#leave it to small town people in any country to only talk about death and wacky shit and who knows who

[holocene-sims]

next // previous

july 17, 2021 11:00 a.m. cathal and eimear's house

[last-words-ofashootingstar]

Allure

Part One:Sunshine

❥MATZ x fem reader

Kim Hongjoong and Park Seonghwa. The most known and feared alphas of the new generation. It took two dozen elder alphas to subdue them and stick them in the world's most secluded prison- hidden away in the mountains. The prison that sweet little omega (Y/n)'s works at.

Knuckle Velvet (Part Two)

Smoke (Part Three)

➯a/n: i've always wanted to write a story i would like to see as a movie or show, and i very much enjoy supernatural and dark romance, so i made this ! it does get very dark so please read the warnings and take care of yourself first and foremost. i am very proud of this, i hope you enjoy 💕

✃ "Because you're... alluring."

✫彡wordcount: 9.3k

♫"Hey, you should leave that young thing alone, ain't no sunshine when she's gone, only darkness everyday." - Flower Face (original by Bill Withers) ♫ Allure Sountrack

(>ᴗ•)♡´･ᴗ･`♡genre: smut, YANDERE, a/b/o au

ಠ_ಠWARNING/content: DEAD DOVE I MURDERED THAT BIH

chapter specific: literally what have i done, not beta read(ironically), criminal MATZ, alpha MATZ/omega reader, forget everything you know about werewolves, so much world building, extremely yandere behavior, talk of attempted child murder, class division of werewolves, panic attacks, vulgar language, mind control, lots of scent stuff, unhealthy relationships, ptsd, flashbacks and nightmares, physical violence, manipulation of others dreams, supporting character death, forced soul bonding, forced marking, reader implied to have mental health issues, murder, gore, violence- all that good stuff. THIS IS NOT A NON CON FIC ALL EVENTUAL SMUT WILL BE CONSENSUAL.

⁂perm taglist: @stvrfir3 @tunaasan @marievllr-abg

⁂fic taglist: @potatomountain @spooo00oky

MATURE UNDER CUT MDNI

˚➶ ｡˚ PART ONE ˚➶ ｡˚

You hate weekdays. That much is true for a lot of people. You like to think your reasoning is especially valid.

Every Monday through Friday like clockwork, 6:30AM you walk into the prison. That on its own wasn't so bad. You lived only ten minutes away; the gothic building looked over your village in tandem with the mountains. You could see it when the weather was clear, even from your bedroom on the edge of town. You were no longer afraid of it like when you were a child.

You are, however, afraid of the newest prisoners.

New arrivals didn't usually rock you. This is the only prison in the country fit to hold lycans, after all. They all got transferred here eventually. From beta's who were just stealing to eat, to alphas who used their powers on humans, to those who believed in the old ways and fed on humans.

You had to interact with them all face to face.

You weren't excited for that particular aspect of your job this week.

You made your way through the double doors and greeted the security guard, your friend Hyolyn, as you went through the metal detector. It went off on account of the scent blocker that was embedded in your neck. She chuckled and switched it off so it stopped its incessant beeping.

"Don't laugh at me!" You threw a smile her way as you got your small purse from the plastic bucket she slid towards you. She doesn't bother to check your bag. She knows you well enough to know you wouldn't bring in any "fuck shit", as she would say. "You alpha's don't have to worry about accidentally spewing scent everywhere."

"Thank goodness for that, this place would stink to high heaven." Her unintentional reference to the new arrivals makes the air turn stiff. She could tell you were on edge immediately. "They aren't all that scary," she lays a comforting hand to your shoulder as you fiddle with the long strap on your crossbody bag.

"I heard one of them killed Alpha Greene... you think that's true? That guy was huge, I saw him at The Thing last year, I almost peed myself cause he looked at me-" You stop your own rambling, taking a deep breath and letting it out as a shaking sigh. "I don't want to go in there. Honestly, why can't we install a laundry chute or something, fuck."

"I'll follow you up, I c-"

"No, no, it's visiting day. You need to be down here. You know Chungha? Her daughter is visiting today. Don't want you to miss her." You offer a sad, tight lipped smile, but that doesn't trick her instincts to protect her weaker pack member. She knows you too well to be tricked.

"You just scream and I'll be there. Either of those cocky fucks lift a pinky in your direction and I'll gut them. They don't deserve to see a trial anyway."

A small exhale in the form of a chuckle lightens her protective instincts, she can tell you feel more at ease with her promise to be right there at the slightest hint of trouble.

"See you, Hyolyn."

"Later, babes."

You wave your fingers with a smile as the elevator doors slides shut. As soon as they clunk together, you let it fall and crouch with your head in your hands, taking in deep and slow breaths as you try and force all of the rumors you've heard about the two newest inmates away from your head.

The older alpha of the duo was the first born in this generation. They're always powerful. But he was born to two bloodthirsty rouges. Born in sin and blood lust.

The younger alpha was born just some months after, to an arranged marriage that was purposefully formed to make powerful children. They surely regret that now. Some say the man has the strongest, sharpest claws since the first lycan in Talbot Castle.

When the elevator dings, you're already upright and have that strong facade on that you put on when you're clocked in.

˚➶ ｡˚

You start with the familiar. "Hey, Chungha," you tap on the silver bars of her cell, "hand 'em over." She smiles as she stands, stripping the sheets from her cot and holding them through the bars for you. "Thank you," you draw on with a tug on your lips that matches hers.

"Yunnie in town?"

"Mhm," you hum as you fold the blanket before dropping it in the large basket on wheels, "she came over for stew, I made sure to feed her good and well, don't worry."

You know it was probably problematic, but you couldn't help it. Chungha came here three years ago on a charge for battery, and over those three years you became sort of friends with her.

The battered in her case was her grandfather. When her five year old daughter, Jiyun, started to show signs of being an omega- he left her in the snow to wither away. She managed to survive until her mother came home, and said mother was furious.

She was lucky she didn't charged with attempted manslaughter.

"She said she'll be here first thing."

"Thank you," she had a heavy pull on her voice. You don't have the emotional connection to other wolves like an alpha or beta did. But it was clear to anyone she was being sincere. "You're a good woman."

"Don't mention it, Yunnie is good company. Oh," you start to wheel the basket away when you remember something. You reach into the purse that you had set on the handles. "She made this at art class, asked me to give it to you so it didn't have to wait in processing."

It was a small, cruelly made ceramic bowl in the vague shape of a heart. It was clearly made by an eight year old, but made with love.

"I owe you."

"Just keep working on that parol work." You said lightly and blew a kiss as you moved to the next cell.

    The rest of your work nearly cleared your mind as you went from cell to cell, floor to floor. Omega's were on the second floor. Beta's on the third. Alphas on the fourth. High security on the fifth.

     It's on the fourth level that you begin to feel those nerves that you had just worked away. The scent was becoming stronger. They didn't put them on blockers? Maybe they didn't think it would be worth it. Everyone knew that they were the worst of the worst, they didn't even try to hide it. They would undoubtedly be put to death. Why waste two perfectly good, expensive, blockers?

     The basket of used sheets is nearly full, accumulating into a weight that makes you put your back into it as you push it into the elevator.

    Your index finger reaches out, and before you can stop yourself you've pressed the button to the fifth floor.

       You blank out until the door opens again. Your teeth are eternally grateful for the gum between them so they don't grind themselves into dust. The mint flavor does little to calm your nerves.

     The only thing that makes you come back to your own head is Changbin. He's a big, buff beta with a gun full of silver bullets on his work belt. He won't let them hurt you. His smile washes away a lot of the nerves.

    But the growl that rumbles against the walls makes them return ten, one hundred, one thousand fold. You don't dare say a word. A deer in headlights until Changbin places his hand on the small of your back. "Go on, don't give them the satisfaction of scaring you. They aren't going nowhere no time soon. Take a look."

     He motions you deeper into the hall, florescent lights buzzing above you, matching the jittering feeling in the deepest pit of your stomach. It smells too strong. Too much. You're about to fall to your knees from the weight and you haven't even come face to face with the near feral criminals.

    Changbin opens the doors at the end of the hall.

     They've definitely gone all out to keep them in place. Two large cages placed next to each other in the middle of the enormous room. Made of pure silver and wrapped in wolfsbane. The unpleasant smell of the plant makes your nose twitch. A ring of blood ash surrounds it. Only omegas can pass through blood ash, and now you start to realize why they sent you.

    You want to curse the warden, but the second you open your mouth, a loud cackle sounds out from one of the cages.

     Changbin's hand twitches at the gun attached to his side.

    "Oh wow," the smaller alpha chuckles, eyes closed, head tilted back, as he sniffs the air. "I didn't expect that." More manic giggles slip past his lips.

    You haven't even looked up to see them and you want to cave in on yourself.

    "What are you rambling about, huh?" The guard next to you shouts, making you flinch instinctively.

     "That sweet... sweet, smell," he moans. You can hear him shuffling. "From a peppy little spit fuck omega."

   You gasp abashedly, and now two laughs ring out. You want to wonder how they can smell you. Your insurance provides the best scent blocker in the country. But you're too scared to breathe, let alone think.

      "Shut up," Changbin groans, he can feel you tense next to him, "don't piss me off, Kim."

    "Awe," a new, rumbling voice makes you cower the second it reaches your ears, "this your mate? Hm, no... you wouldn't bring your mate here. You're not an idiot. Then, say... omega." You don't make a move to look when he addresses you, you stay looking at Changbins grip on his gun, silently.

     "Omega, come!" Your feet move for you, and that manic laugh almost makes you wet yourself as you realize that your wolf is making you move toward them without your consent. You stop just outside of the blood ash, where you know you're safe.

     "Changb-"

     "No. I'm the one you're speaking to."

   Changbin seems to be weighing his options, eyeing the men as they eye you.

    "Why are you here? You a shrink?"

    You shake your head.

   "You a lawyer?"

    Again.

   "She works here, dumbass, look at her scrubs," the younger speaks, and you nod subconsciously, to which he giggles, "what can we do for a pretty little thing like you?"

    When you refuse to speak, the guard does it for you. "She's here for your sheets today. Get used to her."

     You hated that this was your job, but it was easy and accessible, and available for omegas. Werewolves are clean freaks. Every day you had a different cleaning task, but you didn't complain. Not until right now- you wanted to rip out the throat of whoever's idea it was to not shoot these criminals on sight.

     "Ah," he hums, and you can feel his eyes raking your body. You can feel both of their eyes. "Not too bad of a sight to get used to. Huh, Hwa?"

     "Mh, that's right... can't wait to get my hands on her."

Your head snaps back to Changbin.

"Awn, she thinks he's gonna help her!" The high pitched giggles bounce around in your head. "Oh, little omega~"

The saccharine coo finally pulls your eyes to the men in the cages.

If you thought you knew what fear was before this moment, you were wrong.

The two strongest criminals in the country, staring you down like a piece of meat. It doesn't matter that they are the ones in cages of silver and wolfsbane. You are the one who feels cornered.

You can immediately feel out their dynamics. The taller one is the older one, quiet and still in his cage as he sits in the center. Shaggy, shining hair framing his face and neck like an elegant piece of lace over a brides face. He has a sleeve of tattoos on one forearm, a thick tattoo on his neck. Eyes glowing a deep, blood red, as he tries to read your entire story with only a look in your direction.

The giggling one is less intimidating, only by a hair. Chemically lightened locks pushed back messily, letting his entrancing features shine in the light from the narrow windows high on the walls. He has tattoos as well, but they seem few and far between. His eyes are human for a moment before they meet yours. Instantaneously, they flick black.

The knot drops from your throat and you let out a small, pathetic, squeak.

Changbin breaks your staring contest with the alpha, shouting orders at them. "Take the sheets off your cot and set them outside of your cage. Do not attempt to touch her, I will shoot you."

    Neither criminal makes a move to follow his orders, both simply staring at you.

A low growl is emitted when the older alpha finally snaps up, tearing the sheet off the sorry excuse for a bed in one fell swoop. The younger follows his lead, shoving their sheets through the bars that are wrapped in the poisonous flower.

You look to the guard, and he nods, "go." With his finger twitching at the gun ready to pull it, you jump over the dark red ashes and into the wolves den, snatching the sheets up as quick as possible and dashing away, out the door before they even get a chance to lock in your scent up close.

The giggles follow you all the way to the elevator and ring in your head even as the thick metal thunks shut.

As you take a deep breath, you notice the sheets are gripped to your chest, your claws drawn subconsciously in your panic and ripping them up. "Shit!" You let out a curse and shove them into the bottom of the basket so you don't have to smell it as closely on the long ride to the basement.

˚➶ ｡˚

The lingering wafts of your fresh scent are long gone, nothing to distract the alpha's from their caged boredom and bubbling rage over being caught. "I'll have that runts heart in my hands by the end of the month." Hongjoong groaned, to no one in particular- he knew Seonghwa was too deep in thought from their recent revelations. "Fucking back stabbers. They're more pathetic than a bitch in heat trying to get off with a dildo."

The thought hit his mind as soon as the words left his lips.

The thought of you, legs spread with your hand dipped low, trying to satisfy your primal urges and-

"Stop that." Seonghwa growls, kicking the bars of their shared 'wall'.

"Settle down!"

"Oh, like you weren't thinking it!" Hongjoong rolls his eyes, a scowl on his face as he crosses his arms. "Your ruts coming and you don't want your-"

"I said stop," he nearly roars, grabbing Hongjoong's state issued orange top and ripping it with his claws as he pulls him forward.

"I know you want her because I want her too." He whispers, smirking at the telltale signs of desire and bloodlust in his mates eyes. Red swirling around the brown of his human eyes. "Imagine how good she'll smell when we take out that stupid blocker. We'll be drowning in her scent." He moans, grabbing his wrist, "I get the honors, my claws are sharper, anyways," he draws them quickly, digging them into his skin as if to prove a point.

"I can use my teeth, mark h-"

"Oh, will you two stop? Love of God..." The guard in the large room slaps his book down on the rickety table. "What is there possibly for you to be fighting about? You're about to be executed, you know that right? No jury in the world will let you walk, especially the human half."

Their frustrations turn to the man, letting each other go. "Ah, you think so?" The older croons, dragging his index over his bleeding wrist and bringing it to his lips, sucking it clean before he continues. "We won't be around these parts long enough to meet the jury."

"What do you mean by that?"

Hongjoong covers his mouth when a laugh slips past. Seonghwa simply smirks as he sits cross legged, eyes locked with the guard as he licks his wound.

"What do you mean by that?!"

The blonde man breaks out in a fit of laughter. The brunette simply flashes his bloody canines in a twisted smile.

˚➶ ｡˚

You spent the whole time doing your daily tasks trying to hype yourself up to go back up to the fifth floor.

You usually went top down, four to one. Nobody has ever been on five before.

You go bottom up today, starting at Chungha with a full basket of freshly washed sheets. She prattles on about her visit with Jiyun, and how she's so thankful for you.

You choose that as your focus point for the rest of the work day, even as you press the button to the fifth floor.

You think back to the first time you spoke to Chungha, she was a crying mess, unable to sense that you were an omega like herself. She cried and cried and cried as you held her hand through the bars of temporary holding. She cried for her daughter, for cursing her with the shame of being the weakest link of any pack. When she looked up and saw your eyes, barely glowing, she cried more.

She apologized profusely, but you reassured her that her words were true, and you hadn't been offended. You told her that, in fact, she was the first to ever share your feelings of what being an omega really meant. It meant loneliness beside anyone but other omegas. Fake relationships born with people who only stuck around because of their primal instincts to either prey on you or protect you. It meant facing the fact that you were outcasts from both of the world's dominant societies. Outcasted from humans for being a werewolf. Outcasted from werewolves for being weak. So weak, in fact, that blood ash didn't even think of you as a wolf.

That night, you drove four hours to the next village over and looked after her daughter until her aunt had room. You remember the first thing the girl said to you. She didn't speak that whole day, surely in shock from the past few days events. But when you tucked her into the motel bed, she spoke as soft as a ghost, "sing me a song?"

You hum it to yourself now, the soft sound reverberating through the metal around you until the door opened.

You wheel the basket with you this time, like it will protect you as you approach the open doors, already feeling the unwavering gaze of the criminals.

"Hey, dolly~" Hongjoong, you had learned when you took a peek into their files, purred your way.

You didn't give him the satisfaction of responding verbally, but he saw the goosebumps on your arm as you reached into the basket, stretching on your tip toes to get the last two sheets.

"You never shut up do you, Kim?" The guard sighed with an exhausted tone, making you smile as you slowly made your way to the ring of red dust.

The throaty rumble from Seonghwa, the older, taller wolf, makes that smile drop to the depths of Hell.

The new guard seems to notice your anxiety, eyeing you up- in a much less predatory manner than the caged men. "Go on, 'mega. I'm watching them."

A bang on the metal bars makes you glue your foot right back where it came from. It's the blonde one, "you shut the fuck up!"

"No, you shut the fuck up! I'm the one with the silver bullets!"

All of the yelling is making you tremble, Hongjoong and the guard going back and forth. "She isn't your omega!"

"She ain't yours!"

Seonghwa watches with a sinister smile as you back away from the ash and the guard, calling to you quietly, "hey."

The soft tone of his voice makes you raise your eyes, but not your head. His eyes don't hold that threatening and dominating red from before. They're a soft brown color that reminds you of a beautiful dark oak in the morning sunshine. "What's your name?"

"(Y/n)..." your tongue moves without your consent, fresh blankets held to your work scrubs.

You desperately want the guard to notice this trance you're in, and grab you out of it. You want to do it yourself, but you can't do anything but admire the beauty of the criminal who has you hypnotized.

"You're a pretty omega, y'know? What color is your wolf?"

"Black..." It's a slur off your lips, barely registering in his sharply tuned ears over the yelling that continues to fill the room.

"Mine too. What's her name? His is Akma."

"Solis."

"Very pretty. Is she fast?"

"Yes."

"Does she want an alpha? A mate?"

"Yes."

The guard finally notices your raised gaze, affixed to the infamous, unlawful, man. He puts his gun back in the holster quickly before gripping your shoulder and forcing you to turn around. "You idiot, didn't anyone ever tell you not to look a first born in the eyes?"

"Sorry. I'm sorry." No one had ever told you that, actually.

Both of the criminals share a smirk as the man from your pack attempts to calm you. It wasn't hard for them to figure out you were an alpha-less village. They could smell every single wolf in five miles, and not a single stench from a wolf even nearly as strong as them.

There was, however, you. A honeyed smell that filled their guts with the primal need to rip out the eyes of anyone who dared look at you.

The guard couldn't be more wrong. You are their omega. You just don't know yet.

"Go and give these fucks their sheets, then get the hell out of here." The man shoved you, making you jump clumsily over the ash so you didn't break the seal.

He yells at them to back up, and they do so without a fight.

You shove them both in at the same time before running back out quickly, grabbing the empty basket and dragging it with you, the sound of the wheels scraping with the force of your panic echoing in the near empty room.

"You guys get off on scaring defenseless girls?" The guard scoffs, not expecting an answer as he drags the chair out of the room and slams the doors behind him.

Seonghwa lets his facade fall the second the door shuts, falling to his knees and grappling at the sheet like he's a starving man with the last piece of food on Earth. Hongjoong watches for a moment in confusion until the scent catches up with his weaker nose. Then he's quickly falling in the same position.

"It worked, the guard was so easy to distract," Hongjoong chuckles, face buried into the sheet that smells vaguely like you from your time spent holding it. "What did you learn?"

"(Y/n), a black wolf named Solis," he pauses, eyes rolled back as he takes a deep breath. They're red when they re-open. "No mate. It's really her."

"You think we should have told her?" Hongjoong inquires, looking through the bars.

He's never seen Seonghwa on his knees for anyone but him or the moon.

"No," he shakes his head, turning to lock eyes with him. "She'll figure it out when I mark her."

"When I mark her."

He rolls his eyes at his defiant nature, knowing full well he won't disobey his orders no matter how badly he wants to do something.

In a dog eat dog world, the strongest was the most powerful. Unlike their human neighbors, werewolves don't decide political or social standing by money or family name. They decide based on who comes out on top in a battle of the body and of the wits.

It had been determined years ago, when they were just young rebellious pups, that Seonghwa was the alpha. A fight in the woods under the moon had set it in stone between the two.

He could have ripped Hongjoongs throat out right then and there, but now, 13 years later in the present; they're bonded for life.

Sometimes he still sees Hongjoong as that 12 year old boy under his teeth, still snapping and growling even as he bled out with tears in his dark eyes, fighting to survive purely out of spite.

"You can mark her first," Seonghwa speaks quickly, turning his back as he puts the sweet smelling sheet on his cot.

He smiles at the man, a quiet thanks spoken through their bonded souls.

˚➶ ｡˚

Tuesday, they don't see you until much later in the day, but they bask in the sight of you opening the door with a broom and tray in hand, smiling at Changbin. You'll be here for a while, it's a big room.

"Hey, Binnie," you whisper to the beta, and Seonghwa has to bite his tongue.

Binnie? Ugh.

Hongjoong isn't so polite, "hey, Dolly! We don't get a hello?" You barely peek at him, eyes flicked from him right back to the floor in a millisecond. He knows you noticed his pout when he hears the smallest 'hello' tremble by your lips.

You start in the corner, headphones attached to your walkman with your favorite song on repeat to try and soothe yourself. Bill Withers calming voice blocks out every word of the teasing alphas, but you can still feel them mocking you and picking at you.

You don't dare sweep anywhere near the blood ash on the floor. One less precaution in place was one more thing to worry about.

"Bye, Binnie."

He does growl that time, eyes narrowed on your back until the door shuts.

˚➶ ｡˚

Wednesday, you have a frown on your face. "Three days in a row?" The guard Hongjoong got in a yelling match with, Merle, greets you as you come into the cavernous room, "bad schedule huh?"

"No kidding," you sigh, feet slightly hesitant to pass the dust border, "I'm here to fix your shirt. It's state property." You don't look at them, but they know who you're referring to.

They act like they don't, though. Just to hear more of your voice. To make you wriggle under their attention. "Sorry? What do you mean?"

You look and point to Hongjoong, his collar ripped from Seonghwas grasp. "State property."

"Ah, of course." He grins like a jackal, pulling it over his head and sticking his hand out of the bars just in the slightest. "On one condition."

You pout, eyes on the shirt which is just far enough away that you'd have to step closer. And it's the cutest fucking thing they've ever seen.

You look back up at him, silently asking. "Sit and talk with us. The guards here are no fun!" His laugh makes you jump back further, he sounds like a mad pirate.

You look over to Merle, who just shrugs, "just get it over with so these guys will shut up. They're only talkative around you, they need an audience for their antics."

"We won't bite," Seonghwa chuckles with his teeth exposed, making you shiver.

"Fine, give it here." You take a single step forward, palm out infront of the blonde.

When you grab it and go to race away like always, his claws wrapping all the way around your wrist stops you, sharp edges threatening to slice your skin down to the bone. You scream your head off, silenced when Seonghwa coos softly, "sit with us, and talk."

"Let me go..." you plead, eyes frantically flicking to Merle, whose gun is drawn to Hongjoongs head from the border of the ash, waiting for him to take one more wrong move so he can rid the world of one of its greatest criminals.

