#it's not because someone used the dark side of the force that he is automatically gone

[whizzinpast]

Alien Swap (ALNST Role Swap AU)

Sua (swapped with Mizi)

Nigeh has a very specific taste in pet-humans and is known to raise them with proper manners and dress them in most exquisite outfits. Tired of the doting, Sua decided to break out and participate in a singing competition. Nigeh was happy to provide her with all the resources she needed to sing on Alien Stage and loves to brag about their ‘daughter’s’ accomplishments.

Sua meets Mizi in the same way as canon. Unlike canon though, Sua is more open with the children in Anakt Garden. Many admired her and saw her as an older sister, but she paid particular attention to very few. She was very picky about her company (which mostly consisted of Mizi tbh, and Till when he’s not being a territorial jerk)

Loves singing from the bottom of her heart and has a magnetic stage presence.

At first, her dream was to sing in Alien Stage under the stars because it was a great honor (even if she knew what death was really like). Then it was to sing with Mizi under the stars.

She firmly believed that Mizi would win— she never expected her to lose on purpose.

After Mizi’s death, Sua became a living doll. She couldn’t bother expressing herself. It was only until Round 5, when Hyuna mimics Mizi’s singing style, that she snaps. She uses stage props to knock Hyuna over and beat her with her microphone.

She is saved from execution by Luka, and during his version of ‘All-in’ she gets a side cut.

Mizi (swapped with Sua)

Guardian Shine is a segyein too old to bother with bonds. They’ve been very emotionally distant to Mizi, who they adopted because they felt sorry for her. They had, quite literally, left her in the dark for so long Mizi’s eyesight suffered. In spite of Mizi’s constant attempts to reach out and impress her Guardian, with one of those attempts being her application for Alien Stage, she was ultimately sent off to die.

Despite her cheerfulness, Mizi’s self-confidence was very low. She believed she was worth nothing up until she met Sua, and decided to get stronger for her sake. She made her laugh and helped her with physically demanding tasks.

Although she seemed happier with Sua, Mizi easily got skittish around others. Most kids thought she was weird, albeit cute to some extent.

Mizi decided to lose to Sua on purpose. Till found out and harshly criticized her for it. He claimed she should at least give it her all, to which Mizi responded by punching someone for the first time in her life— and frantically apologized for it.

Mizi didn’t know how brutal death could be until she got shot.

Ivan (swapped with Till)

Ivan had always loved the stars. Even when he was violently abused by Guardian Unsha’s lackeys, he loved the stars.

In spite of his circumstances (dragged out of the slums by the galactic mafia, tortured and then forced to entertain terrible segyein) Ivan used his intellect and appearance to his advantage. He became self-sufficient very quickly and crafted a persona to appeal to his segyein overlord.

Due to his experiences, Ivan appeared very cold and stoic as a kid. He dismissed anybody that approached him because he didn’t how to react. It was easier to scare people away than risk backlash. But, otherwise, he could be a polite and chatty kid if you know what topics to approach him with.

One of his most prized possessions is a lighter that he stole from Unsha. He keeps flicking it when he’s nervous.

Sua was his idol, his inspiration, and his rare comfort was listening to her sing. He thought she was the human equivalent of a star. Unfortunately, he never got to properly talk to her because she always misunderstood what he said.

Both him and Mizi were too awkward to talk to each other.

At some point, Ivan tried to escape on his own, but was quickly found by Till, who bullied his way into joining him. They almost escaped until Ivan realized they wouldn’t survive out in the wilderness on their own.

Till remained in his periphery because Ivan automatically blanked out when he was mistreated. The only way for Till to get his attention was to pinch him or punch him. Ivan was too resistant to verbal provokations.

Ivan stole enough materials off of rich segyein to design and sew his own outfit for Round 2. He won because his stage presence was so intense it terrified his opponent into silence halfway through the song.

Till (swapped with Ivan)

Urak bought a problematic pet-human on discount and struck a deal with him: in return for success, the child will get whatever he wants. They started with food. Then sweets. Then heavy equipment. Then guitars. Till continued to provide Urak with his musical prowess and earned everything he could dream of.

Spoiled rotten thanks to his wild success as a musical protege, Till became a force to be reckoned with at Anakt Garden. He was openly arrogant and didn’t bother with kids or tasks that he deemed unnecessary. Though, somehow, he still managed to attract admirers who thought his confidence and talent was impressive.

Out of all the kids, Ivan had the misfortune (or fortune, in Till’s eyes) to be graced with his attention. This is because Till thought of Ivan as his rival, which is, honestly, just a synonym for him getting a massive crush on him. He is stupidly into him. He thinks his ‘raw intellect’ makes him a diamond in the rough. But because he doesn’t know how to get Ivan to look at him in any other way, he gets his attention by treating him like a punching bag. (Worse than Canon!Ivan, who verbally provokes Till into fights.)

He was intensely jealous of Sua because she got so much of Ivan’s focus. However, it didn’t stop him from respecting her. She was one of the rare people that had enough talent and skill to get him. The same could not be said for Mizi.

As a celebrity, he has asshole charisma and he knows it.

In Round 6, Till does something similar to what Sua did in Round 5: he uses the microphone as a weapon and hits Ivan in the legs until he drops to the ground. He simultaneously punched Ivan three times and kissed him until he was shot and bled out.

Hyuna (swapped with Luka)

Phan, Hyuna’s Guardian, was abusive for no specific reason. They cut off her leg when she was a kid simply because they were curious. But seeing that she wouldn’t be of use to them with one leg, they provided her with a prosthetic.

Imagine a movie star persona — big smiles, big personality, black, bedazzled suits and cool shades. That’s Hyuna, except she’s dressed to impress. Looks very cool and effortless, but shows off a more cold and ruthless side to her during matches.

Hyuna had an unhealthy fixation with Luka and considered herself his ‘protector’ or ‘knight.’ Her and Hyunwoo had a more…dicey sibling relationship. They fought a lot (more like Hyuna was picking fights under the guise of being ‘the good guy’) and eventually she would beat Hyunwoo to death so there would be no one between them. Think like…the black knight in shining armor.

Luka (swapped with Hyuna)

If there is a tale of a princess escaping her tower, it would pretty much sum up Luka’s life. As a kid, Luka was extremely shy and rarely played with other kids due to his health issues (his slightly aloof attitude didn’t help either though). This changed when Hyuna and Hyunwoo invite him to play, and he became attached to Hyuna, who always protected him from bullies (and Hyunwoo, allegedly).

Despite his know-it-all attitude, Luka was genuinely ambitious and eagerly awaited auditions for Alien Stage. He was very confident in his talent and, despite the abuse at the hands of his Guardian and his declining health, strongly believed that he would win.

It all came crashing down when Hyuna reveals her true colors. She was a warden more than a guardian— keeping Luka isolated by intimidating anyone who comes near, with Hyunwoo being a slight exception. However, she kills Hyunwoo the following day with her bare hands while Luka was experiencing cardiac arrest. (Her excuse was that Hyunwoo caused it by messing with Luka.)

Luka escapes his enclosure and survives with a group of human rebels.

As a leader of the human resistance, Luka is a tactical mastermind that moves troops around like chess pieces. However, he can only do it from the safety of his home base. The few times he goes out, he’s heavily guarded by Isaac and Dewey.

A/N: The brainrot is hard at work. This is just me laying the groundwork. May or may not doodle designs if I have the time.

[mahi-wayy]

𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍𝐒 | 𝑯𝑼𝑵𝑻𝑬𝑹 𝑩𝑹𝑨𝑫𝑬𝑳𝒀

• General • Romantic [only sfw]

A/n : not adding my usual nsfw part bcz they are supposed to be technically minors in the show? listen I'll add nsfw if people ask but I ain't having anyone slamming me in comments and asks, I have other stuff to worry about thank you very much.

I - GENERAL

"He is right, dark and brooding but right."

dark and brooding my ass blake you're brother is a fucking softie. he just has trauma but which elder sibling doesn't.

he has been burned too much that he would rather appear dark and intimidating to keep himself but most importantly blake safe and sound.

they were adopted by the bradleys at the ages of 8 and 11 respectively. while blake only spent like two months in his orphanage and didn't even remember much about his biological parents, he spent around two years in the orphanage and he does remember the accident that took away his parents.

he had a whole phase in his teen where he would dream about the accident and blame himself for surviving.

he and blake were at the same orphanage.

gravitated towards each other quite quickly especially because hunter kind of scared away the bullies that were troubling blake and the little boy just attached himself to hunter pretty much ever since.

refused to go with bradleys if they don't take blake too. luckily the couple was more than happy too.

had what? a year of normalcy before their adoptive parents died too. he still remembers a little blake crying endlessly at night because he missed them.

that's when he decided to be like a filter between world and his brother.

sensei omino was a shit parent figure but these two were entirely too grateful for the man to continue reaching them what their parents started to actually notice him using them or pushing them to hard.

he usually took the blame too if blake messed something up because he knew if he was involved too, sensei would focus on him more than yelling at his brother.

it's hard for him to handle and understand emotions. barely cried and takes time to build emotional connects since he has kept himself so shielded since he was a kid.

developed insomnia at a early age.

never lost in a sparring match at the academy, like never.

also the best weirder of crimson thunder in the academy. his color is related with a loud, aggressive and damaging side of the element.

basically he is strong as fuck and some of his hot headedness comes from his element other than his personality.

was the one who believed lothor first under his hurt and anger that never quite found a outlet, which automatically convinced blake of it too.

wasn't really connecting with anyone like blake did with tori unconsciously. he was okay with everything they did until he realized the truth. he still feels guilty about that.

he didn't quite like shane's energy, it was practically the red ranger's authoritative aura clashing with his own leadership role, he did tell blake about it.

eventually got used to it once they became a team and he took his second-in-command position.

he is every short-tempered and certain things trigger him at full force. for example he once short circuited cyber cam for cracking a offensive joke at blake.

it took cam three weeks to fix his cyber counterpart because the crimsion thunder pretty much fried his servers and operators.

"you can't have thunder without lightning." "lightning is always followed by thunder." please and this was your own good DO NOT SEPARATE HIM FROM BLAKE.

if he doesn't know about his brother's whereabouts for more than say 4 hours and the man also isn't responding to his morpher, he might as well flip the city upside down to find him.

very fiercely loyal and protective. once he decides to choose someone as his person he will stand by it until you give him solid prove of wrong doings of that person.

a little morally off course, blake is the moral compass most of the time. doesn't mind doing small bad for greater good and can't forget the whole lothor phase.

doesn't like water all that much either, mostly because of his incapacity to swim in too much water and his electrical element.

please don't leave him in a kitchen unsupervised he will end up burning something if not the whole house- good lord.

has trouble sleeping which makes cam's canon comment on his caffeine intake very real.

he drinks so much coffee and other caffeine stuff he is practically immune to it at this point 😭💀🤚🏻

someone please hug this man I volunteer as tribute

VERY PETTY.

BIG SARCASM.

he has murderous tendencies if poked too much when is clearly not feeling it.

II - ROMANTIC

makes the first move.

very obvious about his liking before the official ask out.

he is very standing next to you by jungkook coded bf.

first thing he does is look for his partner after a race.

not much on pda but would rest a arm around their shoulder and drop a occasional forehead kiss.

is a slow and passionate kisser. his kisses usually end up in heavy make out sessions.

very protective in general but even more for his partner.

makes a effort to learn about his partner's hobby so he can just make a conversation if not take part in it for some reason.

spends most of his free time with them.

always tries his best to make up for anytime his ranger duties take him away from plans or stuff.

sleeps as the big spoon.

----

tags: @junglefurytrash @junglekarmapippa @atomic-bobo @anyavaramyr @chanti-leaving @skyland2703 this taglist is only for power rangers content. so let me know if you wanna be added or removed.

