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#its just the implications that drive me insane
unclekaz · 11 months
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honestly since i cut out the more intimate parts of the last fic to package them into a solo fic, ive been very anxious about how to proceed with this and ive been regretting making y/n gender neutral because like. id prefer for them to be masculine/male but i can't exactly hone in on that now
but also like. this is 100% the filthiest im ever gonna write and it's making me anxious thinking about that. like in the grand scheme of things it's definitely very clean, but it's starting to drive me insane with how dirty this is for me to write
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xcosmicsans · 10 months
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Thinking again about the difference in size between rbg arc kangaskahn vs xy arc kangaskahn…….
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niftukkun · 6 months
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new rain world dlc new rain world dlc hell yeah hell heah welcome home nightcat watcher!!
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pensbridgertons · 2 years
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SWANFIRE MONTH 2022
day 7 • scene that made you the angriest
is this the underworld? i was on my way to the underworld. yeah, i know that's where you're heading. that's kind of why i'm here. don't go, emma. once you get there, it is not an easy place to get out of. i know you're trying to save hook, but trust me on this. this won't end the way you think it will.
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jojotier · 2 years
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mildly obsessed with this manwha and its Incredibly Autistic Coded male lead's echolalia
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little-meowyao · 10 months
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I was thinking about that one JGY edit to All You Wanna Do and something came to mind
It could ve argued that LXC doesn't fit because he never abused JGY. It could be argued that he does because he hurt him in the very end. Doesn't matter because that's not my point (I think it does fit)
But you know who really doesn't fucking fit with that song in relation to JGY
Wen Fucking Ruohan
And don't get me wrong, the description on the part he's put on actually fits him pretty neatly. If it were with anyone else. But not with JGY
I guess my point here is that the song is, in the end, about being abused and only wanted for her body, but that's not how WRH behaves towards JGY
I know we know next to nothing about WRH but the Fire Palace scenes show that he 1. Cares for JGY, 2. Cares for him as his own person, 3. Worries for him, 4. Values him. The Implications!!!!
And WRH, in the end, really did not harm JGY. In fact he looked fucking devastated (in the mahua) at being killed by him.
I will NEVER get over them your honor. Never. Ruoyao my silly beloatheds. My meowmeows.
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shrikebrother · 2 years
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since im a musical mood now im gonna talk abt zoe murphy bc i have a lot of feelings abt her
#i think part of why zoe loved evan so much is bc she so badly wanted to feel closer to her brother and by loving and being loved by someone#who connor cared enough for to be best friends w/ while he was still alive she could understand him that way. and maybe she could also feel#as if she was being loved by connor through evan. not to mention how the version of connor evan fabricated cared deeply for zoe#and showed a lot of affection towards her. which for someone like zoe whos been completely detached from her brother for so long must mean#So Much. and like. i think its pretty obvious just how ignored and overlooked zoe is by her family and probably also by her peers to a#certain extent. so someone recognizing her and loving all these little parts of her mentioned by evan in iicth would really touch her#and that someone being Connor... i can see why she would be so quick to forgive evan for kissing her out of nowhere#of course i do think that zoe Does love evan himself genuinely bc of what was said in only us and also bc zoe finally has someone of her own#(and that feeling is mutual bc evan pretty much sees zoe as an outlet to project all his desires onto.)#to quote that one abf essay quote ‘u give so much of urself to other ppl but zoe is just for you’#that might not be the exact quote but like. u get the gist. and i think evans genuine affection towards zoe makes her start to feel the same#way abt him. they can allow themselves to be selfish with each other. they’re just For each other no one else#anyway. back to the siblings. i think the whole concept of deh and also everything evan and zoe’s relationship is built on definitely has#like. some Questionable implications abt connor and zoe’s relationship or at least abt zoe’s feelings for connor. and her feelings for evan#-by extension.#i could literally just be spewing nonsense and my take makes no sense but like. it makes sense to Me and it drives me insane#txt
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ramuma · 7 months
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feb 15
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i-know-nothin · 2 years
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i am in distress
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fangswbenefits · 10 months
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Oral Fixation
Summary: Astarion is quite sure you are going to drive him insane from how adorable and clueless you are when eating those juicy fruits around him... and he just has to do something about it.
Pairing: Astarion x female!Tav
Warnings: 18+. Astarion's POV. Oral fixation. Slight corruption kink. Oral sex (m receiving). Innuendo. Cumplay.
Word count: 2k
Astarion was sure he was going to lose his sanity.
Whether it'd be from the tadpole or you, he wasn't certain yet, but he had a vague idea.
He just couldn't tear his eyes away from your lips as you took a bite from an apple.
With each passing second, he could feel his cock harden more and more.
From the way your eyes closed to the way you hummed when swallowing... it was all driving him closer to the precipice.
But what made him more obsessed than ever was just how adorably clueless you truly were of what you were doing.
As he sat down next to you by the campfire, he could tell you felt totally at ease with him.
You trusted his company and he just couldn't tear himself away from you.
A few droplets of juice began dribbling down your chin and along your neck, and he promptly reached out with his thumb to collect them.
You flinched slightly under his sudden touch and glared at him with a smile. "Oh! Didn't notice you next to me."
Gods.
You were too sweet for your own good.
"Yes, you were distracted keeping that mouth of yours busy," he said so casually that others might have missed the innuendo.
And, in fact, you did.
He adored hurling those at you when you least expected, knowing you missed every single one of them as he kept edging himself.
He then brought his thumb to your lips and you quickly parted them, allowing him to slide it in.
His cock twitched violently and he felt the familiar droplets of precum begin to drip from his tip.
The sight of you sucking gently with an innocent look on your face could easily make him come, so he would need to tread lightly.
"Are you still hungry?" he asked, trying to remain as nonchalant as he possibly could.
Your tongue swirled around his thumb as you nodded.
He pulled himself out of you, much to his disappointment, feeling an intense wave of lust take over him.
As adorable as you looked suckling on his thumb, he wanted your lips around his cock.
He needed to feel your warmth and he felt his cock throb at the thought of you struggling to get past the first few inches.
"Gale found some apples and peaches in a nearby cellar," you chirped happily, smiling widely at him. "Wish he wasn't so tired, so that we could all share."
Astarion wasn't bothered by the wizard's absence.
At all.
In fact, he was more than grateful to have your undivided attention this late at night.
"Well, you are our leader, so it seems only fair that you have the best of the best."
He shifted slightly closer to you, grabbing a peach from the basket on the ground, offering it to you.
You gave him a genuine and heartfelt nod of appreciation, leaning in to sink your teeth into its soft skin.
"Does it taste good?" he cooed, nearly wincing from the unbearable increasing tension inside his trousers.
The ripe fruit nearly melted under your hungry bite, its juices pouring down from the corner of your mouth.
"You should use your tongue more," he suggested.
Your eyes met his and he spotted the usual hint of confusion.
"Look. You are ruining your shirt," he explained, tugging at the now stained fabric that covered her chest. "Your tongue can be helpful, ensuring you can keep it all in," he finished, fearing the implication in his words had been too on the nose.
He had certainly gone too far.
But...
You merely chewed your bite away and nodded with a smile.
And he grew even harder, if that was possible.
Astarion felt like a hypocrite as he could feel his own mess down below, and it would take long for all that precum to seep through the fabric unless he found a way to deal with this.
Suddenly, you took the peach from his hand and took another bite, darting out your tongue to collect the overflowing juices.
"Like this?"
He swallowed, bringing his hand to his waistband, trying to discretely tug at it to alleviate the maddening strain from his cock.
"Almost like that."
You frowned. "Then how?"
You were making this too easy for him.
"I could teach you."
The two of you had been quite intimate in more ways than one before, but it had all been quite chaste.
Still, he was more than content with how things had naturally progressed, even if his body yearned for you to loosen up just a bit more with him.
He wanted to truly show you how much of a devoted lover he could be, and he wanted to teach you how to enjoy every single moment of it, while also giving back.
You sat up straighter, looking eagerly at him. "Then tell me. It shouldn't be that hard, right?"
Oh, it's quite hard, alright, darling...
He felt a few more droplets of precum seeping through the fabric of his underwear.
"I could just show you."
You nodded, waiting.
He rose to his feet and offered you his hand. "Maybe in my tent?"
You joined his side, staring at the basked filled with fruit. "Why not here?"
"It's getting quite late."
You nodded.
The shift in positions had him realise just how much precum he had already leaked for you, his underwear clinging to his strained cock.
"Besides, there are other sweet things for you to taste.
Not only that, but he wasn't about to have you take his cock in your mouth in the middle of the camp, risking getting caught.
No.
He wanted you all to himself.
"Oh. Alright, then," you said with a soft smile.
Gods... he wished he could devour you right there and then and turn that sweet smile into a whimper of pleasure.
He guided you to his tent in silence, occasionally glancing around to ensure no one was going to disturb this.
As you walked inside and he closed the flaps behind him, you turned to glare expectantly at him.
"So...?"
He tugged downwards on your hand.
"You want me on my knees?"
He nodded, desperate to free his aching cock.
"Wait... why?"
As you did what he expected from you, you were then able to eye-level with his crotch, the candles providing enough light source.
And then your eyes widened.
"Oh... oh... you're..." Your voice trailed down, and he nearly moaned from the way you gulped.
"Painfully hard? Yes."
Your eyes didn't move and he took the chance to finally undo the lacing of his trousers, letting out a groan of relief as he freed his cock.
What a complete mess...
He was completely soaked in his own precum, a few drops dangling from the tip before hitting the carpeted floor of his tent.
Your eyes widened again and your lips parted. "I've... never... I've never done this..."
He brought his hand to grip your chin, caressing your jaw with tender fingers.
"Would you like to?"
Shifting closer, Astarion watched as his hard cock hovered over her face.
Your eyes met his. "I don't know what to do."
Astarion was quite positive even your worst attempt would effectively bring him to completion.
As a matter of fact, he was already certain he wasn't going to last long just from how you faintly pouted at him and because he knew you were a perfectionist at heart.
That you would struggle to take his cock, but would be too stubborn not to try.
"I can teach you, darling."
You were burning under his touch, contrasting beautifully with the coldness of his own skin.
He then shifted even closer, and a string of precum dripped onto your lower lip.
You immediately darted your tongue out to swipe across the tender flesh, and he couldn't hold back a low growl.
"Open your mouth for me. Wide."
And you did.
Of course you did.
You were always so eager to learn from him.
You had been appointed to lead the group, but in the privacy of his tent, he was the one leading you.
"Tongue out."
He wrapped his fingers around his cock and gave it a tight squeeze, drawing more droplets of precum from it, so he could have them land on your tongue.
In the back of his mind, he wondered how his cum would taste mixed with the sweetness of your mouth after having indulged in those apples and peaches.
He tugged on your chin and pressed the underside of his cock flat against your tongue. "No teeth."
You immediately nodded, resting your hands on your thighs, waiting for him to make the next move.
He really wasn't going to last long.
But he wanted to at least make it to the back of your throat, if you could even take him that deep without gagging.
Your warmth and wetness welcome the first few inches, and he hissed as your hands flew to his clothed thighs for support.
"Easy now, darling... don't bite off more than you can chew," he tutted, caressing your flushed cheek.
His other hand kept you in place, thumb pressing down on your chin, parting your mouth wider for him.
"You can take more, can't you?"
You nodded, but he could tell you were beginning to struggle slightly, breathing heavily through your nose and eyes wavering.
Astarion took pride in being gentle no matter how badly he wanted to reach his peak.
And you deserved that.
You deserved it all.
And so, he took a moment to let you adjust to his girth all the while trailing soft caresses along your cheeks.
"You are doing so well, my sweet," he cooed, loving the sight of your mouth stuffed with his cock. "Just a bit more..."
It took all of his willpower not to buck his hips as you reflexively swallowed around him, trying to ease him in deeper.
He pulled his shirt up just so he could properly watch you take more of him.
Your fingers gripped him tighter and he kept on showering you with praises, unable to look away as yet another inch of his cock disappeared past your lips.
"You look so beautiful..."
Almost there...
But as he was about to hit that sweet spot at the back of your throat, you began tapping on his leg, and he immediately slid out.
He immediately took your face in both hands. "Are you well?"
You coughed, wiping a few tears away, spit mixed with his precum coating your lips and chin. "You're just... too big..."
Astarion was actually average, but your inexperience was truly endearing, and he would still take that as a compliment.
He brushed his thumbs along your cheeks.
"You are doing amazingly, darling."
You gave him a slight pout. "Let me try again."
Stubborn as always.
He nodded, and you resumed your previous stance.
"I am not lasting long," he warned, wanting to make sure you understood the implications of carrying on. "Do you think you can swallow?"
You looked unsure for a while. "Maybe.... you can just come on my tongue and... I'll slowly swallow?"
His cock twitched at your suggestion and he groaned in approval.
By the time he slid back inside, he could feel his peak approaching more and more rapidly.
He wanted to fuck your mouth so badly, but he knew he had to hold back for your sake. After all, he could always make this a regular occurrence.
And practice makes perfect.
You began to tentatively suck and Astarion nearly burst right there and then.
That innocent suckle tied with your eagerness was a powerful combination, and he no longer cared that others might hear his grunts of pleasure.
"Good girl... you can suck harder if you want to," he encouraged, feeling his eyes nearly dropping shut from the overwhelming sensation.
You hummed around him, pressing the flat of your tongue against the underside of his cock.
And Astarion just lost it.
He barely had time to pull out before the first spurts of thick cum were being squeeze out by his hand.
"Tongue..." he barely managed to say before you promptly spread your lips, tongue fully out as he emptied himself on it.
He fucked his hand a few times as he rode out the blinding wave of pleasure, quite surprised he was able to keep his eyes on you the entire time.
He couldn't remember the last time he had come this much.
You did try your best to keep it all on your tongue, but his cum began to dribble from the sides, down your chin, neck and finally staining your shirt.
As he slowly came down from his high, he quickly unbuttoned your shirt, wanting to see the thick liquid coating the top of your breasts.
What a sight...
He could get hard just from it alone.
As he squeezed the final drops onto your tongue, he saw a single string of cum bridging your lower lip to his tip.
"I do apologise for the obscene amount," he said truthfully.
You merely grinned as you allowed some of it to slide down your throat.
But before you could swallow all of it, he got down on his knees and took your lips in his, wanting to taste your sweetness mixed with him.
You pushed some of it against his own tongue and he eagerly swallowed it, caressing your jaw.
He tasted sweet and salty and he reckoned he could get addicted to this.
When you finally parted from him, your eyes kept that expectant glint on them. "So... how was my tongue?"
He leaned in to press a soft peck the corner of your lips.
"Could use some more work, but the road to Baldur's Gate is long, and I believe we can make the time to practice.
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A/N: sorry... got carried away.... haha....
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ghostheartfelt · 1 year
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*:・。☆ warnings: heavy gore, torture, hurt/comfort, whump, s/a towards reader, men being gross, gunshot wounds, stab wounds, blood and violence, branding (torture method), waterboarding (torture method), reader (thaye) is a badass, first kiss, dismemberment of fingers, eye trauma, protective!ghost, implications of smut/sex, aftermaths of torture. (there is probably a lot i missed, but idc lol all the other shit should b enough warning!!) 〔☆〕 desc: you and the 141 are deployed to austria with the intel of a drug boss known as rolmuth who is harboring romanian soldiers to the east coast to smuggle illegal mercenary personnel into america. what happens when a rapid snowstorm picks up and you (callsign 'thaye') are separated from the others then further captured and interrogated alongside your lieutenant?
