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banjjakz · 6 months

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convection currents ; yuuta x GN!reader

“Am I important to you, Okkotsu-san?” God, he can’t stand it. The way you look at him, the uneven lilt in your fragile, quavering voice; it makes him want to bury himself alive inside of you. “Yuuta,” he says. “Just ‘Yuuta’ is fine.”

word count: 7.6k

warnings: horizontal hanky panky, obsession, possessive tendencies, unhealthy relationships, codependency, semi graphic descriptions of violence, major character death

‪♡‬ read on ao3 ‪♡‬

likes + reblogs appreciated!

Yuuta wants to like you.

And he does – like you, that is. He really, really does.

But there have been some moments that give him pause.

Don’t get him wrong! You’re sweet, kind, doting, attentive, and very clearly an anxious bundle of painful self-awareness. He finds comfort in the kindred connection between your loner spirits. Training is made infinitely easier when he steals a glance at the gentle flash of your sweet smile, the soft flutter of your hair in the breeze, the twinkle of your laugh, floating through the air as a windchime’s ephemeral melody serenades the breeze. Everything about you seems to be perfectly enveloped and embedded within his daily reality at Tokyo Tech; natural, easy, right. That is what it feels like, to be at your side.

The budding affection between the two of you kicks his foolish, stuttering heart into overdrive. How long has it been, since the blood pumping through his veins was motivated by a sensation other than mortal terror?

You make him want to envision a reality wherein he’s embedded into the fabric of the living, breathing world, rather than continue to occupy his perch as a pariah, perennially scapegoated to the periphery.

Each sidelong glance thrown your way is accompanied by the erratic twitch of his clammy hands, as he tries and fails to pay attention during one of Gojo’s rambling, nonsensical lectures. The light in his eyes revives when you call his name. Innards undulating in and out of place, he tracks your body’s every movement, your muscles contorting fast as quicksilver during scrimmages, lethal and alluring all at once.

These are some of the objectively positive aspects of his attraction to you; the things that pull him from his bed in the morning, calling to him like the abyss compels a creature of the night to rise from its coffin.

And then, there are the more…er, complex moments.

“Did you just come back from a mission, Okkotsu-san?”

Like today, for example. Yuuta had just arrived back on campus after a fun afternoon spent with Toge traversing around Tokyo, patronizing various cafes and konbinis. You were lingering at the entrance of the dormitory, back to the front door, effectively coming between him and his bed.

“Ah, no. I was with Inumaki. We were hanging out for a bit.”

“Where?”

“Just in the city…”

“What did you do?”

He stills, uncertain. “Um…that’s…”

“I’m sorry.” Your head ducks in shame, hiding your face from his quizzical glance. “It’s been hard adjusting to student life as a mid-year transfer. I keep up well enough in classes, and on missions, but I don’t think any of the other students like me all that much. Forgive me, Okkotsu-san. To be honest, I’m jealous of how easily you get along with Inumaki-san and Maki-san.”

Of course. How could he assume anything different?

As a non-lineage sorcerer, you were haphazardly discovered by one of the senior sorcerers on a mission gone south and roped into the jujutsu world without prior knowledge of its existence. From a firsthand perspective, he of all people should be able to understand how isolating that must be.

Kicking himself for his judgemental first reaction, Yuuta forces his skeleton to release the tension it harbors. “No, don’t worry. Have you been sleeping well? Did you eat dinner?”

Sheepishly, you shake your head.

This is how he finds himself alone, with you, in a secluded alcove on the outskirts of campus. The afternoon has matured into a thick, syrupy evening, the sky bruised with a smattering of warm hues. You sit on the grassy bank as a pair, shoulder-to-shoulder, your union celebrated by the rhythmic thrum of the cicadas’ song.

“Here, take it.” He offers you the last flavored onigiri leftover from his spoils of konbini adventures.

You protest, waving your hands in front of you. “No, no, no. I’m fine with just a plain one. Please. I don’t want to cause you any more trouble.”

“Plain is my favorite,” he lies. “I don’t even like yaki.”

“...Then why did you have one in your bag?”

“Haha! That’s a great question! I don’t know!” Beet red, Yuuta scratches the back of his head.

Out of mercy, and perhaps pity, you graciously accept the yaki onigiri. Munching in companionable quietude ensues for several minutes, as you both watch the sun impale itself on the dark horizon, bleeding out across the sky in dark, inky tones.

Without sitting face-to-face, it’s easier to speak to you, somehow. The insistent pressure on his chest lifts long enough for some words of actual substance to slip forth. “It’s hard, the first year.”

You remain silent.

“My first year was hell, too. Although that’s probably because I was being haunted.”

“By who?”

He blinks, your question knocking him off balance. Not by “what,” but by “who” had he been haunted? You’ve always been observant. This is why you’ve survived for so long.

“Um, it’s a long story… I’ll tell you in full one day. For now, I’ll just say that there was someone very special to me when I was a child… and it was hard for her to let go of me, when push came to shove.”

“Ah. I see.”

Although August has yet to conclude, the air around him is significantly chillier than what is characteristic of Tokyo’s late-summer hazy heat. Yuuta shivers, pulling his knees up to his chin.

“Yeah. But, um, anyways. If you need someone to talk to…to be by your side… I would like to be that person for you.” He utters your name like a prayer, too concentrated on not stuttering to be embarrassed at the earnest tremble in his voice. “I wish I had a confidante when I first got here. It would have saved me a lot of trouble.”

“A confidante? But didn’t you have your friend?”

Your reply jolts him into looking at you. The expression on your face tells him that you truly mean it as a genuine inquiry.

“Well, um. I was being haunted…and Rika – er, she didn’t really listen to me. She actually got a little overprotective, I think.”

“Do you think she was evil?”

“No!” The denial explodes from his mouth before Yuuta can even fully process the nuance of the question posed. “No,” he repeats, at an appropriate volume, this time. “She was clingy, and protective, and possessive, and honestly violent, but she wasn’t evil. I loved her. I think a part of me always will.”

Love? What is he doing talking to you, alone, at night, about love? How embarrassing. He hadn’t meant to say all that!

Quickly, he stuffs his mouth with the remainder of his onigiri. No more talking. Just chewing.

If you are perturbed by his sentimental ramblings, you show no sign of it. If anything, your face remains impassive, serene, undisturbed like the surface of a tranquil pond.

“You loved her for that, then. Was she haunting you if you were in love?”

After he finishes choking down the final, sticky remnants of his dinner, Yuuta frowns, mulling over your words which are heavy by the virtue of their implication, yet hang and sway in the air as an empty noose dangles from the gallows.

“...I don’t know.” Yuuta says, at length. “That’s what I was diagnosed with when I came here. And it was hard for me to function, back when Rika was still here. I didn’t have any friends. And people close to me got hurt a lot.”

“It sounds like she was always trying to protect you… even when you were apart. I only wish one day, I find someone who would have the capacity to care for me like that…”

“You want that?”

“I do.” Not an ounce of hesitation in your firm, forthcoming reply. “I’ve spent my whole life as something worth less than notice or acknowledgement. Always feeling invisible, never having anyone – not even one person – who cared about me. Up until this point, I’ve lived life wanting to die every day.”

For lack of a better reply, Yuuta simply asks: “What changed?”

“...I met you, Okkotsu-san.”

Oh, wow.

It’s kind of funny – where other people describe feeling hot, Yuuta has always been chronically, terminally cold. Your words induce a rapidly onsetting deep-freeze which permeates every layer of his skin, every molecule of his bones, every wretched atom of marrow lying dormant inside of him, all of it, every fiber of being rooted to the spot in an indescribable emotion.

“I–I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s okay. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that. I apologize for making you uncomfortable.”

That’s wrong. “No, you didn’t! You didn’t, I swear. Just… um, I’m also a person who is lonely, like you described. So I’m not used to, err, being, ah, important. To people? I guess?”

“Oh… I see.”

Clearly, the higher function of critical thought has abandoned him; this is the only explanation for how he reaches to grab your hands, sending the half-eaten yaki onigiri tumbling down to the dark earth beneath your anxiously shifting feet. He squeezes you, tightly, and is delighted in a morose sort of way to find your digits even colder than his.

“Let’s teach each other. How to be important to someone else.”

“Am I important to you, Okkotsu-san?”

God, he can’t stand it. The way you look at him, the uneven lilt in your fragile, quavering voice; it makes him want to bury himself alive inside of you.

“Yuuta,” he says. “Just ‘Yuuta’ is fine.”

;

Field missions have been a part of his daily life as a sorcerer since the day he arrived at Tokyo Tech. Battle has always been challenging for all the obvious reasons, but never before has Yuuta had to deal with the added hardship of fighting alongside you.

This, of course, is not meant to imply that you aren’t able to hold your own; on the contrary, your physical and cursed prowess has granted you the rank of semi-special grade despite this being your first year enrolled in any kind of formal jujutsu schooling. Your cursed technique is innate to your personality and sensibilities, which helps. But even if that weren’t the case, you would still be one of Tokyo’s top-performing students.

Missions are difficult because, despite all of this being true, Yuuta is powerless to curb the instinct to protect you during fights.

It manifests in small ways, at first: insisting to be paired up with you for assignments, always volunteering to partner up when splitting from the larger group during an investigation– things like this.

His behavior starts to stray into problematic territory the longer he is allowed to get away with it, unchecked.

“After Ijichi casts the veil, we’ll sweep the building. Inumaki and Yuuta, you two take the upper levels. We’ll do the bottom half,” orders Maki, gesturing between you and herself.

Immediately, Yuuta objects. “No. I’ll do the bottom half. You and Inumaki should go up together.”

“What?”

“I have a phobia of heights,” lies Yuuta, shamelessly. “It will impact my performance.”

“I have literally never heard you talk about being afraid of heights before.”

“Shake sushi,” agrees Inumaki.

You remain silent, pupils trembling, bottom lip severed between your teeth in a display of bashfulness reserved only for Yuuta’s blatant favoritism, which he wields frequently, in hopes to catch a even a single glimpse of you just as you appear now.

“I’m self-conscious about it,” he laughs, scratching the back of his head. “Thank you both for understanding.”

“Wait! Okkotsu, we didn’t–”

And with that, he grabs you by the wrist and pulls you away with him, sprinting into the abandoned love hotel before Maki or Inumaki can prevent you from absconding.

The two of you are laughing, tickled as usual at the effects of pissing Maki the hell off. Consequences will rain down in due time, no doubt, but for now, it feels best to bask in each other’s presence.

Once through the front door, Yuuta halts to an easy jog, guiding you past the cobweb-covered front desk, around the decrepit scraps of the once-ostentatiously decorated lobby, all the way to the far back corner, where a solid, heavy metal door obfuscates the emergency stairway.

“Oh, it looks jammed… Should we–”

Your stumped musing is cut off by the ricocheting cacophony of Yuuta’s boot violating the door. The metal itself bends and warps, caving in on itself in a hurry to make way for the unstoppable force of the sorcerer’s impassioned blow. He didn’t have to activate any cursed energy.

“Let’s go!” Chirps Yuuta, cheerfully.

In another context, maybe, it would be appropriate for his pulse to spike, for his hands to clam, for his breath to quicken, at the prospect of being alone with you. However, the reality of the current situation is that Yuuta is dragging you down into some dark, unknown depth, where neither of you will be disturbed. As you descend the concrete flights, visibility is increasingly hard to come by, and this, too, excites Yuuta. He is now forced to rely more heavily upon his other senses, which naturally prioritizes the scent of your sweat; the sound of your rabbit-paced heartbeat; the feeling of the paper-thin skin of your inner wrist; the taste of his own desire.

