#mainly making this update so people know I am not dead I did not crash

[clownboyskingdom]

Road update: Made it to our first resting point at my seasonal friend’s place of residence! We’re stopping here with the cat for a few days before I head out solo (+The Captain 🐱) on Saturday, then resting back home until heading 12 hours west to the next job!!

[mirkwoodshewolf]

My little Panther; T’Challa x POC!child reader

*Author’s note*

The world is devastated right now. I had read the news last night and I’ve done my mourning, now it’s time for the tribute. I’ve had this on my Wattpad for a good couple of years but never transferred it to here. But hearing the loss of Chadwick, I knew I had to finally post this fic onto my tumblr so that you all can have a read of it. 

We all miss you Chadwick and you were taken away from us FAR. TOO. EARLY. But you didn’t let your cancer define you, you kept working and helped bring such an iconic character to life, as well as sharing the stories of SO. MANY. REAL. LIFE. PEOPLE (Marshall and Jackie Robinson) to screens worldwide. You will be deeply missed and will always be an inspiration to everyone. You and Stan ‘the man’ Lee are once again together in Heaven awaiting for the rest of the Avengers to Assemble.

Long. Live. King. Chadwick. Boseman.

Taglist:

@plethora-of-things​

@waddles03​

@psychosupernatural​

@ixchel-9275​

@queensdivas​

@jd-johndeacon-or-jackdaniels​

@platawnic​

____________________________________________________________

I was hiding within the den eating the food that my mother had collected. All I remember from my old home was fire and death, I remember running to find my parents but then I had gotten lost in the jungle. It was then I came upon a cave, well a den really of a black panther and her cubs. Ever since then I have lived with my mother and three brothers.

I ate the antelope just like my brothers, wrestled like them and slept like them curled up next to my mother's fur. Even though I was different than them and didn't look like them, my mother treated me like I was one of her own and treated me no less. I was currently being bathed by my mother when we heard something outside.

She went on the defense position and gathered me and my brothers up and pushed us closer to the den as she went outside and stalked to whatever it was that was close to our den. I know I shouldn't have but I got curious so I stepped out of the den and peeked over the log to see my mother roaring and swiping her massive paws at another black panther, but this one was different.

This Black Panther mainly stood on two legs, and its fur didn't look like fur and its eyes were not the pure golden cat eyes like my mother's. Mama roared and swiped her paw again at this intruding Black Panther and the other Black Panther backed away and submitted to my mother before turning and walking away but then I saw it look right at me.

I ducked behind the log and raced back into the den just as mother came back inside. She then nudged me towards her back, I got on and soon she led me and my brothers out of the den and we all searched for a new one. Knowing that we had been found, we couldn't stay in the same place for long. Mama always wants us to move if ever any predator found our den in order to ensure our survival.

*T'Challa's POV*

After arriving back to the palace, I couldn't help but think about that child I had seen in the jungle. It was a simple border patrol but what I wasn't aware was that I had stumbled upon a mother panther's den. I had activated my suit just in case but I didn't engage against the mother for I knew she was probably protecting her cubs. That's when I saw the child hiding within the bushes.

After that I had backed away from the mother panther slowly to show her that I wasn't a threat to her or her cubs. Once I was far enough from the den, I decided that it would be best to head back to the palace since there was no sign of trouble, but still my mind kept going back to that child. Who was she? How long has she been in the jungle? Did she have a family?

"Ther. Brother!" My sister's voice snapped me out of my state of mind and she sassed at me, "Did you listen to a word I said?"

"So sorry Shuri, I just—I was thinking about that child".

"A child?"

"Yes, while I was patrolling the jungle to check and make sure our borders were still safe from any weapons traders, I came across this child in the jungle".

"Was she Wakandan?"

"Possible, she definitely wasn't an outsider I know that much".

"I'll see if I can any records on any villages that have been attacked".

"Thank you Shuri". It was then my kimoyo beads activated.

"Ohh your girlfriend calling you?"

"Stop it!" I then allowed the image to come up and up came Okoye.

"My King" she stated.

"What is it Okoye?"

"Trouble by the river province, poachers are approaching the reserve".

"I am on my way". Okoye's image then disappeared. Before I walked out, Shuri stopped me. She then handed me the updated AMP beads.

"Take these with you, they are a much better improvement than the last ones".

"Thank you Shuri". She nodded then I took off running out of the lab.

*My POV*

After finding our new home, I was outside our new den playing with my brothers when I took notice of something shiny just ahead of me. While my two brothers were busy playing with each other and my mother was bathing my other one, I walked away and followed the shiny bright light.

I tried to catch it in my hands but for some reason it didn't want to be caught. I was so caught up in trying to catch the light that I didn't realize that someone was hiding behind the tall grass. As I caught the light one last time, I heard a shot and I was soon caught in a trap.

I cried and snarled out before three men picked me up and one of them spoke.

"She may not be an animal but she'll still sell for a big price".

"Put her in the trunk with the others" another spoke. I thrashed around and let out a cry for help to my Mama. The men put me in this large metal machine and soon took off. I kept crying and crying until I saw my Mama running just behind roaring up at me. She ran faster and faster until she lept in the car.

I tried to reach out for her but the metal trap they put me in kept me from reaching my mama. She managed to get herself in and she walked towards me and used her teeth to free me, but it was then one of the men held a gun in their hands and a loud bang was heard again. Next thing I saw was my mama rolling outside on the ground.

I cried out for her when suddenly the large machine stopped and I along with a few other animals were tossed around.

*3rd Person POV*

The poachers came out of the truck after their car broke down and crashed into a tree. They all complained to each other pointing the blame on the other when the leader silenced them and ordered them to get into defense position.

The men spread out with their guns drawn and as one of them held out his gun he heard a twig snap and turned to see nothing. That was until he looked up and saw a man in a cat suit.

Next thing the poachers, one of their men was tossed at the truck leaving a huge dent in the door. The Black Panther soon showed up and attacked another one of the poachers. T'Challa now stood before the remaining two and as the leader and his second in command were firing at T'Challa. He merely just walked towards them before striking the second in command.

The leader took out his knife and tried to stab T'Challa but he managed to dodge every swing until he grabbed the poacher's hand that was holding the knife and twisted it until he let go and heard it snap. The leader screamed in agony and T'Challa told him venomously.

"Poaching is illegal in these lands, you will be brought before the council and faced with the consequences". T'Challa then knocked the leader unconscious and walked towards the back to see the animals that were inside but was surprised to see another thing in the truck, or rather someone.

It was the child he had seen earlier today.

*My POV*

As I tried to get out of my cage, I saw the same Black Panther that my Mama faced earlier today come around into view. I froze in my spot just staring at him. It was then his panther face disappeared and it showed that he was actually a man.

He had deep dirty brown eyes and fur along his lips and chin and on top of his head. He almost reminded me of a growing lion. As he got closer to me, I snarled and hissed at him trying to be brave like my Mama.

"Easy, easy. I'm not going to hurt you". He held out his hands to me as he slowly came closer and closer to my cage. He then unlocked them and opened it up and proceeded to back away. "It's okay now, come on out now". I sniffed curiously and slowly crawled out of the cage. "That's it, it's okay. I won't hurt you". As I got out of the cage more, I looked between him and my way of escape.

Then like a shot I took off running as fast as I could with the Panther man behind me crying out for me. I raced down the trail until I came to my Mama. She was still down and there was red stuff around her head and fur. I walked up to her and nuzzled her fur and roared out to her. I shook her with my hands and bit into her ear but she still wouldn't wake up.

I roared at her as I felt wetness come down from my eyes then I curled up underneath my mama's paw and nuzzled her head as the wetness continued to come down my face. The Panther man soon came up close to me and I looked up at him and he looked at me with sad eyes.

"I am sorry". He then proceeded to come closer to me and my Mama but I stood over her growling and roaring at him. I let out a hiss but he raised his hands and said to me, "I won't hurt her, I promise". I glared at him. It was because of his kind that my Mama was dead.

Mama always warned us that ape-like creatures called Humans were always to blame for territory loss, stealing our food and killing us to extinction. Now because of his kind, my Mama is gone. But yet looking at his eyes, I felt like I could trust him. I ceased my snarling and just held onto my mama's body.

*T'Challa's POV*

As I looked down at this mother black panther, my heart sunk. She was only trying to save her cub, even though this was a human child, this mother panther looked at her like she was one of her own cubs. For her memory I decided to call this Pantheress "Kamunyak" meaning "Blessed One". I knew it would be dark soon and I had to get this child back to the palace to get her some warmth before the cold settled in.

Wakanda maybe the hottest places in Africa, but its nights are unpredictable. Some nights it would be cool enough to sleep outside, but sometimes they would be so unbearable cold. I gently touched her shoulders and could feel her fighting against me as I picked her up.

"Shhh, shh. Calm down, calm down" I told her in Wakandan. I had to get her calm because I didn't want her to hurt herself. She was raised to believe that she is a panther and I don't want her to bite into my suit and allow the Vibranium to hurt her. I placed her close to my chest and rubbed her back calming her in Wakandan. When it seemed to work, I kept her close and headed back to the jet to take her back to the palace.

When we arrived back at the palace, I had her put in a special room with a bed and warm food so that she could eat real food. And not knowing how long she has been in the jungle or when her last meal was, I took the liberty to give her the best and healthiest foods Wakanda has to offer.

As I observed her, my sister came back with some news. She pulled up on the screen as she stated.

"It turns out this girl comes from a village near Wakanda. It was attacked by some of Klaue's men and burned to the ground. She must've found a way to escape and has been living in the jungle since. How she's managed to survive for 5 years I do not know".

"A Mother panther raised her as one of her own cubs, it would seem Bast herself came down and decided to protect this child as if she were her own". I said out loud.

"You're telling me we have ourselves a Mowgli? Like that story and movie Baba showed us".

"It would seem so Shuri".

"What do you suggest then my King?" Okoye soon stated out.

"She is a child with no family to call her own, and her adoptive mother was shot and killed in front of her. This child needs the best care and only we can offer it".

"Brother are you suggesting that you are going to raise her?"

"I feel responsible for this child's mother's death. I cannot just let her die with no one to take care of her, knowing that we can teach her who she really is". I stated firmly. My general and sister looked at me then Okoye bowed her head and said.

"Just don't freeze when her feral stage comes back".

"What are you talking about? I never freeze" I stated. I then turned my attention back to the girl and decided to talk to her. I opened the door and shut it behind me. She instantly became alert of my presence and she got down in defense position baring her teeth at me. "Easy little one, I am not here to hurt you, may I sit down?" She seemed to understand me which was a good sign, at least then I knew she could understand me.

I took a seat far enough from her but kept my eyes on her in case anything were to happen.

"My name is T'Challa, do you remember your name?" She remained quiet and poked around the fruit and sniffing them like a cat would. I took a deep sigh and told her, "I know losing your Mama was hard, I lost my Baba not too long ago, and I would give anything to save him too. But I swear to you on my Baba's soul and that of your mother's, I will look after you and protect you. You will never be alone". She then looked up at me and I remained still as I saw her actually coming up towards me.

Slowly and cautiously, but sure enough she came right in front of me until she wrapped her arms around me and nuzzled into my chest. I placed my hand on top of her head and stroked her hair and slowly wrapped my arm around her to pick her up and place her in my lap and hold her in my arms as she nuzzled deeper into my chest.

Within several months of teaching and immense patience, I had given her the name (y/n) was soon learning how to be a human girl, learning how to eat properly, how to walk, learning the history of Wakanda, even learning how to speak both in English and Wakandan.

I along with Nakia and Shuri taught her everything she needed to know and were there to give her the love she deserved and needed. As night fell, I tucked (y/n) in after a long day of staying with Auntie Shuri in her lab while I dealt with some political matters after opening up Wakanda to the rest of the world. I stroked her hair and kissed her forehead and whispered to her.

"Goodnight my little panther cub". And as I turned off her light and was about to shut the door, I heard her voice say.

"Goodnight Baba". I let a warm smile take over me as I shut the door behind me and decided to turn in for the night myself.

[hellimagines]

Starlight Saviour (Chapter One) -- Billy Hargrove

*My masterlist link can be found in my blog description*

Summary: Being Steve Harrington’s younger sister and the notorious girlfriend of Billy Hargrove is hell. Especially when your boyfriend becomes infected and you’re the only one willing to step between him and the monster.

Warnings: blood and gore, angst

Pairing: Billy Hargrove x fem!Harrington!reader

Word Count: 2,800+

A/N: This is based entirely on the trailers we’ve seen, and has nothing to do with the actual outcome of ST3 (sadly). So, when the new season does drop, RIP Billy and RIP this piece of work whOOPS. Also, if your name is crossed out in the taglist, that means I am unable to tag you and you need to fix it before the next update, or else you’ll be removed from the tags. Thank you, and I hope you guys enjoy this!

Outside, the pitch-black night sky encased you and Billy as the Camaro drove steadily down the backroads. Home Sweet Home by Motley Crue whispered from the stereo, but you and Billy singing along managed to outpower Vince Neil’s voice completely. Billy drove with one hand on the steering wheel and the other gripping your calf, keeping you safe as you dangled out of the passenger side window. He kept the car slow, no more than 30 miles, and his grip on you would tighten at the slightest bump or turn. Your arms were flung out behind you, body teetering dangerously close to falling as you leaned back, with your head tilted towards the sky so you could admire the stars. The light pollution had been horrible this summer with the new mall having been built and the fair now in town. The only way to actually see the stars anymore was to go deep in the woods (where you knew not to go anymore) or driving the backroads. Billy knew how much you enjoyed seeing the moon and the stars, and he decided to take you out for the night- ultimately forgoing your original plan of meeting up with Steve and the kids at the fair.

Two quick taps on your leg brought your attention back to the car. “C’mon, star, it’s cold as hell,” Billy griped, giving a full-body shiver for supposed dramatic effect. Rolling your eyes at the nickname while a smile played at your lips, you dutifully slid back inside the car and rolled up the window. You were only wearing a pair of black, high-waisted shorts and one of Billy’s ragged band-tees, and yet you still hadn’t managed a single shiver.

“It is not, you big baby.” Despite your scoff, you reached over to turn up the heat and face it towards your shivering boyfriend. “Thank you for bringing me out here, though, it’s so nice,” you sighed softly, kicking your converse-clad feet onto his dashboard, and turning your body to rest your forehead against his shoulder. You almost pulled away, however, because of how cold his bare skin was. But, you brushed it off as Billy not having the same adrenaline as you did at the moment, and that you’d cool down soon enough, too.

“Mm, yeah, babe, ‘course,” he mumbled, his words slurred together and causing you immediate alarm at the sudden change.

You sat up quickly and turned to look at him, ready to berate him for any alcohol he may have had, but the words immediately died on your tongue. Billy was white-knuckling the steering wheel, and even though his words were slurred and his voice wasn’t all there, his eyes were wide and almost manic. They kept flicking from the rearview mirror (looking at something that you couldn’t see), to you, and back to the road, but his focus seemed to be on whatever was in the back. Turning around, you tried to spot whatever he was looking at- maybe a rogue car chasing you down or a bra you’d left in the backseat, but there was nothing there. Just darkness.

You turned back to him and placed a careful hand on his cold shoulder. “Billy? You alright, handsome?”

A smirk lifted at his lips, but he didn’t look to you. “I’m fucking perfect, baby, why’d you ask?” Billy’s voice was now much darker and throatier, giving you whiplash from the way he’d spoken just moments before. The familiar sound of the engine revving hit your ears, drowning out your song on the radio and filling your blood with ice.

Your eyes flicked to the speedometer, “You’re going too fast, you’ve gotta slow down.”

“It’s alright, baby, you know I’ve got control,” Billy chuckled, reaching out a hand to pet your cheek. You allowed him to, but you couldn’t keep the panic out of your eyes as you held onto his hand.

You urged, “Billy, please, slow the fuck down. You promised you wouldn’t start this shit up again. I know it’s an empty road, but please just slow down.” Billy laughed at your words and shook his head, thumbing your cheek. “If you don’t slow down, we’re gonna have a real fucking problem,” you seethed, losing the caring and concerned attitude, replacing it with panic and fear. Whatever Billy was going through you could deal with later, after the possibility of an impending crash was off the table.

“Baby,” he cooed, “don’t worry.” Billy lifted his head to look at you, and instead of being met with his beautiful ocean-blue eyes, you were now face-to-face with monsterish-green irises and black veins creeping in the whites of his eyes.

“Fuck-”

Just as you began to reach out, pleading silently with yourself that, ‘no, it can’t be back, El destroyed it, it’s fucking dead,’ something struck the driver’s side windshield, instantly shattering the glass and causing shards to spray everywhere. Billy jumped, not expecting the sudden collision, and the car moved with him, swerving you guys into an uncontrollable circle. You cried out, reaching to try and hold onto Billy’s arm in an effort to keep yourself grounded, but it was fruitless. The Camaro slid across the dry dirt and slammed into the side of one of the trees lining the road before you were able to hold onto anything. Since you weren’t wearing a seatbelt and you had been angled so awkwardly prior to the crash, you were thrown backward causing your head, shoulders, and back to collide painfully with the passenger-side window. If the tree hadn’t been pressed so tightly against the miraculously unbroken window, you were positive that it, too, would’ve shattered. Instead, your body slid down the door, a trail of blood smeared across the window in your wake. You could tell there were shards of glass embedded in your forehead, mainly because of the blood dripping into your right eye and obscuring your vision- but with the pain ricocheting across your right side, you figured that there had to be more. The crash had thrown your body to the floor, squished painfully between the passenger seat and the dashboard.