[bellamer]

Just woke up sweating from my nap because I was feeling weird about some portrayals of Pavitr and did the whole Alex The Lion Madagascar 2 Escape from Africa "De Ja Vu Like I've Been Here Before" scene realizing where I've seen this before and why I don't particularly like it

In my own words:

They're doing to Pavitr what they did to Kakyoin which is turning him into a yaoified feminized skinny bottom twink who's only there to make sassy remarks and be the manic pixie yaoi boy, they're gonna do what they did to Jotakak with Chaipunk because I mostly see this happening in Chaipunk fanart and fanfiction

It's the typical case of a character being hyper feminized by the fandom, like how it tends to be in a lot of yaoi series because someone always has to be "the girl" in the relationship because the "bottom" is always portrayed as small, skinny with hyper feminine features or traits and the "top" is always portrayed as some dark, hyper masculine, tall, looming figure

And it tends to bleed into most mlm ships even when the characters in the source material are completely portrayed as being opposite as this like say for instance idk another JoJo ship like Josuyasu where just because Josuke takes pride in his appearance like Pavitr, fans automatically label him the "feminine one" or the "girl" in the relationship and tend to draw him smaller and skinnier than he is and by default draw Okuyasu bigger and taller when Josuke is actually taller than Okuyasu by an inch and the two more or less have the same build but I know you've had to seen it somewhere before because it runs so deep when it comes to MLM ships that I've seen it happen in the fucking OSMOSIS JONES FANDOM (don't ask, you don't wanna know. Unless you do want to know, then I'll share with you the shitshow of what I saw)

And this isn't about the people who may have headcanons of Pavitr being transfemme, ya'll keep doing what you do.

This is about the people who will look at a mlm ship and force hyper feminine and hyper masculine traits onto both of those characters just because they need someone to be the "girl" in the relationship and they choose who's the "girl" based on traits they might consider feminine, example, Pavitr takes pride in his appearance, he's typically cheerful and happy go lucky, he's short (shorter than Hobie at least) and he's "sassy" (Y'know the whole chai tea rant which wasn't really him being "sassy" it was more so him ranting about western cultural appropriation and people using words they don't even understand incorrectly but I digress)

And of course Hobie is given the hyper masculine traits because he's a tall black man which is a whole other problem I'd have to make a whole different rant about of how whenever black men are in mixed race mlm ships they're always automatically made out to be the hyper masculine ones because black men have always had hyper masculinity pushed on them and they're never allowed to be the "soft" ones in the relationship, even if a black male character is canonly portrayed as being not being typically masculine the fandom will still write them or draw them as having some secret " aggressive dominant dark side"

In ChaiPunk's case ? It's literally just feminized asian person and masculainized black person with all the shit I said before about how fandoms always need to make someone the "girl" in the relationship and yeah

Y'all get the point

[artificial-transmutations]

Two sides of the same coin - Early Morning

Kyle loved the early mornings. Not the eight o'clock early mornings or even the six o'clock mornings. No, the best time in the morning was much earlier, the time when the first gray of the morning turned into the sunrise over the waves of the ocean to the east. Although the sunrise over the waves was a spectacle and so beautiful that Kyle had made multiple paintings of it already, it was not the main reason he liked the early hours of the day best.

No, the reason for that was that there were no people around. Kyle didn't hate anyone per se, he just didn't like the company of people in general. Sadly, meeting other humans couldn't be avoided entirely, so these precious few hours of loneliness in the morning helped him to gather the strength he needed for a day full of unavoidable social interaction.

The beach was usually empty at this time, and the first visitors only came here later in the morning, so for a few hours, his usual spot on a rock was left in wonderful solitude.

Not so today. When he came here today, he was surprised to see another person already there, on his rock, a dark and alien silhouette against the gray morning.

Kyle frowned and turned around. His day was pretty much ruined already.

However, as he turned to leave, he heard the other man's voice:

"Hey, don't go."

The voice had a boyish charm to it, but it was clearly a man's voice. The words were surprisingly soft and gentle and didn't carry any force with them.

Despite that, or perhaps even because of it, Kyle stopped and turned around again.

The other man had stood up and walked a few steps in his direction but kept a respectful distance.

"Sorry for invading.", he smiled. "I'm Xavier, and I have noticed you around. They said I would find you out here in the early mornings."

Xavier's voice was gentle and calm, but surprisingly firm, the kind of voice that only people possess who are so very sure about their place in the world. It seemed to come from a position of utter certainty. Kyle found it quite attractive but was confused.

"Why would you be looking for me", he asked.

Xavier shrugged nonchalantly and smiled a warm smile. "Because you're extremely cute and I want to ask you out on a coffee. Oh, here, I even found this while waiting. Even though it probably fell out of your pocket, we could use it to pay for the coffee."

Kyle automatically took the shiny coin Xavier handed him. His head was swimming from the openness of the other guy. He rarely discussed his homosexuality and when he did, he felt so clumsy talking to other people that he quickly stopped. Not so Xavier. He didn't seem like the typical extrovert, but at least he was very sure of himself. Kyle didn't yet know if he liked that. Perhaps he would be even full of himself?

As he didn't answer, Xavier asked: "So, what do you say?"

"Oh, sorry." Kyle replied. Sometimes he didn't notice how long he was thinking internally. He was automatically searching for a good excuse why he couldn't go and played around with the coin, before pocketing it.

"I don't like coffee" was what he finally settled on. And normally, he would have ended the conversation with that, but for some reason he added: "But we can talk now, if you like."

"Sure thing." Xavier nodded enthusiastically. "We should sit down somewhere."

They sat side by side on the rock, facing the ocean and the sunrise. Both men were silent for a moment. Kyle was horrified. Why did he say that? Was he supposed to flirt now? He didn't even know how this worked. How did one make small talk with someone they wanted to date?

Xavier broke the silence. "So, tell me something about yourself."

"Well," Kyle began, trying to think of an interesting topic. "I'm Kyle." God, that sounded awkward. He needed to add some question to it. "And who are you?"

Xavier looked at him and chuckled. It wasn't a mean laugh, but a friendly one, but still Kyle felt deeply ashamed.

"You're not very good at this, are you?" Xavier asked in a friendly voice. "That's okay, it kind of makes you look even more cute."

"Let's try something else, okay? Don't tell me about yourself, at all. Instead, tell me about yourself as if you were the complete opposite of yourself, an entirely different person."

That was a funny idea, but for some reason, it really made things easier for Kyle.

"Okay. Well, in that case I... like to surf."

"Great, so you're a surfer. The whole package? Are you carefree and perhaps even a bit dim?" Xavier entertained the thought.

"Yes, you could say that! I'm really easy going and don't think about things too much at all!" Kyle felt his mood brighten considerably. "I'm also really loud usually and very outgoing", Kyle added, almost shouting to make sure he was being heard.

"Cool, I can see that going for you!" Xavier said. The situation felt a bit weird, like it began a certain way but then took a sharp and unexpected turn. He couldn't really tell why he felt that way, though.

"And it's also my language. To be honest, I'm really not that bright. So, I make my sentence short. And avoid long words. My favorite word is 'dude', though. What is your favorite word, dude?" Kyle had his usual happy grin on his face.

"I never thought about it, actually." Xavier responded. "But is it true that surfing gives you an amazing body?"

"You bet, dude! Check out those guns! And these abs!" Kyle pulled off his hoodie and flexed for the other man, not forgetting to show off the cobblestone road of abs of his. The sun had risen somewhat by now, so his fit body was kissed in the golden light of the morning.

"And I bet all the sun makes you really tan, huh?" Xavier found himself being drawn in by the surfer more and more. His body looked just so perfect.

"Yeah. Goes really well with my blond hair. It's all natural, dude!"

Kyle saw that Xavier was checking him out quite obviously now and leaned back with his arms behind his head to give him a good view, blowing some of his golden strands out of his face.

"It's all natural down there as well, dude!" he added as Xavier's gaze stopped at his more-impressive-by-the-minute bulge that tented his board shorts now.

"Sorry about that. I get hard very often, dude!" Kyle laughed, not embarrassed in the slightest.

Xavier didn't answer, but his eyes stuck to the clear dickprint in the front of Kyles board shorts and the perfect round ass on the other side, clearly visible against the wet fabric.

"Can you teach me how to surf?" Xavier asked, wishing nothing more than to have a body like that.

"Sure dude! Come on, let's get our toes wet!" With that, Kyle ran towards the ocean line, dragging the surprised Xavier behind him.

"Okay, first step: You need to get naked! Completely nude, dude!"

That seemed strange to Xavier, but he quickly complied. His dick was standing stiff to attention and yearned for actions.

As he had finished undressing, Kyle smiled. "Okay, now kiss me dude!"

"O..okay?" Xavier said but leaned up and gave Kyle a peck on the lips. As he wanted to draw away though, Kyle just pulled him into a deep, French kiss.

When they finished kissing, Xavier was rock hard. No, really, his whole skin felt hard and durable, and he found his body quickly getting impossibly thin. Before long, Xavier was nothing more than the colorful surfboard of Kyle, who looked at the object still with lust in his eyes and pants. Time to hit the waves! He didn't care he still had a raging erection - he was confident enough to flaunt it. And who knows, he might even get laid by some dude who watched him enjoy the early morning sun!

If you liked the idea of dudes finding together with objects in an unlikely pairing, you might also like the other stories of the same kind.

[bettyfrommars]

S1 * 💗

Pretty please

Melll I'm so happy to see you in my asks you don't even know

Your Person is Hybrid Steve, your Place is a Concert Venue, and your Thing is Dealer's Choice, so I will give you Farrah Fawcett Hairspray

word count: 830

Steve is mostly just a vampire in this, a few visceral visions of gore, blood, drinking blood, allusions to tracking someone down and killing them. Hybrid Steve is a complicated boy, his primal urges take him to dark places every so often (babe I had no idea it would go this way 💀)

18+ONLY

"Let me see," you pulled Steve aside, ushering him closer to the bathroom of the hotel room. "It needs more...fluff."

You fingered the wave of a curl that bounced on his forehead, smoothing down his mutton chop sideburns with a satisfied hum.

"I look stupid," he mumbled, running a hand over the buttons of the loud Hawaiian print shirt you'd bought for him. It was an especially sultry night in Vegas, and he also had on a pair of chinos that hugged his ass just right. "I'm dressed like my dad."

"Close your eyes," you held a hand over his face while you sprayed his coif thoroughly with his favorite brand of hairspray, bursts of aerosol puffing everywhere. Once it was set to perfection, you adjusted the collar of his shirt, fingering the tuft of chest hair that was visible there.

"Do I look okay?" You stepped back, twirling to give him the full view.

"You always look good," he mumbled again, turning to give his reflection a dirty look in the hallway mirror, scratching the stubble on his jaw. "You really like it when I wolf out like this?"

You lifted your eyebrows a few times in eager approval.

"Good thing Eddie's not here, I'd never live this shirt down."

"Type O before we go?" There was a martini glass full of plasma on the counter, and you handed it to him before gulping the last bit of your wine. The Flamingo Hotel had an entire wing of the establishment dedicated to their vampire clientele, right down to the automatic blackout curtains and bottles of freshly extracted blood. Your boyfriend liked to drink his out of a cocktail glass, pinky out, because he was fancy like that.

Steve Harrington, the most reluctant vampire you'd ever met.

He took three big swallows, finishing the entire thing before setting the glass back down. "I'm not wearing flip flops like a dork."

"Your converse are right over there," you busied yourself with making sure you had everything you needed in your bag.

Once he had his shoes on, you handed him the spare key. "Keep this on the chain around your neck? In case you go into beast mode and I lose you."

"Beast mode" otherwise known as Steve changing into his hybrid wolf form and losing all control, hadn't happened in months, not since he'd done the arduous work of trying to control it. He'd made friends with the monster, as his therapist would say.

You preferred to feed him from your own vein, but that was another trigger, it tended to flip some animalistic switch inside of him. Once he began to change into the beast, there was no going back.

