#motion to make this one fanon official?

[littlewestern]

Sonny's Title

I have a habit of making playlists for my favorite characters in ttte (you can find them on spotify or dm for a tracklist/link) and I like to name them after the engine’s full titles. Duck The Great Western Engine, Donald and Douglas the Scottish Twin Engines, etc. I think it’s a nice way to give the engines the respect and distinction of a full name and the playlist theming works well.

Which became a problem in the case of one of my favorite characters, Sonny. Sonny has so few appearances in canon and none in external media like books or magazines, so he’s never been given an official title. He has nicknames, but nothing akin to the typical format of ‘[Name] the [Adjective] Engine’. So I do what I always do in times of finding-canon-wanting, and turned to @greatwesternway​.

me: what did we end up going with for Sonny's title? did we decide? DJ: I like him as the Second Chance Engine 'cause that's pretty much the only thing we ever got about him. me: 😭 that’s so cute... DJ: Oh good! I was worried it was lame, but I didn't have a better idea. me: no, it’s perfect DJ: They never use these titles in the stories anyway. But I think it's nice for him because he's actually been given quite a few second chances. Even being found by his thieves was a type of second go of it.

Genius. Sonny The Second Chance Engine.

Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

[canonicallyobserving911]

WIP Wednesday

Fanonwriter2023 on AO3

Where CANON and FANON collide!

This is an EPIC LOVE STORY!

Season 7 FANON Speculation: Buddie Multi-Chapter Fanfic - Hiatus Reading: “I’m still in love with you but... I needed to learn how to love myself too!”

Chapters 24 & 25 will be posted soon (two chapters will be posted instead of one).

Buck and Eddie got married and Buck's officially Chris' second dad!

Currently 23 chapters completed: 893.1K Words; Rated: Mature

One chapter will be posted at a time.

{#1 Previous snippet linked here}

{#2 Previous snippet linked here}

____________

I'm excited to finish writing Chapters 24 & 25 because Buck and Eddie are married and the Diaz family is starting the second half of their two-week long European family adventure. For anyone who hasn't read Chapters 22 and 23, here's a brief overview. In Chapter 22, Buck and Eddie got married, Chris was their best man and Eddie successfully surprised Buck with all the things he had planned for him including a three-tier wedding cake. Their honeymoon started that night and they had an important conversation before they consummated their marriage. In Chapter 23, they left Rome the day after their wedding and proceeded to visit 5 other cities for the remainder of their time in Italy. By the end of it, they agreed to continue speaking Italian even after they return to the U.S. because while they were in San Gimignano, they made a decision that could affect the course of their family's lives forever. What was the decision? 👀

They departed Rome at the end of the chapter and they landed in London on Christmas Eve to start the second half of their family adventure. What else are they going to do while they're still in Europe? Will Buck meet his biological father? 🤷🏽‍♀️

___________

Here's a snippet of Eddie on the verge of having a panic attack because of the state he sees Buck in after he enters the room.

_________

Buck keeps reading, he’s still looking down and by the time he makes it to the end, his chest starts feeling funny again like it's felt for the past two days but it’s much stronger this time.  It’s so intense, it causes him to drop the thing he’s holding in his hand.  His vision blurs and he thinks he’s grabbing at his chest because his heart feels weird kind of like it did in March but he’s not sure if he’s imagining it.

He leans forward and tries to reach for the back of the couch but his vision starts to close in and to him it appears he’s standing in a haze of fog as everything in his line of sight starts to get smaller.  He wants to move but he’s too far away from anything that won’t injure him and he’s scared that if he does, he’ll collapse and bump his head on either the credenza or the end of the couch but neither of them is a viable option.

While he tries to make a split-second decision, at that moment, his husband enters the room with a big smile on his face that quickly turns into one of extreme concern when he sees the state Buck’s in.

That sharp pain Eddie felt in his heart at 3:17AM returns but this time it’s so strong it causes his eyes to widen and all the air gets sucked out of his lungs.  He watches as Buck continues to grab at his chest then everything starts happening in slow motion.

With his eyes locked on Buck, he notices his eyes are red rimmed, his cheeks are wet, his skin looks pale and since Eddie’s a trained paramedic, he recognizes the signs of what appears to be a bradycardia event of epic proportions and he knows he needs to act fast or else Buck’s going to hit the floor.

He moves quickly but his legs feel like weights are around his ankles.  He needs to move so he can catch him because now Buck’s swaying on his feet and he sees his knees buckle in real time.  He sticks his arms out like a quarterback does when he’s about to catch the football and he realizes he did it just in the nick of time because now they’re filled with the weight of his husband and he's able to stop him from hitting his head on the edge of the couch.

Eddie has a flashback to March when Buck was hanging from the aerial and he thinks he’s going to lose it.  He screams through labored breaths, “MY LOVE… TALK TO ME.  TELL ME WHERE IT HURTS.  IS IT YOUR HEART?  TALK TO ME PLEASE!”

No response.

Buck’s already unconscious so he gently lays him on the floor, gets on his knees, reaches over from the back of the couch, grabs two throw pillows and puts one underneath his head and the other underneath his ankles to elevate his feet.

After he gets him positioned, he notices Buck’s body is lifeless and it causes him to exhale a half cry and a scream.  “OH MY GOD!  AMORE—MIO!  PLEASE… WAKE UP.  WAKE UP FOR ME MY LO—VE!  TELL ME WHAT’S WRONG!  BUCK PLEASE DO—N’T LEAVE ME… PLEASE!”

No response.

Eddie feels like he’s going to jump out of his skin because he doesn’t know what happened and the last time he saw Buck like this he was hanging from the top of the ladder and his body was dangling in the air.  He was dead for three minutes and seventeen seconds and in his mind he’s not sure how long it’s been because he didn’t start counting when he saw Buck fall because he was too busy catching him.

All his fears about Buck dying again and leaving him flood to the front of his mind like the swirling waters from a category 5 hurricane and as tears roll down his face, he feels like he’s drowning and his lungs are beginning to close and he can tell it’s the start of a panic attack.

What happened that caused Buck to have what Eddie believes to be a bradycardia event? 👀

Is it his heart or something else? 🙃

Is it possible there are long lasting effects from the lightning strike that were missed by the cardiologist? 🤷🏽‍♀️

What's going to happen next? Will Eddie have a panic attack? 👀

___________

This is an EPIC LOVE STORY!

Fic Summary: Months after Buck and Eddie were hit by the same lightning strike; they’re still struggling with the aftermath of it.  But before they make their love confessions, they’ll spend time getting to know themselves as individuals first. Eddie learns to enjoy the simple things in life as he participates in activities on his own and with new friends while Buck learns the rest of the 31-year-old deep dark family secret about his conception and birth. Their journey to forever is still a work in progress but once they finally admit they’re in love with each other, everything that follows their love confessions will be cataclysmic.

__________

Chapter Summaries

Chapter 1 - Eddie makes a new friend while Buck receives devastating news regarding the sperm donation he made for Connor and Kameron.

Chapter 2 - Buck does a lot of research to learn more about the abnormalities found in his red blood cells and Eddie starts a new therapy journey that’s all about him and not the traumas he’s experienced.

Chapter 3 - After more than a month, Buck and Eddie finally spend time together outside of work but it doesn’t end well and they part with a lot of uncertainty regarding their places in each other’s lives.

Chapter 4 - Eddie has a few realizations about his life which causes him to consider moving back to El Paso, TX while Buck continues to be reminded of his past which causes him to take an impromptu road trip across America.

Chapter 5 - Both Buck and Eddie have difficult conversations with their parents and Buck finally learns the truth behind the reason why his mother despised him while Eddie finally tells his mother about the way she tries to control him.

Chapter 6 - More than two weeks after Buck pushed Eddie away after suggesting they needed a break; Eddie decides to try again. Eddie’s there for Buck when he’s at his worst just like Buck was there for him when he was at his worst and he won’t let Buck give up.

Chapter 7 - After Buck’s mental breakdown, Eddie has his back the same way Buck had his when he had his own breakdown more than a year ago.  They share several vulnerable and emotionally intimate moments with one another and they begin to realize their small, sweet and caring gestures matter just as much if not more than any grand gesture ever could because these are the foundations of a long-lasting love relationship.

Chapter 8 - Buck, Eddie and Chris all have their own therapists and during their sessions, they reflect on their pasts while they’re in the present so they can prepare for their future together as a family.

Chapter 9 - Buck and Eddie are there for each other when Buck has to testify as a witness during the trial.  But by the end of it, they’ll both realize their individual and shared traumas are going to keep resurfacing until they talk about them, deal with the fact that they’re in love with one another and face the fact that they can’t live without each other.

Chapter 10 - As Buck and Eddie finally begin to confront their past traumas, they realize how much they need each other to fill in the gaps of their memories.  Additionally, the universe screams at them for what appears to be the one hundredth time so Buck can realize he doesn’t have to ‘find it’ because he already ‘made it’ and Eddie’s reminded tomorrow isn’t promised and he doesn’t have to die alone if he doesn’t want to.

Chapter 11 - A “virga” or dry thunderstorm is in the forecast but once the rain starts, the thunderstorm happening outside won’t be able to match the storm brewing inside between Buck and Eddie.  It’s the universe’s final scream and when the tumultuous winds begin to blow, they’ll have one last chance to hold onto everything they’ve built over the last six years or they’ll lose it all forever.

Chapter 12 - Buck and Eddie have always shared a deep physical attraction and an emotional intimacy that’s unmatched but now that they’re in a relationship, they’re learning how to navigate the romantic intimacy they’ve been waiting for six years to explore. The love they have for each other is a once in a lifetime, soulmate, love of their lives type of love that transcends space and time.

Chapter 13 - While navigating the newness of their romantic relationship, Buck and Eddie take advantage of every moment they spend together. As their individual lives, people from their pasts, time constraints and the possibility of losing each other again make attempts to interrupt and interfere with their journey to forever, they love, care for, support and hold onto each other even tighter to withstand it all.

Chapter 14 - Buck and Eddie can see the lights at the end of the tunnels regarding the results of Buck’s Cancer Screening along with everything else they’re dealing with. But are the lights they see exits to the tunnels or are they headlights on different runaway trains that are speeding towards them in an effort to interrupt their forever?