"Sit, omega." You do so, slowly lowering to the floor with your wrist and life still in Hongjoongs hand. "You have your sewing kit with you, I can hear the buttons hitting the needle. So sit, stay, and talk while you fix it."

Once again, they're the ones caged in. But you're the one who's stuck.

     One look to Merle tells you he probably wouldn't help you even if he could get to you. He lowers his gun as your tailbone hits the concrete floor.

     Your thin work scrubs do little to fight the cold of the old flooring, one reason of many that you shake as you reach into your purse and get the small tin box.

     Hongjoong releases your wrist and sits mirrored to you, hands perched on the bars in the gaps of the purple vine flower wrapped on them. Seonghwa comes to the corner of his side of the split cage and breathes in deeply through his nose, eyes locked in on your every movement. "So you're essentially the errand lady? Maid?"

      "Yes..." You murmur under your breath as your fingers work to thread the needle, slowly backing away until you're out of reach, but still stuck in the blood ash with no one to rescue should the men infront of you decide to rip their cages open. You only stop backing away when you hear a warning growl.

     You don't care to see which it came from, you just want to do this as quickly as possible and get far, far, away. They could have chose anyone to focus their annoying efforts on. Changbin, Merle, the warden. But no, just your luck.

      "You live in the village, right? Were you born here?" Seonghwa continues to do the talking as you carefully fix the shirt.

      "Yes. And no."

     A small hum from the one in front of you is a sign they want you to continue. "I was born to an overpopulated pack. They kicked me out when I turned eighteen. Our old alpha took me in." The hitch in your voice is a clear sign that it's a sore topic. And Hongjoong continues to poke the wound.

      "How did they find you?"

       "Woods."

       "Woods?"

     You can't help the small growl of frustration, lip curling as you look up. "Woods."

     The reaction is one you wouldn't have expected from a normal person, but then- they aren't normal.

     They laugh, cooing over your gesture of anger. Compared to them, you seem like a teacup puppy. "My, my," the brunette chuckles breathily, "is that Solis coming to play?"

     "At least she can," you snap, sent to the back of your own head as your wolf tries to defend you, "she isn't a caged mutt."

    Hongjoong breaks out into a manic fit of laughter, while his paramour is the opposite: his eyes flick red before your own, sharp teeth on display in a show of dominance over your smaller ones that are subconsciously bared at him. "Watch it, omega." He spits his words with venom, "I won't be so nice when I get out of here."

     You rip the extra thread with your claw, kicking the shirt across the floor so it sits at the bottom bar of Hongjoongs cage. His chest still wracks with laughter, watching as you sit up in a low squat so you're still level with the alpha.

      It's clear that you aren't currently you. Your wolf has control of your mouth and body, crouched in a position akin to that of a dog ready to pounce as you hiss your words, "I'm going to laugh in your face as you hang."

     "Aw, is that how dear old alpha died?"

     "Cut it out!" Merle screams disinterested, eyes glued to his flimsy magazine.

      "I heard he got gutted~" Hongjoong giggles, watching the color flicking in your eyes.

     "I'll gut you!" Your threat only makes him laugh more.

      "(Y/n)!" The voice of Hylyon breaks your wolf away from you immediately, falling to your bottom and crawling to the sound unwittingly. "You fucking idiot, Merle!" 

     She reaches over the blood ash and pulls you over the ring, letting you collapse into her as she drags you away, still throwing profanities at the incompetent guard. Hongjoong is laughing loudly. Seonghwa yelling at you to come back. The elevator cuts of his roar, the last thing you see through your blurry vision is his fist making a dent in the silver cage.

You fall onto the floor of the metal box. Thoughts flood your head too quickly for you to swim though them, making you drown and try to escape by releasing the pain with tears. You don't even notice when your friend turns her key in the elevator to make it stop in its tracks, you only see her when she sits right infront of you.

"Babes, calm down, I've got you," she reaches out slowly and places a hand on your leg, slowly rubbing her thumb over your knee.

"I can't go back up there... they're too strong, they make me feel like I'm suffocating," you splutter through gasps, "I'm too weak!"

"Hey, hey, you're spiraling!" She opens her arms and pulls you into her, letting you sob into her uniform. "In and out, girl," she holds the back of your neck securely, almost instantaneously making you calm. "I got you... I got you..."

You sit there for a good while, crying into her shoulder as you sort through your wracked brains.

Your alpha was gutted. Right in front of you. Because of you.

Unbeknownst to you, their tuned ears are still listening in, the elevator stuck within their ear shot as you begin mumbling your favorite song to yourself through tears.

˚➶ ｡˚

The sound of claws slicing through the skin on your back rings in your ears. Though, you can't feel it. Your eyes are locked in on your own claws, dug into the hardwood floor of your humble home to keep yourself from being dragged.

     You've been here a million times before.

     Blood pooling off of your body and onto the frigid surface below you. Teeth sharp and bared to the moon though the open window, begging that she might let you survive. Eyes aglow with your instincts as your wolf tries with every fiber of her being to turn, but she knows it's no use.

     The distorted voice above you drips with mocking venom, a chuckle as its owner realizes you can't even fight back like other wolves might: by letting your wolf fully transform.

     The wind blows through your curtains, washes your body in the artic breeze. The snowflakes on your windowsill are so delicate, all of their features fade into a blurry mush as they make contact. They melt, dripping down your wall.

     This time it's different.

      You're turned over, gaping wounds slammed into the floor as always, but when you look up to your aggressor it's different.

      His eyes aren't the yellow of a rouge, but the red of an alpha. His hair isn't that unruly blonde curl that you pulled at frantically, that you can still feel on your finger tips when your hands are unoccupied. It's long, shining, soft looking dark locks.

       You fall through the floor into another time, another place.

     Face first into the snow: your hands, shaking with adrenaline, do little to catch you.

       You don't remember this.

       This isn't right.

       This isn't your nightmare.

       You find yourself in a clearing in a forrest, the densely packed trees creating a bubble of nature around you. "(Y/n)?"

      You whip around, coming face to face with an unfamiliar man. Almost face to face. If he weren't floating a few feet in the air.

     His legs are crossed under him, hands facing palms up on his knees.

      "Don't worry. You're only dreaming." He speaks calmly as he floats around you in a circle, like a shark examining its potential prey.

     You follow him with your feral gaze, that familiar feeling of an adrenaline crash quickly approaching.

You know you're only dreaming. You've had that last dream more times than you can count in the past three years. It always plays the same. But not this time. You're only slightly thankful that you don't have to witness your alphas death again, but the gratefulness is overshadowed by confusion.

"Are you an angel?" You whisper, watching the man's soft and rounded features as he comes to a stop in the air in front of you and gracefully lowers to his feet.

"I can be, if that's what you want me to be. I'm only here to watch your dreams, fight off the nightmares."

"Why?" You feel distant from your body, watching powerlessly as your hand takes his, letting him lead you out of the clearing and into the darkness of the woods.

It disappears around you, warping into a spring day on a familiar path.

"A favor for a friend."

With the snow gone, you're in your spot, your old towel on the dewy grass with a book laid atop of it and the soil beneath your feet as you approach.

"Enjoy."

The hand vanishes from your own, leaving you alone on the side of the path. You look for him. But he's just an eidolon, watching you from the sky where you can't see him.

You warily take a seat and pick up the book.

˚➶ ｡˚

They don't see you again through the week. And when the next Monday comes by, their sheets are removed while they're in the showers.

Hongjoong sighs from his place on the floor, for the tenth time in the past half hour.

"Hong-"

"I miss our omega!" He whines, cutting him off.

Seonghwa stands from his cot, slowly lowering to the floor next to their shared bars. He lays flat on his back, mirroring Hongjoong as he tilts his head to look at him. "Soon." Is the only word he utters.

He reaches through the silver bars, ignoring the sting as the fresh wolfsbane brushes his wrist, and takes his hand.

The both of them look up at the ceiling through the bars of their enclosure.

Your scent is long gone from the room, and their noses can barely pick up on it through the rest of the village and prison.

"I want out of here," Hongjoong whispers, so lowly that the guard can't hear him from outside of the door, "when are they coming? Your bond with them is stronger, I can barely feel them..."

"Soon." He repeats, "very soon, Joong."

˚➶ ｡˚

Tuesday you manage to talk your coworker into sweeping the top floor, and you rejoice in the freedom of not being under the alpha's gazes. You've worked out a good schedule to completely avoid seeing them, and it's made your job feel like it's back to normal.

You can still smell their power wafting through the AC, but it's bearable. You distract yourself in your free time by making excuses to be on the second floor with Chungha and the other omegas.

Today, that excuse is 'omegas need physical outlets too', and the warden let you bring up buckets and brushes so you could all scrub the base boards.

"Oh, I've got one!" The omega to your left speaks, lifting his brush in the air in a eureka moment, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre or... Halloween?"

Chungha scoffs with a smile as she scrubs away to your right, "are we including sequels? There's like a billion!"

"No, stand alone original," Beomhan goes back to scrubbing as he continues, "both of them are classics but which one is a better classic?"

"Halloween is the classic slasher, Texas Chainsaw is like psychological horror," you chime in as you dip your brush into the bucket, sitting on your calves as you take a breather. "I think it's not fair to compare them... but Texas Chainsaw, definitely."

They laugh along with you, and Chungha shakes her head, "Halloween has more rewatchablity. You don't want to see Sally go through that more than once, but Laurie Strode fights harder and it's more like, yeah I'll watch her kick ass again."

"Cinematography in both is so beaut-"

The lights above you flicker before they shut down completely. People start muttering their concerns, quite a few of them looking your way. "Don't worry!" You hop up and get your keys from your pocket as you make your way to the locked stairwell. "I'll go and see what's going on, keep scrub-"

A loud siren echoes in the brick walls, shocking you all to cover your ears.

Everyone looks to you for answers, and you don't have any as your brain starts throwing theory after theory at you.

"It's okay, go back to your cells! Shut them behind you!"

They listened, however grumpy about it. The cell doors locked automatically when they were closed.

"Hey, what's going on?" Chungha asked over the clanging of the cell doors. The two of you, along with Beomhan, were the only ones left after a moment.

"Go back to your cell, Beomhan, hurry."

"No, what's happening?"

     The sirens cut off and leave you in a pregnant pause for a moment as you simply try to calm yourself.

A deafening scream ricochets through the air vent next to you, scaring you into their arms as you all stare at it.

Usually, the air flow covered the echoes throughout the floors. But with no power, you could hear everything- albeit muffled.

Yells and shouts. Gunshots. Growls. Unidentifiable chaos. And above all, your ears tuned in on a rumbling, calm voice through it all.

"Ain't no sunshine when she's gone... It's not warm when she's away..."

Your eyes widen as theres a bang at the stairwell door. "Go, go!" You grab each of their wrists, dragging them into Chungha's cell. You slam it behind you and let down the sheet she has over it, backing away and staring at it as you hear the door hit the wall behind it with the force it's slammed open.

"(Y/n), what the hells happening?!"

     You slap your hand over his mouth and bring a finger to your lips. The other omegas on the floor are all making a ruckus, and you can only hope that it will confuse that unfortunately familiar voice so he can't find you.

˚➶ ｡˚

The beta in the large room ignores Hongjoong as he continuously asks after 'the pretty omega'.

He just sweeps and sweeps, finally understanding why you hate coming up here. He has his back turned to the cage, and consequently, to the windows.

High on the tall walls, the narrow glass is opened from the outside. Seonghwa smirks, and gestures his head to it. Hongjoongs gaze follows, and he has to slap a hand over his mouth so he doesn't laugh.

A skinny figure is sliding its way in through the window sideways.

He drops to the floor as silent as a mouse, landing on his knees and grinning wildly up at his alphas.

Hongjoong throws his head back in preemptive relief, while Seonghwa is watching with a similarly wide smile as the man walks straight through the blood ash, breaking the circle with the tip of his shoe.

The worker still has his back turned as the lock on Seonghwas cage is picked with a long claw. He doesn't even know what's happening as the next thing he knows, he's thrown across the floor.

      Blood ash knocks up around him, coughs wracking his body as he looks up to his assailant.

      Park Seonghwa, newly freed from his cage, looks down at the worker with his eyes glowing red.

     "Now usually..." He begins, crouching to be face to face with him, "I'd go through this whole place just for the fuck of it and cause some beautiful chaos. But I'm looking for someone."

     "(Y/n)?" He stutters out, backing away only to knock into Hongjoongs legs. Stuck between the two criminals, he chooses his own head over yours. "The second floor! Sh-she's on the second floor!"

     "Let's go get our omega, Joong."

      Nonchalantly, Hongjoong draws his claws and slices the neck of the worker. He hops over the gurgling body and follows his mate with an ecstatic giggle.

      He wraps his arm around the skinny man's shoulder, "Wooyoung! Our savior~" He ruffles his hair and laughs as he groans.

     "You guys know I've got your back. Seonghwa told me about your new omega, you seem excited," he mimics the alphas smile as the eldest of the trio opens the doors.

     The guard on duty, who happens to be Merle, looks back with wide eyes.

"Yes, oh yes!" His eyes roll to the back of his head, touching the stitches you made on his shirt. "Oh, you'll love her, she's a feisty omega just like you."

He makes a run for the fire alarm at the end of the hall, but Seonghwa is faster. The beta is tackled to the floor.

"I'm glad you both will have a buffer, tired of you always at each other's throats during ruts," Wooyoung laughs, looking down at the guard as they pass.

Seonghwa had simply torn out his throat with his bare hand and made his way to the elevator, holding it open with an impatient glare.

The door closes behind them and the only sound is Seonghwa's heavy breathing.

"You're real eager, huh?" The omega breaks the silence, "San should be coming in any second to block the main door. No one will get past him. The rest are in the village, just as we planned."

"Good, she'll need somewhere to rest before we take off....Fucking idiots, thinking they can cage us." He groans, eyes flicking to the number above the doors as it dings.

       3? "Fuck."

     The door opens and the woman on the other side takes a moment, nearly walking in before she notices the crimson liquid dripping from Segonhwa's hand.

      She makes it halfway through the hall before Hongjoong pounces on her, fighting her effortlessly as if she's a rag doll. The guards run to try and save her, but it's too late for the unfortunate woman, and they just signed their own death certificate as well.

       Seonghwa and Wooyoung make quick work of them, but their plan is already foiled as the lights flicker to a halt and leave them bathed in dim light of the setting sun in the few windows.

      The alphas fall to their knees as their sensitive ears are bombarded with a loud, incessant siren.

      "Wooyoung!" Hongjoong screams over it, "go turn that shit off!"

      He nods, taking the keys off a mauled guard and dashing to the stair well, leaving it unlocked behind him.

     Hongjoong crawls to Seonghwa, collapsing into his chest with his teeth clenched and palms over his ears. His ears were always more sensitive.

     His partner places his hands over his, thumb running over his own. He looks down with his eyes glowing red, meeting pure black.

He leans and kisses him deeply, all teeth and bloodlust, trying to merge their souls until the sirens cuts off.

Their foreheads rest together, ignoring the chaos of the beta's around them yelling to be released.

"Are you ready?" Seonghwa whispers, gathering another set of keys from the fallen workers. He throws it to one of the locked in prisoners, a smirk on his face. So much for not creating chaos.

"Let's go," Hongjoong holds the door to the staircase open and lets him go first with a dramatic bow.

It takes one scream to start the havoc. The entire prison is filled with the sickly sweet sounds of caged animals with a taste of freedom. Gunfire and howls bring a smile to Seonghwa's lips as he sings out,

"Ain't no sunshine when she's gone... it's not warm when she's away..."

He hums the song with a wide grin as Hongjoong kicks the door. It takes only one more kick before it slams open and bangs against the cement wall.

The omegas in their cells are all yelling at them, at one another, in general.

Hongjoong kicks one of the many buckets on the floor over and groans, "here I was thinking she'd make it easy. I guess we'll have to go cell to cell!" A small spike of a heartbeat in his ears makes him smirk, following the sound that he memorized the first time he'd heard it.

Seonghwa follows him, immediately zeroing in on the same cell. He comes to stand infront of it, his breath making the blanket behind the bars sway slightly.

You see both pairs of orange slip on shoes and you feel your heart stop in your chest.

You cower further into the corner with Beomhan as Chungha stands in front of you. The sheet is grabbed from the outside and ripped away, making you all shriek.

"Were you playing hide and seek?" Hongjoong giggles, throwing the blanket to the side with his eyes never leaving you, a scowl growing on his features as he notices the way you're curling into another wolf. "You should know better than to hide from your alphas. Come on out."

You shake your head, gaze lowered as you hold onto the back of Chungha's uniform.

"(Y/n)," the saturnine man speaks, "come here."

"No, leave us alone! Leave me alone," your voice cracks despite how strong you want to appear.

"If I have to drag you out of here I will be very angry. Just come on, do us all a solid."

"No-"

"Open the fucking door!"

"No!"

The cells were built to hold lycans, which means lycans shouldn't be able to get in... right?

"Fucking-" Seonghwa hits the bars, leaving a dent and making the three of you jump.

Hongjoong leans on his tiptoes and whispers into his ear, and whatever he says makes his eyes begin glowing a murderous red.

He slowly wraps his clawed fingers around the bars, and the way Hongjoong backs up makes your stomach churn in anxiety of what's about to come.

And it was warranted anxiety.

With a loud growl and a single tug, he rips the silver bars from their cemented place in the wall, causing a large crack to form.

"Holy shit!" Beomhan screams, arms wrapping around you tightly.

Chungha is ripped from the small room and tossed all the way across the room, back colliding with the wall and leaving her unconscious.

You yelp as Beomhan meets a similar fate, torn from your grasp and out into the rec room like he's a mere bag of trash. You see Hongjoong approaching him with his long black claws out and proud, but your vision is blocked by the large alpha infront of you.

     Your hips back into Chungha's small desk, and your hands clamber around, landing on something small and solid.

     You swing it at his head and he ducks, grabbing your wrist and dragging you out of the small cell. You manage to swing again, making contact with his head. The small ceramic bowl shatters into pieces and leaves him only temporarily stunned, glaring down at you.

      "Fucking stop," he growls quietly, shoving you to the floor.

       He lets you shuffle away, only because Hongjoong is right behind you.

     The blonde chuckles, pulling you back up by your collar and crashing you face first into one of the round steel tables bolted into the floor. "Ow!" You yell out as your head makes contact, fighting against him with all your might, but it's fruitless.

     He kicks your feet apart and stands between them, leaning his chest over your back. You can feel his nose against your neck, over the healed skin above your scent blocker. You snap your eyes shut and do the only thing you can thing of.

     You can't fight. Begging to these men would be useless. You can't disappear into the floor like you wish you could.

     "Please, Selene," you pray to the moon, tears slipping past your shut eyes as you feel the claws of the mad man on your neck.

       You cry out as the other worldly sharp nails slice into your neck, slowly and almost surgically. His other hand is cupped on the back of your head, keeping your head pushed into the cold metal. "Shhhh," he gushes above you, "it's okay."

      Seonghwa sits at one of the bolted stools and rests his head to mimic yours, cheek on the table. "We'd've been more gentle if you listened, omega."

       Between the tips of his claws, Hongjoong holds your small alloy scent blocker. Almost instantaneously, your natural scent floods their senses.

     Their deep rumbles of pleasure make you snap your eyes back shut, missing the way Hongjoong stomps on the device.

     "Fuck," the wolf behind you curses, body pressed close to yours like he wants to fuse together, he places his hands in yours and tells you, "you might want to squeeze."

    "Wh- ah!" Your scream echoes over all of the other chaos as his teeth sink into your left shoulder, and you do just that. Your clawed hands squeeze around his, sharp nails knocking together as you hold on like his hands are the only thing keeping you from slipping to the underworld.

       It feels like a million pins and needles washing over you, leaving you paralyzed in place as he purrs into the wound, making your bones vibrate.

     A warm, comforting hand on your cheek makes you force your eyes open. Seonghwa smiles sweetly, like he isn't witnessing one of the biggest crimes in the lycan community.

      Forcing someone to be your mate for the rest of your mortal lives.

     "Breathe, omega," his words make you realize you're holding your breath, and you let it out as a sob. "That's it," he hums, rubbing his hand down your head with all the gentleness he's capable of.

        Hongjoong pulls away with a moan, resting his head between your shoulder blades as he catches his breath.

     Your wolf is already calling for her mate, howling in the back of your mind as you cry.

       "Don't worry, we'll take good care of you." Seonghwas words have little time to register in your adrenaline filled head as he turns your head the other way and climbs up on the table.

     It hits you when he moves your ruffled shirt away from your right shoulder. "No! No!" You find yourself with two million pins and needles in your body now, squeezing Hongjoongs hands all over again as Seonghwa sinks his teeth into you at an excruciatingly slow pace.

They're bigger, or maybe they only feel that way because your body is on fire. You sob freely, feet stomping pathetically to cope with the pain.

What little comfort you find in Hongjoong squeezing your hands back is washed away by the simple fact that it's him. That blood from his claws drips onto your skin.

It feels like a century later that the older alpha finally pulls away, a bellow of pleasure as he runs his thumb over the wound: making you jump.

"Your turn, omega."

The weight of their bodies is gone, but you can't bring yourself to move. Out of fear, maybe. Pain, perhaps.

"You know what happens to wolves who don't finish the bond." Hongjoong purrs teasingly, knowing full well that you will have to mark them back least you want to suffer at the hands of the moon herself.

A life with them was better than being turned inside out and left to the elements. Just barely.

You lift yourself on shaking arms and nearly fall as you turn. You would have if not for Hongjoong catching you. He lifts you back to the table much gentler, letting your legs dangle as you sit on the table top.

"Why... why me?"

"... Have you heard of Harry Talbot?"

"Harry Talbots a myth... what's he got to do with your fuck shit?"

"Harry Talbot was the first wolf that could smell his mate. He could tell just by her smell, they were meant to be." Hongjoong slots his way between your legs, smiling down at you with his bloody teeth, "her smell called to him. It wasn't just good. It wasn't a normal scent. It was...alluring."

You were growing dizzy, head spinning.

"Strong alphas can sniff out their true mate. And, baby, we're the strongest that there is."

You have to force yourself to swallow. Have to remember to breathe.

"Why? Because you're... alluring."

That's the last thing you can register before your world turns dark.

˚➶ ｡˚ PART ONE END ˚➶ ｡˚

[ourfatherwhoartinhell]

Love, Eternal // [Part II]

Pairing | Phantom x Sister!Reader

Word count | 881

⚠️ Warnings | Reader uses she/her pronouns, (y/n) is used once. There is a small ritual scene. TW for murder ghouls, blood, injuries, assault, violence, and death.

Plot Summary: Today was Phantom's summoning day, a special occasion akin to a birthday. Eager to surprise him with a homemade cake, you realize you're missing ingredients and head into town. On the way back, you encounter trouble with some members of the Catholic church that changes the course of your life in the Ministry - and with Phantom - forever.

A/N: I'm so sorry Phantom, no one deserved this. It was supposed to be a fluffy birthday fic I swear!

[Prev] [Next]

“Peace be upon you, Sister. If we can even call you that.”