By the time you made it to the venue to see a world-famous vampire Elvis impersonator on foot, Steve was sweaty and grouchy. You were about to get seated at the designated red velvet booth you'd bought tickets for, when a big man going the other way bumped into Steve, knocking him in the shoulder so hard he stumbled to the side.

"Watch where you're going, Fanger," the other man hissed, continuing on his way. The term Fanger was a derogatory word for vampire used mostly by right wing extremists who didn't think they should be allowed in polite society, or even be allowed to exist, for that matter.

"The fuck did you say?" Steve's normally chocolate eyes glowed amber gold, and his fangs ejected. You stopped to grab his face in both of your hands, forcing him to look at you.

"Baby, breathe," you coaxed, shuffling closer. "Not tonight, Stevie, you promised."

His breaths were coming out forceful, like a bull about to charge, nostrils flaring. You held his face with all of your strength until you saw his eyes melt from tiger yellow back to brown suede again.

"Sorry," he huffed, pulling his fangs in, trying to avert his gaze, slightly embarrassed that such a small thing could rile him up and flush all the personal development he'd done down the toilet.

He'd hold your hand and watch Vampire Elvis jive around the stage in his bedazzled jumpsuits and he'd enjoy it. He'd try not to think about how good it would feel to rip that dude's body apart limb by limb, to drink from his bloody head like a cup. A smile quivered at the corner of his mouth as he thought about how horrible the screams would be while he shredded that knucklefuck with his bare hands.

You squeezed his knee, leaning in while the performance was going on. "That's the first time I've seen you smile all night."

Steve leaned into the grin letting his teeth show. He wanted to put you at ease and make you proud. He'd never loved anyone like you before and he'd do anything to keep you.

He'd track that guy later, while you were asleep, and then everyone would be happy.

Except for knucklefuck, of course. He'd be dead.

[rise-my-angel]

re: the bastardphobia post.

It’s such a stupid discourse too, when Jace, Luke and Joff are (rightfully imo) pointed out as bastards it’s gReEn PrOpOgAnDa and bAsTaRdPhObIa and yet their rebuttal is always half a billion pathetic arguments to try and claim they’re not. Most of them are also nasty to Addam and Nettles for betraying tRuE KwEEn Rhaenyra and being bastards. I think it’s fairly easy to say that the bastardphobia allegations are coming from inside the house.

Their arguments are entirely contradicting. It's wrong for Alicent's side of the family to use them being bastards to bolster their claims as it is wrong for fans to agree. But they also consistently demand that any argument that they are bastards is wrong.

Either some argument that because of some grandparent's hair colour being dark, that means its reasonable for the boys to turn out with dark hair. When that is not how that works at all. With hair colour specifically, it's mostly luck and chance that Alicent's kids all had silver hair. But if Jace, Luke, and Joffery are all Leanors children, then they would have had silver hair too. The in universe characters don't know this kind of science though, which is why the kingdoms all thought it was entierly plausable that all of Roberts children inherited Cersei's blonde hair, when in reality in most cases, natural blondes are only born to 2 blonde parents because its a recessive gene. On first glance no one notices, until someone points out that the children don't look at all like one parent then suddenly everyone else realizes it too.

Also, it's possible one child may be born that inherits an older ancestors dark hair, but not all three of them. That is literally the same unlikely scenario as Robert's children all being blondes when literally every single other Baratheon has dark hair. (Literally Gendry describes his mother as having yellow hair). If those boys were Laenor, they would look even the slightest bit similar to him, but they do not.

The second argument is Laenor accepted them as his own, which means they are not bastards. Which....literally no. First of all, he does express an exhaustion of playing this lie for Rhaenyras sake for so many years. Secondly, that is not how legitimization works.

Bastards getting true names is a process. One which needs to go through public, legal documentation through the King in which actual written declarations are provided. Rhaenyra would have had to admit to Viserys they are bastards and demand legitimization, and then also beg for him to keep that a secret to play the lie off as if they always were. If Catelyn had been a mother to Jon, that doesn't automatically mean he is a legitimate Stark. Ned still would've had to go to Robert and request it.

But the thing is, both of these arguments contradict their point. They would argue instead that Rhaenyra should have pushed for their rights as bastards regardless. To force change to make the system less oppressive to them in general, but she didn't. She lies to suit her own image and threatened her mutilated brother with torture for saying what around the court, is more known as common gossip.

They don't care about bastards outside of Targaryeans. These are the same people insisting that Jon Snow recognize his Targaryean heritage and align himself completely as one. They do not care about him as Jon Snow, they want him to be a Targaryean. They belittle characters like Nettles because her status as as a bastard cannot be looped around to making her a true Targaryean.

They only care about the discussion of bastards enough to morally grandstand about how people discuss them within the Targaryean family. Other bastards that cannot be a tool for their pro Targaryean agenda, do not matter. They do not actually care about it.

But because we use the in universe logic to discuss their in universe legal rights and lack of privlages as argument for a complicated legal debacle, they say its bastard phobic. We don't not support them for being bastards, we are explaining why IN UNIVERSE they would not have the rights to the things Rhaenyra is pushing for.

In universe characters too are not in the wrong for using their status as bastards as why they support the other side. They are well within their right to support the strict legal system which the Targaryeans themselves implimented.

We the audience know theres nothing wrong with being a bastard, but we are not supposed to use that to judge the story with our own moral compass. The point of a character like Jon Snow isn't to condemn others for their views of him as a Snow, its so we understand that bastards are normal people who should not be villanized on sight. It's meant to tell us that we shouldn't judge bastards the way other characters will but it is not to condemn the system people have grown up and and thus think are normal.

But these people make excuses to say why they aren't bastards while also getting mad at us for calling them bastards. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. These people don't care about bastards outside of the discussion of the Targaryean family.

It's both a total hypocrisy and a total lack of nuance.

[voxmyriad]

Cal Kestis Week 2024 Day Five: Fly Low

Prompt: Fall | “Of course it’s you.” | The Sun Comes Up Again | The Force

At first I wasn't sure about this ship, but then I thought about them for too long and got on board

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen, M/M

Fandom: Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order Series (Video Games)

Relationship: Boba Fett/Cal Kestis

Characters: Cal Kestis, Boba Fett

Additional Tags: Pre-Relationship Cal Kestis/Boba Fett, It's "pre" because Cal is oblivious (affectionate), and because Fett is stubborn (affectionate)

"Huh."

It's not the most practical thing to say, as he watches the cable he'd been leaping for go past his hand, blown in the other direction by an unpredictable gust of wind. It isn't what he should be thinking as his high arc begins to falter. The ground is a long way down, and from here he has a great view of the lines of traffic between towering buildings reaching into the sky, into the earth. If there's any earth left. Billions, maybe trillions of souls, just living their lives under the Empire, and one of them...falling.

BD-1 is whistling, the sound fading away from them as they plummet, his little jet frantically firing as he tries to slow Cal's rate of speed, but they've tried that before. It's just not powerful enough. A strong enough jet to carry both of them drains too much power. So it's just him, using the Force to twist in midair, gaze sweeping up and down and around, looking for a nearby speeder, a floating platform, even a girder, anything—

When he's slammed into from behind, metal against his back and pinning his arms to his sides. The familiar roar of a jetpack drowns out BD's whistling as their trajectory is abruptly reversed and the bright stars replace the twinkling ground. The impact had knocked the breath out of him and the grip is too tight for Cal to inhale fully, but only a few seconds later he's dumped unceremoniously on a rooftop.

Cal has enough presence of mind to roll when he lands and comes up with his saber in hand and lit, but when he comes face to face with his attacker, or rescuer, he stops short.

"Of course it's you." The metallic voice from the helmet sounds more annoyed than angry. Arms folded, no weapons in hand. More rescuer than attacker today, then.

As Cal straightens, the blade vanishes and he hooks his lightsaber deliberately back onto his belt. "Of course it's you."

"No one else around to save your sorry shebs, Kestis."

"You were watching?"

"I was in the neighborhood." Armored hands reach up to unfasten the dark green helmet, black T-shaped visor flashing as he pulls it off to reveal unruly curls of black hair and a glower that could rival a turbolaser. "Why don't you look where you're going?"

"I did," Cal protests as BD hops down to look around, crisis averted. "The cable blew out of my reach."

"And you didn't have a plan for after?"

Cal spreads his arms. "The Force provides," he says with an attempt at Jedi serenity, though it's ruined by the smile growing at the corners of his mouth.

Fett growls low in his throat. "Should've let you ruin someone else's day."

"Where's the fun in that?" Cal takes the helmet, examining it with interest, but releasing it easily when Fett pointedly takes it back. "So no hunt this time?"

"There's a hunt. Different quarry. Like I said, I was in the neighborhood." Fett props the helmet on his hip, scanning the horizon for threats in a movement too automatic to register taking his eyes off a credible threat.

Cal glances around too, reaching through the Force, but if there's a Jedi out there, the miasma of souls on this city-world disguises them easily. "Who is it?" he asks anyway, even though he knows Fett won't tell him.

He's right. Fett just gives him a withering stare, but after a few moments he says, "No one you knew."

"Guess I'll take your word for that," Cal mutters, walking to the edge of the roof and looking down. Still a sheer drop from here, not close enough to any other buildings to risk jumping. There's a door on the roof, locked. Not a problem for someone with a lightsaber, but he's trying to keep a lower profile while he's here. (Trying. Not exactly succeeding.) "Aren't you gonna get in trouble with your boss?"

"I don't have a boss. I choose who I work for."

"You know what I mean. Vader's paying you to catch me."

"Not right now."

"What, are you off the clock?"

"I told you, Kestis—I choose who I work for. And when. Unless you want me to change my mind." Fett's hand twitches, ever so slowly.

"All right, all right. I get it. You do what you want, when you want."

"Don't forget it."

It's almost like sparring, the way they do this sometimes, Cal thinks. He says something, Fett takes offense—real or not, Cal's never quite sure—and Cal either doubles down or backs off. He prefers doubling down, but maybe not while he's stuck on a fairly high-level, high-security skyscraper. Which Fett knows. And he knows that rubs Cal the wrong way.

"...so, are you leaving me here?"

"Depends."

Cal takes a step back from the edge of the roof, and another, and as he moves, Fett steps back. It isn't a retreat. It's Fett knowing exactly, exactly how far Cal can lunge with his lightsaber in a single strike. "On?"

"Call it an arrangement."

Immediately, Cal bristles. "With you? I'm not telling you anything—"

"Keep your hair on, Kestis. I have other sources to track anyone you happen to know." Then, strangely, Cal can tell what he's feeling. It's not strong, not as if he'd been Force-sensitive this whole time, not like Bode had suddenly lit up that plateau on Jedha with his shadows—stars, not again, Cal isn't sure he could handle that a second time, even three years later—but usually Fett is even more unreadable than any non-sensitive human should be. Cal has a hard time figuring him out most of the time, but right now there's a flavor of…hesitation. Uncertainty.

"What's up?" he asks as Fett doesn't elaborate, but at that moment there's a flash of brilliant light from the horizon. Cal shades his eyes against the blaze of Coruscant's sunrise. The whole city is gilded, every building and speeder painted gold and copper and silver. "I used to love this," he murmurs as he watches the sky turn from purple to peach and finally shade into blue. "I used to stand on top of the Temple to watch this."

Finally he turns and feels a spark of surprise as he realizes Fett has been watching him all this time with an expression of…frustration? But it only lasts a fraction of time. Clearly caught, Fett rams the helmet back into place and stalks forward. "Hold on," he says curtly, and just as BD secures himself on Cal's back, Fett grabs him again and takes off without hesitation.

There's no time for Cal to ask what's going on, what information Fett is looking for. This time Fett drops him from a height, a short one, but enough that Cal needs to catch hold of a convenient pole and flip in midair toward an elevated walkway. He makes it and straightens up just in time to see Fett disappearing around a building in the distance.