Slowly, you lifted your head, looking to see if your boyfriend was alright. “Billy,” you choked out, trying to blink away the blood and tears to get a better look and make sure he was safe and uninjured. The blond didn’t move at first, staying slouched over the steering wheel with his hands limp at his side. The car was still on and running, and the vibrations and the music didn’t feel right- like all of this was supposed to be much worse than it actually was. Whimpering in pain, you reached out your right arm and gripped the keys, turning off the ignition with a quiet groan. Your arm was littered with glass from your shoulder down to your wrist, and streams of blood fell into the palm of your hand, creating a bloody-red lake that eventually emptied through your fingers. Silence fell over the car with the radio and the engine now shut off, and all you could do was sit there and try to figure out, ‘what the fuck just happened?’.

Tired of the silence, you tried again, “Billy- babe!” And this time, he shifted. But Billy didn’t groan in pain or make any indication that he had been hurt. He simply sat up and straightened himself out, before opening the door and leaving the car. Not a single glance was spared your way, even as you tried to call out to him again. Confusion masked the pain on your face as you watched your boyfriend walk away from you and his car. Now that he was under the illumination of an isolated streetlight, you could see the all-too-familiar faint, black veins creeping up his arms and crawling up his neck, fading into the skin by his eyes and his forehead. It wasn’t Billy, you could no longer deny that, but Billy was still there, still fighting just like Will had all those months ago, and you had to do something to get him back to you.

Even though your entire body ached and your mind was whirring with endless catastrophic possibilities, you still managed to brace yourself against the seat and the dashboard, pushing to try and get off the floor. With a groan of agony, you managed to push yourself up, your arms shaking with how weak you felt. Your right arm nearly gave out against the dashboard, but with a final spurt of energy, you were finally able to throw yourself back into the passenger seat. Squinting against the streetlight now blinding your vision, you were hardly able to decipher the decaying Brimborn Steel Works sign against the rotting wood of the warehouse you had crashed near. Brimborn had shut down years ago, a short while after the war, when Hawkins Lab took over and the factory work shifted to a close. Now, not many people knew it existed let alone where it was located due to its isolation. You were shocked that Billy did, having only been in Hawkins for less than a year, and you couldn’t think of a reason as to why he would know. None of it made sense: the split-second character change, the crash, Billy walking away, and now this- but the detective work would have to wait because Billy was getting closer to the mill and farther away from you. With a deep breath, you climbed over the console and into the driver’s seat before stumbling out of the car and falling to your knees beside the tire.

“Goddamnit- Billy!” you finally screeched, just wanting him to hear you. “Billy, for fuck's sake! Just stop for a second!”

And he did. The monster paused, one leg out in front of him in anticipation for the next step that never came. His head tilted to the side as if waiting for you to say something else, but he didn’t turn to look at you or make any noise.

You whimpered and tried to push yourself to your feet, “Billy, just-” Your legs gave out, sending you face-first into the ground,  and you screamed in pure frustration. Lifting your head and spitting out blood and dirt, you looked towards your boyfriend for any sign that he was still there. “Don’t fall. Please, babe, don’t fall,” you whispered, unsure if he could even hear you.

But then he was turning to look at you, and even though his eyes still weren’t his, the black veins had melted into his skin, giving you a false sense of comfort. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep him safe.” The voice, not belonging to Billy, was deep and throaty, just like you’d heard in the car. “He needs me, just like I need him. He’ll be fine. You, on the other hand, can’t-”

A scream, so painful it made your heart ache, erupted from Billy’s mouth. His hands flew to clutch at his mess of curls before he began shaking his head fervently. “No! No, you can’t fucking touch her! Not her!” Billy, true Billy, cried out, doubling over in the fight against himself. “F-uck off!”

Your heart leaped into your throat at his cries of anguish, and you began to crawl forward, digging your fingers into the dirt for leverage. “Don’t fall, Billy, don’t fall,” you repeated to yourself, desperately trying to get to your feet in your haste to reach him. But the right side of your body was still bleeding, and you were positive one of your ankles was fucked from the crash. So each attempt only got you a couple of inches closer before you were back on your knees, clawing at the dirt.

Ahead of you, Billy was repeating his own mantra of, ‘not her, not her, not her’ and he seemed to be negotiating with whatever was inside him. ‘The Mindflayer,’ you reminded yourself, narrowing your eyes at the memory of last fall. The Mindflayer must’ve said something to appease Billy and calm him down for at least a second, enough time for the monster to take over again. The monster stopped pulling at his hair and he straightened out, looking back down at you with those foreign, green eyes.

He didn’t say anything for a while, silence encasing both of you as you stared the other down. Will managed to fight this thing off with the love and support of his family and his friends, but Billy… Billy only had you. You loved him more than the stars, but with the look the Mindflayer was giving you, you knew it was going to take more than that to bring him home. He seemed to be waiting for you, whether to follow, retreat, or fight, neither of you knew. But with the hope that Billy was still in there, still fighting, you managed to push yourself to your feet, swaying unsteadily with the knowledge that this wasn’t your boyfriend.

“You’ll be safe. Once this is over. I will not hurt you, and neither will he-”

“Of course Billy won’t hurt me, I’m not an idiot,” you spat, interrupting the demonic voice coming from your boyfriend. The monster’s eyebrows rose, but he made no move to retaliate. “Why? Why are you doing this to him?”

“I didn’t choose him if that’s what you’re implying. I was given to him and gifted with all his pain that will help me thrive- help us survive,” the Mindflayer answered, taking a couple of steps forward. You didn’t move away, allowing the monster to get closer to you.

“How? Who did this to him? Who betrayed him and gave him you?” you asked, refusing to flinch when his hand came to stroke your cheek.

“Injection. That’s all it took. I am a virus, I can live anywhere.”

A memory flashed in your mind; Billy and Steve fighting, Max jumping on to Billy before injecting him with the same sedative that had been given to Will- with the same needle. “You don’t like the heat, though. It hurts you,” you whispered, grasping for anything to help you save Billy. Regardless, your eyes widened at the fact that the monster had been there for months, living alongside you and Billy in peace.

“It hurts us, now. Whatever you do to me, is done to him, baby. You mustn’t forget,” the monster said, gently running his thumb over your cheek to wipe away a stray tear that had mixed with your blood. He was taking Billy’s demand to heart and you hated it.

“Don’t call me that,” you growled, resisting the urge to swat away his hand. It wasn’t Billy, but you couldn’t piss off the Mindflayer without Billy receiving those repercussions. Besides, if you closed your eyes just right, his touch felt just like Billy, just colder.

“He would have been the perfect host. Broken, lost, all the pain… He wasn’t supposed to have a light, a star. He wasn’t supposed to break free just to keep you safe. But I can work around you. Your love won’t be enough to stop me this time. I’ve been here, in his head, I know what he thinks and what the others think of him. You’re the only one that cares about him. Neil, Susan, Max- nobody cares about him. Nobody else will help you.” Your breath hitched at his words because he was right and you both fucking knew it. “It’s just the three of us now, and it will be once we end everything. It’s what he deserves, it’s what I deserve.”

The Mindflayer let go of your cheek with your blood staining his palm as he turned away from you. No other words were spoken as he retreated into the mill, but a lone rat squeaked past your shoes, scurrying ahead of the monster and into Brimborn. You wanted to chase after him, you wanted to plead with the monster to let him go, to take you instead, but you knew he wouldn’t. The Mindflayer had adapted to Billy’s strengths and weaknesses, and the bond they now forcefully shared wouldn’t be given up easily. So, with your heart cracking, all you could do was watch as Billy disappeared into Brimborn.

—

All Writing Taglist (OPEN): @teageowen @mads---world @alex--awesome--22 @hxdesworld @frozenhuntress67 @samanthasmileys @simonsaysyasss @marvelismylifffe @bademliimagnum @wherewecangazeintothestars @black-tights-black-heart

Starlight Saviour Taglist (OPEN): @seasidemercury @andtheytoldustotellyouhello @egirlfairy @mckenzieeke @yourthebrokengirl @fandomshit6000 @ssstutteringbbbill @ragingrapids1 @mystical-934 @klanceiscannon14 @goldenhourchild @top-nerd-03 @obsessedwithbillyhargrove

[quinn-firethief]

Quinn Firethief

Hello everyone! It’s currently four am but I’ll do my best here. Quinn Firethief is one of my oldest wizards. I made him two years ago after I downloaded the game for the first time in like, years, to play with some friends. The graphics update had me shook, y’all. My friends and I loved roleplaying as our characters (both in-game via voice chat and in our texting apps cause we’re weebs) so Quinn is pretty fleshed out. The problem is is that I’m poor so I’m currently stuck right before Marleybone. Hopefully, I’ll be able to change that once I graduate. But for right now, I’ll give you guys the rundown of his character up until this point. Quinn Firethief is a Prince. His parents are the King and Queen of Dragonspyre. Yeah, big surprise, amirite? When I made his backstory, I made it without knowing the whole story of the world. Bad on my part, I know, but I’m really attached to the idea now. So, how that works is that while most of Dragonspyre is unhabitable, there is still a very small part that is. That's where the royal family and a lot of inhabitants that were too loyal to leave ran to. It’s a very small place, they have a very small military, it’s very much a former shell of the great glory it once was. Because of this though, Quinn is well known among their people because there’s probably, at least, a hundred or two left there. He cares very much about them, he’s a great public speaker, very charismatic, and he just really cares about people and really loves helping them in general. It's such a small place that it's really not that big of a deal that Quinn is a prince, a few people might be like “wow what's it like???” but a lot of questions don’t really apply to him because he did live a comfortable life, just not a lavished one thanks to their current situation. But his family does have very good background to their name. Firethieves were the royal family after all. There’s a big legend that they got their last name-Firethief of course-by stealing fire from the Dragons themselves so that they could harness the power and learn how to control it. Depending on whether or not you believe that, you could say a lot of people have Quinn’s ancestors from many many generations ago to thank for fire magic. Others might say that the downfall of the world is probably the family’s karma catching back up on them if that is true.

Before I go into the next part. I no longer talk to the friend that played the next character that I’m going to be talking about. We didn’t end on good terms. But their character is very vital to Quinn’s story. I can’t just write them out. So I’ve decided to just not put their name. Maybe I will later, maybe I’ll completely change it; we’ll just have to see.

Quinn had a best friend who was basically like a brother to him. He was always at the castle, and people even called him a Prince too. When they were of age to go to Ravenwood and start practicing magic (which, in my opinion, is probably eighteen, maybe as young as sixteen if you’re super good) they went together. Like I said, Quinn’s family has a long history in fire magic, being the royal family of Dragonspyre after all, so Quinn immediately dabbled in fire magic. His best friend went into myth. When they started questing, they ended up meeting a life wizard named Sarai (her last name escapes me rn I’ll get back to y’all on that) who was in the same year as them. (She was played by my girlfriend, if she ever makes a Tumblr for her I’ll definitely link it here) They needed a healer, she needed some harder hitters, so they all started questing together. They became the best of friends. They were well on their way to being able to take down Malistaire. The journey didn’t come without difficulties of course. Sarai got sick with the Krok Plague during one of the dungeons, and the boys had to rush through the last few to get the cure for her. Quinn’s best friend ended up dropping Myth because he was doing so horrible. He did, however, become very interested in Balance thanks to Kroktopia and found he did very well in that. While Sarai was sick Quinn realized that he had definitely fallen in love with the sweet and gentle Life wizard, and while he came very close to confessing his feelings, he didn’t.

Krok ended well. They were able to get the cure to Sarai in time and they finished it all out together, with Sarai cured of the plague and coherent. They all crashed in Sarai’s house afterward and chatted about how far they had come, and how they heard that Marleybone was needing help next.

Now, this is when my friends and I stopped playing. Summer of 2018 had drawn to a close and I was going into my Junior year. We all got very busy, my family ran into some bad financial problems so I obviously couldn’t unlock the Marleybone zones, and then by the end of my Junior year, I was no longer talking to the friend that played Quinn’s best friend. I’m in my Senior year and I’m feeling nostalgic, and like most Wizard101 players I’m getting sucked back into this game(help me). But this is where I take some liberty with the story. The three of them do end up going to Marleybone, but after a good few weeks, they end up running into Morganthe who, at this point, is just starting to plan on getting a little public about her villainess. Obviously, at this point, I’m messing with canon a little bit, but not that bad. She ended up casting a spell that took ahold of Quinn’s best friend's mind and completely turned him against Quinn and Sarai. They tried to free him from the spell but it became very clear very fast that it wasn’t possible. They ended up having to kill him. Quinn dealt the final blow with his bow and arrow (I got it from a pack, such a good drop sorry now isn’t the best time-) and the place they were fighting in exploded. Sarai and Quinn were knocked out and then dragged to safety by some other wizards that heard the explosion. While the friend’s body was never found, it was plainly obvious that he was dead. Quinn and his best friend, who was basically his brother, had known each other since they were kids. Like, I’m talking six years old. they had known Sarai for at least two years at this point since Krok and Wizard City had definitely (in my mind) taken some time to get through and fix. They were a very close, tightknit group. They were well known around Ravenwood and it was rare when you saw one of them walking around alone. So, as you can imagine, having to kill their own friend was very, very hard on them. Especially Quinn. He and Sarai can’t even be around each other anymore because it hurts too much, the wound is too raw. Quinn ends up telling Sarai that he needs some time alone, some time to think. So they stop talking, they stop hanging out, and they both just stop questing in general. It’s not the same without their friend’s lute playing to cheer them on.

Quinn gets very depressed and turns to alcohol. At this point, he’s twenty-one, so it is legal. A favorite of his is Fireball. If he’s not sleeping or studying or practicing, he’s drinking. He has nightmares (and rarely dreams, those tend to hurt more) of his friend constantly. He has to move out of the dorm because they always hung out there and it just hurts too much, there are too many memories. He can’t even visit Dragonspyre because of all of the memories they have there, he’d probably drop dead the moment he walked in because of how hard it’d hit him. So he moves into the Fire House (the classic burning tower with all that lava) and to try and cope, he makes a grave for his best friend even though they never found a body. Yep, you’re right, that’s exactly what my header is. Depressing, right? I had a leftover present from some winter event, so I decided to put that there to make it even sadder. This is currently where I’m picking up with Quinn, where he’s at his lowest and he’s pushing everyone away and he feels completely alone. It really resonates with me because of how I’ve been feeling lately (for like NO reason might I add). I’m super excited to write about it, it’s definitely going to be fun. I hope you guys enjoyed that! I’m sorry this was such a long read lmao this took me like twenty minutes to type up. Mainly because I had to keep fact-checking and I’m so tired. It’s now five am and I need to sleep. If you guys have any questions, don’t be afraid to ask. If you wanna be friends, shoot me a text! I need more Wizard101 buddies so badly right now. I might open one-shot requests if enough people show interest in Quinn and my writings enough, but we’ll just have to see :)

Have a good day everyone!

[voidiots]

Profile

Una’to Bajhiri :  RP Profile (Mateus, Crystal Server)

Updated: 04/23/2019

Character Name: Una’to Bajhiri

The Basics ––––

·         Age: 25

·         Birthday: 13th Sun of the 5th Umbral Moon (October 13th)

·         Race: Miqo’te : Half Moon Keeper and Half Sun Seeker. (It doesn’t show, he looks most like and ID’s as a Keeper.)

·         Gender: Male

·         Sexuality: Pansexual Polyamorous

·         Marital Status: Single 

(Dating Nezh’a @deviouslynezha)

Physical Appearance ––––

·         Hair: White

·         Eyes: Aqua Green

·         Height: 5’6”

·         Build: Lean and muscular. Short from malnutrition growing up.

·         Distinguishing Marks: Red tattoos, red eyeshadow, light scars on hands.

·         Common Accessories: Long painted nails, masks, and rings made of bone.

Personal ––––

·         Profession: Fortune Telling

·         Hobbies: Tormenting his self-proclaimed friends, researching, collecting secrets, and socializing.

·         Languages: Eorzean

·         Residence: Inns around Ul’dah. (He has an Apartment in The Goblet Ward 13 Subdivision Apartment 10, however he is more picky about who he allows to go there, and if anything will do readings there should someone demand a more private venue.)

·         Birthplace: Twelves Wood (South Shroud specifically, closer to the East Shroud’s border)

·         Religion: Agnostic

·         Patron Deity: Menphina, The Lover

·         Fears: Being alone, the past, the future, others touching his neck, spiders.

Relationships –––

·         Spouse: N/A

·         Children: N/A

·         Parents: Una Bajhiri and Miqo’te by the name of  T’ara Nunh(deceased).