Chapter 15 - Buck and Eddie have known they were exactly who the other one wanted in a partner since they met six years ago when they agreed to have each other’s backs. They’re in a romantic relationship, they’re both preparing to ask the other one to spend forever with them and by the end of the seventh week into their relationship, together they will plan their most important and greatest adventure for their future.

Chapter 16 - As Buck and Eddie begin to prepare for their marriage ceremony that will take place in Rome, Italy in December 2023, they start planning their first international adventure as a romantic couple. Even though Chris is still the only person they’ve told about their relationship, several people who know them have already witnessed the love they share and as the days continue, others will witness it too.

Chapter 17 - As Buck and Eddie get closer to departing Los Angeles for their international adventure, a moment in time will remind them; life is fragile, tomorrow isn’t promised and every second of everyday should be cherished because everything can change in an instant. The result of that realization will cause them to hold onto each other even more.

Chapter 18 - As Buck, Eddie and Chris prepare for family gatherings before and during the Thanksgiving holiday, the “Santa Ana Winds” start to blow and all sorts of expected and unexpected familial drama ensues.

Chapter 19 - As Buck and Eddie get closer to their wedding day, the universe begins to align everything so that some of their parent and children's relationships are strengthened while others come to an abrupt end.

Chapter 20 - With only 14 days remaining until Buck, Eddie and Chris depart Los Angeles, CA traveling to Rome, Italy, for their first family adventure, an early morning conversation about “tying up loose ends” helps Buck and Eddie realize there are still several things left unfinished on their ‘To Do’ lists. The question is will there be enough time to complete all of them?

Chapter 21 - Buck, Eddie and Chris are finalizing their ‘To Do’ Lists, double checking their itineraries and packing their suitcases in preparation for their trip to Europe so they can board their flight that departs Los Angeles, CA on Friday, December 15, 2023 at 3:25PM.

Chapter 22 - While Buck, Eddie and Chris spend the first 8 days of their European family adventure in Italy, their primary reason for going will be fulfilled as well as several others they hadn’t considered or anticipated.

Chapter 23 - As the Diaz Family continues their Italian family adventure, they’ll say, “Ciao” or hello and goodbye to a lot of things almost immediately after they become an official and legal family.

Chapter 24 - Will be posted soon.

Chapter 25 - Will be posted soon.

__________

Read chapters 1-23 are available on AO3.

Continue reading on AO3

Chapters 24 & 25 will be posted soon.

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

“Everything that happened to me, it’s like it all snowballed out from the moment you assholes robbed the bank.”

its fascinating because - this isn't true. The bank isn't the cause of everything going to hell for Amy. If we want to pick a point, it's Leviathan's attack but...

On the other hand, Leviathan's attack is the result of the unmasking of the Empire (and maybe Noelle's presence, according to common fanon) and the chaos that had created, and Coil was only able to do that because of Dinah which he captured during the Bank job.

Also the whole Lung being caught and Bakuda going nuts thing, etc.

So she's sort of right.

This is where it becomes really hard to actually get a good understanding of what exactly happens to take the Amy we see in Interlude 2 (the girl who is trying to be the voice of moral reason for Vicky, little miss police brutality herself - that is the takeaway from Interlude 2, coming in blind) to... the girl who is going to (according to the 'Official Interpretation™' anyway) rape her sister.

We only get a first look at her in Interlude 11h, and 11h crams so many revelations into one chapter and doesn't give us a chance to digest and then Amy vanishes again for a whole arc and then only a little shows up in 13.

Obviously, a lot is going on in the story, but I do think if it was really important to Wildbow that we take a certain POV on Amy, as he purportedly intended, maybe he should have shown more of her.

So we don't really know what was going through her mind, or what her life was like after the Bank and before Leviathan. Vicky does say in 11h that after the Bank Amy was acting differently... it both does and doesn't make sense she'd react so badly to the near miss in the Bank (near miss in terms of the reveal of her horrible secret that actually had it been revealed in the bank probably wouldn't have ruined her life as much as she was afraid of).

So without that look, it's hard to say if Amy is right that everything went bad because of the Bank. On the one hand, it's easy to say that's all nonsense. On the other hand, the Bank could have been the catalyst that ramped up all her anxieties and issues and set into motion the thought patterns that made her run away after healing mark.

(i.e. perhaps no Bank, Amy is in just enough of a better enough mental state to not run off. Probably not but... maybe)

Narratively, of course, the bank is indeed when everything goes downhill for her and for the entire city, implicitly. Arc 1 and the capture of Lung is the start of the story for us the reader, but for the city at large, Arc 3, and all that comes with it wrt to Dinah does end up being the point where the story really kicks into motion and gear, and where wider events go nuts.

As for Amy's immediate 'fuck off Tattletale'... yeah, I mean, if I was Amy, I would be like that too. Tattletale isn't evil, exactly, but she's not exactly a nice person to be around, especially when you're as wound tight as Amy, and the girl just can't not poke at shit. And to be honest, I'm not sure Tattletale's track record of eliciting intended reactions from the people she's poking at is as good as she, or some fans, seem to think. She's great at knowing shit, sorta, but she's not great at actually using what she knows on people, arguably.

[todomitoukei]

hey im kinda confused abt the hpsc and i feel like you could explain it pretty well. is the theory that they’re corrupt and the real villains based in canon or is it just fanon? bc from what i remember they were only mentioned pretty vaguely, so i feel like i might have missed a chapter or something...if it’s based in canon, could you tell me where? (if it’s not too much trouble ofc)

It’s not canon per se, but it’s a theory based on what we know about the HPSC thus far along with some other factors.

As for the HPSC, their job is basically to manage the interactions between heroes and society. In a way, they are the PR team for heroes as a whole. They are also responsible for coordinating the heroes teams with the police, high-profile cases, as well as the provisional hero license exams. We don’t know exactly how one obtains their license to be a Pro Hero but considering the HPSC hands out the provisional licenses, they most likely also take care of the real thing.

With that, they have a lot of control over everything, almost like someone playing chess, with the heroes, police, villains, and civilians being their pawns.

We got a better look at the HPSC once Hawks was introduced, specifically when we got the flashback of him being given his undercover job. There are two noteworthy points from that scene.

The first one being that the HPSC is okay with casualties, giving Hawks the permission to ignore the victims, while he befriends the villains. The HPSC places its importance on the greater good, rather than trying to save everyone.

The second part is about Hawks and his overall role for the HPSC. Though they call it a proposal, Hawks points out that he isn’t given a choice here.

Similar to Eri’s current appearance, people have different opinions on whether using children for the hero side is right or wrong, considering that Eri agreed to use her quirk on Mirio, and Hawks wanted to become a hero.

We don’t have the full picture of what this “special program” that Hawks was a part of entailed, and whether or not he was the only one in it. Although, concerning the last part, we don’t really see any heroes his age so it feels like Hawks was the only one part of this “program” and was always anticipated to be used as the HPSC’s secret weapon. Officially, he’s a hero, but in reality, the HPSC has a lot more control over him than any other hero. Part of that is also shown through his hero outfit, which features the HPSC logo on his shirt.

Keep in mind, Hawks was a kid when he got taken in by the commission. They saw a vulnerable child that happened to have a strong quirk that could be useful to them, so they took said child and turned it into the hero he is now for their own advantages.

Aside from Hawks and Eri, we also have U.A. and any other hero school. While this hasn’t really been addressed by society in the story aside from when Bakugou got kidnapped, this is a high school, which means the students are 15-18 years old. Although the story does tell us that hero students encountering actual villains is a new occurrence, they are still children who get put through very intense training. In the most recent arc, they are being put on the front lines, even though their role was just to evacuate the civilians, it’s obvious from their mindsets and their sense of duty that they are not going to leave it as just that. As mentioned at the start, the HPSC is responsible for coordinating these types of situations so it was their decision to put these kids there. Even if you don’t see an issue with hero high schools like U.A. existing, I think we can all agree that there is something very wrong about putting teenagers on the front lines against the biggest terrorist organization in the country. Funnily enough, the one person to address this is a villain, Dabi:

It makes sense for someone like Dabi, who was created and raised as a mere pawn himself instead of being allowed a normal childhood, to be able to point out that sending kids to a fight like this is not okay.

Speaking of villains, since the USJ arc, the League of Villains has been presented to us as the main antagonists of the series, specifically Shigaraki as the successor to All For One, since Deku, the protagonist, is the successor of One For All. But over time, the members of the League of Villains have been shown to us as being very layered, sympathetic people. Shigaraki has found his own reasons for doing what he does, but that doesn’t change the fact that he has always been and continues to be nothing but a vessel for All For One.

Despite the fact that All For One in his current state technically can’t do much, especially not without Shigaraki, him still being around and still saying that Shigaraki isn’t complete yet shows us that All For One is still the bigger threat and we haven’t seen the last of him. When it comes to the question of how can Shigaraki redeem himself, he would first need to realize that he is just being used by All For One. Because the main difference between him and Dabi is that the latter has recognized that he was only used and is now fighting back, whereas Shigaraki hasn’t become aware of that yet. To redeem himself, he not only has to realize this but also figure out how to break away from All For One. Unlike Dabi, he can’t just leave, since All For One can possess him from the comfort of his highly secured cell.

Speaking of Dabi, some people are also theorizing that the HPSC knew about Touya and helped cover up his death, but that this is unconfirmed so while I’m not ruling it out (according to Endeavor he did search for Touya instead of immediately accepting his death so they most likely do know about it but whether they knew the circumstances that have led to this is unknown), I wouldn’t count it as evidence for the time being.

Circling back to the students of U.A., after the USJ arc the rumors of a possible traitor came up, and after Bakugou got kidnapped, we got this meeting between the HPSC and the police, where they first mention that they will need to make some changes.

Later on, Principal Nezu tells us that, though officially the dorm system is for the students’ safety, it’s also so that they (the HPSC and police) can investigate in secret, with both the teachers and the students being possible suspects.