"...okay," he says, frowning after him. "That was weird, right?" he asks BD, who beeps assent. "Yeah." But they're not falling, and they're not on the roof anymore. Before anyone breaks the silent agreement of minding their own business in a big city, Cal ducks his head, shoves his hands into his pockets and starts walking.

[inklesspen]

A thing you see a lot in Star Wars material is "The Will of the Force". It's simply taken for granted a lot of the time. Oh, Jedi can argue about what the Will of the Force is in a particular situation, but nobody (except Kreia, I suppose) is ever seriously arguing that maybe the Will of the Force shouldn't automatically be obeyed. My guess is that this has something to do with how the Will of the Force is often synonymous with the Direction of the Plot. It's certainly convenient, but it raises ethical issues with which Star Wars rarely if ever bothers to engage.

“Well, the Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It is an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.”

I was thinking about how you can have a Jedi take direction from the Force in a way that's generally reliable (after accounting for individual error), but which doesn't require setting the Force up as a moral authority, and I came up with this:

To begin, let‘s suppose that part of how the Force interacts with sapient beings is that when you make choices — when you settle on an intent — that creates a sort of “status effect” in your connection to the Force. Even if you have no idea how to wield the Force, you‘re still leaking out that intent. And part of what a Force adept can do is basically query the intent states of sapient beings in her vicinity. This is generally done at a subconscious level. A Jedi wants to be able to intervene in unjust situations? Well, then her connection to the Force is basically running a query across all the nearby Intents, looking for someone Intending to do unwarranted harm (according to the Jedi‘s moral guidelines). This is less a "configure search agent, send it to search the net, read results later" scenario like we‘d see with technology and more like a constant feedback loop between the Jedi‘s moral instincts and the collective Force auras of everyone in town. And this produces what the Jedi senses as "the Will of the Force". (We can also say it‘s slightly acausal, allowing Jedi to react to Intents that haven‘t actually been formed yet.) But the same function that queries Intents can also “broadcast”, which is how Obi-Wan mind-tricks the stormtroopers, and part of how Battle Meditation probably works, and so on.

He called upon the Force, gathering it to himself and wrapping himself within it. He breathed it in and held it whirling inside his heart, clenching down upon it until he could feel the spin of the galaxy around him. Until he became the axis of the Universe. This was the real power of the dark side, the power he had suspected even as a boy, had sought through his long life until Darth Sidious had shown him that it had been his all along. The dark side didn’t bring him to the center of the universe. It made him the center. He drew power into his innermost being until the Force itself existed only to serve his will.

The Sith warrior, of course, has other priorities. He will certainly want to keep abreast of certain Intents in the Force, but he‘s doing a lot more spamming of his own Intent upon others. It won‘t always work, but he only has to overpower someone once, right?

Which brings me to a thing that I‘m pretty sure is just fanon — the idea that beskar‘gam can protect a mando‘ad‘s mind from jetii tricks (or, that someone wearing real Mandalorian armor is effectively a void in the Force). If this is true, then someone wearing beskar‘gam isn‘t radiating their Intent into the Force like everyone else does, though a Jedi can still sense them, if imperfectly, by the way their actions influence other people‘s Intents. Still, if you have to go up against a Force adept it‘s worth it to wear beskar if you can, because it effectively removes their precognitive sense; they can‘t react to your Intents until you‘ve acted on them in a way others can see.

So what about droids? There‘s a lot of stuff in the Clone Wars show about the battle droids being fully sapient, with feelings and fears and individualized reactions. But they‘re still networked, still driven remotely.

And that‘s because, yes, a droid can have an Intent in the Force too. Not every droid; not the little mouse droids, or at least they only have small, simple Intents. But a droid with a complex personality, like Artoo? Sure thing. He presents in the Force like any other living being. And the battle droids are getting up there in complexity.

So what do you think happens when a droid has an Intent aura, but doesn‘t do what that Intent would suggest? When a droid wants to do anything other than run headlong at the lightsaber-wielding maniac and the legion of clone troopers, but is forced to do so anyway by its programming?

I think the result is a lot of Jedi being badly served by their instincts. They know what the droid wants to do, and they want to react to what the droid wants to do, but the droid doesn‘t actually do that thing, so they have to force themselves not to react that way. They have to force themselves not to pay attention to “the Will of the Force”. And doesn‘t that sound just like something Palpatine and Dooku would want for them? The better they get at killing droid armies, the worse they get at being Jedi.

[viviane-lefay]

His physical strength is pretty remarkable, true.

In one of the trailers, he easily blocks Cal (who attacks him with full force, using both hands), and then strikes him down with one massive blow, using just one hand - which is quite something.

These are the scenes I would have loved to see more of, because they really show how damn powerful he really is.

After all this is a knight of the golden age of the Jedi, and one of the best at that, renowned for his outstanding abilities as a lightsaber duelist, as well as in the force. This man has got to be fucking epic!

Other than the above-mentioned scene in the trailer, we have just some short cutscenes in the game, but even there, he really wipes the floor with his opponents.

Judging from those, it is quite obvious that Cal, even with the help of Bode, didn't really stand a chance - hadn't he been aware of Dagan's weakness.

Thing is ... it's just these cutscenes, and not the entire fight - because if the gamer in question is really talented, you might get a bit of a different impression, which kind of skews the picture - unfortunately.

Which is why it is truly a shame that we didn't get to see more of Dagan and his fight scenes - be it the duel with Rayvis, or the battle on Tanalorr - it would have done a great job driving home that he really didn't get his reputation for nothing.

You know - show, not only tell.

-

^ Agreed.

... except for the bit that says that the dark side made him more powerful - no, it did not. If anything it made him more fierce and feral, but not stronger.

As for his power level - I think he is easily on par with Mace.

... and an even better duelist than Vader, skills-wise.

Yeah, said it - and I mean it:

That the latter just happens to be the Chosen One, doesn't automatically mean he excels at literally everything and is basically invincible. We have already seen that this isn't the case more than once.

Besides, it's a canonical fact that Anakin was a bit negligent regarding his training, he even says so himself. Even him trying to catch up on this later as Vader doesn't automatically elevate him to the level of mastery someone as consistently driven as Dagan is at.

If anything, this Chosen One issue just concerns his midichlorian count aka force potential, as well as his individual fate being tied to that of the galaxy, having further reaching implications than that of others, but that is it. Same goes for redemption and the ability to free oneself from the grip of the dark side - that's NOT something exclusive to him. He's not that speshul. Don't make him any more outstanding than he actually is ... It's annoying!

Of course there are other Jedi, which might not have the status as the Chosen One, but are incredibly powerful, nonetheless - and Dagan, imho, is one of them!

[banzaitaka]

Can i request jojos from part 1 to 5 having a s/o thats basically like childe( tartaglia) from genshin impact?

---

I feel like I've seen smore (genshin character) like reader than any other ogrids0fgou not a bad thing, just an observation

jgfodsijgfoid watch me regret making this into scenarios dsijfosjf M sorry, Josuke and Giorno barely got any sentences, so I decided to cut them out

(1) Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Masterlist

I hope this is what you wanted & you enjoy reading!

TW: tiny mention of blood in Joseph's & Jotaro's part

Jonathan Joestar x gn! reader

Joseph Joestar x gn! reader

Jotaro Kujo x gn! reader

Family

Someone could list off all dark traits about you, all the violence, all the mischief, all betrayal, and still, Jonathan would look at you with eyes that hold nothing, but love. He believes actions don't determine good or bad, but instead the reasoning behind them, as well as the person's feelings. A thief isn't automatically a bad person, for example, they might be starving or try to save someone with medicine.

He didn't see any reason to put you with the bad people. While your ways might seem kind of...unnecessarily brutal at times, what's in your heart has become clear to him. The way you care for your family...the first time he witnessed you playing with a relative way younger than you, he could feel his heart melt. Jonathan did not hesitate to agree to play along with the image you put up infront of your family. After all, you do it to keep them safe, to keep them happy and with no worries.

Although, he does talk to you about it from time to time. Because on the other side, even though your intentions cause no direct harm towards them, they're your family. And they deserve to know what your're going through. For your sake as well. But he is in no place to tell you what to do, hence why he plays along and only ever gives you little nudges.

The lenghts you go to protect your family is admirable to him and he would not hesitate to jump in to assist if it was ever needed. After all, you would do the same.

Trick Up Your Sleeve

"(Y/N)!!"

Joseph was watching you crash into a wrecked hut, a good distance away. Ceasar was doing his best to hold him back from barging in your direction, "Don't involve yourself, it's (Y/N) battle to fight!" Grinding his teeth, the brunette continued to stare, eyes looking for you. He knew this fight was personal, part of your duty, and something you genuinely enjoyed, but he wouldn't dare letting you get hurt beyond repair.

Your enemy panted, forcing out a chuckle, "Got you at last..."

That's when the wodden planks of the hut started to shake, light illuminating through the gaps. They gasped, almost choking on the blood in their mouth. You broke free with a roar, sending the planks flying in all directions. Joseph's breath got caught in his throat. He took in your form...You were much bigger, looking almost inhuman with the mask planted on your face. Was this really you??

"What the hell is going on!?"

"It's the last trick up their sleeve.", Ceasar explained calmly, finally letting go of the other, "I don't know the details myself, only that they rarely actually use it."

Your enemy was frozen from shock, all the color left their face. They could barely hold themself up from all the blows they already recieved. And you...You looked perfectly fine, steadily walking up to them while drawing your weapon once again.

It was over.

"What the heck was that thing you were doing!? Why didn't you tell me about that before!? I'm your boyfriend! You gotta tell me!", Joseph was all over you, kneeling beside the couch you were laying on. You were still feeling extremely drained, but you stopped panting at least, "You don't just reveal your biggest weapon.", you replied with a smug smile. Joseph pouted, leaning closer to your face, "Then how does Ceasar know about it?"

You chuckled, "We've known eachother for years. He saw me use it maybe three times in total? Really, it's nothing personal, buddy."

The brunette crossed his arms as he leaned back again, "I guess it was a cool plot twist.", he grinned, "Just wait, I'll leave you surprised, absolutely baffled next time we face a foe!" And it became a challenge to both.

Violence

While this is not the language Jotaro prefers to speak, violence plays a huge part on the mission to save his mother. And you, his partner, happen to speak that language fluently. You've been dubbed bloodthirsty by numerous students in your school, leaving those who only knew you by your less dark side in confusion.

Your fight spirit paired with your experiences gives Jotaro enough reason to be able to depend on you. You could control yourself when you needed, and knew when you could let loose to dispose of your enemies quick. You were on a time schedule after all.

The sound of your panting used to be foreign to your boyfriend, but he grew acustomed to it during the trip to egypt. The joy on your face was an odd sight, giving the situation. He managed to look past that, however. He knew you cared. You chuckled as you looked up to him from your position on the floor, "That was quite fun, wasn't it?"

Instead of answering you, he let himself sink to the floor next to you, and let you lean against him. A sigh fell from your lips as silence was about to arise, "I know this is different from what you used to see from me. I mean- more extreme.", you tilted your head to look up at him again, "Do you still want to be with me?"

Jotaro glanced at you from out of the corner of his eye, "You should rest and wipe the blood off your face."

[the-epic-hiram-lows]

"This isn't based on zodiac analysis but I would be happy to do that as well." Do it please

Disclaimer: I know about 5 things about zodiac signs. I'm freeballing this by doing minimal research to avoid a deep, deep dive. If someone disagrees with me, they're probably right.

Sure! First, let's look at the basics.

Again I will cite that this is Riverdale. Nothing is subtle.

Automatically, Mary and Sierra are Libras due to practicing law.

Hiram being a Scorpio is both canon and perfection. Scorpios are known to be the edgy, evil, horny zodiac sign (I say this with love... though textbook Scorpios know and embrace this.)

Hal is a Gemini because, again, this is Riverdale. He lived as one thing while he pretended to be another. You can't get much more two-faced than him.