·         Siblings: Una’a (thought to be dead goes by Nry (@nyrs-nook)), Kana (deceased), Kiri (deceased), Vizha Bajhiri (Half sibling).

·         Other Relatives: Extended clan that he is estranged from on both sides of his family.

·         Pets: N/A

Traits –––

·         Extroverted / In Between / Introverted

·         Disorganized / In Between / Organized

·         Close Minded / In Between / Open Minded

·         Calm / In Between / Anxious

·         Disagreeable / In Between / Agreeable

·         Cautious / In Between / Reckless

·         Patient / In Between / Impatient

·         Outspoken / In Between / Reserved

·         Leader / In Between / Follower

·         Empathetic / In Between / Apathetic

·         Optimistic / In Between / Pessimistic

·         Traditional / In Between / Modern

·         Hard-working / In Between / Lazy

·         Cultured / In Between / Uncultured

·         Loyal / In Between / Disloyal 

·         Faithful / In Between / Unfaithful

Additional information ––––

SMOKING HABIT:

never /sometimes/ frequently / to excess.

DRUGS:

never /sometimes/ frequently / to excess.

ALCOHOL: never/ sometimes / frequently / to excess

RP Hooks ––––

.Traveling Circus: Sword swallowing, knife juggling fire blowing, card tricks, and fortune telling were his gig’s while in service to the circus. He doesn’t like to talk about that part of his life, but someone is bound to recognize him from that part of his life (Ages 10 to 22).

. Fortune Teller: He reads fortunes for profit where he can, it’s an easy to use skill that he was able to pick up from his time in the circus. Readings can be done via all mediums for RP.

.Void Research: He’s secretly been researching the void and voidsent regarding a disease that hit his small “village” when he was a child, taking his siblings and leaving him the only survivor of the disease. Secrets don’t stay secret long though, and surely someone is bound to hear about his research. He’s mainly looking into the disease to see what it entails for those who survive it, and when and what reasons it popped up before in the past. He’s currently trying to link the disease to whatever voidsent it’s derived from. Additionally, this may make him set some with sensitivities or voidsent off given it did impact his physiological makeup.

. Corrupted Aether: Due to the disease he suffered from in his childhood, if you’re able to sense aether it’s likely you can tell that he has a large amount, and that it’s not normal.

. Distrust of Conjurers: He has a distrust of conjurers as they couldn’t make it to his village to help him or his siblings when disease took hold. He also has a dislike of Kan-e Senna as a result. Aura Conjurers are safe from his distrust however. He’s prone to glaring at Conjurers as a result, and often doesn’t realize it.

. World’s Oldest Profession: Maybe you’ve hired him for his services before, he isn’t taking anyone recently as his fortune telling career is treating him better and Nezh’a is very prone to crashing his engagements and ruining them.

. Clan Runaway: Are you a Bajhiri? You may have heard about his siblings deaths, or how he left his poor mother alone when she needed help most. Either way, he’ll likely be aloof around you and try to avoid the subject of his family as much as possible, but may try to probe for information on how the clan is doing.

About the Mun and Contact Details––––

·  My main blog is @fracturedfantasia​, but messaging on Tumblr via IM or asks on my main or character blog is fine by me. Una’to can be found at @unatobajhiri​.

· I will give my Discord upon request. It is probably the best way to reach me as I have it on my computer and phone. Discord and Tumblr are preferable, just because at times my depression or anxiety kicks my butt and gives me low energy. Which by extension means that I may be a little slow on replies because energy and focus are fickle weird things. I am much newer to in game RP, but have been RPing via forums and table top for a cumulative ten or so years.

· I live in Arizona, so in Winter I’m on MST and in Summer PDT. To us, daylight savings is fake.

·  I work retail currently, and that means my schedule isn't consistent. As it is now I have Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday off consistently. I usually play DnD on Monday and Saturday nights typically.

· I tend to be a night owl and have insomnia, so catching me from afternoon to nope in the morning is your best bet. Otherwise I can be low energy at times and forgetful. Life is a busy thing after all, and we all have differing levels of energy that we can dedicate to things. Especially with IRL drama hitting time to time.

· Of course IC and OOC are separate. If you’ve talked to me ever, you will know I am a strange little cryptid that draws and makes jokes a lot, as well as like, I will cry upon seeing kittens.

· Una’to can be found in game on the Mateus server generally for his home server, otherwise any Crystal world is fair game.

What I’m Looking For and Rules ––––

I’m looking for people who are okay with characters changing. As such Una’to is set up with a kind of dating sim route where those around him influence the end of this chapter in his life and how he ends up. That means there are varying levels of good ends and bad ends, with the extremes being the end goal regardless, as people can continue to influence his rise or fall as a person. The more people who are good and convince him to be less jaded, the better off he is for a good end. The more people who are trying to corrupt and use him because of his past with voidsent? The closer he gets to a bad end. 

I’m not looking to ERP. We will both just feel awkward and disappointed more than anything, just because I will be as lost as can be. If it does happen we can try and see what happens, but I want it to be story motivated. Additionally, shipping is not one of my big concerns regarding Una’to. If it happens it happens, but at present I’m not going to push for it. I mean... LOOK AT HIM.

Please don’t try to kill my muse physically. Like, I’m going to put that final nail in the coffin when I so wish. Think he should have some marks left from an interaction, talk to be about it first. You don’t get to decide what changes occur to my character on my half simple as that.

Given he is a character that has darker themes, I ask that all interested in RPing with Una’to be 18+. No offense to minors, I’m just covering my bases here. I’m also quite a bit older than eighteen now, any my comfort for minors interacting with darker things, especially ones that I’m contributing to, is that I would prefer we’re both adults.

· If one has any questions, constructive critique, or comments please shoot me a message!

[deviantconnorarmy]

...There’s Always A Chance...

AN: Sequel for "Statistically Speaking..." Mainly cause I was begged for a sequel. I'd already entertained the idea, but the begging settled it.  By the way, this ended up being super long, soooo there’s going to be a part 3.  This is officially a mini series haha. I’m calling it the “Survivability” Mini-Series

Characters: Fem!Reader (Referenced), Connor, Hank Anderson, Captain Fowler

Pairing: Connor x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Language, Mentions of Violence, Mentions of Death, Injury/Mentions of Injury, Angst

Word Count: 2387

<---Previous Part   Masterlist   Next Part --->

“It comes and goes in waves.  It always runs back, but it’s never quite the same.  Well I think there’s something wrong with me.  Got nothing to believe, can’t you see it on my face.  I was going for the title got it by a tidal wave.  Can’t stay in the shallows, please tell me I won’t wash away.  When it pulls me under will you make me stronger, will you be my breath through the deep, deep water?  Take me farther, give me one day longer.  Will you be my breath through the deep, deep water? Deep water.  Deep water.  Ain’t even scratched the surface.  Thinking I deserve the dream, but I don’t deserve the hurting.  I want the flame without the burning, but I can’t find my purpose when I don’t know what my worth is.”  --”Deep Water” by American Authors

The whir echoing through the parking lot grew louder, turning into a grating whine.  The dim red glow under the snow brightened, flickered, puttered out before lighting up bright and alarming.

Rebooting...Rebooting...Rebooting...

A cough.  Sputtering, choked, fresh blue soaking into white.

The snow was disturbed from where it had settled hours ago as limbs moved, choppily bracing against the ground before pushing up with a groan.

Warning:  System Failure Imminent.  Warning:  System Failure Imminent.  Warning:  System Failure Imminent.  Warning:  System Failure Imminent.

Thirium struggled to flow through damaged systems, leaking through the holes and breaks in the very wiring that was supposed to keep it in.  Inner components struggled to work after exposure to the cold for hours, grinding and groaning with the effort, occasionally seizing before being pushed forward by sheer will.

Thirium Levels low.  Warning:  System Failure Imminent.  Biocomponents Damaged.  Warning:  System Failure Imminent.

Arms tried to drag a struggling body forward, but the parts wouldn’t cooperate with the will, only moving enough to prop up on locked elbows.

“He...help...”

The synthesized voice broke through the quiet of the parking lot, choked out by more thirium streaming to the ground over trembling lips.

Again.

“Help!”

Warning: System Failure Imminent.

“Help!”

LED flickered, dimming--limbs slowly lowering back to the ground.

Not yet...not yet...

“Help...”  A strained whisper.

Footfalls.  Voices.  Muddled as the non-vital components started to shut down, power diverting to the parts needed to continue operating.  Optical units were one of those already shut down, but someone could still be heard approaching.

“Holy shit--”

“This was fairly recent--”

“He’s still alive!  How the hell--”

“He still has something to live for.  Help me with him--”

“We need to move fast, or he won’t make it--”

He was being moved.  Arms wrapped around him, hands grasping to help support, snow and thirium slipping to the ground.

He’s still alive, they’d said, whoever they were.

He’s still alive.

I am alive.

*Hank POV*

Day 1

Hank was on his feet, pacing slowly in the waiting room.  Even though Connor’s sacrifice got you to the emergency room, your condition was volatile.  You hadn’t woken up, you had crashed twice already, you’d already been in and out of the surgery room three or four times, and the doctors weren’t very optimistic about your chances.  All Hank could do was pace and wait, since he was worried about what he would miss if he left.  It had been a stressful first day, and he hadn’t even dealt with what had happened to Connor yet.

Hank’s phone started ringing in his pocket.  A quick look gave him an unwelcome name.

Fowler.

He’d already ignored his calls for the first half of the day, he might as well answer now.  If he pushed the guy too far, he might lose his badge.  Besides, usually Fowler knew to give up if Hank hadn’t answered by now.  If he was still calling, it might be something important.

Hank’s voice was sharp as he finally answered.  “What?”

“For fuck’s sakes, Hank, why the hell haven’t you answered your goddamn phone?” Fowler yelled.  The frown that had been on Hank’s face for hours by now deepened into a full-fledged scowl.

“She’s still at the hospital, and her conditions unstable, where the fuck do you think I’ve been, Jeffrey?” Hank barked back.

“I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for hours--Cyberlife wants to know where the hell their android is, and I’m tired of them riding my ass for your fuck up!”

Hank paused.  “Where their--what d’you mean, where their android is?  I told you, Connor was lying right where we found them!”

“Well apparently you weren’t paying attention, cause it’s not there now, and Cyberlife is pissed!  Are you sure it was destroyed?”

“I’m pretty fucking sure, Jeffrey!  He was pumped full of bullets and his LED wasn’t on--not to mention all the blue blood all over the place was his.  There was no way in hell he was still alive!”

“Well then how the fuck do you explain it not being there when Cyberlife went to recover what was left?”

“Maybe they should have gotten out their faster?” Hank suggested in an acidic voice.  “If they took their sweet time finding Connor, someone else might have got there first and scavenged him.”

The thought made Hank sick, but it was the only explanation he could come up with for why Connor wasn’t still out there.  He’d seen the android--he’d been destroyed.

“That android better show up in the next 48 hours, or you’re dealing with this mess, Hank, not me!” Fowler snapped, hanging up the phone before Hank could yell at him any more.

“Ghaa!” Hank fumed, barely resisting the urge to pitch the phone.  As if the entire situation hadn’t been fucked up already.

Hank looked back in the direction the doctors kept appearing to give him updates on your situation.  He needed to figure out what had happened to Connor, but...it would have to wait until your situation stabilized somewhat.

He wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he left and something happened to you.

*Undisclosed Location*

“I’m going to need more thirium.  And do we have any 9428v components?”

“No.  Have you fixed the--”

“I’ve already done everything I can for the thirium flow, we need to replace some of these damaged components if he’s going to make it off this table.”

Footsteps.  A new voice.

“You said you found someone?”

“Yeah--he was lying in the snow, barely alive, but he was definitely trying to hold on.”

The footsteps moved closer.  A pause.

“I know who this is...why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“You were gone, and he needed attention--”

“This is the deviant hunter.”

Silence.

Then, quietly, “He needs help.”

“You’re always telling us to be better than them.  Now’s our chance.”

“You don’t understand, if he wakes up, we’re all dead.”

“We can’t just let him die, either!  It’s not right!”

“What should we do?”

Silence, again.  Longer this time.

“What does he need?”

A soft sigh of relief.  A noise of frustration.

“Thirium, obviously.  Some biocomponents, a replacement for that leg.  He’s highly advanced, though, we won’t find some of these parts at your everyday Cyberlife warehouse or store.”

“We can’t help him, then--that solves the problem.”

“I never said we couldn’t help him...”

“...It’ll just be dangerous.  The stupid kind of dangerous.”

“Or suicidal.”

“What should we do?”

*Hank’s POV*

Day 3

Dead ends.  Busts, false leads, and dead ends was all Hank’s investigation had gotten him, and he was shit out of luck.  Jeffrey would be trying to reach him again at any moment now, demanding Hank deal with the heat from Cyberlife for losing their advanced prototype.

He’d honestly tried to find out what happened to Connor, but by the time he got to the crime scene again, the snow had covered any possible tracks, and the thirium had disappeared long before his arrival.  He couldn’t see any tracks to follow, or any sign of a third party, or that Connor had miraculously gotten up and walked off on his own.

Though if Connor survived, Hank was sure he would have showed up by now.  It was because he hadn’t returned, and because Hank had seen him and known he was dead, that he’d ruled out the possibility of Connor still being alive.

At the moment, however, Hank firmly believed the investigation could go fuck itself.  You’d crashed again, and were once more in emergency surgery.  From the way the doctors were talking, they were just about ready to give up.  As a result, Hank was once more in the waiting room, Sitting firmly planted in an uncomfortable chair, leaning forward with eyes staring blankly at the ground in front of him.

The entire situation felt too much like what had happened to Cole.

This part of the hospital was particularly busy--it was Detroit.  People got injured all the time.  They were numerous enough that Hank had grown used to ignoring all the bustle and started to only respond when it was a doctor approaching him about your status.  The rest of the time he could effectively ignore everyone else.

So it was that he didn’t hear the footsteps or see the figure walking carefully towards him.

He did, however, hear the voice loud and clear.

“Lieutenant?”

Hank’s head snapped up, followed quickly by the rest of him as his shock propelled him to his feet.

“What the fuck?”

It was Connor.  In once piece.  Standing in front of him like nothing had happened.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true.  Connor’s clothes still looked disheveled, his tie was missing, his shoes looked like secondhand sneakers instead of his usual dress shoes, and there was a clear bullet hole in his pant leg.  The only reason he wasn’t soaked in blood--at least visibly--had to be the whole thirium disappearing after a few hours thing.  And considering the bullet hole in his pant leg, Hank was almost positive if he looked there would be bullet holes in the back of his jacket.

Hank would have asked if it was just some replacement sent by Cyberlife if he couldn’t see the serial number on his jacket and all the evidence that this was the very same Connor that he’d seen destroyed the other night.

“How the hell are you here?  I saw you--you were dead!”  Hank’s disbelief was obvious as he strode up to the android, taking all of him in.  Aside from the clothes, he looked...different.  Something had changed.

“Not yet, Lieutenant.  I had to reboot my systems--it took a few hours,” Connor said carefully.

“So you just...what, walked off without telling anyone?” Hank asked, feeling a surge of anger at the thought.

“No.  I didn’t walk anywhere,” Connor said vaguely.

Hank leaned back, appraising Connor closely.  The android was usually painfully specific, not frustratingly concise.

“Someone helped you?” Hank prodded.

“Yes.”

When Connor didn’t elaborate, Hank leaned in, eyebrows raised.  “Well?  Who was it, who helped you?”

Connor actually hesitated.  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, Lieutenant.”

That was a surprise.

“You can’t tell me, huh?” Hank echoed, watching Connor closely.  The android stared right back, but with hard determination in his eyes.

He wasn’t going to budge.  He wasn’t going to breathe a word of who had helped him.

It sure as hell hadn’t been Cyberlife.  So whoever had helped him...very likely had broken quite a few laws in doing so.

“Can’t or won’t?” Hank asked, watching Connor’s expression carefully.

Connor remained silent, but Hank saw that determination in his eyes harden.

In other words, he knew, but he wasn’t going to tell.

Atta boy.

“All right...well, what matters is that you’re here now, right?” Hank said carefully, backing away.  Connor watched him closely, almost like he didn’t think Hank was just going to drop the subject just like that.

But he was.  For now, anyway, since Connor was clearly protecting someone.

Connor looked down the hall in the direction the doctors were currently in surgery with you again.  “It’s been three days--how is she?” he asked.

“She’s still alive, but...the doctor’s aren’t too optimistic.  She’s been in and out of surgery, she’s in a coma...they say it was a miracle she made it to the hospital in the first place.  You wouldn’t happen to know something about that, would you?”

Connor’s LED flashed red so quickly Hank wasn’t entirely sure he’d actually seen it.  Again, Connor remained silent.

He’s not going to talk about what happened.

Connor remained fixed in place for a few painfully long moments before he broke the silence that had settled between the two of them, his LED blinking yellow.

“Do you think she’s going to be all right, Lieutenant?”

Hank leaned back in his seat.  “Whatever you did out there helped, Connor.  But I think the only thing we can do for her right now is hope she makes it.”