—✩ PHANTOM TOUCH ✩—
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word count —15.6k
a/n: sorry for my inactivity! the entire time i was workin on this shit... let me tell you.. this is 51 pages on google docs LMAO so i hope the length and word count makes this fat fucking hurt/comfort one shot worth it.
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VIENNA, AUSTRIA.
“Move, move, move!” Price yells.
Snow fell and blanketed the ground beneath you, you were dressed in white camouflage tactical gear. 
Your movements were slower as you trudged yourself through the snow, you turned in every direction searching for your captain. 
Your lieutenant. 
Anybody. 
Rapid snowy winds smacked you in the face, nearly forcing your eyes shut as you traveled through the gusts. 
“Soap?!” You shout, planting your feet below into the patches of snow, 
Your arms raise to cover your face. 
“Fuck!” 
“Thaye!” A voice echoed through the snow that encased you in a blanket of long silence. 
Snow nestled into the ground below—everything around you seems to just slow down.
You traipse yourself heavily through the thickness around you as you snap a clip into your M4 carbine, swinging it behind you like it had been previously.
Thump.
Your head droops down and you feel your heart drop into your stomach seeing the body of one of the men you were deployed with face up.
His head four inches deep in the snow and his right eye completely destroyed, his chest marred with several bullet wounds.
The root of his nose is fractured to the point where it’s flattened into what’s left of his skull. 
You swallow the knot in your throat that might have also been barf trying to make its way out of you, kneeling down to peel the soldier’s dog tags off of his corpse.
Hudson “Scooter” Wheeler. 
It makes you smile slightly, your thumb dragging over the metal tag to wipe off the thickness of blood that had coated the carving of his name.
“I’m sorry, Wheeler.” 
The loss of fallen soldiers leave footprints and engravings on one’s heart that never allows them to be the same, again. 
You wished sometimes you could just be without the worry about who you have to lose and who you have to save. 
Restless nights followed by mornings and afternoons full of nothing but unpromised resolutions. You nearly felt as if insanity would be a better route than going through the pain of losing the people you stood side by side with, enduring the effects of grief, bloodshed, and war.
Although there were moments of bonding and camaraderie that were forced to turn into utter gore and distrust due to the change of the objective that deemed those to turn against one another in hopes of survival and success. 
Pride; a fickle sense that could drive an individual to the depths of madness and create a staked claim to prove more power then they own or deserve.
You didn’t understand it. Nor did you want to. 
You were left in a society where the drabness of gray ruled the world and pain of loss clenched to the soldier’s  hearts almost desperately. 
And yet that perpetual colour of gray; a colour so dull but so compelling, it still lights the depths of hell you lived in by merely a petite dose.
Your mouth had begun to feel tacky with your muscles stiffening as the weather conditions intensify by every fleeting moment. 
Inside your combat boots, you feel your feet begin to grow numb; similar to the feeling of stepping on fresh-cut grass and grazing dull needles. 
Now, you wonder what hypothermia would feel like. You weren’t used to this sort of weather. 
Even under your white half-face balaclava, you felt your lips and their absence of moisture. 
Still, you trekked forward, squinting eyes searching for any sign of life around you.  
Your face lights up at the sight of a shadow-like movement through the blistering storm and rapid winds once you wipe off the frost lingering on your goggles. 
They moved closer—it seemed to be one person. 
There’s a tree to your left—your legs manage to jerk themselves through the snow until you're beside it.
You cautiously lower your body into the snowpack below you, clutching your rifle in your grip while your eyes fixate on the moving figure ahead of you. 
Your finger grazes over the trigger of your carbine rifle.
A leg comes before the torso, then the face. 
The skull mask.
Ghost.
Relief washes over you immediately—raising to your knees.
“Lieutenant!” You call. 
His head immediately snaps in your direction, and the time spent staring at each other seemed everlasting, though in reality it was just a few seconds before his large hand was squeezing your shoulder and he was right in front of you.
“Thought we lost’ya,” Ghost rasps.
“What’s the sitrep?” 
“Enemy force has ordnance on standby—Price ordered all units to the West Safehouse,” he says.
You nod softly. 
“Why’d you hang back?” 
His eyes widen under his balaclava and you open your mouth to speak—Ghost tugs you by your vest, pulling you to the side.
“Gh—“
There’s a person behind him.
Sounds muffle around you, complete silence surrounding you as Ghost’s head is slammed with the butt of a rifle. 
Your hands reach down to pull your handgun from off of your hip, pointing it towards his attacker, squeezing on the trigger and unhesitantly dropping him to the ground before he can double back and finish him off.
No words leave your mouth as you turn in one quick jerk, the barrel of a L1A1 being aimed between your eyes. 
Not even seconds later was the thick handle of a bowie knife met with the back of your head. 
Immediately, your body meets with the snow, and you feel the coldness of the snow over your mask. 
You struggle to pick up your head, pain surging in the back of your head enough to blur your vision. 
Keeping your eyes open was a challenge—they constantly blink shut as you watch the enemy force yell at each other, manhandling Ghost by ripping his weapon sling off of him and dragging him by his fur-lined parka. 
His body was dragged up into a Humvee and roughly thrown in before you were picked up by your ankles and wrists and tossed right on top of him.
Your head slumps against Ghost’s bicep as you're washed up by incapacity, your mind fogging against your will. Enervation holds you captive and sweeps you off your feet. 
You’re met with blackness, next, yet the only thing you could think of was your failure to protect your superior.
☆════━━━┈┈┈┈━━━════☆
You awoke to the sounds of struggling—something teetering on the floor. 
It takes a moment for you to come to your senses and stir from unconsciousness, eyes fluttering open to take in your surroundings.
The ever-present smell of waste and deteriorated flesh smacks you with reminiscence, the overbearing cold, the taste of grime, blood, and bile in your mouth. 
When you go to move your hands, they’re immobile; binded by thick ropes that with your state of exhaustion and physical weakness, would be impossible to escape from. 
Your heavy head manages to shift for oneself to observe the room—your gear was purloined, leaving you in your cargos and a tank-top.  
Below you, the ground was concrete and stained with blood that led to the large metal door that had a closed hatch. 
Vaguely, you recall in short and brief flashes why you were there, your eyes shutting for a few moments before opening once again.
Ghost.
Where was Ghost?
“Lieutenant,” you cough. “Ghost, wh—“ 
“‘M here, kid.” Ghost wheezes. “To’yr left.” 
Your head turns, stopping at the sight of his mask on the concrete, blood smeared across the maw of the skull, over the eye socket. 
“Ghost, are you injured?” 
“No.” 
Slowly, your eyes trace up the ground beneath you until Ghost’s boots are in view. 
His soles skid against the ground as he attempts to drag the dentist chair he’s strapped in. “Fuck!”
You shift in your wooden seat in an attempt to reach your hand down to pull up the velcro flaps of your cargos. You couldn’t reach.
Ghost’s boots stop skidding against the floor as the metal door’s rusted hinges creak, the door being flung open to welcome a man inside—three other men were behind him holding military grade rifles with drum magazines.
The man inside the room raises his hand, offering departure in the Hindi language, to which his men shut the door behind him.
His arms were wrapped behind his back, the sound of his heavy boots echoing off of the thick stone walls. 
He walks around the room for a while, allowing you to raise your head to take in who he was.
A European man that’s approximately 184 centimeters with long pushed back shaggy dark hair; his eyebrows arched, a bushy beard. 
On his cheek, a nasty deep laceration scar that reaches the end of his eyebrow. Under his left eye, another scar reaches the bridge of his nose. 
The man is inches from your face, now, a tilt in his head. 
“We see how long it takes to break you, Sergeant.”  His eyes crinkled as his lips upturned in a depraved smile. 
He lifts himself from his bent position, grips the crest rail of the chair, and pulls you farther from Ghost.
“Who is your commanding officer?” He asks, feet spread apart as he looks down at you to assert his dominance.
“Fuck you.” You bite back.
The man’s hand roughly takes hold of your chin, tilting your head up towards the dangling ceiling light. 
“I eat boys like you for breakfast.” 
Ghost chuckles beside you.
His eyes narrow as he releases a choked scoff, his head swinging back before bursting into laughter.
“My drug ring reigns across the entire country—my men swarm all city.” 
His accent is thick, though his English  isn’t terrible. 
“It is either you tell me now and you and friend die quick, or you die slow of bleeding until we find on our own.” 
“Good fuckin’ luck,” Ghost grunts.
You swallow thickly, groaning as the man pulls your head back by the scalp of your hair. 
You purse your lips as you collect saliva from the walls of your mouth, spitting just above the man’s eyebrow and watching as the gob runs down over his eye.
He snarls, dragging an open hand down his face. Using that same hand, the male flexes his hand into a fist and socks you in the jaw. 
“Hey!” Ghost shouts. 
You hear it pop and you immediately outstretch your neck and slam your forehead into the bridge of his nose, arms jerking in an attempt to escape your restraints. “You motherfucker!”
He lets out a groan, his head flinging back as blood streams down his nostrils, his hand trembling over his nose.
“Bitch! Madarchod! Bevakooph veshya…” He hisses through clenched teeth. “Broke my nose!” 
His palm smacks you across the face so hard, a pinkish red hue starts blossoming across your cheek. He repeats it again, then again, and again. 
You squeeze your eyes shut, bracing yourself as numbness circles inside the flesh of your cheek, a similar feeling to those static electricity globes that you’d get for your twelfth birthday and press all five of your fingertips against.
“Hey! This is between you an’ me, a’right?” Your lieutenant gives a sharp nod, trying to reason with the man. 
He stares at Ghost for a few moments, squeezing his fingers in his fist before leaving the room, the door slamming loudly behind him.
You take the moment to actually look at Ghost, your eyes taking in his features entirely.
From his long and messy dirty blonde undercut, to his shade and stubble. 
To his bruised and bloodied lips and the thick scar running from his top lip to the underside of his chin.
To his thick and beautiful eyebrows, the scar on the start of his left eyebrow, running down to the bridge of his nose.
To his deep and all familiar brown eyes—long and light eyelashes accompanying their shape.
To the scar that spread out from the right inner corner of his lip and across his cheek as if it was the engravings of a smile line.
There were several scars littered across the male’s face; each one of vast distinction from the other. 
Once again, the door thrusts open and the man returns, cotton wads up his nostrils with another male by his side, pushing in a rolling mayo stand with different tools and items you assumed were torture devices.
“Hey! Hey! What’re y’doing?” Ghost jerks in his seat, his eyebrows furrowing as the man picks up a syringe, flicking the glass and squeezing out a droplet of the liquid inside. “What th’fuck is that?”
“You will have your answer soon enough,” he simply replies. 
“Agarwal—blade.”
The second man grabs the rotary tool from off the tray, a saw blade in the other. 
Your hands tug against their bindings enough to chafe your wrists, it feels as if your skin is being shredded with a cheese grater. 
“Paip rinch, ab.”  The taller man holds out his arm, to which the man who was now identified as Agarwal hands him a pipe wrench.
“English, asshole.” You grunt.
He slings it over his shoulder and slowly walks towards Ghost as he whistles. 
Ghost’s eyes don’t avert from his gaze, even as the pipe wrench drops from off his shoulder to clatter on the floor, hanging from his wrist and dragging along the ground.
“Who…is…your…superior?” His voice is grim, each word coming out as he takes a step.
Using the hook jaw of the wrench, he lifts Ghost’s chin.
“Piss off,” the blonde huffs.
Not even seconds later does the man swing the wrench around and belt it into his stomach. Ghost lets out a wheeze, his body lurching over in reaction to the sudden pain coursing through him. 
“No!” You yell. 
“Who.” He asks again with spite in his tone—he was demanding, it no longer was a question in his favor.
“You’ll know who when he comes’a knockin’ ‘n blows lead thru th’lot of ya.” Ghost says with a slight raise in his head.
The wrench is swung back into his stomach, causing Ghost to hurl and expel vomit onto his boots.
“Leave him the fuck alone!” You kick yourself forward a bit using your boots. Agarwal’s hands grip the slat of the chair and pull you back towards the tray.
“No, no,” he nearly coos, yanking your head back by the thinner group of hairs on the nape of your neck. 
You clench your jaw and subside, lifting yourself up with your hips to help avoid the pain.
His eye’s strain, beads of sweat rolling down the end strands of his hair regardless of how cold it was inside of the formidable room.
“Get me my player,” the bearded man says as he trails his 12” redwood handle knife across Ghost’s jawline.
Agarwal’s hand releases your hair to your relief and he leaves the room. 
“Disgusting—“ the male snarls. “Making mess of my floor.”
Your eyes narrow as you watch a pool of blood start to form as he slashes Ghost’s cheek, a groan spilling from your lieutenant’s throat.
“Fuck you ‘n y’r floor,” Ghost coughs. 
He drops the wrench to the floor, then uses a rag that was hanging out of his pocket to swipe off the blood from the knife’s blade.
Two men walk in, one pushing in a record player and the other holding a tactical vest and a book.
Your vest and your book.
His name patch reads “Gamble”, the one who throws your vest and the book onto the floor. 
“Rolmuth, the woman—she has had access to our radio frequency and has been writing down our shipment codes and locations.” 
Ghost’s head raises, his pupils shrunken as he takes in the sight of the morse code book. 
The man holding the knife cracks his head in your direction before proceeding towards you.
“Thaye…” he susurrated.
You don’t flinch when his arms raise to swing the knife over towards your temple, a maniacal laugh escaping through the barriers of Rolmuth’s teeth. 
The knife lowers to release one of your hands, though before you can reach for anything, he slams your arm backward against the back leg of the chair, the feeling of your bones snapping beneath your skin causes you to let out a sharp, excruciating cry as your now-broken arm falls limp to your side.
“Thaye!” Ghost shouts. “Fuckin’ bastard…” 
“How?!” Rolmuth yelled through his teeth, lips drawn back in a snarl as he nearly foamed out of his mouth. 
His fist meets with your cheek and your eyes squeeze together in grimace to the pain as he punches you again. 
Ghost calls out your name and you can hear the metal of his chair scrape and grind against the ground. 
You feel your cheek begin to swell, the tender flesh on your face blooming into purple and blue bruises.
He walks to the record player and takes a record out of its sleeve that was resting on the shelf of the small table the player was brought in on. It has wheels on it—similar to the mayo tray.
Rolmuth blows on the record, though the sleeve looks too clean to hold any dust, then places the record on the platter. After pressing play, he drops the tone arm down.
The record scratching sends chills up and down your spine before the music almost beautifully fills the room.
Why does the sun go on shining?
You watch Rolmuth pick up a pair of pliers.
Why does the sea rush to shore?
You wonder if he’s going to try to rip out your teeth.
Don’t they know it’s the end of the world,
He clasps them around one of your fingers on your broken arm.
Fuck.
The cold metal around your finger makes you nearly want to cry.
‘Cause you don’t love me anymore?
He was going to rip off your finger.
“Who is your captain?” His hand squeezes the pliers, applying pressure to your singular finger. 
“Go…to hell—“ 
A scream rips itself from your throat as you feel your sinew and flesh tear, the pliers tearing your finger from off your bone.
“Tha’s enough!” Ghost jerks and flails in his seat, there’s a sip of panic in his voice. “Get th’fuck off of her!” 
Why do the birds go on singing? 