Archie: Sagittarius

The fact three of the above images allude to a lack of commitment is perfect for a character who's made a name for himself choosing between girls for 50+ years. Sure, that isn't textbook Riverdale Archie, but his lack of commitment does peek through in other ways. While I'd argue he is very committed to people, he is impulsive with his passions. He's also independent, outgoing, and friendly. I also think he has a strong sense of justice, but one could argue that was Mary's upbringing rubbing off on him. Or maybe he has Libra in his charts, like his mama.

Cheryl: Classic Leo

She definitely has Scorpio in her chart, but Leo is Cheryl. Dominant, vain, sexual and ambitious... remove the mentions of kindness and any of the Leo descriptions could be her biography.

Betty: Virgo

Betty's Virgoness is everything she hates about herself. The good girl who patiently taught Archie how to read. The girl who quietly smiles instead of screaming. Her perfectionism and enthusiasm are a stifling combination, forcing her into situation after situation where she her need to be right nearly kills her.

Veronica: Aries

Veronica is fiery, entrepreneurial, bubbly, intense, and stubborn. She is consistent, yet still throws curveballs to everyone who watches her. She is bossy and passionate, sensual and charismatic. Aries is a perfect fit for her.

Jughead: Capricorn

Jughead is a nurturer to few, a stranger to most, and a force to everybody. He will let nothing go- maybe some Taurus and Cancer in his charts- and stands firmly on the side of justice (maybe some Libra as well.) He has no chill. If he is down, he is brooding. If he is excited, he is obsessive. Though the first two images on the post directly contradict on the pessimism vs. optimism debate, I'd argue that is apt as well. To be so passionate about injustice is to live in a state of knowing things are utter shit, but believing you can chane them. Jughead's capricious nature (hey, wait!) causes some to see him as a dark force, a fighter, or a mystery. But his friends know there is a softer side. The coin is passionate on both sides, but he can use it to cure or destroy you.

So, basically,

[the12thnightproject]

Chapter 38: Past - The lost is found, but the found are … lost.

Mitsuhide x OC; Hideyoshi x MC (Mai)

All Chapters Archived on Ao3 

Logline - With Mai, Hideyoshi, and Aki missing, Mitsuhide and Katsuko reluctantly team up. Disguised as a merchant and his concubine, can they outsmart the man known as the God of Deceit?

CW: Battlefield scene

[Starting below the cut because of the battlefield scene]

The noise and the haze and the smell of the battlefield overwhelmed my senses. Instinctively, I wanted to be nowhere near the body, even if moving away from it… from him… that was once a person, put me in the line of the fire from the archers. Not even bothering to stifle my screams – no one would be able to hear my voice above the cacophony anyway – I scrambled away from the corpse, hoping that would give me enough perspective to figure out what to do next. It wasn’t as if I could have battled my way out of this, even if the Kanamori vassals had let me keep my sword.

All I could do was run a few staggering steps, then throw myself onto the ground again as a hail of arrows whizzed overhead. They hadn’t been close enough to harm me, but diving out of the way had been an automatic response.

Get out, get out, get out.

I half crawled, half-rolled behind a line of adult-sized wooden arrow shields, with my dark fur cloak pulled over my head for extra protection.

For the moment, I would be temporarily safe, at least until either army moved.

Should I try to use the device that had sent me here? I examined the thing closely, but there was nothing that hinted on how it worked. No. Not a good idea to tempt fate. Until I could learn how to operate it, I was better off not messing with it. For all I knew, the thing would send me to a time with dinosaurs. Instead, I carefully put the strange device in my kimono, securing it with my sash.

More arrows whizzed overhead, these much close than the first wave. This shelter was about to become far less safe. Cautiously, I peeked out. There was a grove of trees about... I don’t know… through the haze it was hard to judge… fifty? A hundred meters away?

If I was going to get out of here alive, it would be with my feet, and I would need to have enough luck that neither side clocked me as an enemy and engaged me in their fight. My green kimono wouldn’t place me with either army - there were red and black clad warriors on one side and blue, black and whi- I finally recognized those were Uesugi battle flags carried by the opposing force.

More rotten luck. The only Uesugi allies I knew were Sasuke, who was in the future now, and Yoshimoto, who was probably staring down at the untrampled snow below the castle walls of Genba. There was no one I could surrender to and declare myself to be on their side.

Having confirmed that I was going to have to run for it, I tried to make my feet move. But this wasn’t like a cave or a box where the danger was in my head. It was everywhere.

In fact, I could only thank a little pocket of dead bodies for my continued survival. Everyone around me was dead, and the dead don’t—

Someone groaned-

Rise?

Zombies. It wanted only that.

No, don’t be stupid. Just because time travel was possible didn’t mean that zombies were too. Clearly I was not the only person hiding behind the dead.

Where was the source of the noise?

The groan came again… there… from somewhere to my left.

A man was slumped to the ground, his hand clutching a bleeding shoulder. How badly was he injured? No identifiable uniform on him. He might be a peasant or farmer who had waited too late to flee. An unlike an injured warrior, whose fellow samurai would come looking for him, a lost peasant would be doomed to lie here until he either died on his own, or was murdered by scavengers.

I couldn’t abandon a civilian.

I took one last regretful look at my path to the trees before crawling over to help him up. "Sir, how badly are you- Aki?!"

Aki.

I had found my father after all.

Iekane had indeed been the key. “Aki!” At the last moment, I recalled his injury and stopped myself from throwing my arms around his neck.

At the sound of my voice, Aki turned his face to mine. He squinted as if I were a mirage. "Katsu. I told you to stay in the tree." His eyes fluttered, and I hurried to brace myself under his shoulder … the uninjured one. Even that movement made him groan in pain.

Automatically I pulled aside his clothing to see how bad the wound was. Already, threads of dirty cloth were sticking to –

A bullet wound?

I hadn’t heard any gunfire. But if at least one of the armies out here was using muskets, then we needed more cover than the flimsy wooden barrier I had just abandoned.

In that moment, it started to rain.

Oh of course. Rain. Sure. Why not.

“My lord! Oh, my lord!” There was an agonized yell somewhere behind us. “Please my lord, you must wake up!” I glanced over my shoulder to see a column of Uesugi warriors, who had formed a protective circle around a fallen man.

“Uesugi fools! Prepare yourselves!” I ducked down, pulling Aki with me, but the red and black clad warrior went charging past us without a glance. His target was the Uesugi.

“The enemy is here! You will not succeed in killing our lord!” And then with a clang and a thud, he too joined the pile of bodies on the dirt.

The battle smoke was growing thicker, and then a man – a man dressed in modern clothing - staggered out of the battle smoke, looking disoriented and scared. Had Iekane’s device pulled someone else into the Sengoku?

He stared at the newly dead warrior. “He’s… dead?”

I’d been so distracted by the sight of lab coat and pants, that I recognized the voice before his face. That’s …

Sasuke.

Seeming to be in shock, Sasuke turned to the cluster of Uesugi warriors. Had he come back from his trek to modern Japan to discover his friends at war?

One of the Uesugi was frantically shaking a collapsed man. “He lurched over then he just… fell. He wasn’t wounded - He’s not breathing!”

Sasuke stepped up to the group, and said something to them that I was too far away to hear.

But it didn’t matter. I knew where we were. Or unfortunately, when we were.

“The wormholes don’t seem to care what sort of chaos they anchor to. Mai ended up in Honno-ji during the fire. I arrived right in the middle of a battle in 1578. In the middle of a battlefield. And, er, immediately created a temporal paradox by giving CPR to Kenshin.”

Fifteen seventy eight.

Iekane’s device had sent me back in time, not forward. That wasn't battlefield smoke that Sasuke had just walked through. It was the wormhole. The wormhole which was just about to dissipate. "Aki! Can you run? At all?"

He looked at me, his face a map of pain. "Katsu? I told you to stay in the tree."

Enough with the tree! I pointed to the wormhole. "We need to leave.”

He looked, then nodded, and said through gritted teeth. "Which one is it?"

Does it matter? "Honno-ji, maybe?" That’s the one Sasuke used. "Or would you rather take your chances on the battlefield?"

In the cluster of Uesugi, Sasuke was performing mouth to mouth on the fallen man - Kenshin. This was his past, and I couldn’t interfere. Who knows what that would do to the already snarled timeline? Without waiting for Aki’s reply, I yanked him to his feet, hoping the momentum would propel him into action.

He took a few stumbling steps forward, then the adrenaline kicked in, and we ran toward the wormhole, pushing our way into the writhing grey. It was unpleasant, but the air was no longer tainted by the smell of death. For the second time that day, I felt that fog slide though me, but in an instant, it dissolved again, leaving us in a swirl of blinding white.

This is new.

Cold. Wet.

A snowstorm.

Had I gotten Aki to Genba?

I looked around, but there was no sight of the castle wall, or that cloying forest of twisted trees.

Seven years ago, the wormhole had dumped Toshiie and me into a blizzard in the Togakushi mountain range. It had been Aki who had rescued me. Had I come full circle? Had I gone back in time again… was it now 1575? Was this my past?

With two trips through a wormhole in less than two hours, it was possible I was losing my mind. Ponderable for Sasuke, if I ever see him again, does frequent wormhole travel cause psychosis?

Next to me, Aki groaned, a reminder that I had a much bigger physical problem to deal with.

Right. Blizzard now, nervous breakdown later.

Thank God I hadn’t taken off the warm cloak that Yoshimoto had given me. But Aki wasn’t outfitted as warmly. Was he shivering? He half stood, half crouched, his hand still on his shoulder wound. "Aki?" He didn’t look up. "Dad?"

He stilled, turned to face me, his expression one of regret. "I'm sorry you found out that way – I wanted to tell you before."

In spite of my intention to wait until we weren’t in danger of being flash frozen, I couldn’t stop my snarky response. Too much exposure to Mitsuhide’s banter. "Yeah. I mean, if you had time to write a letter, then why not just-"

"Letter?" He squinted at me in confusion. There was a long pause, where, knowing Aki as well as I did, I knew he was making some kind of calculation in his head. "Read my letter you did."

"Sounding more like Yoda than Anakin, you are." The joking was a natural response, but I was relieved that he seemed to be lucid. “Of course I read your letter – what did you think I was talking about?”

Rather than answer me, he used my shoulder as leverage and pushed himself to his feet. For a moment, he only gazed at the horizon.

"When were you shot?" I paused, realizing that 'when' wasn't useful here. “I mean how long ago?"

"Several hours before you arrived." He rubbed his fingers together. I offered him my fur cloak, thinking at least we could trade off but he shook his head, then groaned slightly. "I'm too big." With a grimace carefully poked at his wound. "Finally clotted."

Or froze, more likely. The wind punctuated my thought by slingshotting ice crystals right at me. We needed to find shelter and soon. I spun around, looking for some kind of environmental context as to where we were. Clearly not Kyoto, as no temple was in sight. The ground was sloping, and I could just see a line of cedar trees. There were cedar trees in the modern -"Togakushi Shrine?" And yet that didn’t feel correct. It had been seven years sure I've seen modern Japan, but the Togakushi range was Aki’s territory and I had been through there dozens of times in my Sengoku life.

Aki looked around. “No, but we’re not far from Kawaguchi Shine, I believe."

"Kofu?!" We were in Kofu? Not quite taking his word for it, I oriented myself and spun to look what would be uphill. And while I couldn't see much of it in this weather, Aki was correct. We were near the base of Mount Fuji. Had we come through a third wormhole? Or no, maybe they just manifested where they pleased, with no care where they dumped their passengers.

At the moment, did it really matter which mountain we were on? Contemplating the nature of wormholes in the middle of a blizzard was a one way ticket to extinction. Maybe that was what had happened to the dinosaurs.

Shelter was the first order of business. "There's a village near the shrine, yes?"

He was quiet a very long moment then said, "There is in modern Japan. I am very much afraid we're still in the Sengoku."

"How can you tell?" We were getting close to whiteout conditions.

