellite imagery, preferably thermal, we still don’t know where all of the students are located”

“On it” he responded, “I’ll set up a live capture and send it to your laptop”

“Thanks” she told him, walking back over to the group, “we’ll have a thermal and satellite livestream within a few minutes” she told Secman. He nodded in her direction, turning back to the local, Special Agent in Charge, “could you please contact the Hostage Rescue Team, I’m hoping we can do this through negotiation but I don’t want to risk the lives of these children if things go south”. The agent gave a sharp nod and walked away to do just that. The rest of the congregated officers and agents took that as their dismissal and most headed in different directions across the school’s parking lot leaving Theo, Secman and a few local agents huddled around Theo’s laptop, viewing Hugo’s livestreams and discussing potential tactics with the rest of the unit once Daniel arrived a few moments later. The unit decided to establish contact inside the school without waiting for Hostage Rescue but have them en route in the case of things going wrong. The team moved into action.

With Hugo’s voice and support filtering through their earpieces the CNU gathered around a squad car. Secman picked up the megaphone “I am Unit Chief Lucas Secman with the FBI’s Crisis Negotiation Unit and would like to talk to you. We will establish contact through the school’s phones”. With that he set down the megaphone and turned to Jason who handed him a phone with the school’s internal number already dialled. The dial tone sounded once, twice, three times before connecting, “Agent Secman I assume, my name is Samuel”, Secman shot a glance to the laptop where Hugo nodded to show that he was receiving the audio from the conversation, “good afternoon Samuel”, Hugo nodded again to show he had both ends of the call recorded. It wouldn’t have been obvious to those who didn’t know him, but the team watched as Hugo’s reassurance caused their supervisor to visibly relax. “How are the students?” Secman asked, a little more confidence in his stance. He was in command of the situation.

“The students are fine, agent. However, my associates and I are not. We feel like we’ve been ignored” the smug voice came down the line. Theo remained stone faced but internally grimaced at the man’s tone.

“How so?” Secman asked

“Well you see my friends and I have some demands that we’ve raised but no one has listened until now. We’ve been forced into drastic measures but it’s nobody’s fault but your own agent”

Theo shot a glance to her fellow agents and Moran gave her a nod. That was her signal. She snatched her laptop off the hood of the cruiser and walked swiftly to one of the Suburbans. This was an established routine and she heard the audio in her earpiece switch from Hugo’s office to Secman’s phone conversation as Hugo realised what was going on. Once in the car she routed Hugo’s voice chat through the laptop as he isolated their call from the other’s earpieces. They didn’t need the distraction. “Alright Stoneward let’s do this” she told Hugo as she opened another window on the laptop. “Let’s go through repeated police reports in the last three years in the South Jordan area”

“Once we’ve got those we can cross-check with the name Samuel to see what we’ve got”. Theo hummed as she texted Penzias the update and what they were doing. She pulled up the local PD’s records only to sigh when she realised what a mess they were. She heard an answering groan from the speakers as Hugo saw the same thing. “Alright, you take 2016, I’ll take 2017” she said, “focus on causes that people focus around, environmental issues, vandalism, gentrification things like that”. However, as the words came out her mouth she realised something. “Actually, you take the police complaints, I’m going to look into complaints made to the city”.

Samuel seemed to have gotten defensive and so Secman had switched tactics to appealing to the safety of the children. Theo pulled up the city’s records over the last five years, she searched for complaints made to council members, letters to the mayor and residential complaints. She cross-checked for repeated complaints and anything that involved the name Samuel. That brought back hundreds of names and motivations. She sighed at the sheer size of the task she seemed to be facing, but sat up and thought through how to reduce the results down to likely pools. She filtered by age of the complainant, setting the range to white men in their thirties to fifties. That dramatically reduced the number, it looked like many of the grievances were the local elderly, not that Theo found that surprising. Her phone beeped, Secman needed her back out in the negotiation so she quickly sent her reduced list to Stoneward with a note of where she was at and jogged back across the lot to the rest of her team.

Annalise grabbed her by the elbow, “so Secman has managed to get welfare checks and a name list of students in the school but he can’t make head or tail of why” she informed Theo, “he wants you to talk to him”. A shiver crawled up Theo’s spine at the thought of communicating with the creep who was placing so many children at risk but this was the job. She nodded at Annalise, “thanks for the rundown” she said and the two agents walked over. Secman raised an eyebrow at her, checking she knew what was going on. Theo just gestured for the phone and he handed it to her. “Samuel yes? This is Supervisory Special Agent Theo Wilson with the CNU, how are you today?”

“Skip the pleasantries agent, what are you after?” the man asked shortly, Theo winced internally but showed nothing. “I would like to know why you’re keeping the students hostage” she told him honestly, running through possible ways this conversation could go in the back of her mind. “I already told Lucas there, we’ve been forced into this”

“Forced? How so? I don’t assume anyone is holding you at gunpoint are they Sammy?” Theo asked. She saw Hugo’s head snap in her direction at the tone she was taking but Daniel held a hand up to the screen quieting him. There was a pause on the other end of the line, brief but enough to show the team that he’d been caught off guard by Theo’s approach. “You’re well aware then that we are the armed ones agent” the retort came.