*Connor POV*

Connor didn’t move again until the doctor approached them, an android nurse following close behind.  Since Connor hadn’t torn his gaze from the hallway, he saw them coming first.

It felt like his gut was twisting itself up in knots, throat tightening as he fixed the cuffs of his ruined jacket.

Somewhere in the far back of his mind he had the thought that he’d need replacement clothes, and he’d have to come up with an explanation for Cyberlife, but he didn’t let his thoughts wander much beyond that, because the doctor was approaching them, and all of his focus right now was on you, not Cyberlife and his own current situation, you.

“How is she?” Connor asked before Hank could even finish rising from his seat.  The doctor gave Connor an odd look, then turned his attention back to Hank, addressing the Lieutenant over Connor.

“Her condition is getting worse.  At this point, there’s really nothing we can do for her, except perhaps an experimental treatment.  But the chances of success for the treatment are far too slim for me to confidently suggest it.

“What’s her chance of survivability if she has the treatment?” Connor asked sharply, though this time he was addressing the android nurse specifically.

“Eleven percent,” the android promptly answered.

“Is there any way to increase those chances, even marginally?” Connor pressed almost as soon as the android finished answering his first question.

“Certain situational adjustments could increase chance of survivability, but not by much.”

“Not enough for me to change my mind that it’s not a good idea,” the doctor said sternly.  Hank, however, was looking at Connor.

“What do you think, Connor?”

Connor looked sharply at the Lieutenant, an intense purpose in his eyes.  “She had a two percent chance of survival in the parking lot before I made situational adjustments, eight percent before I was...interrupted.  Her odds of surviving with this treatment are better than her odds for making it out of that parking lot alive were.”

Something flashed in Hank’s eyes at Connor’s statement, though Connor couldn’t quite gauge the emotion he was displaying on his features before Hank turned back to the doctor.

He was the only human here at the hospital to speak for you, so the decision was his.

“Do the treatment, then.”

Next Part --->

Tags:  @tea-with-loki @kawaiispacepriincess @thecrazybluefangirl @littleblue5mcdork @noodledraw 

[jilliancares]

It’s Not Spying if You Don’t Call it Spying

Summary: Turns out Everyone is spying on Lance and Keith’s blossoming relationship.

Word count: 5k

read on ao3

Pidge was a curious person. It was something that extended to all areas of her life, whether that meant she was taking apart a toaster at the ripe old age of six to figure out how it worked or spying on her friends in her free time. It wasn’t like it was an active decision, it was just something that happened to her. She’d see someone down the hall, maybe walking kind of like wherever they were going was a secret, and Pidge would accidentally on purpose find herself following. Nothing serious.

Anyway, it wasn’t like she would ever tell anyone what she found. The secrets she gleaned from her less-than-honorable spying sessions were for her alone—and in extreme cases could maybe be used later for blackmail. But mainly it was just to satisfy her own curiosity. Like now, for example.

It was commonplace for her to be unable to sleep. There was all the stress from defending the universe and trying to find her family with any scraps of information she could salvage, not to mention the fact that without the actual sun her circadian rhythm was a bit out of wack—meaning her body liked to think that now was never the right time for bed, even when she’d been up for 36 hours straight. Which was why she often found herself holing up in random corners of the castleship, maying secretly taking apart and putting back together a random Altean invention, or simply sitting in a dimly lit area to think.

But, being up so often as she was, she normally knew the going-ons that happened at night. She knew when Lance crept out of his bed occasionally, his face glistening with tell-tail tear tracks as he made his way to Hunk’s room. Pidge guessed that this was the doing of nightmares or possibly just the thoughts that were likely to attack at night, the ones that berated your mind with thoughts of things you missed and were scared of and might never see again. She knew when Hunk got up in the middle of the night to bake something strange. She knew when Shiro walked the halls, still asleep, enacting some dream or flashback that she couldn’t get to him through—could only lead him back to his room. She knew when Keith trained until the early hours of the morning, when Allura snuck down to the room Alfor’s AI used to inhabit, when Coran stared out the control room into the endless space beyond, looking for all the world like he was wide awake.

And because she knew all these things, had observed them enough during her waking nights to know what was normal, she knew what was decidedly not normal. Such as Keith and Lance walking into the kitchen together, their voices too quiet for her to hear. The moments that the two were quiet and kind were rare, far and few in between, and Pidge felt like she’d found something magical to have witnessed it like this. Part of her thought that they should be disagreeing more than usual in the middle of the night, the lack of sleep making them crankier than usual. But a bigger part of her knew that, regardless of what time it actually was, there was something about the late, late hours of the night that opened the heart and loosened the tongue. She’d just never have expected it to happen to these two idiots.

It wasn’t hard for her to ignore her moral code (she hardly had one anyway) and follow them down the dark halls once they left the kitchen. She’d only known they were in there anyway because of the update she’d installed into her handheld device herself—it let her know where people were in the castle at all times, which was helpful for whenever she needed to find someone. Everyone else seemed to just think she had incredible intuition, which she didn’t mind letting them believe.

Anyway, she observed them from around the corner as they sat down on opposite sides of the hall. Lance’s bedroom was on one side, Keith’s on the other, but neither boy entered their room. Lance leaned against the wall, his legs spread out all akimbo and his hands gesturing as he talked like always, though maybe a little more subdued with exhaustion. Keith sat with his legs crossed, which was just so Keith it made Pidge want to snort in amusement—she held it back, not wanting to ruin her spying purposes.

She only stayed to watch them for a couple of minutes. They were both clearly drifting, both dead on their feet—or their asses, really—and she assumed they’d be going to bed any minute now. Besides, it wasn’t like she could actually hear what they were saying, which was annoying but also gave her ideas for an invention she could maybe make…

So when Pidge went back to the lab, jotting down random ideas for an eavesdropping device (which, come on, could totally come in handy with the Galra, so like. Perfect excuse right there) it was in full confidence that Lance and Keith would be back in their beds within the hour. It was only when she was finally flagging, ready to stumble off to bed herself, when she thought to check her handheld, to see if they were still around.

They were.

Curiosity was strong. Even exhausted, even with her eyelids seeming to be weighing her down, she managed to go all the way back to their neighboring bedrooms to see what they could possibly still be talking about.

And this time she really couldn’t hold back a snort, because these idiots weren’t even talking! They were both asleep, both passed out on the floor, Lance with his head leaned back against the wall and Keith with his chin to his chest. Shaking her head, Pidge swore to have her eavesdropping invention ready the next time they decided to have a midnight chat like this one.

—

It wasn’t Hunk’s fault he was nosy. It was probably in his genetics, woven into his DNA. Some small part of him that left him bug-eyed and mouth watering when he came across something that he could put a minimum amount of effort into to gain more information on the subject. For example, reading Pidge’s diary when she left it sitting in plain sight (like her bedside table), or pestering someone bad at keeping secrets (Lance) for the gossip they had on others. And so it was only natural, woven into his very genetic makeup, for Hunk to investigate when he began to realize there was something up between Keith and Lance.

And for once, he didn’t mean up as in another fight, another dumb dispute that they had gotten into which inevitably had people picking sides and the whole thing turning into Lance-and-Hunk-and-Pidge against Keith-and-Shiro-and-Allura-and-maybe-Coran. It took longer for Hunk to realize something was up this time around, because there was nothing for him to notice. There wasn’t any bickering, no yelling across the room or taunting or teasing or challenging. Instead they were both quiet, lately, and as Hunk began observing them, he noticed that sometimes they’d catch each other’s eyes and smile.

And that’s when Hunk knew something was definitely up. Keith rarely smiled, and even more rarely at Lance. If Hunk didn’t know Lance better, he would wonder if he’d done something to poison Keith and mess with his mind or something.

Eventually, Hunk figured that since Lance was so bad at keeping secrets, he might be able to just ask him what was up. It’d certainly be easier than trying to sneak around the castleship and figure it out for himself, especially when he was already pretty bad at the sneaking part. He tended to be pretty clumsy and almost always knocked something over with a loud crash when he was trying to be silent.

“Lance,” Hunk said one night after dinner. Dinner was Lance’s favorite part of the day—he knew because Lance had told him himself. It reminds me of home, he’d admitted. You know, my family was so big, it was always so loud and crazy and great, but my mom always managed to get all of us together for dinner.

Almost since the beginning Hunk had felt like their team was a family, and he was pretty sure Lance thought so too. It was one of the reasons he put so much effort into their dinners. Instead of letting everyone drift off and eat on their own like they were wont to do for their other meals of the day, he managed to gather them all for dinner, every night. He was pretty sure they all liked it, really. Conversation always flowed, accompanied with laughter and anecdotes and smiles and food. No matter how hectic the day, dinner was always good. It was because of this that Hunk figured it’d be extra safe to confront Lance after dinner, his nerves already at ease.

“What’s up my dude?” Lance said, spinning around to snap and point at Hunk with a set of finger guns. “Is this about dinner tonight? Because I know I told you I could sing praise about it for a quintant but I actually am about to go to bed.”

“No, no, it’s not that,” Hunk said, squashing down his pride at Lance’s words. He cooked dinner for them often, though sometimes Coran insisted on making something, which they usually did their best to force down. Sometimes they outright refused, stopping by on a near planet for an alien equivalent of fast food. “It’s just—is something up between you and Keith?”

“What?” Lance’s eyes had gone wide, his face pale. Hunk wondered if something really was wrong. Maybe they weren’t speaking because their arguing was already commonplace; maybe the natural angry progression of that wasn’t to argue more but to argue less.

“It’s just… you guys have kind of mellowed out recently, haven’t you? Like, you’re not arguing a whole lot anymore.”

“Oh! Oh. Yeah, I guess. I mean… yeah. You’re totally right.”

“You didn’t notice?” Hunk asked incredulously, and Lance puffed out his cheeks with air before releasing a big breath.

“Nah. Guess not.”

Hunk stared at Lance. Lance stared back.

“That all?” Lance asked.

“I guess,” Hunk said slowly. “You know you can talk to me about anything, right?”

“Yeah, totally!” Lance said, completely over-eager. He punched Hunk on the shoulder harder than usual. “Night dude!”

Hunk stared after him. He blinked once. Twice.

Something weird was definitely up.

—

Shiro probably wouldn’t have noticed it if it hadn’t been for Pidge and Hunk. It was just that they both seemed more intense than usual. Lance was still loud and Keith was still angry at just about anything he decided to feel angry about, but Pidge seemed extra concentrated and Hunk kept making weird humming noises under his breath which was actually pretty unsettling.

He decided to ask Keith what was up with Pidge and Hunk.

It wasn’t hard to get Keith alone, he was always stalking off to sulk or look broody in some corner or other, but for some reason Shiro was having trouble. Normally it was easy to find him, checking his usual haunts like the training room and his bedroom and even the kitchen—but he was nowhere to be found.

Shiro realized that maybe it was a little strange to go to Pidge to find out where Keith was so he could ask him about Pidge, but he didn’t really have any other ideas. Plus, Pidge had some kind of crazy intuition—she could almost always figure out where everybody else was.

“Hey Pidge,” Shiro greeted as he stepped into the lab. It was the room Pidge spent most of her time in. The desks were strewn with half-abandoned projects and scrap pieces but if anyone dared to touch any of it Pidge would probably murder them. No one knew exactly what would happen if they did touch it because none of them were crazy enough to try.

“Hey Shiro!” Pidge answered, spinning around on her chair to look at him. “What’s up?”

Looking at her, Shiro was hit—as he almost always was—with just how young she was. How young they all were, really. They’d all been dragged into this war, so random, so brutal, and yet no one ever complained. They just embraced it. Pidge carried half the team sometimes with her genius ideas. Lance made light of any and every situation, just so they wouldn’t despair over whatever trouble they were actually in. Keith ran blindly into everything, as if he hadn’t a care whether he lived or died. Hunk always kept a solid head on his shoulders, always thought things through and refused to let anyone give up hope. And still they were all so young, all so undeserving of the sheer terror of a war resting on their shoulders—Shiro would take the weight of it all, if he could.

“I was just wondering,” Shiro finally said after clearing his throat, forcing himself out of his own thoughts, “if you knew where Keith was?”

To his surprise, a coy grin found its way onto Pidge’s face. It pulled her lips up almost scarily. “You’ve noticed too?”

“Noticed what?” Shiro managed, frowning in confusion. That quickly, the look on Pidge’s face was gone.

“Oh. Whatever,” she said hastily, shaking her head.

There was a pause.

“So?” Shiro prompted. “Any idea where he might be?”

Pidge closed her eyes, pursing her lips. “Lance’s room,” she finally said with a smile. Shiro frowned again, sure she was wrong, but… Well, whenever was she?

And so he made his way back through the halls, back towards Keith’s room, and instead of knocking on the familiar door, he turned to Lance’s. He’d never been in Lance’s room before, never really had any need to. Still, if Pidge thought Keith was in here… Maybe they were talking about a recent mission together or something. They had had to spy on some Galra generals not too long ago. Shiro knew sometimes he felt like discussing their missions further, even after they’d already gone over it all by the time they got back to the castleship.

Shiro knocked on Lance’s door. It was automatic, but only to the room’s owner—for everyone else it waited for permission.

“Um? Come in?” Lance’s voice called unsurely. When the doors slid open Shiro found Lance laying on his bed, one knee bent and the other leg stretched out before him. He rose his eyebrows when he saw Shiro.

“Oh! Shiro—I was expecting, um. I mean. What are you doing here? Are we training or something?”

“No, sorry,” Shiro muttered, suddenly feeling like he was intruding. “Pidge told me Keith might be in here, I don’t know.”

“Crazy how she does that,” Lance muttered, shaking his head. Shiro raised an eyebrow. “Well he was here a few minutes ago. Just, you know. Talking. He’s probably back in his own room now?”

“Okay. Thanks,” Shiro managed. “Sorry.”

“Not a problem!” Lance called after him, the automatic doors sliding shut as he left. Shiro came to a stop before Keith’s door, raising his fist to knock. But he didn’t. Because… Well, because maybe there wasn’t something up with Pidge in the first place—or Hunk.

He furrowed his eyebrows, staring down at his feet as he thought. No, they weren’t really acting that weird after all, were they? Sometimes they’d get obsessed with something and kind of ignore everything else until they’d gotten to the bottom of it, but usually not at the same time. Usually not at the same thing. But maybe this time, maybe this thing…

Well, just maybe it was another pair that was being odd. Shiro tapped his metal fingers against his thumb, from his index to his pinky and back again. It was a strange habit he’d picked up and hadn’t been able to drop for some reason, but it was comforting nonetheless. One, two, three four. One, two, three, four.

With a small shrug Shiro turned and went back down the hall, figuring he didn’t need to bother Keith. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Whatever it was, the two of them could figure it out themselves.

—

Allura frowned at her bowl of breakfast goo. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong necessarily, it was just that, well… something was different. And she was sick of it.

Or, more specifically, she was sick of being left out of it. She was aware that she was constantly being excluded from the rest of the team’s shenanigans. She figured it had something to do with being the Altean princess and the one in charge. Maybe everyone else thought it was wrong to invite her to watch movies with them or to play cards, but it wasn’t. And she was bored out of her mind!

And what was a tragically bored princess supposed to do other than to secretly catch up on the affairs of everyone in her castle? Sure, that might sound like spying, but it certainly wasn’t. It was just… secretly catching up on everyone’s affairs. Privately. Without any of them knowing.

And she found out plenty of useful things this way! Surely it couldn’t be bad when she was so entertained by it?

For one thing, she realized that Hunk was a good singer. He only ever did it when he thought he was alone but hearing his voice made her wish that he did it all the time. It was deep and beautiful and made her feel like dancing again, something she hadn’t done since a few years before the war truly began. And she learned that Pidge could sleep literally anywhere—she curled up at odd hours of the day in completely random places, almost like a cat. Allura had come across her laying on top of the kitchen cabinets once, and just… how had she even gotten up there?

She’d done enough spying on Coran in her life for nothing truly interesting in that department to be revealed, though that didn’t stop her from doing so anyway. Still, nothing exciting was gleaned in her efforts besides the fact that he apparently liked to talk to himself which, really, maybe shouldn’t have been such a surprise.

What was a surprise was that after missions Shiro walked and walked and walked around the ship, following pathways completely randomly. Sometimes he would reach up and rub at his shoulder, where metal melded with skin, and Allura wondered if it was something that bothered him often, if it was painful.

She learned that Lance, apparently, spoke Spanish to himself when he was alone. She’d just pressed her ear against his door, merely curious as she hadn’t seen him all day anyway, when she’d heard— “Oh mierda! I’m… Fuck, I— Dios mierda. Dios.”

She also learned that Keith could be pretty tricky to track down. Her first place to check was always the training room. If he wasn’t there then she was sure she wasn’t going to be able to find him. She almost thought that he was doing it on purpose, stubbornly refusing to let himself be found. It only made her all the more determined to find him, to figure out what he was up to.

—

Coran paused, speechless, as he stood in the middle of the hall. Against the wall, quite a ways from him, were two paladins. Of course, on earth what they were doing might mean something different, but… Well, what else could kissing mean, really?