The story hasn’t exactly mentioned this since or explained how exactly they investigate in secret. We do know that there are robots with motion detectors/cameras on campus that report any kind of movement to the teachers, like when Bakugou and Deku had their fight outside. But what about in the dorms? Are there hidden cameras? Maybe even in the rooms? We don’t know that yet, part it’s still a fact that the HPSC even suspects the kids and puts them in dorms under false pretense when in reality it’s easier for surveillance/control reasons.

So to sum it up, the HPSC has a lot of control and they make sure to keep it that way and get even more control. Of course, considering that it is their job to keep the country safe, it is more or less expected of them. But they more often than not show that they have no issue with using child soldiers, and they are also okay with casualties. Overall, they are a corrupt organization in many ways. With the current arc, especially Dabi calling out Endeavor and thus possibly (hopefully) making society question heroes a little more, it would then also make sense for the HPSC to be questioned, though probably at a later point in the story and not quite yet. However, in order for that to happen, people on the hero side first have to start recognizing these flaws and start questioning the current system that is in place.

[warsamongthestars]

Original Character profile time!

This is Brexpy, the (fanon) 5th Member of the Bad Batch.

His enhancements are Speed, Flexibility and Reflexes; along side a time perception shift and thought process focus (mix Bullet Speed Slow Mo with Sherlock Holmes’ Thought scan from 2009; and that’s it). Weaknesses include: - Nerve Spasms. Occasionally exhaustion takes him, but the adrenaline leaves him a shaking mess. Luckily these events are rare in adulthood, but were problems in his childhood. - Insomnia. The constant needs of movement interferes with his sleep. He has to start taking pills for it. - High Metabolism. Can’t keep up with speeds like that without having to down some major carbs. Doesn’t ever get bigger no matter how much he scarfs. - Low Fortitude. Unlike the rest of the TBB, Brexpy can’t tank hits or hold ground for any length of time. If he can’t think on his feet or react quickly, he goes down fast. - Weak Blood Vessels. Sometimes, the physical pushes he does when performing will burst the weakest blood vessels. He often may remove his helmet with a nose and face running with blood. Sometimes that even includes the eyes. He has a reputation for looking demented on long, stressful missions.

His role in the Bad Batch is Stealth Expert, and Backup Scout. He climbs, he gets into places, he does what he needs to, and he fucks off. This makes him work well with splicing expert Tech, or to cover / be covered by the Sniper Crosshair. He’s more often paired with Crosshair, as Crosshair’s sight can keep up with Brexpy in both motion and distance. Crosshair is often the One-Shot needed to get Brexpy out of a bad situation, and Brexpy can reach the high places Crosshair has to help out if overrun. - TRIVIA: They like being snippy with each other (Crosshair says something bastardly, and Brexpy fires something right back; Crosshair is perceptive, but Brexpy is quick).

He’s backup Scout, as Hunter’s senses regarding electromagnetic radiation and Magnetoreception makes it difficult to navigate urban environments. Brexpy can run and parkour like a sunnuvabitch, making him ideal in on City Worlds and Ships.

Brexpy is the Shortest, at 5′8 feet or 1.73 meters, marking him as possibly the shortest full grown clone (All other Clones are 6 foot / 1.83 meters; even Hunter is 5′11 / 1.83). - TRIVIA: For a while, he feared that his chosen name was going to be “Short Ass”. Luckily, this did not become the case. - TRIVIA: Wrecker has made it a game to get Brexpy in a hug. Brexpy dodges and jumps about, but its often within Wrecker’s space as to make the game “fair”. Occasionally, Wrecker wins, with much loud rejoicing. This mostly came out Brexpy being so Small in comparison to Wrecker. - TRIVIA: Crosshair pulls no punches in making fun of Brexpy’s height. But if any Regs tried, they’d get decked.

His name is actually shortened. His full name is “Break Speed”, but that’s a mouthful. He got it because, in his youth, he had a hard time stopping himself when running, and ended up going body first into walls on several occasions.

His Equipment is primarily a small proto-Bryar Pistol, with illegal overload modification (Like a pre K-16... You know the one, Dark Forces fans), and a Vibroblade. While he is trained in blasters and rifles, his stealth and speed require agile precision or ending conflicts quickly. - TRIVIA: Think of splitting Sev from Republic Commandos into two people; the Sniper side goes to Crosshair, and the melee to Brexpy. - TRIVIA: ... Does this make Brexpy Scorch? Is he gonna be voiced by Carth Onasi?

As a character for TBB, Brexpy fulfills a mix of the Funny Guy with Lancer. In spite of being very active in action with a constant desire to move or dive into whatever curiosity of the day he’s found, Brexpy has seemingly lazily smug attitude.

He’s Rash and Quick to Temper when compared to Hunter and Crosshair’s cool and quiet natures. Both he and Crosshair are Snippy, but where Crosshair Jabs, Brexpy jokes. Though that doesn’t mean that Brexpy won’t snap something at the wrong time, he’s just a lot quicker to feel bad about it.

He’s Moderate intelligence to Tech’s Genius, but often requires Tech to either get to the point or slow down-- Brexpy’s Job can’t take fields of text and still be successful, he doesn’t have time for an entire paragraph.

Brexpy and Wrecker are easily excitable, though to compare, Brexpy is a lot more coolheaded than Wrecker is. Still, they’re prone to competition. You can occasionally catch Brexpy rambling about something to Wrecker.

Between Brexpy and Echo, there’s a lot of arguments. Echo is soldierly, but thoughtful, in comparison to Brexpy’s quick and often automatic reactions. Echo is more a people person, where Brexpy tends to be suspicious around folks he doesn’t know. Echo will follow Regulations and Orders, while Brexpy tends to filter Orders with careful “deafness” and general Common Sense. In Escort Missions, Brexpy often has to act as Echo’s second Hand (While Crosshair is the Eye in the Sky).

Unlike Hunter, Brexpy quickly loses focus or is hyperfocused. He can’t sit still to do paperwork to save his life, tends to nod off in long briefs or during Tech’s lectures. But if he’s on mission, you can nearly expect him to be awake for Days.

As the Stealth Expert, he can be surprisingly Patient and Perceptive, and can even sit still long enough to make insightful observations. He’s made a habit of breaking into places, even if those places are his own bases of operation (He believes that you should always know how to break into your own spaces). - TRIVIA: He was prone to sneaking off and around Kamino, and was infamous for being frustratingly difficult to catch when caught.

As the Primary Melee Weapon User, he’s trained in both the Vibroblade and hand-to-hand combat. He acts and reacts according to his target’s weaknesses, and fights dirty. If he can’t cut you down, he’ll put you down.

Under the Chip, His Stealth expert goes straight into Assassin Territory. He moves fast, jumps fast, reacts fast, and goes in with a Vibroblade. This is a soldier meant to face Jedi face-to-face, and keep up. He goes for the Weaknesses, and he will not relent.

Narrative wise Brexpy is Dead during the currently show timeline (Dubbed the “Dis Line”). He died thanks to complications after his first growth cycle with his enhancement, so he never made it off Kamino. His heart simply beat too fast for his body to keep up, and he dropped.

The picture shown above, where Brexpy is lighting a cigarette on a trophy lightsaber, is the timeline where only He survives and not the BBs. This is the “Luka Line”, where the Dark Forces Saga takes place, and Brexpy is one of the last surviving Clones. His Jedi, were it an official assignment, would first be Morgan Katarn, then inherited Kyle Katarn after Morgan’s death. Brexpy is that one asshole who breaks into a place before Kyle, and lays ammo and Bacta in convenient places, but never cuts down most of the enemies.

[stillness-in-green]

Part 2 of the response to this ask:

Part 1 was about where I think Geten’s story is going, and if I think it’s likely that Dabi will kill him; it dealt mainly with how those characters are set up in canon. Part 2 is far more about the fandom, and the assumptions people make that lead them to theories like the one above--specifically, the assumption that the League was always planning on bailing on the PLF. Hit the jump below with me and I'll go over why I think the common arguments for that are misguided at best, and willfully misreading the text at worst.

WARNING: Contains some generalizations about parts of the fandom that I have mostly taken steps to avoid seeing on my dash, so some of my characterizations may be out of date. I’ve tried to desalinate this post as much as possible, but as an unapologetic fan of the MLA and of Spinner (who I do not bring up incidentally), this is a topic I feel particularly strongly about. Apologies, but I Have Seen Things.

DISCLAIMER: I like Geten better than Dabi. I don't think he's better developed; I don't think he's a better character--I just like him better. This is largely down to the fact that I find the MLA fascinating from a worldbuilding perspective and its members compelling personally, whereas I’m less interested in Dabi personally than I am the Todoroki Drama on the whole, and have been tired of Fanon Dabi for approximately 83 years. I’ll also be the first to admit that my take on Dabi is pretty mercenary--hardly the irredeemable psychopath the Hero Stans on Twitter see, but nothing close to Secretly Soft Big Brother Touya, either. If that’s not your bag, you may want to skip this one.

So, here's a bullet point list of the reasons I have personally seen on why the League was always planning to turn on the MLA:

Dabi and Toga mention "getting started early," and Shigaraki mentions a plan, suggesting that the League had a plan in place independent of the one they arranged as the PLF.

Shigaraki says he won't forgive the Liberation Army for messing with peoples' feelings, so he would never really mean it when he forges an alliance with them.

The MLA is quirk supremacist, like Endeavor, so Dabi would never work with them.

Dabi is just using Skeptic against Skeptic's will; it’s not a willing partnership.

Mr. Compress rejects the PLF moniker for Shigaraki, ergo Mr. Compress didn’t genuinely associate Shigaraki and the League with the PLF.

Toga hated Curious, so she wouldn't want to work with the MLA either.

Twice would never forgive them for what they did to Giran.

[Error: argument about Spinner's opinion on the PLF not found.]

So, let's go over those, shall we? Note that a lot of what I'm going to lay out below isn't conclusive. What I want to establish is simply that the canonical evidence isn't conclusive, certainly not as much so as the people who support this view espouse.

|| Dabi and Toga mention "getting started early," and Shigaraki mentions a plan, suggesting that the League had a plan in place independent of the one they arranged as the PLF.