“Of course you are, you couldn’t pull this off by yourself could you? No. You chose children because they’re easy to overpower. You have fellow conspirators because you could never do this alone” Theo further antagonised. “So now that we’ve established that you’re not the big intimidating man you think you are, how about we discuss this like adults instead of throwing, what appears to be, a large scale temper tantrum? Now. Would you like to discuss this with me? Or with Secman?” The pause on the other end was much longer this time. The silence seemed to last minutes. “You have five minutes to decide” she said and hung up.

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cursewoodrecap · 3 years

Text

Session 23: Medical Ethics

Y’all ever been to college?

Our new friend Vigdor has just pulled a pale, twitching human leg out of a poster tube, sheepishly admitting to Valeria that it’s his own.

Valeria blinks at it. “Well, it doesn’t appear to be bleeding demons, so that’s good?”

Shoshana sticks her head in the door, and has to pause to take in the sight. “Uh, bruh? Bruh? I have questions. Is that yours? I mean, like, yes, you HAVE it, but was it attached to-“

“That’s a bit tricky? It was amputated twice.”

“Twice?!”

“Once from me, and then, well, um. Once from an amalgam of sewn together body parts?”

(Gral and Shoshana pile into the room, because Oh, Lore?)

“When I was in the swamp, we were fighting a bunch of zombies led by this particularly nasty undead guy. We called it the Wailing Wight. At first it was just the usual undead hordes, but then a local leatherworker was found, torn apart and harpooned every which way, half his limbs torn off and stolen. After that, we started getting attacked by stitched together abominations cobbled together from human and animal pieces. I was there just trying to help the villagers, being a doctor and all. But that’s when I lost my actual limbs.”

“They got stolen, like the leatherworker’s?”

“I had to chop them off. Which, for the record, is not a fun time? The Wight’s harpoon has a kind of poison that rots everything it touches. So I had to amputate or, like, die. So I cut them off and his zombies, uh, stole them. And I managed to get one back? Kind of a long story. I don’t know how I recognized it, but – I guess I know my own leg like the back of my hand? Now I’m taking it back to Sturmhearst. There’s a weird fluid inside it; I want to study what’s going on with that so we can take care of the nastyboy in the swamp.”

“Well, I am generally against nastyboys,” says Shoshana, poking his foot in the ticklish bit. It squirms at her.

We’re headed to Sturmhearst anyway, so traveling together seems reasonable. We think about taking Fun Key Shortcuts, but that could backfire spectacularly, so we’ll play it safe and go the normal, boring way.

In the morning, we head downstairs. The inn is trashed. The stalwart barkeep Rene is not there; instead there’s a young elf sweeping out what debris he can. As we grab breakfast and the young fellow thanks us over and over for saving his friend’s life, Vigdor awkwardly wanders around casting Mending on chairs and tables that got a little too close to the tentacles and chainsaws. Shoshana doesn’t really do non-destructive magic, but she slips the barkeep some gold for repairs.

Vigdor’s too lopsided for a horse, so he’s gonna hop on in our cart. He’s very taken with the Eyegis, poking at it with fascination. “You can see the blood vessels in the eyes, despite no source for a blood supply! Do they have tear ducts? Have you ever seen the shield produce tears? Can you make it cry?”

Valeria gets very uncomfortable with this line of questioning and turns the eyes back into painted ones, put off by a Weird Stranger gettin’ all up in her business. Gral distracts him by asking about his fancy metal limbs.

Vigdor goes full technobabble on how the runes and machinery work. “Well, there’s three different kind of magical actuators on each joint, and they act as conduits for the dilithium crystals-” He knows the details secondhand from Bjork and none of us speak robotics, so if he ever needs serious repairs he’ll have to bring them back to Sturmhearst for the engineers to take a look at.

Valeria knows a bit about Jotunn runesmithing, but she’s never heard of it working to this degree of precision; before, she’d only heard of stuff like boats that row themselves, or a peg leg that has a little extra articulation. These are fully actuated limbs!

Val checks if the limbs are the same metal as our space wrench, but nope, they look like completely normal everyday metals. She’s not gonna inspect further, because she has RESPECT, unlike SOME people.

(“Hey, I didn’t try to pry the eyes open or anything!” Vigdor protests.)

She does notice one thing, though: Valeria recognizes runes from most magic systems even though she doesn’t know them well enough to use; her sister studied magic for a long time, so she knows what they look like. There’s one elaborate rune that appears on both Vigdor’s forearm and leg that is of no origin she’s ever seen.

“How long’d it take Bjork to build this thing?” Shoshana asks, squinting at Vigdor’s kneecap.