Glaring over your shoulder, you saw two members from the Catholic church up the road approach behind you. They loved to take turns hanging around the front gate and tormenting the Siblings. The first nuisance was a few inches taller than the other, both still being larger in stature than yourself. The taller one was thinner in frame, with short curly hair. While the smaller one clearly hit the gym, his biceps straining against a shirt you knew was definitely a size too small.

“Where’s your gang of freaks? I thought you people always had guard dogs when you went to town?”

You just ignored them, as you were taught to do, and kept walking. The sound of their shoes on the gravel getting louder and louder. Their pace hurried as they continued to stalk behind you.

“C’mon, we just wanna talk!” The taller one yelled. 

“Yeah! We want to convert!” The shorter one snickered, “you wouldn’t turn away willing converts would you?”

You suddenly stopped in your tracks, unwilling to put up with their taunts any longer. They were not going to ruin Phantom’s big day. 

“You know what–” 

Unfortunately, as you spun around to confront them, they happened to be a lot closer than you originally thought. The taller one already making his way behind you. His shorter accomplice roughly grabbing the bag off your shoulder and laughing as he threw it on the ground, crushing the newly bought ingredients under his boot. The purple food colouring appearing black in the moonlight as it splattered over the stones of the driveway, not unlike blood.

The shorter assailant grabbed your wrists and held them tightly behind your back with ease. The taller fiend wrapped his arm across your collarbone and around your neck, holding you still. You tried to wiggle and break free, you tried to bite or scream but a hand quickly found its way over your mouth as a third man slowly approached. 

The third assailant was different from the other two, clearly the leader of this gang. He was a larger, well-built man with short hair you thought to be blonde (though it was too dark to really tell). His hairstyle looked like it belonged at a country club. His face was covered with a black bandana, leaving only his hazel eyes visible under the night sky. He stood before you and stared, not a single emotion to be found on his face as he adjusted the black leather gloves, placing brass knuckles through the fingers of his right hand.

You shut your eyes, tears beginning to fall down your cheeks. Silently pleading, no... desperately praying you were close enough to the Abbey for somebody to hear your muffled screams.

Swiss and Rain were slowly running out of ideas to keep Phantom distracted. Taking care of the small ghoul, in general, was as bad as trying to look after a kit. However, because it was his summoning day, he was insufferable - and they were powerless to do anything about it. 

The two ghouls in charge of him looked at one another, silently wondering what was taking you so long. You had been gone for over 2.5 hours and they both knew it only took an hour to get to town and back. Shrugging it off, they figured you had forgotten to tell them you were back and went straight to the kitchen instead, to avoid further delays to Phantom’s surprise.

Midway through enthusiastically telling the older ghouls a ‘fascinating’ story, Phantom suddenly froze. His nose pointed high as he sniffed the air, tail twitching as he looked around with worried eyes.

“Guys,” he said, looking at his brothers with a concerned expression. “I think (y/n) is in trouble.”

Swiss casually leaned back into the couch, “Ha, that’s a good one! I don’t smell anything except for the kitchen staff whipping up some mean lamb chops for dinner. I know you’re itching to see her, she’s probably just busy, Bug.”

“Trust me, she hasn’t forgotten.” Rain chimes in.

Phantom squeezed his eyes shut as he exhaled in frustration. Sniffing around again to confirm his suspicion, his tail went rigid as he picked up that strange scent once again. 

“No, I’m serious, something's not right. I have to go.” He said before rushing out of the den, following a faint wisp of your scent mixed with fear…

And blood.

Swiss and Rain immediately jumped up, not smelling anything out of the ordinary themselves, and ran after the spooked ghoul. Passing by Dewdrop, they dragged him along just in case the young ghoul was right. Dew was more than happy to tag along if it meant the possibility of discarding some ungrateful souls.

Phantom, well ahead of his packmates, threw open the large double doors of the Ministry and jumped over the front steps. The gravel spitting behind him as he sped down the driveway, your scent growing stronger with each step.

He skidded to a halt as he saw your visibly lifeless body laying near the gated entrance of the Abbey. Quickly making his way to your side, he gently picked you up and cradled your broken body in his lap. Ignoring the pain of the rocks and stones cutting into his legs, he attempted to calm his breathing once he noticed the rise and fall of your chest. Thank the dark Father you were still alive.

“Oh, Satan,” he choked out, his lavender eyes welling with tears as your face turned towards him. Your one eye swollen shut and your face adorned with all kinds of bruises and cuts.  Blood decorating your face like a painting and seeping through your outfit onto the gravel underneath.

“Hi,” you wheezed, trying to force a smile through the swelling.

“I can fix this,” Phantom sobbed as he frantically looked at the extent of your injuries. “I can fix you. You’re going to be just fine. Aether has been teaching me a lot, I know I can fix this,” he rambled.

Phantom’s violet Quintessent glow illuminated under his grey skin as he carefully ran his hand over your many wounds. The smaller cuts closing and reopening as he worked against his emotions. He placed his hand with the utmost care over a large cut on your cheek and forcefully shut his tear soaked eyes. Willing the Dark One to give him the power he needed to save you as he felt your essence begin to slowly slip through his fingers.

The other ghouls halted their run, looking on in horror as they saw the scene before them.

“Help me, please!” Phantom screamed in anguish.

[Next]

[wszczebrzyszynie]

proszę infodump us about graveyard appropriate flora in 19th century Poland

Oh woah turns out a Lot of people want to know this. It does make me quite happy... i'll try to keep it interesting and not go off-topic much, but i have to say i do have a fascination for both history and death related subjects, so forgive me any slip ups. It's also important to mention that: 1) i mostly talk here about catholic cemeteries, and not Jewish ones, although many of these things may overlap; things like these were, especially in the latter half of the century, falling under the country's law, and not church law (even though those two often cooperated), 2) this is mostly about Congress Poland (russian partition of Poland). Austria, Prussia and russia all had different laws, obviously, that could affect what I'm talking about here, even if not by much. I'd rather be clean on this one and not assume things about other occupants 3) translating this to english was absolute hell. Sorry if some parts are hard to decipher and feel free to ask for a clarification.

Plants on cemeteries were used for both decorative and hygienic purposes ("trees planted in rows, in equal distance from each other (...) clean the cemetery air, because their roots and leaves absorb decomposition and carbonic acid, and emit the ground's moisture into the air. The best types of trees for cemeteries are poplars, birches, willows and aspens" (it's not in the text, but acacia was also pretty popular) Oględziny i grzebanie ciał zmarłych ze stanowiska higieny publicznej, 1873); it makes sense, considering they were build with walking space in mind, a bit like a park, but further away from the town* and with different sets of social norms, if i can call it that. It should also make sense then, that garden, eatable plants were not allowed to be planted on the cemetery, and could only be planted 5 years after the cemetery closed down (and even then, they could only be planted if they didn't require much digging); it was obviously considered non hygienic (same with water; a cemetery was allowed to have a well, as long as the water from it wasn't meant for drinking).

Most common and liked cemetery plants were the various trees i mentioned before (+ conifers as a whole), roses, jasmine, elderflowers, all kinds of flowers and overall scented plants, often planted on graves themselves. It was also important to mention that cemeteries were built with airflow in mind, so while the trees were recommended, there couldn't be too many of them (unless built as a "barrier" between the town and the cemetery, so that the cemetery air wouldn't flow towards the town). Airflow is also why hill sides were considered a good spot for cemeteries, but only if the wind flew from the town or village towards the cemetery, and not the other way around. The only fruit trees allowed on cemeteries were morus trees, which is directly tied to silk production. Policya lekarska : o grzebaniu ciał zmarłych, 1846

*well not exactly; in the beginning, polish catholics really didn't like the idea of walking over 1000 steps away from the town they're living in to the cemetery (1000 steps was the distance required to build a cemetery. Up to this point, the most common kind of cemetery was the one on the church ground, meaning somewhere in the middle of the town. It was also fully under the church law), but it's not like they had much choice? 19th century brought an insane population growth, so cemeteries had to grow as well, and they couldn't exactly... get bigger in the town centre. Also they thought it would be way better for hygienic reasons to have them as far away as possible. This attitude started changing somewhere in the 1820s, but it would take a while until it fully set in, and that's only because a new set of laws rolled around

I actually live nearby an old cemetery. It used to be an asylum cemetery specifically, built in 1860s, and it functioned for 80 years. Today it's considered a small forest/bike path, but you can still see the relicts of the old cemetery, specifically in the plants that grow there and the paths that still exist; there's a lot of white pines, sawaras, common ivy and periwinkles (cemetary plants popular even today), as well as (invasive) plants brought all the way from the US that used to be a part of then cemetary-park complex. That being said i also live in lower Silesia, which was a part of Germany before world war II, so very much not Congress Poland, but i thought I'll share, because i genuinely love that place and it's history. Cemeteries are interesting 👍

[jaemmphilia]

★ 𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚕𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚋𝚒𝚍𝚍𝚎𝚗 𝚜𝚎𝚌𝚛𝚎𝚝 ★ || kim s.o

★ summary: sunoo is the 3rd youngest of the enhypen kingdom's royal family. his oldest brother is in the process of becoming king, and sunoo notices how stressed out poor heeseung is. the young boy goes out to the town's market where he meets [name], a local farmer. for sunoo, it's love at first sight.

★ pairing: farmer!reader x prince!sunoo

★ warnings and rating(16+): semi-modern royal au, sunoo is the prettiest prince (i'm sorry jake, ily bae), some language, reader is taller than heeseung, and is described to have a muscular build

★ word count:

★ binnie's thoughts: sunoo?? he's not my bias, but hes a cutie. enjoy this sweet royalty au, i am so dedicating this fic to my soulmate @inniesyrup

★ requested?: yes, by @onementally-unstabel-kid

★ disclaimer: this fic in absolutely NO WAY represents sunoo or the rest of the enhypen members as people. this fic is simply for entertainment purposes. enjoy!

© triplejracha, 2023. please do not copy to any other platform.

Being one of the seven princes of the Enhypen Kingdom was tiring, according to Sunoo.

From constantly having to wear clothes that restrict his breathing, to wearing heavy jewelry that hangs on his small frame. It often gets to be too much for him, so he sneaks out at night to visit the town's market to get a feel for what life is like for a commoner.

With his hood draped over his mop of soft, chestnut-colored hair, Sunoo stalks through the crowds of people roaming the town's market.

Sunoo enjoys places like these. Places where everyone knows everyone, places where it feels like a tight-knit family. Now, Sunoo loves his brothers to death, but they also feel like strangers to him. He wishes he could go back to the days when he and his brothers would run through the maze gardens together, giggling as the hot sun warmed their chubby, youthful cheeks.

Now that his two oldest brothers, Heeseung and Jay are in training to take over the throne, things haven't been the same between the seven of them. His brothers are too busy to hang out with him, even if it was only for half an hour. This makes Sunoo feel lonely, the young prince often spends his time alone in the castle's many gardens.

Sunoo is pulled out of his trance when a strong arm pulls him to the side and away from the swarm of people coming toward him. Sunoo panics at first, thinking one of the guards caught him sneaking out of his room. His heartbeat picks up, his breathing coming out in short, sharp huffs.

"Woah there, darlin'! I'm not gonna hurt you!" A warm voice causes Sunoo to stop breathing altogether. The person's voice is gentle, sultry and hearty. Sunoo has never heard such a relaxing sound, he doesn't know how to respond.

"You might wanna close your mouth, you'll start catchin' flies!" The person laughs and Sunoo feels his entire body warm up. The person's voice doesn't sound like the ones he's used to, it sounds more…country.

Sunoo finally looks at the man, his eyes falling on a solid chest. The man is tall. Well, taller than Sunoo. He might even be taller than Heeseung.

Sunoo's eyes travel up, his breath catching in his throat as he observes the man in front of him. The man has a warm aura about him, he reminds Sunoo of the warm September sun before the season turns cold. The man feels cozy, his eyes searching Sunoo's face. Sunoo hopes the young man doesn't recognize him and turns him into the guards that patrol the market.

"Are you lost, darling? I haven't seen a pretty face like yours around here," the man says, the warmth on Sunoo's arm leaving as soon as he could even register it.

"No, I'm not lost," Sunoo says, his voice trailing off as he fails to take his eyes off the handsome stranger in front of him. Sunoo usually has no problems talking to new people, but this young man is different, he can tell. "I'm from… the next town over."

As Sunoo stares at the man, it begins to click in his brain. This is the same man who delivers fresh produce to the castle for him and his family to enjoy. Sunoo can't recall if he has ever had a conversation with the man, and his stomach drops at the thought of the man knowing who he really is.

Sunoo is surprised that he was able to lie so fast, but he's even more surprised that the male doesn't recognize him.

"Oh! Let me be the first to welcome you to the small town of Dark Blood!" the young man beams, his pearly teeth on display for Sunoo, "my name is [Name] and I run that produce stand just over there." [Name] points to a stand with various types of fruits and vegetables.

Sunoo is aware of that. He's very aware that [Name]'s family owns a large farm just a few blocks from the castle. Sunoo flashes [Name] a shy smile and allows the taller man to drag him around the market he's been to a million times now.

Sunoo finds himself sitting on a haybed at the Jung Family Farm. As he takes in his surroundings, he begins to realize that this might be his favorite place outside of the castle.

The moon had begun to set long ago, the sun's bright rays peeking up over the large hills of various fruit trees.

[Name] approaches Sunoo with a drink in each hand. He hands one to Sunoo who takes it with a soft "thank you."

"You know, I know who you are," [Name] says as he plops down beside Sunoo on the haybed. Sunoo chokes on the drink, entirely taken by surprise at [Name]'s sudden confession.

"You do?" Sunoo questions once he regains his breath. Why is he surprised? [Name] has been delivering to the castle since he and Sunoo were both very young.

"Yeah, I didn't say anything because there had to be a reason why you would come all the way to the market by yourself." [Name] explains, and Sunoo pouts, cursing himself for not coming up with a disguise.

"Are you going to tell the guards about this?" Sunoo asks, looking up at the taller male who sports a smirk, the left corner of his full lips twitching upward. Sunoo can't help but think that [Name] is more handsome than he remembers.

"No, why would I? Besides, if I did," [Name] pauses as he takes a sip of his drink, "I doubt they would believe a simple farmer boy such as myself."

Sunoo hums, taking in [Name]'s words. He realizes that [Name] does have a point. "Well, I appreciate you not snitching."

[Name] chuckles, turning his head to look at Sunoo under the early morning rays of the sun. "Well, it did give me a chance to hang out with the prettiest prince I ever had the pleasure of laying my eyes on."

Sunoo's dark-colored eyes go wide, his neck and ears turning a light shade of reddish pink. Did [Name] really just say that so casually with the most confident smile on his handsome face?

"You think I'm pretty?" Sunoo questions, a shy smile creeping onto his face.

"'Course I do. I've always thought you were the prettiest." [Name] lightly nudges Sunoo with his muscular shoulder.

Sunoo's body and brain are buzzing, swirling with emotions he's not too familiar with. His heart beats heavily against his rib cage, and the pesky butterflies in his stomach refuse to calm.

"Look at you. You're all flustered and blushy." [Name] chuckles again as he wraps his arm around Sunoo's more petite frame.

"Stop teasing me! I can't help how I look when someone like you compliments me!" Sunoo protests, his elbow nudging [Name]'s side.

"Someone like me? What does that mean?" [Name] barks out another laugh as he falls back onto the hay bed.

Sunoo huffs and finds himself laying back as well. He turns his head, only to see a soft pair of [EC] staring at his face. He gives the male a puzzled look. "Do I have anything on my face?"

"Yeah, it's all over." [Name] brings his hand up, the knuckle of his index finger lightly grazing against Sunoo's soft cheek.

"Are you going to make a joke and say that I have beauty all over my face?" Sunoo asks, his eyebrow cocked up as he purses his lips a little.

[Name] snickers, knowing he's become too predictable. "No, what makes you think that?"

Sunoo rolls his eyes, allowing a smile to make its way onto his face. "Because it sounds like something you would do."

"You are right about that. And I will have you know that you were right. That was exactly what I was going to say."

"You're predictable and cheesy," Sunoo says, turning his body to lie on his side. His nose brushes against [Name]'s, causing the two of them to freeze for a second.

"Sunoo, can I do something bold while I still have the confidence?" [Name] asks, his eyes flickering back and forth from Sunoo's eyes to his lips.

Sunoo knows where this is going to go, and he doesn't plan on stopping it, so he just nods at [Name].

[Name] cups Sunoo's cheek, leaning in close to the male as his eyes close. Sunoo allows his eyes to close as he feels a pair of soft lips press against his own. It's feather-light and Sunoo barely feels it at first, but he leans his head forward to press into the kiss.

The two of them kiss for a bit as the sun rises in front of them. Sunoo's parents are not going to be happy about this, but like most things he does, Sunoo will keep [Name] as his little forbidden secret.

[cosmicdeaths]

i'm writing this because i don't know else to do to stop crying. and because there is little else my helpless hands can do to change this horrifying reality we're living in. i am sudanese. and my mother just told me that we've lost yet another relative in the ongoing civil war in sudan. i've also learned that the small lovely town i grew up in, Shambat, in Khartoum Bahri, is currently plagued by this fever the origin of which is yet to be identified. from what little we know whoever gets this fever just does not wake up to see the sun of another day. it might be because the dead bodies people buried in their backyards in a desperate attempt to grieve and honor them are unearthed by the rain. it might be because the entire health system has collapsed months ago and there is no way for these people to attain any form of medical help. we've lost family members with chronic conditions simply because they couldn't get medical attention until it was too late. my own grandfather died of complications that could've easily been managed had they gotten him the proper treatment. we've lost people to this fever, too. a brother and the very next day, his sister. and more keep dying. it hurts and angers me that no one's talking about this. and just as equally my heart breaks for each and every palestinian out there, and i keep praying for them and hoping to be half as patient as they are. i know what it's like to be so scared your entire body goes numb, i know what it's like to be displaced and leave behind everything you've ever known with little hope of ever coming back. to survive and not really feel like you did. i saw this video of a palestinian woman holding her dead baby and just begging to nurse him one more time. i see palestinian men breaking down into tears while trying to comfort children, literal babies, whom they pulled out of the rubble. a little girl who's saying god why didn't you take me along with my mother, god, you know i can't live without her. and i suddenly remember that i know of a friend of my family who just sits there crying helplessly every night because she doesn't know what to tell her starving nieces who are too young to understand that they can't get food because of all the shooting outside. i keep seeing entire villages in the west being completely wiped off the map, reduced to nothing but a black dot of ashes and ruin. and this isn't even a first; ethnical cleansing in the western areas of sudan went on for decades and no one even bat an eye. my heart will never stop bleeding for Darfur. i know of a group of boys who were stuck for days in the very university i went to, waiting for a ceasefire for days on end until one of them died of fear or starvation or illness or whatever it is that we still don't know to this very day, and they had to bury him in the very field they used to play football matches in. a field every student in that university knows and has been to and laughed and cried in. girls are raped and sexually enslaved in terrifying numbers. the biggest maternity hospital in the country, the one i was born in, was looted and patients kicked out. these are all stories that will never leave my memory til the day i die. they're all deaths i will never forgive nor stop mourning. i won't despair and i won't give up, but the heart aches and cracks, and the tears run and run and leave crevices behind. the world is an ugly, ugly place. only hope and solidarity can save us. my sudanese and palestinian brothers and sisters, you are not alone. and you never will be.

[sugolara]

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙩

ft. K.B x S.T x I.M x fem! reader

Synopsis: After a deadly virus leaks all over the world, every country is forced to close down it's borders and airports to prevent anyone from coming in and out. Though, it's to late for some people. The dead has rose and is looking for revenge. Cw: gore, quirkless! au, apocalypse! au, zombie! au, weapons, death, angst, lots and lots of blood, cannibalism, suicidal thoughts, slow burn

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They had gotten their designated job and when their alarms rang at 8 AM, they woke up, changed and headed out. The boys wanted to see F/n, but she had left earlier, much to their dispamy. Her patience had been running as she just wanted to feel the heavy gun in her hands. 

She rubbed her hands as she made her way to the weaponry, it was getting cold, and the thin jacket did little to keep her warm. She didn’t see Gunhead when she entered. She would have waited for him but when she spotted the bins of pistols, rifles, and automatic rifles, she let out a grin and picked one of them up. 

The M6 rifle was a bit dirty for the most part. The chamber was empty and she looked around to find bullets. A rack shelf stored boxes of ammo, each neatly organized. She found the designated ammo, the bullets looked pretty in its box. 

Only a bit of ammo was in the box she held. A couple other boxes of the same ammo were on the shelfs. She checked them, though feeling disappointed as it would only cover three rounds. She then looked around for a scope, luckily finding one.

She’d have to thank Kyoka, Tenya and Mashiro for finding such beauty. If only she talked that way about Katsuki, Izuku and Shoto.

“I see you found the M6.” Gunhead said, closing the door behind him. 

She smiled smugly as she looked through the scope, “It’s pretty neat. Didn’t think I’d ever see a gun like this again.”

He hummed as he pulled a chair closer to the bins, “We’d have to thank the weapon team for finding it.”

“Oh, you bet I’m gonna thank them.” She said, lowering the gun and looking at him, “So what am I going to do today?”

“Well, seeing as how you’re familiar with the weapons, today you’ll clean them. We’ll start off with the pistols. Don’t put any bullets inside, we don’t want to accidently set it off.” He said to which F/n understandably nodded and began to work while he read the same book he read yesterday.

Izuku let out a yawn, shaking his head to wake up as he followed Mezo to the weaponry where it held a small room. At least he was going to see F/n, though he didn’t think he’d have a chance to talk with her.

“Good, you made it.” Ochaco said, avoiding eye contact with the male as they entered the building. Gunhead had waved at them, greeting them a good morning as they returned it. 

The freckled male hoped that F/n would have turned to greet him as well, but he already knew she wouldn’t since she was busy looking over the weapons. He could tell the way her eyes shined at the gun she held. He hoped that maybe someday she would look at him the same way.

When they entered the room, a small table and four chairs were placed in the center with a few papers on it. Izuku had grabbed a written paper, looking at the town and cities, “You’ve already been here?”

Mezo handed him another paper, “Those are the cities that we’ve already scavenged for medical supplies.”

“And?” Izuku said, reading down the list.

“There’s nothing in those cities.” Fumikage said, sipping on his coffee.

He looked up from the paper, surprisingly, “You’ve been through every store?”

Ochaco opened up a map, “Only the pharmacies. We leave the grocery stores to Eijiro and Denki and the drug stores to Aizawa and Yagi.”

“And where are they?” Izuku asked, wanting to see his teachers.

“They’re on a run, looking for more survivors.” Fumikage said, warming his hands on the coffee cup, “They should be back sometime this week.”

The freckle male furrowed his brows, “Looking for survivors? Wouldn’t that be a disadvantage? Wouldn’t someone be a danger to everyone?”

“We don’t make the rules, Izuku. We just go by it.” Ochaco said, crossing her arm as she sat down, “From what I heard, this place was supposed to help start civilization again. That’s why there’s so many people. Someone from the military or someone affiliated with it, had brought civilians instead of people with power.”

“Like those that are higher up.” Mezo added. 

“To start civilization?” Izuku couldn’t believe it. So the reason why Sortson was created was to repopulate. But why would someone even go out of their way to do that? Don’t get him wrong, he's glad to be here, but to think that someone wanted to do something that the higher ups had no effort in doing so was astounding. 

