#nulls are so cat coded to me

[mamuzzy-creates-stuff]

If we look cute enough, they will surely blame it on the alphas. 👉👈🥺

In order: A'den, Mereel, Ordo, Prudii (hiding), Kom'rk, Jaing.

Kal: OHhhhhh, you know where you shove up those tooka eyes, you think I was born yesterday, rascal sheb'ike!!! You won't get away with it this time!

Narrator: They, in fact, got away with it. Again.

[just-null]

HI JAY!! i just saw ur post abt giving u ideas as to what costumes to give nori and omg my brain automatically gave me an image

NORITOSHI AS CAT!!!! like with pink paws and white fur like in a onesie 😭😭 omg he would look sooo cuteeeeeeee aldoe he acts like a black cat but he physically he would suit a white cat's costume so much better omg imagine him with a pout complaining abt it like he wanted to be something else but u suggested that idea and he cant say no OWNFKDKDKKDDK

HI ROSE!! you're so fucking fr for this. i finished this so fast i felt like it wasnt enough so i messed around and doodled some more.. maybe i'll continue doing this with some of the costume ideas? who knows.

all i knows is how cute this cat boy is

[Doodles under the cut!]

hes.. he's so fucking cute as a cat... I see you're on the side that sees Noritoshi as cat like. interesting. I 100% approve.

I couldn't choose between black cat or white so I went with both and a mix... I fucking. I can't with your mind. it's so big. the pouting got me fucked up bro. you're so fucking fr.................

noritoshi is a very serious and very hard working heir. its why his toe beans are so tantalizing

[arafilez]

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ▰ ▰ ✶ WØRLD EPISØDE FIN: WILL ⪨

ㅤㅤ➛ ㅤiii.ㅤ EMERGENCY 𒉽 jeong yunho❛ 𓇿

🥂̸̤ㅤㅤMDNI smut, fluff ㅤ ✸ㅤyou can hack into anything and everything! except maybe jeong yunho's heartㅤㅤ───ㅤㅤ w: kissing, flirting, praise kink, size kink, oral (f receiving) ㅤㅤ»ㅤㅤ wc: 3.2kㅤㅤ𠈔ㅤㅤ moodboard

ㅤ❛ you're the reason why i am dancing in the mirror ❜

You type away furiously in your laptop with the new code that Yeosang has sent to your base and continue changing bits of your programming code to try and infiltrate into the Z-dimension’s security system. It was hard and with the variety of codes in front of you the best thing you can do now is stay calm and concentrate. You still have time till tomorrow.

Wooyoung is almost done with the hologram of the ship, Yunho is fixing some of the hardware and you only need to crack this code. You rack your brain to find another loop you are missing, some kind of infinite series, or it might be a null loop that you have to add when you hear a loud crash. Jerking up your head from your laptop your first instinct is to run because there has been an attack.

Your second instinct is to stand in confusion as you hear Yunho scream, “What the fuck, man?” to your brother and him blabbering some excuses. Yunho shakes his head and goes back to work as you look at your brother who just winks at you mischievously. With disgust painting all your features, you set back to work ignoring Wooyoung’s whines about you being a ‘bad’ sister.

You type down the various codes again and try to work but nothing comes up as a frustrated groan leaves your lips. Should you try a completely different method or go back to the basics of a for-loop and add a simple elif loop. But wasn’t that too simple? You jerk up in surprise again as you feel a hand on your shoulder and turn around saying, “Wooyoung, I don’t have time for your shit.”

Your words dry at the back of your throat as you look at Yunho’s smiling face with the contrast of his veiny hand on your shoulder. Should a simple touch make you light-headed? No, it should not, absolutely not. “Hi Yun,” you murmur and your ears suddenly feel hot when you extend his grin looking at you.

Your insides feel like melting, but before you let your heart win, your mind interferes and you cough lightly. He also seems to get out of a trance as he says, “You can do this tomorrow, sleep for today, and you look like shit.”

“Such sweet words you say Yun!” you roll your eyes affectionately, and he chuckles. Leaning towards you he gently places a hand on your hips and whispers, “I can say more if you want me to.”

“Do I now?” you smirk lightly looking up at his tall figure as you think you see his eyes darken just a little, a smirk adorning his pretty face but almost instantly his hands leave your waist and he is gone. You exhale lightly shaking your head at your hallucinations and close your laptop.

Yunho is flirty. He will flirt with a stray cat if given a chance and you scold your heart lightly at it racing for him. Yunho didn’t mean it, he never meant it and it has always been that way. Him flirting, you flirting back and that was it.

“Gosh, stop with the heart eyes, it’s disgusting,” Wooyoung says making fake gagging sounds as you roll your eyes at your twin and get up. “So did you see that?” Wooyoung asks looking at you expectantly and you furrow your eyebrows.

“See what Wooyoung-ah?” you ask as you move around your desks turning off the projectors and look up to see his wiggling eyebrows. He smiles mischievously saying, “How he got angry when I threw that?”

“Yes, why did you even throw that thing so hard? I thought we were attacked, you piece of shit,” you scold him gritting your teeth as he makes a face at you which screams ‘I am so done with my dumb sister.’

“I did it for you, remember, how you said Yunho looks hot when angry?” Wooyoung grins and your fingers pause over the projector switch as you look up and scream, “What?”

“He. Looks. Hot. The point was made. So I did it for your eyes to be blessed,” he screams back and you walk over to him holding him by his collar. As you smack your brother's shoulder, your face is probably adorned with fifty shades of red and pink.

“Sh-shut up, and stop screaming,” you whisper-yell at him and another patch of hyena laugh comes from him as you slowly release his shirt.

“You are so gone for him, sis.”

“Am not.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes.”

“You said he looked hot yesterday when he had grease in his face while he was fixing the machine,” Wooyoung cocks his eyebrows as you look away. Well a small patch of oil and grease on his right cheek made him look sexy which was no lie but the mistake was telling your hyper brother about it.

“You like him so much, it is gross,” Wooyoung speaks a little too loudly as you try to shush him but he continues, “Oh we both know you have degrading kink too, even if you try to hide it.”

“Woyo shut the fuck up,” you scream jabbing him in the side to which he just giggles like the menace he was.

“Are you guys okay?” Yunho peeks from the door and you say ‘yes’ a little too quick for your liking. Wooyoung clicks his tongue in disapproval and whispers, “What did I teach you about playing hard to get?”

You don’t pay attention to him but instead look at Yunho, staring at him quite openly as you take in his messy silver hair sprawled over his forehead and being lightly tied back with a bandana.

“Take a picture, it will last longer,” Yunho chuckles leaning his tall body against the doorframe and you can hear Wooyoung snicker behind you as you look down scolding yourself for getting caught for your blatant stare.

Yunho walks in and keeping down the file he had gone to fetch walks towards your desk and you can hear Wooyoung mumble something along the lines of “Seonghwa hyung is calling me” before you can call out his bluff because Seonghwa hadn’t returned yet, he sprints off leaving you and Yunho alone in the room.

You click your tongue at your brother and his antics to “get you and Yunho laid”, his words, not yours, and know he did this on purpose. If you make a list right now it will be endless how many times your brother has actually done this.

He once locked you two in a laundry room which had another door, and once tried to lock you two in his room at a New Year’s party, instead, his overly drunk self, locked himself, successfully spinning the bottle for you two to kiss only for San to barf all over the floor, trying to send you two in a ‘seven minutes in heaven’ only for the lights to be cut off and hear Mingi scream his ears off. You appreciated his efforts but you knew this from the heart- the universe doesn’t want you and Yunho together. You knew you weren’t Yunho’s type but who was your brother to listen.

Yunho’s fingers softly caress yours as you are broken from your thoughts and he smiles softly saying, “I will help you tidy up.”

“Yun, you don’t have to,” you say softly but he hums and says, “No, I volunteer,” and places a hand on his chest as if he was taking a pledge making you giggle at him.