Rolmuth wriggled the rest of your finger off, your eyes daring to skim down to look at the bone sticking out from your knuckle. 
Blood spews out of the gore, coating your entire hand and dripping from the crevices of your skin into your lap, staining your cargos, turning their white color into several distinct shades of red.
Rolmuth sets the finger—your finger down lightly on the standing metal tray besides you. 
Why do the stars glow above?
A penetrating ringing fills your ears; one so loud it felt like it’d be the cause of your tears instead of the pain surging through the entire left side of your body.
Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?
You’re in shock, unable to speak. Your jaw is locked, your teeth are clenched so hard it feels as if you might shatter your teeth. 
It ended when I lost your love. 
Ghost’s voice echoes in the back of your mind, when he calls out your name, you’re pulled out of your trance. You jerk your slumping head up.
You want to call out his name, but it seems like your throat is swallowing every little word that is being screamed inside of your head. 
The room is spinning and you can’t feel your arm, you can’t feel the finger move that was just severed from your hand.
“Look at me, look at me, love…” your lieutenant simpers. 
Your eyes search the room until they land on Ghost’s, he sounds far away. You feel your eyes widen as cold metal wraps around another finger once again. 
Why does my heart go on beating?
Rolmuth’s lips close in near your ear as he tugs lightly at your middle finger. 
“You don’ want to lose this finger, do you?” You feel the man’s hot breath run up the side of your face and brush past your ear.
“Who…is…your...captain?” 
Why do these eyes of mine cry?
Every nerve in your body seized, your spine stiffening with every urge to kill the man standing beside you. 
Ghost coughs up blood; internal bleeding. 
“I’ll fu…cking…skin you…” you croak, your words finally becoming coherent.
He laughs. Rolmuth’s single arm raises in a humorous gesture of surrender. 
Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?
Your eyes squeeze shut, though shoot open at the rush of heat, the pliers applying clutched pressure to your finger before Rolmuth started ripping off the second finger, wiggling it until it broke off skin and sinew. 
It ended when you said “goodbye.” 
“Look at me, Thaye.” Ghost’s voice sounds desperate, so you offer him a short glance as your jaw slacks and your body retracts.
Your strained eyes snapping to the bearded man as he places down your middle finger on top of your pointer finger.
A gag surfaces in your throat and your body twitches as you watch your finger fall and roll almost as if it’s the most natural thing. 
Ghost yells your name again.
You finally focus on him, your eyes welling up, reddening and puffing against your will.
“Jus’ look at me, angel,” Ghost’s silked voice calms you, although in a manner you can’t hear him as well as you want to. 
Every muscle and ligament inside of you feels tense and stuck.
Why does my heart go on beating?
You had three fingers on your left hand—three fingers.
Thumb, pinkie, ring. Thumb, pinkie, ring. Thumb, pinkie, ring.
“Y’ll kill her, she’s losin’ too much blood—she’s goddamn delirious!”  
Gamble’s fist barrels into the side of Ghost’s head, you hear a feral groan leave his gullet.
At least I can still put a wedding ring on my left hand. You thought.
Those three fingers trembled and twitched, it was the only movement on the left side of your body besides for your left eye—is he going to take one of my eyes? Your head is swarming with thoughts.
“Ghost…” you slur, still locked onto the blonde’s eyes. 
“I know, love,” he says as gently as he physically can. “So proud of’y…” 
His speech comes out as a garble, but you’re still able to understand him. 
“‘M gon’ get us outta here…alive, a’right?” 
Your head slumps at the attempt of a nod. 
“Save y’r energy, lovie.” 
“Shut the fuck up,” Agarwal grips Ghost’s earlobe, pulling him closer. You’re not able to cognize his words, but you’re aware of the vexation in his countenance. 
You flinch once Rolmuth drops the pliers on the metal tray. He removes his latex gloves that were blanketed in your gore and throws them onto your lap. 
“Clean them up—she still is of use to me.” His voice grows more distant as he leaves the room.
Gamble injects Ghost with a syringe that was hanging off of his waist, casting him with drowsiness, his eyes struggling to keep open before he’s blacked out.
“What did you do—…what did y’do to him?” Your eyebrows stitch together. “What did you do?!” 
They unstrap his arms from the chair, then his ankles.
“Answer me goddamnit...” You seethe, tears warping in your eyes.   
“Shut the bitch up,” Gamble nudges Agarwal in the shoulder before he pushes Ghost further out of his restraints, his body still and unconscious allowing the scarred man to bind his wrists with zip ties. 
Agarwal simply nods and paces toward you. The stock of his gun smashed into your jaw before you could react.
☆════━━━┈┈┈┈━━━════☆
DAY TWO.
The woman in the doorway was bedraggled; tired eyes and shrunken tear-stained cheeks. 
There’s a light illuminating from the pulled-back curtains—a light so bright it could dry the shining tears that spill out scarlet fluid over the eyes of the miserable.
You feel only patient while waiting for the morning sun to rise over the horizon line of the ocean side.
It’s deteriorating yet caliginous frame of murky grey stone and vast sorrow of an arched entrance sat in disposition from harrowing memories filled with bloodshed, grief, and war.
Your face relaxes at the distinctly ravishing but delicate overcasted ray of light shot down from the amidst along the ruins, the melancholy ambiance nearly sent chills down your spine.
Heavenly cries of forgotten mothers begging for forgiveness of their past sins, children's playful and beatific screams, although it was nothing unknown to you.
Screams were usually followed by split rib cages and bullet wounds—tears, blood, those screams and sweat, you went through it all just for it to lie unheard and forgotten.
You searched the odd and seemingly afterlife-like realm with your eyes, you could only wonder where you were, and why you were there.
Why the flowy white dress draped over your body oscillated with the wind in a gorgeous motion.
You're lifting your head out of the water now. 
The taste of salt seems so thick, heavy. Like you could drown in it. Like you could get drunk off of it.
The waves crashing onto shore sound so loud atop the eerie silence, their white crests phasing through your body as if your presence was unknown to them.
You loved the ocean because as opposed to the ones who were supposed to; the ocean loved you and was never afraid to come too close, even at your worst.
As you move farther from shore, the water slowly travels up your body, submerging your frame. 
You close your eyes as your head is the last thing the water consumes. You feel the water bubbles tickle your skin and elevate themselves up to the surface. 
It doesn’t take long for that familiar burn inside your lungs and that familiar feeling of being gagged by the water to swarm your senses.
Your head jerks up and you let out a loud gasp as you fade into consciousness, slipping into colored imagery instead of just monochrome. 
Waking up felt like hell; your mouth was dry and most of your limbs felt unresponsive. 
Only when you see Ghost curled up on his side, laying on the floor in front of you, are you able to register where you are and what’s going on.
His knees bucked up into his abdomen  with his hands zip tied behind his back and his face battered and bruised. 
Specks of dried blood ran from his scalp down his face reaching his compression undershirt. 
He was asleep.
There was a gentle rise and fall with his chest—you could still hear his labored breaths from where you were. 
It felt colder. 
Your eyes wander down to your left hand that was wrapped in bandages that were stained red, your two fingers missing and replaced with nubs that were uneven from each other.
If your arm wasn’t broken, you could use it to break the leg of the chair and wield  it against the next person to walk through that large metal door that made you wonder if it was life or death upon you.
If your fingers weren’t missing, you could use them to untangle your restraints on your other hand.
You could barely move your wrist—the pain that swells your entire arm makes it nearly impossible.
Ghost stirs on the floor, his body curling into itself further before his legs straighten out. 
“Lieutenant,” you mumble. “What did they do to you…?” 
His eyes flicker to yours. 
“‘M alive, aren’t I?” Ghost says.
His voice is so hoarse and weak—he sounds dehydrated.
“You are.” 
Your eyes close a moment to allow yourself to breathe in the air around you.
The single door breaking up the dull room that held them hostage creaks open on rusted hinges allowing Rolmuth to enter.
Two different men from the day prior push in the same record player and the same rolling metal tray that was stained with your blood. 
“Rise and shine,” one says, his boot meeting harshly with the lower section of Ghost’s back.
 The blonde’s eyes stay intent on the movements of Rolmuth as he lifts up different record sleeves to read their names. He slides one out and places it on the platter.
That familiar sizzle fills the room before the gentle hum of the music begins.
A short gasp leaves your mouth as Rolmuth kicks down your chair by the back stile, your head immediately jerking forward before it slams down onto the cement floor.
He dismisses the two of his men.
Rolmuth’s hand levitates over the tray and he grasps an old tan hand towel, draping it over your face.
You can hear the buckle of Ghost’s pants tink lightly on the floor as he jerks himself. “Fuckin’ bastard!” He yells.
I don’t want to set the world on fire. 
It was going to be okay, you told yourself. You trained for this. Truthfully, you were one of the best swimmers on the task force. You can hold your breath—but if that rag manages to cave in, you’ll most likely panic and lose focus.
I…just want to start a flame in your heart.
“Are you ready for talk, now?” Rolmuth arches over you. 
In my heart, I have but one desire…
Your voice muffled, you call him something along the lines of an asshole and a prick, which is quickly silenced by the pressure of water that smacks you in the face.
And that one is you, no other will do…
Ghost watches the man pour a jerry can of water over your face. His breath hitching in his throat watching your body twist and turn trying to evade from the water. 
I’ve lost all ambition for worldly acclaim
Your body arches up in protest, head jerking side to side as if it would make it any more easier on you.
I just want to be the one you love…
Focus on the music, you tell yourself. You can barely hear your own voice. 
And with your admission…that you feel the same,
Rolmuth’s smile is ear to ear as he continues tipping the canister over your cloth-covered face.
I’ll have reached the goal I’m dreaming of, believe me…
You violently thrust your body, panic surging  through you as you feel water invade and swallow your lungs. 
I don’t want to set the world on fire…
Involuntarily you gasp and choke in more water, you feel your eyes roll to the back of your head.  
I…just want to start…a flame in your heart.
Your throat was burning like scolding lava, your heart throbbing inside your chest threatening to rupture. You don’t dare to make noise. 
You’re gagging, gasping, sputtering. That you can’t handle. But you don’t let yourself cry. Not like this.
I don’t want to set the world on fire, honey,
The music is starting to garble. 
Why is it starting to sound so distorted? You ask yourself. 
I…—you too—uch.  
“Stop, y’ll fuckin’ kill her! Bloody tosser!” Ghost grits his teeth before spitting out words.
Now that you have the chance to think about it, that song reminds you of someone.
I just want to start…
Your grandfather—you’d sit on that circular crocheted rug and listen to that song as him and your grandmother baked apple fritter.
A great big flame…
He loved that woman more than life itself; when she’d started to get sick with bone cancer, he helped her bathe, he helped her eat, get dressed. 
Down in your heart.
Your mother told you about how he had asked her doctor to keep the fact that she only had three weeks left to live just between them. 
You see, way down inside me,
She was still happy. So happy. He wanted to spend those last three weeks with her. He retired from his job and took her to all the places she’d talked about visiting. 
Darling, I have only one desire. 
She passed away, and he spent every day doing all her favorite things. He watered her plants, he baked. He listened to her favorite songs. 
And that one desire is you, 
He adopted a puppy—a beautiful Australian Shepherd which he named after her. Your mom would say that your grandma’s being was reincarnated into that dog. 
And I know nobody else ain’t going to do. 
Would that happen to you too? Who would you want to belong to? What kind of dog would you be? 
A deafening ringing fills your ears, you finally stop fighting. Breathing.
“She’s not movin—“ Ghost wheezes. “She’s not fuckin’ movin’!” 
He was trained for this. He couldn’t break. He couldn’t.
“Enough!” The blonde yells again.
They could crack him, but they can’t break him. They wouldn’t kill her. 
Rolmuth finally puts down the canister and removes the rag from off your face, his body bends over to lift your chair back up. 
Your body twitching, struggling to release the water clogged in your gullet
“Wake up, bitch,” he snaps and his open palm cracks against your cheek. Your eyes shoot open.
Your mouth opens, your strained and bloodshot eyes widen with horror as you vomit out water, sputtering between your lips as you hack and gag. 
The taste of bile is sickening to your empty stomach. 
Ghost calls out your name, catching your attention as you stabilize from your state of stupor. 
“So proud of’ya, Thaye,” he groans. “Y’r strong, ‘lright? We’ll kill these bastards, all of’em.” 
You can hardly spare the man a small nod before your chin is grabbed by Rolmuth’s uncut nails—blood and dirt caked underneath them.
“You tell who you are work for, I consider sparing life.”  Rolmuth runs a blade across your cheek, increasing the pressure slightly to slit your skin—a feeling similar to a paper cut. You moan in pain. “Your friend I can not speak for.”
Blood trickles down from the incise, slowly flaring through your cut and pushing from the barriers beneath your top layer of skin. 
“F…uck…—“ your silenced by sudden metal on your tongue, scraping gently like a threat. 
“I will carve out ur pretty little tongue, cut it in bits, and feed it to you.” Rolmuth coos. “Would you that, yes?” 
“Y’sick fuck, get th’fuck away from ‘er!” Ghost attempts to jerk himself up, the bonding on his ankles not allowing him to, his bruised ribs protesting in pain as he lets out a sharp breath.
Your eyes burn into his, your neck flinching as he slowly pushes the blade farther down your throat, his hand prying your mouth open. 
He chuckles lowly, small “ah’s” leaving him as he slowly opens your mouth farther to allow the tip of the knife farther down. You salivate, drool racing down your chin and over the creep’s knuckles. 
Ghost’s eyes divert from your face to the man’s hands. Disgust laced in his features. 
He swallowed thickly, he could feel his skin boiling. He wasn’t angry. 
Pissed.
He was incensed. 
More than that. 
“G..host…” your slightly muffled voice trembles.
His gaze fixes back on yours, watching as your left eye twitches at each of Rolmuth’s motions. 
“I know, love…J’s look at me, ‘lright? J’s look at me.” 
It presses onto the skin of your tongue, it’s curved edge digging into the fragile skin and tissue causing the metallic taste of iron to taint your sense of taste.
You still bore into your lieutenant’s gaze.
Saliva and blood dribbles down your neck, the sight no doubtedly arousing the male in front of you—his tongue leapt out to slowly trace along his bottom lip.
You might drown in your own saliva at this rate.
Your lieutenant purses his dry and cracked lips, but he doesn’t look away. 
He takes the blade out of your mouth, rubbing it against the cloth of his pants to clean it. 
Rolmuth raises the knife and pierces your thigh, the feeling of cold metal hitting you first along with the shock, the sound of cloth tearing.
“I want names!” The man hollered, spit landing on your face just below your eyes.
Ghost watches your pupils shrink, his own eyes widening and slowly shifting to your thigh. 
An intense tingling sensation swarms your entire leg, then a heat. A heat that felt unbearable. 
Ghost searches for your eyes again, his mouth moving, though you can’t hear anything he says.
He broke through skin and sinew, twisting the knife inside of the laceration.
“Talk, bitch!” Rolmuth’s eyes darken. 
It takes a few moments for the pain to surface, and when it does, it’s scorching. Your jaw slacks open as your eyebrows pinch together, a shrill whimper escaping you. 
“Don’ look, don’t.” Ghost pleads with you. Even he was struggling not to look at your thigh.
It didn’t take eyes to tell there was blood bubbling from the wound and dripping down your pants and trembling leg. 
A narrow vertical split across the midsection of the flesh of your thigh. Your eyes didn’t leave Ghost’s.