In responses to my recent Overhaul post, I defended Viz’s official translation as an accurate rendering of the dialogue in question. In general, I feel like Caleb Cook is pretty reliable in his translations, if sometimes kind of stiff or dry in localization. However, there are times he makes assumptions about lines--as indeed a translator for a currently-running series will sometimes have to--and sometimes, those assumptions don’t pan out. This is one of those times.

Dabi's line, "Shall we get started early?" is based on an assumption Cook made about a line that doesn't have an actual subject. In the original dialogue--Hayame ni hajimaru ka--there is no “we,” not even in the form of some implicit collective in Dabi’s grammatical inflection, nor is there a question of "should." All Dabi’s doing is musing that the start (again, there’s no subject, and so no indication of the start of what, or the start as initiated by who) is happening early.

Toga's line communicates much the same, save that she does specify that the schedule/plan/arrangement is happening earlier than expected--which is totally true, since her line is in response to Dabi observing that Machia moving must mean Shigaraki's awake, and Shigaraki was supposed to be down for another month.

Shigaraki's line, like Dabi's, lacks a subject to describe what exactly is supposed to start as soon as Shigaraki wakes. He's saying something that would, in a more stilted way, be, "I wake up and then it's the start, right?"

None of these lines suggest that the characters are necessarily talking about any plan other than the one the PLF laid out. Yes, it looks somewhat damning that Shigaraki's first action (after getting himself a cape, anyway) is to have Machia bring him the League, but heck, maybe that was always the plan. Just because Shigaraki wants to rejoin his comrades doesn't mean the rest of the PLF didn't already have machinations that they were supposed to set into motion the moment Machia left. After all, the plan as Hawks understood it did involve simultaneous attacks on major cities--maybe the League was going to be spearheading one of those attacks. Further, Shigaraki knew something was wrong from the moment he regained consciousness, and we don’t know how that knowledge affected the call he made. Hell, maybe the original plan was for the League to be brought to meet him somewhere in a chartered limo; we don’t know.

It's telling that this idea that the League had a Secret Plan to screw over the MLA rarely seems to account for Mr. Compress and Spinner being confused over the suddenness of events. The response to questions about this seems to be that the "villain trio" knew about it, so the ignorance of the rest of the League can just be handwaved--the important members knew, and that's enough. This is ungenerous towards both Twice and Mr. Compress, but I have got particularly little time for Spinner, the narrator of MVA and guy who decided to devote his all to Shigaraki, being disrespected in this fashion. More on that later.

|| Shigaraki says he won't forgive the Liberation Army for messing with peoples' feelings, so he would never really mean it when he forges an alliance with them.

Shigaraki does say he won't forgive the MLA, but consider what he did to the MLA and its leader. He destroyed most of their stronghold, killed scores of them, is directly responsible for Re-Destro losing his legs, and saw that vaunted descendant of Destro about six inches shy of full forehead-on-the-ground dogeza. The League Shigaraki commands killed a great many more of them, including one of their inner circle. He commandeered the Liberation Army, its resources, and its grand cause. I think it’s safe to say he’s more than responded in kind!

I'm not saying Shigaraki feels for the MLA the same way he does about the League, far from it, but I do think he's practical enough after two hundred chapters of character development not to throw them away out of spite. In Chapter 246, he tells Ujiko explicitly, "When someone offers me something, I take it," and, "I'm done taking the heroes lightly. I'll use everything I've got to obliterate the dregs All Might left behind." From a purely practical standpoint, if he intends to throw everything he has at the heroes, he has no reason to throw the MLA under the bus, and 116,000 reasons to keep them around. I'm altogether sure that, so long as they stood to be useful to his plans, he would have kept them around.

|| The MLA is quirk supremacist, like Endeavor, so Dabi would never work with them. + || Dabi is just using Skeptic against Skeptic's will; it’s not a willing partnership.

I hadn’t seen the second point in the wild, but I suppose it must be how the “The League will betray the MLA” theorists are getting around Dabi and Skeptic’s clear collaboration and how that collaboration totally scuttles the first point, huh? Hilarious.

Anyway, setting aside the fact that Dabi showed up to the one planning session we were shown when even Geten didn’t, there’s evidence in the canon that Dabi was working with Skeptic since even before the raid. Consider that Dabi’s video was filmed at the villa (the wall paneling and the style of the couch both match) and ask yourself where the camera he used came from. Once the filming was complete, where was the video stored such that Skeptic could access it from his laptop? If Dabi’d had it on an SD card and Skeptic was seeing it for the first time, why didn’t Spinner, Compress and Toga watch it alongside him? Surely Skeptic would need to watch it through at least once to know when to splice in the footage of Jin’s death for maximum dramatic impact? On that note, by far the most telling piece of evidence is this: if Dabi wasn't already working with Skeptic, then why was he wearing one of Skeptic's body cameras during his confrontation with Hawks?

Further, Skeptic's protest when he’s pulled onto Machia isn't that he doesn’t want to be with the League; it’s that he doesn’t want to leave Re-Destro behind. Once he's resigned that it's going to happen, though, he's cocky about his talents and complimentary of Dabi's big reveal, even if he is exasperated about the League's antics. It's ambiguous, I admit, but given that Dabi's wearing his cameras, he had to have known Dabi had a reason for them--and given that he is both abrasive and mouthy, I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have demanded to know what that reason was.

Hell, Dabi even thanks Skeptic for his editing work, which is more direct positive approval than he's ever shown anyone in the League (give or take the high-five with Twice, which, genuine or not, he would have known he was doing on camera). That much-vaunted panel of Spinner telling Toga to come back to the League? Dabi's grinning, which in isolation you could read as a certain rueful affection, but with the full context of the chapter, it becomes apparent that Dabi is grinning at Skeptic's laptop, seconds after telling Skeptic to "hurry up." Skeptic is, at that moment, probably gearing up the video to project nationwide, and Dabi’s more focused on that than he is Toga’s crisis, even when Compress directly appeals to him for aid. He tells Compress he doesn’t care, the same way he told Hawks he doesn't give a damn about the League.

Let me be clear here: I'm inclined to take Dabi at his word. I think Dabi hangs around the League because, for all that he says one man's conviction can shake the world, he also knows his own limits, and the League offers safety in numbers and an avenue to pursue his revenge. Maybe he finds them acceptable enough company, maybe he even does like them a bit despite himself, but I think any affection he might have for them is entirely incidental to his views on their usefulness. In the same way, while he's willing to bail on the MLA when the heroes attack, I don't think it was his plan to do so, especially not given his apparent immediate regard for Skeptic, as seen in the deleted scene here. Sure, he dislikes Geten, but ultimately, Geten is a stupid kid too tied up in his care for Re-Destro--who's now worshipping the ground Shigaraki walks on--to really be getting in Dabi's way.

Maybe if the MLA really were as quirk supremacist as Geten makes them out to be, Dabi would be actively looking for a way to see ‘em burn, but as I’ve said countless times before, Geten is not a reliable narrator vis a vis the MLA's doctrine. Now, obviously I don't expect Dabi to give them an unearned benefit of the doubt,(1) not after what he heard Geten say, but if Dabi has been working with Skeptic, it doesn't take a genius to realize that while Anthropomorph is a perfectly good quirk, it is categorically not what primarily defines Skeptic’s "worth" in the MLA societal microcosm.

Nothing that Skeptic does reflects the way Geten talks about "elevating one's ability" or "sheer strength" in the way that HeroAca fandom tends to understand as referring to flashy and offensive quirks. And yet, Skeptic is a ranked advisor warranting an introductory panel with RD's inner circle and Geten is not. Perhaps, just perhaps, this might have led Dabi to reevaluating his initial assessment just slightly?

|| Mr. Compress rejects the PLF moniker for Shigaraki, ergo Mr. Compress didn’t genuinely associate Shigaraki and the League with the PLF.

So, this one's pretty wild, because, in the same chapter that had people crowing about Mr. Compress's dialogue, Mr. Compress's actions show the exact opposite of the conclusion this theory would demand. Specifically, if it was always the League's plan to ditch the MLA, Mr. Compress would have darted right past Skeptic, ignoring the man's cries for help. He doesn't--he picks Skeptic up on the way past and (at least in the volume corrections) deposits him safe with Dabi in Spinner's scarf. Of course, Skeptic still stands to be useful, but if one acknowledges that Skeptic's usefulness is reason enough not to abandon him, then what exactly is the argument for leaving 116,000 perfectly useful warm bodies behind?

But let's set aside Compress rescuing Skeptic and focus on the actual point, because that point in itself is still flawed. Mr. Compress's thoughts on the PLF in the specific talk bubble in question are somewhat ambiguous. It's another case of the Viz translation making a couple of assumptions that are just that--assumptions.

Compress's words in the Japanese are as follows:

Chōjō Kaihō Sensen.… Viran rengo no Shigaraki Tomura ga…

Viz then renders the line like so:

The Paranormal Liberation Front's… No, the League of Villain's Shigaraki…

Note that in the Japanese, the possessive no is only included once, to indicate Shigaraki's association with the League. Further, the original doesn't indicate any negation in Compress's thoughts. Yes, he could be rejecting the PLF association for Shigaraki, but he could as easily be narrowing his scope to Shigaraki as the figure he represents to the League, rather than the figure he represents to the PLF--not rejecting wholesale, but rather becoming more specific. Compress might also be thinking first of the PLF as a general organization, then narrowing down to Shigaraki specifically.

Rather than reading this line as an indication that Compress regards the PLF as temporary, I was heartened by the fact that Compress thought about the PLF at all! If the League really had been planning to discard them this entire time, then there's no reason for Compress to have ever taken the Front seriously enough to have thought about them in that moment of crisis. You can carry this back further, too. In Chapter 258, when Twice is asking Hawks for help, he says that Spinner and Compress have been in meetings for days. Coupled with Compress's first thought about the entity that will carry out Harima's desired reformation being the Liberation Front (or possibly "the Liberation Front's Shigaraki"), this indicates to me that Compress was taking it seriously, not just gorging himself on sushi on the MLA's dime.