The cursed spirit they’re looking for has been wreaking havoc on the surrounding commercial strip, to the point where several businesses have had to draw their shutters in the wake of the love hotel’s primary foreclosure. Evidently, recurring, unresolved muder-suicides did not bode well for business.

“Um…if we’re supposed to be searching for the curse behind all of the couples’ deaths, shouldn’t we be looking in the bedrooms?”

Your voice echoes, tinny, in the thick, humid air of the emergency stairwell. They haven’t hit the bottom yet.

“Eh, maybe. This doesn’t feel like that kind of case, though.”

“Huh? How do you figure?”

Although moving swiftly, at the speed of light, your footfalls make barely a whisper against the aged concrete steps. Still, it’s enough for Yuuta’s hypersensitive ears to pick up on. Deprived of the sight of you, he drinks in the intimation of your existence, greedily.

“Heat rises,” he says, slowing pace as they approach what can only be the door to the boiler room, which has been left ominously ajar. “Cold sinks.”

“...Um, I’m not sure I follow.”

Stealthily, he slithers inside the slender crack between frame and the door itself. The angle of its opening doesn’t even waver. He pulls you along with him, replying as he moves, “Crimes of passion carry a kind of hot, frenetic energy. Panic, impulse, instinct – all of those things have lots of, hmm, friction? Like an explosion. Really hot at first, dangerously hot, and then it fizzles out into nothing.”

Unfamiliar pieces of enormous machinery tower in the dark. As much as you are able to while crouching so low to the floor, you take care not to trip over any errant pipes.

“So this isn’t a hot curse?”

“No,” Yuuta confirms. “The curse–” murder-suicides in a love hotel, how on-the-nose could it be? “–is premeditated by nature. Obsession solidifies over time. To act on that is a calculated choice.”

He stops short. You would’ve crashed straight into his shoulder blades if he weren’t painfully cognizant of your whereabouts at all times. He preemptively steadies you on your feet before you can even begin to stumble.

“At some point in this building, someone,” says Yuuta, quietly, as he cautiously eyes the opaque blackness before them, “spent a lot of time thinking about their beloved.”

“How can you tell?”

“Cold sinks,” Yuuta repeats.

Violence explodes, seemingly, out of nowhere. The curse attacks all at once, aiming perfectly towards you as though it had been lying in wait, stalking your every move. Yuuta always takes point whenever you pair up together, because he always insists on taking the first hit. It is this presupposition that leaves you wide open, vulnerable for attack from behind.

“Yuuta!!” You shriek, desperately dodging the grotesque appendages reaching out to you. Your body hits the floor just seconds shy of what would have been a gory fatality.

When you lift your head to identify the exact form of the curse, you still in uncomprehending terror.

“...Yuuta?”

How can this be?

Not even seconds prior, Yuuta had been a whole, living, breathing, intact person, guiding you as solidly as your own personal anchor. Why, then, does he appear to you now as a corpse, brain matter spilling down his temples, bloated limbs belying days of decay, flesh pale and tender and loose around the bone.

No, no, no. Had you been too late? Had the curse gotten to him first? Are you next?

Despair fills you, overflowing your sensibilities with the intrusive desire to rid the world of your miserable existence. How could you have let him slip through your fingers? How could you be expected to return to any semblance of a life, with Yuuta gone? You don’t deserve a future without Yuuta – you don’t even want to imagine one.

You’ll do what’s right, and offer your life in penance that you failed to protect his own.

Cursed energy welling within you, threatening to tear you apart at the very seams, you are about to implode with all the conviction of an abandoned lover– but a familiar, desperate cry of your name halts your ministrations.

That was Yuuta’s voice calling out to you.

But there he is, lying before you as nothing more than a desecrated body.

Unless…?

Yuuta calls your name again, sharply, this time in a tone adjacent to something scolding. The fear of disappointing Yuuta outweighs all else. It’s enough to snap you back to reality, to clear your clouded faculties and reveal to you the real Yuuta, who stands on guard just a few paces away, living, breathing, sweating, crouching, preparing for action.

“The curse,” he calls, eyes never leaving the thing in front of you. “It’s the curse. Don’t worry, it’s not real. You’re alive.”

“I’m alive?” You parrot incredulously. “That’s your corpse over there!”

“...Huh? My corpse? But I see yours–” He cuts himself off, face going eerily blank. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Close your eyes. Don’t flinch.”

In your defense, you try your best.

Remaining sightless and motionless is difficult as the rest of your senses are inundated with the disgustingly explicit soundtrack of slaughter. The sound of flesh forcibly sliding apart on the edge of Yuuta’s cursed katana is familiar, at this point, but no less gut-wrenching to bear witness to. When he deals the final blow, the evidence sprays all over the front of you, drenching you from head to toe in what should be the curse’s blood.

And yet, the liquid is frigid. Like you’ve been assaulted by the waves of the cruel, immortal sea.

“You can look now.”

Hesitantly, your eyes flutter open. You’re met with the sight of Yuuta, also covered head to toe in the viscous liquid produced by the corpse’s demise. Now that the exorcism has been completed, the preternatural heaviness is lifted from the building. But still, you struggle to breathe.

“Why didn’t you let me fight?” Something horrible announces itself, crowing from an ugly, dark corner of your mind best kept away from public view. “Was I going to slow you down?”

He sheathes in katana without sparing the gory weapon another glance. The space between your bodies is quickly extinguished, as Yuuta crosses the space in a matter of heartbeats. Blood roars in your ears, drowning out all which does not consist of Yuuta’s fixed gaze, Yuuta’s shaky breath, Yuuta’s pallid, sweaty skin, Yuuta, Yuuta, Yuuta.

“No.”

A large, wet palm meets your cheek. The soft squelch should be repulsive. Your stomach flips for entirely unrelated reasons.

“Why do you think all those murder-suicides happened?”

The question catches you off guard, but you answer, nonetheless. “The curse.”

“What do you think the curse made people see, for them to do something like that?”

You want to ask what the hell this line of questioning has to do with anything, with the mounting intensity in his stare, with the firm hand on your face, calloused thumb rubbing miniscule half-crescents into the crux of your jaw where the bone and flesh is pliant and breakable, could crack open like the shell of a creature already cooked alive, prepared to be split open for gluttonous consumption–

And then, rudely, the memory of mere moments prior hits you:

You’ll do what’s right, and offer your life in penance that you failed to protect his own.

“Oh,” you whimper, pathetically. “They see– the curse makes them see, um, someone special to them.”

“Not just ‘special,’” Yuuta corrects. From this close you can see the faint trail of blue-green veins spiderwebbing their way from his eyebags, metastasizing every which-way, just underneath his skin. “What is a curse?”

“The coalescence of negative energy secreted by human non-sorcerers.” You rattle off the elementary answer without second thought.

“What kind of curse was this?”

The moisture evaporates from your mouth. “A cold one.”

“Why?”

“‘Obsession solidifies over time. To act on that is a calculated choice,’” you mimic back.

Although, your tone doesn’t quite replicate the self-assured way by which Yuuta had originally imparted the information. No, your voice shakes apart, just as disjointed as the rest of your body feels at this moment.

“What did you see when you looked at the curse?”

He already knows. He wants you to say it. You want to plead for mercy, if only to savor the eroticism of begging for something you know will not be spared for you.

“I saw you, Yuuta.”

The curse’s blood is bitter and cold, like soured juice, when it is thrust upon your tongue. Yuuta is uncaring of the gore coating the both of you, the time-sensitive nature of this mission assignment, the way your knees sway and buckle as the adrenaline begins to leak from your body, replaced by a new, even more exhilarating sensation.

Opaque darkness still shrouds the boiler room; and yet, it isn’t enough to prevent your souls from recognizing one another. Hands wrestle with buttons, fingers grapple with zippers, teeth gnash into flesh, and the two of you take each other apart not with the reckless abandon of lovers under the duress of a transient liaison; no, you are methodological, thorough, all-consumed by the well-marinated desire that has been fertilizing from the moment you first came into contact with one another.

Yuuta throws you down to the floor and moves his body at a preternatural speed so that he beats you there, his hand cradling the back of your skull before it can strike the concrete.

“I saw you too,” he huffs into your mouth.

“You were d-dead…” The way you struggle to say the word is cute. You’re so fucking cute. God, he’s no better than a fucking curse.

It’s impossible to curb the temptation to sink his teeth into your neck, eagerly feeding off of the intoxicating effects of your pained, thrilled squeal. “You weren’t,” he murmurs into the abused flesh, pressing a kiss where he’d just gnawed. “You looked close, but you weren’t dead.”

“...Huh…?”

Can you even think right now? Do you understand what he’s saying to you? How could you possibly grasp the implications of what is transpiring, right now, when you’re laid out on the floor, snow-angeling in the blood and guts and gore of a murdered curse, delirious off of a heady combination of lust and adrenaline and fear?

“You were just barely alive. On the edge.” He moans, rocking the hard line of his body into your own. “Do you know what you said to me?”

“Tell me.”

“You asked me to finish the job.”

Back arching off of the grimy, gritty ground, every fiber of your being reaches out for the fingers that tear at the cloth of your uniform as though it is nothing more than some cheap costuming. “You know what? I knew it wasn’t the real you, when it said that. ‘S not like you.”

He’s monologuing to himself, it seems. You are far beyond the hope of verbally communicating in anything other than your strained, hoarse whines.

“You’d never ask me to do that. You’d stay with me until the very end, wouldn’t you?”

Desperately, hopelessly, you nod, your fingernails carving your intentions into the meat of his shoulders. When had his shirt come off? Did you do that?

Are you the one tearing away the last bits of offending clothing, or is that him? Do you growl in stoked desire as he breaches your entrance, or does that inhuman noise come from the both of you?

When Yuuta is buried inside of you, he feels like he’s finally been laid to rest. There is the warm, comforting embrace often described as death – but instead of an eternal bliss found at the conclusion of his life, Yuuta is able to access this euphoria by burying himself inside of you. You are his headstone, his tomb, his coffin: all of you exists to house the death of all of him, and without him inside of you, you would live on in aimless unfulfillment, anxiously awaiting the day a beautiful boy will come to die under your care and linger with you in eternity.

You are–warm, hot, burning up, self-immolating beneath his fingers. Every thrust forward threatens to scald his hips on your molten flesh.

“Fu-fu-fu-fu-fu–” you stutter, body shuddering to life, rising from the ground, seizing and contorting in strange shapes as you struggle and fail to cope with the insurgence of pleasure coursing through you. “Yuu–ta–”

“Promise me.”

“Wha–”

“Promise me,” he hisses, hands coming to your throat. “Promise you’ll stay. You’re too important to me, I c-can’t lose you too, hnnnnn–”

Promise you, I’ll never leave you, is what you are able to only mouth, breath and voice held captive in his unrelenting grasp. Because you cannot voice it entirely, you pour all the contents of your heart and soul into the sentiment. Fingers rising weakly to clasp onto his, you tighten his grip on your windpipe and take comfort in the drowsy haziness that cradles your consciousness.

When he comes, he holds you to him like he’s afraid you’re going to crawl off and die somewhere else if he doesn’t keep you right where you are, crushed against, his shivering frame, so tightly bound to him that he can hear your diaphragm contract and expand, over and over and over again, each breath cut short by a wheeze or a sob.

Through it all, he cradles you. Naked, bruised, and forever scarred from the sight of not-Yuuta’s rotting corpse, you cling to him and release your sorrows into the dark, empty abyss of the boiler room.

Back and forth, he rocks your body, soothing your nervous system into an illusion of safety. There is no such thing as “safety,” not for jujutsu sorcerers – but together, with limbs intertwined as one, this is the closest you can come to fooling yourselves into hoping, one day, for a safe place. A safe person, even.