“This is so damn boring.” Katsuki said as he sat in Denki’s and Eijiro’s living room, “When the hell are we getting out of here.”

“Dude, chill out.” Denki said as he passed him a soda, “We got to wait for Ochaco’s team to look for a city or something. We go with her in case of any emergencies.”

He scoffed, “Had I known I’d be sitting on my ass I would've gone with F/n. Heard the small ass house is loaded with guns, she’s proably throwing a damn fucking party.”

Denki eyed him, a cheshire grin forming on his lips. He placed his feet on the blonde's lap, “A little mouse told me, that you’d have plenty of fun with her, if you catch my drift.”

The blonde glared at him and threw his feet off his lap, “What the hell are you on about?”

“Eijiro told me about your teeny tiny little crush. Assuming it's small with that small heart of yours.” He quickly shielded his head as the blonde threw a pillow at him, repeatedly hitting him, “I was just joking! Have mercy!” 

From the kitchen, Eijiro shook his head, eating a donut, “I miss this.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about, Dunceface!” The blonde said as he continued to hit the male. 

Denki waved his left hand while his right hand protected his head, “C’mon, man it’s totally obvious!”

“Shut the fuck up!” The blonde said, a blush coating his cheeks.

Shoto had to refrain himself from leaving. Why on earth would Nezu think that farming and gardening would be a good job for the male? He didn’t know anything about this. He grew up in the city! Not on the outskirts! 

“Lighten up, city boy! Today is easy work!” Ryuko, the head lead from farming and gardening said as he passed the boy gloves, “Be thankful that you won’t work with the pigs or chickens. And on the plus side! You’ll have Momo working with you.”

The boy looked to his side where he saw Momo standing, “It’s not that bad, right?”

“Depends on what your version of bad is.” Momo had let out a chuckle, if only he knew.

“Right, I’ll leave you to it!” The long blonde-haired said as she made her way towards her friend, Yawara. 

Momo nodded and entered further down the two aisles of wooden plant boxes. To the right were vegetables; peas, tomatoes, squash, carrots, potatoes, cucumber and cabbages. To the left was the fruit section; strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and melons. Then to the back, there were small trees, ready to bloom. 

Shoto had pointed to the trees, “What are they growing?”

Momo hummed, “I think oranges and a cherry tree.”

“Cherries?” Shoto asked, a bit bizarre, on why they would grow cherries. Oranges he understood, but why not something else?

“Yeah, the community takes a vote on things that need to be planted.” Momo said as she placed some woven baskets on the ground, “We’re also trying to grow turnips, yam, celery, garlic and radishes.”

Shoto had looked to an empty space where he could see the dirt was damp, “The community as a whole makes decisions?” 

Momo nodded as she crouched down, “Mr. Nezu wanted to make it fair. He wants the community to voice their problems and not seem like he is the only one who is in charge.”

“Why not a council team?” He asked as he crouched down next to the girl, watching the way she plucked the peas. 

“Mr. Aizawa, Yagi, Chatora, Gunhead, Mirio, Tsuchikawa and Tamaki are in the council.” She placed a pea in the basket, “Along with Mr. Nezu, of course.” 

She wanted to mention Hizashi, but she decided not to as she was sure that he was long dead by now since the bandits had taken him for collateral. 

“So F/n was wrong.” Shoto muttered as he thought back to yesterday when the girl thought that Sortson only had a leader. 

“That’s the girl you came with, right?” Momo said, “I haven't gotten the time to meet her. I hear she's a pretty good fighter.”

“Yeah, she is.” Shoto said, not noticing the way Momo smiled at him when he had a faint blush on his cheeks. The boy couldn’t feel it from how cold the weather was. 

Momo showed him how to pluck as she continued to speak, “Usually we work on the afternoons, but since I was chosen to work on the plucking, I chose to do it in the morning, that way we don’t do anything on the afternoons unless the farming group need the extra help. I was the only one appointed to pick the fruits and vegetables, so I hope you don’t mind that I choose you to help me. It can be really relaxing.”

Ah, so she’s the reason why he’s here. I guess it was relaxing as he plucked the peas, “It’s fine. Maybe I can learn something.”

She smiled at that, “That’s what I said.”

Time seemed to go by fast as she cleaned the guns. She had paid every attention to the detail and made sure that not a spec of dirt was seen. She hadn’t noticed Ochaco’s team leaving a while ago along with Izuku. She probably should have noticed him as the male was left bothered to not receive her attention. 

“Lunch break.” Gunhead said as he came back and passed her a brown lunch bag, “Feel free to go home, you’ve done plenty today. You can work on the rest tomorrow.”

“Nah.” She catched the bag effortlessly and noticed he didn’t have one, “You’re not eating?”

He shook his head as he gathered his cup that he had bought an hour ago, “I have to check on Mei in her workshop. I am a busy man.”

She nodded as she munched on a sandwich. She then looked at  it, “This is pretty good.”

Before he left, he let out a chuckle, “Thank you.”

It wasn’t long until she finished her sandwich. It’s been quite a while since she’s had a meal, like last night’s dinner. Despite them not having the pork, she did enjoy the rice and eggs as it almost tasted like Katsuon. Izuku was a really great cook. 

When she wiped her hands and crushed her bag, her ears faintly catched on people yelling. She was quick on her feet when she saw people running towards the entrance gate. She grabbed a pistol she had previously loaded and placed it behind her waistband, running out the door and following the others. 

She kept low as she proceeded. She didn’t hear gunshots, but she did hear people arguing and yelling, maybe a little crying. As she got closer, peeking behind a shack, she could see an army truck with at least six people standing by, all with guns and a large group of Sorston people.

She could see Hanta in the crowd, so she made her way to him, her right hand slightly hiding behind her back in case she had to grab her pistol. When she stood by him, she noticed the way his expression was terrified. She whispered as a man in front talked, his hands yanking a tied up yellow-haired male,  “You know them?”

The male nervously bit his nails, a habit that grew after the farm, “..The one on the floor used to be one of my teachers. He’s a friend to another teacher, a really great friend.”

She noted how badly beat up the male was. His hands were tied, his mouth was duct taped and he was blindfolded, “What the hell did they even do to him?”

Before Hanta could speak, Mirio and Tamaki came back with many crates filled with supplies. Nezu stood in the front, his smile that he shared when he met F/n was no longer there and his tone was laced with no emotion, “You got your things, Tomura, so let Hizashi go.”

It seemed that Nezu's comment was funny to Tomura as he grinned. His pistol in hand waved to one of his men, “Dabi, check it. Make sure there isn’t anything missing.”

His companion rolled his eyes as he removed himself from the truck and slowly made his way to the crates. He boredly looked at it before glancing back at his leader, “There’s no guns.”

The statement had caused Mirio and Tamaki to tense up, the crowd behind as well. However, Nezu made sure to keep his composure as he placed his hand behind his back, looking at the male, “That is my fault. I will make sure my people will bring you your supplies.”

Sharing a look with Mirio and Tamaki, they quickly nodded and headed back to the weaponry shack. They made sure to hurry as they didn’t want another friend or another person to die. But as Tomura watched them leave, something irked him as he glanced back at Nezu, “You know, Nezu..I feel like you aren’t taking me seriously.”

“I will have your stuff in a second.” His heart beating faster as he knew where this was heading, “No one has to die.”

“Seems to me like someone has to.” He then cocked his gun to Hizashi’s head, firmly pressing it so that the beat up male knows what's to come next, “This is the second time you’re late with my shit and I’ve been real nice about it the first time. But I’m starting to not like it.” 

The action startled the crowd as some had to look away covering the mouths from maybe letting out a gasp or a scream. When Hanta noticed from the corner of his eyes that F/n’s hand was behind her back, he quickly grabbed her arm before she could do anything. He whispered as he continued to look ahead, “Don’t be stupid. You’ll get us all killed.”

“Wasn’t planning on doing anything.” She whispered back, “Just need to know when to protect me and you.”

She wondered where Shoto was as he was the only one still inside the walls. Katsuki and Izuku had gone for a run a few hours ago in a city that was a bit far, so they wouldn’t return until sundown. Maybe the garden needed extra help. Her thoughts however were answered as a hand had touched her shoulder. 

She glanced, her brows narrowing at the feeling of being touched, but when she saw Shoto breathing heavily from running, her brows relaxed. She looked back ahead when he made no intention to talk to her. She hadn’t noticed the way his eyes had widened.

When Tomura had placed the safety off, Mirio and Tamaki came back with a utility cart filled with rifles and ammos. They had run out of breath as they hesitantly placed it near Dabi’s frame. Though the raven-haired male was too busy looking at his little brother, a swarming of emotions filled his body. He had to quickly play it off.

“Dabi, check it again.” He said, already feeling bored.

Again he checked, his eyes briefly glancing at Shoto before looking at the assault rifles, “Where’s the AR-15?”

“Uh, oh.” Toga said as she had a grin and played with her knife, ready for Tomura’s commands. 

“You know finding weapons is extremely hard these days, Tomura.” Nezu said, trying hard to defend his people, or more specifically Kyoka as she’s mainly in charge when it came to looking for weapons, “The team had to venture out farther from here and they barely made it back. Please, take what you have and leave Hizashi.”

“Hmm.” Tomura took in a deep breath, his grin widening as he stared at the man in charge of Sorston, egging him. A minute of silence went by, until he firmly pressed the gun to Hizashi’s head. A shot was heard and a thud soon followed. 

Shrieks and gasps were heard when Hizashi’s corpse fell to the ground. Nezu had to close his eyes as some blood had gone on his dress shoes and jeans. He swallowed harshly when he opened his eyes and avoided his fallen comrade. He stared at Tomura, keeping his composure, “Take your supplies. We’ll see you again next week.”

Tomura slowly began to shake his head, his face forming from a grin to a snarl as he stared at Nezu. He walked over Hizashi’s body and came close to Nezu, his tone laced with venom, “Goddammit! What does it take for you to lose! Huh!?”

The male then began to scratch his neck, looking around at the crowd for a moment and when his eyes stopped at someone, his hands fell back to his side. How odd was it for Dabi to look like Shoto? He remembered when the raven male—or at that time white-haired male, was taken, one of his men had mentioned a younger brother. 

He made sure that Shoto knew he was looking at him and the action didn’t go unnoticed by those near him, especially F/n and Hanta. For now, Tomura would leave the younger male in the community for a while. At least until Sorston decides to take action. 

His grin returned as he leaned back, his eyes staring at Nezu. His time here was done for the day. He clapped his hand as he made his way back to the truck, passing by Toga, “Kill someone.”

With a jump on her feet, she quickly flung her knife to her left. When her knife successfully wedged itself to Kyoka’s head, she jumped in joy, a blush and grin coating her face, “Yay! I landed it! Did you see that Spinner!? Mr. Compress!? Dabi!?”

While the crowd gasped and shrieked again, Gunhead was able to catch Kyoka’s corpse as he stood behind her. He shakily closed her eyes, uttering a small prayer as a sigh came from his lips. Another dear friend has fallen.

“See you next week, Nezu!” Tomura said as he slammed the passenger door closed and his underlings joined after him.

The crowd could only shed a few tears, watching as some placed their jackets on Kyoka and Hizashi’s body so that no one else had to see their state.   

Once again, Nezu has failed his community. The two bodies below him were his mistake and he was going to make sure that only he felt guilty since he was the key to their deaths. He could already imagine Shota and Denki's devastating faces. 

“Nezu…” Yawara placed his hand on his shoulder, “Bury…or burn?”

The white-haired male took a deep breath in and looked at Yawara, Gunhead and Tsuchikawa, “We bury. We don’t burn our people. Make sure to not drop them and grab a few hands if you need help.”

“I’ll grab the shovels.” One of the Sorston’s people said and quickly headed to the farm. 

“Understood.” The three then followed after the other one. It was a depressing loss. They could only imagine what Shota, Toshinori and Denki would feel knowing that they have lost someone dear to them.

[mads-weasley]

C'est Toi

Eugene Roe x Medic!Reader (Soulmate AU)

Masterlist

A/N: Hiiii @issiie / @cetaitlaverite !! Sorry again for the delay! This is the last gift from me, and I hope you've enjoyed them so far. I'm excited to release this fic! It is my first attempt at a soulmate au, so bear with me! I do not own any of these characters except for (y/n). Enjoy!

Summary: People never know when they'll meet their soulmate, but (y/n) would have never thought she'd meet hers in a hot, humid town in Georgia.

Warnings: mentions of wounds, blood, death, etc...

For as long as she could remember, (y/n) (y/l/n) wondered if she had already met her soulmate. The small mark above her hip was a constant reminder of what, more like who, who was yet to come into her life. As she grew up, she always looked out for the matching mark on every boy she went out with, but soon grew tired of the chase, deciding that it would happen at the right time.

Before the "right time" could come, the world descended into war, and (y/n) enlisted, wanting to serve her country like the rest of the men in the military. After a rough time of convincing generals and higher-ups in the army, she was granted permission to be a combat medic in the 101st Airborne, Easy Company.

Basic was hard, but she made it through Sobel, even though he had it out for her especially. One thing that got her through the long runs up Currahee and the long lectures was her fellow medic, Eugene Roe. The Cajun was shy at first, but (y/n) soon brought him out of his shell when she started talking about the family she left behind. From then on, they were inseparable. You would rarely find one without the other, and if you did, you knew that they would make their appearance soon.

Before they knew it, it was the night of June 5th, hours before the "Day of Days" they trained for would begin.

June 6th, 1944

After getting all geared up for the jump, (y/n) made her way over to where Eugene was making sure everyone in his platoon had enough bandages in their personal aid kits. Her stomach was buzzing with uncertainty and a twinge of fear as she waited for him to finish.

"Salut, ma chérie," he called to her, a smile painting his face. She could tell it didn't quite meet his eyes, though.

"Hey, Gene." She took a deep breath as she approached him. "Are you ready for this? Cause I don't know if I a-"

He gently placed his hands on her arms, squeezing softly to stop her rambling. "You've got this, (y/n/n). Don' worry, okay? We're gonna be fine."

At his touch, a warmth spread through her body, and she could feel a blush creep up her face. He was her best friend, so why was she freaking out at a simple touch from him?

Pushing through the feeling, a defeated sigh escaped her lips as she muttered toward the ground. "Promise me you'll be careful. Please."

He moved his hands to cup her cheeks, his soft browns peering into her (y/e/c) ones. "I promise, ma chérie. You too."

Feeling the heat from his breath on her skin, she glanced down at his lips before catching herself after a split second.

"Alright, Doc," she whispered, reluctantly stepping back. "I'll see you in France."

With a solemn expression, he nodded, scanning her face as if it was the last time he would see her, heart racing. Just before she turned away, he caught her wrist gently, pulling her into a tight embrace, burying his head into the crook of her neck.

When he finally pulled away, Eugene turned and walked towards his plane, knowing that if he turned back, he wouldn't be able to leave her. Doing the same, (y/n) took a deep breath, blinking away the tears that threatened to fall. They would see each other again. They had to.

The unsettled feeling in (y/n)'s stomach didn't settle. Not even when she found Floyd Talbert on the way to the rally point. Not even when she linked up with most of the company at the designated point.

Only did the feeling subside when she laid eyes on a very exhausted-looking Eugene Roe. Along with this feeling, an invisible weight lifted off her shoulders as she saw him patching up a soldier in the distance.

"Gene," she whispered under her breath before running toward him.

The man he was helping started to limp slowly over to the aid station, and Gene stood up, taking a deep breath.

When she called his name again, his head shot up, and a smile instantly formed on his grimy face when he saw her. He met her halfway, throwing his arms around her middle, and pressed his cheek against her hair with a sigh.

"Je remercie le Seigneur," he murmured, "Thank you."

At that moment, Gene was more content than he had ever been before. She was living and breathing. That's all he'd asked for.

The time they were separated, though only hours, he felt like his heart was unable to beat properly until he saw her again. Throughout his journey through the forest of Normandy, the image of her smiling face kept him going, along with the hope he was going to see it again soon.

Pulling away, Gene cupped her face gently, searching her face for injuries. "Are you alrigh'? Are ya' hurt?"

"I'm okay, Gene," she mumbled, placing her hands over his. "I'm okay.

Tension thickened the air, and his heart began to beat out of his chest as she looked up at him with the most beautiful face he'd ever seen. In a split-second decision, he chose to finally tell her how he felt.

"Listen, I need to-"

"Medic!" he was interrupted.

(Y/n) nodded in the call's direction. "Go."

Scanning her face one more time, he ran toward the cry for help, already missing (y/n)'s warmth.

As she watched him go, she tried to calm her racing heart. He was alive. Gene was alive.

The next few days after D-Day, they were ordered to take the town of Carentan. Supposedly, there was a company of German paratroopers holding the city, but no one knew for certain what they were walking into.

Gene and (y/n) were at the back of the formation of Easy as they waited over a hill on the road to Carentan. They watched Lieutenant Winters speak to Harry Welsh before giving the signal to go.

Nodding to each other, they began to run toward the town. Within seconds of the company moving in, a cry in German could be heard, followed by the dreaded sound of machine-gun fire. (Y/n) watched in horror as some of the men beside her were gunned down easily.

"In the ditch!" Winters yelled over the chaos.

Not hearing the order, (y/n) kept on running with the surviving men of 1st platoon into Carentan.

Gene's heart dropped seeing her sprint into the onslaught of bullets.

"(Y/n)!" He yelled, but she didn't hear him.

Dust sprung from the ground before her as she barely made it to cover with Harry and George Luz. Slamming into the concrete building beside them, Welsh looked behind them, realizing the rest of the company was nowhere to be found.

"Where is everybody?" He shouted as Luz shoot a few times around the side of their cover.

Taking cover, George hid behind the wall momentarily. "I have no idea!"

During this interaction, (y/n) was scanning their surroundings, trying to find any indication of where everyone was, especially Gene. At this point, her eyes were trained to find the bright white and red armband they wore, but she saw no trace of it.

'He'll be okay,' she told herself. 'He'll be okay.'

In less than a minute, the rest of Easy began swarming into the town, and that's when the first cry for a medic could be heard.

"Medic up!"

Saying a silent prayer, (y/n) took a deep breath and ran out into the chaos. Bullets whizzed by her as she found the injured man in an alleyway.

"Help me, Doc! It's my arm!" the soldier yelled when she slid down beside him.

"I've got ya, sweetheart. You're gonna be okay."

She pulled out her bag and sprinkled sulfa on the wound, bandaging it up the best she could. Once she was done, she asked the man if he could stand.

"I think so, ma'am."

"Good," she responded. "Go back toward our infill point and take cover there."

Just as the words left her mouth, another yell for a medic could be heard. Within two seconds, she was on her feet, making her way toward the next injured man.

"This is going to be a long and hard day."

A good bit into the battle, Gene had treated many men but was yet to see his (y/h/c) counterpart darting through the streets of Carentan. This could have been attributed to the fact that the town was like a maze, different streets and alleyways made it hard to navigate it, even though it wasn't that large.

Taking cover in an old bakery, Gene glanced to his right to see Shifty Powers aiming his rifle at what he suspected to be a sniper. After he was done shooting for a moment, Roe called out to him.

"Powers. You seen (y/l/n)?"

He had to think for a second but nodded a few seconds later. "Yeah. I saw her helping someone with a shoulder wound not too long ago."

"Alright. Thanks," Gene responded, brows furrowing in concern.

'Where is she, now?' He thought, watching as men flew by the entrance of the bakery.

"Medic!"

Like always, (y/n) went flying toward the sound, disregarding the danger she was putting herself in. Halfway there, she heard the desperate voice of Lip echo through the street.

"Move, move, move!" He yelled, motioning for them to take cover.

With a curse, (y/n) continued toward the injured man 10 feet in front of her. Before she could make it there, she heard the distinct whistle of an incoming shell, and the next thing she knew, she was thrown backward from its impact.

The breath was knocked from her lungs by the force of the explosion. Frozen, she tried to speak, but nothing came out but strangled gasps.

She vaguely heard someone call her name, but all she could focus on was the violent buzzing in her ears and a burning sensation spreading through her stomach. Trying to lean up on her elbows, she yelped at a sharp pain in her abdomen and fell back on the hard ground, hand flying to the area. When she pulled it away, it was coated in crimson.

"I'm h-hit," she whispered to no one in particular. "I ca-can't b-bre-breathe"

Suddenly, a body slid next to hers, their hands hovering over her.

"(Y/n)! Oh mon Dieu."

Gene. It was Eugene. Even though he was sick to his stomach, he pushed it aside and went into medic mode. She wasn't just another wounded soldier, but right then, he had to treat her as one.

"Ge-Gene?"

"Yeah, it's me, chérie. I've got ya. Hold on."

He hooked his hands under her armpits, pulling her toward a nearby building.

"Come on, sweetheart. I got ya."

Whimpers escaped her mouth as he jostled the wound when they moved. Just when they got around cover, Harry Welsh came sprinting around the corner, hand holding his helmet to his head. At the sight before him, his heart dropped. Everyone knew how close the two of them were.

"Doc, do you need help?"

"No," he responded, lifting her shirt to get a look at the wound. "Tell Spina what happened."

With a reluctant nod, Harry raised his rifle and went to find Ralph. Gene glanced at (y/n)'s face, which was covered in scratches and scrunched up in pain, and quickly gave her a morphine shot to the shoulder. Seeing her visibly relax, he felt a slight relief as well.

"You're alright, chérie. You're alright," he whispered, cupping her cheek gently.

"Thans', Ge," she slurred, eyes fluttering shut from the morphine.

He quickly got out a bandage and started to clean the wound, which he discovered was from a two-inch piece of shrapnel that was embedded in her abdomen. Sprinkling sulfa on the area, Gene froze when he saw a discolored area just above her hip.

Shaking the feeling away, he finished bandaging her up before wiping the area in question clean of any blood.

The shape of the mark was instantly recognizable. It was a mirror image of the one on his hip.

If they had matching marks, it could only mean one thing. His eyes widened at the realization.

They were soulmates.

"C'est Toi," he muttered under his breath. "It's you."

The young man's heart began to race at the thought, and all the feelings for her he'd suppressed since Toccoa came bubbling back to the surface.

He was pulled from his stupor by the voice of Spina.

"She alright?"

Gene cleared his throat, "Yea', she took shrapnel to the stomach, but it's out now. She'll have to come off the line."

"Shame. I know we really need her out here with us."

Glancing back down at her, he smiled. "You have no idea how much."

Before long, they carefully loaded (y/n) onto a stretcher, and she was sent to the aid station. When she woke up, a familiar head of dark hair was resting on the side of the bed, his hand intertwined with hers.

Deciding to let him sleep, she watched him silently. Nowadays, a solemn look occupied his handsome face most of the time, so she loved seeing the carefree version of him.

"Glad to see you're awake," whispered Lip, who was laying on the cot beside her.

"Me too. What happened to you?"

"Mortar," he replied matter-of-factly.

"Ah, I'm sorry, Car."

He smiled softly, "Thank you. You too, (y/n). I know he'll miss you."

"I'll miss him just as much," she replied, running her free hand through Eugene's hair.

Shooting up at the action, he grinned at her sleepily, asking. "Hey, chérie. How are you feelin'?"