Indeed, back in Ujiko's lab, when it was just Shigaraki talking about his backstory and his dreams of destruction, Compress looks the opposite of impressed; we know from his narration in 294 that he liked the League because they didn't place any importance on one another’s pasts. Yet, at some point, his view shifted to believing that fulfilling his ancestor's ambition, his bloodline’s duty, really might be back on the table. We as readers don't quite know when that shift happened, but given, again, his initial mental invocation of the PLF, I think we can assume that it's tied to that alliance, those resources. And sure, when the moment of crisis happens and he's really defining who and what Shigaraki is to him, and where his values and priorities lie, it's with the League and Shigaraki as the leader of the League. But that doesn't mean he never had his hopes for the PLF at all, or was partaking in plans to ditch them.

Also too, this is a man who was lamenting the loss of their partnership with Overhaul, a man who personally maimed him, on top of killing a comrade. You're telling me the guy who shrugged off his animosity towards Overhaul would willingly allow the League to plot sabotage against even wealthier collaborators against whom he has even less reason to hold a grudge? Come on, guys.

|| Toga hated Curious, so she wouldn't want to work with the MLA either.

This one's easy: Toga pretty explicitly hated Curious, but she's even more explicit that she likes the MLA because she thinks the world they want to create is wonderful. She says this verbatim at the end of 225, after Curious has spent the entire chapter hounding her with explosions and intrusive questions. What turns her animosity on Curious is not some reveal that the MLA's world would be terrible after all, but Curious calling Toga's "normal" miserable and tragic. Essentially, she doesn't object to the world the MLA wants to bring about; she objects to being turned into a martyr for that world, especially when that martyrdom requires that the things that make Toga happy be characterized as horrific misfortunes.

Toga doesn't like Curious; she kills Curious. And then she comes into a position of leadership, and we don't know a lot about how that position takes her, but she seems delighted to be walking out onto the stage to be announced as such, and she makes active contributions to the discussion of the PLF's plans in Chapter 245. We are, again, given no indication that her lethal response to Curious means that she's planning to ditch the MLA on the whole.

Incidentally, Curious asserts what she does about Toga only in the context of the world as it stands. The world's rejection of Toga's normal, and the extremes that rejection drove Toga to, are what Curious considers tragic and miserable, not Toga's fascination with blood in and of itself. She clearly believes that, in the world the MLA envisions, Toga's life would not be so miserable because she would never have been oppressed to the degree that she snapped. And frankly, Curious isn't wrong. The only reason she is a villain in that scene is that she's willing to murder Toga to project that tragedy to the world. If she'd been willing to sit down and have a civil interview with Toga to print it in a relevant magazine, she would have been fine.

|| Twice would never forgive them for what they did to Giran.

You know, this is a totally fair point. It is, however, somewhat complicated by the fact that Giran himself never left the PLF. Now, there’s almost certainly something to be said about Giran’s whole information broker shtick being terminally compromised by his capture, his maiming, his client list being hacked, etc. He had a bunch of identifying items strewn all over the country that were covered in the national news, items that people who associated with him closely certainly would have recognized. Maybe he’s laying low for a while?

I don’t know why Giran was still around by the time of the raid. I can theorize about his pragmatism or what have you, but the canon really doesn’t give us anything to go on. Still, if he really hated the MLA all that much, as he would be totally justified in doing, it’s pretty bizarre that Horikoshi showed him twice in PLF crowd scenes post-Deika looking nothing worse than kind of confused and uneasy. Heck, you’d think he would at least have merited a better seat in the crowd for the big merger announcement.

Giran aside, the fact that Twice never does hit it off with anyone in his regiment is, I think, telling. If there’s anyone in the League that intentionally kept himself at a distance from the MLA because of hard feelings, it’s likely Twice. After all, if he had befriended anyone, he presumably wouldn’t have needed to go to Hawks for tutoring almost an entire month after Deika. That said, the fact that Twice does go running to Hawks for tutoring shows that he’s at least doing his best to act in accordance with what he thinks Shigaraki and the rest want. That doesn’t preclude the League having a secret plan that he’s either in on and playing along with, or hasn’t been told about because he might not be able to stop himself from vocalizing about it. Still, while absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, obviously absence of evidence is not evidence of presence. So, lacking any sign that the rest of the League is planning treachery, I’m not inclined to assume Twice’s lack of forgiveness is indicative of anything other than his own feelings.

|| [Error: argument about Spinner's opinion on the PLF not found.]

:: INCOMING SALT WARNING :: INCOMING SALT WARNING ::

This is the one that really gets to me. I have never seen an argument that the League is planning to betray the PLF that convincingly explains the fact that Spinner, to all available evidence, threw himself wholeheartedly into trying to make the PLF succeed. To be more precise, I have seen one explanation, and that explanation is that the plan to ditch the MLA was a secret that only Shigaraki, Dabi and sometimes Toga knew about, and to reiterate, that is bullshit.

In my experience, this is an explanation proposed by people who care about Spinner only insofar as he can be a Soft Gaymer Boyfriend or score them rhetorical points, but have little to no interest in his ongoing--and, indeed, increasing--importance to the League generally and Shigaraki’s arc specifically. The dude who talked about how Twice’s home was the League, who got through to Toga while still respecting her choice when no one else could, the guy who recognized the hollowness within Shigaraki but also bonded with him over video games, the man who Mr. Compress said was Shigaraki’s most devoted follower(2)--this man did not do all of that for people in this fandom to say, “Oh, well, the others probably just kept it a secret from him because they thought he’d be bad at lying.”

Really? “Bad at lying?” And that’s an adequate justification, is it, for Shigaraki letting Spinner toil for months under false pretenses? For lying to the man who adores him the most? Of course it isn’t, but the people who theorize this don’t really care about Spinner’s adoration for Shigaraki, or the fact that Shigaraki rewarding Spinner’s feelings by allowing him to dedicate himself unstintingly to something Shigaraki was planning to discard from the beginning would be a blatant abuse of Spinner’s trust.

I have never seen anyone try to argue that Spinner was in on a plan to betray the MLA all along. That’s because it’s patently obvious that Spinner--forthright, direct Spinner, who named the merged organization with Re-Destro, spends all his time in meetings, has a direct exchange with Re-Destro about the state of their plans, and is probably the reason RD started wearing polka dots--went all-in on the PLF. But for the people who propose the “the League was always going to bail” theory, Spinner and his labors are an afterthought.

Spinner is not an afterthought. Where Mr. Compress has been captured, Toga could hypothetically be peeled away from the League via Uraraka, and Dabi almost certainly will be peeled away via the Todoroki plot, Spinner’s driving motivation at this point is Shigaraki himself. He connected to Shigaraki’s nihilism, his hatred, but also his humanity--the humanity in Shigaraki Tomura, not in Shimura Tenko. His empathy didn’t spring from contrived psychic glimpses of crying 5-year-olds, but from long months of observation, doubt, and gradually deepening wonder. He’s the only person currently with Shigaraki that I can see caring enough about Shigaraki’s welfare that he might sacrifice his own goals and desires to help Deku save him.

Spinner is not an afterthought, and I refuse to build or entertain theories that treat him that way. So as to his opinions on the MLA? Despite having his own reasons to be leery of them based on how shabbily Trumpet treated him, he was obviously trying to make the Paranormal Liberation Front succeed, which means he must have believed that Shigaraki wanted it to succeed. Therefore, unless you’re prepared to assert that Shigaraki (and everyone else who was in on it!) was cruel enough to lie to Spinner about something he was devoting so much time and energy to, the inescapable conclusion is that Shigaraki also wanted the Front to succeed.

(Note: After letting a friend pre-read this, I have been informed that there is, in fact, one explanation offered for Spinner knowing the League was going to abandon the PLF but working his ass off on the venture anyway, and that explanation is, “Something something wants to prove himself because low self-esteem.” This is so ridiculous I can’t even bring myself to edit this post accordingly. Low self-esteem! Because nothing would alleviate Spinner's low self-esteem like toiling for months over something that holds no worth to the people he actually cares about, right? Right?? Bah. Humbug!)

And but so, to wrap all that up: I fundamentally disagree that the League viewed the Paranormal Liberation Front as a temporary arrangement, at least to the extent that they were actively planning to betray their newfound--new won--allies. The fact that I don't think the League intended to discard the MLA out of hand does, thus, influence my opinion that, whatever Geten's fate will be, I'm pretty sure it's not going to be, "He gets murdered in a way that resembles nothing so much as a sick revenge fantasy dozens of chapters after the last point when such a death would have been remotely tonally appropriate."

Thanks for the ask, anon! Sorry about-- *waves at all of this*

-------------------------------

(1) Not that Mr. “Burns Random Delinquents Alive For Not Measuring Up To His Standards For Villainy” has any moral standing to criticize others for how they determine the value of peoples’ lives, mind.

(2) Other translations for the verb in Mr. Compress’s Japanese line of, “You are the one who ____s Shigaraki the most,” include yearn for, long for, pine for, miss, love dearly, adore, idolize, and revere. “Most devoted follower” is accurate enough, but considerably less homo than some of the things we could have gotten there.

[oveliagirlhaditright]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25092943/chapters/60809314

SoKai Week Day 2. Prompt: First Meeting.

Author’s Note: My take on how Sora and Kairi met… but I didn’t use the manga version—or Sora finding Kairi at all—as I figured everyone would do that. And something like this might actually be canon, because in the game Sora and Riku are basically like, “You know the girl at the mayor’s house? She got here during the meteor shower.” So, it sort of seemed like they didn’t know Kairi before that moment, but perhaps went to go meet her then?

Also… While I usually write a third person that’s from a character’s PoV, this is moreso the omniscient/omnipresent PoV—like, a god or gods are narrating about Sora here and not Sora himself—and that’s why it has adult lingo instead of childish lingo in this little boy’s memory.

And (1) and (2) here are just instances where Sora and Kairi used the wrong words, because they’re babies. Sora meant to say “glaring” instead of “grinning”, and Kairi meant to say “world” instead of “whirl”… I thought about having Riku mess up with that once, too… but even as a toddler, I think he’s too smart for that. XD

Oh, and eventually the parents do catch up with Sora and Kairi… but since they’re just having a nice moment—where Kairi’s making yet another friend—they leave them be for a moment, while they secretly watch them from afar.