“Shhh,” he simpers, thumb swiping your cheek, which is damp from an unholy mixture of cursed blood, sweat, spit, and tears. “We’re together. It’s all okay.”

“T-together…”

“Yeah. Just you and me.”

;

“You don’t think that’s an issue?”

“I’m not saying there isn’t an issue. But we should tread lightly, here. We don’t know what could happen if we interfere.”

“If we don’t interfere, the newbie might die.”

“It won’t get to that point. I won’t let it happen. Oi, don’t blow smoke in my face. That’s unladylike.”

“Don’t lecture me on what’s ‘ladylike,’ cocksucker.”

“Wow! That burns!”

“Come here, I’ll show you what else burns.”

Lingering outside the door to the infirmary, you shift your weight from foot to foot, unsure of the appropriate course of action to take. Clearly, Gojo and Ieiri are in the middle of a conversation that is not meant to be heard by prying ears – not that you can make heads or tails of what they’re talking about, anyways.

All you wanted to do was come see Ieri for your weekly check-up, as was customary following the love hotel mission. The adrenaline must have numbed your pain receptors in the moment, because as soon as you’d arrived back on campus, your entire body felt like you’d been through a grinder.

You were kinda confused, at first, because you didn’t even engage the curse in combat. In due time, of course, you remembered what–or who–had actually bruised your ribs, broken your skin, sprained your joints, left you carrying the contours of his wanting.

Why were they talking about you dying, anyways? Yuuta saved your life. Nothing was going to happen to you as long as he was by your side.

“Hey.”

Jumping out of your skin has started to feel good, kind of. You look forward to Yuuta’s unceremonious greetings as he creeps up on you in silence, futilely waiting for you to detect his concealed presence.

“H-hi,” you demure. Why are you shy? He’s been so far inside of you he practically fused into your skeleton. Blushing because he caught you unawares is ridiculous.

“Aren’t you going to go in?”

Wondering how he knows what you’re here for is pointless. Equally as useless is trying to deduce how he was able to figure out your recurring appointment time. He’s Yuuta – it’s natural for him to acquire knowledge about you, as easily as one picks low-hanging fruit from a tree.

“Umm, I think they’re talking about something.”

He frowns. “About what?”

You hesitate. Should you tell him what you heard? “Ah, I don’t know...”

“Are you sure?”

You remain silent, unsure of how to proceed. Part of you wants to bare your innards at all times, whenever Yuuta is around. It feels natural, like a rabbit’s cowering. On the other hand…

Somehow, the thought of telling Yuuta the truth–yeah, Gojo-sensei and Ieiri-sensei think there’s a chance I might die soon–would not end well for anyone involved. If there was something you truly needed to know, you’re sure your senseis would tell you.

Right?

“Please trust me,” you whisper, only feeling a little guilty. You’re doing it to protect him. If something dangerous is going to happen to you, Yuuta shouldn’t be involved at all. He must live. You must make sure of it.

Reluctantly, he acquiesces, although he insists on accompanying you to your check-up that week. Strangely, neither Gojo nor Ieiri seem surprised that he is here with you, and make no effort to question why. Yuuta is allowed to linger at your sides as Ieiri takes your vitals, reviews the status of your various injuries, and even holds your hand when she scans your cursed energy levels. Thankfully, you are on track to make a perfect recovery.

In fact, not only are you replenishing the strength and ability that had been impaired during the love hotel mission–you are regenerating cursed energy at rates which exceed your natural capacities.

When Ieiri relays this to you, Gojo, who has been lingering in the infirmary for some unknown reason (you suspect it’s simply to annoy Ieiri with his very presence) speaks up: “Do you know what that means, kid?”

“Um…” You start, nervous. Everyone’s eyes are on you. It feels like you’re under a microscope. “I’m moving up a rank?”

Gojo bursts into a fit of giggles, doubling over at the waist. “Wow, what an opportunist! Haha, maybe in the future, if your cursed energy continues to compound exponentially. I’m asking you about the cause. Any idea why you’re suddenly overflowing with power?”

“No.” Your answer is as truthful as it is anxious.

“Typically, a dramatic increase in output like this only occurs after a Binding Vow. Make any life-or-death promises, recently?”

It’s supposed to be a joke, the way Gojo says it. You can tell because his crow’s feet dip down just far enough away from underneath his blindfold that you can tell whenever he smiles with his eyes. And he is smiling, after he cracks the joke. You’re also able to intuit when he stops smiling, as the depressions on his face smooth out into a careful blankness. You are thirty seconds too late to the punchline. Instead of laughing along, you remain damningly silent, and Yuuta shifts uncomfortably at your side.

“Okay,” says Gojo, clapping his hands. “Alright.”

Although you’re fully clothed in your school uniform, it makes you feel chillingly exposed when what feels like all Six of his Eyes bore into the collection of dark marks ringing your neck in a brutal, makeshift collar. Those were not, in fact, the work of a curse.

Yuuta fidgets with the flimsy paper lining the examination bed. You kick your feet like a child in time out.

“You owe me seven thousand yen,” Shoko deadpans.

“Hey! Didn’t we say forty-five?”

“Don’t kid around.”

Am I in trouble? The terrified plea swells to the front of your mouth, begging to escape. You force the words to sit, stay, and curdle on your tongue.

“Can we go now?” Asks Yuuta, uncharacteristically direct.

Given the odd gravity in the room, you don’t expect Gojo’s easy wave of his hand, dismissing the two of you with a flippant hum. Not having to be told twice, you hightail it out of the infirmary, grateful to be released from the constant invasion of privacy and security that is a prolonged existence within the reach of Gojo’s Six Eyes.

Finally alone once more, the training grounds are a welcome reprieve for you and Yuuta, who crash into the grass clearing hand-in-hand, heartbeats synced.

“Did we make a Binding Vow? When we…you know…”

Yuuta’s voice trails off, lamely.

“What if we did? Would you regret it?”

“Huh? No, of course not! It’s just…well–”

“Well, what?”

“That’s kind of permanent,” Yuuta whispers, dark pools of obsidian sorrow holding your gaze in its cruel, captivating clutches. “And we don’t know what will happen if it breaks.”

For one second, the rawness of it hits you. Fear washes down your back, prickling your flesh, raising goosebumps, locking your spine rigidly into place. The two of you had certainly made a life-or-death promise, infused with cursed energy and blood and…other…bodily fluids. To inadvertently perform a Binding Vow meant that the sheer intensity behind both of your wills was purely, wholly devoted to the promise.

Which is why you take a step closer to him, voice steady. “I didn’t make that promise with the intention to break it. Ever.”

He sucks in a sharp breath. “Don’t…you can’t be sure of that.”

“I am.”

“You won’t be able to guarantee it.”

“I will.”

Familiarly calloused hands grab your shoulders, jostling you with charged intention. “You don’t get it! My favorite person in the whole world already left me once. If that happens again, I can’t… I don’t know…”

“Yuuta.” You don’t have to lay a finger on him for his entire body to stand at attention, drawing tall and taught, when you call his name. “I will never leave you, even if I die.”

The ensuing kiss tastes like metal.

Despite the passionate fervor with which he devours you, his mouth his cold, and his digits even more so as they dig into your cheeks, your throat, your waist, your chest, groping and pulling and kneading your flesh to loosen the rigor mortis that has arrested your willingness.

“D-don’t, ah, make any m-more marks…”

Your protest is, at best, unconvincing, the person least of all convinced being yourself, as Yuuta’s teeth and tongue on the tender flesh of your neck make you feel like you’re about to leave your body. “Hnng–Gojos-sensei already knows, I think.”

“Good.” He’s crazed, nipping and slurping at your sensitive soft bits like a man starved. “Let him know. Everyone should know. I shouldn’t even–” he kisses “–have–” he bites “–to say it–” he licks you in between speaking, as though it goes against the grain of his being to part ways with you for more than just a few jagged inhalations.

The ground hits you hard, reprimanding you for your clumsiness with a firm impact on your backside. Yuuta pursues with haste, hands slamming down on either side of your head, ripping the grass in retribution.

“Yuuta,” you hiss, hands flying to his dark mop of hair, trying to reel him back – in vain, of course. “We are outside. In the middle of the day. Anyone could walk by!”

“Don’t care.”

His eyes are glazed, half-lidded, pupils blown wide and deeply dark as a gunshot wound, uncaring of your anxiety as he attempts to dive back into you.

“Wait! What if someone sees me?” Now, he rears back. “I don’t want anyone else to see, Yuuta… only you get to see me like this.”

Even the ants traipsing across the clearing stop dead in their tracks, rendered motionless, silent, at the abrupt onslaught of highly charged cursed energy that washes through every living and non-living thing within a five-mile radius.

“Okay.”

Wordlessly, your world upends as you are thrown over a wide shoulder clad in spotless, wrinkled white. You’ve always thought it was funny – how Yuuta’s uniform never managed to permanently stain itself with any of the gore he frequently encountered, and yet, there was always a noticeable depression in the seams, ever-lurking, complicating the otherwise flawless expanse, evoking a sense of pity.

Even when the shirt flies off, abandoned to crumple sadly in the corner of his bedroom, you can’t get its image out of your head. That spotless white. Those gleaming gold buttons dripping in iridescent rivulets down the front of the garment. Only within the intricate designs etched into their surface is one able to glean the barest hint of blood, staining the metal a pale crimson. If you weren’t looking for it, you wouldn’t notice it.

But you have always sought out his ugly, twisted parts. Even when he tries to hide. Even when he might duck from them himself.

That’s okay.

That’s why he has you.

When he bites you so hard that the wound draws blood; when his palms squeeze around your windpipe so deftly that you lose vision; when pins down your bruised hips, ignoring their wriggling avoidance; when his unquiet nature makes itself known, eclipsing the carefully bashful performance he puts on for his peers so that he might be liked, or loved, even–that is when you feel most connected to him. That is when your affections burn brightest.

And during the comedown, as he holds you close and rocks your brutalized body back and forth and back again, you are well aware that it is he himself who he seeks to soothe.

He doesn’t know, you realize, broken out of your post-coital mental haze with a pointed moment of clarity.

Yuuta has no clue what lurks inside the haunted catacombs of his soul.

What does it say about you, then, that his naivete only serves to further incense your want, smoldering like an inferno brewing at the base of a pyre, threatening to engulf your sorry corpse in entirety?

;

As third year trudges on, instruction takes less time in the classroom, or on campus. More frequently, you find yourself out on missions from sun-up to sundown, running around Tokyo-to and even surrounding prefectures. The grades of the curses you go up against only increase with time, and so, to, does your proximity to mortal danger.

Through it all, Yuuta is present. Indignantly so. Despite your rank as a semi-special grade sorcerer, you have yet to embark solo on an assignment. The pair of you are one combative unit, at this point so intertwined in sentiment and instinct that rarely is it necessary to reach for verbal exchange while engaged in battle. It is as though the reserve of cursed energy you draw from is a pool shared between you, a combination of your innate abilities plus an additional overflow, supplied by the Binding Vow you had consummated all those months ago.

So close are you, now, that Yuuta grows comfortable – confident, even – with your hold on his proverbial leash. These days, he is less neurotic when you inquire as to his whereabouts. Your prying questions provoke within him nothing other than a deep-seated sense of reassurance. He no longer doubts where he stands with you, as he once did when you were still a fresh-faced, mid-year transfer adjusting to life at Tokyo Tech.

In retrospect, he recognizes that he should never have let his guard down.

It’s his fault, really. Entirely his fault. The extra strength provided by the powerful effects of the Binding Vow deluded him into a false sense of security.