But in the back of your mind you know Wooyoung is right about you two being too oblivious and trying to hide your feelings by sticking to casual flirting. You push these thoughts to the back of your mind but they come back. How Yunho’s eyes had lingered on your lips and your eyes even after San barfed, how he casually slid over to your desk and hovered over your figure while his fingers rested on yours when you told him to check a code. There’s plenty of space beside you but he always does that. You know his lust-filled eyes and the tinge of jealousy in them when Yeosang practices his seducing skills on you. How his eyes lingered on your exposed neck in the last mission and then trail along your jaw to your lips making you fidget on your seat as Hongjoong was handing out your positions.

And you enjoy this too much. The little push and pull game you two keep playing, the way he gives you his attention and you bask in it. But lately it has been too much. Playful flirting has turned to intense staring, light jokes have turned into him and you being too close physically but never escalated. And your fool of a heart was falling for all these.

“What is on your mind? Me?” Yunho says coming right in front of you and you look up at his tall frame looking deep into your eyes. Earlier you would have flirted right back, but now they have started to make you lose your voice, weaken your knees, and your hands sweat. The effect it had on you now was insane. If you didn’t have any better judgement you would push him down right there on the table and take him. Or let him take you. Either way works.

You shake your head stuttering out a “no” but Yunho doesn’t ponder much leaving you to your desk as he puts his own documents down on his table. After you two were done, you left, Yunho following suit and then the door closed automatically as you two walked out. The walk is quiet, tension thick in the air when you decide to test a theory.

You are one of the best technicians here, the best hacker, so maybe you can hack yourself into Yunho’s heart too.

You trip lightly on air, very much on purpose, and wait like a damsel in distress to fall and for Yunho to catch you. His muscular arms easily slide around your back and you grin satisfactorily in your mind at your plan being successful. You open your eyes with your best-acting face on when you see the smug grin on his face.

“Did you do that on purpose?” he cocks his eyebrows at you and you get up scoffing lightly, “You wish.”

You feel dizzy seeing his face as he leans close to you and his lips hover just above yours as he says, “I wish for a lot of things, you know?” You draw in a sharp breath at the close proximity but Yunho swiftly moves away, opens his door and calls out, “Don’t trip anymore on your way, I am not there to catch you, you know?” followed by a cheeky grin.

You enter your room, your thoughts screaming only Yunho’s name and you keep thinking about him even when you make yourself comfortable under your covers. God he is making you suffer so much, it has been an hour since the incident but his thoughts are unbearable, if only you can hold him by his collar and push him against the wall and make out.

And your brain clicks.

This is it.

This is what you have been missing. A firewall. The code is for breaking the firewall to get to the main security system. You scramble up, throwing your sheets down and putting a jacket over your t-shirt and shorts you walk out with your ID. You open the door of the lab and run to your table taking out the papers sprawling them on the table and typing out the code in the computer.

And it worked.

You jump in joy lightly and send a text to Hongjoong about the success which you knew he would check in the morning. You stumble lightly, tipsy from your happiness and you bump into a muscular chest behind you.

Yunho.

Yunho?

Shouldn’t he be sleeping?

“Why are you up?” his deep voice rumbles making goosebumps dance against your skin and you can feel your insides turning mushy.

“Just had to finish this,” you reply, voice coming out much breathier than you intend it to be and you glance at him just to retract your eyes because of his own boring into yours.

“Hmm? What you got there?” he hums lowly, his tall frame leaning over your back as his hands swipe open the computer while the other goes around your waist and holds the desk. You become a bit light-headed as soon as his cologne hits your nose and you inhale it sighing carelessly.

His head is now almost on your shoulder while your body is stiff as you grip the desk more rigidly when you intake the view of his veiny hands around you and on the mouse casually swiping through the code you had cracked earlier. Your breath becomes unstable as you realise the proximity and you curse your mind for liking the warmth of Yunho’s body pressed against your back.

“Well, Hongjoong is going to be satisfied,” he breaths out and you can feel it tickle your senses as you hum and look at his face. He looks at you back and for a moment you feel everything stop. His eyes glaze into yours and you look back into his dark ones and wonder what bliss could possibly come.

Yunho is so close to kissing you. His eyes are fixated on your lips and his whisper sends a warm flush all over your body, “If we do this, there’s no going back.” You are in a haze and you whisper, “Yes,” and it barely makes it past your lips before Yunho kisses you.

And suddenly the air is knocked out of you. This was an emergency situation, an uproar went in your head.

Jeong Yunho is kissing you, his lips on yours and you push down all questions in the back of your mind and kiss him back. The kiss becomes impatient almost immediately as he grips your waist and holds your cheek with his other hand manoeuvring the kiss. You kiss him back feverishly, lips clashing harshly against each other and you tangle your hands in his hair tugging at them harshly.

He pulls away for a breath of air and you pant lightly as you look up to his lust-filled eyes and he hoarsely speaks up, “My room.” The walk through the corridor is a blur and you cling onto Yunho’s arms as he quickly opens the door and closes it after you two enter.

Pushing you against the door he kisses you again and swipes his tongue over your lips and you grant him access as a slow, elicit moan leaves your mouth. Fighting for dominance is not useful as Yunho taps your thighs twice and you comply with him jumping and locking your legs along his torso as he carries you to his bed.

Lying you down gently Yunho’s eyes run over your messy figure before he asks, “Are you sure?”

Your heart melts at the sincerity in his tone and you nod a “yes” quickly not wanting to waste any more time as Yunho dives in for your neck. He presses light open-mouth kisses along your jawline before moving his head and sucking harshly on your neck. You moan loudly as he continues nibbling delighted at your response and presses a light kiss adorning his work after.

You start to become impatient and almost rip open his shirt and he chuckles lowly saying, “Slow down, kitten.” You exhale lightly at the nickname and watch him pull your t-shirt over your head and throw it to the other side of the bed. You run your nails through his toned chest drooling over the perfect texture and he chuckles.

“Damn no bra, aren’t you naughty, kitten?” he slurs his words lightly and you throw your head back in pleasure as he takes one of your perked-up nipples and fiddles with it.

“I-I was just-" You try to finish your sentence and he hums bringing his voice lower by an octave and looks at you almost challenging you to finish the sentence. “I was just going to sleep so I had no bra o-oh my fuck Yunho,” you moan loudly as he dips down suddenly sucking your other nipple. You arch your back in pleasure and his hands slide down your waist playing with the hem of your shorts before yanking them off along with your panties.

The cold air hits your clit making you shiver from the sensation and he smirks looking at your state. Arousal drips from your vagina and he places a long finger collecting them and pushes his finger in you. You cry loud at the immense pleasure you feel and you see his pants straining as he moans too and says, “Fuck, you are beautiful.”

He scissors another finger inside you and then adds another and you moan his name loudly as he hits your g-spot frequently and picks up pace and you feel your stomach tightening. You are close, so close when he suddenly pulls out his fingers and pants and you open your eyes at him desperately.

“Need you,” he moans and quickly opens his pants and boxers and you almost gasp at the sight. You knew he was big, but this was a whole new level and you drool at it. Yunho would be proud but right now he was horny and needy and needed to be inside you badly.

He hovers over positioning himself and pushes inside you and you moan his name out loud as he stills himself. When you tap him to move he obeys and picks up his pace, his strong hands holding your hips down as he slams into you. “Fuck faster, Yun,” you scream and he coos at the nickname.

“Fuck baby aren’t you small and tight?” he moans explicitly when he feels the tip of his cock on your stomach, “All for me.” Your eyes roll back and you chant his name feeling your high build up fast at his pace.

His cock slams against your walls making you light-headed as you barely murmur an ‘I’m close’ and you can hear him grunt something along the lines of ‘Me too.’ With one last long-drawn moan you cum, your high getting released rapidly. He pulls himself out before coming all over your stomach.

You pant lightly, slowly returning to reality as Yunho gets up to get some wet tissues from the bedside table. You watch him silently as he cleans you and himself up while you lie and adore his face that was sculpted by the gods. His awkward clearing of throat brings you back from your trance and you look at the shy smile that makes its way into his face.

“Listen urm, I like you, y/n,” he speaks shyly gazing at your fingers which were now intertwined with his and you smile back saying, “I like you too, Yun.”