"Sore, but I'll be okay...What happened after I fell asleep?"(Y/n) paused. "I don't remember much."

Not expecting the question, Gene about choked on nothing just thinking about his life-altering discovery. "I just patched ya' up and brought you here."

Although he was the one who brought her to the aid station, seeing her all bruised and bandaged suddenly made the situation real. He could have lost her. Tears glistened in his eyes, and he dropped his chin.

"I'm so glad you're alright. I don't know what I'd do without you, (y/n). I mean it. When I saw you laying there...I had to-"

"Stop," she interrupted. "You're not gonna lose me...and I don't know what I'd do without you, either."

"Who else would patch you up?" He joked, rubbing her hand softly with his thumb.

(Y/n) chuckled lightly at the joke, followed by a wince. "Please don't make me laugh."

"Sorry, darlin', my jokes normally don't make anyone laugh."

Even though she tried to hold it in, a laugh escaped her lips, causing her to groan lowly. "Gene!"

"Sorry!"

They sat in silence for a few minutes until her eyes began to droop and she yawned. Eugene ran his hands through her hair gently, lulling her to sleep.

"Go to sleep, (y/n)," he whispered. "I'll be here when you wake up."

October 1945: Zel am See, Austria

Over the 8 months since Gene found out about (y/n)'s soulmate mark, he was tempted to tell her many times but decided against it.

Even though he wanted her to know how he felt, he was going to wait until the war was over. The last thing he wanted was for them to finally get confess, only for one of them to get killed.

When the Japanese surrendered in September, everyone was celebrating, but once everything settled down, they began thinking about home, more importantly, who they'd be coming home to. Gene had been thinking about telling (y/n) more and more each day, and it reached a boiling point in mid-October.

The Austrian landscapes around them were some of the most beautiful any of the men had ever seen, specifically, a lake with a perfect view of the Alps. This was where he was going to tell her how he felt; a place that was untouched by war.

That day, the company was finally having a rematch baseball game from V-J Day after George and Frank, who were on the losing team, pitched a fit about it not being a fair game. While the rest of the company was getting ready for the game, Gene approached (y/n)'s billet door.

Taking a deep breath, he knocked on the door.

Heavy footsteps came thumping down the hallway, followed by (y/n)'s aggravated voice.

"No, Frank. I'm not playing in the stupid ga-"

Opening the door, she froze mid-sentence when she saw the shy-looking Cajun.

Her heart skipped a beat at the sight, and a blush crept up her neck. "Gene! I thought you'd be playing in the game?"

He simply chuckled. "I'm not very good at baseball."

"Me neither," she started. "So, what brings you to my humble abode?"

"Since neither of us is playing, would you maybe want to go-"

"Yes," (y/n) interrupted. "Yes."

A smile broke out on his face. "Don't you want to know what I was gonna say?"

"Nope. Surprise me?"

"Sure."

"Alright. Close your eyes for me." Said Gene as they came up to the special place he'd found for them.

She listened and held her hands in front of her with a laugh. "Okay. Just don't let me run into anything, Eugene!"

"Don't worry. I've got ya, chérie," he said sweetly, taking her hands gently.

Arriving, he turned her toward the lake, sliding an arm around her shoulders. "Open."

(Y/n)'s eyes sprung open and widened at the view. "Gene, it's beautiful!"

"Do you like it?" He asked sheepishly.

(Y/n) turned to him with a surprised expression. "Of course I do. Thank you."

This was the moment.

Gene gently took her hands in his once again. "(Y/n)," he whispered. "I love you. And I kno-"

He was cut off by (y/n) pulling his face down to hers, crashing their lips together. As they pulled away, she chuckled breathily. "Do you know how long I've wanted to do that?"

The young man was beaming with happiness. "Just how long?" he questioned.

"Since I found out we were soulmates," she said, shrugging her shoulders with a grin.

Gene's eyes went wide. "Wait! You knew?"

"Since Toccoa."

"How?"

"I think you forget that you slept shirtless in Georgia."

Running a hand down his face, he sighed. "Of course. I'm an idiot."

"No, you're not," (y/n) paused. "And I love you, too."

[justforbooks]

César Aira

He has published more than 100 novels, gives his work away, and his surrealist books have a massive cult following. Now Argentina’s favourite rule-breaker is tipped for the Nobel prize

Afew years ago when Patti Smith played at a cultural festival in Denmark, she told the crowd that she was happy to be playing in the presence of one of her favourite authors. It was said she had only agreed to play the festival because the author, César Aira, would be in the audience. Aira, although celebrated in his home country, Argentina, was little known outside Latin America until he was discovered in 2002 by the Berlin-based literary agent Michael Gaeb, who was enchanted by his unconventional, surrealist books, which shift atmosphere, and even genre, from one page to another.

At first it proved difficult to sell Aira’s novels to a wider audience. “The fundamental problem when promoting César’s work is that the editor always asks: ‘What is the novel about?’” Gaeb told me. “And in the case of César, it’s not easy to answer that question.”

Gaeb has since sold Aira’s books in 37 languages. At the start of October last year, the English betting site Nicer Odds named Aira as a favourite for the Nobel prize in literature, slightly ahead of candidates such as Haruki Murakami and Salman Rushdie, who have appeared more regularly on such lists.

“I already know that every October, until my death, I’m going to have to put up with that.” Said by any other writer, this would come across as a humble brag. But Aira doesn’t seem to be the kind of person who appreciates disrupting events. “Sometimes the candidacy is useful to me,” he said, laughing. “For instance, now we live in a more luxurious apartment, one a little beyond my circumstances. And they rent to me because they see that I am a candidate for the Nobel.”

His apartment is located just five blocks from his office, which in its turn was the house where he lived for more than 40 years with his two children and his wife, Liliana Ponce, a poet and a scholar of Japanese literature. The recent move took place because Ponce has an illness that affects her mobility, and the new building has an elevator.

Aira, who does not speak to the local press and whose interviews with foreign media are usually short and conducted via email, rarely leaves Flores, a lower-middle-class neighbourhood that’s best known today as a textile hub for the clothing stores in wealthier areas of the city. Early in his career, Aira developed a method called the fuga hacia adelante (something like “forward flight”), which consists of writing a few hours a day and never looking back to edit until he reaches the end of a tale. “I revise much more than I did before,” casually demystifying what is perhaps the fact most repeated about his work. “I think that I’ve become more demanding. Or else I’m writing worse than before.”

The novels were – and sometimes still are – written in neighbourhood bars, cafes and even fast-food joints, such as McDonald’s or Pumper Nic, a now-extinct Buenos Aires chain. “It began when my children were small,” he said. “If I had a bit of time, I escaped, and I went to write. But after the pandemic, the bars and cafes started to fill up a lot. And there’s the issue of the telephones. If at a neighbouring table two people are conversing, it’s possible to ignore them. But if there’s just one person talking on the phone, it’s as if they’re speaking with you. It’s horrible!”

Aira was born in Coronel Pringles, in a small town in the south of the province, 300 miles from the capital. “I was thinking just now of my first memories of childhood because they are of the revolution of 1955,” he said – the year Juan Perón was removed from power by a coup for the first time. There was only one cinema, and television had not yet caught on. But the town had two well-stocked public libraries. “When I was still a teenager, I was already reading Joyce, Proust and Kafka,” Aira said. His precocity was also stimulated by an amateur public education in which classes were taught not by specialised professors but by volunteers with gigantic private collections of books. There were doctors who taught philosophy classes (“in those days, doctors were humanists”) and lawyers who taught history. “I didn’t have that kind of bureaucratic education where the teacher knows more,” he said. “It was something a lot freer.”

When he was about 14 years old, Aira met Arturo Carrera, a friend who, like him, would become a nationally recognised writer. Aira dedicated himself to prose; Carrera, poetry. The friends tried to stay up to date with the literary world by getting hold of magazines that were based in the capital. One of those publications, Testigo (Witness), held a contest. Carrera sent a few poems, and Aira sent a story. They both came out winners.

At the time, the majority of promising secondary school students in Coronel Pringles continued their university studies in Bahía Blanca, a city 75 miles away. “Law was the only graduate course they didn’t have,” Aira said. He told his parents he was interested in a law degree and moved to the capital. “I wanted to come for the art galleries, the cinemas,” he said. For two years, he studied law at the University of Buenos Aires, and then he transferred to the department of literature.

Testigo folded before it could publish Aira’s winning story. But one of the judges of the award, the novelist Abelardo Arias, wrote to congratulate him. Aira and Arias began a correspondence, and soon Aira showed Arias a manuscript. Arias loved it and passed it on to the publisher Galerna, which agreed to print it.

“It was a big thing, even more so for a young person of that age,” Aira said.

One day, walking aimlessly through the streets of the city with a friend, he came across a building he knew. “Here, in this building, an editor wants to publish a novel of mine,” he told her. “Let’s go up.” When he arrived, he asked to speak with the person responsible for his book. Then he asked for the manuscript back: “I don’t want to publish it any more.” The editor was astonished.

I asked Aira why he’d acted like that. “Just because,” he said. He shrugged and laughed. “I wanted to impress her.”

To write all day long without revising until you reach the end of a story produces an obscene quantity of books. Nobody I met in Buenos Aires ventured to pin down exactly how many volumes Aira has published. César Aira, un catálogo (César Aira: A Catalogue), organised by the writer and lawyer Ricardo Strafacce, is the most notable effort to itemise his work. Launched in 2018 with the aim of helping the uninitiated, the catalogue reprints one page from each of Aira’s books. The catalogue was commissioned by his publisher in part to commemorate his 100th book (Aira likes round numbers), but in the time the catalogue took to reach the printer, Aira had already written two more.

When I sat with Strafacce in the Varela-Varelita bar in Buenos Aires at the end of a November afternoon, he was still indignant with the catalogue’s publisher, who he said had made changes without telling him. For instance, the publisher had edited the date of publication for the Aira story El hornero (The Ovenbird). “I’m furious,” he said. “You can talk to [the editor]. I don’t give a shit.” He complained about another small modification: in the biographical information for one of the titles, to his mention of Madrid, the editor had added “Spain”. In Strafacce’s eyes, the detail made him seem like an idiot, a “boludo”.

“Don’t writers get worked up about the most incredible minutiae?” said Francisco Garamona, the editor in question. With a cigarette in one hand and a glass of soda in the other, he explained that he’d merely used the version of El hornero that Aira himself had authorised, rather than the one in circulation, which was pirated. He was sitting on a sofa in La Internacional Argentina, his bookshop, where he also operates his publishing house, Mansalva. Today, Mansalva probably publishes the most titles by Aira. “There he is, and here are more, here’s another, and here,” Garamona said as he counted the shelves in the bookshop. “One, two, three … seven. Seven niches of just Aira.”

In a way, the decor reflected Garamona’s multifaceted career; in addition to being an editor and a bookshop owner, he is a musician, a film-maker, a poet and the former owner of an art gallery. Today he is also one of two editors whom Aira defined for me as “official”. The other is Damián Ríos, from the publisher Blatt & Ríos.

The honour of “official” editors must inspire some pride in Ríos and Garamona, because Aira has worked with more than a few. His extensive body of work is decentralised in dozens of editorial houses, the vast majority of them tiny, which makes him an author at once ubiquitous and elusive. In this context, it’s not difficult to understand how a controversy like the one with El hornero came about. Aira must be one of the few writers in the world, maybe the only one, to sell 25,000 copies of one title and at the same time launch other titles in much smaller print runs. He has never charged royalties or advances for the small publishing houses in Argentina. “That was the agreement I made with Michael [Gaeb],” Aira said. “I don’t meddle with the world. And he doesn’t meddle with Argentina. In Argentina, everything is free.”

Aira’s strong cultural presence today conceals the stuttering start of his career. “For many years, this was the only proof I was a writer,” he said, showing a handful of yellowing pages, the nucleus of a book without a cover. His voice shook, this time, emotion had truly moved him. In his hands was a copy of Moreira, considered by some to be his first published novel. In the background, an atmospheric combination of dissonant chords and piano notes faded away. “I only listen to Morton Feldman these days,” Aira said. He added that he’d recently made an exception to listen to Now and Then, a “new” song by the Beatles completed thanks to help from artificial intelligence.

After going up to the office of the publishing house Galerna in 1969, in that half-impulsive gesture to ask for his manuscript back, some years went by before Aira had a chance to publish again. Moreira was supposed to come out in 1975, but was delayed. The editor of the book was Aira’s friend Horacio Achával, owner of the publishing house Achával Solo. In 1976, there was another military coup in Argentina. “Horacio was a political militant and had to go away,” Aira said. “He took off. He went to Uruguay.” The copies of Moreira, still without a cover, were left stranded in a warehouse. Years later, Achával returned to the country and finalised the cover. The book was officially launched in December 1981, just weeks after Ema, la cautiva (Ema, the Captive), which came out from another publishing house in November 1981 and today disputes with Moreira the title of Aira’s official debut.

Strafacce told a different story. “Moreira was printed in June 1975,” he said. “The money ran out, and there wasn’t enough to print the cover because in the same month, there was a financial crisis and a bank run here in Argentina.”

Aira published a few books in the 80s, but according to Sandra Contreras, who founded a small publishing house that published him throughout the 90s and 2000s, it was not until 1990’s Los fantasmas (Ghosts) that he accelerated his production. At the time, she said, he also spoke more explicitly of a new phase, “the beginning of the regular publication of his novelas and novelitas”. Aira was the first author to be published not only by Contreras’s publishing house but also by Mansalva and Blatt & Ríos in the early 00s.

In the 90s, small publishers like these were rare. Garamona said that this began to change in 2001, when after almost a decade of one-to-one parity between the Argentine peso and the US dollar, the local economy went through one of the worst recessions in Latin American history. Importing books became expensive. And so, after spending years favouring authors from Spain, local bookshop owners finally had eyes for Argentine literature.

When Gaeb first encountered Aira’s work in Guadalajara, in 2002, Aira had already begun to occupy his paradoxical central position at the margins of the culture. “He is a writer who exists in different fields, at different levels,” the fiction writer and critic Alan Pauls says, from his Berlin study, in a conversation over Zoom. “On the one hand, he has quite a lot of popularity. And on the other, he remains a niche writer, a cult writer. We still think of him as a writer of the avant garde, a manufacturer of very sophisticated objects. He’s someone who occupies the centre to his regret, not because he looked for it.”

To get hold of Moreira today isn’t easy – on the site Mercado Libre Argentina, in mid-December, there was a copy going for about $1,200 (£950). On the cover that for years remained unfinished, there is a monstrous, saturnine figure riding a yellow horse. Beneath the image, the first sentence of the novel prominently appears: Un día, de madrugada, por las lomas inmóviles del Pensamiento bajaba montado en potro amarillo un horrible gaucho (“One day at dawn, through the unmoving hills of Thought, mounted upon a yellow colt, there descended a horrible gaucho”).

In Spanish, El Pensamiento can refer to both the abstract noun, and the village close to where Aira was born and spent his childhood. The phrase gives a taste of the kind of mixture harboured within the novel. Evoking Juan Moreira, a folkloric knife-fighting hero of the Argentine Pampas, the book narrates a gaucho-esque pantomime, shot through with philosophical allusions and images from dreams. In Moreira, one can already recognise the multifaceted and frenetically imaginative style for which Aira would later be known. But the Airean machine still seems to just be getting started: there is a heavy self-consciousness that is absent from the books that follow. In these later works, his prose is limpid and inviting. Here is the start of El mago (The Magician), published almost exactly 20 years after Moreira:

In March this year, the Argentine magician Hans Chans (his real name was Pedro María Gregorini) participated in a convention of illusionists in Panamá; the event, just as the invitation and promotional leaflet described, was a regional meeting of prestigious professionals, a preparation for the great world congress the following year, which was celebrated every 10 years and this time would take place in Hong Kong. The previous one had been in Chicago, and he had not gone. Now he planned not only to participate, but also to establish himself as Best Magician in the World. The idea was not crazy or megalomaniacal. It had a foundation as reasonable as it was curious: Hans Chans was a genuine magician.

Aira takes this magical premise seriously, drawing from the dilemma a tale both comic and – in its exploration of the complex relations between being and seeming – densely philosophical. Hans Chans has the gift to be an illusionist, but not the vocation. He is too self-indulgent to dedicate himself to the profession. The narrator writes: “Maybe, paradoxically, the advantage he had played against him and condemned him to mediocrity.” Without patience for the theatre of magic, Chans limits himself to drawing handkerchiefs from wine glasses, and things of that sort.

It would not be unfair to read El mago as an allegory for the career of Aira himself: of someone who has the gift of writing but for whom the most deeply rooted conventions of the profession seem meaningless. Just like Hans Chans, the author is aware of his gift. Aira is affable and courteous, but he is far from being modest. (Modesty, faked or not, is another convention of the profession.) About the manuscript he asked to take back from Galerna in 1969, he said: “It was better than anything else that was published at the time.”

He has never been afraid to throw darts at other writers. When we spoke, he was disdainful of Roberto Bolaño, saying he had read only one novel by the Chilean author, which he found “terrible”. Aira also said that the great Argentine novelist Juan José Saer had once warmed to him, when he was young and starting out, but then became envious when Aira started getting more attention. In 1981, shortly before Moreira was finally published, Aira wrote an essay titled Novela argentina: nada más que una idea (The Argentine Novel: Nothing But an Idea), which mounts a general attack on literature of the period. The essay begins:

The current Argentine novel, beyond a doubt, is a stunted, ill-fated species. In general terms, what defines a poor novelistic product is the poor use, crude and opportunistic, of the available mythical-social material. In other words, the meanings that dictate how a society lives at a given historical moment. But the literary transposition of a reality demands the existence of a very exact passion: that of literature. And a rapid, provisional survey, not at all exhaustive, of Argentine novelists reveals that they have not read deeply, and show a complete absence of that passion along with its epiphenomenon, talent.

Aira, who had not even published a novel at that time, sticks his scalpel swiftly and mercilessly into a series of authors, most of whom have been more or less forgotten. The essay, though, is remembered these days for Aira’s attack on Ricardo Piglia, who, until his death in 2017, was a kind of public rival to Aira, at least in terms of the very different literary forms they espoused.

Pauls linked Aira’s attacks at the start of his career to his ambition to reconfigure the Argentine novel. “When he emerges in the literary environment, he knows perfectly well the writers he has to tussle with,” he said. For Pauls, Aira disturbed the paradigm of a certain progressive Argentinian literature, a literature of the left, very masculine and politically committed. “Something that literary school could not stand, for example, was a certain kind of work with frivolity, with the banal, with the superficial,” Pauls said.

Aira’s style crystallised very early on. Even if Moreira is not at the level of his next books, there is no clear sense of progression in Aira’s trajectory. Maybe for that reason, none of the readers could point to a favourite work.

Aira said he will have two new novelitas ready soon. He said he plans to give one to Ríos and the other to Garamona. “And now I’ve been thinking, because one of them came out better than the other, more imaginative – who will I give that one to?” he said, laughing.

Aira rejects great theorising about his decision to give away books free or publish the majority with small publishing houses. “His form of publishing is part of his poetics, his resistance to editorial capitalism, his punk attitude,” Gaeb said.

Contreras classified the hyperproduction of little books for small publishers as an aesthetic decision. “Something like: it’s enough for a tale to be imagined to make it necessary to publish,” she said. “There is also a fascination for the book as a unique object.”

Pauls said he interprets this decision as an avant garde way of thinking: “If the kind of literature I make is never going to have hundreds of thousands of readers, what happens if I inundate the market with books?”

When Aira was asked if he was edited nowadays, first he said that “nobody revises anything”. Then he conceded that Ríos sometimes makes one comment or another. Ríos corroborated this, but found it hard to define the exact nature of his comments, and he made it clear that they weren’t about anything structural. Contreras said that in her day, she at most corrected the odd typo.

Garamona laughed at the notion of editing or revising a text by Aira. “He has written since he was a teenager without stopping, and has such a mastery of form and content that in the end there isn’t much left to do,” he said. “You just have to pick it up, make a good cover with a pretty design, correct two or three errata.”

Los hombrecitos con sobretodo (The Little Men in Overcoats) is the title of the novel Aira defined as the most imaginative of the two he recently finished. “What happens is that here in the neighbourhood, two blocks away, where the fire station is located, men pop out at night,” he said. “At midnight they come popping out of the ceiling. Little men suddenly appear like that, really tiny men, they all wear overcoats. And at night, I go and watch them.”

He spoke as if he were beginning a fairytale. The low, tremulous voice transiting between fine irony and rapture; the sense of humour; the erudition; the sedentary life in a dark house in the neighbourhood where he’d lived for decades, from which he generates cosmopolitan, compact stories full of metafictional layers – all of it reminds us a bit of Jorge Luis Borges.

For an Argentinian, to say a great local writer seems like or is influenced by Borges must sound absurdly lazy. But both authors start their brief, densely packed books with literary anecdotes or memories written in crisp prose. In the works of both, there are frequent essayistic digressions. Both persistently turn to the literary technique of ekphrasis. There are metafictional and metaliterary games, references to other works.

The main difference is perhaps in the intensity and direction of the narrative swerves, and Aira’s greater comfort with pop culture and genre literature. Whereas a story by Borges might take up a lost 19th-century Persian manuscript, a novel by Aira might locate it behind the balcony of a McDonald’s in Flores, pored over by an adolescent with an acne problem.

Borges was almost infantile in his complete dedication as a reader, distant from the mundane hustle and bustle of the world. Nobody had anything substantial to say about Aira’s private life either. “He likes to drink coffee and talk about literature,” Ríos said. Gaeb said that Aira sometimes seems to get along better with children. (In fact, the person about whom Aira spoke with the greatest passion, albeit briefly, was Arturito, his only grandson.)

Strafacce, his friend for more than 20 years, said he found it easier to explain what Aira doesn’t talk about. “We’re used to not speaking about politics because I’m Trotskyist,” he said. “And César is not.”

It was the week of the second round of the presidential election. A few days later, the Peronist Sergio Massa, a member of the centre-left governing coalition at the time, would be defeated by the far-right Javier Milei. “Milei is worse than Bolsonaro,” said Aira, in his only comment about politics.

That day, before going to the cafe, Aira passed through the Museo Barrio de Flores. Earlier, he had been irritated at a package from one of his foreign publishers: a box containing copies of one of his novels in Dutch translation. “They keep sending me those here,” he complained, as if sending books to the author himself were a kind of gaffe. Aira handles books with the avidity of a collector. He was mesmerised for a good while that afternoon by an edition of the French author Raymond Roussel, one of his surrealist idols, and he showed us a little purple box the size of a pack of cigarettes: a tiny special edition the Biblioteca Nacional had made of El ilustre mago (The Famous Magician), another novel of his. But for some reason, he wanted to rid himself of the box with the Dutch edition.

The Museo Barrio de Flores does exactly what its name suggests, displaying all kinds of memorabilia – old calculators and radios, paintings, newspaper clippings, political propaganda – related in some way to famous inhabitants of the neighbourhood. The definition of “famous” is broad, ranging from Perón – who lived there with his first wife – to the two preteen nieces of the museum’s director, who created a children’s library during the pandemic and appeared on the front page of the newspaper Clarín. Aira seemed at ease there. His name occupies one of the steps on the staircase by the front door. On the step above is the name of the great writer Roberto Arlt; on the one below, an advertisement for a real-estate broker.