He shouldn’t have been so careless with your life. He shouldn’t have strayed so far from your side. He shouldn’t have let you out of his sight. He shouldn’t have left you alone, even if it was only for a split second–not even.

Once again, he has failed to save the most important person in his life. Somehow, losing you is worse than losing Rika. He is no longer a child. He possessed both the skill and ability to save you.

And yet, he had been absent in your time of need.

The one time you’d been off on a mission without him. The one and only time. Principle Yaga’s sorry excuse was that the higher-ups found it strange that you, as a semi-special grade, had never completed a solo assignment. Apparently, your rank was being threatened if you refused any longer to display independent capability.

Well. Now there’s no rank for you to claim, anymore.

After news of your death reaches him, he roams campus like an aimless specter, as though he is the one who has been robbed of life.

In a way, he has. Half of his being has perished. He limps, lopsided, dragging the phantom weight of your body with him wherever he goes.

It takes a while to get used to the absence of your physical, living, breathing manifestation. As a fellow sorcerer, you have been wholly eradicated from the fabric of his reality.

But as a spirit…?

Death is not enough to break a Binding Vow – this, Yuuta knows better than anyone. He retains his augmented cursed abilities, along with your presence. The two of you join once more in battle, as he summons you to protect and guard him in life as he failed to do for you. Your selfless nature has never been more clearly evident. Not a single call goes unanswered, not a single need of his unmet.

Is this a haunting?

No, he doesn’t think so.

When the two of you had still been skittish and shy around one another, nothing more than a pair of innocently covetous children, you’d dared him to reflect on his relationship with Rika. What had been translated to him as a haunting, you reimagined as something more corporeal, something genuine, something worthy of gratitude, and love.

This is how he chooses to think of you – the both of you, together, still joined in perfect union. No matter the fact that you will watch him age, change, develop, and eventually die, one day, should he be so lucky. You do not haunt his waking hours. You do not terrorize his dreams.

You love him in a way that transcends the bounds of space and time.

He has not been cursed. Rather, he has been blessed with your unconditional love.

To earn true forgiveness, he must show you his, as well. You must occupy his every waking thought. You will invade his every intention. You are at the forefront of his mind when he rises with the dawn, and the memory of your breath against the shell of his ear whispers to him good night. You dress him. You urge him to sustenance. You machinate his combat. You heal his wounds. You wipe his tears when he sobs, alone, terribly alone, sobbing into his knees after each time the life of a friend meets a senseless, violent conclusion.

You are still there when he wraps a rough, harried palm around his throbbing arousal, thrusting up into an elusive, now long-gone pleasure. You guide his hands’ journey across the hazardous dips and valleys of his rib cage, the grotesque concave of his stomach, the sharp blades of his hip bones. His skeleton threatens to crawl outside of his flesh. It yearns for something beyond this senseless cycle of bloodshed, grief, and rage.

Never does he feel closer to salvation than when he is on the precipice of ecstasy, dehydrated, underfed, delirious, heart beating so fast that it limits his vision, his lung capacity. When he occupies this liminal space, it is not the brink of orgasm which he straddles. As he approaches climax, he yearns not for an explosion of wet heat, but for the euphoric embrace of a final ending: your arms around him once more, real, tangible, warm.

Until then, he will trudge onwards. Miserably alive. Cold inside and out. Numb to physical pain, constantly inundated with the wounds inflicted on his spirit, his sentiments, his soul.

Solace finds him in the fact that you committed to remain by his side, forever. How could he wallow in total despair when this remains true?

You chose this, after all.

You chose him.

You did.

Didn’t you?

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ean-sovukau · 1 year

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I've been reading many posts about Danny being the Ghost King, Jazz being Queen Mother, Dan redemption, Dani being his daughter, Danny and his clones, summonings, hilarious assumptions and so on. So, I thought why not combine them.

A new Ruler of the Infinite Realms has been chosen and all realms can feel the changes. But not everyone is okay with that because it has been a few millennia since the Tyrant King was sealed and there's suddenly this new ruler that they absolutely have no info on. That won't do for them.

So after countless hours of searching, scrying, seance and not so great attempts at summoning, the finally found a very old spell, written in on the wall of an ancient temple that they can barely read or translate, that have a slight higher chance of success. A spell that can reveal the royal succession lines of the Infinite Realms's throne. So naturally people fought amongst each other to have it for themselves and some of it got lost in translation or destroyed.

But the spell still works, not like how they want it or how the original spell intended to work, but it worked nonetheless so nobody think anything was amiss.

Of course, John Constantine got a version of the spell and had to share it with the rest of JL. The spell he got however only give him the barest bones of the succession lineage such as Royal Hierarchy, Royal Titles, Given Titles, Chosen Name and picture of that they look like. And since John is British the spell use the British royal hierarchy as template, meaning instead of conquest through combat, they think it's bloodline.

Most of the lineage are missing since the rulers were either ended and erased or forgotten, so the only thing that was clear was from Pariah Dark and Kronos (which is a shock for Diana) and downwards. So imagine their surprise when they look at the picture under current King of the Infinite Realms and see a being that looks like a teenage boy looking back at them. They were again shocked when looking below the new king and see a list of deceased male heirs with only one surviving princess.

Who is King Phantom?

#Danny Phantom #King Phantom #Queen Mother Jazz #Dan Redemption #Princess Danielle #dani phantom #dc x dp #dp x dc #justice league #ghost king danny #royal lineage

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y-rhywbeth2 · 5 months

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Lore: The Bhaalspawn

Link: Disclaimer regarding D&D "canon" & Index [tldr: D&D lore is a giant conflicting mess and it's borderline impossible to cover everything. Larian's lore is also a conflicting mess. You learn to take what you want and leave the rest]

I decided to compile all of the information I could find/remember on the Children of Bhaal in one place; drawing on the original games, BG3, WotC "canon", and a magazine article written by the writers of the original games meant for playing Bhaalspawn in pen and paper games. There's a surprisingly large amount of information.

Also prodding a bit at the distinction between a Bhaalspawn, as in a quasi-deity, and their tiefling descendants, who are also called by that name.

As with all D&D lore, sources may conflict, but nevertheless, here it is.

There are technically two variants of being that can be referred to as bhaalspawn (three, if we count the Dark Urge as something separate).

The term "Bhaalspawn" is usually applied to a Child of Bhaal, a quasi-deity who has the Lord of Murder for a father. Most are Demigods, born of a mortal parent, although Bhaal has seemingly also produced at least one Titan, who has no mortal lineage at all (hi, Durge). With the exception of that last one, they were all sired before his death during the Time of Troubles. Many, if not most, had Bhaal's priests as their mortal parent - willingly conceived as part of the greater plan to resurrect their god.

As is the norm for half-planar-half-mortals, the offspring of a Child of Bhaal will be of the planetouched (tieflings, aasmiar, genasi). As Bhaal is an evil-aligned god, his grandchildren and descendants are specifically tieflings (or some humanoid equivalent, if they have children with non-humans).

Each Child carries the divine essence of their father, woven into their very being (the god himself specifically derides them as having "borrowed" existences). This divine essence wasn't distributed evenly, and some carried more of Bhaal's taint than others. Some were aware of his influence acting on them from birth, and others never knew what they were until their more powerful and ambitious siblings came knocking to tear their essence out of them.

Being so tied to Bhaal, the souls of his children are inherently tied to him and the Throne of Blood - when they die their essence returns to him and takes their souls with it. A Bhaalspawn can worship another god and receive spells as a divine spellcaster if that deity accepts them, but there is no other afterlife waiting for them except for their father's domain. Specifically, this is the Throne of Blood, a section of Banehold (Bane's domain) which should be on the first layer (Khalas) of the plane of Gehenna (also known as "The Bleak Eternity of Gehenna"). Every single game has placed the Throne of Blood on a different Lower Plane (the Hells, the Abyss, the Grey Wastes), but none have used the one actually given in the tabletop canon, for some reason. Mount Khalas is an active volcano, hundreds of thousands of miles high with slopes of at 45° at their very flattest. The slope is generally more like a sheer cliff face, and falling may "completely shred" the would-be climber. The mountain floats in an infinite void by the border of the Nine Hells. The ground is full of bottomless black chasms and magma flows fed by "waterfalls" of the stuff, and the ground glows crimson from the heat of the molten rock. The air is clogged with pyroclastic ash and it's impossible to see further than a dozen feet in any direction. It also features the River Styx, a river polluted by all the filth and evil of existence that flows through all the Lower Planes. The next layer of Gehenna, Mount Chamada, is visible overhead, glowing faintly, "burning like a small, bloody moon." The spirits of the dead who are sentenced to this plane are those who were consumed by greed and a ruthless and insatiable lust for power in life; in death they are selfishness embodied. The domains of the deities who reside there are carved into ledges on the slopes. Banehold - also known as the Barrens of Doom and Despair - is "an inhospitable locale, filled with vast deserts of black sand and huge plains of dark granite." The sky is blood red and sunless. The only source of water on the plane is the Styx.

Some Bhaalspawn feel the pull of their father's domain so strongly that their soul can be pulled into Gehenna before they die. Should these individuals become sickened or injured enough they will fall into a coma as their connection to life weakens and their soul is dragged into their father's realm in the Lower Planes. It will return to their body once they're healed and that the pull of life is strong enough.

Some Bhaalspawn have reported the ability to "feel" deaths occurring around them, which is also said to be a pleasant experience that calls to them.

Due to their inherently divine nature, every one of them has the latent capacity for sorcery, though not all will manifest it.

It was originally claimed that all the Children perished in the Bhaalspawn crisis, however a small ttrpg supplement published by the writers in a magazine article (meant for playing Bhaalspawn as tabletop characters) claimed that while many died, including all the most powerful of their kind, many "weaker" Bhaalspawn survived the crisis.

There is conflicting information about the free will of these survivors following the foiling of Bhaal's first resurrection. As per the original game's canon, Bhaal's command over them is gone once broken, and these Children were free to act out their lives as they saw fit - bar stuff like the occasional nightmare and inherent urge to go on a killing spree. The power in their blood is their own to repurpose.

Baldur's Gate 2 presented the possibility of a Bhaalspawn being totally cleansed of their father's taint and rendered fully mortal and free of all divine meddling. 5e has retconned this in both tabletop supplements and BG3 canon, and posits that while one of the Children can (seemingly) be unchained from most of Bhaal's control, his divinity is an inherent part of them and they may still become pawns in his designs.

Judging by the first two games it seems that a Bhaalspawn's ability to resist their father's control is related to their own willpower and how tied to death and negativity they are. Being sheltered from death and suffering allows themselves to distance themselves from him, while exposure and harbouring feelings of hatred will destroy the barriers and push them closer.

One of the things Bhaal may try to push his children into doing is interfering with the plans of Cyric, who originally killed him during the Time of Troubles and temporarily usurped him as god of murder.

Bhaalspawn grow in power with age and experience. While signs can start early, by the end of their adolescence they will all have begun manifesting various abilities and signs. What defines "growing in power" is rather nebulous - in game mechanics it's tied to character levels. Technically, a Bhaalspawn could manifest the ability to create supernatural darkness and turn into the Slayer at age 17 and, by the time she's 18, have manifested as much as eleven more powers (and a plethora of dark influences plaguing her to go with them, including an addiction to killing). Or she could go her entire existence never having more than those two traits, a nasty temper, and some horrific nightmares.

Quasi-deities are immortal - ageless and unable to die from natural causes. While theoretically, a Bhaalspawn might not manifest this trait, it would conflict with other established lore on half-deities (because D&D lore loves conflicting with itself). Bhaalspawn immortality tends to kick in at any point in adulthood, at which point their age freezes. They could be in their twenties - and is more likely to manifest at a younger age, but theoretically it could kick in when they're 87 or older.