It also used to be an old fanon theory, that Kairi’s name is actually “Hikari” and not “Kairi”. And that she tried to say her name was Hikari when she was first found… but was having difficulty speaking from having just space traveled, and it came out sounding more like “Kairi”. So the adults started calling her Kairi, and later she had amnesia and couldn’t even correct them that that was wrong and thought it was right herself. So I went with that here, just because.

Enjoy!

How Can I Love, When I’m Afraid to Fall?

How had Sora and Kairi met? That was an easy one… Sora had gone over to her house with his dad—after having heard about the new girl at the mayor’s house—soon after he’d helped that person who had been squeezing his heart, as he felt that she somehow needed his help, too.

And it was, strangely, when the small Kairi opened the door to let him in… that would partly make a later Sora realize he loved her. Since he would often see Donald do such things… and so it was clear that she could fit in with both the old and new segments of his life.

“Kairi!” chastised the man, who Sora could only assume was Kairi’s adopted father—the mayor—as she tried to usher them in. "You can't just open the door by yourself like that, sweetie." And with that “sweetie” added in for the child he had only just met, it had seemed to Sora that the elected official had already come to adore her heart and spirit.

But even though the man had just told Kairi “no”, about letting Sora and his dad in… he motioned that they should come in now, anyway, in probably thinking it would be rude otherwise.

"Hi!" the cute girl had said with such energy, that she'd inspired Sora to try and be just as extroverted as she was from now on, since it did no good to be shy in Kindergarten. "Have you come to see me? I'm Hika- Kairi."

"Yeah! We hear you came from another world!" Sora exclaimed excitedly, as he’d beamed at Kairi and resisted the urge to pinky promise with her that he’d help her fine her home planet.

…But even though Sora had been young at the time, he'd been able to tell by the look on the mayor's face that he was uncomfortable with what he had just said. His face had looked both pinched and purple as, he'd stepped closer to Sora's old man and whispered, "Even if she is, this is not the time nor the place to-"

And Sora had immediately understood then, that the mayor was unintentionally confirming that Kairi did come from another world. Parents were always this grave, when they wanted you to believe something. It was like how Sora had recently come to accept that Santa wasn't real… somewhat because of Riku. And when he’d told his parents that, they'd used big words to try and say that Santa did exist.

"Surely the world is good enough, that a man would secretly give everyone presents one night a year," Sora’s mom had argued. But Sora had deduced later—when he saw a play guitar his parents gotten him for Christmas when they’d all been out shopping together (that they’d clearly forgotten about) labeled as "From Santa"—that that wasn't true.

And one time, when Sora had suspected his dad had eaten his cookie, the man usually of few words had asked, "Would an honest and good man do that to you, when he also just bought you a slip-and-slide to show you how good he is?" And Sora had heard that his dad's voice was higher, too.

It was the same thing here. And knowing that, Sora interrupted the grownups before they could get angry, as only adults did, and said, "I'm going to take Kairi to the Play Island. She needs to meet Riku, if she's going to play here!"

And Sora was running off with Kairi's hand in his own, before either man could catch them. They were toddlers, after all, and much faster because of it.

Just a few days ago, a massive makeshift bridge had been erected, to get people from the Main Island to the Play Island faster. And while it would sink before Sora and Kairi turned six, it served to get them to what they'd eventually see as their home right now, so Kairi could meet her other future best friend this night.

But as they ran... Sora couldn't help being struck by how Kairi’s red hair matched that of the setting sun. He'd never been out this late before, and so this memory would later stick with him for two reasons.

Once they reached the paopu tree where Riku was at, Sora felt proud that he'd won this "race" with Kairi, but also bad that she was now wheezing with her hands on her knees. He put a hand on her shoulder to try and calm her once, before walking towards Riku.

"Hey, Sora," Riku smiled, as he seemed to sense his bestie's attention on him even without turning around. "What are you doing out so late?"

An older Sora would have easily turned that around on Riku—in wondering why he was out this late—but baby Sora had had no idea what attitude or turning the tables was, so he instead proudly showed off Kairi, by putting a hand in front of her face before pulling it away, like a magician revealing what was behind curtain number one. "Riku, this here is Kairi. She's from another world! But the grownups don't want us to know and were grinning at each other." (1)

And Riku was instantly sympathetic here, while Kairi winced. And at the time, Sora had thought it was secondhand embarrassment she felt for her new father's sake... but years later, he would come to understand why Kairi might fear adults being angry at her—because of the experiments Xehanort did on her; and perhaps he treated her worse during them, if the results displeased him some way—and it made his blood boil.

"The... other world thing is cool," Riku had chirped, as he’d indicated Kairi should relax and take a seat on the paopu tree trunk he himself had just vacated. "But the adult stuff is rough... eat a paopu here, and take a load off. …They say, if two people share one, they'll kiss forever or something. But who cares about the icky thing? Just eat it like I do, and pray that other part will never get to you."

Kairi did seem somewhat hungry to Sora, so maybe that was why she took Riku up on his offer. But only somewhat. For in maybe not wanting to mess up the paopu fruit legend like he was okay to, she smashed the fruit in her hand some and then just only drank the juice from it. And Sora watched on, somewhat transfixed, as he thought he was the only one to do that…

It was after a seagull accidentally dropped a coconut by the new trio's feet—and they all began eating it, after they’d worked together to get it open—that Kairi finally spoke up about something that seemed to be on her mind, "...Don't get your hopes up, you two. I might not be from another whirl. I don't remember." (2)

And Riku opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, but Sora cut him off by extending a hand towards Kairi for her to take and smiling at her. "Even if not... you may be from another island. And so, you can show us another world that way. And maybe we'll be your friend for that... or everything else!"

And Kairi's face lit up like the Christmas tree that Sora loved even now, as she threw her arms around Sora and eventually brought Riku into the hug, too. "Thank you both... so much."

And years later, Sora would come to understand that maybe Kairi had come to love him, because he'd been the first to bring her something good after her recent world of horrors.

Author’s Note: I also hope I didn’t make Kairi’s adopted dad seem abusive. Because he’s not. At all. That one part was just to say that Xehanort gave Kairi trauma about any adult for a while:(

[sbooksbowm]

The ‘Does this make sense?’ check: Chapter 3, Part 1, intertextuality and reader recognition

This chape examines the reader function of the fandom communication circuit. What makes the reading experience of fic? How do readers acknowledge and interpret meaning, and how do they set expectations for the reading material with which they engage? Finally, how does the practice of reading (which is often considered private) actually maintain community? Let’s break it down:

Part 1 examines intertextuality, or how a fic makes reference to other works in its text, and how those references build an in-text universe for the reader

Part 2 examines paratexts, which are all the texts in a work that is not the body (i.e. the title, the tags, the chapter titles, summaries, author notes, appendices, etc. as opposed to the actual story). I look at how paratexts, particularly tags, are crucial infrastructure for signaling a fic’s content, which helps readers set expectations for what the fic will do

Part 3 puts the two together, looking at how the reading experience unfolds with these two textual features and how reading fic maintains the boundaries of a fandom

Introduction: intertextuality? paratexts? 

In this chapter, I explore the reader node of the fandom communication circuit, discussing how circulating textual meaning to readers relies on paratexts and intertextuality, which root fanfiction in the network of writing from which it was born. Rather than focus on individual selection, which I foreground in Chapter 2, Brownian motion is a useful model for considering the overall motion and interpretation of these textual means, aligning it with the community aspects of reading fanfiction. I argue how the intertextual and paratextual elements of fic are crucial to its reading. Readers expect resonances of intertextuality in a fic, and they rely on paratexts to signal a fic’s basic content for their reading selection purposes. 

I define intertextuality, to paraphrase Busse, as the explicit or implicit references in a fic to metatexts, cultural and literary contexts, and other interpretive texts (i.e. other fic) [1]. The intertextuality with other fic is most important in developing fanon and signaling the place of a fic in the larger fandom. Busse characterizes fic through fragmentation, intertextuality, performativity, and intimacy [2]. These elements, especially fragmentation and intertextuality, underscore the Brownian motion of fic production, a concept adopted by Juli Parrish to describe the aggregation of fannish textual output in constituting fanon [3]. Fic—as works-in-progress, stand-alone pieces, series—constitutes the broader fandom, and the referential intertextuality employed by fic moves the fandom in a given direction [4]. Intertextuality also signals to the reader the writer’s experience and knowledge of the boundaries of the universe, and it employs self-referential elements that, when understood, affirm the reader’s own fandom experience and knowledge. Goodman argues that fanon and rigorous classification ‘actually help police or maintain the boundaries of the official fictional universe’, by signaling to a reader what differences from canon they will encounter in a fic [5]. 

Paratexts, which signal interpretation, are an expression of those boundaries, a framework that speaks to the agreed upon or favored tropes, styles, conventions, and characterizations. Paratexts amount to ‘authorial guidance, instructions and injunctions’, and writers must choose paratexts themselves, thus these boundaries are necessarily dictated by the writers [6]. For example, AO3’s robust tagging system serves as boundary markers for readers looking for fic, who can filter for specific relationships or content. The tagging system is managed by tag wranglers, who monitor the tags of a fandom and group similar tags that express the same fannish ideas. Tag wrangling is a concrete expression of the boundaries of the fictional universe, which are ever expanding with each new interpretation.

The first section of this chapter examines how intertextuality crosses multiple zones of the community model, couching reading practices in community-generated context. I illustrate this phenomenon with a Percy Jackson meta-speculative analysis on Tumblr that was transformed into a fanfiction piece and a series of Harry Potter ‘what if?’ reimaginings built from Tumblr prompts.