Was his hair bleached? It seemed like such an unnatural shade of blonde. Brunette underneath. He must bleach it himself.
Rolmuth gave it one more twist, releasing a thin, raw, scream from your throat. 
Tears stung the corners of your eyes, but you wouldn’t let them get the satisfaction of that from you. Especially not you. 
“They’ll b’ere soon, Thaye.” Your lieutenant says.
“You are weak,” Rolmuth spits. “You will break.” 
He rolls his shoulders before gripping your pointer finger and holding a jab saw above it.
Your eyes flicker to Rolmuth’s and Ghost calls your name. 
“I want a name!” Rolmuth’s scream makes your head spin. 
“Fuck y—“ your voice is replaced with a high pitched cry followed by gasps and whimpers as Rolmuth’s new blade carved through sinew and bone. He lifts up your finger against the blade and with one swift movement, your finger falls onto the floor. 
“I’ll fuckin’ kill you, y’bastard!” Ghost’s lips twitching in pain mixed in with a whole lot of anger. 
Your body jumps up, an animalistic noise escaping your throat as you swing your head back and wince loudly, the pain in your thigh 
“Name! Or I take another!” Rolmuth yells just inches from your face. 
You couldn’t handle it—your vision is swarmed by black spots and your head is killing you. Your body is in so much pain you feel so much, but so little all at the same time. 
When your eyes roll to the back of your head and lolls, you can faintly hear the man yell ‘shit’ before you’re unable to comprehend what is happening.
Everything fades into a subtle blackness, and the last thing you hear is Ghost yelling your name. Screaming your name. 
☆════━━━┈┈┈┈━━━════☆
DAY 4
You wake up to the sound of loud groaning and thumping. 
It takes you a few moments to register that you’re awake and you can actually move. 
So you do—you upheave your head and take in the light spilling in the room from between the iron barred vent. 
It stings your eyes, blotchiness surrounding your peripheral before you’re able to adjust to the light. 
Ghost is on the floor taking blunt forces into his lower abdomen—the blonde sputters out a cough as his entire body jerks at the contact. 
The man grips the neckline of Ghost’s shirt, lifting his head from off the ground as thick red paste runs down his split and swollen lips.
His legs lift themselves up in an attempt to propel his body up and out of the man’s grasp, but he falls flat as his neck is slammed back onto the cement. 
Before Ghost can gasp for air the moment his neck is released, a closed fist slams into his cheekbone, knocking the wind out of him. 
“Stop,” you rasp. “Let’im go…”
Ghost is twitching on the floor, blood spilling from his mouth. His entire face is caked in red flakes and black and blue blemishes—the entire left side of his face is fattened with knots.
“No…” you snarl.
The man whirls his head and glares at you, an amused expression of disbelief stamped onto his face.
“No?” He says cockily.
The man paces towards you and cuts off your bindings, bundles your hair in his fist and drags you over towards Ghost, you whine and raise your unbroken arm to try and pry his hands off, but he only tugs harder. 
He pulls your hair up until you're positioned on your knees, chin raised up and neck tilted.
You hear a click, it wasn’t a gun. 
He unsheathed a pocket knife. It was a fairly decent size. You were tired of seeing knives.
Ghost watches the man’s hand lower to your abdomen, fingers pirouetting across your delicate skin, it sends a shivering fear throughout your entire body like electricity. 
“Please…” you meekly whisper, attempting to pull yourself away, your body is so weak from lack of use. Your voice came out as a croak. 
His other hand holds a knife that teases the neckline of your shirt. 
Ghost thrashes against the floor attempting to wrestle out of his bindings. “I’ll skin you,” Ghost’s voice is hoarse.
“How would you feel If I just…” His fingers trace along the scars on your stomach. “Touch her, ever so lightly…Right in front of you?” The man snickers.
You yelp as his knife cuts a thin line down your blood-stained neckline until your cleavage is exposed. 
Tears surface the corners of your eyes. 
No, no, no, no…
“Keep y’r eyes on me,” Ghost whispers weakly. “That’s it, love.”
You feel your shirt tear entirely down the middle and fall down your arms, pooling around your wrists. 
Your vision blurs and your mouth starts to feel dry, teeth chattering in unison with your trembling lips. 
When the knife rests over the center gore of your bra, your breath hitches in your throat and tears bead down your cheeks. 
The blade slices through the cloth and immediately your hand rises to cover your nude chest.
Ghost’s eyes stay locked with yours, one half-closed from being beaten beyond his control.
You feel his facial hair scrub raw against your skin, sipping in your fear and vulnerability.
“Team Delta en route for seaside, Corbin, what’s your report?” 
His radio.
The man pauses and takes his hand off the midline of your ribcage to grab his radio.
“Delta, this is Pooch on standby—hostages are stable, the woman is awake.” 
You release a choked sob, causing the man to release the talk button and bash it against the side of your face, sending you straight onto the floor. 
“Thaye…” Ghost croons.
You clutch your chest with your one hand as you feel the right side of your face swell. 
“It’ll ‘b over soon,” you tremble, releasing a shaken breath. “They’ll find..us…”
“Shut the fuck up,” his voice is slicked with spite. “Both of you.” 
“Pooch, this is Delta, rog that. Don’t kill our intel—0-7, signing off.” It crackles.
You lift your head and turn it slightly, blinking causes the pain on your cheekbone to burn like acid. 
“Go to h—“ the radio is bashed into your face again causing your vision to swim and make your head stumble. 
The sound of blood trickling and hitting the floor fills your ears, your left palm flattens against the cold floor. Missing fingers wrapped to keep you alive, not because they care.
He punches the radio into your right eye. You keep your head down in submission.
“You wanna act tough? Get treated like you're tough!” He yells.
His hand tugs your head back—you can see your own blood splattered against the communicator before you’re met with the same fate.
Ghost watches as the man beats the right side of your face in with the butt of the radio until it’s practically unrecognizable—caked and blistered. Bruising and swelling so tender on your skin. 
He can’t do anything.
He can only watch. 
You whimper and cry, hissing through your tears while your jaw clenched, the radio mercilessly landing on the same spot allowing more blood to cascade from the wound. 
The last hit is the hardest, sending your numbing cheek staggering back down onto the ground, you wheeze. 
If Ghost’s hands weren’t tied behind his back, the man standing above the two of you would be a mangled corpse. He knew that. 
Your breaths are shallow and rasped. It feels like hell to breathe—to move your face. Crimson just pools beneath you as Pooch flicks off your gore from his communicator.
He grunts in disgust as specks splatter onto the ‘cleaner’ side of your face. Like water spots on a windowpane or glass shower door. 
When you hear the door slam behind you, it makes you flinch. 
Your body has broken into tremors now, maybe it’s not tremors—but your spasming. 
And your hand is still covering your scar-ridden chest, but you feel like you might pass out again. 
Ghost’s own breaths are ragged—you wonder if lunderneath all the blood on your face if you’d look just like him. 
“Sleep,” he rasps. “I’ll watch ya.” 
You relax as much as you possibly can, your single eye twitching shut in favor of your other one. 
All you’ve had these past four days was sleep, yet it didn’t replenish. It didn’t make you feel any less tired or exhausted. 
With your bones feeling brittle and sore, it was hard to shift yourself into the mindset of falling asleep, but you tried. 
You felt Ghost scoot himself towards you, possibly just to shield your unclad chest and give you a taste of comfort. 
Your eyelids feel heavy with pain and fatigue, your body stilling as you allow yourself to sleep.
☆════━━━┈┈┈┈━━━════☆
DAY 5
Your hands are tied above your head, a gag set between your teeth which you gnaw at in an attempt to drag it down to hang around your neck.
Ghost is a few feet away from you—both of you hanging on metal piping with rope around your wrists. 
Ghost’s boots were on the floor, he was too tall to hang like you, where you could swing your feet. Did they take your shoes? 
You watch the steel poker ignite in the industrial furnace; the end of it glowing all shades of red, yellow, and orange. 
It was two different tools Rolmuth was holding, now. They had two different symbols on each one that you were unfamiliar with. He was choosing.
Rolmuth spun the branding irons with his thumbs and pointers, chuckling dryly to himself as he approached Ghost, setting one of them back inside the boiler.
His boots were so loud, they echoed off the walls of the room they were in—It looked like some sort of boiler room, but you weren’t too sure. 
You two must’ve been in a warehouse of some sort. 
Rolmuth has to look up to look your lieutenant in the eyes. 
When they’d woken you up, they threw you a gray tank top, so you weren’t as exposed as you were before. 
The Hindi man pulls down Ghost’s gag. 
“460 degrees of heat on metal…” he says as he lifts the hem of Ghost’s shirt. “You talk, I spare you more scar.” 
“Go fuck y’self, y’manky twat…”  the blonde snapped.
An open mouthed yell left Ghost’s throat as the metal is lanced firmly over the middle of his stomach, tugging at his flesh and skin.
Ghost’s eyes squeeze shut as loud whimpers escape from him, ragged winces. 
“Stop!” you cry.
God, you’d never heard him in so much pain. You never thought you’d ever hear him scream in agony, in physical pain. 
You're forced to watch the smoke trailing up the rod, Ghost’s back arching in tormentation. 
“You piece of shit!” You twist and turn your body causing the rope to shred through layers of your skin. 
His muscles tense and his knuckles go white from how hard he’s gripping the pipelines holding him up. 
Rolmuth removes the metal from Ghost’s skin—it could be described as a flesh eating parasite; the way that his skin sticks to the rod as if it’s desperate for that contact.
A hitched gasp manages to make its way past his lips as he feels a tinge of relief, his body twitching and pained moans and hisses filling your ears.  
You jerk your body weight down, kicking your bare feet until you feel the metal start to dent. 
Rolmuth sets the iron back onto the furnace over a rack, he’s bending over to adjust the heat, the fire is roaring.
You tug your arms down and you let out a strained whine at the feeling of your wrists starting to bleed.
When the metal gives in above you, it creaks and drops you down.
You slide down the metal and Rolmuth’s body swings up from fidgeting with furnace levers and knobs. 
His arms are immediately reaching for his gun while you lift your legs up and kick the heels of your feet into his shoulder blades, hard. 
Rolmuth’s head slams back into the brick base of the furnace, he lets out a groan, his form dragging down and slumping against the floor.
Your body lands harshly on the ground, an excruciating response coming from the back of your head.
Black spots cloud your vision as you slowly try to regain your composure. Your vision is blurring, everything sounds far away and echoed. 
The gun slides across the floor.
Your jaw clenches as you pick up your heavy head, your eye searching for the gun regardless of the pounding that distracted you.
When you spot the muzzle, you lurch yourself forward and reach, finger grazing the trigger guard before your pulled back by your hair, earning a yelp to leave you.
Your lungs refuse to cooperate in your chest as your scalp is nearly torn from your head. 
Rolmuth growls with clenched teeth, pulling you away from the gun and towards him as he kneels himself over you.
This was the first time you were able to get a decent look at his face—if it weren’t for your messed up eye—but you only can see the rage dispersed over his face as his hands gather around your throat.
He slams your neck down, adding onto the pain thrusting through the back of your head.
“Bitch!” Rolmuth snarls.
You suck in your gag, causing panic and adrenaline to rush through your entire body as your binded hands thrash and attempt to push him off of you. 
You duck yourself, bend your leg and kick it against his ankle to heave yourself up with all your weight upwards. 
He exclaims in his native tongue, some of which you can only recognize as insults and swears.
Ghost calls your name weakly.
Rolmuth’s hands slip from your throat allowing you to breathe and sit yourself on top of him, you tug your body and maneuver yourself until you're behind the man, pulling the knot of your bindings against his throat and crossing them over. 
His neck lifts to try and give himself access to air, though you tug and hold his waist steady between your knees. 
You yell with your clenched teeth, the fabric between your lips making the muscles in your jaw ache. 
Him wheezing beneath you, fingernails clawing at your split and abused hands before he shifts.
“Thaye!” Your lieutenant hollers.
Rolmuth’s hands reach down to his vest to pull another gun, aiming it at your foot and pulling the trigger causing you to let out an agonizing scream, pain racking your entire body. 
The bullet shoots clean through, you knew that for sure. It was too close. 
Your grip on his neck loosens so you can slap the gun out of his grip.
In three quick motions, Rolmuth’s back atop you with his hands grasping your hair again, dragging you towards the furnace until your face is close enough to feel the heat radiate onto your face.
You feel the thickness of gore engulf your foot and drip down your toes onto the floor. 
Your grunting, muffled, and loud breaths make your head pound as the man squeezes your jaw and forces your neck towards the mouth of the forge. 
“No…” you snarl with bared lips, kicking your legs regardless of the pain, throwing yourself towards him to keep yourself as far from the flames as you could.
Rolmuth laughs dryly accompanying his guttural breaths, his body stretching yet keeping a firm hold on your mandible as he takes hold of one of the branding rods. 
“No!” Your eye widens and your hands reach up to push his face away from you.
“Fuck!” He growls, shaking his face to keep your hands off as he pulls the iron out of the furnace.
He wastes no time pressing it into your side regardless of the thin tank covering your skin, and the cloth does absolutely nothing in regards to the sudden gut wrenching sensation that makes it feel like your entire body was drenched in gasoline and set on fire with a blowtorch. 
Your cry is deafening to the ears and the smell of burning charred flesh is quick to fill your nostrils. You feel and you hear your skin bubble up, sizzle, then pop, then stick to the metal and entangle itself around the start of the handle taking the appearance of something similar to chewed bubblegum. 
Even trembling and shaking, you manage to find a way to position your hands so you can plant your thumbs into his eyes and use some of the only fingers you have left to press them into his eyes, causing the man to yell. 
Still, your screams aren’t matchable as your fingernails gouge into his sockets and claw at his eyelids, shredding through flesh easily as blood began to dribble down his face and over his lips like tears. You still manage to scream louder in anger than the man can in pain. 
Your fingers shove deeper into the grooves of his eye sockets, the organs are pushed so far back that blood sprays across your face and he finally releases the rod.
It clangs to the floor, and he starts sobbing in his native tongue, convulsing hands reaching up towards his red-painted face as you pull your gag out.
“Go to hell,” You seethe wobbly as you lift yourself and steer yourself behind him, taking Rolmuth by the nape of his neck and forcing himself inside the mouth, against the grills inside the furnace. 
He shrieks and cries, moving erratically as his face is engulfed by the fire. Slowly, yet quickly, his skin is shredded by the blazes and the bottom rows of his teeth are exposed. 
It takes him a while to stop making noise before you pull his head out and throw his twitching body onto the ground, then you finally allow yourself to lean against a boiler tank and take pressure off your injured foot.
You propel yourself off the tank by your palms and drag yourself regardless of your ankle to the edge of the furnace, turning yourself around to scrape the rope against the brick.
A gasp releases from your throat at the sudden relief around your wrists, the rope falling to the ground. 
“Ghost?” You lift your head. 
“‘M here.” He replies. 
“I don’t know if I can get up.”
“I know you can,” Ghost urges. “Find…” he sputters up blistering coughs. 
“…Fin’a knife, ‘n get me outta these binds, yea?” He huffs. “‘N I’ll do the rest.”
Your eye blinks as you grip the ankle of Rolmuth’s corpse, pulling him toward you to start flipping up his vest and pant pockets.
He didn’t have a knife on him. 
Got to be fucking kidding me.
A door is swung open, a singular set of footsteps stepping into the room.