“Oh good,” he exhales and you laugh at his puppy-like demeanour and run your fingers through his grey hair as he leans into your touch. He brings his lips down to kiss you and you can feel his smile as you kiss him back softly as he holds your hands in his. Pulling back he puts another peck on your lips as you two become a giggling mess under the warm covers.

✸ㅤ ara's notesㅤㅤ───ㅤㅤ i am happy for this one yayay lmao i mean a bit self indulgent but okay ig ㅤㅤ»ㅤ series mlistㅤ ateez mlist ㅤ main mlist ㅤ naviㅤㅤ𠈔

✸ㅤ taglistㅤㅤ───ㅤㅤ @haneagerr @tunaasan @evidive @huachengsbestie01 @philijack @atiny-lizbeth @chxnnii @nakiiko @therealcuppicake ㅤㅤ»ㅤㅤ comment here or in series mlist to be added or removedㅤㅤ𠈔

© arafilez on tumblr. please don't copy and repost my work as your own ▰▰ ✶

[bestworstcase]

So...

Fell from the sky into a "crazy world"... trying to get home... trying to get to the tree... tree causes ascension/rebirth/renewal... tree could be considered home... "we just want to go home/to the tree"... they literally need to ascend back to Remnant...

And at the risk of sounding very stupid, is this going to be some "you just gotta believe" magic? Is Ruby's Total Breakdown really holding them all back from getting out? I get that's kind of the narrative point here but still... ugh fuck, I'm just losing it right now.

NO BUT ALSO, YES! BUT ALSO, NO. mostly no but a little yes.

if you’ve never read the books (or watched the musical, which has proven to be a significant creative influence because they wrote this volume for !!!me!!!) the single most important thing you gotta know about wonderland in order to follow along with what rwby’s doing with the ever after, is that wonderland is about taking abstract ideas—metaphors, idioms, the null case, etc—literally and taking concrete things and treating them as absurd. the result is a very particular way of looking at the world. everything is sideways and stretched and turned inside out and also the same. the harder you try to understand it the less sense any of it makes, but it also makes perfect sense if you begin with the assumption that of course it makes sense. it’s very much like a dream.

the ever after nails this way of looking. absolutely knocks it out of the park. everything the cat says is true, but only if you know how to think like the cat. otherwise the words make no sense and obfuscate more than they explain.

for example: ruby asks the cat which of their names they prefer to go by, and the cat answers “oh, i don’t go by; that belongs to the days and years! but if you are asking what i am, i am indeed a cat most curious.” if you listen to that with regular ears it just sounds like the cat is talking cryptic nonsense and refusing to give a straight answer. but! in the cat’s perspective they’re not only being quite clear, they’re giving ruby a lot more information than she asked for: the days and the years go by, but the cat does not, because the cat is a cat most curious.

the cat cannot ascend because it is their purpose to know everything. the cat doesn’t, can’t, partake in the endless cycle of life and rebirth. all afterans change when it’s their time to change, but for the cat it never is and never will be. the days and the years pass them by, and they are always so. very. curious.

you see? they mean precisely what they say.

one of the things that makes 9.8 is SO COOL is that the cat code-switches to reveal their ulterior motive—they repeat all the same information conveyed by “oh, i don’t go by!” but this time speaking in ruby’s (& the audience’s) language. and then, while they do slip back into afteran speech a bit when they get irate (“it’s not a place you go, it’s a place you know!”) for the most part once they’ve made this switch they stick with it. and that’s really fun, because it pulls back the curtain to show off the machinery of the wonderland logic the ever after runs on. it’s not gibberish, it’s nonsense. there’s a kind of sense to it, if you feel around for it with your hands.

(a similar thing happens with the paper pleasers in 9.7: note the purple star explains the village’s desire for ascension in very clear, straightforward, unambiguous terms. now think about how jaune perceives ascension, the lengths he goes to to prevent it, and how the purple star says they keep trying to tell him that he’s wrong. they learned to speak his language and he still refused to listen.)

so, anyway, what this means for the tree and the way out is this:

the cat told them how to find the tree.

“you do not go to the tree.” the tree isn’t real. you can’t go to the tree—you can’t move spatially from point a to point b and expect to arrive at the tree, because it’s not something that exists as a spatial point. it’s something else. it’s an idea. it’s a metaphor. you do not go to me, i go to you; what am i? that’s what the tree is. it’s a riddle without an answer, except for all the answers it has.

“the tree goes to you.” it’s something more like the days or years, which go by; the tree goes to. it doesn’t matter where you are, where you’ve been, or where you’re going. the tree will be wherever you are when you’re there, because the tree isn’t tethered to any one point in space. the tree is everywhere and might be anywhere and certainly it’s always somewhere. (“it’s a place you know.” if you know where the tree is, you’re already there. if you don’t, you’re not. it’s very simple.)

“unless, of course, you’re me. you see?” this is two separate statements intertwined as one. just as the days and the years go by for the cat, the tree never goes to them—they can’t ascend. that’s the first thread. the second thread is a hint. how do you get the tree to be where you are? you need to be “me.” you need to be yourself, you need to know yourself, and you need to want to become yourself. the riddle is “what are you?” and the answer is “myself.”

(<- the you you wanted to be when you were still you.)

and this is exactly what happens when the tree goes to ruby. the first time, when the herbalist asks the question, she comes face-to-face with her younger self and has the shattering realization that she no longer knows who she is. the second time, the tree reaches out to her with the broken pieces that shattering shook loose, and ruby’s answer is “i’m fine. i can handle it.”—not quite an identity, but a belief about herself. and the third time, ruby says “i don’t want to be me anymore,” but then she realizes that isn’t quite true. she resists the cat, as much as she can, and the cat cannot become her. there is—waves hands—something in ruby rose that only ruby rose can be, and with everything else eroded away that something is what the tree goes to when ruby calls out to it by drinking the tea. there’s some narrative exploration happening here of what “myself” can mean, the different angles and layers of identity: the way ruby once saw herself, the stories she tells herself about herself, the essence of who she is deep down inside her heart. and ascension, of course, is about assembling all of these disparate pieces into a completed whole. you break, you rebuild.

BUT.

& this is the important part!

the tree isn’t the way home, it IS home. it is, specifically, the home of the ever after. afterans conceive of ascension as a return home to shed their burdens like an old coat, to rest, to heal, perhaps to dream for a while of what they would like to be next, in order to ready themselves for their return to the waking world. just as you can spend the night in a friend’s home, a non-afteran can rest for a while in the tree and perhaps be revitalized, but the tree isn’t their home. they’re houseguests.

could the tree get them home? open a door? help them find their way? maybe. if they look at it from the right angle, because all of these things can be metaphors for the healing and renewal the tree provides. but maybe not, because their perspective right now is all wrong. they still don’t GET IT. if they want the tree to get them home the first thing they need to know is that the tree can’t get them home: you don’t go home, home goes to you.

(home is where the heart is; it follows that if you find your heart, you’ve found your home—and found you’re home, too. if their path home runs through the tree, it’s a path made of metaphor and verbal sleight of hand. you see? it’s very simple once you get the hang of it.)

(this also, as a sidebar, elucidates why the cat cannot ascend; the tree is not their home anymore than it is rwbyjn’s. the cat is the heart of the ever after—they are the part that knows, the part that very rarely forgets, when they fill broken hearts with pieces of their own what they’re really doing is saying i remember, i remember who you were and are and will be, i remember the pieces you forgot, let me remind you of them now—but the cat’s heart is with their maker. they can’t ascend because they can’t go home and they can’t go home because their home is on remnant and their heart and their home will always be on remnant until they know why she left them here.)

(<- the cat thinks their maker left them to make humans. they don’t know, but the bubbling resentment behind their uncertainty suggests that the cat believes that she left them behind because she liked humans better. they are, accordingly, desperate to become human. finding their way to remnant as a cat wouldn’t do them any good if their maker isn’t interested in them that way anymore; it’s not enough to just find her, they need her to ANSWER THEM.)