As a reminder, the community model looks like this:

Part 1: Intertextuality as Reader Recognition

‘the jackson files’ by ideasofmarch exemplifies how the ‘dialogic amateur community status’ of fic ‘foregrounds collective and intertextual aspects’ of reading and writing, demonstrating how intertextual reading crosses multiple zones of the Community Model [7]. Based on a Tumblr post by couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name, ‘the jackson files’ articulates the meta-speculative analysis presented in couldnt’s Tumblr post in a mix of narrative and Twitter-style storytelling. Notably, couldnt posted her analysis on 10 July, and ‘the jackson files’ was posted on AO3 four days later, capturing the rapid reader response that ebbs and flows on Tumblr and that is usually difficult to track ex-post-facto. The fic’s reliance on that post affirms the transitional relationship between writer and reader in the fandom communication circuit, as well as reader-as-participant in a quickly-moving development of fanon (couldnt’s post has 11,727 notes as of 5 August, 2020 and 13,015 notes as of 25 Aug, 2020) [8]. ‘the jackson files’ is doubly intertextual: it is a Percy Jackson fic and Buzzfeed Unsolved crossover, and it draws from a Tumblr meta-analysis. The fic is more legible in the context of couldnt’s post, demonstrating how ‘the text’s meaning can be tied to a specific place, time, and community in ways that make it difficult to read’ outside of the context of the fandom and the circulation of the Tumblr post [9].

ideasofmarch’s interpretation demonstrates how the circulation of fic text through the reader is a multi-layered process: ‘Fan fiction becomes an exemplary instantiation of reader-response-based approaches, not only because the source text’s readers clearly and literally respond but also because any reading of these responses requires a complex reading model that cannot separate text from reader and author’ [10]. In this case, ideasofmarch’s roles as narrative and creative interpreter of couldnt’s post cross multiple zones of the community model: drawing from meta-analysis in the response zone, acting as reader and writer, in order to form the text.

Although tracking the fannish artifacts that anchor fic production can prove difficult after discourse has swept into new territory, some fic writers consistently cite the digital artifacts that service their fic production. The writing practice of both ideasofmarch and dirgewithoutmusic is predicated on reading practices that are engrained in the community context. Many of dirgewithoutmusic’s AU fics, for example, respond to reader prompts, articulating dirge’s role as an interpreter of said prompts. dirge, as a reader of Harry Potter, plays on the structure of the books, which relies on the reader’s knowledge of the series to understand the poignancy of certain moments, motifs, alterations, and flourishes. In ‘the last son’, dirge imagines the progression of the Harry Potter series with Ron Weasley as the Chosen One instead of Harry Potter. 

**(an aside: if you enjoy HP fic and have not read this piece, go read it now so I don’t spoil it for you)**

Among the many changes, including different deaths of major characters and a shift in the Weasley family dynamic, is the motif of the blue Ford Anglia owned by Ron’s now-deceased father, Arthur. In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Ron and Harry fly the Ford Anglia to school because they’ve missed the train; the car later rescues them from acromantulas in the Forbidden Forest. dirge concludes the fic—after two Weasley brothers are lost to the war and the surviving siblings return home—with Ginny Weasley repairing the car, claiming, ‘I bet I can get this thing to fly’ [11]. The conclusion resonates with the reader because it points to what the car symbolizes in another strand of the Harry Potter universe while containing the promise of adventure in the current iteration. dirge’s works are bookended by community-based reading practices: a reader-submitted prompt, then a reader response contingent on understanding the intertextuality of the fic.

Kristina Busse, Framing fan fiction, p.142.

Busse, p.142.

Juli Parrish, ‘Metaphors we read by: People, process, and fan fiction’, 3.11. 

Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse, Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, p.9. ‘The events created by the fan community in a particular fandom and repeated pervasively throughout the fantext [body of fan creations]. Fanon often creates particular details or character readings even though canon does not fully support it—or, at times, outright contradicts it’.

Lesley Goodman, ‘Disappointing Fans: Fandom, Fictional Theory, and the Death of the Author’, p.666-667. 

Martin Barker, ‘Speaking of “paratexts”: A theoretical revisitation’, p.240, 242. Paratexts ‘points of reference and relevance in relation to the work, suggest and contribute to the mode of participation in it’.

Busse, p.143.

couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name, “okay, so: Rachel is literally one of the richest people in the country…’, Tumblr, 10 Jul, 2020; Busse, p.114. ‘Fan fiction increases both the quantity and the speed of dissemination and intertextuality, however, so that fans can often see tropes get created, picked up, subverted, and dismissed within months, if not days.’

Busse, p.151.

Busse, p.155.

dirgewithoutmusic, ‘the last son’, Archive of Our Own, 29 Sept, 2016. 

[singingcookie]

YOO WHAT ARE YOUR PLATONIC 1A KIDS HCS??? As much as I love shipping stuff just seeing the kids hanging out really gets me 😭

I mean. Bruh same lmao. Part of the reason I want to write Drops of Jupiter so bad is because I wanted a catch all for my platonic shit. It’s ultimately gonna have ship stuff at the end of the story, but most of it is just. Gonna be dorm/internship shenanigans. Which means A LOT of platonic shit will be happening everywhere if I have anything to say about it!

As for getting to actual “headcanons” though. A lot of these have been/will be touched on the further in that fic gets but

Each of the respective “squads” has a group chat. Dekusquad, Bakusquad, and (while not technically official in fanon I don’t think), the Girlsquad…they all have a group chat for shenanigans and get-togethers etc.

Also for the sake of clarity my views of the composition of the first two squads are as follows. Dekusquad is Deku, Ochako, Iida, Todoroki, Tsuyu, and Aoyama. Bakusquad is Bakugou, Kirishima, Mina, Sero, Kaminari and Jirou.

Aoyama was originally only close to Deku but Deku started inviting him to join the rest of the group. Mostly because it was weird for Aoyama to pop in only to vanish just as fast. And everyone there just adopted him as the resident cryptid. He rarely speaks in their group chat outside of reactions emojis.

They accidentally created the Aoyama Rating system in the group chat, wherein someone sends a picture and says “Aoyama Rate” and he’ll give them a rating and a blurb about the content of the picture. Any selfies sent for rating automatically get 10/10 or higher.

Todoroki’s asked for Ochako to give him some help with learning close combat. It mostly just results in her constantly flattening him because he has NO IDEA how to throw his weight around. He also frequently treats Ochako to things (buying an extra bowl of rice at lunch and “getting full” so he gives it to her for example). She’s appreciative but also gets grumpy about it sometimes.

Todoroki, Iida, and Deku banded together to rack up tickets at an arcade for a Thirteen plush for her birthday during first year. (I might write a one-shot about this)

Any group study sessions between the class (read as four or more people involved) are usually headed by Iida, Momo, and/or Tsuyu. But that’s mostly because without one of those three, a big group tends to have things go off the rails really quickly…

Satou and Momo collaborate a lot on sweets and teas that they’ll share with the rest of the class. They recruit Tokoyami and Aoyama a lot for taste testing.

Mina and Jirou are agents of chaos easily comparable to Sero and Kaminari as far as pranks or setting stupid scenarios into motion. (see what they did to help “distract the class” in chapter 8 of DoJ as an example…)

Oh right. Funnily enough Bakugou is the cryptid in the Bakusquad chat. He almost never messages in there but he reads all of them. Which is only realized when they started shit talking him “wonder what’ll make him speak up” they regretted it

Tokoyami, Shouji,Kouda, Ojirou, and Todoroki are actually really chill with each other? They all kinda hang out together from time to time. And even though they don’t really talk much, they still enjoy just sitting in each other’s company.

Hagakure is an agent of chaos all on her own. And likes to sneak around the dorms in her updated hero costume just for the giggles of it.

The girls have a “girl’s night” every Saturday that they can. They used to alternate between “normal” activities and D&D together but they’ve been on hiatus for a while. Funnily enough, Momo probably misses their sessions the most.

Bakugou and Ochako get along well and have bonded over liking Babymetal but Bakugou has sworn her to secrecy on the matter…

They try to do a monthly class activity to get everyone involved. But, since first year, they tend to try to keep the activities limited to campus… There’s a fear that whenever they go out in public all together, the League tends to show up, so they try their best not to tempt fate all too often.

Quirk pranks are…common to say the least

I feel like some of these aren’t very detailed but I also feel like I’m rambling a bit asdfghjkl I hope you found these answers to your liking!!

[firebirdsdaughter]

Random Writing Tidbit-ish… Romance?…

… So.

I wrote about kissing.

That’s new.

Well, it’s rather involved kissing.

Please note, though: This does contain references to romantic interactions (such as kissing and physical contact) of dubious consent—at the very least, there is an extreme power disbalance in the situation.

So… In canon I want them to be friends (not usually big on canon romance, actually), and in my ‘official’ fanon, they’re friends… But… But kissing, guys.

When is this set? Is it an AU? An alternate possible timeline? I don’t know. I’m pretty sure this is massively ooc, but I wanted to post it anyway to prove I could. I guess. Maybe. I’m very tired right now. I have no common sense or judgement.

I’m sorry.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“It wasn’t my idea to do this now!” Fuwa growled, stomping across the floor of the basement as they waited. The plan was to move Horobi to a more secure location in a continuation of their current, however shaky, alliance against Thouser, but they had to wait until the close was clear and no one else could notice and possibly report to ZAIA. As a result, Hiden was having Izu monitor the headquarters’ security cameras, the two of them had been stuck biding their time in the dark, empty basement—together. For hours. “I’d rather not spend more time with you!”

“I have noticed.” Horobi replied dryly, preferring to stand at the centre of the room and look around rather than useless motion, watching the human pace. He could have sat down in one of the still-upright folding chairs, but he’d had enough of them after weeks of being trapped in one.

Vulcan’s head spun around to glare furiously at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You have been particularly vocal on the subject.”

“That a problem?” Fuwa’s voice came from right beside his shoulder, the human having marched back over to him, eyes blazing angrily.

Horobi sighed, turning to face him, rolling his eyes. “Why must humans be so insufferably loud?”

Then Fuwa’s face was in his, practically spitting, like Vulcan always did when he began boiling over. “You trying to start a fight or something?”

Horobi said nothing, just staring back at him for a moment—then, because Fuwa was so close, radiating anger, and because he’d had enough of being pushed and snapped at all day, he leaned his head sharply forward and shoved his lips roughly against Vulcan’s.