Your eye searches for a weapon—anything that can deal enough damage.
A metal fire poker is hanging off the wall to your right, so you swing your elbows back and lift yourself up by the palms of your hands.
As quick as you can, you hoist yourself up by using the support of a metal deaerator, your arm sliding against it as you limp and throw yourself towards the wall creating a subtle thud. 
“What the fuck…?” A man’s voice murmurs.
You silently curse to yourself under your breath as you grab the fire poker off the nails that were being used to hold it up.
Using the heel of your injured foot, you shuffle against some shelving, looking between the gaps for the man inside the room. 
He’s holding a Fennec, nothing you haven't dealt with before. 
He’s twenty seconds to your left, carefully skimming along the floor with his eyes down the sights of his gun.
You pinch a metal screw off of one of the shelves and toss it into the corner closest to you to lead him your way. 
“Fuck,” the younger male jumps slightly. He looked young and lanky, at least from his physique.
When you hear his boots start to rub against the floor, you lift your head slightly to watch him turn towards your direction. 
Your fingers and nubs flex on the thin metal, it’s hard to gain a clear grip.
The man comes around the corner of the shelves, the sounds of his tactical gear shuffling alerting you when he gets closer until his helmet is in sight.
You immediately thrust the fire poker into the gap below his collarbone and into his scapula, dampening the fabric of his undershirt in that area as it rips. 
Out of panic and shock, his finger grips the trigger and you have to jerk him away before any of his bullets are able to hit you.
“Please!” The boy pleads, gun dropping to hang around his neck as he grips the caps of your shoulders. You only glare at him before plunging the fire poker further into that same spot until it tears and mauls through his back, sticking out on the other end.
He’s gasping out, but it’s almost like no air is exhaling, mouth held agape as his grip on your shoulders releases. 
You shout and cry out at every thrust until the hole carved into his skin is able to suck in the hooked tip. 
The male’s head falls and you allow his body to slump down and forward, the metal rod holding his stilled body up. 
You heave dryly and press a palm on the wall to support yourself, your foot is killing you—literally.
The blown out flesh and puckered skin walls made you want to barf. You could stick a finger through your foot and feel your pulsating muscles just hug around your finger. 
You lean down and unclip the knife holster from the gun belt, unsheathing it then hobbling around the shelving towards Ghost who was still hanging from the pipes. 
“Okay, okay…” you breathe sharply, struggling to lift yourself up onto the brick platform of the furnace, nearly stumbling off before you catch your footing. 
“Keep still,” you say, arching your hand to start cutting at his bondings until he’s dropped onto the floor.
Ghost lets out a loud groan, his arms clutching his ribs. They’d broken one of his ribs, maybe multiple. You both were in bad shape.
It takes him a moment to get himself off the floor as you seat yourself and scoot off of the hearth. 
He grabs both of the hand guns that had been dropped onto the floor, holding one out to you.
You unclip the magazine, then snap it back into the chamber at the sight of one missing bullet. 
It was the same one that Rolmuth used to shoot your foot. 
Ghost’s hand rests on your cheek, gently. “Y’did good, ‘lright?” He spoke with a lilt. 
“Can y’walk?” 
“A little.” You nod. “Fuckers took my shoes…” 
He lets his hand fall to check his magazine, then he nods. “‘Don’t know if I can carry ya with m’ribs.” 
“It’s okay, just don’t wait for me.” You reply.
His eyebrows furrow. “Bloody hell, Thaye, I ain’t leavin ya.” 
“I know but—“ 
“No.” 
Ghost’s half-lidded eyes glare at you, giving you all the warning to stop.
“Stay behind me.” 
He starts walking towards the door, slowly peeking it before leaving with you behind him.
Walking hurt—even while you only applied pressure to the heel on your injured foot, the muscles contracted and the pain was torturous. 
One man entered the hallway holding a box from another room, which Ghost took care of by shooting a single bullet between his eyes.
The box had opened and dropped glass equipment, alerting four others who had been lingering in the room he came from.
They yell and communicate in their native tongue, one sticking his head out of the door threshold to aim his rifle.
Ghost fires his pistol and the man swings his head back into the room, still opening fire into the hallway.
“Fuck!” You hiss, dodging the bullets and moving quickly behind a filing cabinet, lowering yourself down. 
Ghost’s back presses against a door to your right, pulling himself out of cover to fire at the man.
Two bullets miss and the third causes his head to fling back and smear blood as his body arches and falls down to the floor.
You lift your head and aim your pistol, gasping when your throat is suddenly hooked back from behind you. 
When the combatant turns you around and attempts to make a slash at your throat, you manage to extract yourself by gripping his wrist and snapping his elbow out of place, the sounds of bones snapping as he yells.
His knife drops from his hand and you scramble to pick it up from the floor.
You groan as his boot digs into your bandaged hand before you're able to pick it up, then his hand grips your neck to lift you up.
He wraps his arms around you and squeezes you, locking his wrists over each other at your back. You clench your teeth and jerk violently in his grasp.
Ghost is fighting four other men, locking them in the crook of his elbow and smashing their skulls between the doors.
The man holding you in position crushes you in his grasp even with his broken arm. He tries dragging you into another room.
“Let me the fuck go,” you gasp, causing the man to laugh. 
“You will regret ever trying to leave your room,” he utters. 
You breathe a moment, heart pounding through your chest as you swing your head into the side of his neck and sink your teeth into his skin with all the strength in your jaw. 
Crimson liquid seeps into your mouth and down the front of your neck as you yank out the flesh of his throat. You spit out the skin and blood, wiping your mouth and tongue against the skin of your arm as the man’s grasp loosens
His shoulder blades and chest are glistening in red, gore spurting out of the torn spot in his throat as his body stumbles and he’s gargling on his own blood trying to speak.
“Fuck you…” You shutter weakly, eyes slowly skimming down to the knife lodged inside your waist. 
Shit.
He must’ve stabbed you before lifting you up, your adrenaline pumping so fiercely you couldn’t feel it until now.
You stumble on your feet slightly, shaking hands lowering to wrap around the handle and pull it out of the slit.
The runnel of red paste turns into a thick stream down as it drenches your tank top. 
You lift your head slowly and throw the knife overhead across the hallway, hitting a man who’s pointing a handgun at the back of Ghost’s head. 
It’s blade spades into the back of his skull and makes his body wriggle down onto the floor.
“Ghost…!” You gasp and press your open palm over your soaking top and open laceration. 
Ghost steps over both legs of a bloodied man before shooting him dead and advancing towards you.
“Shite…” He huffs, gently removing your hand and placing it back after gaining a clear inspection.
His hands grip the hem of his shirt and roughly tear at the fabric creating a long strip, then he moves your hand aside again to tightly secure it around your wound. 
You hiss and groan, hand gripping his shoulder as he tugs and pulls at your body while tying the knot of the fabric. 
“I’s ‘lright.” Ghost mollifies as he scoops his arm underneath your armpit.
It offers you some support as he guides you both out towards a staircase.
It wasn’t a warehouse—you and Ghost were just in a basement that was turned into a meth lab. 
Boxes and boxes full of lab equipment scattered along the floors. 
You’d never seen such a big basement, one with torture chambers and stonework rooms. 
Hell, in the corner of the room with all the steel liquid tanks and chemical barrels. 
A woman is in bright blue hazmat coveralls and a chemical mask standing on top of a metal stool. 
Ghost raises his pistol and you lower it slightly with your palm, his eyes glaring at you with his head kept facing forward. 
“You can’t miss, we don’t know what corrosives are in these tanks. Is it worth it?” You keep your voice low, personal between the two of you.
He doesn’t reply, instead he looks forward, then squeezes the trigger and picks the woman off by shooting her in the side of her neck.
You swallow thickly as her body spasms on the ground, the stool getting caught in her ankle as crimson fluid rises and bubbles inside of her mouth. 
Ghost guides the two of you up the cobble stairs, one hand dragging up the wall and the other across your lieutenant’s wingspan.
Your eyes flash at the sudden two objects being thrown down the stairs, the sudden silence as they roll down step…after step…after step before Ghost is swinging you up into arms and yelling.
He’s breaching himself through the door, into open fire before the staircase you had come up from explodes into the emitting heat compressed air and blasts behind the two of you sending you both flying forward. 
Smoke engulfs the room, giving both you and Ghost coverage to get behind cover.
You're pulled by the back of your shirt behind a deep freezer, bullets flying and hitting the metal.
“Fuckin’ pricks got us pinned!” His head lifts over to fire at three of the men who have ballistic shields covering those firing LMGs behind. “‘N I’ve got four left.”
You can’t see through the thick smoke—you can’t breathe while wheezing into the crook of your elbow. “Seven,” you inform him. 
“Cover me,” Ghost grabs your arm for a moment, letting go and serving around the freezer. 
You follow behind him with a raised pistol, shooting off at any glares you're able to see through the fumes.
Six…Five…
A man steps out from cover behind a wine cabinet, but before he can fire his rifle, you pop him in the eye.
Four…
Ghost quickly crouches down and shimmies the rifle out of the corpse’s grip, grabbing at a magazine and stuffing it into his vest he’d managed to keep.
You groan and push over a bookshelf behind Ghost once you’re both out of the smoke. He takes aim and opens fire at three men, blowing holes in their chests before he rams into the fourth with a loud yell and slams down the stock of his assault rifle into his face until his teeth and nose are finely pressed into the persian rug.
You finish off two more who try to walk through the threshold of the room, turning your head over your shoulder at the sound of approaching footsteps.
Two…
You jerk yourself away before you get slugged by a riot shield, ascending yourself and shoving your firearm past the barriers of his lips from behind. You pull the trigger and his head flings as the bullet rings out and creates a sizable hole in the back of his head.
One…
Before his body hits the tile, you take hold of his riot shield and deflect the hail of gunfire from the individual who came emerging from the threshold corner.
You walk forward until his clip is empty to drive the shield into his vest-covered chest, stunning him so you can push it aside and fire your last shot into the underside of his jaw. 
Zero.
Bullets continue spraying throughout the entirety of the house while you make sure you don’t pass out from the amount of blood you’ve lost.
You grab the TAQ-V from off the floor and click a new magazine into it, shoving a spare into your back pocket before pushing into the same room as Ghost.
He’s piling bodies on the floor, wrestling for dominance over a knife. 
You fastdraw another handgun you’d grabbed off of one of the bodies and shoot the man in his knee cap to allow Ghost to gain the upper hand and pierce the man’s temple with the weapon. 
“Thanks,” he says gruffly. 
You nod softly, inhaling sharply as you feel wet blood pool around your uninjured foot. 
They took your shoes for no reason, like they had a use for them.
Maybe it allows you to move around more quietly, but it still disturbed you that they took the time to even peel off your socks. 
“What intel did y’know that we didn’t?” His chest is against yours, head craning down to keep the conversation between the two of you.
“Lieutenant, we don’t…” You pause a moment, your head spinning. 
Hunger, thirst, the cold, the blood loss. There was so much holding you hostage and you weren’t even able to comprehend how you were still standing—limping.
“Well, Seargant?” His voice is low, still holding the same husky British drawl.
“We don’t have the time for this, for now—“ Ghost shoves you aside before you can finish, raising the muzzle of his rifle to open fire on the men entering the room.
“Fuckin’ riot shields!” He pulls you behind a flipped over tattered blue couch that had already gone through its fair share of bullets.
A bullet flies and hits the side of the couch a hair’s breadth from your face. 
“Goddammit,” he curses while replacing the magazine in his gun.
The men brandishing shields push further.
When one reaches close enough, you run in front of the shield and grab the sides before he crashes into you. 
You turn him until his body is vulnerable to Ghost, your teeth ground into each other.
“Ghost!” You yell to catch his attention, head snapping in your direction to fire a single round into the back of his head.
You throw the body off of yourself and yank the riot shield to cover yourself, ducking your head as you recoil your fist and punch one of the men baring LMGs hard twice in the jaw.
You thrust the shield into the next, throwing it into his abdomen as he topples, finishing him off by shooting him down in the chest.
One turns with his M4 raised, but you turn your gun around and bash the stock into the base of his chest, then again into his cheek, swiping your leg across the floor and knocking him down then picking his head up and slamming it down on a thick shard of glass sticking upwards to finish him off. 
Ghost drops the last body, finishing off a magazine into his vest and throwing the weapon aside. You toss him another one, which he catches with ease.
“We’ll force upstairs, look f’r our shit, ‘n leave.” He says as he picks up a frag grenade from off a vest.
“There should be Skimobiles somewhere around here, the ones they were using in the FFO,” you nod.
“A’right,” he groans while rolling his shoulders. “On my mark.” 
He trudges past bodies until he’s at the threshold of the staircase, stepping up slowly with the grenade in one hand and his gun in his other.
You follow behind leisurely, eye down the scope of your rifle. 
He pulls the clip and tosses it up, arm stretching behind to press his hand against your shoulder blade. 
“Oh shit—grenade!” A man yells from upstairs before detonation. 
“Go!” Ghost immediately backs up off the wall and skips over two steps into the corridor, prefiring as he loops around a wall.
There’s already bodies and limbs splayed across the room from the combatants who were hit by the frag.
Your back rubs against the wall as you lean to shoot down the hallway, whirring bullets firing past you.
After a few back and forths between staying flat against the wall and leaning to fire off your gun, bodies drop and you’re able to progress down the hall. 
Ghost is somewhere on the opposite side of the house, you still hear heavy gunfire.
You pause at the sight of another man at the end of the hallway and you recognize him immediately.
The look in his eyes and the scruffiness of his face made your lips stretch in almost the most feral look.
Corbin, that was his name. Callsign ‘Pooch’.
Anger burns in the depths of your lungs and stomach as you grip the wall for support, lunging yourself forward to lift your feet over each body that was littered across the hallway floors.
Sweat ran down the sides of your face and splotched down around the neck of your shirt with the blood.
You watch his face twist into a wolfish grin as he slings his gun over his shoulder and walks towards you. 
“Alright, sweetheart.” He purrs. 
White noise fills your ears.
All you can see through the glossy shine of your eyes is the man who humiliated you in front of your superior. 
All you can see through the blinding red rage is the man who beat Ghost and cracked his ribs, forcing you to watch him retract and twitch at every fleeting fist. 
Even the hail of gunfire is silent in your ears as you drag your injured foot. Everything sounds underwater, everything feels dull.
His fist intersects and meets with your cheekbone causing your head to shift to the left and your body to stumble where you stand. 
You grip his wrist and divert his second punch by lifting your arm and thrusting your knee roughly into his thigh to tamper his movements.
He groans, with grim chuckles following after. “I’m going to enjoy every last second of this,” he coos.
Your body shivers in disgust as you slide your fingers down to your waist, priming the knife stuffed beneath the hem of your shirt. “Go fuck yourself…” you hiss.
His eyes flicker down to your hand and his boot immediately connects with the middle of your torso, sending you across the floor with a loud thud.
Pooch steps between your legs and lifts your upper body by the neckline of your shirt, his knuckles slamming down to beat on your already swollen face. 
Drool and blood pour from your mouth, a strangled gasp leaving you at every punch before he releases you harshly back down onto the floor. 
Your eyes are rolling to the back of your head, the pressure and swelling in your face and head being all too much for you.
A boot is savagely kicked into the lower pit of your abdomen, making you gag on air.
“Get the fuck up.” Pooch spits. 