“Well, I was unconscious for a good bit of it so…between a week and 2 months? He was already working on it when I, uh, had to amputate.”

“…did you KNOW you were gonna wake up with those things on?”

“Oh! Yeah, yeah. It took a while ‘cause the original blueprints they found were for somebody, like…really short for a human or really tall for a halfling? Something in between. Bjork had to resize the whole model to fit a human.”

“He, uh, FOUND blueprints?

“I can’t imagine he’d have made blueprints for a person who didn’t exist? It was all proportioned very strangely. I don’t know too much about it, you’d have to ask Professor Bjork.”

(One of the players asks if the strange rune, perhaps, says ISTC in a language the characters don’t know. It DOES, and we’re all very pleased with ourselves for previous-campaign references.)

The long road stretches on before us, and we have plenty of time to talk as we spend a week or two heading north toward the coast. We fill Vigdor in on the four flavors of Curse and the concept of the Prisoners, and that we suspect there’s major Key nonsense going on up at the university. (Heh heh, “major key.”)

Vigdor and Shoshana bond over being locals. Why are foreigners so weird about trolls?

Vigdor really, really wants to look at Twombly’s glasses. We explain to him that the Key could take his desire for knowledge and turn him into a cackling, dimension-hopping madman with a few extra eyeballs. He still wants to play with the glasses. Valeria protectively hides the Key map, just in case, flashing her Hunt fangs at anyone who asks about it.

After like a week of pestering everybody, Vigdor gets to look at the glasses. Disappointingly, when not looking at the Key map, the colorful lenses just make everything look slightly more those colors. Maybe Gral’s lutestrings look weird, but that could be the placebo effect. He tries flipping around the many lenses in different combinations, and finds that all of them make him look absolutely ridiculous.

Eventually after many days of travel, we can smell the ocean and the distinctive stench of a large number of humans living in one place. Vigdor takes in the familiar sight of his college hometown. Shoshana is dumbfounded that this many people can live on top of each other, while Valeria thinks it’s a quaint little town.

Up to the west, Sturm Castle squats on a cliff above the city, like a big hippo of knowledge. It looks like it was once a reasonable castle shape, but it’s had new wings and towers built onto it haphazardly until it’s a weird sprawling network of jammed-together architecture. By the edge of the cliff, in one of the more sensibly-built sections, a majestic lighthouse beams out over the bay. In the city below, the largest building appears to be a grand temple, with its roof carved in the shape of an open book. The perimeter of the city is outlined by strange wooden and metal towers, two or three stories tall with conical brass roofs.

Eh. It’s only got one castle, so it can’t be that good of a city compared to Aurentium.

Our cart is briefly stopped for a quick examination at the gate by a friendly city guardsman. He’s flanked by two of the same enormous owl-masked guards we saw accompanying Quercus and Ulmus. “Hi, welcome to Sturmhearst, folks! What brings you here?”

We all awkwardly try not to look at Vigdor’s leg bag.

“I’m, uh, here to visit Dr. Emily Thorpe?” he tries.

“Oh, visiting the university. Don’t need yer life story. Where you stayin’? I can recommend some inns. Oh, and check out the Scholar’s Temple while yer here!” He hands us a brochure from the Sturmhearst Tourism Board and steps back. “ALL RIGHT BIG GUYS, LET EM THROUGH!”

The owl guards don’t move.

“Oh, uh, I mean –“ He fishes in his pocket and pulls out a whistle. “Lemme see if I can remember how the doc told me to do this.” He blows a few sharp notes on the whistle, and the owl guards promptly step off the road to let us through.

Huh.

Vigdor makes an investigation check on those guards, who definitely weren’t around back when he was in school. They’re pretty bulky for humans – no, honestly, they’d be bulky even for goliaths. He’d heard a story from Professor Bjork that the school was hiring goliath mercs and dressing them in owl masks, but the professor had sounded like he hadn’t believed it much. Supposedly they’re silent because they don’t speak the language, but Vigdor’s pretty sure Bjork speaks Jotunn, so that excuse doesn’t quite hold up.

Once we’re out of the guards’ earshot, Gral pulls a huddle. “Vigdor, the Key’s a more recent influence, so let us know about anything new or significantly more abundant – that’s where we’ll need to search.”

Vigdor hmms. “The big brass towers weren’t here before. And the owl guys didn’t used to be a thing.”

Gral cuts another glance back to the owl guards, considering. “…How much of a faux pas is it to remove a Sturmhearst person’s mask?”

“I mean, if you’re dealing with the plague, it’s kind of a dick move? And dangerous? But most people – it’s like, the same rudeness of grabbing someone’s hat or jacket. For some people it’s badge of honor or superiority, y’know, how amazing they were to get through the gauntlet of Sturmhearst. But mostly it’s a practical tool of the job. We’re not, like, afraid to show our faces.”

Gral nods. “So you wouldn’t have to duel them, then.”

“W-what?”