Lance had Keith pressed against the wall, his hands cupping his face. Keith’s hands were resting on Lance’s hips, pulling him closer, and Coran decided that it just wasn’t his business.

He turned around and left. It wasn’t like anyone else had to know.

—

Lance was in love with Keith.

Or… he was pretty sure he was, anyway. If he wasn’t then he was well on his way to getting there.

It’d only been a few weeks since they’d started getting so much closer. Sleepless nights spent in each other’s company, talking about anything and everything they could think of. Lance told Keith about his family, about his parents and his older siblings, about his nieces and nephews. He told him about visiting his grandparents in Cuba and about his favorite beach. He told him about genuinely loving the Garrison, and about how he was afraid he would amount to nothing, never truly pass, never be able to fly like he wanted to.

And Keith told him everything, too. He told him about being in the foster care system, about going from family to family, about getting his hopes up again and again only for them to be crushed brutally underfoot every time. He told him about the loneliness of it all, his inability to make friends because of it. He told him about how he aged out of the system, how he’d never even had a real family until now, until Voltron. He talked all about how the only constant in his life, really, had been the internet, where he’d browsed endless sites and learned everything he could and always got way too deep into conspiracy theories.

They talked so much, so often, that sometimes they just talked themselves to sleep. Sometimes Lance would wake up with the worst pain in his neck, only to find Keith curled into a ball, his cheek smushed against the metal floor, right across from him. Lance figured it started happening then—the flutter in his stomach, the breathless, nervous sensation in his chest. Lance had tried to shake it off; a crush on someone he spent every single day with could in no way be good for him, but it was unshakeable.

And Keith, it turned out, didn’t really have boundaries. He’d spent so long without being close to anyone, so long being on his own and in solitude, it would really make sense for him to be most comfortable that way, to think hugging and cuddling was weird. Except, no, nope, not at all. He was like a cat starved for touch—as soon as it started happening he was addicted to it.

He would stand utterly still, this odd look on his face, just waiting for Lance to hug him like he had once before. Once Lance deciphered that look, he realized that Keith gave it to him every night before bed (on the nights they actually managed to stand and stumble into their own rooms, that is). And it only progressed from there! Lance would grab his hand to drag him somewhere and show him something, and when they arrived Keith simply wouldn’t let go. And one night Lance offered for them to hang out in his room for a while, to talk on his bed, and Keith readily accepted.

It really wasn’t that surprising that they fell asleep together. And even less surprising that they woke up tangled together.

After that it just became habit. Sleeping together was better than sleeping alone—it was warmer, comfier, a hundred times less lonely.

The first time Lance kissed Keith, he seemed surprise. The second time, not at all.

Lance was just glad he kept letting him do it.

—

“When do you think we should tell them?” Keith asked. They were laying on the couch in one of the castle’s many living rooms together. Lance was under him. Keith had made good use of the little room on the couch by simply laying on top of Lance, who didn’t seem to mind at all. He was playing with his fingers, drawing them out and tracing them from palm to tip. His fingers were long, skinny and tan where Keith’s were shorter, paler.

“Dunno,” Lance said. “Whenever, really. I’m kind of surprised they haven’t noticed.”

“Me too,” Keith murmured. Normally he felt like everyone was pretty on top of things, noticing every minor detail out of place. One time at dinner Keith decided to have a second plate and Hunk had asked him if he was feeling okay. “Maybe they’ve gotten dumber.”

It didn’t matter—Keith didn’t feel in any rush to tell them. He kind of liked having Lance all to himself, anyway. Normally he was loud and obnoxious and made horrible puns that Keith didn’t understand half the time, and when they were alone together he was still all these things. But he was also sweet. He was also soft. He was also smooth, when he wanted to be, when he really tried—the things he said could make Keith blush.

Sometimes when they were in bed together, when things were fast and hot and sharp, when they were panting and gasping in tandem, sometimes Lance even spoke in Spanish. Keith was pretty sure that Lance had caught on that he liked it when he did that—it was dumb, but he couldn’t help thinking it was hot. Sometimes Lance would lean down and whisper something in his ear, something that he couldn’t even comprehend but that slid so easily from his tongue that it had Keith arching into him all the same.

“Unless they all already know,” Lance hummed thoughtfully. “And just aren’t telling us.”

“I don’t think any of them can keep a secret,” Keith pointed out, and Lance hummed in reply.

—

Pidge snorted, pulling the headphone out of her ear. It was like a hearing aid almost, letting her hear things at a certain distance, and she’d been using them to listen in on Lance and Keith. Honestly, did they really believe none of them could keep a secret? If anyone that was Lance.

She huffed and wriggled a bit, trying to get comfier. It was a tight squeeze, but… Pidge fit. Maybe it was a bit extreme to start crawling through the air vents in order to spy on her friends but she was bored, okay? Drastic times, and all that.

And anyway, this was obviously the best thing she could’ve done. Because she was witnessing this, Keith laying on Lance, the two of them talking about being together. And they were right! Nobody knew! Well, other than Pidge, of course.

Or so she thought. It was about two seconds later that her eyes zeroed in on Hunk. Across the room. He was peering from behind another couch, just his eyes poking over the edge of the sofa. Pidge narrowed her eyes at him—how dare he spy on them!? Or, erm… so blatantly, anyway?

A sudden clunking somewhere behind Pidge had her twisting her head over her shoulder, breath coming short in her chest. What was it? Had someone snuck into the castle? Were they in the vents?

“Ow,” Allura muttered as she hit her head on the ceiling as she came around the corner. Her eyes widened when she spotted Pidge.

“Pidge,” she whispered. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“…I asked first.”

“I don’t care.”

Allura let out a frustrated groan. “I’m just… looking around. Doing some reconnaissance. You know.”

“You’re spying on Keith and Lance, aren’t you?”

Allura just nodded and Pidge managed to scoot over. If they smushed together, there was just enough room for the two of them to look out through the vent. And so Allura shimmied up next to her, humming in surprise as she saw the position Keith and Lance were in.

“I should’ve realized!” she whispered. “Can’t believe I didn’t guess…”

At that very moment, Shiro came walking past the living room. He paused in the doorway, blinking as he spotted Keith and Lance.

“Hey guys,” he said.

“Aagh!” Keith said in surprise, tumbling to the ground. Lance hauled him back onto the couch. “Er—hey Shiro. We’re dating.” (Allura let out another gasp; across the room, Hunk’s eyes widened at the outright admittance.)

“That’s nice,” Shiro said pleasantly. “Good for you two. Have you seen… well, anyone?”

“No,” Lance said with a shrug. “Have you checked the kitchen?”

“Yep.”

“Control room?”

“Yep.”

“Er—training room?”

“Yep.”

“That’s odd,” Lance said. Pidge could see him frowning from here.

Right then, Coran came running up. He took one look at Keith and Lance, sitting very close together on the couch, then turned to Shiro.

“It’s not what it looks like!” he proclaimed.

“What?” said Shiro.

“They’re just—sitting!”

“We’re dating, Coran,” Lance piped up.

“Oh. You’re admitting it then?”

“You knew?” Keith interjected. Coran shrugged.

“I’m sure I’m the only one.”

“Not true!” Hunk suddenly exclaimed, standing up from behind the couch and pointing at Coran. “I knew! I most definitely knew!”

Keith screamed again, more from surprise than anything else. It was pretty startling to realize you were being spied on, Pidge was sure.

“Well I saw them kiss,” Coran said, seeming offended.

“I noticed that they stopped bickering!” Hunk argued. “I knew about it first!”

Pidge gasped, offended. There was no way Hunk knew before her.

She punched out the screen to the air vent, wriggling out a bit and dangling from the ceiling.

“Liar!” she shouted. “I knew first! I saw them talking in the hallways! And sleeping in the same bed!”

“Well I heard them having sex!” Allura jumped in, which made the room quiet down except for Keith’s indignant splutters—his and Lance’s faces matching colors of crimson.

“How do you—” Lance finally broke the silence.

“You speak Spanish when you’re—”

“AAHHH!” Keith interrupted.

The room exploded into more screaming, everyone sure that it had been them who knew that the two had been dating the longest.

—

Keith turned to Lance. “I guess we don’t have to break it to them then, huh?” he muttered. His face still felt hot.

Lance just looked at him miserably. “I don’t think I can ever have sex again.”

[artificialqueens]

Yoü and I Ch. 5 (Shalaska) - pradatrash

AN: HOLY SHIT! WOW, I am so, so sorry for how late this is. There’s really no excuse for how this has been neglected but if you have stuck with this and waited for an update I love you, please accept my apologies, and I hope you can continue enjoying this xx

Maybe one day I won’t sing about you, I’ll sing a song about someone new

He sees him when he comes through the doors with the rest of the passengers from the plane and it’s like taking in a breath of fresh air after being locked in a prison cell for years. Aaron’s grin gets even wider as he grips the handmade sign in his hands, waving it when the Justin’s tall lanky figure comes into view.

WELCOME HOME ALASKA THUNDERFUCK!

Justin doesn’t even have to look through the crowd to find his boyfriend, his spikey blonde hair, big bright eyes and the giant homemade sign in his hands his heart tug and for the first time in months he cracks a genuine smile.

Home. Aaron is home.

He walks so fast through the throngs of people his suitcase’s wheels give up and just allow themselves to be dragged along, he follows the sign in the air and once everyone pulls apart like a movie he stares at his world.

“Welcome home, J.”

Arms wrap around each other, bodies press together and he collapses full force into his boyfriend, his nostrils instantly taking a deep inhale of Aaron’s cologne and scent. Tears come to his eyes and fall down his cheeks in steady streams his vision so cloudy he doesn’t even realize that his entire family is standing behind Aaron.

There stood his mom, step dad, Cory, and Brooke the only person missing was Ryan of course but they were there and they were real and there. It took his breath away to just think about the lengths Aaron had gone to to arrange this welcome party for him and it only makes the guilt sit like a brick in his stomach more.

His mom runs forward and pulls him into a tight embrace as he lets out a laugh and kisses the top of her head before he hugs Cory and Brooke. “You didn’t have to come all the way out here to greet me!”

“Duh we did, Aaron insisted!” Cory smirks as Aaron shrugs nonchalantly, Justin biting his lip as another wave of guilt washes over him. “Noodles, you didn’t have to do this…”

Aaron shakes his head and links their hands the group walking towards the parking lot, “I had to welcome home my favorite person the right way.”

Justin smiles crookedly and leans into his boyfriend’s shoulder while everyone talks around them but all he can concentrate on is Aaron’s hand in his and the way his thumb brushes over the back of Justin’s knuckles. He didn’t realize how much that one little thing comforts him until he feels it after months.

All he can do the entire ride back to their small apartment is stare at Aaron. He takes in his blonde hair, which has definitely gotten blonder if possible, his soft smile, and the way he uses his hands animatedly when he speaks. It’s as if he’s relearning and re-experiencing everything he is absolutely enthralled with about Aaron.

It’s like he’s brand new but at the same time he’s the oldest and most comforting thing Justin has had in his life. Aaron notices him staring and smiles at him shyly before he raises an inquisitive eyebrow,

“Sorry…just exhausted from the trip and so, so happy to see you.”

Something is off in Justin’s tone and his body language is clingy but not in the usual sense, Aaron notices he’s gripping his arm like any second he’s going to disappear. He doesn’t say anything in front of his family but gives him a gentle squeeze, a feeling of dread forming in the pit of his stomach.

The rest of the car ride is good with Justin mainly speaking about the tour and everything else and Aaron remains silent the whole time, his eyes scan Justin up and town like he’s studying him.

Once they were finally alone with no more family to attend to, just the two of them sitting in the silence they finally had a chance to look at each other fully. The sight of Justin in front of him; real and tangible crushed Aaron’s chest and made him feel weak.

Bodies crash into each other and they’re groping everywhere they can, grabbing clothing, touching hot skin as their mouths found one another heatedly.

“I can’t believe how much I love you,” mutters Justin into Aaron’s neck as they embrace skin on skin. Aaron takes a second and pulls back, scanning his eyes over Justin’s face closely. He hasn’t shaven and a little stubble was growing around his chin and it was incredibly hot.

Even though it had only been a few months Justin looks five times older and mature. It’s incredibly attractive to Aaron but there’s a sadness to it for some reason.

Justin had grown up and Aaron had missed it.

Justin senses where Aaron’s mind is going because he knows his boyfriend that well so he reaches out a hand and links their fingers together, bringing them to his lips he places gentle kisses on his knuckles.

“Hey, it’s still me baby…”

“Is it?”

An uncomfortable silence falls over them as Justin begins to panic that Aaron somehow knows. But there’s no way he could, is there? His eyes flit quickly to Aaron’s face but it’s not a knowing expression, it’s just a sad one. He knows something is off and that kills Justin all over again.

All Justin can do in that moment is yank Aaron closer to him and press their lips back together, tugging off the rest of their clothes as they fall tangled onto their bed. Their bed. It’s familiar and so, so comforting to Justin in his moment and he takes a second to let himself smell the sheets that are home to him.

A moan rips from Justin’s throat and brings him back to the present as Aaron climbs over him and presses a soft kiss to his clavicle.

He looks down where he’s hovering over the love of his life-right? And it’s all too much. It’s been four months too long. Four months changes things. It was all…different.

Justin looked different, acted different, felt different.

There’s just one thing that Aaron knows won’t feel different and it’s the feeling of them together, as one, when they’re just tangled in each other and the world around them doesn’t matter.

So that’s what they do—get lost in one another and rediscover each other and what it’s like to be loved once again. It’s a little after one in the morning when they pause and Aaron looks down at Justin and pauses.

He was beautiful. Everything was new and everything was the same—he was perfect but a complete stranger to Aaron in this moment.

“Aaron? Noodles?”

Noodles.

“Sorry, just tired out from that last round…”

Justin smiles reassured and kisses his forehead, pulling the covers around their satisfied and tired forms. “We can sleep…I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Aaron almost has the courage to ask; “will you?” But stops not wanting to start anything tonight. This time Justin watches Aaron fall asleep which doesn’t take long and he almost feels the urge to throw up with the guilt that creeps back into his system as he watches his sleeping boyfriend.

—

Christmas 2009. Aaron Coady is standing in the doorway of his house. His fucking house.

The MySpace photos had become a reality. A handsome, tangible, sexy reality and Justin was way in over his head.

“Go talk to him!”

Brooke’s excited yet quiet words hit his ear and he almost jumps at the surprise but still doesn’t take his eyes off of Aaron. “I-I can’t believe he even showed up…”

She doesn’t even give him a second to process before she shoves him forward through the crowd to the front door to greet the new guest.

Justin feels his body moving in slow motion as he approaches Aaron, the blonde turns just as he hangs his coat up to immediately lock eyes and then it’s all over.

That’s it, Justin feels it like running full speed at a brick wall. His eyes widen slightly and he can’t tear them away from the man in front of him because right now it’s just them in the room.

Sound fades out and all that’s left is the sound of Justin’s heartbeat in his ears. It’s overwhelming and fucking terrifying, yet at the same time Justin thinks he may just be content with staring at Aaron for the rest of his life. Is it possible all the oxygen has been sucked out of the entire house?

“Justin, right?”

He blinks when suddenly standing right in front of him, so close that the smell of his cologne wafts over him in heavenly waves, is Aaron. Justin stutters for a second before he’s able to compose himself…until he looks at his face.

That damn smile. Those soft lips. God fucking dammit!

“Y-Yeah…I can’t believe you actually showed up.”

Aaron raises an eyebrow as a soft laughter comes from him, his eyes are nothing but gentle towards Justin and this is the first time he’s ever meeting Aaron but already he feels incredibly safe with him.

“After all that back and forth on MySpace I had to meet the real deal.”

He smiles at Aaron and in that moment feels an overwhelmingly warmness seep into his bones, through his skin and into his heart. Something felt like home. He felt like home.

—

Justin looks at the tall man in front of him, his blonde hair glimmers in the dim hotel lighting and for a split second he’s able to convince himself it’s Aaron.

The older man takes a step closer, calling Justin to him, and even though everything about this feels absolutely wrong the alcohol flooding through Justin’s veins somehow make it right.

“Aren’t you and that Needles queen still together?”

His breath smells of cigarettes, something that Aaron’s occasionally does too but not in the same way. It makes Justin a little sick but he just gives a shrug of his shoulders and feels the other man’s laugh resonate in him like dead weight.

“Sweet. I didn’t know you guys had an open relationship.”

We don’t.

But none of that matters now as Justin’s clothes are coming off and he’s touching someone that ins’t Aaron. He’s kissing someone that isn’t Aaron.

He didn’t even get the other guy’s name, he came and left within two hours and barely any words were spoken between them. The minute the hotel door clicked behind him Justin was instantly under the hot spray of the shower, his makeup and tears running down his face in streams.

The only word that he could hear in his head was: Aaron.

His Aaron, his sweet, sweet boyfriend. What had he done?

His eyes snap open and he wakes with a small jolt, the covers over him which are meant to feel warm and comforting do the opposite as he gasps into the darkness.

He feels Aaron shift next to him as he rubs at his eyes, the clock on his bedside table reading 4:30am.

“Another nightmare?”

“Yeah.”

“About the finale?”