You clutch your stomach and turn, slowly feeling for the knife, then quickly lifting the edge trimming of your tank top and grasping the handle, pulling it out and sweeping your leg around and behind his ankles to knock him off to the side.
He yells out swears as you level yourself over him, his legs kicking out to make your chest rest on the soles of his boots. 
Both of your hands grasp the handle of the knife making it easier on your lack of fingers. His hands grip your forearms as you cry out and try forcing the knife down on him.
He kicks his legs up and backwards, upending you over him and sending the knife flying. 
You hiss and give yourself no time to recover, flipping on your stomach and army crawling with your forearms to grab the knife.
He topples atop your body, planting a piercing slap across your face before reaching for the knife and propelling it downwards into you.
Before you’re able to block, the knife breaks through the skin in your stomach, your hand managing to grab his wrist before he’s able to gut you open.
You seethe and let out a sharp whine followed by a croaked cry, your other hand circling his wrist in an attempt to push him away. 
Quickly, you roll your body off to the side and let go of him, causing the knife to pierce into the wood flooring as you grip a console table to succor yourself up.
Corbin abandons the knife and flings himself upwards, swinging his gun into his arms. 
“I’m done playing games.” 
You advance on him, grabbing the rifle and pushing it into his chest before he can aim it at you.
One of your hands grip the upper hand guard while the other grips the bolt and holds the muzzle up.
You yank his body over towards the window behind you, turning your body then grabbing the man by the back of his hair and smashing his head through the glass.
It shatters from contact and leaves cuts and shards in his skin, a loud yell clawing its way from his throat.   
His finger grips the trigger and bullets roll out into the floor as you pull his head back.
You pull the rifle sling from off his shoulder, tossing it aside and disarming him from the X12 tucked into the back of his pants.
He growls at every tug of his scalp as you shoot him in the back of the leg and force him onto his knees.
A loud wail echoes the hallway from the man below you.
 “Shut your fucking mouth,” you snap.
“You don’t get to scream.”
“You don’t get to cry and whine like a little bitch.”
There’s no remorse in your voice, no sense of mercy for the man being held on his knees and whimpering.
You smack the magazine onto the base of his nose, blood dripping it’s way down his nostrils as a struggling noise spills from his lips.
“You…fucking….” he chokes on his own words. 
His entire body violently trembles at the tortured scream he releases as you squeeze the trigger again, shooting Pooch in his shoulder then proceeding to stick your thumb into the ravage wound harshly.
“Bitch! Fucking bitch!” He strains and pants like a dehydrated dog trying to jerk away from you.
You replace your finger with your foot, lowering his back against the floor as you press your toe into the bullet hole.
Another scream tears out of him as you blow another hole into the other side—his chest convulses.
Blood seeps from his mouth, you hold the grip of the handgun with both hands and sob out loud as you empty the entire magazine into his head until his face is unrecognizable to the amount of bullet holes.
You keep pulling the trigger, even as the gun starts to click announcing its out of ammunition.
The entire floor below you is covered in gore; flesh, messings of brains, blood, skin. 
So much.
Your body snaps around as a hand abruptly drapes over your shoulder, your arm raising the gun ready to bash it into the skull of the next man to try and touch you.
“Thaye, Thaye—y’got him! Thaye, he’s dead!”
Someone calls your name trying to snap you of out haze.
Ghost—your eyes soften with glistening tears as he calmly disarms you after deflecting the hit with his forearm, tossing the handgun aside so he can push you into his chest by the back of your neck.
“‘S over, sweet girl.” Ghost says with intonation. “Can’t hurt ya anymore.”
Your eyes are wide with terror, hands bundling your lieutenant’s shirt as you exhale a shaky mewl.
It’s him who releases you first, handing you your custom rifle and radio.
His balaclava is back on his face, along with the skull mask.
“Y’r vest ‘n boots are in the room I came from,” Ghost jerks his head.
You nod softly and shamble towards the doorway in the direction he’d pointed out.
You pause.
A little boy walks out of the threshold—he’s holding a gun far bigger than his head.
Your eyes widen slightly. “Did these men take you from your family?” 
You turn your head over your shoulder to call for Ghost, the sound of a bullet whirring filling your ears.
Ghost wastes no time pulling out his handgun and shooting the little boy in the head before running towards you.
Your right shoulder is screaming at you as time seems to slow down to a crawl. You hear Ghost yell behind you and the gunshot ringing as the little boy falls back and you do too, hitting the ground hard.
The masked man is on his knees in front of you within seconds, lifting your head into his lap.
“Thaye! Thaye, don’t y’fuckin’ die, not now…” He growls, applying pressure down onto your shoulder with both of his gloved hands.
Your lips slant in a tired manner, eyelids feeling heavy. His bloody hand kneads your cheek, smearing gore along your already dirtied skin.
“Fuck! Fuck!” he curses loudly. “Stay awake, love, please…”
God, he was hurting, it hurt to have your head against the burns on his stomach, but he wouldn’t let you die.
“Babygirl,” he says weakly. 
All you can see is an uncleanable amount of red seep and cover your shirt.
Your lungs clutch together inside your chest, labored breaths escaping you with a strained noise.
“I know…I know—keep those gorgeous eyes on me, sweetheart.” He inhales a shaky breath, flipping up your blood-crusted hairs from sticking to your forehead.
You whisper an apology, catching his attention as you grip his waist. Ghost’s eyebrows furrow.
“Don’t. Don’t say sorry,” he says. “You did this, you saved our lives, love.” 
“‘M just finishin’ the job, ‘lright?” His split and bloody lips find a place on your temple, planting a raw and long kiss to your throbbing skin.
“…’least I got to see your face before—“ 
Ghost holds you, squeezing your hand as a slight warning. “Don’t talk like that.” 
It was a demand. 
“That an—“ you spur into a coughing fit, blood spraying onto the man’s vest. “…Order, Lieutenant?” 
“Spare y’r energy,” he huffs. 
“Simon—“ you slur.
“Stop.” He snarls.
Your ragged breaths start to stray, causing panic to surge through the man above you.
“No,” he growls, squeezing your smaller hand in his a bit tighter than before. “Don’t, Thaye,” he says through clenched teeth.
Your body falls limp in his lap, the grasp loosening on his shirt making his heart pound through his chest, a painful pounding that felt similar to acid reflux.
“No!” Ghost yells, desperately palming at your tangled hair in panic. “Fuckin’ massacre,” he exhales shallowly.
One arm scoops beneath the back of your knees, the other across your shoulder blades with his hand holding your arm. 
A loud strained groan claws it’s way from his gullet at the sudden pain inside his ribs as he lifts himself up and off the floor. 
His muscles tighten inside his body, a burning sensation in his abdomen as he clutches you close to his chest, feeling your blood seep into his shirt.
☆════━━━┈┈┈┈━━━════☆
The gentle rhythmic beeping and steady flow of air through your nostrils was something that felt unreal and forced.
You slowly flutter your eyes open to light slipping in between the beige curtains. Your eyes are half-lidded and threatening to close against your will as your bandage wrapped hands rests atop the metal railing on either side of you.  
It smells of strong floor cleaner and hand sanitizer, a scent that is slightly uneasy on you as you slowly slip back into consciousness. 
Your muscles feel tight in your body; pain racking your shoulder and neck as you crane it to take a look around the room. 
The walls are spinning and the ceiling above you is spiraling making you sick to your stomach. 
On the bedside table to your left—closest to the window—there’s flowers. They’re too withered to try and recognize what kinds, shredding to flakes in your fingers when you caress them between your pinky and thumb.
Your hand drags up to pull nasal tubes out of your nostrils. It’s almost as if you’ve forgotten how to breathe air, throat tightening and lips so still from lack of moisture.
There’s a penetrating migraine in the back of your skull as you carefully swing your legs over the side of the bed, the thin baby pink and spotted hospital gown flowing down your sides leaving you slightly exposed in your thigh region. 
Bare and bandaged feet slide along the smooth cold tile, sending chills up your body as you grip the IV stand with your trembling hand, the other holding onto the bed railing for support. 
You groan and strain as you struggle to lift yourself up, propelling upwards with your palm and grip on the stand until your knees straighten and your standing up somewhat decently.
Where was Ghost? Is Ghost alive?
So many thoughts coursed through your head along with the punishing feeling of dehydration. 
You guide yourself using the wheels on the IV stand towards a counter, your hands gripping the handle of the sink and pulling it upward.
A choked moan manages to break from you as you scoop the water in your hands and swill the rich liquid. 
Water dribbles down your chin, which you wipe away before lifting your head to look into the medicine cabinet mirror. 
Your hand rests on the wall in front of you as you heave.
They cut your hair shorter, not too short but enough so that it was comfortable. Your entire right side of your face being bandaged, stains of blood being a faint copper color.
Bandages wrapped around your neck and reached down your shoulder you’d been shot in.
Your hair had been taken care of neatly while you were in a coma, that was obvious.
Ghost. Where?
You grip the IV stand and hobble towards the door, turning the knob and gripping the threshold with your other hand as you step out. 
A nurse pauses in her tracks, rushing to your side in an instant. “How are you up? Your injuries are critical,” she gasps, palm flattening against the small of your back.
“My lieutenant—…my lieutenant…” you say in an undertone.
“You need bed rest, you’ve only just woken up.” Her voice is gentle yet commanding.
“No,” you bark, shuffling out of her hold. “Please take me to him.” 
The woman bites her lip before nodding hesitantly, hand against your back again to guide you towards his room.
It was only a few doors down from you—when the nurse opened the door, allowing you into the room.
You see the back of Ghost’s head facing in your direction, his hair tousled from the bandages wrapping around his head.
“Ghost,” you call.
His head turns from facing the window to facing you, you hear him murmur your name in reply.
“Y’minx,” he breathes. “Hell y’doin’ out ya bed?”
You carefully walk yourself towards him, the nurse holding her hands atop her chest nervously. The sound of the plastic wheels of the stand makes his breath hitch in his throat, the sound of reassurance that you were alive.
“You okay, big man?” Your voice is hoarse from lack of use, but he’s able to that you perfectly.
“D’ya ever worry ‘bout y’self, love?” Ghost asks with a tinge of humor. 
Heavy casting was on his right leg, bandages and patches on practically every inch of his body—similar to you.
“Sometimes,” you smile softly and push strands of his hair out of his face, your heart slightly shatters in your chest at the sight of him flinching at your touch.
Ghost scoots himself over slightly, wincing at the sudden movement.
You seat yourself beside him on the large gatch bed and his hand pushes you down to lay beside him.
“Wait, Mr. Riley—“ the nurse takes a small step forward.
“I’ll ‘b fine,” he grunts.
Her eyes blink slightly as she takes a few steps back, her lips separating to speak though no words come out. She simply turns on her ankles and closes the door behind her.
Ghost secures an arm around your waist, pushing your back flush against his bandaged chest.
Your eyes trace his tattoos and the muscles of his arms, every scar and blemish.
“Where’s the force?” You ask quietly.
“Left recently,” he mumbles back tiredly, pressing his nose into your hair. “Y’smell like pomegranate—got y’self a damn spa crew while y’were out?”
You laugh dryly, breaking into a light fit of wheezes.
“Not too hard, Seargant.” Ghost’s finger tucks a loose strand of hair from your bangs behind your ear.
Your wet bandages on your hands rub against his knuckle as you hold onto his hand, he seems to pay no mind.
You turn your body slightly so you can get a better look at his face. “Odd seeing you without your eye black.” You quip.
His closed eyes open to look down at you. “Mm, might as well see m’down in me knickers then, eh?” He chuckles huskily.
“Very funny,” you roll your eyes lightheartedly. 
You catch his small glances to your lips, his hand leaving your chest to run his thumb down your bottom lip until that same hand is cupping your cheek lovingly.
His eyes narrow, he’s sleepy, but you still catch yourself propping your body up with your elbow and closing the gap between the two of you. 
Instantly, his head cranes and tilts to deepen the kiss, his fingers gently sliding down the side of your face to press his thumb into the underside of your jaw and drag his fingers along the nape of your neck.
Ghost breathes into your mouth, the taste of mint leaf and citrus enveloping your taste buds as his tongue laced over yours.
The kiss was passionate, you feel his eyebrows furrow showing his desperation as you both kissed softly at a gentle pace and motion.
Your eyes flutter open as you feel his warm lips leave yours with a quiet pop, both of you panting lightly with his forehead pressed against yours. Ghost’s eyes are unable to open for a few moments after you disconnect. 
When they do open, your eyes bore into his brown orbs, the dark purple hue circling under his eyes showing his deprivation of sleep.  
When he feels you buck gently back into his groin, he releases a small grunt, lips meeting yours again for a small chase kiss.
“Not like this,” he says quietly. “I’d take you on this bed right here, right now, but y’ve recently waken up ‘n we’re both still in r’covery.” 
You hum in agreement, his hand finding it’s place on your chest once again with the knowledge of your lower abdomen injury.
“‘N to b’honest—‘can barely feel m’damned balls, feels like ‘ve got whiskey dick.” He grumbles, and you bite your lip to suppress a giggle.
“Simon!”
“Don’ you laugh at me, woman.” Ghost lowers his head into the crook of your neck, biting the skin gently 
“My deepest condolences, Lieutenant,” you purr, catching his lips in another kiss when you jerk his head upward with your uninjured shoulder. He growls against your mouth in reaction.
There’s a long yet short line of silence as you turn towards his back again, your legs tangling with his as you hold your lips against his knuckles.
“Y’have no clue how strong you are.” He swallows the knot in his throat as he speaks. “God, Thaye, they…they told me there was a chance y’d never wake up.” 
“Hey,” you hum. “Stop that, I’m here now.” 
His eyes stare blankly at the wall ahead of you, maybe even the same wall you were staring at—if your eyes weren’t closed already. 
“I just don’ know what I would’ve done if I made it outta there ‘n y’didn’t make it with me.” He says. 
“Y’r the reason I made it out with you in the first place. If y’hadn’t pulled that barmy stunt—“ he pauses, and you feel the rise of his chest and the fall as he exhales deeply.
“Y’survived internal bleeding, trauma to the head ‘n eye, two broken ribs, second and third degree burns, asphyxiation, dismemberment, stab wounds and gunshot wounds..” Ghost squeezes his fist tighter against your chest. 
“So did you, Si.” You coo softly. 
“Christ…” he mutters. 
His fingers interlock with yours best they can, regardless of the most of them being numbs on your knuckles, and it wasn't until your hand rested on his chest and rubbed over the raised scars, that he realized he hadn't been touched so gently in nearly eleven years. It wasn't a new feeling, but it was a feeling that he had craved desperately. 
Never had fallen in love before, but he knew you had bad experiences with it—figuring out that your ex-fiancé had cheated on you while on deployment. Someone had to love you, and he was skeptical of it being him, but it was clear you loved him too and now he was scared you’d stop. 
But hearing your gentle breathing as you slipped back into sleep hunched into his form led him somewhere he’d never been. You cleared his mind and cleared away his thoughts. For the first time, he doesn’t want to look away from what he has the ability to feel.