…um.

so, the way to get home is to solve all the riddles—what are you looking for? where can you find it? what will you do? what will you be? what are you?—in, i would guess, roughly that order. the act of answering itself is what gets them home, because in the course of answering they will find what they’re looking for as a matter of course, because what they’re looking for really is where their hearts are.

(obligatory musical note: “home is where you keep your hopes and your memories/it’s more than where you sleep, it’s the place where you dream”—the essential mechanism outlined here, of finding your way home by finding where your heart is because wonderland is not about going home, is the central conceit of the musical; and i really cannot stress enough how much 9.8 set up for the next to episodes to resolve by following the same narrative beats. the characters are split up the same way with each group facing the same fundamental challenges in the same general circumstances, and the only piece not yet on the board is the mother-figure who arrives at the penultimate moment to protect alice from the defeated hatter’s wrath. which, um. UM! so, i think it’s a pretty safe bet that the thematic resolution of this volume will resemble that of the musical pretty closely, and the narrative workhorse for that theme is the getting home mechanism.)

the TL;DR here is, getting home is about—well, knowing. to get yourself home, you need to know three things: 1. what are you? 2. what is home? 3. where do you find it?

and once you know that, it’s easy.

ruby having a breakdown isn’t holding them back. (quite the contrary; ruby’s been the one finding the way home this whole time. she doesn’t know it yet, because she can’t see the whole picture, but she’s been the only one doing what she’s really supposed to do all along—letting the world guide her, turning her gaze inward and trying to see. she isn’t seeing clearly, so she thinks she’s falling behind, but really she’s still leading the way. just, in a much different way than she thought she had to.) nothing is holding them back, per se. they just haven’t learned everything they need to learn, and the things they know, they don’t know how to put together yet. once they know, they’ll already be home.

[fred-erick-frankenstein]

"Should we call him C, sir?"

"Yes, well, Caesar is as good a name as any, I suppose."

.

[video description: a snippet from the "Jeeves and Wooster" episode "Bridegroom wanted" (S04E03):

Jeeves can be seen, ironing shirts. Through the open door, Bertie can be seen, pacing. Jeeves looks up, asking: "Could I do something for you, Sir?" Bertie turns to him, quickly saying: "No, that's all right, thank you, Jeeves. You carry on." He moves out of frame again. Not for long though. Jeeves seems to have foreseen that, as he doesn't look down on his shirts again. Only as Bertie re-enters the room again, he quickly looks down on the shirt. Bertie: "Erm... A problem has arisen in the life of a friend of mine," he leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms, "who shall be nameless, and I want- Or rather, he wants your advice." Jeeves quickly looks in his direction. "Certainly, sir." Bertie continues: "I must begin by saying this is one of those delicate problems where not only my friend shall remain nameless but all the other personnel must remain nameless as well." "Would you prefer if we were to term the protagonists A and B, sir?" "Yes. Or North and South." "A and B is more customary, sir." "Yeah, well, you know best, Jeeves. Very well. Now then, A is male and B is female. Follow me so far?"

While talking, Bertie has once again entered the room. Jeeves puts down the iron, answering: "You have been lucidity itself, sir." Bertie walks around him. "Right, well, owing to a erm..." He stops, looking at Jeeves, who looks up and at him . "What's that 'something of circumstances' people talk about?" Jeeves frowns questioningly. Bertie continues, searching for the word, looking up into the air: "Er... Cats come into it, I remember." Jeeves smiles for a split second before answering: "Is concatenation the word for which you are groping for-?" Bertie smiles, nods ND starts pacing again: "That's it, owing to a concatenation of circumstances, B has got it into her nut that A is in love with her but he isn't. Now then, until recently, B was engaged to..." he stops, sticking out his tongue, thinking. Jeeves half turns to him, helping: "Should we call him C, sir?" "Yes, well, Caesar is as good a name as any, I suppose." As Bertie says the name 'Caesar' Jeeves stops what he's doing, frowning confused and looks up, before raising his eyebrows in something close to resignation and continuing. Bertie didn't notice his confusing and continues talking: "As I said, until recently B was engaged to Caesar and A hadn't got a care in the world. But now there's been a rift within the loot, the fixture's been scratched and B is talking freely about teaming up with A. And what I want you to bend your brain around, Jeeves, is the problem of how Caesar can oil out of it."

Jeeves has resumed ironing but stops now to say: "I think, sir, that you mean A." Bertie, leaning against the doorframe, looks down thoughtful: "Do I? Wait a minute. Oh, yes, that's right. Yes, how A can oil out of it." Jeeves smiles slightly. Bertie: "I don't want you thinking that this is simple. You see, A is what is known as a chevalier and this hampers him." Jeeves watches him, smiling, before starting to fold the shirt he ironed, as Bertie keeps talking about this "friend" of his. "I mean, if B comes to him and says, 'A, I am yours,' he can't simply reply, 'That's what you think.' No, he has his code, you see. And his code rules that he must accept this situation." Bertie looks down, somewhat sullen, muttering: "Although, Jeeves, frankly, he'd rather be dead in a ditch." Jeeves smiles slightly again. "Well, there you are. All the facts are before you. Anything stirring?"

Jeeves looks up and nods: "Yes, sir." Bertie looks relieved and surprised: "Well, good heavens, Jeeves! That certainly is the deluxe express service." Jeeves smiles upon the praise. "Thank you, sir. Obviously, sir, B's matrimonial plans would be rendered null and void if A were to inform her that his affections were engaged elsewhere." Bertie is confused. "But they aren't." "It would only be necessary, sir, merely to convey the impression that that were the case." He smiles lightly and Bertie too starts to smile as he understands: "I see what you mean! Yes. If I were-" he stops himself upon his slip of the tongue, Jeeves smiles and turns to him as Bertie stammers on: "Or rather if A were to produce a female and have her assert that she was betrothed to me..." again Jeeves turns to him, smiling knowingly, and Bertie stops himself: "um... Or... I should say betrothed to him," Jeeves nods and Bertie continues: "Then the peril would be averted." Jeeves nods: "Precisely, Sir." Bertie looks up, smiling: "Yes." /end description]. 

[aidendh]

BSD! OC! Kuuske Saiki | P1

Rework of my RAU! Kusuke Saiki

--

Kanji: 斉木 • 空助

Rōmanji: Saiki Kusuke

Also Known As: Dr. Kuuske, Ku-kun (mother), Dr. (Metaverse)

Namesake: N/A

--

-:Personal Information:-

Status: Unknown

Gender: Male (He/They)

Sexuality: Demiromantic, Asexual

Birthday: 19th June

Age: 19 (Persona Arc)

Height: 179 cm (5'10")

Weight: 63 kg

Blood Type: B

Likes: Reading, inventing, loosing to his sibling, minstrels, magic stars

Dislikes: Spiders, bats, the dark, glasses

--

-:Professional Information:-

Occupation: Inventor

Affiliation: Untouchables, University of Cambridge

--

-:Metaverse Information:-

Name: Kuuske Saiki / Kusuke Saiki

Location: Untouchables

Distortion: Laboratory

Treasure: Butterfly Hair Clip

-

Code Name: Dr.

Theme: Scientist

Mask: Telepathy Canceler

Weapon: Scythe / Explosives

Persona: Twin Demons

[Navigator]

(Technically two entities as one Persona)

-

Osamu (Death)

[Has a black liquid dripping from his eyes and mouth (overdosed)]

Element - Curse

Repel - Psy

Weakness - Fire

Passive Skill: Null [all Elements except Fire]

-

Fyodor (Judgment)

[Ghostly white/blank eyes, Scar that bleeds on his neck (beheaded)]

Element - Psy

Repel - Psy

Weakness - Physical

Known Skill: One Shot Kill

Book: Unknown

--

-:Relationships:-

Family:

Unknown Mother

Unknown Younger Sibling

Unknown Father

Pet(s): Kit (red panda)

--

-:Appearances:-

Manga Debut: Lost Souls, Persona arc

Anime Debut: Bungou Stray Dogs: Lost Souls, Persona arc

Light Novel Debut: The Butterfly

--

-:Portrayal:-

Japanese Voice: Nojima Kenji

English Voice: Chris Patton

--

"

Dr. Kuuske to an unknown customer

"I could care less how you refer to me. Better yet, don't refer to me at all! .....Though I would prefer He/They."