This wasn’t the first time something like this had plagued him in his sleep yet every time he lied about it. He claimed it was the season 5 finale that always haunted him, but both of them in a way knew it wasn’t that.

“It feels like just yesterday that…that it happened.”

Aaron nods in the darkness, shifting closer to his boyfriend in comfort.

Justin had one too many drinks once again, usually it ended up with both of them drunkenly fighting about something, but this time it hadn’t. They’d avoided angry sex for once, but instead of doing anything they had done nothing.

They had been at the Blue Moon bar as they usually were most nights now—both of them drinking to prevent themselves from speaking about their relationship which is what they should have been doing.

They were both wallowing in some sort of misery and drunkenness.

A few minutes pass in silence and then those minutes turn into two hours as the two lay there, both very much awake, but unsure of where to go until Aaron’s voice breaks the silence—

“I feel like there’s an ocean between us.”

“I feel it too.”

Another silence falls over them and in this moment Aaron is thankful for the darkness so Justin can’t see the tears forming in his eyes. He knows the truth, he just needs to hear Justin say it himself.

“Who was it?”

Justin blinks and turns his head to the side,

“Who was what?”

Aaron scoffs, anger finally seeping its way into his veins after a delayed moment.

“I know.”

Justin inhales a sharp breath as he starts to fill his whole world come crashing down. His stomach drops and his heart pulls at itself angrily. He had to face the music now, there was no way out.

“I didn’t even know his name, he was from Florida.”

The small sob that comes out of Aaron’s mouth rips Justin’s hearts to shreds and instead of reaching out in the darkness to hold his boyfriend he stays still. Frozen in shock at finally admitting it out loud.

“I will always love you…”

Justin lets out a small sob of his own at Aaron’s words, knowing very well what he means.

“But you’re not in love with me anymore, are you?”

Aaron shakes his head in the darkness, biting his lip to stop the onslaught of tears.

“No.”

Justin shakes his head, refusing to believe this conversation is happening right now. It’s 4:30am and they’re in their bed, in the house they’ve shared together for almost four years.

He can’t imagine his life without any of this, his life doesn’t have a purpose if Aaron isn’t in it.

“W-Why did you leave me for a whole year?”

In reality it had felt like a lot longer than a year to him.

“I…I needed more than you, I needed to make something of myself or else I was just going to continue living in your shadow.”

“Was it worth it?”

Justin didn’t have an answer then and he still doesn’t now. His words catch in his throat and that’s all the answer that Aaron needs.

“My dreams always had you in them. My dreams were captured based on feelings for you. Your dream was about being something exclusive from me…and I guess you’ve found it.”

Aaron’s words aren’t biting or cold, they’re just filled with pure truth and hurt and Justin can feel it, every word is a dagger straight through his already battered heart.

“I can’t be Alaska Thunderfuck if I’m with Sharon Needles.”

Justin finally speaks the truth he had been wrestling with the entire year, it tears him limb from limb but right now that’s all he can feel what with the alcohol still humming in his system and the very reality that right now is the end of their relationship.

“I need out. I can’t breathe.” Aaron wipes at his eyes furiously and sits up, throwing the covers off his body as he stumbles to find his shoes.

“Out?”

“Out of this.”

“You want to quit?”

They leave the lights off purposefully, both of them very well aware that if they were to see each other in the light, if they were to see the real emotion in both of them that this was only going to get worse.

“My heart already has and it looks like yours did too back in that Marriot hotel room.”

For some reason the mention of the night with the other man prompts Justin to leap out of bed, in a string of seconds he’s suddenly compelled to keep Aaron with him, no matter what the cost.

The very reality dawns on him that in a moment the two would have oceans between them.

“I came back though, I came back Aaron…”

“You came back to me too late. I fucking waited.”

Justin reaches across the bed for Aaron’s arm but the older man tears it away from his grip almost violently.

“I came fucking back!”

“A year too late!”

Justin feels anger, fear and sadness rise in his throat and he throws his arms up, taking a step towards Aaron in the darkness.

“What then? Do you—do you want to hit me to make yourself feel better? Do you want to fuck so angrily that all of this goes away? I want to fix this, I can’t lose you for fucks sake!”

Justin practically screams at the top of his lungs in in their small room, his voice full of anger and half pleading. “Hit me! Just fucking hit me, Aaron!”

So he does. He hits Justin and he hits him right back. Before they both know it the night is a blur of fists, crying, screaming and kissing and then Justin’s gone and Aaron’s left in a heap on their bedroom floor sobbing.

—

In case you hear this, then know you’re the love of my life want to tell you I’m sorry, I miss having you by my side

[svubloods]

Imagine Jamie staying by your side while you're in Hospital

(A/N: For Anon, I hope you and everyone else enjoys this! Sorry, if it’s bad. It’s almost midnight and I’m super tired!) 

Imagine Jamie staying by your side while you're in Hospital

"Did you get it?" You asked as soon as you saw Jamie slip into the room, you propped yourself up waiting for an answer.

"I got it," He confirmed with a grin, producing a brown bag from behind his back.

"Thank God," You beamed in delight.

“Here catch…” He warned about to underarm the bad to you before stopping himself after remembering the state you were in, “Actually maybe not,”

“Good idea,” You chuckled, gently shaking your right arm which was confined in a cast and a subsequent sling.

He walked towards you and took a seat in the chair beside you. He pulled the table towards you and helped you sit up properly by moving your pillow and letting you use his arm as leverage.

“Thanks,” You said, breathing through the pain.

“Don’t mention it,” He reassured, grabbing hold of your good hand and kissing it.

“Alright,” You began, opening the bag that he placed on the table and pulling out a chocolate muffin, “ I thought I asked for a blueberry one?”

“But I knew you really wanted chocolate,” He countered, giving you the eye.

“Who has chocolate muffins for breakfast?” You questioned, teasingly, squinting at him.

“People who are stuck in the hospital and need cheering up,” He responded before grabbed his own breakfast out of the bag as well as placing the tray of coffees on the table as well.

“You think you know me well,” You remarked but taking a bit all the same.

“You enjoying yourself?” He smirked as crumbs fell from your mouth.

“Mmm,” You struggled to say with your mouthful which he chuckled at, you waited to chew and swallow before asking, “How did you get this past the nurses?”

“I pulled the cord on someone's machine.” He stated dead seriously, not looking at you.

Your eyes widen in shock.

“Y/N, I’m kidding,” He reassured laughing as he took a sip of coffee, “I just hid it behind my back and stayed close to the wall,”

“Bet that looked suspicious on the security camera,” You commented.

“But you’re glad I did it, aren’t you?” He countered.

“I am,” You confirmed, “I couldn’t eat any more of that hospital food, Jamie. I think it was making me sicker,”

“I doubt it,” He smirked, “But anyway enjoy breakfast from Ralphs instead of the hospital kitchen?”

“You went all the way to Ralphs?” You asked, taken aback.

“Of course I did, it’s your favourite,” He answered, honestly confused by your reaction.

“But it’s so far…” You reminded. “Well, it’s hardly like you could get it yourself,” He said.

“You didn’t have to do that,” You protested.

“I want too, you need something to cheer you up, and what better than breakfast from your favourite cafe?” He quizzed.

“I forget how much in love with me you are,” You remarked.

“Then I’ll have to remind you, every day, for the rest of your life,” He promised.

“You sound like you’re going to propose again,” You chuckled.

“I might have to,” He reminded.

“Have they still not found it?” You sighed.

“They say the bagged with the rest of your clothes but they just can’t find the bag,” He explained.

“I love that ring,” You frowned disappointedly.

“It will turn up,” He half-heartedly reassured.

“I hope so,” You commented before changing the subject so you didn’t have to dwell on the subject.

It had been bothering you since you woke up and Jamie told you that they had lost one of the bags with your personal belongings, the bag they lost unfortunately contained arguably your most important and significant possession.

The engagement ring Jamie had given you three months earlier.

You were constantly rubbing your hand where it had been before the accident as if you could rub it back to you. It had been a week and a half since the crash and you still hadn’t left the hospital. Granted you were in a coma for the first four days but still, you were getting restless and not to mention stir crazy.

The accident, well it was hardly an accident, happened during work. You and your partner Sonny were tracking a known drug dealer and suspected rapist. You were tailing him in your car before you both witnessed him in a drug deal. You went to apprehend him but one of his ‘associates’ spotted you getting out the car and your suspect ran away and into a car. You both raced back into your won car and began to chase after him. Starting the police chase. Luckily, you were driving as you were the only one who had been trained in high-speed chases while Sonny began calling in for backup. Unfortunately, for you, your suspects friends got there quicker than your backup.

He came out of nowhere and crashed into your side with such force that it sent your car into a tailspin and unfortunately into a lamppost that essentially crushed your car inwards on your side. Thankfully Sonny got away relatively unscathed apart from some cuts and bruising while you weren’t so lucky.

You sustained a mild concussion, multiple lacerations, a broken arm and several broken ribs which lead to a punctured lung. The surgery you needed to correct that was mainly the reason while you were still here as well as all the stitches you needed. And like you said for the first four days you were in a medically induced coma to give your body time to heal. But you were still here a week later after waking up.

You knew it would have been much harder on you if it weren’t from your fiancé Jamie. He had stayed by your side almost the entire time. He only left to change clothes, take a shower and buy food but besides from that, he remained by your side. Not prepared to leave you here alone despite your protests and reassurances that you would be okay. You were constantly being visited by the rest of his family, your co-workers, friends. Especially Sonny who felt guilty that you were here and he was okay even though you were driving and he had no control over what happened.

You and Jamie had been dating for three years at this point. Your anniversary was three months ago and it was on your anniversary that Jamie asked you to marry him in the same place that you had first met when you were teenagers. The park across from you high school on Staten Island. It wasn’t what you had expected but it was perfect. You had begun dating, years after first meeting after reconnecting when he became an officer. You were already a Detective and he reconnected with you after his station and your then station were working together. You were already five months into dating before you transferred to Manhattan’s Special Victims Unit which was housed in the station he was assigned to.

“Jamie, you need to leave!” You exclaimed hours after eating breakfast and hours into your daily does of daytime trash television.

“Why?” He asked, concerned and surprised, turning to look at you.

“Because I’m fine and you’re literally wasting your time sitting here with me,” You elaborated.

“Y/N, I’m not wasting my time sitting here with you. Spending time with you is never a waste of my time especially when you’re in a state like this,” He insisted.

“But Jamie, you’re making me feel guilty.” You whined, taking a deep breath and looking up at him as you were lying down and he was sitting in the seat beside you.

“What? Why?” He questioned.

“Because I’m okay and I’m capable of being here alone. I’m going to be out in a few days anyway.” You repeated.

“Y/N…” He began before trailing off.

“Jamie, I get it, okay?” You reassured, “I wouldn’t want to leave your side if the roles with reversed. I’d be glued to your side making sure you were okay and getting better,”

“So you understand,” He said.

“I do but I’ve realised that even though we want to do that it isn’t the best thing for us, you know? We’re over-protective of each other because are jobs are so dangerous and that fear of loosing each other is amplified when something does go wrong.” You continued to explain, “ But we can’t alway be there to protect each other. You can’t alway be by my side even though I wish you could. I feel like if we don’t do it now. It’s going to be harder when I go back to work.” 
 “I think you’re right,” He sighed.

“Aren’t I always?” You teased.

“I’m being silly aren’t I?” He asked.

“No, you’re being a good boyfriend,” He complimented, stretching your arm out and rubbing his shoulder lovingly.

“Fiancé,” He corrected.

“About that…” You joked.

“Don’t,” He warned, getting up and grabbing his jacket, “You sure you’ll be okay?”

“Yes, I will be fine in a hospital with security, surrounded by doctors accompanied by trash TV.” You reassured jokingly. “You can call if you need anything,” He reminded.

“I’ll text and whatever I need you can bring when you come back tonight,” You reassured.

“Okay,” He breathed uncomfortably, you knew he still didn’t want to leave you alone, “I’ll see you later,”

He walked slowly towards the door, you think hoping that you would stop him and let him stay. But you knew in the long run that this would be better for the both of you. You couldn’t always be so protective of each other especially in the jobs you were in. He reached the door and opened it to leave.

“Hey, Jamie?” You called.

“Yeah?” He questioned, turning back to look at you.

“I love you,” You smiled.

“I love you too,” He returned with a grin.

You blew him a kiss and he winked at you before leaving.

You spent the rest of the day, watching TV and chatting with nurses and doctors. Sonny came and visited you doing his lunch break to check up on you and see how you were. Amanda came with him and brought flowers. They discussed the current cases they were handling with you while also giving you updates on the open cases you had before the accident. One of them was in court currently and you had Barba texting you updates but they gave you the rundown.

You missed Jamie throughout the day while he was gone but it just proved the saying that absence makes the heart grow fonder. You were even more executed to see him and you remembered why it was so great not to spend the whole day with your other half.

“Knock, knock,” Jamie said annoying his arrival before stepping into the room and walking over to you.

“Hey,” You smiled broadly, lifting up your good arm encouraging him to hug you.

He embraced you carefully, watchful not to harm you n your fragile state and gave you a kiss before sitting back down in the seat beside you like he had done for days prior.

“So,” You began, “How was your day?”

“I missed you,” He responded sweetly, grabbing your hand again.

“ I missed you too but I’m wondering if you did anything else other than that.” You countered, “Did you go back to work maybe?”

“I’m starting back tomorrow,” He informed.

“Good,” You nodded, “So what did you do today?”

“I took a shower, cleaned the apartment because I know you would kill me if you came back and saw it in the state it is in now,” He continued.

You nodded.

“And…” He started before trailing off.

“And…?” You related curious.

“I went looking for something,” He stated.

“Intelligence, common sense, dignity?” You suggested jokingly.

“It’s something of yours,” He continued.

“My dignity?” You demanded playfully with an overdramatic expression.

“No,” He chuckled before reaching inside his jacket and pulling out a familiar object, “This!”

“My ring,” You exclaimed, with a grin, “How?” 
 “I went looking for it myself. I had a feeling that it might have been put in one of the evidence bags and I was right,” He explained, looking down at the ring which he held in his fingers.

“You should be a detective,” You commented.

“I’m working on it,” He winked.

“So, are you giving me it back or are you having second thoughts?” You joked after a few seconds passed and he continued to stare at it.

“Y/N,” He began dramatically for your enjoyment while putting his hand out, indicating to you for yours which you happily obliged too, “ Will you do me the honour of agreeing to marry me for the second time?”

“I do,” You nodded dramatically while giggling as he slipped the ring back on to your finger.

Right, where it belonged.

[renaroo]

Recovery None (59/61)

Disclaimer: Red vs Blue and related characters are the property of Rooster Teeth. Warnings: Language, Canon-typically violence, Psychological torture & manipulation, Mentions of gore, Character death, Minor Sexual content Pairings: Yorkalina, Chex Rating: T Synopsis: [Canon Divergence AU] When the Mother of Invention crashed, Project Freelancer was in shambles, its surviving agents scattered, its equipment stolen, and an impending investigation into the crash from the UNSC was on the horizon. To regain control of the deeply corrupted program, the Director established a new unit from his remaining supplies – the Recovery Unit.

Three former Freelancers were chosen for particular tasks: Zero is to hunt down and destroy the Meta, One is to investigate and recover stolen or missing equipment, and Two is to take down AWOL former agents.

Of course, no one’s motivations are what they seem…

A/N: I have been in a very tough place in my life between updating these chapters, and for that I cannot apologize to all of you and thank you for your patience enough. This story means so very, very much to me, as you all can imagine, and having your support and love through all of this has made both writing this fic and getting out this chapter in a rough time possible. So just... thank you all so much. We’re almost there. 

Special thanks to @analiarvb, @notatroll7, @secretlystephaniebrown, @xhauntedangel, @icefrozenover, @every-survival, LinniLotus, Yin, and @a-taller-tale for the feedback!

Recovery One XVIII: Lying in Pieces

So out of curiosity, are you carrying me over your shoulder out of some low key aggression that’s satisfied to treat me like a sack, or are you trying to save my fragile masculinity by not going full bridal position here?

“You’re an artificial intelligence, Church, you don’t have any masculinity. Just numbers. And annoyance,” Tex informed him as they raced down the halls of the MOI -- racing past memories and horrors and everything in between.

Perhaps it was an act of rare mercy for them that they didn’t have time to stew and reflect on everything around them and what horrific truths they must have meant for them both. 

Maybe. Almost. 

I guess I’m just more surprised you’re bothering to carry it around at all, Church clarified. I’m not really, y’know, using it or anything. 

Tex felt herself scowl as she ignored him and continued forward toward the fight that was sure to come. “Church, we’re not one entity. We’re not one person. Even if at one time we were -- if that’s truly what we were before either of us can even remember that as a possibility -- there’s no way we can be that again now. We’re different. We’ve grown. We’ve had experience outside of ourselves.”

So? Church asked. Didn’t stop the program from shoving tiny pieces of me into completely different people. 

Shaking her head, Tex couldn’t even believe he’d bring that up. “That’s not been working out so great.”

I’ll need citations on that claim, Church said with a scientifically pompous air about him.