"When you've travel through as many times as I have, it becomes easier." There was something about the statement that felt sad, and plaintive, or maybe he was just in pain, so I didn’t question him, I simply ducked under his shoulder again and started moving.

Even knowing there was no village near the shrine, my instinct was to go downhill, not up. Maybe we'd at least find a farmer eventually. Even in the warm clothes and cloak I had on, I was beginning to feel the chill. Keeping moving was better. Aki, with his blood loss and unseasonal clothing, had to be even colder. I put my arm around him, and nudged him onward. “Come on, Old Man.”

"You are highly lacking in filial piety," he muttered.

"Keep moving; I want a father, not a Popsicle." I pulled him along another step, as he acknowledged my pun with a bark of laughter.

We were moving, at least... but if this storm didn’t let up, I doubted we could continue at this pace.

"Found you in a blizzard," he said a little while later. He'd been quiet for a bit, so I was relieved he was still lucid.

"Did you know I would be there? Did you pull us back in time?" No response. Whether he was back to conserving energy, or just refusing to answer, I didn’t know. Instead, I concentrated on moving forward, face down from the wind, as pellets of icy snow hit my face.

Sho would be pissed that I just ruined a month of skin treatment. Thinking of her led to thoughts of Mitsuhide. What had he thought when he saw me vanish over the side of the castle? Did he regret letting me go, not once but twice? No, I could not think that way. Had he not allowed me to leave, I would not have found. Aki. No matter what happened, I at least had this. I put my arm around my father's waist and helped him press forward.

Though it was less effort to go downhill, the trek was hazardous, as the snow hid and slicked over all manner of stones and debris. Even though were were proceeding with caution, Aki slipped on something, stumbled, then fell to his knees.

He stayed there for a moment, clothes soaking up the snow, head bowed, breath rapid.

“Come on.” I tugged on the non-injured arm.

He scowled at me. "You know this would better for you... if you left me."

"Like you left her?" Whoops. Did not mean for that to come out.

Like I left Mitsuhide?

I slapped that nasty voice away. No. That was different. Mitsuhide hadn’t needed me. Not the way Mayumi had needed my father. When I left him, I didn’t leave something broken behind me.

"Katsu, I need you to leave me here. You have to find and protect Hiko. And make sure the others..." he trailed off, squinted at me. "I don’t know which one you are."

Shit. Was he delirious? "I'm Katsu. Katsuko. You know the only one who’s a girl." At the very least he ought to be able to tell the difference between me and Takauji. My ears didn’t stick out. "And Hiko is fine. Yoshimoto sent him to Kasugayama with an escort of Takeda mitsumono."

"That's not what I-." He coughed, but at least this time he climbed to his feet. He leaned on my shoulder. "Lay on MacDuff."

"I thought it was lead on, MacDuff?"

“It is not. Apparently I neglected your Shakespearean education.”

“Well, it would have been anachronistic anyway.” I think.

Step, Step, Step. It was almost a march.

Step.

Step.

Step.

I felt like I was taking on more of Aki's weight with every passing moment. How much ground had we covered?

Time blurred into whiteness that was only interrupted by the pain of the ice when the wind struck at a certain angle.

I had only the knowledge that we were still going downhill as confirmation that we were still heading toward some form of civilization, although in this weather, we could have passed within a meter of a house or shrine and not seen it.

It was becoming harder to feel my feet under me.

Could be worse. Could be dinosaurs.

As I thought that, something dark and shaggy burst out of one wall of white barking wildly.

Not a dinosaur.

Wolf.

I'm definitely going to stop thinking how things could be worse.

With Aki draped over me, I couldn’t reach the one dagger Iekane’s vassals hadn’t taken from me. "Nice wolf. Just a big shaggy cousin of a dog." I had no actual hope that speaking in a soothing tone would help. I did hope that it wasn’t hungry. Or territorial. Or-

Slurp!

I certainly had not expected that the wolf would jump on me and lick my face and knock us all over. "Good wolf." I hesitantly patted it. Aki was semi-conscious at this point. The wolf sniffed the air, yipped three times then howled. The sound split the atmosphere, cutting sharply through the snow.

Maybe the licking was his way of tenderizing my skin for a big old group dinner.

I winced as the wolf howled again.

Then, faintly, I heard someone yell, "Muramasa!"

The wolf yipped in response, then a large shape emerged before us. A man on a horse. “Muramasa stop that." He turned to address us. “I'm sorry. He's friendly, but he doesn’t normally bother strange-“ He broke off with a sharp exclamation. “Katsuko? What the hell are you doing out here?"

Who are you?

@selenacosmic @lorei-writes @bestbryn @lyds323 @akitsuneswife @tele86

[fairy-writes]

The Decay of Yesterday: Chapter Thirteen {Viktor x Reader}

this is a reader-insert fic, but i hate the terms y/n, (name), etc., so i’ll be using the nickname “scout” in place of it! if that’s not your cup of tea, well, then this probably isn’t the story for you. hope you enjoy!

i give some of the arcane characters last names in this because, y’know… traditionally, ppl have last names, lol

word count: 1.5k

masterlist

<- first chapter

<-previous chapter

next chapter ->

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Five years after the first outbreak

The door to the hospital was broken in. But not from the outside. It looked as if a large force had bulldozed its way through the automatic doors from the inside. Maybe people trying to get out? But then what had locked the doors?

Had the hospital locked its own people inside in an attempt to stop the virus from spreading?

You push the thought from your mind as Vander motioned for the two of you to follow him around the side to another entrance. It was the emergency room entrance, with an ambulance smashed through the front doors and bodies lay decomposing. Well… decomposing was a generous word. The corpses were little more than skin and bones. Their bellies had ruptured with gas soon after death, and organs were shriveled bits of tissue surrounding them. 

It looked like the wild animals of the city had already picked through their share of the human corpses. You shuddered at the thought of being eaten. From what you gathered, the undead only went after living humans and animals, so those already dead were ignored. These poor people were likely killed by the ambulance crash, either that or in the riots that followed the outbreaks. 

You pushed those thoughts from your mind as well. Now wasn’t the time. 

The hard linoleum floors were covered with dried blood and grime. You could see the dust particulates in the air from the snowy sunlight streaming in through the broken glass of the emergency room doors. You had to stifle a sneeze in the crook of your elbow and pray that any undead still in the hospital had terrible hearing. 

When you let the sneeze out, your little trio froze and listened. There was the sound of footsteps upstairs. But something was… off. They seemed too fast. Too regular. Not at all like the shuffling of a zombie corpse. 

A flash of panic goes through you when Vander lays a hand on your shoulder, his Lobo in his other hand. He’s deadly calm, with a set frown on his face and a dark look in his eyes. You and Viktor share a look, and the air is suspiciously silent of a snarky comment.

At least he knew when to take things seriously. 

The three of you duck behind desks and walls as the footsteps move toward and down the stairs at the end of the hall. The metal shakes and creaks, and you have no doubt that the dead are beginning to wake. Then, just as that thought passes your mind, you hear the resounding moan that means a zombie has spotted someone living.

The footsteps quicken, and Jayce bursts through the set of doors at the bottom of the stairs. His face is covered in sweat, and his backpack is bursting at the seams. You rush forward, as does Viktor, and you all crash into each other in a hug. Jayce stumbles backward but doesn’t fall. His strong arms go around you both, and he grins,

“You guys are okay!” He nearly shouts, only for you to shove your hand over his mouth.

“Quiet!” You hiss but are happy to see him nonetheless. 

His following words are muffled, and once you are confident he isn’t going to shout, you remove your hand. He gestures back toward the stairs,

“We need more supplies, but I don’t have enough room in my pack. If I show you guys, could you help carry it?” He asks, and you pause, a feeling of trepidation washing over you. 

You can’t help but feel like something terrible is going to happen. 

The bad feeling doesn’t go away as you approach the door Jayce had initially burst out of. The sounds of the shuffling of the undead grow in numbers, and as you make it to the second floor, you can hear the zombie moans echoing through the desolate hallways. 

It doesn’t make the feeling any better. 

If anything, it makes it worse. 

Viktor is in front, setting the pace and looking for specific things. You can hear him mumbling under his breath, listing off various medications as he pauses to root through cabinets of empty hospital rooms. He checks the labels of each one, and if they’re not expired—or so you assume—he tosses them to Jayce, who in turn hands them to you to stuff in your backpack. Vander keeps a lookout, a dark look on his face as he listens to the zombies getting ever closer. 

As the four of you leave the room, you freeze in your tracks. 

At least a dozen of walking corpses are spilling down the hallway in a slow shuffle. Then, finally, they spot you, and almost simultaneously, a chorus of wails and howls erupt from their throats. Vander grabs ahold of your backpack just as you swing it onto your shoulders. You stand frozen like a deer in the headlights, and then he hauls you down the opposite hallway. Jayce is in the lead, and Viktor is keeping pace as best he can. 

That is… until he stops dead in his tracks. 

“Viktor! Come on!” You shout, shrugging your backpack from your shoulders and waving Vander and Jayce on with a quick “We’ll catch up!”

Thankfully (or maybe not), they listen and take off down the corridor.

You sprint back to Viktor’s side and grab his arm roughly. He hasn’t moved, eyes locked on something in front of him. His face is pale, his shoulders trembling, and he looks close to tears. 

What was going on?

You turn to see what he’s so worked up about and frown.

“Sky Young”

Then you remember what Jayce said to you when you were first at the compound. 

“Sometimes he is. But he means well. He’s just under a lot of pressure from Silco, being the head scientist and makeshift doctor and all. It doesn’t help that Sky—She—”

And then… back at the house when Viktor was asleep…

You shake his shoulder gently, waiting to see some sort of response. He shifts, mumbles something that sounds vaguely like “Sky,” and turns over.

You shake Viktor forcefully, and it seems to snap him out of it. He adjusts his crutch under his arm and spins away from the zombie reaching for him. The two of you hurry down the hall and make it to a hospital room when the doorway is blocked by more undead. 

Where are Jayce and Vander?

That doesn’t matter now. 

You have the walkie-talkie. 

You can get in contact with them later. 

You slam the door behind you and move the hospital bed in front of the door, piling furniture and objects against it the best you can. There’s slumping against the doorframe, and it shakes with the force of all the bodies piling up against it. 

But the barrier holds. 

And that’s all that matters. 

You’re on the second story, so if need be, you can climb out the window and likely survive… right?

Viktor slumps against the wall, and you whirl to face him, anger tensing your shoulders and gritting your teeth.

“What was that.” You snap, and he turns his head to face the window.

“It doesn’t matter.” He grumbles, and your temper flares.

That wasn’t going to work. 

“Oh, I don’t think so.” You snap and throw a hand to gesture a the door where it’s still shaking. “You almost got us both killed. I think I deserve an explanation.” You continue, and he turns to look at you, fury illuminating those pretty eyes till they look almost gold.

“I’m telling you, it doesn’t matter.” He says, and before you know it, your fingers are fisted in the collar of his jacket, and you’re yanking him closer until your noses are touching. 

“Tell me.” You command, and he narrows his eyes, takes in your bristling appearance, and speaks. His voice is firm, leaving no room for questions.

“Her name was Sky Young.” He eventually says in a quiet but hard voice. You roll your eyes at that,

"No shit, Sherlock. I gathered that.” You blurt, ignoring his tone of voice, and he glares,

“I wasn’t finished. She was the first zombie.” At that, you recoil and drop his jacket, stumbling back.

The first zombie? How did he know that?

You ask him as such, and he looks away again before mumbling something. 

“What?” You ask, and he glances at you, his voice wavering as he speaks. He looks close to tears again. 

“Because I created the zombie plague. She was the first victim.” 

____________________________________________________________________________

taglist (let me know if you want to be tagged!): @trfanglophile | @slasherflickchick | @blackswansociety | @cremthehive

[fruityfroggy]

Remember Hecate, my ts Li oc that I’ve only briefly mentioned before because I can’t draw her? Probably not, but that’s alright. I’m just in the mood to spread some propaganda about her rn.