“Oh, with bards it’s like ‘you are not deserving of your title’ and you have to duel about it. You know, like, how dare you slander my name, I’ll have to fight you for my honor?”

“Oh, uh, no, nothing like that. The mask is proof of office, that’s all.”

Before we get investigating, though, it’s late and we should rest. Vigdor wasn’t a palling-around-town type, but he rolls a nat 20 and knows the best inn in the city – not one of those touristy places on the square; the best-kept-secret on a side street that only the locals and regulars know about.

We have a lovely night around the docks of Sturmhearst. Shoshana spends like fifteen minutes just staring out to sea, because they MAKE boats that big???? This much water even EXISTS????? There’s a dragonborn ship from Aurentium, a goliath ship from Jotunhein, a couple of Galwan freighters, and even a ship crewed by colorful macaw aarakocra. (History check: while the Aquilians mostly died out, some of the ground-based aarakocra cultures survived. Valeria’s met macaw traders before in Aurentium; they tell lots of stories and do GREAT impressions.)

Valeria, meanwhile, holies some ocean water. They say Galwan clerics swear by holy seawater; salt repels demons, right? It’s gross harbor water but, whatever, it’s holy now. She also beats a sea captain at Man-go, presumably dock style. The inn’s equipped for foreign travelers, so it’s got a whole bar of draconic and goblin spices!

Gral, meanwhile, discovers the inn is near a bath house and enjoys finding out what a sauna is.

Morning comes, and Sturmhearst U awaits. Vigdor knows the main campus has the colleges of Engineering, Science, and Medicine, while the satellite campus across the bay houses the college of Ethics, which includes humanities like economics and history.

Valeria rolls for Order of the Rose knowledge. The Order actually has an arrangement with Sturmhearst when they’re working in Valdia – whenever the Order is sent on disaster relief, some Sturmhearst ethicists are sent to help coordinate. Valeria’s never worked with them personally, but the impression she’s gotten from her fellow knights is Not Great. From what she’s heard, they’re supposed to do triage and help direct the knights, but it seems like they spend the whole time sitting around debating absolutely horrible things. “Hey, if we brewed up some necromancy, could we use the skeletons of plague victims to transport supplies without spreading the infection?” Apparently they just sit around in corners debating whether that kind of shit is kosher or not, without ever actually DOING anything.

Also ethicists wear white instead of black like most Sturmhearst scholars, which is just pretentious. We then poke fun at an Order of the Rose knight calling anyone else pretentious.

Vigdor studied at the College of Medicine; he’s a doctor. But that’s not where he’s taking the leg.

“Why not Medicine? I mean, it’s a human body part, innit?” Shoshana asks.

“It’s…I have some concerns…regarding the, um. So, along with this leg, my arm was stolen, right? Not long after the arm was stolen, the sewn-together amalgams got a lot, uh, cleaner.”

We stare at him.

“…as if whatever stitched them together had my medical training.”

…oh.

“I’m a little hesitant taking that info to the College of Medicine,” he admits.

“Why?”

“There’s a lot of ‘for the greater good’ stuff with the College of Medicine sometimes. The College of Ethics keeps them in check. Anyway, there’s actually this thaumochemist I want to take a look at it.”

(We’d know the discipline as alchemy, but she hates that. She’ll go on a whole tirade about it. Somebody yells “Full Metal Thaumochemist” and we accidentally take a commercial break. We’ll never get tired of that joke.)

More of those owl guards are at the door, supervised by a businesslike white-coated member of the College of Ethics. His mask is a bit more abstract than the ones we’re used to; not modeled after a bird face like the regular scholars’. He lets Vigdor in with no problem, though he’s a bit suspicious of the rest of us. We’re with a doctor, though, so he’ll let it slide. “Welcome to Sturmhearst, may your visit be enlightening.” He does the same whistle we heard before and the guards step aside. Gral’s a string guy, he can figure out the notes easily enough but he doesn’t whistle.

“Nothing goes on here without Ethics knowing about it, huh,” Gral observes.

More owl guards are stomping around, some carrying heavy objects. Vigdor knows where he’s going, but asks an owl guard for directions, as an experiment. The owl guard doesn’t even notice him. He steps in front of the guard, who just steps around him very politely.

The castle is a nightmare to navigate, like Hoeska, but we have an expert tour guide. “The old keep, the part that used to be a castle – that’s where all the 101 classes are and the whole working hospital. All the additions are laid out super weird, and then there’s the tunnels underneath. The Chem students had WILD parties down there, they brewed up all SORTS of stuff. The lighthouse is a real lighthouse, but it’s also where admin is, and the dean’s and headmaster’s offices. Oh! DO NOT cross the librarians. Each college has its own library? Like, theoretically they share the whole collection, but which college keeps which books is kind of a blood sport…”

Shoshana and Gral hang back, feeling out of place. “Bards don’t really have a college, exactly?” Gral explains. “It’s more of a pilgrimage. I met the elders of each village and they imparted wisdom upon me?”