A Child of Bhaal can usurp their father and take his godhood for themselves: They must prove themselves worthy of being Lord of Murder by deliberately orchestrating a thousand innocent deaths (the method can be anything). They must seek out a portion of their father's flesh. Remnants of Bhaal's slain avatars, such as the remains of the Raveger in the Moonshaes, or traces remaining in the Winding Water from the Time of Troubles are recommended. Bhaal's actual corpse would've been in the Astral Plane, pre-Sundering. What one is meant to do with this chunk of flesh is unspecified. And then one is meant to present themselves for judgement by the overgod Ao, who will decide if they deserve the job. This seems to involve some kind of epic quest in a very dangerous location to prove oneself.

The term "bhaalspawn" also seems to be applied to the tiefling children and descendants of the true Children. Tieflings descended from Bhaal show no outward signs of their heritage the way most other tieflings do, appearing as regular members of their species under physical examination and lacking strange quirks - such as those seen on tieflings descended from the god Mask, who cast no reflections. That said, planetouched descended from deities are known to bear birthmarks in the shape of their divine ancestor's holy symbol, so that might be the exception. Like many of the non-Asmodeus tieflings, they bear the taint of the lower planes in their being, and from birth they often feel it pushing them to bend to their whims. In the case of bhaal-spawned tieflings, these urges would be murder ideation and an obsession with death. God-descended tieflings are no more inherently powerful than the regular kind descended from fiends like devils, demons and night hags.

As with all of the non-Asmodeus tieflings, after the first tiefling grandchild the blood tends to go dormant and hide itself for generations, until it suddenly manifests in a child born to an unsuspecting normal family who is unaware that the taint of the god of murder lurks in their bloodline.

There are various abilities (and side-effects) a Bhaalspawn might manifest. Interestingly, while a Bhaalspawn can manifest the vast majority of them, they will never manifest all the possible powers available to their "family." Meanwhile, the most powerful of them will manifest all of the dark urges and traces of evil that threaten to consume their kind.

There are no rules given for their tiefling descendants. Tieflings have been known to manifest a variety of quirks and spell-like abilities, such as those that have been provided for the Children of Bhaal, it's not unthinkable that their heritage may cause them to manifest one or two of them. Going off of the tiefling creation chart from 2e, a tiefling will randomly manifest one advantage, and one drawback.

So a grandchild of Bhaal might have poisonous blood and be unable to control herself from going berserk from bloodlust in battle. One might heal at an unusually fast rate and give off an aura of death that causes strangers to respond to them like they're a monster. Another tiefling may be able to temporarily boost his strength to impressive levels, but be consumed by the urge to murder.

While only the most powerful manifest every trait, the signs of being a Bhaalspawn include:

The undead can sense a Bhaalspawn if they're within 60ft of each other - so clearly that they can pinpoint their exact location. Even protective magics that should hide them from the undead's senses won't keep them from being aware of their presence, it will only prevent them from being able to know exactly where they're standing. In BG2, a vampire named Phlydian describes it as being able to "smell the murder in [their] heart."

Being around the Children of Bhaal triggers the fight-or-flight instinct and makes others uneasy; they give off an unsettling aura that causes those nearby to subconsciously pick up on them as predatory, and Bhaalspawn have a harder time convincing others to like and trust them. Divination spells that reveal alignment and intention will detect them as evil, regardless of whether they truly are or not.

Bhaalspawn are harmed by holy weapons, and those who are particularly murderous can also be harmed by holy water.

Bhaalspawn blood is black and viscous, and the divine essence within it calls out to the lower planes. A bleeding Bhaalspawn leaves a "scent" that calls to all fiends of the Lower Planes, including devils and demons. Even if it doesn't have the texture and colour, the blood is poisonous. If their blood enters the bloodstream of another being it will immediately cause weakness and fatigue. If the blood is not purged, the individual will weaken into a coma and eventually die. Of course this won't affect beings immune to poison. According to Phlydian vampires find the divine blood of the Children of Bhaal irresistibly "sweet."

They experience chronic, horrific nightmares that are traumatic enough to impair the demigod's daily functioning. These visions can occasionally be resisted through willpower, but not staved off indefinitely.

Bhaalspawn always want to kill, and may lose control of themselves in physical conflict, trying to strike at everything within reach. They struggle to restrain themselves, and limiting attacks to non-lethal damage requires will saving throws. They are reckless in combat, paying attention to little except slaughtering their opponent/s - not even caring about their own safety, The urge to kill can be a fundamental need, If not met, thoughts of murder slowly overwhelms their willpower, thoughts and their awareness of their surroundings, until they're finally driven to kill somebody. This urge cannot be sated by anything except for the murder of a sapient being. (This is similar to the effects of some hungers that affect the undead, causing them to devolve into mindless, feral animals driven by hunger - it may look the same.)

They are possessed by a constant undercurrent of rage, and when humiliated or frustrated they must keep a grip on their anger or slip into a state of violent killing rage not unlike that shown by barbarians in combat - their strength and endurance is greatly strengthened as they attempt to attack the subject of their ire.

They may actually find their sense of free will is innately weaker than that of regular mortals.

They are drawn to the sight of the dying and the dead, and take involuntary pleasure in the sight.

Bhaalspawn are also known to manifest various quirks and spell-like abilities (which they can cast as three times per hit dice/character levels a day. So a level 12 Bhaalspawn with "death knell" can cast it 36 times a day). Again; not every one of them manifests every ability, many will probably never have more than two, but powerful individuals may still manifest most of them.

They are able to boost their strength to impressive or even superhuman levels (depending on base strength) for anywhere between 1-20 minutes.

They are immune to all poisons and toxins.

They are resistant to being wounded, unless the wounds are caused by an object made of or plated in silver. Complete immunity to being harmed by unenchanted weapons is also a possibility for the most powerful individuals. (I've never been clear on what damage reduction looks like - I suppose either it's harder to break their skin, or else the wounds simply close up or at least heal up a bit automatically.)

They can cure moderate wounds like a divine spellcaster.

If they touch a dying creature they can drain the remaining life-force from them, killing them and temporarily strengthening themselves (as in physical strength and hit points, as well as boosting the power of their spells) Some may manifest the similar ability to drain the life force from a target by looking at them, stealing their vitality to heal themselves. The target doesn't need to be dying, and may be perfectly healthy

They are unaffected by any but the most extreme of temperatures, to the point where they're resistant to elemental damage of that kind (this could be cold or heat, or both). Some Bhaalspawn are also resistant to electricity and any magic cast on them.

They can strike mortal dread into nearby beings.

They can use divine energy to smite their foes - or they can maifest it as a 20ft area of darkness and tangible evil ("cold, cloying and greasy" to the senses) that damages non-evil beings within it.

They can create supernatural 15-20ft clouds of impenetrable blackness that extinguishes all sources of light, as per the darkness spell.

One Bhaalspawn manifested the (involuntary) ability to instinctually teleport to safety whenever he panicked - this is just speculation, but I would assume this works the same as the ability available to Bhaal's Deathstalker priests; they can teleport to the Throne of Blood in the Lower Planes, and from there teleport back into Toril at any location not protected by warding magic.

And, last but not least, Bhaalspawn are known to be able to transform into the Slayer when particularly favoured by their father. In one, exceptional, case a Bhaalspawn was known to manifest Bhaal's other avatar; the Ravager.

#I'll probably notice a thousand flaws the moment I hit post...#FYI the aferlife sucks if you're a Bhaalspawn #“You have an air of irresistible desperation about you”#No shit sherlock #I'm still judging you for not detecting Orin you useless vampire (affectionate)#durge #the dark urge #dark urge #orin the red

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a-wisebear · 10 months

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yes, i love the disaster lineage, a dyslexic cryptic frog, the most knighty-sith, very high and very high man still claiming children, the embodiment of the light side as infinite sadness, problem child actually is the chosen one, golden child at war, and we close it with unsupervised child with paint it's too good at it

#star wars #the clone wars #disaster lineage #yoda #count dooku #qui gon jinn #obi wan kenobi #anakin skywalker #ahsoka tano #sabine wren #i didn't even mention the disaster of luke and leia

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vanteguccir · 4 months

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family reunion | jasper hale

Jasper Hale x reader | Cullen family x reader (platonic) | Mikaelson family x reader (platonic)

Summary: When Edward decides to leave Bella behind for her own safety, Y/N take the lead to take the Cullens to the town where she grew up, with her only concern being how to explain for them her real there.

Warning: None.

Author's note: That is my work, I DON'T authorize any plagiarism! | English isn't my first language, so I'm sorry if there's any grammar error.

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"Edward, if you really want to disappear... I know a place we can go." Y/N said, looking directly into the mind reader's eyes, hoping to see some kind of emotion there.

Y/N could imagine the mess that was in Edward's head, the fact that he had, or rather, wanted to leave Bella behind for the girl's own safety was killing him from the inside, and despite feeling angry at the quick choice he made, she couldn't judge him. Y/N could never see herself away from Jasper, just imagining the possibility made her frozen heart hurt.

"Where?" Rosalie chimed in, looking at Y/N waiting for her response.

"New Orleans." She responded a few seconds later, feeling everyone's eyes focus on her.

Everyone in the Cullen family had a story that began at their birth and, often, ended with their last breath before becoming creatures of the night, stories of when their surname was something else, not Cullen.

Each one took their own time to reveal this story to the others, but it was never difficult for Y/N, after all, her life was normal before anything else... Right?

The vampire was born in London, but at the age of thirteen she moved to New Orleans with her mother after her parents divorced for reasons that Y/N didn't know to this day. Her mother chose New Orleans based on the idea that her parents, Y/N's grandparents, lived there and her ancestors came from there too.

From the age of thirteen, Y/N discovered the culture of New Orleans and grew up surrounded by it: street parties, blues players on every corner, restaurants open 24 hours a day, bright night bars and so on. At least that's what Y/N told her new family.

The truth is that the girl came from a lineage of extremely strong and well-known witches in the supernatural world, the Mikaelsons. Anyone who is smart enough would have a question mark in their mind now, after all, the Mikaelsons who are still alive are all vampires and vampires don't procreate, right? Right!

But what if part of the story has never been told? Not in bedtime stories, at least.

Niklaus' father was not the only affair Esther had, the mother of the Mikaelson family had a thing for supernatural beings and, therefore, in addition to werewolves, Esther became involved with a great wizard at the time, from the Bishop lineage.

Wizards weren't as well known at the time, as everyone focused on the female image within witchcraft, sometimes with curious eyes and sometimes with evil ones, but that doesn't mean they didn't exist, and Esther not only found one, she had a daughter with him.

Five years before Esther decided to turn her children into bloodthirsty creatures, she gave birth to Agnes Bishop-Mikaelson. Knowing the gigantic problem it would create if she showed up at home with another daughter in her arms, after her 9-month "trip", and that the child was not Mikael's, Esther decided to leave Agnes with her father and pretend that she never existed, completely removing the name Mikaelson from the child.

And it worked, no one from the Bishop family ever looked for her throughout her life and eternity, but that doesn't mean that the story of having remnants of a Mikaelson in the family tree wasn't passed on.

And Y/N, from the age of thirteen, grew up surrounded by infinite grimoires of her lineage, listening to stories told by her grandparents and mother, finally being able to understand why she could make fire light out of nowhere or objects levitate.

But although the girl saw her magic as a salvation, it was her downfall as well.

After the death of her grandparents, her mother became lost in grief and loneliness, going to the other side of the veil a few months later, leaving Y/N alone in a world of supernatural beings who would do anything to kill her if they knew about her great-great grandmother.