It wasn’t really a kiss. More just slamming their mouths together and holding there. But even that was unexpectedly an almost… Pleasant sensation. Fuwa was warm. He was solid. He was… Real. And so very… Human. He was everything Horobi should detest with every single atom in his being, and yet the closeness was… Comforting. He felt Fuwa freeze, his heartbeat rising and his breath coming short, telltale signs that said he’d never done this before.

Something in Horobi’s mind misfired, and without thinking he found himself pulling closer, trying to cling to the warmth of Fuwa’s body like the room was suddenly cold, his hands actually reaching up to grab hold of the human’s suit jacket for more proximity. Vulcan was still too stunned to react, but he didn’t falter or stumble back when Horobi pressed closer against him, stedfast as a pillar. Horobi’s head tilted, unbidden, like his body wanted to turn this into a real kiss, his lips moving against Fuwa’s. The reaction made even less sense to him—HumaGear had no hearts, no lungs, no blood. He should have no instincts that could move him without his command… But he’d also learned long ago that they were still sensitive to touch—and something about contact with Fuwa made him want more. Abnormally warm, heartbeat like a bass drum, and the sheer fact that Vulcan hadn’t tried to kiss back at all, wasn’t trying to press the unexpected advantage he suddenly had or make use of Horobi’s abrupt loss of guard. The complete opposite of that person…

When Fuwa finally did move, it was to shove Horobi away, like the touch was painful to him, jerking back and staring like a deer caught in headlights. With some distance between them, Horobi’s senses came back online, and he immediately tried to recover some of his own dignity, reassuming his usual cold expression. Vulcan took longer to bounce back, visibly struggling to calm both his heartbeat and breathing.

He looked so startled and lost that Horobi couldn’t resist a smirk. “… I would have assumed you had at least kissed before.”

Fuwa turned red, though it was hard to tell if it was from embarrassment or anger. “W… What are you…?”

“It is particularly obvious by how flustered you are.” Horobi informed him shortly, not bothering to wait for him to finish.

“Of… Of course I’ve…!” Fuwa’s panicked look settled into an only slightly rattled glare as he trailed off. “And what the hell would you know about kissing?!”

“More than you do, apparently.” Horobi tilted his head, analysing Vulcan’s agitation. “Really? No one?” He smirked slightly once more. “Not even Valkyrie?”

Fuwa flushed even more at the mention of Yaiba, turning away to collect himself. By the time he looked back over at Horobi, however, his eyes had narrowed even more, his mouth twisting. “Sh… Shut up!” He snapped sourly. “Where the hell did a HumaGear trying to destroy humanity learn kissing, then?!”

“Amatsu Gai.”

The answer was so immediate and flat that it threw Vulcan off for a moment, and his rage was tempered by bewilderment. “A… Amatsu?” His mouth opened and closed a few times before he found anymore words. “You… You kissed Amatsu?”

Horobi merely stared at him blankly. “I did not say that.”

“But you just…” It was like he could see the gears turning as Fuwa processed his statement. “… Oh.” Vulcan’s expression shifted even more, a look creeping onto his face that was partway between horror and… Pity? “Oh.” He said again, gaze dropping to the floor.

Horobi raised an eyebrow at him. “Satisfied?”

Fuwa was quiet for long enough that Horobi began to turn away, until the man abruptly spoke, far softer than before. “Then… Why kiss me?”

Horobi froze. He had no answer—his initial intention had been to force the human to be quiet, maybe embarrass him—but he had no excuse for his behaviour after that. Especially not the way he’d tried to get closer and deepen the kiss. Was it the overwhelming, petty sense of finally taking something that before had only been taken from him? Or was it because Fuwa was so much Amatsu’s opposite that it felt like… Like contact with him somehow cancelled out what Amatsu had done. At the very least, the drastically different sensation overrode the lingering, phantom memory of Amatsu’s touch, something he could still feel years after the last time the President of ZAIA had even been in the same room as him. HumaGear didn’t experience or need for intimacy the same way humans did… But the way the sensation of Amatsu’s cold fingers curling around his chin, or tracing the lines of his face and down his neck, running through his hair, while the mouth over his would occasionally bite down sharply on his lip as a reminder of who was in control, still clung to him like invisible shackles had taught him that touch not only mattered, but would stay with them for a long time. With Jin the binds had lightened—focusing on his son had given him something else to think about, something infinitely more pleasant. The Ark’s will had been a purpose beyond the chains of the past; both a chance to be something more than… His.

But Jin was gone and the Ark had been no freedom at all, and the feeling of the cold hands clawed back in, wrapping back around his throat. The contact with Vulcan had unexpectedly overridden the memories, the warmth chasing away the ghostly cold. Whenever Jin had touched him, all his senses had locked onto that contact as a welcome distraction, but that was all it was. Jin’s touch was different; it didn’t—couldn’t—seek out the lingering traces of Amatsu’s hands and wipe them away, as Fuwa’s had seemed to, like he was washing away stains.

He hadn’t realised how long he stood frozen until Fuwa’s voice came again, slightly closer. “Oi. Did you hear me?”

Slowly, Horobi turned his head to look at Vulcan, who had taken a few steps around  to stand in front of him again. One of Fuwa’s hands was partially extended, like he’d been thinking about reaching out to the HumaGear—when Horobi looked at him, however, he quickly snapped it back, looking vaguely self conscious. For a moment, Horobi just stared at him. “… I do not know.” It was not a lie. He was genuinely unsure of what his purpose had been. “… You are not Amatsu Gai.”

Fuwa gave him a look like he thought he was going senile. “Well… Obviously.”

“That had… An unexpected effect.”

Vulcan frowned, shifting even nearer, enough that Horobi could detect just a slight hint of his higher body temperature, his hand drifting out again. “… Horobi…”

When Fuwa’s fingertips actually brushed his sleeve, his gaze flicked further up to meet the human’s eyes, which were now brimming with some sort of weird mix of emotions that Horobi was certain he would never be able to properly process—but there amongst them, just like before, were horror and pity. Staring into Fuwa’s eyes, with the man so close that the warmth he radiated like a bonfire was beginning to seep through the the fabric of his coat, Horobi could suddenly feel every single persisting trail of Amatsu’s touch he’d ever endured, wrapped around him like a horrible, frozen cloud—and he just wanted it all off.

It wasn’t even a full step forward to be close enough to kiss Fuwa again—and this time, his mind was clear, and his every motion deliberate as always. Vulcan wasn’t as shocked, either, and though he initially tensed when Horobi’s lips first touched his, he relaxed after a moment, rather than pulling away. For a bit, he just let Horobi kiss him, holding still as the HumaGear’s hands drifted up again, this time to grab handfuls of his blazer, pulling closer—then his head tilted slightly, pushing back just a little, like he was trying to ask a question. Horobi paused, pulling back just barely enough to speak, and used a word he’d only uttered a very few times in his life, “Please.”

Vulcan promptly closed the tiny distance between them. Fuwa kissed as angrily as he did everything, with the same air of spoiling for a fight. His mouth was warm, his lips slightly chapped, and he inexplicably tasted like coffee and chocolate, though Horobi knew that as a HumaGear, he shouldn’t be able to taste anything. It felt like a challenge, an invitation to push back, rather than an expectation of control. His hands settled lightly on Horobi’s arms, leaning closer rather than pulling or grabbing, staying completely away from the HumaGear’s face. His mouth was clumsy against Horobi’s, inexperienced—Horobi suspected that if he had ever kissed before, it hadn’t been since high school at the latest—nothing like the practiced grace Gai had used. His heartbeat and breathing were fast and loud, almost panicked again, bursting with emotion, not light and unaffected.

He’d never really considered how small Fuwa actually was, either—he’d always known the man’s exact height, but had never had reason to compare it to his own. Now he realised Vulcan had to tip his head up and stand slightly on his toes for them kiss. With that knowledge, his hands loosened from Fuwa’s suit, one moving to the back of the human’s head, fingers weaving into Vulcan’s hair—the other arm went around the human’s waist, lifting him easily off the ground. Fuwa gasped sharply, his own arms shooting around Horobi’s shoulders for balance, fingers scrabbling against the HumaGear’s back for purchase—not that Horobi was in any danger of dropping him. Once they’d settled into a more comfortable equilibrium, Fuwa’s hands began exploring, tracing new memories across Horobi’s back and shoulders, even up the back of his neck to the edge of his head wrap, fingertips even slipping under it, brushing against the hair beneath. Horobi let his more complex systems slow down, choosing to lose himself in Fuwa’s warmth, in the strange, combat-like kiss, shutting out the rest of the world, even his own internal clock.

 Eventually, it was unsurprisingly Fuwa who pulled back first, shoulders heaving, voice breathless. “… Some of us need to breathe regularly.” For a moment, they kept just staring at each other—until Vulcan finally swallowed nervously. “So…” He rasped, raising his eyebrows, “… Can you put me down?”

Horobi hesitated for a moment, but finally he reluctantly lowered the human back to the  floor, arms lingering around him for a bit before at last pulling away and stepping back. He turned away slightly as Fuwa smoothed and righted his clothes in awkward silence, trying to put his own mind back in order, and finally realising the situation he’d put himself in. “… We never speak of this again.”

Vulcan took several more deep breaths, raising the back of his hand to his lips. “Damn… You even kiss like you’re trying to kill someone…”

Horobi glared at him. “We. Never. Speak. Of. This. Again.”

Fuwa watched his expression for a moment, then nodded slowly. “… Agreed.” He said, at last. Then his phone buzzed, and he quickly checked it. “… That’s Hiden. Izu says we’re clear to go.”

Satisfied with Vulcan’s agreement of silence, Horobi spun on his heel and marched off toward the stairs without waiting to see if Fuwa was following him.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I actually spent a lot of time, more time than I usually spend, at least, thinking about the concept of intimacy and how it would relate to HumaGear… Obviously, they have no blood flow, or breath, or heartbeat, etc. But they do seem to be sensitive to physical contact, can differentiate between it being pleasant or unpleasant, whether it hurts or not… It seemed to me that could end up being their version of a reaction to intimacy, contact that they feel comfortable w/, in a way. Would also have a level of having rights to what happens to their bodies, etc.