Shosh feels like an uneducated hick even by that standard.

We take a hairpin turn in one of the Science buildings and run into Professor Quercus! Or at least someone with a bird mask and a similar voice, chatting with some other masked scholar. “Ah! Yes! We made a lot of excellent discoveries before we started to run into problems – you see, there hadn’t been an event in some time, but if we could get in there to the source, we could really – well, my goodness! These are the people I was telling you about, who gave me such wonderful notes!” Quercus turns to us, sounding rather delighted. “I certainly didn’t expect to see you here. Welcome to the world of knowledge! What brings you here? I thought you were having adventures and derring-do!”

“Well, it turns out our adventures led here!” Gral tells him.

Quercus nods enthusiastically. “I’d show you around, but I rather need to speak to the bursar! If you need anything, I’m sure you can find my offices without too much problem. And please, if you’ve encountered any interesting monsters, I’d love to hear details! Especially if you have samples!” Despite his keen excitement, Professor Quercus rolls a four and fails to notice our Shusva accessories.

“If you ever need a cup of tea and a biscuit, you’re welcome to stop by my office! I’d be more than happy to speak with you! And if you could do me a favor – well, I wouldn’t mind having you with me when I speak to the bursar! See, our expedition to Holzog has hit a bit of a snag. The events with that mist stopped happening, you see. Luckily, we managed to identify which house you were going to, and we were all set to investigate, but then the Baroness put a squadron of those damnable Condotierri to prevent us getting in – “

Gral shrugs, deliberately casual. “I don’t know why you’d go back; there’s not much to see besides what’s already in the notes.”

(Vigdor immediately rolls insight to see if Gral is lying. Unfortunately for him, bards are excellent liars.)

“Anyway. The bursar’s giving me an earful about continuing to fund the expedition. I’m considering withdrawing from Holzog and asking him to redirect the funds into a different project! For example, lots of interesting monsters have been seen around Barroch lately!”

Yes, definitely, we want him to go somewhere that’s not a Tempting Key Portal. Valeria and Gral tag-team Persuasion checks to sell him on interesting cases of monsters we’ve heard of around Barroch. If we’re fuzzy on the details – well, all the more reason to have someone get out there and take a closer look!

Quercus is rather taken by the idea. “If you would, Mr. Duu –“

“Um, actually, Duu is the tribe, my family’s name is-“

“-yes, if you could write me some letters, I might find it useful making the acquaintance of the locals while setting up camp. Sturmhearst hasn’t established an official relationship to your people yet’”

Gral agrees to write up a formal letter explaining the mission of Sturmhearst and the expedition to make introductions a bit smoother; the word of a bard will go a long way in gaining the cooperation of the orcs of Barroch. He’ll do a personal letter of introduction for Quercus, and a general letter to Shieldeater’s administration to explain who the heck these weird bird people are.

“Wonderful! Bring it by my office!” He gives us directions that make NO sense to anyone but Vigdor. We’re pretty sure several of those compass directions aren’t real words?

“Oh, and if you see an angry tall woman stomping around, tell her I’m not here! She’s mad at me for some reason I can’t discern. Good day!”

He scuttles off, presumably to hide.

We definitely want the gossip on that – Ulmus was mad at him about funding, and she definitely dissed his field of study. Is this what academia is like?

Vigdor confirms that the professors have all kind of weird beefs, interdepartmental politics, and personal feuds. “One of my professors gave me a B- in amputation – shows what he knows – purely because I was taking some classes outside the College of Medicine and he got all offended. It’s a lot of politics and bullshit, they’re all more concerned about their careers and publishing than actually important stuff.”

We find a door with a brass plaque: Dr Emily Thorpe, Thaumochemist. There’s a paper list tacked to her door with a list of courses: “Intro to Potion Brewing,” “Principles of Alchemy Thaumochemistry”

Vigdor knocks. “Yes, who’s there? Come in!” a voice calls.

“It’s Vigdor! Vigdor Gavril!”

“Ah, Vigdor!” A halfling woman in the requisite bird mask waves from behind a counter where she’s handling a set of proper Movie Science bubbling beakers and flasks. “Yes, you sent me that letter! You had something ‘interesting’ for me!”

“Yes, and you will see why I couldn’t be more detailed!”

She notices his metal arm as he starts pulling open his heavy waterproofed case. “Oh! I heard that Professor Bjork was giving you his prototype! How’s it working?”

“They’re loud and heavy and uncomfortable sometimes, but I have limbs! Can’t complain! But then I, uh, found one of my limbs again.”

He goes over to an open table and pulls out his entire-ass leg with a flourish, plus vials of hair and blood and strange unidentified liquids. Her eyes widen.

“Ah, this is yours!” She watches his toes wiggle. “Well, you don’t see that every day.”

“Yeah, I found it stitched to some kind of unholy undead abomination.”