Kuuske Saiki (斉木 空助,, Saiki Kusuke) is Survivor's weapon/medical supplier and the previous owner of Untouchables, not much is known about him

Personality: Prideful, Competitive, Sadistic, Attention Seeking, Selfish, Curious, Deceitful, Honest, Mutterer

Confidant/Arcana: Temperance

-:Quotes:-

• (About his hair style) "I have terrible eyesight in my left, so I have no use for it."-Kuuske

'You just think it looks cool.'-Kusuo

• (Kuuske's Motto) "Curiosity killed the cat, but reincarnation brought it back."

• (After awakening his Persona) "Interesting.., so this is what happens when you unlock a Persona in your own Palace."

• (Shadow Kuuske while waving at the Phantom Thieves) "Have fun trying to find my Treasure!"

--

-:Etymology:-

• The name Kuuske is a misspelling of his given name 'Kusuke'

• The name Saiki means 'equal' (斉/sai) and 'tree' (木/ki)

• His full name Saiki Kusuke is a pun on the Japanse pronunciation of the word 'Psychic' (Saikikusu), 'Suke' is common in Japanese given names for males

--

-:Trivia:-

He has an IQ of 218

He studied at Cambridge at the age of 14

He has a muttering problem

He has notebooks filled with blackmail

Despite his inventions, he prefers to not use technology unless hes working

He has a flip phone that can do perfect video calls

He is protective and possessive of his younger sibling, though he still wants them to live their life

He made a Scythe based on a show he watched, he calls it 'The Green/Red Crescent'

He owns a Green/White one and gave Akira a Red/Black one

Kuuske will wear a skirt/feminine clothing just to spite others

He'll do a lot just out of spite

He hardly ever gets sick, but when he does, he gets it bad, this causes him to have panic attacks

This'll also happen when someone he is close to is sick

He's scared of bats and spiders

[Continued in P2]

Kuuske Saiki

-

-

-

Dr. Kuuske

-

--

A Clingy Older Brother and a Genius Inventor

'Curiosity killed the cat, but reincarnation brought it back.'

Confidant: Temperance

--

[chaotic-tired-cat]

Theoretically what would happen if someone from Ytilaer ie. one of us gets got and sent to ww!verse? Would the Null put them under the restraint of 'no spoilers' or would they be free to blab? Hell, would they get access to the Null?

OH THATS A THOUGHT OK OK ok so thank you for asking, this is so wild to think abt. I had to check through some rules from World Walker's earliest drafts, but!!! We got the answers in the end!!!

So there’d absolutely be some sort of limit on spoilers. Going by the way the Null decides on quirk shock, it’d probably feel like suddenly losing your voice from a cold. Pushing limits with sign language or other non-verbal communication would induce dizziness and maybe temporary loss of vision. Think about how it feels to stand up too fast while dehydrated/low blood pressure. There’d be no inherent access to the Null, but there is an Old Script array to mimic a travel quirk! It’s got requirements that being from Ytilaer would automatically qualify us for. (aka no preexisting quirks/powers/etc.)  So. Good news, there. Also, Cloud will know on sight if someone’s in the wrong world, and the Null tends to throw travelers at anomalies anyway.

There’s one other thing I should mention: did the traveling person make one of those old Self-Insert meme things? Bc if someone made a self insert or wrote a fic where Izuku has a non-canon quirk they designed, directly arriving in WW!Izuku’s homeworld could result in them being granted a weaker version of the same quirk. maybe around 25-50% strength? Getting a quirk would mean you do not qualify for the dimension-travel Old Script.

tldr: no spoilers, and maybe a surprise quirk? If no surprise quirk appears, then congratulations! You qualify for dimension-travel abilities!

[sepublic]

Campfire, Canyon of the Golden Winged Snakes, Hey Ho Whoa!

           AMELIA IS BACK BABY!!!

           Let me tell you, when I first saw her, I had to do a double-take… Like the way the characters just so casually passed her, I blinked and was like- Wait, was what Amelia?!? And then I realized it was, and I just… WHAT!

           I was a bit afraid we wouldn’t see her, but it seems that she’s our NEW fourth companion, to replace Tuba… RIP to Tuba, you had a good funeral, and given the trajectory this season is going as of now, we… Really won’t see you again, huh?

           Screw you Simon.

           We’ve gotten SO many fascinating revelations in these three episodes… I can’t say I’m surprised at all that Amelia, or at least the revelation of her, would return to help Grace (and maybe Simon) resolve her issues! That was a very neat twist with the massive pile of numbers actually indicating it was AMELIA and her monumental issues, not the Apex! Very clever of the writing team to have us heading towards her the entire time, though it makes me wonder when we’ll get back to the Apex given how we only have TWO episodes left…!

           What’s interesting is that according to Amelia, there’s ‘corrupted code’ in some cars, and apparently this refers to any cars that SHE made while trying to figure out the perfect world? Amelia mentions ‘quarantining’ them, and One-One wants them gone as well… Given what Amelia says about ‘ejecting’ cars, does that mean they’re all transported to the very end of the Infinity Train, and just… thrown off?

           Are there a bunch of cars strewn about somewhere in the wasteland, is there even an END to this Infinity Train??? Or are they all just lumped together and some sort of force-field is placed around them, or some other barrier, to keep the corrupt code from –presumably- infecting the other cars around them?

           It is a bit weird to see One-One insist on getting rid of those cars, though… I hope the denizens inside are okay, especially those corgis! Given his lesson with Tulip about not blaming himself worked, I feel like this is contrary to what he’d learned? Or is he simply allowing those worlds to exist, and remain ‘weird’, while still fixing the corrupted code so it doesn’t spread and disrupt the world of other cars who have their own thing going on? Regardless, as Amelia said… it seems One-One is still working on his issue of viewing passengers as ‘numbers’ to fix, like the cogs of a machine! It seems he’s at least TRYING to be more personable, but, well…

           It seems that Amelia is still working on that sound-motif she’s always had, which is pretty neat! She mentions a ‘pulse’, so I presume it’s sent out from the engine, and when it scans an ‘anomaly’ (AKA anything with corrupted code, including stuff and denizens from the unfinished cars) they’re ejected… Given Amelia mentioning having to quarantine Hazel soon, I imagine this pulse heads out every now and then? Shouldn’t one pulse alone have done the trick, or is there a certain range to them and Amelia has to travel through the cars and activate the pulse from her location, to allow maximum effect?

           Anyhow, Amelia! You know, I mused that Episode 7 of this season would introduce the Book 4 protagonist, given how our previous Episode 7’s worked… Each one established the general idea/setting for our protagonist, as well as a formal introduction! The Chrome Car told us about Lake and her deal with wanting to be her own person, escaping the Flecs… The Mall Car established the Apex and properly introduced us to Simon and Grace…

           So… maybe The Canyon of the Golden Winged Snakes Car re-introduces us to Amelia, while establishing the conflict of the next Book; Fixing the corrupted cars! This is just speculation on my part, of course…

           Back to Amelia, I guess I shouldn’t be all-too surprised that she’s still kind of a jerk, what with the way she just… steamrolls over what Hazel has to say to ‘correct’ her with the proper facts, and whatnot! I’m a little glad, because it doesn’t completely forget that she still has a bigger number than Simon or Grace by FAR… But also upset, because c’mon Amelia, Hazel is a freaking kid! I know you’re trying to erase multiple decades’ of past sins and mistakes, but she doesn’t know!