So if any MCs are curious about a tall, goth, phantom-harpy woman, keep reading!

These are some interesting things about Hecate, and you should know them!

She lives in a house in the woods of an alternate dimension. It’s the dimension where she made a deal with Lucifer (how she got her beast form), and she’ll let you stay in her gothic house as a bed and breakfast if she likes you enough. Who needs the Wet Wick when you have the luxury to stay at her place any time? Just don’t question where she goes when midnight arrives…

Her dark red eyes can glow in different brightnesses, depending on the negative emotion she’s feeling. This is an interesting way to take a peak at how Hecate truly feels about someone or something. For example, her eyes glow a dim red light when she sees Mhin. There’s some tension between the two at the moment, but her eyes aren’t glowing bright enough for it to be anger towards them. She’s…sad about it. About what happened...

SHE GIVES YOU BAKED GOODS AND PASTRIES (as long as she likes you of course). She does this mostly because my desire to give Mhin sweets made me do it, but it adds to the appeal, right? Plus, SHE HAS A PASTRY POCKET. A POCKET THAT SHE USES TO CARRY AROUND HER PASTRIES (and baked goods, but pastry pocket sounds better)! Idk why I’m so hyped about this idea (maybe because of the gap moe of it), but it did make me design a belt for he pocket to go on

But basically, all the other Lis and MC will get their share of Hecate’s goodies when she bakes a fresh batch (not Leander tho, she refuses, so he’ll just have to beg the others to share some with him). Once you get close with her, she’ll also come out of random alleyways to specifically give you certain sweets!

Hecate has the most similarities with Leander, funnily enough, because she fuckin hates this man’s guts. She wants to kill him, he’s trying his hardest to change her mind. But fortunately, her curse helps her learn his exact intentions, and if getting executed by the Senobium didn’t teach her anything about manipulators, then I don’t know what will (so it was…kind of a good thing she died?). Anyway, let’s talk similarities before I forget!

Their major similarity is how they’re both unaffected by your curse. You can touch them with your bare hands all you want (they both secretly like it...for different reasons though). This brings us to their second similarity, which is their powerful magical ability. Just two mages who both have a source of power that’s hard to access (as well as their overall skills in magic), making them more powerful than most. The last one is one that all of them have to some extent (so Hecate kinda had to have it), which is the different (almost opposite) sides to them that obscure their true nature.

She knows the secrets of everyone else (the other Lis AND you). Hecate has a curse that automatically forces information on whoever she meets for the first time, into her brain. Specifically, info on everything that has happened to them and everything they've done in life (I called this " the ability to read life force" the last time I talked about it, which doesn't make any sense, so it's a curse now). She's fine with it since it is quite helpful in a place like Eridia. But, having memories that aren't yours can be quite terrifying. Especially traumatic ones...

So, even if you're not romancing Hecate, it's still best to keep her on your side and at least consider her warnings and advice (especially the ones that she repeats).

That'll be it for this nonsense post! If you're still here, then...I'm kinda sorry lol. But yeah, hope I didn't bore you.

Just one question tho...would you choose Hecate's route?

[inappropriatemetalfilth]

Why Waldreg?  Why was it Waldreg that got to push the self destruct button ["Why do we even have that lever, Kronk?!”(*)] on the dam? Because it makes sense. 

A) He´s not an uruk. Strategically Waldreg is simply the obvious choice. With the Númenóreans around any stray uruk would be suspicious and likely chased. I´m not sure if they would or could have known about human defectors, but even then one random human fleeing the scene would have had a significantly higher chance at making it than someone the Númenóreans would undoubtedly deem an enemy at mere sight. As a human Waldreg is not automatically suspicious, even if the Númenóreans know that some Southlanders joined the enemy, they wouldn´t know which side he´s on just seeing him.  B) He´s going to do it.  Would Adar really leave that important a task to someone else? He´s obviously not bogged down by a misguided ego of the “important” person has to do the important thing but lead by pragmatism and in that sense the leader riding off on a decoy mission is what increases their chances.  Moreover Waldreg has well presented himself as trustworthy. He´s been leading the Southlanders joining them and at least the viewer (**) knows his previous enthusiasm about questionable dark leaders but what was pretty unambiguous is that he paid the costly price and killed Rowan in the “Only blood can bind.” scene (1x05). (And after all forcing such a deed onto a prospect or applicant is a long and well tried technique of gangs, cults, sororities, fraternities etc., having aspiring members commit some kind of bad thing not only binds to the new group it also very much separates them from the rest of society. (xx))  C?) He´s not an uruk Part 2. I think A & B well suffice as answer but there was another idea, I thought I had already read about somewhere but couldn´t dig up anymore (if someone has a link pls send it my way) there´s the theory that possibly the sword hilt might need “red blood”. We only see it used and working with human blood and not black blood. Why? Perhaps that´s just the mechanics of that magic and you would need to install an extra black blood extension to make it work on different blood types. Perhaps Sauron fashioned it to work that way on purpose. Why? Who knows, because he has no respect for orcs and doesn´t want his sword to be tainted or because he believes there is no need  cause he already has the orcs under his full control but the sword´s thrall on red blooded beings could be useful, perhaps he does not want to hand over the power and options the sword grants to orcs, the headcanon possibilities are endless. 

(**) and regarding B) I would say the real question here is: Did Adar get to know that Waldreg was the one that had the sword hilt in his possession all that time?!!  They get to know about Theo having it, but before Theo snatched it from Waldreg, he was the one holding onto it and keeping it hidden. - Did Waldreg tell Adar about that?  - Did Adar believe Waldreg?  - Did they have a conversation about why Waldreg kept the sword hilt?  - Did Adar chide him over letting Theo just take it away?  - Or did Adar just eye roll him away everytime Waldreg got close to even mentioning that certain dark lord and he never got to know about the sword hilt having been in Waldreg´s possession? 

I need answers.  

(*) No seriously why? Was that mechanism always meant to flood the volcano or just something that came in handy? Why the sword specifically? Janitor sword hilt for structural maintenance? Was that a spare weapon he used for another task or was that weapon fashioned as multitool? Are there other mechanisms that sword operates in other structures around middle earth? If the dam self destruct button was not meant for the creation of Mordor what was it for? Do dams generally have a self destruct mechanism? What´s going on? Whose plan was it anyways? Adar? Morgoth? Sauron? Others? Joint project? The sword gets associated with Sauron, so if it was meant to be part of the volcano plan he would have been involved? Galadriel´s words could point to it being Morgoth´s idea and project that a successor has to put into action in case, but it could point to that successor already being in on the project as well or even it being a successors project that Morgoth isn´t even involved in.   “I must be blind. This is no sigil. It is a map of the South lands. (...) It is the Black Speech. It speaks not only of a place, but a plan. A plan by which to create a realm of their own, where evil would not only endure, but thrive. A plan to be enacted in the event of Morgoth's defeat... By his successor.” (1x03) - Also how does Adar feel about aligning with that very plan (of whomever) and putting it into action? Was he following the initial idea or repurposing it for their own goals? How did he get to know about it? Was he, after Morgoth´s defeat expecting and waiting for it to be put into action just to be disappointed by Sauron, who had better things to do (like fusing uruks with walls) and then taking matters into his own hands? Did he get rid of Sauron as a threat for them first and did he then look for a path to how they could proceed and find this plan?   | Waldreg (Geoff Morrell), Adar (Joseph Mawle), “Fabio” (Jed Brophy), "Fury" (Luke Hawker) | The Rings of Power | 01x04 “The Great Wave” & 01x06 "Udûn" |

[tmnt-tychou]

Welcome to part four! I was in Chicago last week which really inspired this  chapter with its many mausoleums, including one that is said to be haunted and you will see spirits if you go there and say out loud the inscription in this chapter.

Part One Is Here

Enjoy!

It Hides Within the Fog

Part Four: Donatello

The choice wasn't even difficult. Spending some quality time alone in the dark with her favorite turtle? (Though she would never admit a favorite out loud.) She'd jump on that in a heartbeat every time.

“Donnie!” she squealed merrily as she caught up with him and latched playfully to his arm.

He stopped, surprised but also pleased. “You're coming with me?”

Like the absolute nerd that he was, instead of bringing a flashlight, he had a headlamp strapped to his forehead as if he were a field student out looking for a rare nocturnal creature to band and study. The only rare, nocturnal creatures in this cemetery were him and his brothers.

Name attached herself to his arm. “I'm always up for exploring creepy new places with you, Don. Though you're blinding me with that thing.”

“Sorry,” he said, inclining his head so his headlamp wasn't shining right into her eyes. “But that's good information to know if I ever thought of taking you out on a date.”

Name's thoughts derailed into two separate camps at his words. Did he mean he was thinking about asking her out? Or was he using the big IF because he would never ask her out?

Her mouth moved on automatic. “Are you saying you have thought about it?”

She inwardly cringed at the eagerness in her voice, but knew that asking the question was the best way to get her answer. The two of them had too much of a frank relationship to let that kind of unspoken bullshit exist between them for too long. And she appreciated the hell out of it. Thought they were just friends at this point, it was the most honest and open relationship she had ever been in. Donatello's frankness was a breath of fresh air and she treasured it too much to let unanswered worries fester between them.

In answer, Donatello wouldn't look at her, but he said, “To be honest, I have thought about it. I really enjoy spending time with you. I would like to do it more often without my brothers around.”

Her face heated up. The arm she hugged felt so much warmer.

“I'd like that, too,” she told the ground. “I would totally go on an actual date with you if you're interested.”

“Oh, I'm interested!”

He said it so fast it made her laugh; half from butterflies and half from pure happiness.

He was grinning. “Okay, so um...give me some time to put something together and I'll let you know when.”

She was practically giddy with how easy this was; how everything just fell into place. Was this love? Was this how easy it was when you were with the right person?

“Sounds good! I look forward to it!”

They were both riding the same high, drowning in happy stupors as they wandered into the fog. Donatello had forgotten all about why he had walked in this direction in the first place until he came face to face with it.

An old mausoleum sunk into the tired ground. It was choked with creeping vines and smothered in grime. A gate that once locked out the public was left wide open, hanging off its hinges. Oddly, it looked forced open from the inside, as if someone or something had tried to get out.

Name flicked her flashlight over the large, rectangular structure while Donatello grabbed the vines over the entrance way and tugged them down. Revealed beneath was the inscription: “These graves belong to the dead, not the living.”

Name read it out loud, a chill creeping up her spine as she did so.

“Spooky.”

Donatello, still on the high from landing a date, just winked at her. He had to duck slightly before stepping inside. She followed, keeping her flashlight on his shell as if afraid to illuminate anything within. Once inside, Donatello's light uncovered a long hallway—much longer than expected from looking at it on the outside. On each side were rows of rectangular placards with names and dates.

Name found it all to be exceptionally cool. She had never been in a mausoleum before. She was sure Donatello hadn't either. Even though she was getting a very unique feeling that she shouldn't be there, she also wanted to keep looking.

Donatello was in the lead, systematically looking at one side then the other when he suddenly jumped back. He nearly knocked her over with his shell, but she managed to grab onto him to keep from falling.

“Sorry.” He glanced back at her. “It startled me.” She moved around him to see what had scared him so. Flush against the wall was a floor-to-ceiling mirror. Donatello had been spooked by his own moving reflection in a place where no mirror was expected to be.

She stood before him, watching their reflection. Donatello was behind her. He had momentarily removed his headlamp so he could look at their reflection without blinding the both of them. Name felt and saw his hand land lightly on her arm. She dared to think they looked like a couple, standing together like that. The soft smile he gave in the mirror made her guess he might be thinking the same thing.

Their gazes met in the mirror and she said, “So weird. Why would they put this in here?”

She half expected Donatello to come up with some obscure fact about mirrors in mausoleums, but all he said was, “To scare the hell out of us.”