“We’re about to go face your ugly side that’s trying to kill everyone you’ve made friends with over the past year, asshole. What more evidence do you need exactly?” she asked critically.

Tex, I’m just trying to say, we’re a part of each other now and it’s stupid to pretend that I’m going to be jumping back into my own skin -- so to speak -- again any time soon. He paused, a little awkwardly. Like I hate to bring this up, but I’m not entirely sure I know... how to untangle us at this point either. Look, I’m new to this whole numbers-and-code thing.

Annoyed, Tex kicked down an obstructing door. “You’re actually not. You’re not new to it at all. That’s part of the problem. And for the record, I never said I was carrying around this husk of a body for you.”

The door she kicked down clattered on the ground and left them staring forward at Caboose who was innocently staring right back before happily waving. 

“Hey, Tex! Glad you found Church! Did you see the little Church man? I’m going to feed him crackers.”

If you let him see me like this I swear to god I’ll delete both of us.

Tex smirked. “Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep.”

“Okay!” Caboose replied readily. 

Fucksake Church groaned in what attempted to pass as annoyance but radiated through Tex like affection.

“Caboose, our friends need help,” she explained to him.

“Oh no! We need to go!” Caboose announced before hesitating. His head tilted. “Tucker isn’t one of those friends is he? I don’t know about saving Tucker...”

“I don’t... was Tucker even on the camera feed?” Tex asked.

No. Which is its own problem to sort out for later, Church answered nonchalantly. 

“It’s Wash and some of the Reds,” Tex translated. 

“Agent Washington!?” Caboose gasped. “Let’s go help--”

Before the words were finished escaping Caboose’s mouth, there was a rush of air past them. Caboose even wavered on his feet unsteadily. 

“What was that?” Caboose asked, looking after the direction of the gust of wind. 

“The doors opened. Our friends are outside,” Tex answered.

“Right! Go help--” Caboose began to rush forward but Tex grabbed his shoulder to keep him back for a moment.

“Caboose, I want to give you a special job,” she explained.

“Oh?” Caboose asked back.

“I want you to help the white guy,” Tex explained. “Being on the receiving end of your help before has taught me that this is the best course of action we have.”

I double that assessment, Church muttered.

“I’m going to help, Tex!” Caboose assured her. “And then we’re all going to help little Church eat crackers. It’s gonna be great!”

Tex glanced to her shoulder where Church’s body was still hanging over it while Caboose ran for the exit. 

A small, white projection of Church appeared where she was looking. “What? I can feel you smirking.”

“Well, you asked what I was carrying you around for, right?” she asked mischievously. “Now I’m going to show you how you’re going to help us out.”

“Fuck, this is going to make me pissed, isn’t it?” Church groaned. 

As he lived and breathed, it was Maine. 

Washington stared at his former teammate, utterly struck by the fact that yet another Freelancer had come falling into his already crowded and confusing life, shocked by how his old life and new seemed to be consistently at odds. 

And by the fact that apparently Maine had just saved them by ripping Wyoming’s implants violently from his head. 

Which left a lot of questions, but mainly what side was Maine on. 

Slowly raising to his feet, Washington maintained a certain wariness. There was something just inconceivably wrong with the bulky way that Maine moved, with the snarling and huffing that was coming from him that was utterly different from what Wash had known before.

He knew Maine had been a high priority target of the Recovery team -- so high that Wash had not been granted permission to go after him even by the time that whole dynamic fell apart. But he had not received in depth briefings. 

All he knew was that Maine supposedly killed Carolina in the final raid on the Mother of Invention.

But now he knew that Carolina was far from dead. 

“My god, none of us know how to communicate,” he surmised in horror before looking over to York. “Have you got some answers for this!? Good ones?”

“No,” York yelled back. “Just the kind that super suck now that he has another AI and Wyoming’s enhancement.”

Eye twitching in irritation, Wash all but threw up his arms. “Right there! You just screamed out like three things that are need-to-know information that I have absolutely no context for!”

York shook his head and then looked at Wash. “Would you stop screaming at me every three minutes!? Holy fuck, how does your voice reach that high anyway?”

“I believe it’s inferior Blue genetics at play,” Sarge stage whispered. 

“I hate all of you!” Wash hissed.

“We KNOW!” York and the two Reds yelled harmoniously. 

“Jesus this is a shit show and we’re all going to die and I don’t even know what for,” Simmons bemoaned as Maine turned toward them all.

“Okay, fine, everyone, I’ll give you the short and sweet version!” York ground out. “That guy is Maine. He used to be a Freelancer. He got an AI. Now he gets his jollies by going around, killing the rest of us, stealing our AI and equipment, and adding them to his collection. He’s the one who fucked me over real good and took Delta.”

Washington scowled at York. “How is any of that remotely true? That doesn’t sound like Maine at all!”

“Keep up, Wash, that’s not Maine anymore, it’s the Meta, and that’s exactly what he does because I’ve been on the receiving end of it already! Not to mention what he did to Carolina,” York ground out.

“Or what he did just now in front of us,” Simmons piped up. “Not saying I know who this guy is, but we did just see him rip something out of a guy’s spine who was regularly kicking our asses beforehand.”

“Yeah, that, too,” York nodded.

Angrily, Wash clutched his rifle. “Keep up!? How the fuck am I supposed to keep up!? I feel like I have, at most, a third of the information right now and you’re asking me to keep up? Seriously? How about you stop wasting time and tell me how the hell we’re supposed to beat this thing?”

“I don’t know!” York answered. “I just fight it and lose all the time. Why do you think I look like I went through ten rounds with a can opener!?”

“You’re useless!” Wash screeched.

“We’re all each other’s got!!!” York yelled back.

“NO!” Wash said with exaggerated waving toward Sarge and Simmons. “We’re not!”

York paused for a moment before looking to Sarge. “Sir?”

“You have permission to speak, Red Team Freelancer,” Sarge replied cheerfully.

“Right, that’s getting a touch old. Anyway,” York said before turning his own shotgun around so that the butt was facing Sarge. “Would you do me the honor of testing out your new invention? Seeing as how we’re both men of tastes when it comes to our weapons.”

Even through armor, Wash could tell Sarge had never appeared more delighted in his life. 

“What are you doing?” Wash demanded as Maine’s hulking form turned its attention toward the Mother of Invention.

“Our mutual friends in there are next on the menu for obvious reasons,” York pointed out. He then looked seriously toward Wash. “And I’m tired of friends feeling we didn’t do everything in our power to save them.”

There was something tight and painful in Wash’s chest. But, being an expert at ignoring such things thanks to Blue Team at that point, he elected to point at York warningly. “Actions speak louder than words.”

“Then I think it’s time for some action,” York chuckled.

“You get fucking one liners, too!?” Simmons bemoaned.

Washington wanted nothing more than to join Simmons in the disbelief of the moment, but loathe as he was to admit it, York was right, and Maine -- or whatever he had become -- was going straight for the Mother of Invention.

And if there was anything Wash had learned recently it was that anything with that sort of focus on death and destruction had to be heading straight toward Blue Team. 

“What are we doing here?” Wash asked York snappishly.

"We’re putting a wall between the ship and the Meta,” York announced. “I think I can get in close as long as I have cover fire, but basically I just need to round all of us toward those cliffs as much as we can and let me in -- hopefully the Sergeant wasn’t exaggerating about the modifications he put into this gun.”

“Stop calling him the sergeant, he’s just Sarge!” Wash corrected.

York gave an incredulous look in Wash’s direction and shook his gun. “Wash, for fucking real here, are you going to play ball? Alright, I’ve fucked up in the past, but this thing’s going to kill Carolina if it gets a hold of her -- and Tex, too, if you’re right and she’s in there. They already killed Dee. I’d like to get some payback.”

Wash huffed heavily in through his helmet. He absolutely did not appreciate York making any sort of sense. 

But he definitely was. 

“Simmons,” Wash called out, looking to the maroon soldier. “Do you think you can get a line of communication between us and Blood Gulch by using the teleporter?”

Surprised, Simmons stood up straight and shifted in the snow. “I mean, hypothetically it should definitely be possible. It might take me an hour or two to fully reconfigure--”

“I’m going to give you ten minutes,” Wash replied plainly. 

“I can’t do that!” Simmons cried out in protest.

“No? Would you prefer to fight a renegade Freelancer with the rest of us?” Washington asked knowingly. “No? That’s what I thought. Get in contact with Blood Gulch and ask them to send in some able-bodied soldiers immediately. We need help.”

“We shouldn’t limit it to able-bodied if we need help from Blood Gulch,” Simmons pointed out. “That puts us down to... I guess the bodyguard--”

“Do not ask South to come!” York ordered.

“Absolutely tell South to come,” Wash contradicted. 

“She will shoot us in the back first chance she gets! Did you even bother asking her what happened to North!?” York cried out.

“Wouldn’t be the first time a Freelancer shot me in the back,” Wash said plainly. “Besides, she’s going to fight this... Meta over us.”

“How’d you know it was responsible for North?” York asked, amazed.

“I didn’t,” Wash replied, marching toward Sarge. “I just know know South prefers challenges.”

"You play a dangerous game, Agent Washington,” York mused.

“And you play dumb like the rest of the world can’t figure out you’re compensating for something,” Wash fired back. “Now are you going to move forward so I can give you that cover fire or not?”

“Youch,” York mocked before taking a deep breath and racing forward. “Yo! Meta!” Maine’s hulking form stopped momentarily, turning back, his domed helmet gleaning as a low snarl came out from him. “You and I have some unfinished business!”

Washington took aim and waited for the so-called Meta to make its move first, but as he lined up the shot he heard a distinctive sniffing and sobbing from behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and found Sarge wiping at his visor nonsensically.

“Are you crying?” Wash asked critically. 

“I just never thought that the Red Army would produce another soldier as ready to die for its glory as me,” Sarge said between gurgles. “I’m just glad to see the day that Red Team pride his vindicated. It’s like the son I wish I never had.”

“Stop talking, it makes my eye twitch and I need to aim,” Wash ordered.

For an infiltration expert, York had an amazing grasp of hand-to-hand. To the point that even through his anger, Wash was forced to give the man the respect he deserved. 

As the Meta lunged, York ducked below the wide swing and used its exposure to throw an elbow beneath the Meta’s ribs. His momentum carried and he swung around to behind the Meta where he kicked the Meta forward. 

When he watched the balance waver, Wash hesitated. It reminded him of the training room floor. Of a time when he called each of these men and women his teammates. When he didn’t think they could stab each other in the back for more than points on a scoreboard.

When a scoreboard seemed like it was worth stabbing in the back for. 

He stared down his scope and wondered if the Meta was any more a monster than Maine and Wash himself were then. More than any of them were willing to be then. 

And it was about then that Wash realized that he wasn’t saying any of those thoughts out loud but it might as well have been. He hadn’t progressed that much since Doc called him out on it--

“Watch your six, Freelancer!” Sarge yowled out before firing his shotgun right beside Wash, effectively pulling him out of his own existentialism. 

“Shit!” York cried before ducking down into the snow, allowing the Meta to be hit by the spray of buckshot. “That was my three!” he corrected.

"Son, I tend to like you, so I will give you an unprecedented warning about my feelings toward insubordination!” Sage howled out. 

Watching as the Meta spun around to face the source of his attack, Washington took a deep breath and aimed for the helmet before firing. The shot bounced off the protective alloy, but the force was still enough to knock it back. And it was also enough to make the Meta step back toward York once more in order to regain balance. 

Quick on his feet as always, York ducked down and pressed forward, shoulder first, for the back of the Meta’s knees, sending it barreling over himself and then rolling out of the path. 

“Take another shot, Wash!” York yelled.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Wash yelled back before taking the shot with his rifle just as the Meta began to reach around with the brute shot. 

The Meta snarled again but once more was exposed for York, this time though it wasn’t a cheap shot the former Freelancer was throwing. Instead he took aim with Sarge’s modified shotgun and fired at the Meta’s abdomen -- right where the mesh and metal met. 

“That’ll look great for the Red Army recruitment montage!” Sarge declared.

Wash was almost impressed himself when he saw the Meta drop to one knee, brute shot out of hand. But before York was even on his feet, something drastically changed. 

A multitude of flickering sprites surrounded the Meta’s helmet and, without warning, the Meta became encapsulated in a dome shield.

“He has more modifications!?” Wash yelled out.

York looked back and gave a bodily shrug. “I knew he was collecting them but I wasn’t sure he had--”

“Well we didn’t know and you didn’t share!” Wash cried out. “How the hell were we supposed to know that?”

“Sorry, I’ve been busy being shot at and almost murdered lately, not standing around canyon bases drinking beer and having small talk!” York snapped back.

“There’s room for both!” Wash roared in frustration. “What the hell else can happen!?”

As if summoned, Simmons appeared. “Um, guys--”

“It better be good news,” Wash said flatly without even turning. “Which would be that you were able to contact the others even faster than I told you to.”

“Yeah, no, that’s still going nowhere,” Simmons informed him. “But the bodyguard chick did come through the portal for a minute.”

Wash’s eye began to twitch again. “For a minute?”

“Yeah, I told her what was happening and she said to hold up, then went back,” Simmons explained. “Um... Agent Washington... you seem... pretty unhappy.”

“I’m an emotional shell, Simmons. I don’t get unhappy anymore,” Wash warned. “I just anticipate the worst possible scenarios and find myself disappointed when things are worse than predicted.”

“Oh, hey, you trapped the white guy in a dome,” Simmons pointed out. “That’s pretty good. And now Tex is here.”

“What?” Wash asked before turning and seeing Tex’s familiar figure with a cobalt armor over her shoulder. His heart sunk in his chest as the Meta lowered the dome shield. “Oh, no.”

Tex took in the sight, more than a little shocked at just what a crowd had been gathered around the Meta. Washington, Sarge, Simmons, and--

Hey, that’s your friend, Church pointed out unhelpfully. Jersey or whatever.

It was an easy enough comment to ignore as she stepped out into the snow. “Holy shit. As I live and breathe, Agent York has joined my favorite gaggle of idiots.”

“Was that meant for me? Because I protest,” Wash said simply. “I am absolutely not with York. Or... an idiot. But that went without saying, which is why I didn’t bother -- you know what, just shut up and help us.”

“Shut up and help us, wow you really have become a Blue,” Tex snarked. “And now worry, help’s already here.”

While the Meta snarled, turning on its heels to take in the fact that it was surrounded, Caboose finally caught up with them at the entrance of the ship. He was holding the spike grenade that Tex had found for him. 

“I’m here to help!” Caboose cried out excitedly, flicking the grenade on.

This idea is stupid as fuck, for the record, Church commented.

Just as Caboose was lining up for the Meta, however, he saw Wash and let out a gasp. “Agent Washington! No one let me know that you were here! I would always help Agent Washington over any white guy.”

“Seriously, does no one else hear how that sounds?” York asked.

“We do, we just don’t care,” Simmons retorted.

“Caboose...” Wash said cautiously, eyeing the grenade.

“Caboose, help the right person,” Tex tried to warn. 

“Sure thing, Tex! And the right person to help is my friends!” Caboose yelled out before tossing the grenade straight into the wall beside Tex and Church. 

Everyone, including the Meta, stared for a moment. 

“That was the worst throw. Ever. Of all time,” Wash hissed. 

“Not my fault,” Caboose swore. “Someone put a wall in my way.”

Goddammit, Church bemoaned.

“Everyone down!” Carolina screamed from behind them before tackling both Tex and Caboose, taking them out of the way just before the grenade exploded -- sending shrapnel and snow flying out everywhere in an unseeable storm. 

“You came to help? What about the Director?” Tex asked Carolina. 

“What, like he has anywhere to go in that wreck?” Carolina asked. “I checked the sensors, looks like UNSC ships are on their way here. I made a tactical decision.”

"Was that tactical decision to see us all get arrested?” Tex questioned, gripping onto Church’s body’s wrist.

“That would be an added bonus,” she mocked before looking up. “But it’s more than that. This is about unfinished business. It’s about people I’ve used for my own means, and trying to make up for it. People like Maine.” She looked forward, watching as the Meta found itself upright again and began growling and snarling. “I had opportunity to stop him before. I had chances to reach out to him while I was a Recovery agent. And I didn’t. I let this happen. And it’s done nothing but hurt the people around me ever since.” She looked back meaningfully toward Tex. “And that’s just a little too much like him for my comfort.”

“Or mine,” Epsilon spoke up, appearing on her shoulder. “I... I think I’ve really hurt people in the past. I think it’s time we try to help them.”

Tex looked at them both critically. “Sounds noble enough,” she said stiffly.

Sounds stupid enough, too. Like yeesh, Church answered. 

“But I don’t think there’s anything left of Maine in there for you to apologize too. It’d be best if you let me punch him instead,” Tex pointed out. 

“Only after I’ve tried the... not punching route,” Carolina ordered before moving in toward the Meta. “Agent Maine! This is your commanding officer!” Carolina shouted, getting the creature’s attention. “That’s right, it’s me.”

It snarled and flexed out with the brute shot in its arms. 