           I also like seeing her just trash-talk Simon and calling him a child, especially since we know that he and Grace are only eighteen thanks to the Reddit AMA by Owen Dennis… Even if Simon were physically older, mentally he really isn’t! Granted I guess I can’t blame him for THAT, though I can blame him for Tuba’s death…

           I remember when the writers discussed juggling multiple characters, so after seeing Tuba die, I was wondering what was really the point… But I see now! It’s because they ALSO have to handle Amelia as well! And dang, she’s still remarkably callous… She doesn’t remember Grace at all and doesn’t even seem remotely interested… And upon hearing that a cult was started in her honor, she just does NOT care! It really shows that Amelia still has a LOT to work on, that just fixing the broken cars isn’t enough for her…

           It was a bit weird to have our main trio just pass by this obvious, fellow passenger, and just totally ignore them… But given Grace’s rule about ‘not trusting adult passengers’, I guess I’m not surprised? I have to wonder when it was made, and how young she was when it was established; If Grace was a kid and that was part of her apprehension towards adults, and/or they were actually trying to get their numbers down, so she saw them as ‘deceitful’ or whatever! Coupled with adults being less likely to fall for the Apex’s propaganda, and it makes sense…

           What’s really fascinating is that One-One doesn’t even know about the Apex, according to Amelia! Which, given the implied length of the Infinity Train, it really says a lot about how much stuff could’ve happened, completely independent from one another! It almost seems like fate that Simon and Grace encountered so many kids and brought them together… Whereas Tulip didn’t encounter ANY passengers, sans Amelia, on her journey!

           (Well, there was that ONE dude in the next car over who immediately got sent back home. And she was only there for five months, but still!)

           I feel this low-key ties back to what I discussed earlier, about One-One being an ‘ends justifies the means’ sort of person; That the situation with the denizens is less a matter of them dying, and more about what that says about the Apex passengers as people! Of course, he doesn’t even KNOW about them, which honestly blows my mind… He really IS disconnected, huh? I guess Tulip helped make a dent in his metal head, but there’s still a lot of work to go… You know, Amelia’s criticism of One-One seeing passengers as just ‘numbers’ reminds me of what some other fans brought up, on the idea of if whether or not issues can actually be quantified like that!

           Given what Owen said about the train also being wrong sometimes, and I have to wonder if this will be resolved by the end of Book 3… or perhaps Book 4, assuming we get it! Yeah, most of the team has been laid off and the viewings are low, so SERIOUSLY- WATCH on HBO Max, spend actual money on this thing if you want it around because you’re LITERALLY paying for Book 4’s production by this point people! And spread the word!

           Anyhow, looks like other fans were right- Hazel IS a failed creation of Amelia, in this case her attempt to recreate Alrick… Although she implies that Hazel is more than just a ‘clone’ of him, is this referring to Hazel being a little girl, or something else entirely? Is the implication that Hazel would’ve been her and Alrick’s child, because uh… Amelia and Alrick are white. She also mentions a ‘handkerchief’, so what’s THAT about…?! Did she just toss one aside and it glitched into Hazel…?

           Hazel is taking this about as well as you’d expect a child, and I’m wondering if Grace suddenly turning around and calling her ‘null’, only to ask to stay overnight… Means that she has a plan to ditch Simon and hang out with Hazel and Amelia, for the rest of her life? Either way, Simon is apparently taking her ‘betrayal’ to heart… That, or he’s expressing genuine remorse at seeing what he did to Hazel, but probably not. Honestly, the way his character is going it seems like he may go off the deep end…

           OR, maybe not! Because we get some more development on him and THE CAT… Samantha! That’s right, an actual name! I guess I’m not shocked that ‘Samantha’ managed to smuggle some tiny One-Ones out of the Tape Car, and even a miniature player as well! I have to wonder how she finds her stuff, honestly… Considering how vast the Infinity Train is, it’s not out of the question for people to go entire months without encountering others! It’s actually kind of a miracle of fate that The Cat has encountered so many passengers, over and over, across this show…! Given the possibility aired by Mace about some characters being ‘destined’ by the Infinity Train, and I’ve got to wonder…

           It’s interesting that even when Simon is taking his rage out physically, he NEVER goes for The Cat… and she knows this, no less! Not once is she ever scared for her life, instead she’s more concerned for what this has to say about Simon! It’s complicated, all right, and apparently all we know for now is that The Cat accidentally left Simon behind, and ultimately stuck with her choice to prioritize herself! It’s interesting, the idea that even if Simon and The Cat have a better understanding as to why the other did what they did, they won’t ever really ‘forgive’ one another, or reconcile- Just go their separate paths, for now and likely eternity…

           Simon is of course getting mad at Grace for not talking to him and is confused by her changing her mind! A confrontation between the two is inevitable in our last two episodes, and given how we haven’t seen Grace’s number at all… It’s probably low. I can see the two reuniting with the Apex at the end, only for Simon to invoke his larger number to turn them on Grace… Or try to head back to the Apex to do exactly that!

           Still, given how the show is still making the point to delve into his perspective and trauma, and how he STILL won’t harm The Cat… I have to wonder if the season really will end with Grace leaving the Infinity Train, and Simon staying behind to fix his own issues? Of course, what about Hazel… We know she’s a denizen for sure so she can’t leave, right? Unless her fake number can fool One-One… Speaking of which, was Amelia’s number at 337 when she first arrived? Because that seems a bit small for someone who had otherwise hijacked the Infinity Train by then and was making unfinished worlds…

           Back to Amelia, if Simon doesn’t help… I wonder if Book 3 will end with HER taking lead of the Apex and leading them down a new path? It’d be ironic given how she mentioned about not being great with kids, and tie back to her penance… Or, maybe Grace will continue to live with the Apex and help! Maybe Simon will join Amelia… Who knows? Personally I’m fixated on the fact that Amelia just UTTERLY outclasses Simon… I expressed previous appreciation at Tuba being able to defend herself, until you know what…

           But given how Amelia is a lot more savvy, jaded, and cynical about this sort of situation; I think she’s probably safe for now! It’d feel a bit unresolved for Simon to get HER killed off too…

           Overall, a fascinating turn of events, and I can get a good sense of why the episodes were clustered the way they were together, to be released separately! Each does its own little arc… The first one establishing the mood and having Tuba, only for her to die! Then the next one involving Amelia and the fall-out of the Hazel revelation… And the last two episodes will be THE finale, just like it’s traditionally been in the past! I can’t wait to see what happens next…

[feminaexlux]

A Needed Miracle - Chapter 18: But never complete

I'd been working on this one for months... because I did like 70% in 1-2 sittings and then fell off the face of the planet and I'm now just getting back into the groove.

Hope this is at least interesting to some people >_>

Read on AO3

⁂

(Nine years ago)

As soon as he said the wish Adrien knew he'd fucked up big time. He'd been dissolved, turning into the space in-between his component atoms, the trillions of tiny subatomic particles and… concepts that had initially, through sheer luck, linked up into some kind of personhood and made a pattern of Adrien Agreste.

He'd seen the Null forms of Tikki and Plagg. He knew the presence of the Invader. It was the best name they had at the time. And from there he saw how much he had cost this particular universe in terms of the energy and time it'd take to sink into his wish.

He'd asked for a "redo". A complete and total rewrite of reality because some 15 year old rich white boy with superpowers couldn't handle that his family and his friends had been murdered all around him. Well, in the grand scheme of things maybe it was a little short-sighted. Hawkmoth had been defeated at the cost of a bunch of teenagers playing superhero while there had been this thing looming in the outskirts.

Then he saw that Tikki and Plagg had cheated.

⁂

When he came to, he realized he'd been back in his bed. He blinked a couple of times and scanned his room, making sure that it was actually his room and… he wasn't dead? He wasn't dead. He was… still Adrien by the looks of it, his room being his room and all. He looked down at his hands, suddenly panicking that he'd lost Plagg. He didn't have the ring, holy crap! He turned over and went onto his knees, throwing the sheets and pillows off of his bed in a desperate search for his kwami. "Plagg!?" He yelled out. "Plagg, please let me know you're here!" Adrien cried, half sobbing.

If Plagg wasn't here… maybe Marinette had him?

Adrien ran out of his room and burst out into the main hallway. Apparently it was around the twilight hours, no one had been up and Nathalie (… and his father what the fuck they were both such huge assholes) wasn't around. He managed to throw open the front doors and ran out into the courtyard. Not even the gate could stop him as he vaulted through one of the holes in the giant decorative ironwork head first.