She snorted and Donatello's reflection smirked before he moved on. The hallway stretched out far into the darkness. Was there a longer corridor underground? She didn't feel like they had walked down an incline. How was this thing so big on the inside? As they continued on, she noticed that the rows of placards no longer held names and dates. They were blank. As if waiting for the next death to be added to its collection.

Maybe the next name would be hers.

That thought almost didn't feel like her own. Like another voice had put it in there. The sensation of being targeted by something malevolent sent her heart racing.

“Donnie?” She glanced around, looking for him, but her flashlight could not locate his tall, shelled form. As she searched, she discovered other hallways to the left and right, extending far out into the darkness. To the right, she could have sworn she saw Donatello's light and silhouette disappear around the next corner. But as she moved to follow, a heavy hand landed on her shoulder.

“Oh, Donnie!” She spun in surprise. When had he managed to get behind her? Well, he was a ninja after all. “I thought you were—nevermind. I'm ready to get out of here.”

He nodded and looked back at the direction they had come. Name was more than happy to lead the way out. Even then, with Donnie right beside her, the oppressive sensation that she was in danger still pressed upon her. She wanted out of that building. Now.

As she hurried for the exit, they were forced to pass the mirror again. A mirror in this place in the light of day was creepy enough. She was definitely not keen on walking by it again in the dark. Still, she couldn't help but glance at the reflection as they passed. Donatello was behind her and he looked like himself, but wrong somehow at the same time. It had to be a trick of the light. That mixed with her growing anxiety was making her imagination run wild.

Yet, her instincts were screaming at her to run. To get her body out of that crypt. And why didn't Donnie have his headlamp anymore? Why was he standing so quietly in the dark when he snuck up on her? She surged forward to get some space between them. Large, heavy hands caught her shoulders. She was flung into the concrete wall and it knocked the wind out of her. Hands pinned her, something that looked like Donatello loomed over her. But the way he was smiling at her, the way that smile bared sharp teeth, was very unlike the turtle she knew.

“Donni—”

Those hands that had only showed her anything but kindness now wrapped around her throat. She struggled for air; fingers prying at his grip, foot kicking him in the torso. The tall turtle was immovable. She dared to try to hit him in the head with her flashlight, but she couldn't reach. The light flickered around the room, reflecting off his glasses. Illuminating that predatory grin. He liked this. He was going to enjoy watching the life leave her eyes.

This wasn't Donnie. She began to see stars as her vision faded. The last thing she would ever remember before death was that hideous grin.

Then, something barreled into her attacker and she fell to the ground coughing for air. Her throat was on fire with each breath. And Donatello—her Donatello—stood between her and that grinning thing. That dorky headlamp was still strapped to his forehead. His tech bo sparkled with electricity as he faced the mirror image of himself.

“You okay?” Donatello called over his shoulder. It was a relief to hear his voice. So far, the turtle impostor hadn't made a sound.

She tried to respond, but she couldn't get out more than a few rasps before the thing attacked.

************

Donatello had no time to check on her as his double charged. That thing, whatever it was, was as big and heavy as he, but it wasn't as skilled. Donatello dodged the attack and sent his double flying down the corridor. He didn't know why there was another mutant turtle in here that looked just like him, he only knew that it was hurting Name and was therefore his enemy.

The double's face curled into a snarl, but it still made no noise. Any other time this would have been a fascinating encounter, but not with the life of the person he really cared about on the line. He crouched protectively, keeping himself between her and it. But the Donatello thing turned and somehow skittered right up the wall and into the darkness. Try as he might, Donatello could not find it again. It was as if his doppelganger only existed in the light and when darkness took it, the form was ripped away.

Though he wasn't sure what happened, it felt as though the danger had gone. Donatello turned back to check on Name and found her standing directly behind him. He nearly jumped to find her so close.

“Hey, are you okay?”

She looked a little battered and scared, but she nodded. Then motioned to her throat.

“It's going to be sore for a while,” he confirmed. “I'm sorry I wasn't there sooner. I didn't realize you were no longer right behind me.”

She smiled at him and gestured to his bo. Did she want to hold it? If it would make her feel safer, he would have gladly given her anything he had to offer. She took it, inspected it for a moment. And then rammed it into Donatello's side, shocking him, right into the strip of exposed skin between his shell and plastron.

He grit his teeth as he was hit with the full voltage the weapon could muster. Electricity coursed through him and dropped him to the ground. Another shock and he was on his side, muscles in uncontrollable spasms.

He stared wide-eyed at Name—at her mirthless, wide grin. And over her, the shadow of his double appeared. It took the bo from Name, placing its foot on Donatello's plastron to hold the shaking turtle down. Then it pressed a button on the staff and a blade shot out of the tip. These things, whatever they were, did not mean for either of them to leave this crypt alive.

These graves belong to the dead.

***********

Name came to, with both her neck and now her head killing her. She had a vague recollection of trying to get air back into her lungs, and then a figure the same size as her had shoved her head into the wall. She saw a Donatello-like figure on the ground and another Donatello standing above him, bo staff in hand. And...was that her? Which one was her Donnie? Then, she noticed the one on the ground still had that nerdy headlamp on. The bo's blade glistened in the light.

Shit! They were going to kill him! What could she do against her own double and a creature that size? Then, she saw the mirror. Donatello had taken off his headlamp when they looked at it. His double didn't have one. Did these creatures come from the mirror? Had they created them themselves by stopping to stand in its reflection?

The Donatello double tried to stab down, but Donatello rolled out of the way. He tried to kick back, but his movements were weak and unsteady. He was outnumbered and he was struggling to get his body to move. She had to do something!

Unsteady herself with her swimming vision, she managed to get to her feet and wrapped her fingers around the frame of the mirror. It wouldn't budge.  Donatello managed to dodge again as his double attacked. He came face to face with Name's duplicate and she saw him hesitate instead of attacking her.

No, Donnie! Don't hold back on her! Save yourself! She wanted to scream, but her throat was still sore.

And try as she might, she still couldn't yank the mirror free. It was stuck solid. So she grabbed her flashlight and hit the damned thing as hard as she could. It shattered into glittering pieces all around her.

And around Donatello, the doubles shattered just the same. The two impostors cracked and fell into sharp, shiny shards, showering the turtle in broken glass as he covered his head.

When all was still, Name made her way over.

“Donnie?” she croaked in a dry voice.

He grabbed his bo first, making sure the weapon could not be used against either of them again. Then he pulled himself to his feet as she reached for him.

“Is it you this time?”

“Yes, it's me,” she managed to rasp.

The two touched each other. Confirmed with eyes, with hands on faces and arms, that each was real and safe.

“Are you hurt?” they both asked.

“I'm fine,” they replied together.

“Jinx,” Name said, and tried to laugh, but ended up coughing.

Donatello pulled her in, his form still with a slight tremor, but he felt warm and safe.

“Back to the truck,” he announced. “We're getting out of here.”

She was more than willing to let him guide her. Her flashlight had broken upon impact. All that was left as a source of light was that beautiful little headlamp that told its simple truth of who was the real Donatello.

They stumbled together out of the mausoleum, clinging to each other with relief and unwilling to let go of one another. As they hurried back, the crooked gates were a welcome sight, as was Raphael's bellow of “LEOOOOO!” coming out of the mist like a foghorn.

“There's one of my brothers,” Donatello said dryly.

Name was so happy to hear Raphael's voice. She had never so badly wanted to huddle up somewhere tight and enclosed with all four brothers surrounding her. Safe. They would keep her safe and she would know that they were safe as well.

As they neared the gate, the other three wayward turtles appeared from the fog—all from different directions. She was alarmed at the state of each one. Mikey was wild-eyed and out of breath. Raphael was splattered in blood. Leonardo was soaked and filthy.

Name suddenly forgot all that she had been through as concern flooded her.

“Guys, what happened to you? Are you okay?”

The other three all paused when they saw her, then glanced around themselves as if expecting to see someone else standing next to them. All three were a mixture of surprised and haunted at the sight of her. Donatello's arm had never released her from his side the entire walk back.

Raphael was the first to recover from his stupor. “You don't know what happened to us—you've been with Donnie the whole time?”

It nearly sounded like an accusation and she felt the need to defend herself. “Yeah, I had to pick one of you. All four of you wandered off at the same time.”

“And the three of you each thought Name had gone with you?” Donnie surmised.

“Yeah, she had to be with me,” Michelangelo insisted. “I had her in my arms. I carried her. If it wasn't her, then what was that?”

Name flashed back to the mirror people. Were there doubles everywhere?

“You didn't get hurt, did you?” Raphael asked her. “When you were with me, I saw you get hurt.”

She did get hurt, but clearly not in the same way that Raphael had seen her wounded. She shook her head emphatically. “No, I'm not hurt.” It wasn't completely true, but it seemed like something the largest brother needed to hear.

“Good,” he replied with relief. “I'm actually okay with you not having been there with me. It wasn't pretty.”

Michelangelo seemed to have calmed, but Leonardo still looked unsettled as his gaze kept wandering back to the mist. Name moved to touch his arm.

“Leo, are you okay?”

The question shook him. He gave a tight smile and nodded. It then occurred to her that she hadn't heard him utter a word. Just like the mirror creatures.

Donatello must have thought that, too. He said, “Leo, I need you to confirm out loud.”

Leonardo blinked. “I'm fine, Donnie. Let's get in the truck and get out of here.”

As they all moved as one, Name once again clung to Donatello's arm.

“Donnie, how do the other guys think they were with me when I was with you the entire time? I don't think they encountered the types of doubles we did. They weren't attacked by me. They genuinely thought it was me that was with them.”

“Maybe you were.” Donatello pulled out the keys as they reached the truck and tossed them to Michelangelo. He then motioned for Raphael to get in. “Where are you hurt?” he then asked his largest brother.

“Just a few scratches. The blood's not mine,” Raphael responded with a bit of pride.

Name sat herself in the other middle seat as Leonardo and Michelangelo both sat in the front. The truck chugged to life as Michelangelo wasted no time in turning them around and getting them the hell out of there. Name quickly put on her seat belt while Donatello anchored himself as best he could to the vehicle floor so he could work.

“What did you mean the other guys were also with me tonight?” Name then asked him. “How is that possible?”

Donatello glanced up from where he was cleaning Raphael's arm. “There's a multiverse theory that every decision we make splits off into infinite realities. One universe where we decided to go left and another where we decided to go right.

“In this case, when the four of us split up, you were left with four decisions: which turtle to follow. Three other universes were created, one for each decision you made. And maybe for a brief moment, all four universes converged into one before separating into their own entities.”

From the driver's seat, she could see Michelangelo shaking his head. Leonardo still radiated a disquiet about him. The look on Raphael's face as he watched her was unintelligible.

“Well,” she then announced with a long exhale. “I hope that at least means none of you had to face anything scary alone.”

Raphael still looked like he had rather her not have been present for whatever it was he had encountered. Leonardo, however, glanced back, looking less on edge. He even managed to give her a tight, but sincere smile.

“If you hadn't been with me, maybe I wouldn't have survived,” Donatello said softly. “You're the one that stopped them.”

She doubted that. The guys were stronger and more capable than her. They could survive anything. Donatello would have figured it out, but she was glad she had been there to help him.

She leaned in and whispered for his ears only. “In this universe, I chose you.”

The purple-banded turtle smiled softly to himself as he finished bandaging Raphael's wounds.

With that said, Name opted for moving to the back seat and when Donatello was done, he joined her. The two held hands, fingers entwined, all the way back to the city.

**********

Almost done! I’m going to try my best to finish the last part by Halloween. Either way, it WILL be finished, even if I miss the deadline. As always, a big thanks for reading and please forgive me if you asked me to tag you and I missed it. Feel free to ask me again.

@turtle-babe83 @android-cap-007 @pheradream15 @post-apocalyptic-daydream @thelaundrybitch @analogswordsman @mysticboombox