It didn't take much for the story of Esther's secret daughter to be revealed, and consequently, the existence of Y/N. Beings from all over the United States began to appear to the girl, wanting her life in exchange for revenge, and then her ancestors began to haunt her dreams trying to help her, but Y/N didn't understand that, and the situation only left everything worse for her.

Until one day, a charming man wearing a suit that was too expensive to wear on any given day appeared at the door of her house, offering protection and help in exchange for explanations.

Elijah was extremely helpful after understanding what his mother did to the Bishop lineage, being grateful that Y/N had no reservations in showing him all the grimoires and diaries of her ancestors, revealing the complete truth.

And with that Y/N was welcomed by the Mikaelson family, being able to train her magic with Esther's grimoires too, despite not having any physical help, since Kol, one of the Mikaelson brothers, was sleeping in some kind of coffin and Freya was dead, or something like that.

But it was one night when Y/N was walking alone through the streets of New Orleans, eager to return to the home of who she considered family, when everything was stolen from her.

An old and strong enemy of Esther appeared accompanied by reinforcements and not even with all of Y/N's still little knowledge would she have been able to stop them, the girl had only recently started studying strong magic and blamed herself for it, despite it not being her fault.

The girl was kidnapped and taken to a warehouse far from the entrance to New Orleans, surrounded by orchards, where she was tortured for hours, or was it days?

With the little strength she had left, Y/N was able to escape a few meters away from the warehouse, and it was there that she was found by Esme, who at the time was looking for fragrant apples to decorate the counter of her temporary home with her family.

Y/N could never be able to thank Esme enough for saving her life that day, if it weren't for the eldest, she would not have survived, already extremely weak and with fractures that caused irreversible damage to her organs, which would only lead to a slow death. Therefore, when Esme arrived at his house suddenly with the young woman in his arms, Carlisle spared no time before transforming her.

And then Y/N Cullen's new life began. She knew that hiding the whole truth wasn't right, but the last thing she wanted was to put the Cullen family in danger, already putting them at risk enough just by being with them.

"Are you sure you're ready to go back there, my love?" Jasper's question interrupted Y/N's triggered memories, and the girl was momentarily grateful that, with her magic, she could block Edward's reading.

"Yes, it's time to face those fears. Pack your bags, we'll leave at nightfall." Y/N informed decisively, turning around and going to her shared room with Jasper, finally being able to take a deep breath and organize her mind.

She needed to tell them before they put a foot in New Orleans, the girl knew that Niklaus would know of her arrival within seconds and she definitely didn't want to cause any more drama.

Y/N took out her phone and opened the contacts, her finger hovering over Elijah's contact, sighing and closing her eyes tightly before locking the screen, her last meeting with the Mikaelsons wasn't one of the best; Niklaus demanded that Y/N return home, despite her type of vampire being different, while Rebekah blamed herself for not having protected her enough before that night and Elijah tried to calm the whole situation, also begging her with his eyes to return to them, they missed her company, but she knew she couldn't, not at the time.

The girl shook her head, trying to shake off the thoughts, and picked up her and Jasper's bags, starting to organize the piles of clothes that she would take for both of them.

༻﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡༺

"There, everyone's ready?" Emmett asked after loading all the bags into the four cars and closing the trunk of the last one. Everyone responded with a simple wave and got into their respective cars, Y/N heading to the car she would use with Jasper, getting into the passenger seat and waiting for the long journey to begin.

"Baby, what's going on? Ever since you decided to take us to New Orleans you've been quiet. You know if you don't want to go there, we can aways choose another place-" Jasper began, his right hand on Y/N's thigh as his eyes remained on the road in front of him, casting quick glances at his girlfriend.

"No Jas, I'm fine, just thinking... I wasn't completely truthful with you guys about my life before I turned." She said, looking closely at Jasper, waiting to see his reaction, but only received a nod as if to say "you can continue, I'm all ears". "I think it would be better for everyone to listen." Y/N muttered, pulling out her phone and quickly starting a group call with one person from each car.

"Y/N? Unless Jasper lost his hand, I don't see why you're calling us. Your car looks great." Rosalie was the first to answer, being in the car behind Jasper and Y/N.

Y/N let out a laugh while Jasper rolled his eyes, Rosalie could be sarcastic when she wanted.

"Hello to you too, Rose. I'm just calling you all because I think I should tell you everything before we get to New Orleans. I wasn't completely truthful in the life story I told you before." Y/N began, beginning her long and tragic life story, smiling small when she had everyone's attention.

"This is all... Wow." Alice muttered from Edward's car. "How come I didn't see any of this?"

"Like I said, I'm a witch, and even with the transformation, for some reason, my magic wasn't interrupted or broken, in fact it became stronger and I have more control over it, that's why you only see me in some of your visions and Edward only hears some of my thoughts, I decide what you can see and hear." Y/N explained, seeing a sideways smile spread across Jasper's face, he knew she didn't mention him because she didn't hide her emotions from him, she never did.

"I think it's a lot of information to digest in a short amount of time, but we understand why you kept it from us for so long and I'm grateful that you wanted to protect us all." Carlisle took the lead, followed by "uhum's" from everyone, Y/N sighed in relief.

"When we get there, are we going to stay at this Mikaelsons' house or...?" Alice asked, looking out the window at the constantly changing landscape.

"We're going to the house I grew up in, I never sold or rented it. It must be dusty, but I promise it's big enough for all of us."

"Just the fact that I won't need to sleep with Edweirdo makes it good enough for me." Emmett joked, everyone laughing simultaneously, which calmed the tension.

༻﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡༺

It didn't take long for the traditional "Welcome to New Orleans" sign to appear up ahead.

Y/N took a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves, she couldn't imagine the Mikaelsons' reaction to seeing her again, so many years later. And she couldn't lie and say that she wasn't afraid of the Cullens' reaction to seeing what a mess her "other life" was.

The girl quickly took out her phone and opened the message group she shared with the Cullens.

"We arrived in the city that never sleeps, this is my home address, but you can just follow Jasper and I and we'll be there soon."

After sending the text, Y/N started giving Jasper directions to the entrances, trying not to look at the places they passed, as she knew she would get stuck in a memory loop. Finally, after many entrances, the girl saw the house where she spent her adolescence and early youth, smiling small as she felt her eyes fill with tears.

"It's that one over there." She said, pointing to the two-story house with a light pink fence in the front and pastel yellow curtains, just like her grandmother liked.

It wasn't long before the family found themselves unloading the suitcases from the cars and taking them to the living room, Emmett cracking jokes while Esme scolded him and Alice talked about all the clothing and shoe stores she saw on the way there.

A sound of approaching footsteps caught the family's attention, and they looked up to see a blond, green-eyed man approaching with an expression of anger and surprise.

"So it's true?" He spoke up, making Y/N freeze in the middle of the room, her hand dropping the backpack she was holding. "Y/N Bishop-Mikaelson everyone!" The man continued loudly with an ironic tone and sarcastic smile, opening his arms.

"Nik." Y/N whispered, closing her eyes tightly.

"Did you finally remember that you have a family, Y/N? Or did you come to ask for help with some nonsense you got into?" Niklaus asked rhetorically, staring at the entrance where he could see the girl's silhouette.

"Niklaus, please." Y/N spoke, turning and leaving the house, stopping a few meters away from the older man.

The hybrid stopped for a few seconds, analyzing the girl he saw as a daughter before she disappeared from his life, and the only girl Niklaus would set the world on fire if necessary, besides his brothers.

"Why did you come back?" He asked, crossing his arms, as if he was in charge of the city, which in a way is not a lie.

"We were in trouble in Forks and needed some time away." She responded with a sigh, quickly glancing at the Cullens behind her, who were paying attention to the moment without trying to interfere.

"Problems?" Nik paused for a second, a thread of worry passing through his eyes, which was quickly drowned out. "And do you find refuge here?" His nervous tone returned.

"Yes Niklaus, if you don't remember, I grew up here and my entire lineage is from here, I have the right to return to my home." Y/N argued, taking a rigid stance, pointing to her own chest.

"Oh, now New Orleans is your home? Funny how-"

"That's enough Niklaus." A second male voice came before the vision of a dark-skinned man wearing an expensive suit emerged.

"Great, a family reunion! Just what I needed right now." Y/N spoke with false excitement, rolling her eyes.

"Good to see you too Y/N." Elijah spoke, stopping next to Klaus and looking at everyone behind the Mikaelson girl, noticing their uncomfortable expressions at the sudden encounters and barbs exchanged between Nik and Y/N. "Why don't we have dinner at our house with everyone and... talk? We miss you Y/N and it would be great to meet the ones you consider family. If they're important to you, they're important to us too." He finished, sending a quick smile to the Cullens and receiving ones in return.

It would be long months.

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trillscienceofficer · 22 hours

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Star Trek: Voyager Prey // Fury // Infinite Regress // Retrospect // Year of Hell // Lineage // Drone

#trekedit #voyageredit #seven of nine #b'elanna torres #voy #star trek voyager #b7 #you: what the FUCK is the theme of this set #me: don't worry about it. or read the alt id #also i mega cheated by using lineage twice #but i dare you to tell me that the two gifs don't have very different vibes #pour one out for the unusable scene in warhead where b'elanna carries seven for once

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antianakin · 4 months

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You know it'd be kind of poetic if what you call the Insidious lineage continued to branch further away from Jedi teachings over the years while the good lineage of Obi-Wan/Luke/Rey/etc continued until the latter is forced to stop the former when they once again endanger the Galaxy.

I mean I know it's already happened with Palpatine and Vader but those guys are openly Sith. I mean it'd be tragic if Ahsoka or Sabine, still thinking they're doing the right thing, not realizing they've fallen, and even thinking they're the true Jedi come into conflict with Luke (or Rey it's far enough in the future) who have to stop them from causing harm while trying to reason with them.

Be a either a good (if they decided to be better) or tragic (if they don't) ending to the insidious lineage.

Woof, that's a pretty depressing AU depending on how you explore it!

One of the things I feel like would happen like post-ROTJ is that you might end up with varying different... branches of Jedi. They would EFFECTIVELY be lineages because all of them start from one Jedi survivor, but they branch out as time goes on. And because a lot of our different Jedi survivors were people who had limited training, they're all going to approach this Jedi thing just slightly differently.

Ezra's version of what being a Jedi means isn't going to mean the same thing as Cal's, for example. Ezra got taught by a padawan who never finished his own training, which massively limits the specific Jedi teachings he would've gotten. Cal on the other hand was someone who was raised in the Temple and then got trained by a real Master (Cere) for several years post Order 66, which means his training is likely more complete than Ezra's is and includes more of the typical Prequels Jedi apprenticeship milestones. Cal is going to know more of the traditions and rituals than Ezra is that he can then pass on to his own students (like Kata). Cal understands what it is to have been a Jedi survivor in a way that Ezra just never will. And none of this makes Cal a better or more real Jedi than Ezra is, just one who is going to be passing on different things. And so far as we know, these two characters don't overlap at all. They don't meet, they don't know each other.

And that doesn't even begin to bring in Luke who was taught by two Masters himself, but who got about 24 hours of training at like 19, took a three year break, got a couple of weeks with Yoda, took another 6 month break, and then is miraculously a Jedi Knight afterwards and starts his own school from that. We have to assume that he does NOT have access to the Ahch-To Jedi texts for most of the time he is running that school since Han seems to believe Luke was still LOOKING for Ahch-To and doesn't actually know if he found it at all during TFA. So what Luke is passing on is this combination of like the quickest apprenticeship ever and some REALLY old Jedi texts that probably barely any of the Prequels Jedi even knew about and had likely undergone a lot of changes by the time the Prequels Jedi were doing things. Luke and Leia are running almost entirely on instinct and like a couple of words of advice from Obi-Wan and Yoda that Luke can pass down.