Marinette was only a block and a half away. His Lady had always been so close and he'd been an idiot for not even seeing her right in front of his stupid face. But he could fix it! He could fix it now, thank God. No… Thanks to Tikki and Plagg and--

A silver car screeched to a stop in front of him before he could run across the street to Marinette's house. A car door flew open and his Mother emerged, looking panicked in her white silk sleeping robe. "Adrien! What are you doing?!"

"Mom?!"

She ran to him and wrapped him up tight in her arms. "Adrien how could you leave like that? What were you doing?! You foolish, foolish child! Do you know what time it is?!"

Adrien had been a little… more than a little shocked and overwhelmed with a mix of joy and confusion at seeing his mother in person again. His wish made her come back! But… "Mom, I need to find--"

"You're coming home right now," Emilie said, dragging Adrien back into the car despite his protestations. "Simon, please take us home." Adrien heard a familiar grunt and the car was put into reverse, taking Adrien further away from his… Destiny? No. He'd changed all that. Emilie turned and forced Adrien to look at her by gripping his shoulders and turning him. "What the hell were you doing Adrien?! You know your father will be furious!"

Rage boiled over in Adrien. "I HATE HIM!" Adrien screamed. It all spilled out in the relative privacy of the car, how Adrien had found a Miraculous and became Chat Noir, how he had been fighting Hawkmoth with Ladybug, how Hawkmoth was Gabriel and Nathalie had become Mayura and they had become some disgusting couple thing but that Adrien had supported their relationship unknowingly because Emilie had been dead for a year and--

"That is quite the nightmare, Adrien," his father's cold voice interrupted, coming from over the car intercom. "Come inside. You've caused enough trouble for tonight."

Adrien had arrived at home. They didn't believe him. Of course they wouldn't. There was one way he could prove all that he was saying… that book was still in the safe, wasn't it? He ran out of the car to his father's office and slid away the Klimt-"inspired" painting of his mother. He punched in a few codes but they were all rejected.

"Adrien!" His father's voice boomed at him. Adrien ignored him for the time being, trying in vain to remember anything that might have been important to Gabriel. Adrien remembered how Gabriel had… died loving no one but himself, and punched in a sequence. The safe popped open and revealed…

Nothing? Where did that fucker hide everything? Adrien ran at his father and pulled off that stupid candy-striped cravat, shocking everyone in view. No Miraculous?

Wait… his wish really did reset everything. He stood still in place, staring back at his father. Oh shit, Adrien thought.

⁂

(Now)

It took at most 10 minutes of Adrien and Plagg waiting in Tatsue until Marinette and Luka came down from the apartment and walked toward the car, hand in hand. Longg had already come back sulking, apparently prematurely dismissed by both Marinette and Luka. Adrien got out of the car and opened the passenger door for the pair, but Luka stopped before entering. "Where are we going?" He asked.

Adrien smiled. "A safehouse."

Luka narrowed his eyes at Adrien. "Why?"

"Chances are you've been targeted on purpose, I'll explain more in the car," Adrien said, patting the roof of Tatsue.

"Wait… My sister and--" Luka paled. "I can't--"

"Oh don't worry, Kagami already took them to the safehouse earlier. We tried to take you both as well but Plagg and Tikki said it'd be alright if they watched over you until you both woke up. Can't really argue with them if they already made their minds up," Adrien shrugged.

"Why do you want to help us?" Marinette asked, squeezing Luka's hand tighter.

Adrien put his elbow against the car and rested his chin on his braced hand. "You're looking at the man who forced Universe number 2 into existence," he sighed. "I remember everything from the first one and I need to tell you why we're all here. I can't give you a bigger hook than that, can I?"

That'd been essentially what Longg (and Tikki) had explained to them, but Marinette still reeled back in shock. "This is… this is so crazy," she said shakily, feeling her hand squeezed back by Luka. "I still… I'm still having issues processing all this."

Adrien nodded. "Yeah. Crazy doesn't begin to describe it. Look, even if you still don't trust me you have Tikki and Plagg back and can absolutely obliterate and smear me into a thin paste if you wanted. I have nothing to hide and nothing to hold back. I just need you two to give me some time to explain what I can and show you what I know."

Luka sighed to himself, saying "I don't know where--" when Plagg phased out from Tatsue. "Nevermind."

Tikki flew next to Plagg, both kwami looking back at their holders. "Adrien's right. We need to be somewhere safer," Tikki said gently. "We trust Adrien to tell you the truth."

⁂

The ride to the safehouse was relatively short but plenty awkward and quiet. Marinette had looked back and forth between Luka and Adrien, but one was staring blankly out the window in a dark, pensive mood, still gently squeezing her hand as reassurance of his presence, while the other was staring at them, thoughtful and smiling whenever Marinette looked back at him but adding no additional comment.

Adrien, Tikki, and Plagg had initially given them a quick rundown of what they had experienced in the previous universe. That while Marinette had been Ladybug before as she was now, Adrien had been Plagg's original bearer. Both Marinette and Adrien had been much younger, starting their superhero lives at 13 years old and had years of practice using their Miraculous before the reset. The original Hawkmoth was Gabriel Agreste, but that had all been undone by Adrien's wish because they failed to defeat Gabriel in the end with Marinette dying.

Adrien had no clue who this Hawkmoth was.

Marinette understood most of it, but she'd noticed that Luka just… wasn't here with her mentally. If Marinette could guess what was going through Luka's head, she guessed it must have been worry over Juleka. She was half right.

Luka had been feeling an odd sense of… detachment since Adrien called. Yes, he was currently the Black Cat Miraculous chosen, but… he'd been a placeholder. He wasn't… the original. He wasn't even truly intended to be the one wearing this ring in Universe 2 and Plagg didn't seem to care much for Luka.

But if he hadn't had the ring and he hadn't been partners with Marinette, would they have ever gotten together? Would she have even noticed him?

It did feel like the past decade and change had been him swimming through mud trying to find his place in the world outside of his family. Didn't have a father, lost his mother, had to sell their houseboat, had his sister block any contact from him for the better part of a year, his love life and attempts at rock-stardom were disasters. He finally had things starting to go his way when Marinette literally fell into his life.

And then they each got a Miraculous. It was the first time Luka had felt alive and somewhat in control.

Hearing now that he was just some random asshole swept up in this whole thing was a little bit of a blow to that perspective. Maybe he needed to hand this ring over to Adrien, who supposedly knew how to handle it.

Maybe then Marinette would have a partner that wouldn't be such a fucking liability.

⁂

They ended up being driven to some fancy Japanese dojo and as Luka had been staring out the window most of the ride he saw a formidable looking man with a huge nose ring look over the car. There'd been a split second where that man had locked eyes with Luka, staring him down with a vague but palpable threat of violence in the air.

But whatever that man saw, he deemed Luka (and Marinette, probably?) safe enough and the car drove itself further in, going down a few levels in an underground lot. The car was parked and the doors automatically opened. Adrien moved out first, beckoning Marinette and Luka to follow him.

Having been lead into one trap today, Marinette had been hesitant in falling into another one, but… at least she and Luka had Tikki and Plagg. So she'd use that. She transformed in a pink flash after she noticed no one else was around and there hadn't been any cameras.

"That's… smart of you, actually," Adrien mused out loud, chuckling. "I get it." Both Adrien and Ladybug looked at Luka expectantly, but he… he just sighed.

"We wouldn't be here if I hadn't gotten caught, right?" Luka said. "I'm putting myself, my sister, Rose and Marinette in danger by being this… by being Panthera. This Miraculous shit isn't working out for me, is it?"

"Luka?" Ladybug asked quietly. "What…"

"Kid, don't--" Plagg was cut off when Luka took off his ring.

Ladybug panicked. "Luka!"

Luka opened his palm with the Black Cat Miraculous ring to Adrien. "This was always yours, wasn't it?"

Adrien looked down at the ring. A few moments passed, each one stretching out longer than the previous. There was a real sense of longing in Adrien's eyes and he reached out his hand toward Luka's… and took the ring. It shrank down a little bit and morphed into a signet ring with a flat silver face, blockier than the simple wide silver band it had been for Luka. "You just handed me one half of a universe ending machine, you know that?" Adrien said disbelievingly. "I'm not sure if you're serious. I didn't think either of you would want that back in my hands."