“And that explains the Knight of the Rose. Hello, Kyr.”

“Kyr Valeria Argent, at your service!”

“Dr. Emily Thorpe, at your service as well, I guess? Pardon the mess in my lab, it’s not much but it’s home. Hand me that vial?” She pulls out a syringe and takes a sample of not blood, but oily black liquid, from the leg. “It will take some time, but I can write up a thaumaturgical profile without much difficulty. Do you mind if I keep it?”

“You can hang on to it. But I would appreciate discretion.”

“Yes, this will stay between me, your friends, and – oh, this is Hugo, he’s my teaching assistant. He’s been helping since the school was mobilized.” She turns to Vigdor’s clearly uneducated hick friends (not you, Valeria, you’re very fancy) and explains:

“In times of crisis, the University turns from education to innovation. Were this a disease, we’d be researching cures! If demonic, we’d be researching weapons or dimensional banishment. We haven’t really received direct orders this time, so everybody is doing their own thing, which I can’t say I mind. Mostly I’ve been helping other researchers with the practical application of their theorems.”

She scribbles out a hasty list. “Hugo, if you can go to the library and put these books on order? The Vigmar and the Auspelius especially would be useful, but don’t let the librarians kill anyone over them. And the Principles of Advanced Anatomy – tell them I won’t ask. But I do need it.” The grad student nods and hustles out of the room.

(Shoshana insights, out of paranoia. Hugo’s a good egg, though he might refer to thaumochemistry as alchemy.)

“Now, Dr. Gavril, do you want this leg back? How intact-“

“Want it back? Like, in the abstract, or on my body?”

She pulls out a vial of bubbling acid. “I’d like to put some of this on it and I’d like to see what happens.”

He blanches slightly. “Uh. Um. I have some proprietary-“

“Aw, no acid then,” she grumbles, stowing the acid with an audible sigh.

“Only do something you would do to living person’s leg. That they would survive!”

“How would I know? I’m a chemist, this is only, like, my second dead person!” She pauses. “…well, fifth.”

Shoshana starts looking around at all the alchemy equipment curiously. Everything here is clearly labeled with numbers, and letters that feel like numbers, and complex formulae, which hedgewitch potionery doesn’t really account for.

There’s a knock at the door. “Ah, that must be Hugo. Come in!”

Valeria instinctively body-blocks the leg from view.

It is not Hugo. In walk 3 white-clad ethicists. The gentleman at the front is in fancier robes – we suspect he’s the kind of fellow who has tenure – and he wears a powdered judge’s wig atop his mask. We immediately don’t like it. His two companions peer around the lab – one has a jeweler’s loupe built into the lens of his mask, and the other is carrying a big chime with runes carved into it, clearly a magic item of some sort.

“Dr Thorpe,” the leader intones.

“Sorbus,” she replies disdainfully.

“I see you have guests, is now a bad time?”

“Is it ever a good time?” Emily makes a point of tending to her samples and beakers busily.

“I suppose not. We have come to ask a few follow-up questions. Have you been visited at all by Professor Matthias Macker? Has he followed up on the project you were working on together?”

“I told you, no! I had no potions strong or precise enough for what he needed, and he’s never spoken to me since. That was months ago!”

“And no one has seen him since then. You understand why we need to know what you discussed.”

“Yeah, not since you quarantined the whole surgical wing!”

“That is not what I’m asking about. Has Macker’s assistant Greta Ruble visited you?”

“No. She’s a good kid, though, don’t hassle her.”

“We are simply making sure she is not a danger.”

Emily sputters angrily. “A danger to who?!”

“I cannot tell you that.” He turns to Valeria. “Kyr, it is always a pleasure to see a member of the Order here. I suppose if you’re here we can be assured nothing… unethical is happening,” he says, unpleasantly oily. “I am Professor Rigmor Sorbus of the College of Ethics; I lecture on legal and judicial ethics. These are my assistants, Charles and Pippin.”

Valeria bows with the precise degree of politeness required. “Kyr Valeria Argent, at your service.”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance. In these times of mobilization, it falls to us as ethicists to supervise our colleagues’ noble efforts. Please, I implore you: if you see anything untoward or suspiciously unusual, I request you report it to the nearest representative of the College of Ethics.”

Emily butts in. “What happened to Eric Pelbort, his other assistant?”

“Mr. Pelbort has transferred to the College of Ethics and is assisting us with some research. We will let you know if that changes.” He tells her dismissively. “Kyr Argent, the College of Ethics has always been proud of our long association with the Order, and I would like to extend our deepest condolences for the tragedy of the Crusade. Should you have need of any assistance whatsoever, do not hesitate to ask. Our offices are on the satellite campus across the bay. If you were to visit, I’m sure many would love to speak to a paladin of the Order of the Rose.”

“We have business here, but I might be able to make time to stop by,” she equivocates.

“Very well. I will let you all get back to whatever it is you’re doing with that leg,” Sorbus says, turning neatly on his heel and taking his leave, his toadies hurrying in his wake.