And Luke doesn't seem to have met Ezra or Cal, either. It's possible Luke and Ezra will meet in the Mandoverse as we move forward, but as of now, they've never met and Ezra isn't a part of Luke's Jedi school.

So what this leaves us with is the potential for there to be several Jedi lineages kinda running around out there that all sort-of branch out from three people whose experiences of learning to be a Jedi are WILDLY different. The core of it is always the same, that selflessness and compassion and balance, but the details of it, the traditions and teachings and rituals of what you even DO as a Jedi are going to probably end up dissimilar from each other. Luke's school is not going to be the same as whatever Cal might set up on Tanalorr which isn't going to be the same as whatever Ezra passes on to any student he ends up taking on (if he survives the Mandoverse).

Ahsoka and Sabine then just kind-of end up their own little branch. They MIGHT call themselves Jedi, Sabine seems to call herself a Jedi even though Ahsoka explicitly says that she doesn't want Sabine to BE a Jedi, but their variation on it is going to be its own thing. If we're kind about it, they're not necessarily Sith, they're not villains, but they have a tendency towards selfishness, arrogance, and impatience. And maybe they end up more like the Nightsisters in TCW where the Jedi know they're out there being weird and kind-of dark, but they're keeping it relatively contained so the Jedi just let them be for the most part. Luke, Cal, and Ezra all know Ahsoka and Sabine are out there being weird and kind-of selfish, but until it becomes a galaxy-ending problem, they're just going to let them do what they want.

#star wars #luke skywalker #cal kestis #ezra bridger #jedi #pro jedi #ahsoka critical #ahsoka tano critical #sabine critical #sabine wren critical #insidious lineage #infinite lineage #shatterpoint lineage

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nocturnowlette · 6 months

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The Dragon

The dragon walks up behind me. I'm in a nondescript white room. The walls, floor, and ceiling are all the same material: something ethereal, almost seeming to glow but only when I'm not directly looking. The light emanating from seemingly nowhere seems to infinitely reflect off every surface, making it sometimes hard to tell if the walls are even there, or how big this space really is. Though I haven't turned around, I know it's the dragon. I've seen him before, but I forget where. More importantly, I've felt him before. It feels like it's something I've always known, some part of my DNA, maybe my entire lineage. This dragon's presence is known more to my instincts than my mind. His name is - translated to something I can understand - is Sunny. Though, honestly, I don't think there is a name that can accurately represent a creature like this. He's right behind me now.

I haven't turned around, in a way it doesn't feel necessary. I've known his ears, half cones tapering off to a point at the back. I know his horns, between the two ears, bowed outwards and bending in 90 degree angles. They rise until they're just above the ear, tilting gently forward just past the ears before sharply bending straight backwards, then bending one more time downwards, ending in a sharp point. I know his tail, seemingly large and yet ever-changing in its largeness. Dulled fins, equally spaced, line the top; the bottom half, a lighter pink than his short-furred purple everywhere else, runs with slight waves along its surface. They feel like waves frozen in time. I sense waves of something wash over me. Energy? Pressure? Like a dull droning hum without any sound. It's surrounding me.

As he kneels down behind me, the presence seems to double, then triple in intensity; the air feels tough to move through, and so I don't. Cutting through the invisible waves assaulting my mind, thoughts come flooding to me; Where am I? What is this? What's going to happen to me? A sense of danger starts to creep over me, the hair standing on my back, heart rate increasing- The dragon puts his arms over my shoulders, gently, and places his head over his arm on my left. He seems almost impossibly peaceful. A moving statue. The presence seems to have disappeared entirely, giving me room to think. And yet, I'm paralyzed. All I can really do is stare.

The dragon, whose gaze was near immobile and dull moments before, seems to have the shine of the room gently reflect in his eye. He takes a deep breath in, holding for a short moment, before breathing slowly, slowly out. His breath is a light purple. Due to his snout and head position, the breath is missing me entirely: likely a good thing, perhaps he's purposefully avoiding my nose? We sit there for a while. A few minutes, maybe. He breathes in, slowly, holding it for a moment, then out, slower. I find myself starting to sync with his breaths, so steady that it feels like a gentle rhythm. As much as I don't want to admit it, it's giving some comforting solace in the middle of the confusion. That, and the slight smell of lavender.

The contrast of the artificial coldness of the room and the smell of pure nature is dizzying. Or, something is dizzying. I close my eyes, trying to take in fewer senses and get my mind sorted. He starts to purr. Can dragons purr? Apparently, they can. The rumble has a strong feeling to it, like snoring, but I adjust quickly to it. It reminds me of game controllers and earthquakes and dryers. Definitely dryers. It has that slight rumble to it, like something light is tumbling, and the warmth. I'm surrounded by warmth, like a dense blanket.

The arms around my shoulders are like a scarf, the dragon seeming to be ever closer than before. When did he move? Wait, where am I? Why am I thinking about all of this? I open my eyes. The room looks different. I swear, it does. The color is slightly different, but only in the corners of my vision. A light purple? It smells like lavender. I look to my left again, the breath still steadily pumping out. Is there no ventilation? It feels harder to breathe, like the air is dense. I need to breathe in more, but I'm only getting dizzier. I need to find a way out-

"Breathe in, deeply."

I feel my lungs work on their own, taking a breath that feels impossibly large.

"Breathe out, slowly."

My lungs empty as if there was nothing there in the first place.

My brain feels heavy, exhausted.

"I'm sure it does."

What?

"Don't think too hard."

My thoughts are like molasses.

"Isn't that such a nice feeling?"

It's hard to disagree. It's actually very, very hard.

It feels like I've always loved this feeling.

"You have."

I have?

"Yes. You ask a lot of questions for a pet."

I'm a pet?

The dragon chuckles.

"Of course. Why do you think you're here?"

Why am I here?

"To meet me, officially. You've always known me."

I have?

"You have."

I have.

"There we are. Don't you feel lovely?"

I do.

"Isn't that all that matters?"

It is.

"Good pet. Let's go home, now."

Anything you wish.

#fanfiction #furry #hypnosis #for patricia taxxon

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dontmixpaintinyourcoffee · 7 months

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As per usual, info under the cut <3

IM BACK BITCHES!!!

Alright, here's the design stuff:

I wanted to go for kind of a Lois Lane vibe, including the way she gets all the way up in business she should not be up in. At the same time I wanted to bring the super cutesy gothic lolita style in at least a little. So I ended up going with a poofy short jumpsuit with bows and teddy bears. I would love to make a specific thank you to @themooncallsyou for suggesting I look at the Moschino 2022 spring line for inspiration, it ended up having a very heavy impact on the final design.

I tried to lean into the investigative part of investigative reporter, so that's what the heavy coat is about. I thought adding that classic detective silhouette would be a nice final touch. Plus, I think Blondie likes the drama of the coat flying behind her as she's chasing down a lead. It makes her feel very cool.

Alright, so her original pet is a bear cub named Grizz but I have. Several problems with that. The main one is that it's not clear what the difference between Grizz and the actual sentient bears and her story is. There is never any differentiation between them. It's a Goofy-Pluto situation. Like it doesn't need to be explained, but the minute you start thinking about it too hard it gets weird real fast.

Anyways say hello to Honey the magpie!! Magpies are great mimics and lovers of shiny things, so I thought one would be a perfect fit for Blondie. She repeats bits of gossip and steals little trinkets and clues to help Blondie with whatever case she's on. Honey is where Blondie gets her infinite supply of bobby pins. Her scale is a little off, I don't think magpies are actually that big, but I still think she's cute so I'm not changing it now lol.

Now for character stuff:

Honestly I'm not really changing anything as much as I am exploring what's already there. I think Blondie has the potential to be really interesting, because she's unique within the class system of the school. She's kind of the inverse of Raven status-wise. Raven was born to royalty, but because her mom is the Evil Queen she's actually considered a commoner by society. Blondie was born to a wealthy commoner family, but her fear of rejection leads her to exaggerate the prestige of her lineage. Everyone sort of knows that she's not a Princess but she's so desperate to keep up the image of royalty that no one knows where she actually lands. Most of the royals assume her parents are Lord and Lady or Duke and Duchess or something. In reality they don't have any noble title, and Blondie is very insecure about that.

Blondie isn't so much ashamed of her family as she is terrified of exclusion and rejection. Her standing in society is the one major thing that makes her different from all the other royals, but she has major anxieties that she's always on thin ice. In her mind she's permanently one wrong step from total ostracization.

On a happier note, she does have a genuine passion for journalism! She considers her news blog/podcast practice for her future career. She starts out discussing school drama and gossip, but tries to stay a neutral third party. That's why her hair is so big. It's full of secrets. As the story goes on she starts reporting on more political and social topics beyond the boundaries of the school (and therefore becomes one of Milton Grimms worst nightmares). She is really, really, really good at getting into shit people do not want her to get into. She's got her eyes on prize and good luck stopping her

#eah #ever after high #coffeepaintart #eah fanart #blondie lockes #eah art #yes i have thought about this cartoon for children designed to sell dolls from almost a decade ago for far too long why do you ask #eah redesign

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layziidakkii · 2 months

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Kaufmo: "You're gonna do great, Pomni. I'll watch over you as long as I can..." "Just...don't tell the others I'm still around. I won't be for long."

Kaufmo is one of the greatest Chosen who had ever fought for Caine. His infinite positivity and patience with the ones he trained, as well as his uncanny ability to brighten up any room he walked into was one of the Clown's greatest traits.

Kaufmo was the one who trained Jax, Ragatha, and Saturday. Out of the three of them, Jax was the closest to him. Unfortunately, Kaufmo perished in battle a long while ago...and no one has really gotten over it yet.

Kaufmo and Pomni share a connection, as they are a part of the Fool's Lineage, a series of Mimes, Clowns, and Jester themed Chosen who have appeared in The Crossroads, and were able to bring great fortune to Caine and his other Chosen. Fools are believed to be a good omen, and appear during times of strife.

Because of this connection, Kaufmo can appear to Pomni in the form of a spirit avatar that only she can see, or Kaufmo can temporarily take over Pomni's body if things are getting rough and she needs a bit of a push, though this is only for emergencies.

He only has a limited amount of time before his code merges with Pomni's forever and he disappears, so Pomni has to become more powerful than him before that happens.

Kaufmo teaches Pomni everything he knows, and because of Pomni's capacity to think on the fly, she picks up her new abilities fairly quickly.

Pomni: "What…is this? A-Am I doing this?"

Kaufmo: "That my friend, is the Fool's Fantasia. It's an infinite source of Chayotic energy that all members of the Fool's Lineage can draw from. We use it to power our abilities and protect ourselves."

P: "Infinite? Wow…I really have access to all of that?"

K: "Well, as much as your body can convert into raw power. An ocean is vast - but you can only drink so much at a time. It takes stamina to not only maintain the connection, but also utilize it."

P: "That's so cool."

K: "My friend, you have seen NOTHING yet! A powerful and skilled Fool can use the Fantasia to their heart's desire. You are only limited by your imagination!"

P: "Th-Then we'd better get started!~"

K: "Post-haste, Pomni!"