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blueskittlesart · 4 months
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i kinda really wanna see a big ol vent/rant from you about genshin now lol. I would read an essay
I'm not sure you understand the insanity you just unlocked in me but ok
genshin impact is probably the clearest modern example i can think of of capitalism absolutely eviscerating a creative project. For context, I started playing genshin in 2021, just after the 1.4 update. it was venti's first rerun/the first windblume festival if that means something to you. and I really genuinely thought that it might have had something special. It was a gacha that didn't FEEL like a gacha, which was a huge feat to me.
it began with a very simple story pitch--you, the protagonist, are one of a set of twin siblings traveling through space. you come upon a seemingly unassuming world and your attempts to continue your journey are suddenly stopped by a mysterious, all-powerful figure. you are separated from your sibling and wake up alone on the shores of this planet you were attempting to leave together. throughout that opening cutscene and scattered through the world and your character's dialog there are implications that all is not as it seems, that your character is something unique to this world and that they possess powers and abilities that you've yet to unlock. You are told that you must travel the seven nations of this world in order to find your sibling, which is great--a simple, zelda-like objective which drives the player to explore the secondary narratives of the world. none of this is bad on the surface. in fact i'd argue it's pretty good. there's a ton that can be done with these story bones. even at launch the map and combat system were full of potential as well.
Note: for ease of reading, i'm going to label the different storylines of the game now. A-plot refers to the central objective of the entire game; the find-your-sibling plot and everything that encompasses, including the abyss order/dain, the heavenly principles, the fake sky, etc. B-plot refers to the secondary objective present in each new nation, usually meeting the archon and/or solving a problem for the archon. (A and B-plots will occasionally intersect.) C-plot refers to any story, location, or background information which remains in permanent gameplay but which isn't directly related to the A or B-plots, such as dragonspine, the chasm, enkanomiya, etc. D-plot refers to any story, location, or background information which is confined to limited-time events and does NOT remain in permanent gameplay, regardless of its connection or lack thereof to the A and B-plots, such as the golden apple archipelago, the infamous albedo/dragonspine event, the infamous kaeya/diluc event, etc. Lore as i will refer to it in this post refers to any information which is present in permanent gameplay but which is not directly told to the player within the A or B-plot story quests and objectives, including books, weapon, artifact, and item descriptions, world quest dialog and puzzles, etc.
So now we're in mid-2021, there are two nations' worth of B-plot story quests released in full, and we've run into our first problem, which is that the game isn't finished yet. I don't have any actual information about how the game was/is written, but based on what i've observed over the past few years, my best guess is that the A-plot has been fully written since the beginning, at least in some form. there were very early-game events and information pertaining to the A-plot that would take years to see any actual payoff in the main story quests (kaeya's origin story, the 1.3 scaramouche fake-sky drop, the flowers in lumine's hair, etc.) but those kinds of A-plot story easter eggs very quickly dropped off when the game absolutely EXPLODED during the pandemic.
this sudden burst in popularity was the true beginning of the end for genshin, i think, because suddenly they had a HUGE fanbase that desperately wanted more content faster than they could pump out new A-plot or even B-plot story quests. one of the most pervasive complaints about the game when I began playing in 2021 was that there was nothing to do between story quests. update 1.4 (which was the update I started playing at) was important in that it was the first time since genshin's release over a year before that players recieved any new A-plot, in the form of the archon quest We Will Be Reunited, also known as the quest with the most fucking misleading name of all time. you'll never guess what doesn't fucking happen during this quest. anyways. we were a year into gameplay, two nations out of seven released and a third on the not-so-distant horizon, and it seemed obvious that players were owed some sort of A-plot payoff. and that's very much what WWBR was advertised as, from the quest's name to the banners full of art of the twins staring wistfully at each other. The thing is, what i'm describing as A-plot payoff was actually. not really A-plot payoff at all. WWBR was the reveal that the protagonist's sibling was working with the abyss order, and that the abyss order was connected somehow to Khaenri'ah, which at this point casual players would only have known about from THAT QUEST and MAYBE kaeya's character descriptions if they were diligent enough to get him to friendship level 10 (which, btw there is no indication that you should do to get important context about the story of the game, because kaeya is a 4-star starter character and the only character in the entire game that actually has genuinely important story hidden in his character descriptions.) So what I'm calling A-plot payoff felt at the time a lot less like A-plot payoff than it did like an abyss sibling cameo in an attempt to satiate everyone who was begging for more story. We actually gained almost net 0 information. this is very quickly going to become a pattern.
As I've already alluded to, the motives behind this writing decision are transparently obvious. Genshin is a free gacha game which relies on a consistently active and engaged userbase to make its money. With fans getting restless about the lack of engaging story at the time and a new, very ambitious B-plot quest gearing up for release that would require major support from that fan base in order to remain profitable, the writers were backed into a corner. they HAD to throw the fans some sort of bone in order to keep them engaged with the A-plot, since it was originally pitched as the driving force for the story as a whole, but they were also clearly not at a stage of the writing process where it was prudent to give the player any REAL information about the A-plot. This is how we ended up with a 10-second abyss sibling cameo and an offhanded mention of Khaenri'ah, a nation whose plot-relevance was at that point still basically unknown.
The real problem is, WWBR worked. at least, it worked as intended at the time. It satiated story-focused fans in the interlude between B-plot nations, as hyv was gearing up to release inazuma, which required a lot of time in preparation. WWBR was followed almost immediately by the C-plot golden apple archipelago in 1.6, widely regarded as one of the better events of version 1. GAA was memorable especially because it was the first event that involved an entirely new, limited-time-only map, meaning the event had much more longevity than the standard events players were used to. This is, imo, most likely the update combination that led to the standard formula which hyv uses for its quests and events nowadays. the back-to-back release of WWBR and GAA satisfied both fans who wanted A-plot story AND silenced criticisms about the game lacking endgame playability, which at the time must have seemed like a goldmine to writers desperate for a solution to their content-to-fanbase ratio problem.
From here, genshin started following a standard method of release for their next three nations--inazuma, sumeru, and fontaine. the formula generally went as follows: one major version update (usually version x.0) containing a major map update which included all B-plot relevant locations in the new nation, and the first chapter of the B-plot story quest relevant to that nation. this would then be followed by 2-3 version updates which would each contain the next chapter in the nation's B-plot story quest, sequentially. After the nation's B-plot quest ended, during the downtime in which the next nation's story and map would be finalized, subsequent updates would be largely C-plot, and would contain minor expansions of the map to increase endgame playability via exploration and world quests. This is how we ended up with updates like the chasm, the several extra islands in inazuma, and the quite frankly ridiculously large sumeru map, as well as the offloaded maps like enkanomiya and the sea of bygone eras. with the possible exception of the chasm, none of these areas are A OR B-plot relevant. hyv has realized that artificially inflating the map makes their game technically more engaging during the downtime between nations. However, this comes at a price. While the scenery and set design of the game remains consistently beautiful, the actual, mechanical gameplay that populates that scenery very quickly became mind-numbingly boring if not borderline unplayable. While the 1.0 questlines were not perfect, there was at least an emphasis on the player actually DOING things. 1.0 B-plot quests would have you going to mini-dungeon temples and completing challenges which would acclimate you to the combat system while also serving narrative purpose. There were quests that required you to navigate open-world dungeons. Because your characters were lower-level, combat challenges that arose during these quests were CHALLENGES, rather than two-second buttonmashing segments. By the time we get to sumeru, though, both B-plot AND C-plot quests have become little more than moving your character from location to location and tapping through (usually unvoiced) dialog. there's no GAMEPLAY in the quests anymore, because gameplay isn't what makes money. What DOES make money is giving players 300 hidden chests to find in an open-world map segment, each of which gives them 1/80th of a gacha pull. And so the story suffers and the map gets bigger.
Along with the map expansions, downtime between nations usually also nets us one A-plot quest, usually involving the character dainslief, who was the driver of the initial WWBR quest. This is the second half of hyv's magical formula for keeping fans happy between major releases. the A-plot quests will, as a general rule, give players either very little new information or no new information at all, but will dress up the delivery in such a way that it ALMOST feels as though the protagonist has moved forward somehow. the most recent example of this writing style, the 4.7 quest bedtime story, amounts to about an hour and a half of gameplay and, while it DOES contain a segment in which the protagonist finally actually has a conversation with their sibling, that conversation literally begins with the line "I have so many questions, but for some reason I don't want to ask them right now," ensuring that the sibling will not actually be required to give away any plot-relevant information whatsoever, and the quest ends with the protagonist FORGETTING THAT THE CONVERSATION EVER HAPPENED IN THE FIRST PLACE.
As I think I mentioned before, the cardinal problem of genshin impact's writing is that fans want answers faster than the writers are prepared to give them. I don't doubt that there's a game bible or relevant equivalent somewhere within hyv which contains the explanations we are currently lacking in regards to the A-plot. the game is consistent enough in its storytelling for me to believe that this isn't all just being made up as we go along. But I'm also certain that a lot of the late-game A and B-plot that is planned (especially if the Khaenri'ah is truly planned to be the 8th nation of the game) hinges on the player knowing very little about the A-plot. this would be fine if genshin was a standard single-release video game that players could work through at their own pace, but it isn't. it's unfinished, and each nation in the game releases months to years after the last, leaving the writers to scramble to fill in the gameplay gaps and players struggling to remember plot-relevant information when it's brought up literal years after they last heard it mentioned. Not only does the time between updates leave players frustrated about the lack of A-plot, it makes the A-plot harder to understand when it is brought up, because the writers are required to throw in so much dense C and D-plot just to keep engagement high enough to make the game profitable in its downtime. we joke about the insane convolution of genshin's lore, but that is first and foremost a byproduct of its financial model. the game requires engaement to be profitable, and adding lore for players to look into drives up engagement. The fact that having so much story with so little plot relevance muddies the waters and makes the A and B-plot stories considerably harder to understand doesn't matter as long as money is being made.
I want to take a quick detour here to talk about the release of sumeru specifically, because this is when I really began to clock the fact that genshin was declining. on paper, racial sensitivity issues aside (Not that they're not important, but i'm doing this deep dive from a storytelling and game design point of view, nothing else. that's a whole can of worms i don't have time to get into here) sumeru was a really promising addition to the game. The new B-plot quest which was set to drop in 3.0 was highly anticipated for several reasons. Two fan-favorite characters (kaeya and scaramouche) were expected to play major roles, because of earlier C and B-plot quests, and much of the nation's scenery that was teased in trailers and promotional content appeared to tie into the A-plot. the most exciting draw about sumeru and version 3.0, though, was the major update to the combat system.
Arguably genshin impact's most interesting feature upon release was its combat system. The map was basically a botw clone at that point, and the story quests, while decently engaging, were rough around the edges to say the least. What genshin DID have going for it was a unique real-time combat system that rewarded strategy and quick thinking.
Genshin's combat system is elemental, and on release there were 6 elemental affiliations: anemo (wind), cryo (ice), pyro (fire), hydro (water), geo (rock), and electro (electricity.) in a sort of pokemon-like system, certain elements were weak to other ones, but more importantly, certain combinations of elements could drastically boost combat stats. Players got to construct four-slot teams of characters, each with an elemental affiliation and certain "skills" which would match their element, and you were encouraged to use the interactions of these elements to build teams. very quickly, a huge community formed dedicated to optimizing teams and tiering characters. People would even make a game out of building teams specifically to do high-level damage with "bad" characters or characters who weren't designed to be damage drivers (my 100k jean burst was an incredible moment fr.) this was, of course, also a picture-perfect driver for the gacha aspect of the game, which was how players obtained new characters.
Pre-3.0, combat was... well i won't say it was balanced, but there was no elemental reaction that had any MAJOR advantage over the others. when you actually ran the numbers, i believe vaporize was the best reaction in terms of damage output, with the best team being raiden national with kazuha for EM buffs. but a well-built freeze or melt team could do similar numbers, or even better numbers depending on your artifact rolls. (ayaka permafreeze you will always be my #1.) Despite a steady stream of new characters with each update, characters from the earliest version of the game like xingqiu and xiangling were still topping the charts in terms of usefulness and versatility in teambuilding. However, as early as 1.0, players had been teased that a major update to the combat system was planned. There was a seventh element, dendro (plants) which pre-3.0 only existed as an elemental affiliation for menial enemies. there were no playable dendro characters, and the only elemental reaction that existed relating to it was very low-level and not particularly useful in combat.
Originally, dendro was projected to be added to the combat system somewhere in version 2, but its release was delayed substantially, meaning it came out along with its affiliated nation, sumeru. And as soon as it came out, it basically broke the combat system. I assume that the scaling they ended up going with may have been out of fear that players would be hesitant to integrate a new element into their pre-established team builds, and thus they may have been worried about sales on their dendro character banners, and i assume that the fact that 3 elements are required to get the highest-level reaction was an attempt to make the meta more balanced in the face of that scaling, but, well... it didn't work. At this point, the genshin impact combat meta is basically "if you're not using hyperbloom what the fuck are you doing." there's basically no reaction in the game that comes close to it in terms of both damage and ease of use. you are not going to beat a hyperbloom team with anything other than a better-built hyperbloom team. combat is now very heavily skewed in the direction of dendro, meaning that if you DON'T want to use a dendro team, you're going to be doing significantly lower numbers. And since enemies are added with each update, post-3.0 combat becomes difficult and annoying if you don't have a hyperbloom team on-hand.
The major gripe i have with dendro isn't even the scaling, though. I mentioned offhand earlier that the 1.0 B-plot questline had a section which taught you the basics of the combat system via mini-dungeons. These mini-dungeons, of course, taught you the version of the system that existed pre-3.0, so there's no tutorial for dendro reactions. Rather than integrating the tutorial into the story and world like they did in their early quests, upon playing 3.0 for the first time players were given a popup that explained, very wordily, how dendro reactions worked. there was no opportunity to test these reactions in an environment without consequences--if you wanted to try them you'd have to remember the relevant information, build yourself a team, find an enemy to try them on, and just hope you got it right. This lack of integration is something i began to notice more and more with genshin as it progressed, especially in sumeru. where in mondstadt and liyue open-world puzzles would be explained to you by an npc or via environmental context clues, in sumeru you'd be stopped while exploring every two seconds by a popup explaining some puzzle or another which, of course, you wouldn't read, because you didn't want to do the puzzle right that minute anyway, and then by the time you DID want to do that puzzle you'd have no in-game way of figuring out how to do it. The puzzle popups may seem like a small thing, but it's one of the clearest examples in the game to me of the fact that the player experience is so clearly not being prioritized here. the game doesn't even TRY to be immersive anymore. they have no qualms about pulling you out of the story to read a paragraph about how the puzzle works. they don't care how your character, in-universe, is supposed to have acquired that information. they don't care why your character, in-universe, is doing the puzzle in the first place. because they know the reason YOU are doing the puzzle, which is to unlock a hidden chest that gives you 1/80th of a gacha pull.
That was not "a quick detour" was it lmfao. ok anyways. back to the story. Now i want to talk about D-plot, meaning limited event stories, and lore as i defined it earlier, meaning contextual details not present in quests or playable story. This is where i think genshin's story becomes completely inaccessible.