Aira left the box of books with an employee and continued through the museum. At one point he dwelt on a framed letter written by Pope Francis, another former inhabitant of the neighbourhood. “Did you see how pretty the pope’s handwriting is? They don’t teach that in school any more, no.” He went to another room, where there was a showcase with some of Aira’s books.

When he opened the door, there was a group of ladies sitting around a big table. A class was in session. They all smiled pleasantly, focusing their attention on the author. Only the instructor of the course seemed to be younger than 65.

“What is the name of the little plane that flies near the ground?” one of the ladies asked.

“The what?” said Aira.

“The little plane,” the lady repeated, with a certain impatience, lowering her open palm toward the floor. “The one that flies near the ground.”

For a while, everyone stared at Aira, waiting for an answer. “An unexpected question,” joked the instructor awkwardly.

Aira shrugged, and we went to the corner to look at his showcase.

✔ This is an edited version of César Aira’s Magic, published in the Dial. The article originally appeared in the Brazilian magazine Piauí

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[theoldlesbianwithcats]

nanshe fest anon here, haha let me invent a callsign .... how about Rio :)

i totally relate to what you mean when you said you are not able to distinguish between the "lesbian" and bisexual experience shared in that interview. things like this hindered my ability to understand what my sexuality even was, since i cant relate to either of them. then i read "lesbian books" and dont understand how they can have sex with men without a mental breakdown. i had a mental breakdown about my sexuality when i was pressured to marry, tried DIY conversion therapy on myself but when i faced with the option of even touching a man sexually, death seemed better because how could i live like that? theres no way. of course this made my mental health worse but not to trauma dump - i am ok now, so dont worry.

the anon who talked about strap ons was also very insightful. the focus on strap-on contributed to me developing a severe sense of dysphoria around my genitalia with this depression that i would never be able to have a "real" sex life.

this is why it is so important for lesbian experiences to be heard, i think the queer spaces are making things worse for us, particularly when we are young and vulnerable. also i am from a non-english speaking country, where homosexuality is still criminal so i could only turn to these spaces for support. i think even in countries such as the US, its the same for a lot of lesbian girls in rural towns... they turn to these spaces for help online since its so scary to be a child in a violent homophobic family. maybe they get helped because its worse than nothing. but also it can screw with ur mind a lot. my dream lesbian event would be to hear from more lesbians of color who grew up outside west europe/us/canada... i had to leave my birth country to be able to have a future. but i feel so awkward to be the only lesbian of color in the room 99% of the time. its not that the white women are cruel, dont misunderstand me, they can be lovely and supportive. but it adds an extra level of alienation, because so many times in my country people would call homosexuality as a white persons invention. of course i know that lesbians exist elsewhere but it would be nice to see that in person at these events!

-rio

Hi again, Rio! :D

Yeah it's messed up that even in the "lesbian community" we think we're freaks so we don't even dare talking about our experience! I grew up in a small town and I remember discreetly reading sex ed books for teens at the bookshop for any info or positivity about lesbians, instead I would only find a paragraph telling me it's a phase. So tumblr was my lesbian safe space back in 2010, for example the "it gets better" campaign really helped me when I was bullied in high-school (unfortunately now that charity pretends they have no idea what a lesbian is...) Now the lesbian content is awful and lesbophobic everywhere, offline and online.

And I feel you about lesbian books, I finally got around to reading one I bought years ago because it was recommended to me and it was about two "lesbians" leaving their husbands for each other... We need book lists with actual lesbian rep!

All the strap-on stuff invading lesbian spaces is so weird yeah... A few minutes ago I clicked on a blog because she was talking about wanting to finger a woman while having acrylic nails, which made me go 🤨 and while she called herself a lesbian, it was obvious she wasn't, it was all talk about c*ckwarming and deepthr*ating ("but it's only for strap and girlc*ck, if you're a man do not interact!!!!" 🤪) I don't know if you had sex already but let me tell you that you are not lacking anything and no real lesbian will think you need a sex toy to be a complete partner and have real sex, she will only want you as you are. I mean, my ex-gf and I never even considered trying a strap-on and we definitely thought the sex we were having was real and amazing haha

About meeting lesbians of color, maybe you can find events on Instagram? I wondered why I never saw many women of color at lesbian events in Paris until I learned that black women preferred creating their own events and advertising them on Insta! Maybe you can also find an organization for LGBT refugees? Hopefully you can meet lesbians there :)

[moonieshinesims]

Generation One - Chapter Forty Three

Since River had confirmation that Ichiban was being held in Strangerville, she would be cutting her time in Mt. Komorebi short. As usual, chaos ensues before she can even leave the country...

**I also had no idea what font I'd used in the previous two posts (because I'm a dummy and forgot to write it down), so from here on out I will be using a different font!

Excuses were already in place for her internship, which she knew Arakawa-sama would be understanding of. At least, with the excuse she provided him, he would be...

If someone in her "family" was going through an emergency, shouldn't she be there to help? Who would understand that more than a Simkuza family crime boss?

River was sad that she wouldn't be seeing much more of Reiko, Jun, and Michiko. She'd really learned to like them over the few months they'd been together.

She had her real family, her sorority sisters, and now these guys. For someone who started out pretty unpopular in high school, things were certainly different now!

River decided to have a last "going out get together" with Reiko and Jun before she flew out to Strangerville. It had taken her a few weeks to even get all the stuff settled to move over that way... She knew she would still be in classes, online for a while, until graduation. And she also needed to secure a place to live. Thankfully, Havarti and Cassie were on the job!

That meant she could relax a bit with her friends... But Jun was being elusive for some reason and couldn't make it.

River had yet to go to an onsen the whole time she'd been in Mt. Komorebi. Reiko had suggested it when River first told her of her plans, and she was really glad she got to go!

When they made it back into town, River wanted to take photos with Reiko in the photobooth.

A few days later River finally heard from Jun and he agreed to meet her at a local bar.

But as it turns out, Jun was just really emotional about River's departure and didn't want to embarrass himself by admitting to it!

Meanwhile...

In the middle of River and Jun's conversation, they could hear screaming coming from a building over. They took off running in the direction of the commotion only to find that Damien... River's boss at NITCA... had burned alive thanks to some faulty electrical wiring at the laundromat!

Jun stood panicked, "I just... I just used those washers the other day... That could've been me!"

While River took off. While she had gotten rid of many of her fears around last year's Harvest Fest thanks to those potions she found in that quaint little shop back home... but apparently the fear of death was not one of the ones she'd wished away!

When she got home that afternoon, she had to tell Michiko the news of her father's passing...

"He was my dad and I don't give a rat's ass that he's dead... So, you shouldn't either!"

River wished she could be as cold as Michiko. She wondered if she'd inherited that trait from Damien himself...

A Few Days Later...

River came home from work to see the fire brigade putting flames out in her apartment. Emergency services whisked away a charred pile of remains.

"...Michiko?"

While she wasn't necessarily upset about Damien's death (more-so upset that she'd seen the body), she was very unhappy about her strange little roommate who she'd come to consider a friend.

"Like father, like daughter, huh..."

There was a small funeral held for Michiko a few days later. Not many people came other than their NITCA associates. She really didn't have any other family or friends.

Reiko pulled Jun aside and gave him a firm talking to for being insensitive. Michiko wasn't the nicest of girls and had her fair share of issues, but was still their friend.

River took her time to grieve, and even got to take some of Michiko's ashes with her.

While she hadn't witnessed Michiko's death, that was now 6 people close to her (whether for good or bad reasons) that had perished around her in the past few years...

How many more were going to die? Would she ever get used to it?

[gnomeicecream]

Dream time with Gnome.

I had a dream about a movie.

We start with an old guy alone in the middle of nowhere ranch country. You see little mementos from his past where he was able to travel, adventure, keep up with family. Then an old photo, two brothers, a young looking lion with a sleek coat. This contrasts the present: A cobbled together shelter made of used parts and scrap sunk in a hill under a tree. The closest neighbor is a severe agoraphobic who only interacts with people from within a steel and glass robot. Old Man goes through his day, letting his animals out of the pasture, going for a walk. Just killing time, waiting for it to return the favor.

He's got his affairs in order, so he drives out during a cold night. Gets out of his big truck with Old Lion and starts walking, never intending to return. But he isn't the one who gets weak first, its Old Lion. Seeing his last friend collapse, he looses his nerve and turns back till they get home.

One day some time later, he spots a massive storm of dust slowly pushing its way east, consuming the railroad tracks that pass down the hill in front of his house. Hoards of animals are fleeing before it, wild, domestic, forest and field. Old Man stops only long enough to grab his family recipe book and Old Lion, swings by in his truck to get his neighbor. He basically kidnaps him cause he is to afraid to run.

He follows the railroad tracks cause there is no road till he comes across a small family, two girls and two parents and offers them a lift in his truck bed. The cab is full from Mr. Wheely. I don't dream it but know that the parents get touched by the storm because they are outside, but the two kids they guard with their bodies survive.

As they go along they scavenge food, find clues, listen to old radio recordings of an obstacle adventure race starring The Daredevil. They find the last party member. A teen boy was left behind by his father was a rail engineer who disappeared getting supplies to and picking up any survivors who could be found in the Dust.

They find the last clue, where it all started. There's nothing but an abandoned town and goldmine any further out then Old Mans Hideaway. He leaves his kids, his friend, his recipe book, and his truck behind, taking only Old Lion and himself. Heading into death again, this time unafraid cause hes got something to live for. And his lack of fear kept him safe from the Dust.

The rusty, ancient electric engine gets him most of the way to the mountain. To the gold mine where the miners were killed one by one as they struck it rich so the owners didn't have to payout, but then this and that, magic, revenge, ghosts, dust storm. Daredevil, an embodiment of Old Man's recklessness and youth, won't let him pass. Old Man talks till Daredevil's false confidence and bravado wavers, and he dies. Old Lion, his courage and will, goes on to guide the ghosts onward. Old Lion was comfortable with the end of his life.

Old Man has a new lease on life. As he leaves he sees a train pull into the station, its that teenage kids father. They both ride on back, the Old Man passes on some sage advice, The End.

My dreams were heavy on the metaphor last night, ayy. Very strong narrative through, good job me. I did clean it up a little in the write up but not as much as you'd think.

[charmingkit]

CHRISTOPHER “KIT” CHARMING || 28 || HEIR/SOCIALITE

Favorite song: Quietly Yours - Birdy

Sexuality: Bisexual

Pronouns: He/Him

Big Three (sun, moon, rising signs): Aquarius Sun, Libra Moon, Capricorn Rising

BIOGRAPHY:

Growing up, Kit Charming had, much like his name suggests, a charmed life. He and his father, Charles,  lived in one of the largest mansions in all of town, and while he was an only child, Kit was never lonely. The two had plenty of servants and friends just as wealthy as themselves to keep Kit and his father busy, but what they lacked was the woman they loved most: Kit’s mother. The lady of the Charming household passed away when Kit was a small child, leaving him siblingless and motherless. Kit’s father was satisfied with the small burden of one son to raise and groom to maintain the Charming name. Kit became an apprentice of sorts, learning the ways of running a centuries-old estate and its accompanying vineyard. Though Charles never remarried, it was clear from his early twenties that Kit was expected to marry a woman wealthy enough to contribute to the Charming estate and beautiful enough to maintain the image that his family established long ago.

It was Kit’s father who suggested that he throw a ball in hopes of finding a wife. The idea of a ball was a far cry from the lavish, wild parties that Kit was used to throwing at the Charming mansion, but he figured it was worth a shot to keep Charles quiet about his marriage prospects. After all, the only women he ever found at parties of his own, he didn’t keep around much longer. It was there that he met her—the masked woman who occupied his entire night and all of his thoughts thereafter. She was beautiful, kind, and all the things that he had been looking for in someone to marry. The mystery woman fled the ball just before midnight, and while Kit has been searching for her ever since, the only trace he has of her is a glove she left behind that night. Since then, Kit has given up on the prospect of marriage, though he knows his father won’t allow himself to pass until he sees his son married off. To keep his life more protected from Charles’ scrutiny, Kit has moved to a country home on the outskirts of Echo Isle where he has a quiet life and a few maids to keep him comfortable and less lonely. He still enjoys throwing his notorious parties every now and then when his father is away traveling at the Charming estate, all in hopes that his mystery woman will show up again one day.

HEADCANONS:

Because of his background, people who don’t know Kit assume that he is rigid and overly polite. However, those who actually knew him know that he is a playful young kid inside, trying to get out of his responsibilities.

Kit was very close to his mother. He doesn’t usually talk about it and refuses to open up to anyone. However, the death of his mother took a heavy toll on him. He didn’t believe love to exist until the Masked Woman came to his life. Until then he searches for her, hoping the fates would allow him to find love once more. 

Kit usually throws lavish parties and is never one to shy away from the crowd. He likes being social, and seeing everyone in the vicinity having fun. He knows not all the people around him are his friends, in fact, he has very few friends. Still, that doesn’t stop him from enjoying the company of strangers and acquaintances.  

Reputation is everything to Kit. Being born rich and pressured by his father to maintain the dignity of his family, Kit was instilled to create a good image of himself – that is until alcohol comes in.

Having no mother to care for him made Kit stubborn and hard on himself. There was no gentle touch of a woman to ease him from pain. Only strict advice of a father to "man up". Kit hopes that someday he can be vulnerable, without any judgment thrown at him.

Like old wealthy families, Kit is talented. He could sing, play the piano, guitar, and violin at a young age. He could speak multiple languages and has been to a lot of countries for business purposes. He is not afraid to showcase his skills to attract attention. 

As the heir of his family’s business, Kit knows his wine inside out. He is particularly an expert in everything that involves wine. Someday, he hopes to expand the business more than anyone from his family had done.

A lover of horses. Kit likes to gamble, particularly in races. He has a collection of horses, though his favorite one is Duke. 

OTHER SKILLS:

Expert Swordsman: Kit Charming has an excellent sword and fencing skills. He knows how to use a sword, dagger, and a little of arrow.

Horse Riding: Kit Charming is able to ride a horse well, even at high speed in difficult circumstances. He knows his horses well and is often seen gambling at the races.

[rphelperblog]

Couples Witness Protection Rp Meme

assorted-feel free to edit or change pronouns for rp uses inspired by some of the wanted threads on the lovely blog @bcrgondy​

“Not everyone is under witness projection for being a participant. I thought you would have known me enough to know better.”

“Honestly, the nice guy act was getting a bit hard to hold up.”

“Look, I get the whole hiding in plain sight thing, but isn’t putting two people that would be top on the kill list as husband and wife a bit like sitting ducks.”

“Someone really weird came to talk to me at work. they were describing you with a completely different name.”

“Wait- you look like my husband. He was an informant on some big trials and then disappeared.”

“I have stories from another life. Stories that might just make the devil weep.”

“It’s hard to admit, but, sometimes, becoming someone else is the only true way to know who you really are.”

“If this were to continue, we would have to go away together. Hide together with our lives like memoirs of people we have never known.”

“Would you resent me for choosing a way out of this that might just send our family into the program?”

“ I may be an agent, but it can also be like an acting coach.”

“Look, i am not just some farmer. A nice girl like you should really find a nice guy or gal or them to hang around.”

“The justice system truly creates many victims in its attempt to find justice for something only God or a time machine can fix.”

“Sometimes, it’s odd to want to be forgotten.”

“If you see these people or hear these names, you leave. And if they have you, promise me you will tell them my name immediately.”

“It takes a while to stop looking over your shoulder. You know how people talk in prison. Anyone out could relay your identity, but so many things could happen that thinking them over only rakes the placid lakes growing through you onto burning hot coals.”

“What a country this is were people who witness a crime are forced into a life utterly different to testify when the murders or dealers have the options of their freedom or a time served that wasn’t life.”

“Honey, is there a particular reason why a gun was pointed at my face earlier today?”

“This is a second chance card. If you choose it, be aware of all of the rules that come with it.”

“Do I stack up to what you imagined a felon to be?”

“Please don’t respond to the wrong name. My handler said that is the most frequent set of new lives people require.”

“It’s a wonder when you stop looking over your shoulder for the criminals and instead have nightmare visions of Sue from the pta learning about your past and days as an informant.”

“When the suburbian women say something about the ghetto, it is hard for me to keep all limbs inside the vehicle.”

“There is no going back to my old life. Do you realize that people like him have gangs of people ready to put someone in a body bag for doing what I did?”

“You identity is your life. Under no circumstances unless death is imminent, you keep hold of that secret as strongly as our lungs pull for air.”

“You told them?! I thought you loved me.”

“Hey! It’s a good question. I mean like you didn’t choose to snitch on people. You were either a really stupid criminal or a bad one.”

“Honestly sometimes, prison might be better than living under this hideous name in small town usa.”

“Well, there aren’t many scenic places to hide out after you witnessed a murder.”

“Usually, I am not the type to have my real life adhere to tropes, but I have never seen a light shine so bright like you. No matter how many times I tried to touch your soul with my blood tinged fingers- there was no fingerprint residue.”

“If they figure out who we are, I won’t hesitate to serve you up on a silver platter and I wouldn’t expect any less from you in my stead.”

“Please, you think I wouldn’t sell you out after what I did to my boss.”

[ratmonky]

Death Drive

Word Count: 5.5K

Warnings: non-con, mild blood, choking, biting, fight/violence, burns, tentacle

AO3 Link

A gift to my lovely friend who also drew this gorgeous piece for this fic,  @bacterialheaven​  <3 (Your art fascinates me so much ahh T^T)

Although most of the devil hunters have the life instinct, I think Hirofumi doesn't care much about survival while doing his work, making him the perfect example of an individual with a death drive. Just like Kishibe (:

The depths of the ocean had many things hidden at the bottom where sunlight never reached. Fish still yet to be discovered, monsters and devils.

Swimming in the ocean was something you could never do since the thought of never knowing what might be hiding underneath the dark waters was horrifying.

However, the terrifying creatures of the ocean could never get you as long as you stayed on the land.  