(Yes, you guessed it: That was Professor Rowan, with his Tort Wig and his assistants Pip Loupe and Chime Charles.)

“Those guys give me the creeps,” Emily grumbles. “They used to be fine, but lately they’ve been doing this whole inquisitor act.”

Vigdor’s always known these guys as douchey blowhards. But now they’re douchey blowhards with AUTHORITY.

There’s always been a divide between Ethics and the other three colleges roughly the size of the harbor! The sciences don’t believe in debate, they believe in experimentation! Anyone who can spend an entire week talking without action is wasting time and breath. The College of Medicine thinks even less of them – they just get in the way of progress!

(IRL we all respect medical ethics, but Sturmhearst WAS founded on a fine tradition of graverobbing and leeches.)

Vigdor is primarily a surgeon, or he was, when he had two fully functional hands. (Two players at once: “HE GOT DR STRANGED!”) He had quite a few classes with Macker, the chair of the surgery department. Most people didn’t like the guy, except his surgical grad students who would defend him to the death. A bit of a hardass about proper procedure, but that’s probably not a bad quality for a surgeon. He was a local institution, so it’s pretty alarming he’s somehow gone rogue.

“His whole lab was quarantined?”

“The whole teaching wing, actually,” Emily tells us.

“Are there people in there? Some kind of sickness?”

“Not that I’ve heard. Ethics just put guards outside the labs and blocked everyone from going in. They’ve done it to a couple places around the school recently. The excuse is that someone was doing ‘unsafe experimentation’ that’s ‘poisoned the area’ or something?”

Wack. “How long have these quarantines lasted?”

“They don’t really end? A couple stopped after a few months, but some have been there for a year! Nobody goes in or out. Sometimes the white coats go in, but it’s pretty rare and they don’t stay long.”

“Is that what all the guards are for? Where’d they all come from?” Vigdor asks.

“Medicine used to be the ones, uh, hiring them.” (A quick insight roll notes that she hesitates on the phrase “hiring.”) “Lots of them still answer to whoever they were originally assigned to. But recently Dean Chidor from the College of Ethics took over that whole program, so a lot of the newer ones answer primarily to the ethicists. I mean, they all dress the same, so it’s kinda hard to tell? I haven’t asked a lot of questions, I’ve been trying to keep my head down since the whole thing with Macker.”

“What actually happened with him?”

“He’d been acting weird for a while,” she confides as she starts sticking pins in the leg and wiring them to a voltage generator. “He’d been working on something, some kind of extreme surgery – I think he was looking into a method of surgically removing Curse corruption. He was hitting roadblocks, though; he called in me and Alma Ulmus, who’s a College of Medicine bigwig.”

“Yeah, we met her in Bad Herzfeld!”

“I heard she’s here again, stalking around the halls complaining about funding. She knows more about his project than I do. Anyway, Macker sent me requirements for a healing potion he was gonna administer as part of some surgical procedure. I couldn’t get anything as powerful or precise as he needed. I’m a thaumochemist; I don’t know medicine that well. So it was beyond me to do that amount of gross tissue damage repair as controllably as they wanted it. I mean, I made some pretty nice innovations as far as the theory of potioncrafting, I’m hoping to get published as soon as it goes to peer review.

“But I couldn’t do what he needed, and eventually I got shut out of the project. Then one day he vanished. Alma set off for Bad Herzfeld and Macker stopped coming out of his lab. His assistants were still going in and out, but not long after that, the ethicists quarantined the place.”

“Has anyone else been quarantined?” Valeria asks.

“People from all three colleges got hit. I dunno about other ethicists, I haven’t heard about them quarantining anything of their own. But everyone else has. A group of engineering students were building a defense system to be deployed out to the Scar, and all of them got quarantined. Here in my department, Dr. Vilman – remember him? Stupid goatee, did a lot of stuff with crystals? – got shut down. Sometimes they quarantine the whole lab; sometimes they just shut down a project and everyone working on it gets a ‘guest lecture position’ over in Ethics. Sorbus said they got one of Macker’s assistants, Eric Pelbort. He had another one, Greta Ruble, but I guess she’s given them the slip.”

Emily’s got experiments to do on that leg, so we’ll let her get to it. As we head out, Gral asks one last question. “What’s up with those guards, by the way? Why do they only respond to those whistles?

“Uhhhh,” she says, as we fail our persuasion check. “They, er, don’t speak very good Valdian. Mostly foreigners, goliaths, the like. The whistles get their attention.”

Gral sighs and doesn’t push it. Vigdor’s already making plans to pickpocket a whistle. Valeria, since she has a direct invite to talk to the ethicists, considers the unheard-of paladin approach of Just Asking Them Directly.

First, though, Vigdor wants to check out the quarantine of Macker’s lab; he knew that professor well, and we’re all curious what’s been going down.