Already, we've covered the fact that in order to consume the very basic story, players have to be willing to wait years between A and B-plot quest releases, punctuated by irrelevant map expansions and interlude quests. I mentioned before that genshin's incompleteness is one of the major problems of its story. the fact that players have to wait years, remembering plot-relevant information that they have no way of knowing will even BE plot-relevant, for the payoff of these narratives is frustrating at best and actively malicious at worst. But in theory, there should be an obvious way to circumvent this. One could just wait until the game IS completely finished to play the whole thing. Sort of like buying a game in early access but waiting until it's actually finished to play it all the way through. that's theoretically possible. but, as i have been hammering home this whole time, genshin is a free game, and therefore genshin relies entirely on a consistently engaging fanbase in order to remain profitable. if genshin does not have a base of players who are willing to log in every day, or at the very least once every update, the game's financial model collapses on itself. therefore, genshin puts on limited-time events. this is a standard in gacha games, as a way to keep the fans consistently engaging. What is not standard, however, is the way that genshin uses these events as vessels for its story. about 19 out of 20 limited events in genshin impact will be useless menial bullshit with no effect on the story or really even the player aside from maybe making you fucking angry. 1 out of those 20, though, will be innocuously named, with nothing in the banner or event description to indicate that it's special in any way, but it will contain serious A or B-plot relevant information that exists nowhere else in the game. My personal favorite example is the infamous 1.3 scaramouche appearance, in which he showed up, told the protagonist that the sky was fake, and then immediately fucked off again. Scaramouche did not show up again until at least 2.0, and the fake sky wasn't so much as MENTIONED again until 3.2, almost TWO YEARS LATER. but there are others, such as the (almost equally infamous) albedo doppelganger event in which a major character's loyalties are called into question, or the event where major biographical information is revealed about kaeya, the only playable character with major known connections to the A-plot and Khaenri'ah. With all of these events, once the event period ends, the information contained within them vanishes from the game completely. there's no way to replay old events that you've missed, even sans rewards, so if you miss a plot-relevant event the ONLY way to catch up on that story is through word of mouth. again, this is a transparent way to keep genshin's userbase engaged during downtime between B-plot quests; if you don't log in and play every event, how will you know if you've missed something important? You might not be able to fully understand the future story if you miss out on the D-plot now!
The D-plot problem is something that I think could, in theory, be circumvented by dedicated record-keeping. if the wiki had anything resembling an easily accessible event database that marked story-relevant events and contained summaries or gameplay videos, at the very least you wouldn't have to fear being completely lost on the off chance that a random throwaway line in an event from fucking 1.3 becomes plot-relevant. but hyv obviously doesn't want that, because it undermines their financial model, and the sheer number of events and the amount of rerunning of irrelevant events they do makes the task of recording and categorizing them all daunting if not impossible.
Then, of course, there's lore. this is arguably what genshin is infamous for in certain circles of the internet. You know that unraveled video where bdg reads every book in skyrim? if you tried to do that with genshin the video would probably be about 10 hours long. and it's not just books; genshin hides (potentially) plot-relevant information in weapon and artifact descriptions, in random hidden world quests, in character bios... the list goes on. and 9 times out of 10, the information is essentially written in code. Plot-relevant characters will have multiple names, or the relevant information will refer to them as vaguely as possible, presumably to further the "mystery" and encourage theorizing among fans. but the sheer amount of information like this that exists within the game makes it all but impossible to determine what is plot-relevant and what isn't. For a topical example, the most recent A-plot quest bedtime story mentions the name Rhinedottir in connection with events in Khaenri'ah, suddenly making that name A-plot relevant. Rhinedottir is an alternate name for the character Gold, whose existence you would only have known of before this point if you'd unlocked and read the character Albedo's character bios. (Albedo is a limited-run character who hasn't been available since november 2022, btw.) the only other information about Rhinedottir permanently available in the game comes from the description of the weapon Festering Desire, which was only obtainable from a limited event back in 2020, anyway. So basically, if you wanted ANY context for that remark, you'd have to have been playing the game since AT LEAST 2022, AND you'd have to have taken the time to go over your weapon and character descriptions with a fine-toothed comb. keep in mind that as of right now (june 2024) there are 85 playable characters in this game, each with 10 unique unlockable character bio sections, and over 150 weapons, each with their own unique descriptions, not to mention over 50 artifact sets, each with 5 unique artifacts, which all have their own unique descriptions as well. there are also 51 different collections of books which contain written lore as well. the idea that any player could keep up with all this, or that anyone could even sift through it all to pick out the important things that they NEED to keep up with, is insane, especially when the game makes a point of withholding crucial plot information from its players within the A and B-plot quests. this amount of written lore only exists, again, to drive up engagement in the hopes of subsequently driving up profit. Even if the average player isn't reading and absorbing all this information, the fact that it's there coupled with the fact that the writers consistently refuse to reveal anything beyond surface-level A-plot information means that there's basically ENDLESS theory fodder. and THAT means that people will be posting their theories and talking with each other and getting into arguments. it means "genshin impact" trends on twitter. it means engagement, and engagement means money.
basically what it comes back to is that everything is so transparently money over player experience with this game. I think what we're witnessing with genshin is what i would call an end-stage gacha game--a gacha game that's gone on a little too long and gotten a little too popular, and so the veil has started to slip a little more than usual. Gachas work primarily because they operate by toeing the line between what is fun to play and what is a predatory mechanic. As long as the actual gameplay remains engaging and rewarding, players can ignore the unsavory business practices underneath. At this point, genshin has swerved too hard into the money-hungriness and is still hoping that they can use their old tried-and-true engagement farming methods to remain popular regardless. currently, it seems like those methods are still working, unfortunately. Like I said in the post that prompted this, i really can't wait for the hyv writer NDAs to expire 10 or so years down the line, because I can only imagine what an insane shitshow writing for this game must be. I want to see the tell-all articles. I want carnage.
That being said, I played genshin impact religiously from 2020 to 2023. I loved the game. Despite myself, I am still really, REALLY interested in the A-plot. I want to know what's going on with the protagonist and their sibling; where they came from, what happened to them, what the heavenly principles are, what role celestia plays in all of this. I want to know Kaeya's full backstory, what role Khaenri'ah plays in the overarching story, and what happened to it in the past. but I don't really have any faith that I ever will, because I know that as long as keeping their fans in the dark and stringing them along remains profitable, that's what hyv will continue to do.
Do I think genshin impact is unsalvagable? in its current state, yes. If I was given the ability to turn back time and convince a bunch of executives of the profitability of this venture, I would change almost nothing about the story of genshin and completely rework the mechanics of its release. I would make it a series of single-release self-contained games rather than a constantly-updating gacha. Each game would be one B-plot quest, or one nation, eight games in all, preferably released once every year. Removing the gacha mechanic, players would be given access to a certain pool of characters to build teams at the start of each game, and then periodically unlock new characters as the story progressed. for example, if you were playing the inazuma game, you'd start out with only your protag, and after progressing to a certain point in the story you'd get a pool of inazuma 4-stars to teambuild with freely. Then, as the story progressed and you met plot-relevant inazuman 5-stars you'd add them to your pool. I'd change basically nothing about the combat system except for a properly integrated introduction of dendro when it makes its appearance in sumeru. Once you completed the story in that nation, you could move onto the next game in the series if it was out, or if it wasn't, you could continue to explore the open world while waiting for the next release. Would this be as profitable as the gacha model? probably not, but what it WOULD do is allow for much more consistent pacing and writing, with the added bonus of not making your userbase feel like you'd shoot them in the head for their pocket change.
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juniperhillpatient · 22 days
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I have talked about this a lot before but it’s on my mind & also it’s something that really should be discussed more in Buffy fandom -
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People are constantly talking about how Spike defies all the rules Buffy was taught about demons & vampires & rightfully so. A vampire falling in love with a slayer & fighting for his soul for her is such a romantic notion & I do love it but the nuance of Spike’s arc is even more interesting than that! He does love Buffy but not only that he befriends the Scoobies too. He brings flowers for Joyce after she dies. He helps prove that Tara is not a demon when her family tries to gaslight her & isolate her. He becomes a pseudo big brother to Dawn.
And yet none of that is even what I’m here to talk about! Spike IS a hero & he does have a long spanning redemption arc before the soul (& we’re NOT here to talk about Seeing Red right now, as usual that topic is too expansive & requires its own post) that should be acknowledged & his character is rightfully praised but he is NOT the only exception to vampires having nuance & it drives me crazy that we act like he is. The Judge isn’t just talking to Spike when he says this:
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“You TWO.” He’s talking about Drusilla too! He says that they share affection & jealousy. That Angelus in his total sociopathic lack of human emotion is the odd one here.
Then you have things like this -
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Conversations with Dead People has Buffy sharing a very long & deep conversation with an old acquaintance turned vampire. And it’s far from the only example in universe of a vampire retaining some sense of camaraderie with people from their life!
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That’s right this entire rant has been a lead up to talk about my best girly Harmony Kendall. You’ve fallen for my ruse if you’ve read this far muahaha! Admittedly Harmony’s strongest moments are mostly unfortunately on Angel but even in season four of Buffy when she dates Spike she is clearly intended at times to be sympathetic. Season 4 is also interesting because we see a lot interactions between various gangs of vampires like Harmony’s so-called minions & even Sundays gang where they’re very much evil but also sharing in living (existing?) space & acting like bickering roommates or siblings. Like creatures with bonds & personalities & intricacies.
The point I’m trying to make is that the show never truly wants to grapple with the existence of Spike in all his nuance but it’s also not just about him! In general there is so much to grapple with in the idea that vampires can change & be redeemed & I’m not saying I’m anti scary evil vampires I’m just saying the universe gave us these hints of nuance & then the characters never grappled with it & that’s lame. For Buffy killing things that have a shot at redemption however small would be a major emotional blow if she ever addressed it! Especially in her season 5 “am I just a killer 🥺” arc. Let’s deal with the implications!
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Let’s deal with Xander’s trauma about killing Jessie & just how much it would/should hurt for him to see Spike increasingly choose good & work with the Scoobies. I would LOVE to know Xander’s reaction to Harmony’s arc on Angel or Cordelia befriending her & letting her go ina world where the writing acknowledges that he drove a stake through his best friends heart!
It’s just that the writers accidentally complicated their own lore & then totally refused to ever let their characters address what the cracks in the stories they tell themselves mean. Giles says that a vampire is no longer the person but instead the thing that killed them. What’s scarier: the idea that your loved one was killed & something wears their face like a mask OR much more insane (to me) the idea that your loved one came back very wrong but it’s still them? Your brother eats people now but he still remembers how you like your eggs & can quote every episode of the cartoon you watched as kids. Your mom murdered that woman from the PTA who always talked too much in cold blood but she still remembers the recipe for your favorite pancakes. The show wanted scary vampires but it got so caught up in never addressing the infinitely more complex & scarier vampires it accidentally created & sticking to the more simplistic initial idea that it did both the characters & lore very dirty. And I’ll never shut up about it!!!
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etherealspacejelly · 2 months
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so glad i’m not the only person who is this haunted by “dig it in there mr spock”. like im insane over it. i try to explain it to anyone in my actual life, including my star trek loving father and they’re just like …..ok? why does this matter so much
YES. THANK YOU. THANK YOU FOR THIS
it literally. drives me insane. its such an innocuous moment and they never mention it again but. the implications. THE IMPLICATIONS
ofc it matters. because it gives valuable insight into the way jim thinks. spock And the yeoman were both behind him. he Knew That. and yet, he assumes its spock. immediately.
he was enthusiastic about spock touching him like that, but the Second he finds out its the yeoman hes uncomfortable??? why??? why is he comfortable with spock massaging him and not the yeoman. what difference does it make. im shaking him by the shoulders. im holding him at gunpoint. what did you mean by that jim. what were you thinking. what was the logic there. im yelling
its shit like this that makes you go ah. yep. i see now why slash fiction was invented. because these motherfuckers are so textually gay its not even funny. how does anyone come out the other side of tos thinking they're not in gay love with each other i will Never understand
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this panel is forever driving me insane. beyond the fact that satou took the time to make a miami vice reference in the middle of a firefight this line had extremely funny implications depending on how you interpret it bc it means that either
1.) he and his ibm share memories/information (most canonically probable)
2.) his ibm just. decided on its own to watch miami vice while he was letting it roam around
or 3.) he expended valuable energy for the express purpose of manifesting his ibm, sitting it down, and making it watch miami vice. while being hunted by the entire japanese government.
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lunar-wandering · 10 months
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things about the Boboiboy series that drive me NUTS (this list is written solely from memory)
the fact that the first three elements, Wind, Earth, and Lightning, didn't really start out as having different personality's from Boboiboy himself (at least, not by much/it wasn't extremely noticable) but then, Lightning, after being split for too long, losing his memories completely, and achieving tier 2, becoming Thunderstorm, suddenly goes all Edgy(TM). and then Wind eats a mood-changing potion and goes manic, and not only does that unlock his tier 2, making him Cyclone but that becomes his personality. like. hello??? the implications.... and then later on, Fire, Water, Leaf, and Light manifest WITH their personalities pre-set. what??? the vague implication that the elements are sentient and the personalities started becoming more obvious when Boboiboy's mind started slipping/letting them have freer reign haunts me every day.
speaking of Fire's manifestation. he initially manifested from the stress of exams and walked around accidentally burning shit down in the middle of the night. what a mood tbh.
if the elements are sentient, the implications of Retak'ka stealing them from Boboiboy and using them- without having his personality change, is INSANE. like bro. he used them as a weapon instead of letting them be actual people..... and then later on in the comics Thunderstorm gets taken away AGAIN and is trapped in a sword, a literal weapon, and is used. again. HELLO????
both of the first times Thunderstorm gets summoned (both the obvious first time and the first time after they all got reset to tier 1 due to Complications) involving his phobia kills me every time why the FUCK did they do that. they didn't even address it the second time around but they animated Lightning looking like he was in distress anyways. WHY DID THEY DO THAT TO HIM. i know he's the fave but like. was this necessary.
BOBOIBOY JUST DECIDING "Y'KNOW WHAT??? I'M GONNA INVENT FUSIONS NOW HERE WE GO" IN THE SECOND MOVIE AND PROCEEDING TO ABSOLUTELY WIPE THE FLOOR WITH RETAK'KA
i could list so much Thunderstorm stuff tbh he's definitely the fave they give him so many cool bits of animation. he does the "teleports behind you" move SO OFTEN and it's SO GOOD
Leaf's deadpan "Fashion Tragedy" line
that one time Boboiboy split into Fire, Wind, and Leaf, and EVERYONE agreed he shouldn't have done that and should never do it again cause those three have negative braincells when in a group together
the songs??? like. the opening songs. the insert songs used in the movies. the OST. why the hell are they so good. i mean i know i personally like em cause they tend to use rock. but like. its SO GOOD.
Yaya and Ying being arguably the two most powerful/capable members of the friend group as they should
that one time Thunderstorm and Fang fought and they paused right before hitting each other and the objects behind both of them exploded from the force of the other's attack
in the first movie when it hinted that we'd see Boboiboy without his hat for the first time ever throughout the entire movie and then it FINALLY HAPPENED when he caught a giant hammer right before it could hit him and punched the dude away with a blast of energy. he has a white streak in his hair and it's visible in the series from this point onwards.
I KNOW IVE SAID A LOT OF THUNDERSTORM SCENES BUT THAT POINT IN GALAXY WHERE HE WAS USING TIER 2 BEFORE HE SHOULD'VE BEEN USING IT AND HE KEPT SWAPPING IN BETWEEN BOBOIBOY AND THUNDERSTORM THROUGHOUT THE FIGHT??? THAT WAS COOL AS FUCK I LOVED THAT
i could list so many of the really cool shots from this series tbh. that one time Light slow-mo backflipped over a bunch of debris and then activated laser eyes to shoot at the villain is a highlight.
literally everything about the fact the plot of this show went from "aliens come to earth to steal chocolate" to "boboiboy nearly fucking dies on an almost daily basis"
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