Right?

~~~

Hitchhiking wasn’t as dangerous as you had anticipated. When you told your close friends that you would be making your way out of the city by hitchhiking, they warned you about the dangers of getting in the car with someone who might want to hurt you. No matter how much you tried to explain to them how you had to lay low and stay away from any public transportations to not get caught, they didn’t listen.

However you hadn’t listened to them either, that was why you were sitting on your luggage near the roadside. You were only a couple of towns away from the city but you still had a long way to travel.

It had taken you more than a dozen rides to get to here from where you had started. Normally it would take two hours by car to travel here but it took you eight hours to get where you were now.

It was getting late, your last ride had promised to drop you off next to a place you could stay the night but the man was too creepy to look at and you felt uneasy to be stuck in the truck with him.

Naturally, you had insisted that he dropped you off on the first roadside diner.

You regretted it now. It was the middle of the night, you didn’t have any place to stay and the roadside diner you had been planning to eat was out of your budget.

Either you had to get a ride now to save money to travel to a cheaper roadside diner or go out of your budget and stay the night here feasting on food… The latter option was the worst. Saving money was more important.

You knew how to attract a ride anyway. Smile in a friendly way, hold up your ‘going to the countryside!’ sign, and hope for the best. You wouldn’t wait any longer than between ten to fifteen minutes before hitching a ride but it was almost impossible to get a ride at night.

There was no way that someone would drive you to the next town or somewhere you could sleep. Everyone was on the edge because of the devil attacks that had started happening more frequently.

No. Don’t think about devils. Not now. Not ever.

With a long sigh, you redirected the light from your flashlight onto the map. You could wait until the morning or start walking on the side of the road until you came across a gas station; however, it all felt like a waste of time and effort. This side of the city didn’t have anything but trees on the roadsides. It could be dangerous to walk close to the forest at night too, you had heard the devils who lived in nature would come out at night.

The sound of your stomach grumbling brought you out of your frantic thoughts.

You were starving, the last thing you ate was a granola bar in the morning. It had been quite a while since you had last eaten but if you went over your budget, you might not be able to make it to your destination.

“Where are you headed?”

Startled, you turned your head to the man who was talking to you. He looked around your age, he had black hair and a rather creepy smile tugging at his lips.

“Um, the countryside.”

“Oh, you’re all alone?” he asked.

You nodded to confirm. Then internally yelled at yourself for telling him that you were alone. He could be someone dangerous.

“I’m headed to the countryside too, want me to give you a ride?” He gestured towards a black car parked in front of the diner.

You would have taken his offer if it weren’t for the sinister smile on his face.

“Thank you but I wouldn’t want to be a burden.” You averted your gaze from him and shone the light back on the map.

“It’s dangerous to be out this late at night.” He put his hands in his pockets, shrugging slightly. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing I didn’t take you to safety.” He gestured towards the parked car behind him once again. “I'll give you a ride, free of charge.”

He had cornered you, there was no reason for you to refuse his offer. You were still conflicted though, you would have turned him down if it wasn’t this late in the night. He didn’t look like the type of person to take no for an answer either. You couldn’t say no to his generous offer but you kept hesitating. If you were to find the perfect excuse maybe he would leave. However, you didn’t have any excuses.

Ugh!

Why were you even hesitating? You needed a ride and here was this guy, offering to take you away from the doomed city. You hit the jackpot!

“A-are you sure?”

“Come on, I was about to leave.”

“Ah, I can’t thank you enough.” Gathering the stuff you had with you and putting away the flashlight, you forced yourself to smile at him. “You saved me from waiting who knows how long for another ride.”

He didn’t say anything as he led the way towards his car. Opening the baggage, he let you put your luggage in the back and closed it. As you were walking around the car to open the door and sit on the back seat, the guy spoke before he hopped on the driver seat himself.

“I have stuff in the back, sit on the front.”

You stared inside through the window to see two large black bags on the backseats. Reluctantly, you reached to open the front door and climbed inside the car.

“So, where are you exactly headed?” He asked as he put on his seatbelt.

His question brought you out of your frantic thoughts. “Somewhere remote.”

“Hmm, so no specific destination? Don’t you have a family member who’s waiting for you? Where are you going to stay?”

You didn’t have anywhere to stay. At least not yet. Your plan was to find a motel and stay somewhere remote until people forgot about you.

Most importantly, it didn’t feel like he was asking these questions to start a conversation. You changed your mind, wanting to get out of the car.

You turned your head to tell him that but his unsettling stare left you speechless.

He asked a more particular question. “Do you have a specific address you want me to drop you off to?”

“I-in front of the first cheap motel we come across would be perfect.” You clutched on your small shoulder bag. You felt nervous when people stared at you for too long.

He hummed in acknowledgment as the car rolled forward.

“You seem to have a lot of luggage. Moving somewhere?” he spoke again, taking a turn and getting on the highway.

Your head jerked up, looking at him. “Um, uh.” You were hesitant to lie. “I’m just backpacking around the country.”

“Wouldn’t it be cheaper to bike instead of hitchhiking?” He wasn’t even facing you but you could tell he was smirking at your utter stupidity. “Or rather do it with a group?”

Although your throat felt dry, you didn’t dare to swallow. “Probably but I wanted to have a little adventure for myself, alone.”

“Don’t backpackers usually have a backpack and not a luggage?”

“I just have too many things I need with me.” Ahh, you were so bad at lying. Stop fidgeting with your fingers and looking around like that. He will notice. Just… change the subject. “A-anyway, I don’t think we introduced ourselves. I’m (name), what’s your name?”

“Hirofumi.” He grabbed the gear shift, changing it to a higher level and speeding up. You sank deeper into your seat and started to panic. Only then you realized you hadn’t put on your own seatbelt. While you were hurriedly trying to put it on, Hirofumi pressed on the cigarette lighter button. You hoped he wasn’t going to smoke inside the car but failed to notice how there weren't any cigarette tar stains on the interior of the car.

He took a sharp turn, you grunted but managed to put your seatbelt on. As you sat back in your seat, the first thing you noticed was that he was driving down towards a road leading towards the forest.

“Um, I think you took a wrong turn,” you said, bringing it up to his attention.

“It’s a shortcut.” He kept his eyes on the road that was only being illuminated by the headlights, everything else was dark, you had no idea what kind of shortcut he was taking.

There was this feeling of being in the middle of the ocean. You could feel something sinister was lingering in the deep dark water underneath you. Something was about to emerge and grab you by your ankle, pull you down, and drown you.

You knew how to swim.

However, could you swim if whatever thing was pulling you down turned out to be a lot stronger and scarier than anything you had ever faced?

Could you struggle when you were this weak?

Could you fight when you had nothing to fight with?

Without your weapons.

Without your badge.

Without your devil.

“You know, hitchhiking was a great idea,” he said, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel as he continued smiling. “It was a smart option but for someone as dumb as you, there was a way to ruin it. You went and told all of your dumb friends about your plan.”

You stared at him for some sort of explanation but you didn’t need any. Yet you still asked him, whimpering, “W-what are you talking about?” Your bottom lip had started trembling.

He knew.

“For a devil hunter, your sense of danger is too low.”

A tremendous wave of panic washed over you when he sped up.

“Who are you?” Did you even need to ask? He was one of those private hunters. Makima had most likely sent him after you.

Despite being a devil hunter from the city, you were now weak. You had resigned from your work without notice and broke the deal with your devil. Although it had been an impending decision rather than a sudden one, you had left your work abruptly.

After watching so many people die and losing who you had thought would be your friends for a long time, the bitter truth of being a devil hunter had resurfaced.

Devil hunters were destined to die on the job, sooner or later.

The money you earned from being a devil hunter could let you live in comfort materialistically until the day you died but having to suffer from nightmares every single time you put your head on the pillow or closed your eyes could never be comforting. It wasn’t worth it.

You didn’t want to lose more people or see any more grotesque devils murdering civilians but once you started working under Makima’s orders, leaving wasn’t that easy.

That’s why you were on the run.

Even though you had sworn to protect the people of your country, you were running away from the job that gave you a purpose to your insignificant life like a coward.

How childish.

The cigarette lighter popped off with a soft click sound, bringing you out of your hectic thoughts.

He was taking you back… He was going to hand you over to Makima. You were going to work until you died.

“You should’ve gone up north, going south was predictable. Well, at least if you hadn’t told your friends about the hitchhiking part, maybe you’d go under everyone’s radar. However you’re a chatty one, aren’t you? Some ‘friendship comes before work’ type of person, huh? That would explain a lot-”

Hirofumi’s words didn’t reach you anymore. The color drained from your face and your ears started ringing. Your whole body started to shake, and tears started streaming down your cheeks. “Please,” you sobbed, your voice came out shaky, pathetic. “Please don’t do this. I did nothing. I’m just tired of all of the deaths and I can’t handle it any-”

“You can’t talk your way out of this,” Hirofumi said as he took another sharp turn, driving deeper into the forest.

You found yourself stuttering, ”Y-you don’t understand.” You looked at Hirofumi with tears in your eyes. “I’ll be killed.”

“What are you so unhappy with?” Hirofumi spoke again but he wasn’t even facing you. “It’s not like you were living contentedly up until now, were you? In that case, it makes no difference where you live or what you do for a living. Or if you’re killed or not.”

Your face found a new shade of pale. He wouldn’t understand. He was one of those crazy devil hunters who had shut their humanity off.

“You only had to kill demons for a bit and you got rice every day. It might as well be heaven but I guess you weren’t a real hunter.” His smile grew wider as he was watching the trees creep towards him slowly before zooming past the window. “You can die in peace now.”

You got quiet but your tears didn’t stop.

With a vicious smile on his lips, Hirofumi turned away to face you. “You know, a pro devil hunter wouldn’t cry.”

Everything was spinning, it made you believe that your head felt fuzzy. It didn’t even occur to you that he was driving at a normal speed now. Almost immediately you tried to think of an escape plan. Could you manage to run away if you were taken to the headquarters? There was no way you could and that was why you had to fight with everything you had to refuse to go with him. You looked out of the window, the forest could be a great way to lose him. The trees and the darkness could cover you, giving you the advantage to sneak away without having to face this guy in a battle. What was your next move going to be?

You didn’t know but you had to get away.

You stared at the door lock, it was locked but you could lift it even without him noticing. The speed was still accelerating but if you managed to jump out of the car you would have a head start by running. The car wouldn’t stop until his shock wore off and that would give you the great advantage of looking for a place to hide.

There weren’t many people or devils out in the forest at this time of the night. Hopefully. It would be easy for you to run without being seen by another person who could tell him where you went.

What if a devil attacked-

Getting overwhelmed, you took a sharp breath and exhaled loudly. You had to calm down. You didn’t have much time to think over the plan, you just had to do it. If you waited for too long you were going to lose this chance of getting away.

Hesitantly, you glanced at Hirofumi. To your luck, he was only focused on driving.

Cone on. Come on. Come on.

Your heart was pounding, a single cold sweat droplet trickled down from the burning skin of your temple to your cheek as you carefully and suddenly unlocked the door. But you forgot about the most important thing. Your seatbelt. Your biggest mistake was forgetting to unbuckle your seatbelt. As you had twisted your body to jump out of the car, you had found yourself stuck, slammed back into your seat from the force of the seatbelt itself.

Hirofumi stared at you as if it wasn’t a big deal that you opened the door of the moving vehicle or how you were trying to escape. He lifted his right hand up while he crossed his middle and index fingers, “Octopus.”

Your blood ran cold as a giant tentacle emerged outside of the car from a dark cloud and slammed the door closed. You were frozen in your seat as if your muscles had dried up and turned to stone.

What was that?

No, you didn’t want to know.

The car decelerated until it slowly rolled to a stop.

You didn’t dare to look at Hirofumi but you knew he was smiling at you. You knew he had that sinister smile plastered on his face, glowering at you with his big dark eyes.

“Ink.”

He turned off the engine, the headlights flickered off and it became pitch black. Darker than black. It all swallowed you whole. It was as if light didn't exist, the only thing you could see was the dangerous glint in his eyes.

Hirofumi calmly plucked off the burning hot cigarette lighter and held his hand out towards you but you couldn't see. “Ms. Makima told me to bring you to the headquarters,” he said, pausing momentarily as you were trembling in fear, unable to move a muscle. “Dead or alive. I get paid either way.”

You gulped audibly. This was it, wasn’t it? The end.

There was another long pause before he sighed and pressed the cigarette lighter on your thigh. “Look me in the eye when I’m talking to you.”

The sharp pain made your eyes widen and your mouth popped open in pain. You could run away, you just had to unbuckle the seatbelt and bolt out of the car.

However, as soon as your hand went to the buckle to pop the latch plate out, he firmly pressed the metal lighter on the back of your hand.

Yowling in agony, you refused to retrieve your hand and instead unbuckled your seatbelt. Without giving him another chance to attack, you opened the door.

As soon as you fell on the mud, you took a couple of wobbly steps before finally gaining your strength and used the ground as a springboard to start running without looking back. Things weren't as dark now, you could see well but you still were confused about things. Without actually having a clear idea of your whereabouts you kept running deeper into the forest but you couldn’t run in a straight line, you had to confuse him with which way you were running. Abruptly, you stopped to look around to see where you could run. The sudden movements made you lose your balance, stumble and fall down. You scraped your knees. Without checking your injuries, you got up to make a sudden bolt to your right.

Your own heavy footsteps were echoing each time your foot made contact with the wet mud. Or... no. Those weren't echoes of your own footsteps they were more like- They belonged to someone else-

“You’re running too slow.” A scoff.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw him running next to you. He wasn’t out of breath like you were but he lifted his hand towards you, pointing his forefinger at your face before crossing his middle finger over the other digit.

He was going to call out his devil again.

With a sob, you made a move to change your direction but it was too late.

“Octopus.”

Black smoke appeared behind him. From the dark mist, a tentacle emerged, abruptly grabbing you by the waist, you flailed violently as soon as your body crashed onto the tentacle. It lifted you up, punching the air out of your lungs from the force of its grip around your body. You started hitting the tentacle’s slimy skin, crying and yelling at the same time. “Let me go, let go!”

Hirofumi pressed his hand on the tentacle and walked towards you while dragging his hand on it. “You’re more fun than I thought.”

As he was getting closer, you struggled within the tentacle’s hold by kicking helplessly at the air. “Get away from me!”

He stopped in front of you and looked up at you with that same disturbing smile before tapping on the tentacle twice. “I took a liking to you.” The tentacle lowered you down until Hirofumi tapped on it again to stop. “You’re quite interesting.”

The tentacle tightened its grip around you and forced your arms to be pressed against your chest. You were getting crushed, you kept trying to inhale but no air was going inside your lungs.

“However it still would be less of a hassle for me to take your corpse to Ms. Makima. You’re just too annoying.”

Fear came rushing back, the bitter reality of how insignificant your life was a harsh truth to accept. Hirofumi could kill you without batting an eye, he would be fine with taking your life because at the end of the day he was going to get paid for doing his job.

You opened your mouth to beg for his mercy but nothing would come out. Your face was turning blue from lack of air instead.

Hirofumi said something you couldn’t hear. Instantly the tentacle’s hold loosened around you. With the pressure gone,  you greedily inhaled air, filling up your lungs and coughing.

“I’ll make it quick,” he said, this time frowning instead of smiling. “What a shame though, I thought we’d be able to work together in the future.”

“W-wait!” you coughed, trying to catch your breath to talk to him. “No, no, no! Please, I’ll do anything. Please,  I won’t try to run again, I’ll sit patiently and- and-”

He was very quiet, almost silent, but resolute. The blood in your face drained away when you heard his cold and terrifying tone asking you a question with three simple words, “You’ll do anything?”

Your eyes widened as you tried to process the meaning behind his words, you could feel your blood being pumped through your veins but something was wrong, there was a heavy feeling of something crawling under your skin.

“I’ll do anything.”

That sinister smile returned to his face.

The tentacle lowered you, now, your feet could touch the solid ground.

“I want you to prove me wrong,” he said, stretching his arms above his head.

“Huh?” The tentacle unwrapped around you but remained at the back while you stared at the guy in front of you in confusion. “Prove what?”

He positioned himself in a fighting pose. “Prove that you’re a devil hunter worth keeping alive. Let’s duke it out.”

He had to be kidding. You were nothing without a weapon or your devil. It was unfair to you and-

Hirofumi landed a sudden kick on your stomach, doubling in pain, you took a couple of wobbly steps back.

When you glanced up at him, you saw him jumping in his place as if he was only warming up. He was taunting you, don’t fall for it.

Yet you knew he wasn’t kidding about you proving him that you were a good hunter. He had made it clear. So you had no choice but to take him down if you wanted to live.

You aimed a kick towards him but he caught you mid-air by your ankle. Whimpering, you tried pulling your leg back to no avail. The panic of the situation started to settle in as he got closer to you. “That’s cute, you didn’t even put any strength behind your kick.” He tucked your leg around his waist, closing the distance between the two of you. His face had gotten awfully close, his hot breath ghosted over your face. For the first time tonight, you looked at his eyes directly, his pupils were dilated to the point of being completely black. You could see your own terrified expression being reflected back to you in them. To put it simply, you were at his mercy once again, balanced only on a single leg with no way of escaping his hold.

“You lose,” he grinned. “You really aren’t cut out to be a devil hunter.”

“Please,” you began but he interrupted you, his other hand pressing on the small of your back and sliding down your curves to squeeze a generous amount of the supple flesh of your ass. Your breath hitched, the uneasy feeling of being powerless against a higher rank like him made your stomach churn in fear.

“Let’s have some fun before you die.” You could hear the smile in his voice.

With that, the tentacle returned, abruptly going under your shirt, pulling it up and over your head. You didn’t even get the time to react as Hirofumi let your leg down to shove you forward against the tentacle. Gasping, you planted your hands against the tentacle in a pathetic attempt to push yourself up but it was now impossible with his weight pressing you down. His hands were holding your hips in a death grip and rubbing your clothed ass onto his own clothed crotch. You were moving away from his hips helplessly, unaware of the tentacle pushing your bra up to let your tits bounce free. Only when the cool air hit your bare chest, you became aware of what the tentacle was doing. Your nipples perked up and the slimy skin caressing your skin made you flinch, the feeling of one of its suckers on your nipple was enough to make you shriek in disgust.

Hirofumi chuckled, his hands on your hips slid up, feeling your curves before dragging you against his clothed cock. He couldn’t help but grab your hair to pull it as he grinded against your ass with a little too much force. You could feel him growing bigger, he had to be a twisted creep to get off to this.

“Stop… no more…” Begging, you turned your head to look at him. With the way he was pressing you down, you couldn’t meet his gaze, instead found your cheek being pressed flat against the tentacle. Ignoring your pleads, Hirofumi pulled himself back to yank your pants down hurriedly as the tentacle latched one of the suckers on your nipple, toying with the sensitive nub. You started to breathe hard as the realization of how vulnerable you actually were hit you hard. All you could do was to pathetically attempt to get away from Hirofumi to be assaulted by the tentacle instead.

Then the loud sound of his belt buckling made you jolt, the tears and begging for him to stop came right after. You would do anything for him to stop. However your cries were ineffective, they didn’t stop him from pulling down your panties and drinking up the sight of your naked lower half. They only seemed to spur him on even more.

“Stop…” you whimpered and struggled. Tears started streaming down your face as a choked sob left your lips. He smiled against the skin on your shoulder in response while lining himself on your entrance. Twisting your arm behind your back to keep you still, he put his entire weight behind his hips to surge them forward and buried the entire length of his cock in your cunt.

Wincing, you gasped. Hirofumi took it as a signal to move. You were awfully wet, each time he pulled back himself to slam his hips forward, the squelching sounds of your pussy filled the silence of the forest. If that wasn't gross enough, your cheek was being grazed against the slimy skin of the tentacle, its fishy stench started to overwhelm you, making you gag.

“Ahh, you like this don’t you?” He tentatively pulled his hips back to abruptly slam them into your pussy.

“No…” You bit back a moan, closing your eyes and begging for all of it to stop internally.

“You’re getting off to this, you’re sopping wet.” Hirofumi mounted you completely, you could feel his entire weight settle on your back. “Be a good girl for me, will you? Be honest, it’s just the two of us here.”

You grumbled in response.

“Makima isn’t listening.” He nosed some hair out of his way to whisper in your ear. “Only I will hear your confessions. You can tell me anything, trust me.”

“Go to hell,” you hissed. If he was going to kill you, so be it! You weren’t going to give him the pleasure of humiliating you. All you had left was your pride and you were planning to keep it until the very end.

He slammed his hips forward, hitting your sweet spot on the first try. His firm thrust was all it took for you to silently scream, with the air in your lungs completely gone from the impact, you were clenching around his cock. You opened your mouth to take in some air but the tentacle wrapped around your neck, squeezing tightly around you to prevent you from breathing. The tip of the tentacle forced its way into your mouth and swirled around your tongue before diving deeper down into your throat. Hirofumi placed his hand on the tentacle, tapping twice for it to loosen around your neck. The tentacle left your mouth with a disgusting pop sound. Then he replaced the tentacle with his own hand, shoving his fingers into your mouth and grabbing you from the inside of your cheek.

Now, when he thrust forward and picked up his pace, you couldn’t bite back your moans. To your utter horror, it worked. Every thrust of his hips left you moaning, gasping for air. His merciless, rough thrusts remarkably sped up, especially in comparison to before. He was humping you like a rabid dog now and he responded to your surprised moan with a long, pleased hum.

Your drool started to spill out from your mouth and down to your chin since you didn’t have the luxury to swallow the saliva with three long digits prying your mouth open. You moaned audibly and threw your head back when his cock stroked a specific spot along your insides, Hirofumi took this opportunity to bite into your nape hard enough to draw blood, on a second note, you started to think he could be an actually rabid dog.

A scream left your lips, more out of pleasure than pain.

Hirofumi’s teeth sank deeper into your flesh as he felt your gummy walls pulsate around his cock, clenching and begging to be filled with his seed. He gave a muffled chuckle against your flesh, chewing on the raw skin. Although you weren’t honest in the slightest, your body was.

The tentacle’s tip went between your legs and the sucker latched onto your clit, catching you by surprise and making your entire body shake in pleasure.

How cute.

With a delighted smile, Hirofumi stopped biting your nape. He licked your blood off of your skin all the while he was fucking you frenziedly, thrusting in and out your pussy with sloppily wet sounds that started to make your knees unbuckle. Swallowing down your pride, you gave in to the pleasure so you could move your hips and arch your back to meet his frantic thrusts. At the same time, the tentacle toyed with the sensitive nub. It all made your legs trembled under you as your moans got louder than before.

Hirofumi's pace suddenly slackened when his cock throbbed upon your walls clamping on him. Taking his hand from your mouth, he placed it on your shoulder to grab you. He pulled his hips back and abruptly slammed forward, punching the air out of your lungs one last time as you felt the slight twitch of his balls on your skin before a pleasing warmth filled your belly.

The tentacle moved in tight circles around your clit and you clenched around Hirofumi’s cock for the last time, milking more of his seed using your pulsating walls inside of your cunt. Even after the tentacle left you alone, Hirofumi continued fucking his cum into your pussy, gross squelching sounds from his seed gushing out from your abused hole had become a white noise to you at this point. By the time he pulled out of you and let you go, your legs gave up from under you. Before you could crash on the dirty mud, the tentacle caught you, holding you up in a gentle grip.

Hirofumi was tucking himself into his pants while you watched him in exhaustion. He noticed your stare and gave you the same unsettling smile. “I think you’d be a great devil hunter if you were partnered up with me. Makima would agree if I said so. Won’t you agree too?”

You couldn’t keep your eyes open anymore but you managed to blink slowly in response, mouthing a ‘yes’ in defeat.

Hirofumi’s eerie smile grew wider, his eyes squinted from his cheeks puffing up. “I look forward to working with you in the future.”

The depths of the ocean had many things hidden at the bottom where sunlight never reached. Fish still yet to be discovered, monsters and devils.

Swimming in the ocean was something you could never do since the thought of never knowing what might be hiding underneath the dark waters was horrifying.

However, the terrifying creatures of the ocean could never get you as long as you stayed on the land.  

Right?

~~~

Hitchhiking wasn’t as dangerous as you had anticipated. When you told your close friends that you would be making your way out of the city by hitchhiking, they warned you about the dangers of getting in the car with someone who might want to hurt you. No matter how much you tried to explain to them how you had to lay low and stay away from any public transportations to not get caught, they didn’t listen.

However you hadn’t listened to them either, that was why you were sitting on your luggage near the roadside. You were only a couple of towns away from the city but you still had a long way to travel.

It had taken you more than a dozen rides to get to here from where you had started. Normally it would take two hours by car to travel here but it took you eight hours to get where you were now.

It was getting late, your last ride had promised to drop you off next to a place you could stay the night but the man was too creepy to look at and you felt uneasy to be stuck in the truck with him.

Naturally, you had insisted that he dropped you off on the first roadside diner.

You regretted it now. It was the middle of the night, you didn’t have any place to stay and the roadside diner you had been planning to eat was out of your budget.

Either you had to get a ride now to save money to travel to a cheaper roadside diner or go out of your budget and stay the night here feasting on food… The latter option was the worst. Saving money was more important.

You knew how to attract a ride anyway. Smile in a friendly way, hold up your ‘going to the countryside!’ sign, and hope for the best. You wouldn’t wait any longer than between ten to fifteen minutes before hitching a ride but it was almost impossible to get a ride at night.

There was no way that someone would drive you to the next town or somewhere you could sleep. Everyone was on the edge because of the devil attacks that had started happening more frequently.

No. Don’t think about devils. Not now. Not ever.

With a long sigh, you redirected the light from your flashlight onto the map. You could wait until the morning or start walking on the side of the road until you came across a gas station; however, it all felt like a waste of time and effort. This side of the city didn’t have anything but trees on the roadsides. It could be dangerous to walk close to the forest at night too, you had heard the devils who lived in nature would come out at night.

The sound of your stomach grumbling brought you out of your frantic thoughts.

You were starving, the last thing you ate was a granola bar in the morning. It had been quite a while since you had last eaten but if you went over your budget, you might not be able to make it to your destination.

“Where are you headed?”

Startled, you turned your head to the man who was talking to you. He looked around your age, he had black hair and a rather creepy smile tugging at his lips.

“Um, the countryside.”

“Oh, you’re all alone?” he asked.

You nodded to confirm. Then internally yelled at yourself for telling him that you were alone. He could be someone dangerous.

“I’m headed to the countryside too, want me to give you a ride?” He gestured towards a black car parked in front of the diner.

You would have taken his offer if it weren’t for the sinister smile on his face.

“Thank you but I wouldn’t want to be a burden.” You averted your gaze from him and shone the light back on the map.

“It’s dangerous to be out this late at night.” He put his hands in his pockets, shrugging slightly. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing I didn’t take you to safety.” He gestured towards the parked car behind him once again. “I'll give you a ride, free of charge.”

He had cornered you, there was no reason for you to refuse his offer. You were still conflicted though, you would have turned him down if it wasn’t this late in the night. He didn’t look like the type of person to take no for an answer either. You couldn’t say no to his generous offer but you kept hesitating. If you were to find the perfect excuse maybe he would leave. However, you didn’t have any excuses.

Ugh!

Why were you even hesitating? You needed a ride and here was this guy, offering to take you away from the doomed city. You hit the jackpot!

“A-are you sure?”

“Come on, I was about to leave.”

“Ah, I can’t thank you enough.” Gathering the stuff you had with you and putting away the flashlight, you forced yourself to smile at him. “You saved me from waiting who knows how long for another ride.”

He didn’t say anything as he led the way towards his car. Opening the baggage, he let you put your luggage in the back and closed it. As you were walking around the car to open the door and sit on the back seat, the guy spoke before he hopped on the driver seat himself.

“I have stuff in the back, sit on the front.”

You stared inside through the window to see two large black bags on the backseats. Reluctantly, you reached to open the front door and climbed inside the car.

“So, where are you exactly headed?” He asked as he put on his seatbelt.

His question brought you out of your frantic thoughts. “Somewhere remote.”

“Hmm, so no specific destination? Don’t you have a family member who’s waiting for you? Where are you going to stay?”

You didn’t have anywhere to stay. At least not yet. Your plan was to find a motel and stay somewhere remote until people forgot about you.

Most importantly, it didn’t feel like he was asking these questions to start a conversation. You changed your mind, wanting to get out of the car.