Caboose, sitting up with his head tilted, looked toward Tex. “Um. Are we just going to sit here and watch the new Blue Lady do stuff?” Caboose asked. “Or am I still supposed to help?”

“You are definitely not helping!” Tex and Church said at once. 

“We’ve got our own plan, Caboose, sit tight,” Tex assured him before getting to her feet and racing toward where Carolina and the Meta were. 

Despite what they might have anticipated in response to Carolina’s diplomacy, the Meta actually had lowered his dome shield, looking warily toward Carolina as two AI swirled around its helmet -- bright yellow and turquoise.

“I’m not here to hurt you, I’m here to help,” Carolina continued to coax. 

The Meta hesitated for a moment before letting out a horrific roar, multiple AI appearing around its helmet at that time. 

“Carolina!” York called out from where the Reds and Wash had ended up, distracting the former Freelancer leader. 

“York!?” she cried out just before the Meta took a swing at her. Fortunately, her speed boost got her out of harm’s way but not without tripping her up and causing an awkward landing to her side. 

"Why do I ever open my mouth?” York bemoaned.

“Isn’t that the million dollar question we all keep asking ourselves,” Simmons griped.

Hey, Tex, not that I’m the one to be telling you how to hit things... but I can’t help but notice how Mister Tall-and-Growly-and-Hauntingly-Familiar seems a bit distracted at the moment to me. What’cha think? Church fired off.

“I’m thinking you read my mind, cheater,” Tex said, launching herself forward and toward the Meta, redirecting her grip of both of her hands to Church’s body’s left ankle. “Hey, AI conglomerate!” she cried out, turning the Meta around toward her. “Looking for someone?”

On cue, Church showed up over her shoulder. “Miss me?” he asked. 

Immediately the plethora of AI around the Meta’s helmet began swarming around, encircling over and over again as if all attempting to steal a glance as they released a disorganized muttering of “Alpha! Alpha! Alpha!” 

“Holy fuck this is creepy,” Church remarked shortly before Tex skidded to a halt right before the Meta and then took Church’s body into the full swing of her momentum. “Oh shit not the face!” 

Church let out a frighteningly high pitched scream as his body collided with the Meta’s helmet, shattering both of their visors. But Tex was far from done, taking the flailing, empty robotic body and continuing to beat the dazed and distracted Meta with it. 

Though it stumbled, the Meta seemed too stunned -- not wanting to attack either Tex or Church but also not wanting to create the dome shield again either. Which was fine with Tex because she could keep smacking him around for ages. 

Well, until the Meta had enough and grabbed Church’s arm, ripping it from the rest of the robot.

She then glared toward the others. “You all can get off your asses and help any time you want, y’know!?”

“Yeah, fuckers! We’re pulling our weight!” Church yelled. “Some of us literally!”

Washington was almost too stunned to move. He stared at the scene in complete shock. 

“What’s going on?” Sarge asked as York stumbled through the snow to meet Carolina half way. “What just happened? I want a full report!”

“From who? Me?  I have no fucking idea!” Simmons’ voice crackled.

“Maine... the Freelancer... he has all the missing AI fragments,” Wash answered, still working with the pieces himself. “They’re in a late state of Rampancy -- all of them -- the dying stages of an Artificial Intelligence. And they’ve unified somehow... looking for something... or someone,” he then looked to Tex’s shoulder where Church’s sprite shined brightly. “The Alpha... The AI that stated it all.”

“Great, hope they have fun finding him,” Sarge huffed. “We need to grab our Red Freelancer and skiddadle out of here. Doesn’t look like much of a fight for us.” He paused and then put a hand to his chin. “Though, technically, we still have that agreement with Texas.”

“Finding him?” Wash asked, turning on them. “You honestly still don’t get it. There’s no finding the Alpha, the Alpha is already here. He’s Church! Can’t you see that?”

“What? So you’re saying that those AI with the white guy are all pieces of this Alpha. And the Alpha is Church. And Church is being used by Tex to slap the white dude around?” Simmons tried to keep up.

“Yes,” Wash said simply. 

“Heh. The Blue’s hitting himself,” Sarge chuckled. 

“That doesn’t seem physically possible,” Simmons said, scratching at his helmet. 

“Yes, well, none of us seem to fall toward convention, do we?” Wash asked. He then glared at Simmons. “You said South was coming with reinforcements...”

“Oh, yeah, they are,” Simmons nodded. “They just have to figure out how to fit them through the portal first.”

Wash squinted. “What do you mean by fit?”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than there was a loud, crackling, booming sound in the distance, drawing all of their attention around the mountainside to where green electricity was dancing though the air.

“Wonderful,” Wash muttered. 

[coolgreatwebsite]

Why DotEmu Has Me Worried About Windjammers On The PS4

Early in 1994, an unassuming little game named Windjammers made its way to arcades. Developed by Data East for the Neo Geo Multi Video System, Windjammers is essentially high-octane video air hockey. Players pick one of six characters with different skills and shots, one of six courts of different sizes and layouts, and proceed to volley a frisbee back and forth with the hopes of jamming it past their opponent and into the goal. It’s a game that’s dead simple to pick up and play, but that simplicity masks an amount of depth to its mechanics and variety in a player’s options that makes Windjammers something special. When two skilled competitors go at it throwing rapid fire shots, counter-shots, trick shots, super shots and counter-super shots, the game is an edge-of-your-seat adrenaline pumping blur. Unfortunately, most people just didn’t seem to catch on to that hidden layer, and Windjammers was generally met with a middling reaction.

As time went on and arcade game emulation became easier, Windjammers gained a bit of a cult classic status. For a good long while it was a side-tournament staple in the fighting game community, and a French community had rallied around it and were doing their thing, but it wasn’t until website about video games Giant Bomb started playing it in 2013 that North American awareness of the game really started picking up. As much as I would like to be a cool on-line guy and say that I was way into it before that, I was only tangentially aware of the game prior to Giant Bomb’s coverage (I was more of a Street Hoop guy when it came to weird Data East Neo Geo sports games, for whatever reason). Nevertheless, it’s a game I feel like I’ve been a fan of for a long time, if that makes any sense. It’s an immediately and deeply lovable game.

The only port Windjammers has ever had as of this writing was a Japan-exclusive release on the Wii Virtual Console in 2010. This release eventually got delisted in late 2013, shortly after Giant Bomb’s coverage started strangely enough. Ever since then, there’s been a steady rumbling of people asking for the game to come to modern systems with online play, mainly aimed at PlayStation’s Third Party Production team. After all, they’re the guys who got us a Final Fantasy 7 remake and Shenmue 3, right? If anyone can get this weird obscure frisbee game out of whatever licensing hell it fell into following the death of Data East and years of turmoil SNK has gone through, they could! Well, at PlayStation Experience 2016′s showcase event it finally happened. The lights dimmed, a familiar tune started playing, and there it was on the big screen: Windjammers was coming to the PlayStation 4. The wish had been granted.

And then the monkey’s paw curled.

Pictured above is the banner for the Windjammers booth at PlayStation Experience 2016, and pictured in the zoom-in of that banner is the one thing powerful enough to instantly turn a retro video game fan’s excitement into dread: the logo of French video game company DotEmu. Founded in 2007, DotEmu is a company that specializes in bringing old video games to not-so-old platforms. Over their nearly 10 years of existence they’ve built up a network of connections with Japanese developers and rightsholders and have been responsible for bringing a sizable amount of classic games to various platforms (an exact list is hard to compile, as even their website’s game list is clearly incomplete). The rub here is that, despite the years of experience and web of trusted business partners, DotEmu consistently puts out products that can be described as poor at best.

Generally not poor in flashy, attention grabbing ways mind you. They’re competent enough that a passerby could go “sure, that’s Metal Slug!”, but for the people who love and care about these classic games the vast majority of DotEmu’s output may as well have shipped with crash bugs. It’s not just old game obsessives that suffer either as, even though it may be difficult to point out specific shortcomings without side-by-side comparisons, the way DotEmu’s ports are busted have an undeniable effect on the way these games play at even the most casual levels. These problems aren’t flukes, they’re consistent and documentable, but they often go ignored in media coverage of the company and general discussion of their releases. 

I don’t think this is due to any sort of nefarious intent or anything, but rather a lack of education about the subject. Most of the complaints are loosely organized tweets, or squirreled away in niche message boards, and the informative reviews that hit Steam are easy to lose among the less-than-informative ones. The reason I set out to write this article was to attempt to find and document the issues plaguing DotEmu’s ports (with a focus on their Neo Geo offerings as they pertain more to Windjammers) and, most importantly, put everything somewhere easily viewable and shareable. With that mission in mind, I jumped into the Steam version of one of my favorite arcade games: Metal Slug 3.

The Steam version of Metal Slug 3 was, unbeknownst to me at the time, my first brush with DotEmu. I ran through it once back in mid-2014 and here in 2017 all I could recall was that it was the worst port of the game I had ever played, so it was a natural pick to start off with. I played the Steam release simultaneously with the game running in MAME, trading off every other level, just to make sure I was getting all the facts straight. The most immediately apparent issue with the Steam release is that the audio is wrong on almost every level. Most of the sound effects are off in different ways, the worst of them reduced to nothing but shrill screeches, and the music is mangled in one of the oddest ways I’ve ever experienced. It has trouble keeping a steady beat, but it doesn’t quite skip and instead sort of tries to rush back to where it’s supposed to be. It almost makes it seem like the music is being performed by some sort of drunken orchestra, or as if someone were briefly holding back the turntable of a record player in the few cases where it seemed to affect the pitch. I’ve taken the liberty of making a video comparing the music of both versions, below.

The other two big issues are slightly more subtle, but much more impactful on the gameplay itself. First off, the Steam version drops frames like crazy, which means the game consistently stutters and jumps around erratically. Metal Slug 3 is pretty chaotic so it can be a little tough to pick out amidst the explosions, but the DotEmu port drops frames at all times, even during the game’s rare quiet moments. I found that the tiled background of Stage 3′s pre-sub cave area offered the most readily visible comparison (below). [UPDATE 1/12/17: This is actually an issue with frame-pacing rather than dropping according to John Linneman of Digital Foundry. Frame-pacing issues are where, rather than completely skipping over frames of the game, individual frames will stay on screen for longer or shorter than they’re supposed to. The end result is still a stuttering, choppy mess.]

This problem only exacerbates the next issue: the Steam version has input lag. Input lag means, well, there’s a lag on your inputs. You press a button and it takes a little bit longer for the corresponding action to happen on screen. Don’t know why, don’t know how, but there is a slight amount of input lag present in the DotEmu port that just isn’t there in the MAME version. Weirdly enough it wasn’t anything visual that tipped me off, but instead something auditory. The gap between pressing the fire button and hearing the gunshot sound effect is a bit wider in the Steam version, and it’s fairly noticeable when you’re going back and forth between versions.

These two issues are bad enough alone, but when combined it causes the game to feel muddy and unresponsive when in actuality it’s quite snappy. Easily dodgeable attacks suddenly become less so, simple actions such as jumping and shooting below you become more difficult to perform effectively, and the game is much more likely to register jumping and shooting as a simultaneous press of A+B, making you accidentally activate your kamikaze Slug Attack while in a vehicle. This isn’t any sort of scientific evidence, and I certainly wasn’t playing amazingly in either version of the game, but I did demonstrably worse in my playthrough of the Steam version and I attribute that to the generally awful feel of the controls.

The one nice thing I can say about DotEmu’s port is that the online play seems, from my extremely limited experience, totally fine. I played the first couple of levels with a friend and it was smooth throughout. The port’s underlying problems still existed, and I’m not sure how the netcode would hold up to something more timing intensive like a versus game, but online play did not accentuate any of the port’s issues from what I could tell.

A brief check-in with the Steam port of Metal Slug X revealed that it, unsurprisingly, has the exact same problems Metal Slug 3 has. This is where my firsthand experience with DotEmu’s products ends, because I’m not enough of a sucker to buy three bad versions of old games. Just two. Craving more info, I put out the call to my wonderful, smart, definitely non-sucker Twitter followers. What follows is everything I was able to gather from them.

Now, I love Metal Slug 3, but I’m far from an absolute expert on it. There are people who have played the game for longer than I have and are way better at it than I am. I doubt the same can be said for friend of the site LordBBH regarding Shock Troopers. One of his favorite games of all time, BBH has probably put more hours into playing Shock Troopers than anyone on the planet (and plenty of those hours are on video). He knows the game inside and out, and he found all of the same issues in Shock Troopers that I found in the Metal Slugs, but he also stumbled upon a couple of things I would have never even thought to check. Such as the difficulty settings, for instance. Every Neo Geo game has about 8 or so different difficulty options that you can change in the system settings, but DotEmu’s ports have just four: Easy, Medium, Hard, and Very Hard. Whereas the original release of Shock Troopers adjusted the damage you take depending on what difficulty you were playing on, the difficulty options in the Steam version, from what LordBBH can tell, do... absolutely nothing. If it were anyone else I would chalk it up to not knowing the game well enough to spot the differences, but this guy knows.

There’s also another issue that’s entirely specific to Shock Troopers and definitely worth noting. There were two versions of the game, and the thing with Shock Troopers is you can either select one character or a team of three that you can freely swap between in-level. In what’s generally considered the “main” version of the game, a team has individual life bars for each character. In the other version, the whole team shares a single life bar. This minimizes the difference between playing as a team and playing as a single character, and the version of the game that uses the shared life bar is treated as more of a curiosity than a thing people play. The DotEmu port uses the single life bar version, and there’s no option to switch to the other one. This is probably an easy thing to overlook if you’re not, you know, a company in charge of porting the game to a different platform. But if you are, it shows a real lack of knowledge and care for your product in my eyes.

If you want a really, really long look at LordBBH playing and discussing the Steam version of Shock Troopers (and a little bit of the next game), he uploaded a video of it to his YouTube channel. For now though, let’s move on.

Twinkle Star Sprites is a cute versus shoot ‘em up game where players compete to clear out the enemies on their side of the screen and launch attacks at the other player. According to the info I received, the Steam version has all the general problems of the previously discussed games, but with a couple of fun unique wrinkles. First of all, the online leaderboards report impossible scores. Like, scores in the billions. For a while people weren’t sure whether it was a bug or people were hacking, but it turns out the leaderboards take the sum of all scores attained in all the versus matches you’ve played and post that. This makes the feature useless for competition, as you can rack up higher and higher scores simply by playing more. 

The other thing I was told is by far the weirdest one I’ve heard. While the previously mentioned useless difficulty options actually do something in Twinkle Star Sprites, what they do is increase the frame rate. The game itself is unaltered, it’s just sped up. I have absolutely no clue how or why this would happen, and I didn’t receive details on how much each option increases it by, but this is apparently a real thing that happens and I kind of can’t believe it.[UPDATE 1/12/17: My source on this has gotten back to me with claims that this does not actually happen. Whether or not it never did or was fixed in a patch is unknown. The difficulty settings currently do nothing. Leaving everything here for transparency.]

With that we’ve gone through all the specific examples I was told about and could find on my own, so that about wraps up the “what” of this whole situation (for now). Now we have to move on to the “why”. Why are these ports so consistently shoddy? Why does a company that positions itself as trying to make sure classic games don’t “get lost” continue to bungle everything in both the most basic and most baffling ways? The answer to that isn’t exactly clear. We could look at the case of DotEmu (legally, don’t start) using Nebula, an emulator last updated in 2007, for their 2015 Neo Geo Humble Bundle releases and question their competency. We could look at stuff like the apparently lacking Heroes of Might and Magic 3 HD release or the fact that their promotional Windjammers PS4 theme contains no actual elements from Windjammers and question their passion. We could look at any number of things and take any number of guesses, but I have a feeling the real reason for all of it is simple: they can get away with it. You can technically play through everything beginning to end, and the amount of people who care about these games to the point of easily noticing and articulating these flaws is minuscule compared to the greater number of players. Major outlets aren’t going to report on the input lag of a specific port of a 17 year old game. Negative Steam reviews complaining about frame drops aren’t going to drown out the people going “just like my child days!” and giving a thumbs up (except in the case of specific franchises where obsessives outnumber nostalgia fiends). The people just coming to these games for the first time aren’t going to have the frame of reference to know something is wrong, for all they can tell the game just normally sounds like that. DotEmu can phone it in because there’s not enough people to get the word out that they’re calling collect.

As for the final question: “where” does all this leave the PlayStation 4 port of Windjammers? Only time will tell. DotEmu has been talking up how they’ve had the French Windjammers community constantly playtesting and giving feedback to make sure they get things right, but then again David Sirlin said the same thing about having pro players help with the development of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. It’s just not enough of an assurance to make me overlook the company’s extremely rough track record. I hope they prove me wrong and knock it out of the park. I would love to have an official and fully featured re-release of this game that I love, but I’m not holding my breath. My money’s on it being another in a line of DotEmu botch jobs. For a company supposedly devoted to making sure old games aren’t forgotten, it’s almost ironic that they’ve so consistently helped make sure they’re something even worse: misremembered.

Did I miss something? Get something completely wrong? Do you have something to add about a different game? Let me know! I want to update this article with as much relevant and accurate information as possible! Feel free to get at me on Twitter or send me an email.