#the amazing digital circus #pomni #tadc #tadc fanart #the amazing digital circus fanart #the amazing digital shonen #hare & harlequin au #tadc shonen au #tadc kaufmo #kaufmo

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shadowbriar · 10 months

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Fred Weasley - Clandestine Love

Pairing : Fred Weasley x (she/her) Reader Word Count : 2.5k Warning : Angst. Synopsis : His unwillingness to come out of the shadows have finally caused him greater damage one couldn't possibly fix. Notes : Post no 1 for my 1 Year Anniversary Celebration. Don't forget to fill the form here if you'd like to be tagged for my future works. If you like this story and would like to support me, please visit my kofi page and perhaps get me a coffee?☕ Fred Weasley's Masterlist click here. Taglist : @jsjcue @coffeehurricanes @ell0ra-br3kk3r

He lightly traced the shape of her nose, admiring each freckle on her face as if they were his road map to home. She was fast asleep, chest raising and falling at a steady pace. It is certainly one of the world's unexplained mysteries, how she seems to hold such magnetism that would always charm and hypnotise him.

Behind these four walls, he could find comfort and bravery to actually show his true feelings. About how he admires her as if she’s a goddess that walks the Earth. Like she was graced with beauty beyond compare, he struggles to look away though his eyes were burning from her glow. Like she was the oxygen he’s desperate to breathe in. And in return, she made him feel wanted, needed, and most importantly, loved.

It wasn’t that he didn’t feel appreciated by his friends and family. No, he knows full well the amount of love and support he’s received from the people around him throughout the years. The cheers and laughter people always greet him with were the very evidence of the said affection. But the heart is a silly object and it often acquires silly things, and for this one time, his heart desires her.

Being in love with the House Prefect when you’re the sole cause of trouble and mischief certainly was never on his list.

Fred never thought that hearing about how she gave a student detentions for the whole week would make his day better, having been the one who’s had the longest list of detention himself. He never thought that her whining of night patrols would keep his lips tucked in a smile for hours. He never thought that laying on her lap as she talks about her frustration about the House points would be the very thing he looks forward to each day.

As sappy as it sounds, he never knew the word love until he met her.

The boy lets out a silent sigh. The question she asked for what seems to be the hundredth time last night haunts him. The words were carved into the back of his head, her voice playing in an infinite loop as it pushed him closer to the edge.

Why can’t we go out in public like this, Freddie?

Merlin knows just how much he wished he could love her out there, show the whole world that she’s his and his only. How it peels his skin whenever they’ve got classes together yet he couldn’t sit next to her. How each time he spots her at the corridors he wishes to be able to pull her away, giving her a quick kiss before continuing whatever mundane activity they were having.

But Fred knew that the mess he’s made over the years has given him quite the reputation that could tarnish her’s. If it weren’t for her strict and rigid parents, demanding her to be the perfect daughter and keeping the true noble pure blood lineage, he would have spent no other second to kiss her at the Great Hall. To take her to Hogsmeade date every other week and send her love letters whenever break comes. To go and introduce himself to her parents.

Fred was never ashamed of his name, but for once in his lifetime he feels complete and utterly unworthy.

“Good morning.” He says softly, noticing the light movements she makes as she begins to regain consciousness “Sleep alright?”

She smiles, still not opening her eyes as she buries her face to his chest, “Never better.”

Fred runs his fingers through the strands of her hair, gently stroking them as if they were the most fragile thing he’s ever held. He rests his chin on top of her head, inhaling the sweet scent of her shampoo that he so much loved. Her body heat was giving him the comfort he’s been looking for all night from all the tiresome scenarios and questions running in his head. She was his one and only anchor to sanity and he’s certainly not ready to part from her soon.

“What time is it?” She asks, voice muffled from his shirt “Flitwick asked me to help with some paperworks before classes start.”

“5.40.” He says as he peeks to the clock laying by the bedside table “I thought you have some essays due for Divination class?”

“I do,” She sighs, this time sitting up “I’m planning to finish that first before I go to Flitwick. I have so much to do and so little time. I wish there were more hours in a day, 24 is just not enough numbers.”

Fred chuckles, following her to sit up and kisses her clothed shoulder, “I’ll miss you today.”

“I’ll miss you too, Darling.” She says with a smile, closing the gap between them as she plants a chaste kiss “I’ll see you at Charms class, alright?”

He nods, not saying another thing as he watches her pack her belongings.

“Oh, and good luck for your Quidditch match today!” She says cheerfully as she skips back to him, planting another kiss, this time more passionate than the previous “I’ll cheer for you the loudest.”

—-

She chuckles lightly in between the kisses. He has one hand resting on her waist while the other is cupping her face, fingers tracing her jawline. Sneaking themselves in the locker room now, Fred hopes that he could freeze time and make this moment last just a little bit longer. Put it in a bottle so he could stare and relive it each night before he goes to sleep. But even with such magic in their sleeves, certain things are too good to be true.

Whenever they’re together, the blissful feelings he felt would be mirrored on her. She could feel her skin burning from the electrical sparks. Her cheeks are always tired from smiling and stomach hurts from all the laughter. If she could ever choose the moments which she could relive in an infinite loop, it would be any moments shared with him.

“What?” Fred asks with a raised eyebrow, an amused smile plastered on his handsome face.

“Nothing,” She says, clinging her arms on his shoulders now “I just find it adorable when you’re clingy.”

He rolled his eyes, “You say as if it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s not. I never said that.” She remarks “Don’t put words in my mouth, Mr. Weasley.”

“Oh, there’s plenty of other things I’d rather put in your pretty mouth.”

“Shut up,” She says, slapping his shoulder “We should probably go. Our friends might already be frantic looking for us.”

“Let them have their kittens.” He whispers in a low voice as he continues to leave trails of butterfly kisses on her jawline “I want to stay here forever.”

She chuckles, “And if they find us here? What should we tell them?”

Fred stops, pulling away as he bites his lip. He let out a half-hearted huff of sigh, forcing a smile as he placed one last kiss on her temple. His body language changes drastically. Shoving his hands down the pocket of his trousers as he looks everywhere but her eyes.

“You’re right, we should go.”

His agreement was never a surprise but still an upsetting sight to see. She could feel the crack in her heart grow slightly bigger. His dejected expression was only half of what she’s been feeling lately, she’s sure of it. He could never understand the real burden she’s been feeling for having to hide their intimacy when all she wanted is for the world to be their sole witness.

“Or maybe.. We could just tell them the truth if it ever comes to such an event.”

“Darling,” Fred calls with an apologetic smile “You know we can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

Fred remained silent. He let out a defeated sigh, tucking the few loose strands of her hair behind her ear before kissing the tip of her nose gently, “We should go. I’ll see you tonight, yeah?”

She bites her lower lip, wanting to prolong their conversation but his match will begin any minute now. It wouldn’t be pretty to have him being searched by the Gryffindor Quidditch team and caught with her. Certainly the worst possible scenario to happen. It would ruin everyone’s evening before the match even began.

So she forced a smile, nodding, “I’ll see you tonight.”

—-

Fred stood proudly in the middle of Gryffindor Common Room, one of his hands being raised high along with George’s as the students cheered for them. The two were the MVPs of today’s match, helping Harry to catch the snitch before the Ravenclaw’s seeker could as they launched the bludger at the poor boy. A rough game, quidditch.

He could see her, standing by the stairs as she leaned against the walls. The smile that was decorating her face warms his heart, having to know that she’s happy for his victory too. He couldn’t wait for the night to pass, for people to leave him alone as they find their drunken selves back to their own rooms so he could sneak out with her and spend the night at the Room of Requirement instead.

He couldn’t wait to tell her the details of today’s match, though she was there to witness the game herself. He couldn’t wait to tell her how every inch of his body felt hot as he scored another goal. He couldn't wait to tell her how it felt to have adrenaline pumped through his veins as he hit the bludger, quietly praying that the damage done to the poor Ravenclaw wouldn’t be that severe.

But his sight of her was abruptly blocked as Alicia Spinnet pulled him down the table. A hint of blush was visible on her cheeks. Fred couldn’t even spare a word and ask what in the world she was doing before the catastrophe happened.

Alicia kissed him.

Fred froze on his spot, mind going foggy as he tried to process the event happening. The loud cheer of students suddenly felt muted. It took him a few seconds to finally regain consciousness and pushed Alicia away. When he looked back to the stairs, she was gone.

“What in the bloody hell were you thinking?!” Fred spat at Alicia, rudely shoving her away. He was never one to be cruel towards girls, but the confusion and horror plaguing his mind has taken over himself that he acted the way he did.

Leaving the baffled crowd, Fred storms out of the Common Room. At this point he couldn’t spare to give any mind to the hushed whispers of his rude action and his now pursuit to chase her. If people want to talk, let them talk. Perhaps it’s time for them to know about their secret love affair. Fred knew sooner or later, no matter how hard he tries to keep their relationship tight in a box, this one tiny secret would seep through the thin walls of the castle. Yet if he could ever have a say about it, he would choose to have it without hurting her in the process like this.

“Love?” Fred calls as he heard her quiet sobbing, stopping on a secluded corner now “I am so sorry for what’s happened there, I didn’t know why—”

“You know why, Fred.” She says between her sobbing, looking at him with hurt in her eyes that he’s never seen before “I’ve told you a dozen times already.”

“You think I wanted Alicia to kiss me?” He asked, offended.

“No, but I know that you know why she kissed you.” She says with her voice breaking “I’ve told you— I’ve.. I’ve asked you so many times to just go out of the shadows but you never listened.”

“How is it anything related to that?”

She let out an appalled expression, angry at his failure to connect the dots. Surely it isn’t hard to understand that Alicia kissed him because she thought he was single, right? It shouldn’t take a genius to understand that everyone thought that way and what would be a bigger celebration than to kiss your teammate over your shared victory?

“You’re impossible,” She mutters, running a hand through her hair “This is exactly why I asked you to come forward! To let our relationship be public. This is exactly why!”

Fred stood still, not saying a word.

“Why can’t you just listen to me?” She asked with a defeated tone “Why won’t you love me in the open?”

“Love,” He calls softly, taking her hands gently “You know why.”

“Actually, I don’t.” She says in a desperate tone, walking away from him so she could conceal the fragile forefront “I mean you’ve never given me a clear reason as to why we have to keep on hiding and isolating every other door we enter. It’s not like the world would combust into flames if people know we’re seeing each other.”

Fred smiles apologetically, “We can’t.”

“Why?” She pushes, finally asking the worst question that has been plaguing her mind “Are you embarrassed of me? Is that it?”

“What, no!”

“Then what is it?”

“I just— I can’t. Not now.” Fred says in frustration, unintentionally raising his tone “Love, please. Let’s not argue about this. This isn’t the right time.”

The calm inside her has long passed, replaced with a storm filling her head. She couldn’t take anymore rollercoasters of feeling blissful during the day and having endless anxiety of thoughts at night. If he really loves their relationship, as much as he shows it within the closed doors, then why not take the leap of faith and go public about it? What’s the worst that could’ve happened?

“There was never a right time for you, Fred.”

Fred winches at her words. He knew that he was ruining them, that he was dragging them down to an unnecessary pool of misery but given the situation and pressure, he couldn’t take any other stress of having to deal with people teasing her, let alone tarnishing her name. Her being the pure blood everyone has always looked up to would definitely cause some words to spread once it’s known that she’s dating a Weasley.

If anything, he’s the one that is afraid of her to be embarrassed.

She stares at him with much disappointment evident in her eyes. He hates to put her in such a place, but there isn’t much he could do. He’s simply not ready for their private intimacy to be a public display where everyone could chew on.

“Love, please—,”

“I can’t keep doing this, Fred,” She says as she finally composed herself better, steadying her tone and controlling her breathing “Not after tonight.”

Fred blinks, trying to digest her words better. The bitter taste of heartbreak started to poison his tongue. He doesn’t like where this is going.

“You either love me or you don’t.” She continues firmly “And tonight you’ve proven the latter.”

“I—,”

“It’s over, Fred. We’re over.”

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