You turned your head to tell him that but his unsettling stare left you speechless.

He asked a more particular question. “Do you have a specific address you want me to drop you off to?”

“I-in front of the first cheap motel we come across would be perfect.” You clutched on your small shoulder bag. You felt nervous when people stared at you for too long.

He hummed in acknowledgment as the car rolled forward.

“You seem to have a lot of luggage. Moving somewhere?” he spoke again, taking a turn and getting on the highway.

Your head jerked up, looking at him. “Um, uh.” You were hesitant to lie. “I’m just backpacking around the country.”

“Wouldn’t it be cheaper to bike instead of hitchhiking?” He wasn’t even facing you but you could tell he was smirking at your utter stupidity. “Or rather do it with a group?”

Although your throat felt dry, you didn’t dare to swallow. “Probably but I wanted to have a little adventure for myself, alone.”

“Don’t backpackers usually have a backpack and not a luggage?”

“I just have too many things I need with me.” Ahh, you were so bad at lying. Stop fidgeting with your fingers and looking around like that. He will notice. Just… change the subject. “A-anyway, I don’t think we introduced ourselves. I’m (name), what’s your name?”

“Hirofumi.” He grabbed the gear shift, changing it to a higher level and speeding up. You sank deeper into your seat and started to panic. Only then you realized you hadn’t put on your own seatbelt. While you were hurriedly trying to put it on, Hirofumi pressed on the cigarette lighter button. You hoped he wasn’t going to smoke inside the car but failed to notice how there weren't any cigarette tar stains on the interior of the car.

He took a sharp turn, you grunted but managed to put your seatbelt on. As you sat back in your seat, the first thing you noticed was that he was driving down towards a road leading towards the forest.

“Um, I think you took a wrong turn,” you said, bringing it up to his attention.

“It’s a shortcut.” He kept his eyes on the road that was only being illuminated by the headlights, everything else was dark, you had no idea what kind of shortcut he was taking.

There was this feeling of being in the middle of the ocean. You could feel something sinister was lingering in the deep dark water underneath you. Something was about to emerge and grab you by your ankle, pull you down, and drown you.

You knew how to swim.

However, could you swim if whatever thing was pulling you down turned out to be a lot stronger and scarier than anything you had ever faced?

Could you struggle when you were this weak?

Could you fight when you had nothing to fight with?

Without your weapons.

Without your badge.

Without your devil.

“You know, hitchhiking was a great idea,” he said, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel as he continued smiling. “It was a smart option but for someone as dumb as you, there was a way to ruin it. You went and told all of your dumb friends about your plan.”

You stared at him for some sort of explanation but you didn’t need any. Yet you still asked him, whimpering, “W-what are you talking about?” Your bottom lip had started trembling.

He knew.

“For a devil hunter, your sense of danger is too low.”

A tremendous wave of panic washed over you when he sped up.

“Who are you?” Did you even need to ask? He was one of those private hunters. Makima had most likely sent him after you.

Despite being a devil hunter from the city, you were now weak. You had resigned from your work without notice and broke the deal with your devil. Although it had been an impending decision rather than a sudden one, you had left your work abruptly.

After watching so many people die and losing who you had thought would be your friends for a long time, the bitter truth of being a devil hunter had resurfaced.

Devil hunters were destined to die on the job, sooner or later.

The money you earned from being a devil hunter could let you live in comfort materialistically until the day you died but having to suffer from nightmares every single time you put your head on the pillow or closed your eyes could never be comforting. It wasn’t worth it.

You didn’t want to lose more people or see any more grotesque devils murdering civilians but once you started working under Makima’s orders, leaving wasn’t that easy.

That’s why you were on the run.

Even though you had sworn to protect the people of your country, you were running away from the job that gave you a purpose to your insignificant life like a coward.

How childish.

The cigarette lighter popped off with a soft click sound, bringing you out of your hectic thoughts.

He was taking you back… He was going to hand you over to Makima. You were going to work until you died.

“You should’ve gone up north, going south was predictable. Well, at least if you hadn’t told your friends about the hitchhiking part, maybe you’d go under everyone’s radar. However you’re a chatty one, aren’t you? Some ‘friendship comes before work’ type of person, huh? That would explain a lot-”

Hirofumi’s words didn’t reach you anymore. The color drained from your face and your ears started ringing. Your whole body started to shake, and tears started streaming down your cheeks. “Please,” you sobbed, your voice came out shaky, pathetic. “Please don’t do this. I did nothing. I’m just tired of all of the deaths and I can’t handle it any-”

“You can’t talk your way out of this,” Hirofumi said as he took another sharp turn, driving deeper into the forest.

You found yourself stuttering, ”Y-you don’t understand.” You looked at Hirofumi with tears in your eyes. “I’ll be killed.”

“What are you so unhappy with?” Hirofumi spoke again but he wasn’t even facing you. “It’s not like you were living contentedly up until now, were you? In that case, it makes no difference where you live or what you do for a living. Or if you’re killed or not.”

Your face found a new shade of pale. He wouldn’t understand. He was one of those crazy devil hunters who had shut their humanity off.

“You only had to kill demons for a bit and you got rice every day. It might as well be heaven but I guess you weren’t a real hunter.” His smile grew wider as he was watching the trees creep towards him slowly before zooming past the window. “You can die in peace now.”

You got quiet but your tears didn’t stop.

With a vicious smile on his lips, Hirofumi turned away to face you. “You know, a pro devil hunter wouldn’t cry.”

Everything was spinning, it made you believe that your head felt fuzzy. It didn’t even occur to you that he was driving at a normal speed now. Almost immediately you tried to think of an escape plan. Could you manage to run away if you were taken to the headquarters? There was no way you could and that was why you had to fight with everything you had to refuse to go with him. You looked out of the window, the forest could be a great way to lose him. The trees and the darkness could cover you, giving you the advantage to sneak away without having to face this guy in a battle. What was your next move going to be?

You didn’t know but you had to get away.

You stared at the door lock, it was locked but you could lift it even without him noticing. The speed was still accelerating but if you managed to jump out of the car you would have a head start by running. The car wouldn’t stop until his shock wore off and that would give you the great advantage of looking for a place to hide.

There weren’t many people or devils out in the forest at this time of the night. Hopefully. It would be easy for you to run without being seen by another person who could tell him where you went.

What if a devil attacked-

Getting overwhelmed, you took a sharp breath and exhaled loudly. You had to calm down. You didn’t have much time to think over the plan, you just had to do it. If you waited for too long you were going to lose this chance of getting away.

Hesitantly, you glanced at Hirofumi. To your luck, he was only focused on driving.

Cone on. Come on. Come on.

Your heart was pounding, a single cold sweat droplet trickled down from the burning skin of your temple to your cheek as you carefully and suddenly unlocked the door. But you forgot about the most important thing. Your seatbelt. Your biggest mistake was forgetting to unbuckle your seatbelt. As you had twisted your body to jump out of the car, you had found yourself stuck, slammed back into your seat from the force of the seatbelt itself.

Hirofumi stared at you as if it wasn’t a big deal that you opened the door of the moving vehicle or how you were trying to escape. He lifted his right hand up while he crossed his middle and index fingers, “Octopus.”

Your blood ran cold as a giant tentacle emerged outside of the car from a dark cloud and slammed the door closed. You were frozen in your seat as if your muscles had dried up and turned to stone.

What was that?

No, you didn’t want to know.

The car decelerated until it slowly rolled to a stop.

You didn’t dare to look at Hirofumi but you knew he was smiling at you. You knew he had that sinister smile plastered on his face, glowering at you with his big dark eyes.

“Ink.”

He turned off the engine, the headlights flickered off and it became pitch black. Darker than black. It all swallowed you whole. It was as if light didn't exist, the only thing you could see was the dangerous glint in his eyes.

Hirofumi calmly plucked off the burning hot cigarette lighter and held his hand out towards you but you couldn't see. “Ms. Makima told me to bring you to the headquarters,” he said, pausing momentarily as you were trembling in fear, unable to move a muscle. “Dead or alive. I get paid either way.”

You gulped audibly. This was it, wasn’t it? The end.

There was another long pause before he sighed and pressed the cigarette lighter on your thigh. “Look me in the eye when I’m talking to you.”

The sharp pain made your eyes widen and your mouth popped open in pain. You could run away, you just had to unbuckle the seatbelt and bolt out of the car.

However, as soon as your hand went to the buckle to pop the latch plate out, he firmly pressed the metal lighter on the back of your hand.

Yowling in agony, you refused to retrieve your hand and instead unbuckled your seatbelt. Without giving him another chance to attack, you opened the door.

As soon as you fell on the mud, you took a couple of wobbly steps before finally gaining your strength and used the ground as a springboard to start running without looking back. Things weren't as dark now, you could see well but you still were confused about things. Without actually having a clear idea of your whereabouts you kept running deeper into the forest but you couldn’t run in a straight line, you had to confuse him with which way you were running. Abruptly, you stopped to look around to see where you could run. The sudden movements made you lose your balance, stumble and fall down. You scraped your knees. Without checking your injuries, you got up to make a sudden bolt to your right.

Your own heavy footsteps were echoing each time your foot made contact with the wet mud. Or... no. Those weren't echoes of your own footsteps they were more like- They belonged to someone else-

“You’re running too slow.” A scoff.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw him running next to you. He wasn’t out of breath like you were but he lifted his hand towards you, pointing his forefinger at your face before crossing his middle finger over the other digit.

He was going to call out his devil again.

With a sob, you made a move to change your direction but it was too late.

“Octopus.”

Black smoke appeared behind him. From the dark mist, a tentacle emerged, abruptly grabbing you by the waist, you flailed violently as soon as your body crashed onto the tentacle. It lifted you up, punching the air out of your lungs from the force of its grip around your body. You started hitting the tentacle’s slimy skin, crying and yelling at the same time. “Let me go, let go!”

Hirofumi pressed his hand on the tentacle and walked towards you while dragging his hand on it. “You’re more fun than I thought.”

As he was getting closer, you struggled within the tentacle’s hold by kicking helplessly at the air. “Get away from me!”

He stopped in front of you and looked up at you with that same disturbing smile before tapping on the tentacle twice. “I took a liking to you.” The tentacle lowered you down until Hirofumi tapped on it again to stop. “You’re quite interesting.”

The tentacle tightened its grip around you and forced your arms to be pressed against your chest. You were getting crushed, you kept trying to inhale but no air was going inside your lungs.

“However it still would be less of a hassle for me to take your corpse to Ms. Makima. You’re just too annoying.”

Fear came rushing back, the bitter reality of how insignificant your life was a harsh truth to accept. Hirofumi could kill you without batting an eye, he would be fine with taking your life because at the end of the day he was going to get paid for doing his job.

You opened your mouth to beg for his mercy but nothing would come out. Your face was turning blue from lack of air instead.

Hirofumi said something you couldn’t hear. Instantly the tentacle’s hold loosened around you. With the pressure gone,  you greedily inhaled air, filling up your lungs and coughing.

“I’ll make it quick,” he said, this time frowning instead of smiling. “What a shame though, I thought we’d be able to work together in the future.”

“W-wait!” you coughed, trying to catch your breath to talk to him. “No, no, no! Please, I’ll do anything. Please,  I won’t try to run again, I’ll sit patiently and- and-”

He was very quiet, almost silent, but resolute. The blood in your face drained away when you heard his cold and terrifying tone asking you a question with three simple words, “You’ll do anything?”

Your eyes widened as you tried to process the meaning behind his words, you could feel your blood being pumped through your veins but something was wrong, there was a heavy feeling of something crawling under your skin.

“I’ll do anything.”

That sinister smile returned to his face.

The tentacle lowered you, now, your feet could touch the solid ground.

“I want you to prove me wrong,” he said, stretching his arms above his head.

“Huh?” The tentacle unwrapped around you but remained at the back while you stared at the guy in front of you in confusion. “Prove what?”

He positioned himself in a fighting pose. “Prove that you’re a devil hunter worth keeping alive. Let’s duke it out.”

He had to be kidding. You were nothing without a weapon or your devil. It was unfair to you and-

Hirofumi landed a sudden kick on your stomach, doubling in pain, you took a couple of wobbly steps back.

When you glanced up at him, you saw him jumping in his place as if he was only warming up. He was taunting you, don’t fall for it.

Yet you knew he wasn’t kidding about you proving him that you were a good hunter. He had made it clear. So you had no choice but to take him down if you wanted to live.

You aimed a kick towards him but he caught you mid-air by your ankle. Whimpering, you tried pulling your leg back to no avail. The panic of the situation started to settle in as he got closer to you. “That’s cute, you didn’t even put any strength behind your kick.” He tucked your leg around his waist, closing the distance between the two of you. His face had gotten awfully close, his hot breath ghosted over your face. For the first time tonight, you looked at his eyes directly, his pupils were dilated to the point of being completely black. You could see your own terrified expression being reflected back to you in them. To put it simply, you were at his mercy once again, balanced only on a single leg with no way of escaping his hold.

“You lose,” he grinned. “You really aren’t cut out to be a devil hunter.”

“Please,” you began but he interrupted you, his other hand pressing on the small of your back and sliding down your curves to squeeze a generous amount of the supple flesh of your ass. Your breath hitched, the uneasy feeling of being powerless against a higher rank like him made your stomach churn in fear.

“Let’s have some fun before you die.” You could hear the smile in his voice.

With that, the tentacle returned, abruptly going under your shirt, pulling it up and over your head. You didn’t even get the time to react as Hirofumi let your leg down to shove you forward against the tentacle. Gasping, you planted your hands against the tentacle in a pathetic attempt to push yourself up but it was now impossible with his weight pressing you down. His hands were holding your hips in a death grip and rubbing your clothed ass onto his own clothed crotch. You were moving away from his hips helplessly, unaware of the tentacle pushing your bra up to let your tits bounce free. Only when the cool air hit your bare chest, you became aware of what the tentacle was doing. Your nipples perked up and the slimy skin caressing your skin made you flinch, the feeling of one of its suckers on your nipple was enough to make you shriek in disgust.

Hirofumi chuckled, his hands on your hips slid up, feeling your curves before dragging you against his clothed cock. He couldn’t help but grab your hair to pull it as he grinded against your ass with a little too much force. You could feel him growing bigger, he had to be a twisted creep to get off to this.

“Stop… no more…” Begging, you turned your head to look at him. With the way he was pressing you down, you couldn’t meet his gaze, instead found your cheek being pressed flat against the tentacle. Ignoring your pleads, Hirofumi pulled himself back to yank your pants down hurriedly as the tentacle latched one of the suckers on your nipple, toying with the sensitive nub. You started to breathe hard as the realization of how vulnerable you actually were hit you hard. All you could do was to pathetically attempt to get away from Hirofumi to be assaulted by the tentacle instead.

Then the loud sound of his belt buckling made you jolt, the tears and begging for him to stop came right after. You would do anything for him to stop. However your cries were ineffective, they didn’t stop him from pulling down your panties and drinking up the sight of your naked lower half. They only seemed to spur him on even more.

“Stop…” you whimpered and struggled. Tears started streaming down your face as a choked sob left your lips. He smiled against the skin on your shoulder in response while lining himself on your entrance. Twisting your arm behind your back to keep you still, he put his entire weight behind his hips to surge them forward and buried the entire length of his cock in your cunt.

Wincing, you gasped. Hirofumi took it as a signal to move. You were awfully wet, each time he pulled back himself to slam his hips forward, the squelching sounds of your pussy filled the silence of the forest. If that wasn't gross enough, your cheek was being grazed against the slimy skin of the tentacle, its fishy stench started to overwhelm you, making you gag.

“Ahh, you like this don’t you?” He tentatively pulled his hips back to abruptly slam them into your pussy.

“No…” You bit back a moan, closing your eyes and begging for all of it to stop internally.

“You’re getting off to this, you’re sopping wet.” Hirofumi mounted you completely, you could feel his entire weight settle on your back. “Be a good girl for me, will you? Be honest, it’s just the two of us here.”

You grumbled in response.

“Makima isn’t listening.” He nosed some hair out of his way to whisper in your ear. “Only I will hear your confessions. You can tell me anything, trust me.”

“Go to hell,” you hissed. If he was going to kill you, so be it! You weren’t going to give him the pleasure of humiliating you. All you had left was your pride and you were planning to keep it until the very end.

He slammed his hips forward, hitting your sweet spot on the first try. His firm thrust was all it took for you to silently scream, with the air in your lungs completely gone from the impact, you were clenching around his cock. You opened your mouth to take in some air but the tentacle wrapped around your neck, squeezing tightly around you to prevent you from breathing. The tip of the tentacle forced its way into your mouth and swirled around your tongue before diving deeper down into your throat. Hirofumi placed his hand on the tentacle, tapping twice for it to loosen around your neck. The tentacle left your mouth with a disgusting pop sound. Then he replaced the tentacle with his own hand, shoving his fingers into your mouth and grabbing you from the inside of your cheek.

Now, when he thrust forward and picked up his pace, you couldn’t bite back your moans. To your utter horror, it worked. Every thrust of his hips left you moaning, gasping for air. His merciless, rough thrusts remarkably sped up, especially in comparison to before. He was humping you like a rabid dog now and he responded to your surprised moan with a long, pleased hum.

Your drool started to spill out from your mouth and down to your chin since you didn’t have the luxury to swallow the saliva with three long digits prying your mouth open. You moaned audibly and threw your head back when his cock stroked a specific spot along your insides, Hirofumi took this opportunity to bite into your nape hard enough to draw blood, on a second note, you started to think he could be an actually rabid dog.

A scream left your lips, more out of pleasure than pain.

Hirofumi’s teeth sank deeper into your flesh as he felt your gummy walls pulsate around his cock, clenching and begging to be filled with his seed. He gave a muffled chuckle against your flesh, chewing on the raw skin. Although you weren’t honest in the slightest, your body was.

The tentacle’s tip went between your legs and the sucker latched onto your clit, catching you by surprise and making your entire body shake in pleasure.

How cute.

With a delighted smile, Hirofumi stopped biting your nape. He licked your blood off of your skin all the while he was fucking you frenziedly, thrusting in and out your pussy with sloppily wet sounds that started to make your knees unbuckle. Swallowing down your pride, you gave in to the pleasure so you could move your hips and arch your back to meet his frantic thrusts. At the same time, the tentacle toyed with the sensitive nub. It all made your legs trembled under you as your moans got louder than before.

Hirofumi's pace suddenly slackened when his cock throbbed upon your walls clamping on him. Taking his hand from your mouth, he placed it on your shoulder to grab you. He pulled his hips back and abruptly slammed forward, punching the air out of your lungs one last time as you felt the slight twitch of his balls on your skin before a pleasing warmth filled your belly.

The tentacle moved in tight circles around your clit and you clenched around Hirofumi’s cock for the last time, milking more of his seed using your pulsating walls inside of your cunt. Even after the tentacle left you alone, Hirofumi continued fucking his cum into your pussy, gross squelching sounds from his seed gushing out from your abused hole had become a white noise to you at this point. By the time he pulled out of you and let you go, your legs gave up from under you. Before you could crash on the dirty mud, the tentacle caught you, holding you up in a gentle grip.

Hirofumi was tucking himself into his pants while you watched him in exhaustion. He noticed your stare and gave you the same unsettling smile. “I think you’d be a great devil hunter if you were partnered up with me. Makima would agree if I said so. Won’t you agree too?”

You couldn’t keep your eyes open anymore but you managed to blink slowly in response, mouthing a ‘yes’ in defeat.

Hirofumi’s eerie smile grew wider, his eyes squinted from his cheeks puffing up. “I look forward to working with you in the future.”

[gideonthefirst]

D&D Character Ask Meme: Scenarios from My Friends’ Games

Sitting in the middle of a circle that appears to be magical is a chair emanating strong necromantic energy. The circle itself seems to have a connection to the astral sea. When a familiar tried to cast Identify on the chair, it died instantly. Would your character touch the chair?

A powerful warlock has assassinated a group of important people, including your friend’s father. However, she is your childhood friend, and is clearly not in control of her own actions. How does your character treat her?

Imix, the prince of Elemental Fire, a CR 19 monster, is attacking your character while they plummet through the air on meteors. It is made clear that all the party has to do is survive for a certain number of rounds, after which they will be healed. Would your character try to fight Imix, or focus on healing?

Your character rolled two nat 20s in a row to flirt with a goddess they weren’t really interested in, and the goddess gives them her number. Does your character call her?

Your character is in a city that is under siege and may be attacked at any time. They haven’t seen their friend who they’re in love with in months, and don’t know when they’ll see her again. Third level spells are the most powerful they have, would you character use a spell slot on Sending?

Your character is at a party. It would be super lame to go home early, but in order to get a long rest before a tournament they’re in starts tomorrow, they have to leave at 9. When does your character leave?

When attempting to return home to the Fey Wild, your character accidentally got sent to Shadowfell. Would they drink from a chalice by a pool in the bottom of a system of caves that they were told held the only source of magic in Shadowfell?

After killing a giant murderous worm, you learn that it has a baby. Does your character attempt to adopt this baby and risk being attacked by Furies who don’t want them to bring it out of the Underworld, or leave the baby worm to fend for itself?

Your party is shipwrecked on an island where anti-magic experiments are taking place, because magic is illegal. There seem to be people captured here and being experimented on. Does your character attempt to rescue those people, putting themself and their party in danger?

Half of your party has been in prison for several sessions. You have a potential plan for escape that involves kidnaping a member of the royal family and framing someone else, possibly causing an international incident. How does your character feel about this plan?

Your character sees a hologram pressing holographic buttons. Do they follow along?

Your party all has a level of exhaustion. Do you do cocaine with the knowledge that it will get rid of that exhaustion, but might have other side effects?

Your character draws from the Deck of Many Things, and gets a card that lets them choose to have any first or second level class feature from a different class. What do they take?

Your character has an ability that lets them touch a person and learn about their past. However, if they roll badly, the DM will change the story so that what happened in their past is worse than it otherwise might have been. How would your character use this ability?

A pack of devil bounty hunters is chasing one of your party members from town to town. In the newest town the party has fled to, they acquire the deed to a small run-down inn. Does your character continue to flee the bounty hunters, or do they stay in town and start running a bed and breakfast?

Your character is about to go try to rescue two party members from two of the BBEGs of the whole game. They have reason to believe they might not make it out, but are also on a time crunch. Their partner texts them that they need to talk. What does your character do?

Your character’s girlfriend is magically frozen, and the only way to free her is for your whole party to work together. You have to roll a d20 at triple disadvantage, and be demoted from level 20 to whatever you roll. What do you do?

Your character’s level 20 polycule is being forced to fight to the death by a god. There's an incredibly incredibly annoying wizard who's also here. He trapped two of your party members in a prismatic wall. You can kill him easily, but he keeps insisting his spells are useful, and you’ll probably have to fight this god eventually. What do you do?

Your character, who has political importance, is given a letter to deliver to your teacher. However, when they open the door to her study, all they see is her apprentice lying on the ground, having clearly been recently attacked. They enter the room and are stabbed, noticing more assassins. Does your character try to help the apprentice or do they run?

Your character’s country is at war. They are given the option to sacrifice themself to bring down an important bridge, potentially delaying the attacking army by a week. This will buy time for people to evacuate, but also mean your side is left without a powerful wizard. What do you do?