We walk on over to the surgical wing to case the joint. There’s a single owl guard blocking the hallway, presiding over a small barricade. A pleasant sandwich board sign states “Area quarantined by College of Ethics, apologies for the inconvenience.”

We try to walk in and the enormous guard holds out a hand to stop us. Shoshana tries to wiggle around him, like a cat trying to get at your dinner, but he impassively blocks her every move.

Gral tries a smoother approach. He begins with small talk; the guard doesn’t even twitch. He starts asking prying questions about the surgical ward. No response. Fine, then: he switches to Orcish, a sinister undertone weaving through his voice as he uses Words of Terror.

An insight roll reveals completely unchanged body language.

“Either they’re immune to fear or not a humanoid,” Gral reports back. “Not a single emotion. Definitely not goliath mercenaries.”

“Tryin’ to talk your way into the surgical wing?” says another chatty passerby. “Good luck. They got all the medical cadavers locked up in there and they won’t let us in.”

(Cadavers? Oh shit, we bet that’s the guard factory, theorize the players.)

“Oh, are you a med student?”

“Yeah. I work with Professor Herberts, or I used to, anyway. We needed a couple cadavers to do this comparison study about spleens; we got some weird ones from out in the wood, we compare spleens to see if place with thing don’t worry about it; need control spleen. And then these BIG DUMB IDIOTS wouldn’t let us in, and Herbert got transferred to the College of Ethics all of a sudden. He’s been gone a couple months.”

“How long do professors usually transfer for?” asks Gral.

“I mean, they usually pop over to give a lecture or two and come back by the end of the day.”

(Vigdor happens to remember that the College of Ethics also runs an asylum. They live in a big spooky castle and do dissections with guts and stuff, it can do a number on your head! Some of the ethicists have branched into the field of psychology. No reason to mention this when people are having extended stays on the ethics campus, of course…)

The student shrugs. “I gotta get to lecture. If you manage to get in there, any chance you can bring me back a couple spleens?”

We wave goodbye noncommittally, though Vigdor insists he can pop a spleen out of a corpse like a yolk from an egg. He’s a good surgeon!

Anyway, Vigdor went to school here, and the dice are on his side; he knows a side path through an old abandoned classroom into the surgical suite. He pops the lock on the door easily; all the undergrads used to go this way when slipping into lecture late, to get past the TA keeping track of tardies.

The guard is in earshot but facing the other direction, and he’s not even blinking, much less scanning around. Gral casts Silence on us and our very clanky party slips by easily.

Shosh sticks her head into the TA’s office. Nothing really stands out, but she swipes some interesting-looking notes from the desk drawers to look at later.

Meanwhile, Gral and Vigdor go into Macker’s office. The desk is an absolute mess, which is very unlike the guy Vigdor used to know. There are wheeled chalkboards crammed into the office, covered in scribbles and anatomical diagrams. Paging through the notes and glancing over the chalkboard, Vigdor makes a decent medicine check and can at least figure out what problem Macker was working on.

Based on what Dr. Emily told us, Macker’s trying to develop a surgical procedure. The issue is that whatever he’s doing would cause so much physical trauma that it’d kill the patient, and he’s looking for some way to prevent that. There are lists of healing options: formulas, spells, potions, nonmagical stabilization methods to keep the patient alive while various tissues are extracted from the body.

Gral’s unimpressed. Healing methods? That’s pretty tame for forbidden knowledge.

To Vigdor’s experienced eyes, this stuff looks mega-advanced and highly experimental, but Gral’s right – it’s not anything you’d scramble to censor.

Weirdly enough, the place doesn’t look ransacked, only disheveled and a little dusty. Macker’s notes haven’t been moved since he was here. Maybe this isn’t what the ethicists were after?

We head to cadaver storage while Valeria keeps watch. Cadaver storage is creepy as hell, but only because it’s, y’know, a room full of cadavers. A lot of the bodies, kept stable with Gentle Repose, appear to be Cursed, but that’s hardly weird. What’s so crazy they’d keep it hidden from everyone?

Vigdor opens the door to the dissection labs, Gral’s Silence deadening any ominous warning he might have had from the room beyond. Yes, the table here’s been recently used, and the bizarre symbols scrawled on the chalkboards have spilled onto the surrounding floor and walls, but Vigdor’s eyes are drawn to where the chalkboard peels away like skin to reveal a strange, multicolored, impossible space. The floor begins to take the shape of a stone hand that projects out into the shimmering void, joining a daisy-chain of enormous hands that form a walkway out to a marble platform floating in space.

Gral takes his Silence spell with him and runs to get Valeria.

Eyes starry, watching entire worlds and impossible shapes spinning through iridescent mists, Vigdor takes his first heady hit of Key taint.

As we cut session, Valeria considers that the ethicists may actually have a point.

#the cursewood #Session recap #sturmhearst university #gral omokk'duu #valeria argent #vigdor gavril #shoshana bat chaya #The key

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