Luka shook his head. "It's always been yours."

"It's a nice thought. You're a better man than I am," Adrien chuckled. "But it's not mine." Adrien tossed the ring back at Luka, who nearly fumbled in catching it. "Not this time."

"You… won't take it?" Luka seemed confused.

"Like I said, it's a nice thought. But I can't use it."

"Can't?" Ladybug asked.

"Can't," Adrien confirmed. "One of those little stipulations in the fine print of resetting the universe. I can't ever use a Miraculous ever again."

[cranehusbands]

null and voided

Crypto | Park Tae Joon/Wraith | Renee Blasey; voidwalker timeline; hurt/comfort; voidwalker/whitelisted; apex rarepair week; 1563 words

a/n: and here’s where i show you just how unhinged i am.

SO. FOR CONTEXT. me and a friend (it’s mr tumblr user the-goolings, nate) have an au/plotline for the voidwalker timeline seen in wraith’s original story short, with voidwalker being... voidwalker, and her guy in the chair helping her out is crypto, who is originally in his hired gun skin variant before being captured by the syndicate and like... half-cyborged? before he escaped to wait for her while she went about with her revenge. it’s fucked! but anyways they make me feel and they’re in LOVE. please ask me more about this au if you’re so inclined i have. a lot

a very late day 6 for @apex-rarepairweek, hurt/comfort! 

likes < reblogs, any comments in the tags are appreciated

ao3 mirror in the reblogs!

Preview: Renee pushed away some of the schematics for the parts in his chest cavity, folding her arms across the dining table and resting her head on top of him, turning to keep an eye on him as he was sleeping… no, as he was shut off. He was hardly human, he’d said so himself, he didn’t sleep. ...But that wasn’t right, was it. He still lived, and felt, just as she did, and although he didn’t breathe and eat he still existed by her side like he always did, and that was as human as it got, right? [...] “God, Tae, how did this happen?” 

The only sounds echoing through the apartment were the loud contact of metal on metal, small curses and larger ones, and electricity crackling between two loose wires with a frustrated grumble. Old Chinese food boxes laid strewn around the apartment, old clothes discarded without a second thought, a blanket thrown over the couch like a makeshift bed, and the dining table taken over with tools and schematics, first person pronouns littering the notes of parts and functions. The radio at one end of the table quietly played the news, news of wars and violence that was just white noise against the gentle scraping of metal.

 Renee cursed to herself again, slamming the screwdriver back down on the table as she sat up and rolled her shoulder, scowling a little. She was learning this as she was going along, which was hard when the handwriting on your only guide was illegible most of the time. Running a hand down her face, her fingers parted for a moment, and she dared to steal a glance down at the body resting on the sofa that she’d dragged into the dining room, at the way the metal reflected the synthetic lights, how peaceful he looked, like a… fucked up, cyborg sleeping beauty, eyes closed and chest wide open, exposing the wires and components that kept him alive. How her friend, her partner, her lover, Taejoon Park, was sitting there, half human and half machine, and how she was repairing him for the third time that week.

 Getting back to their timeline had been a mess. She’d done what they’d been fighting for all this time, saving herself from another dimension in her place, barely surviving by the skin of her teeth. Sometimes she could still feel the blood of the man who had ruined her life splashing onto her face, remembering the feeling of his skull as it marbled in her grip with every bash against the wall, and she couldn’t tell if that felt good or not. But what didn’t feel good was stumbling back into their own quiet, secluded apartment, practically tripping through a portal, delirious from blood loss, leaning a shoulder up against the wall as she shook off the heavy gear and dragged her blood along the paint, and seeing a man who seemed so familiar but still so strange rushing to meet her, staring at her as if he was an illusion. She wondered if that was just what he was - he looked like Taejoon, looked at her like he used to, lips parting in the same way as he brought a hand up to her face to hold her, but his touch was cold, metallic and unwelcoming, but all the same, it was him, surely?

 The way his nightmares haunted him, and the way he gripped for her in his sleep as if she would leave him, all but confirmed it.

 It was the Syndicate, he’d said. Got to him when he was gone. Tortured him, barely kept him alive, involuntarily entered him into a simulacrum program, where he escaped with the last of his humanity and had been living in isolation for months before she’d gotten home. He didn’t sleep, or eat - he didn’t need to, not anymore. He just listened to the sounds of his own parts functioning, and wondered what it would be like to hear them stop. He’d taken down all the mirrors, covered the windows and any other reflections, making sure that he didn’t have to see himself, and what he was forced to become. Tried to find Mila by himself, he’d said, but he kept flipping between hopelessness and sheer mania, trashing the apartment before fixing it again to trash it again. All while she was dimensions away, totally unaware that the man who helped her get this far was barely hanging on, waiting for her to come home.

 It wasn’t her fault. Not by any means, and Taejoon had told her as much. But now that what she’d made her life’s purpose was just another page in the book of her personal history, it was all she could think about. Renee pushed away some of the schematics for the parts in his chest cavity, folding her arms across the dining table and resting her head on top of him, turning to keep an eye on him as he was sleeping… no, as he was shut off. He was hardly human, he’d said so himself, he didn’t sleep. ...But that wasn’t right, was it. He still lived, and felt, just as she did, and although he didn’t breathe and eat he still existed by her side like he always did, and that was as human as it got, right? She let out a sigh, shaking as she did so, biting her lip as her eyes started to well with tears, continuing to watch him and remembering the times he’d fall asleep, just like this, at his desk, working for hours for her sake and his own, as she’d wrap a blanket over his shoulder and ruffle his hair with a gentle kiss to the temple-

“God, Tae, how did this happen?” She whispered to herself, breaking down and turning her head away to sob against her forearm, unable to stop herself, her whole body shaking with the force of it, bottled up day in and day out of repairs. Had she let him down? What had they become? Zombies, searching for truth and revenge, the syndicate one step in front with a knife behind their back. She’d gotten revenge in one dimension, but what about the countless others she saw in her sleep, the voices that followed her everywhere and the void that beckoned for soulless company-

 She held in a breath at the familiar whining sound of servo’s releasing locked up air, fans kicking in as a single robotic eye looked around, making noise with every movement. Renee rubbed her eyes against her arm before she sat up, forcing a light smirk. “Hey. I’m not finished, why’d you-”

“Forced startup. Syndicate slave code.” Even now, it was hard to get used to the slight crackle in his voice as he spoke, as he moved his hand to point to the back of his neck.

“We gotta get that fixed.”

“...Have you been crying?”

She froze. “I- no, it’s nothing-”

“Renee…”

“Don’t ‘Renee’ me, Tae.” She almost snapped, not wanting the pity, before she felt herself deflate. “I said it’s nothing, OK?”

She listened to the way his cybernetic eye moved to look her up and down, moving his hands to support himself as he slowly sat up. “Wait, no, I’m not-”

“Quiet.”

“What- no, let me finish my work first.”

He closed up his ribcage with a light click, looking up to her as she rolled her eyes. “There. No more work.”

“That’s only going to wreck itself later, and you’re going to complain, you know that, right?”

“I don’t matter right now. All that matters is you.”

Though she slightly softened, Renee opened her mouth to speak again, only cutting herself off as he put a hand against her cheek - it was cold, but still so warm, and full of love, as he ran a hand across her cheek.

Taejoon moved his hand up to across her freshly shaven (another bad episode with the void, instinctive) head - the metal was cold against her skin, enough to make her flinch a little, but she stayed, almost leaning into it like a cat would, as he gave her a tired smile, moving his hand to hold her face, fingers still stroking what little hair was above her ears. “Kiwi…”

Renee paused, opening her eyes and cocking an eyebrow as she held onto his wrist. “Did… you just call me a kiwi?”

“Mhm… you’re soft and fuzzy.”

She looked at him, chuckling and scoffing a little, shaking her head. “I can’t believe you. Remind me never to cry about you again.”

“Noted. I would never want you to, regardless.”

“But you know I will. We’re just made that way.”

Taejoon hummed, looking down, almost defeated. 

She sighed and pressed her forehead against his, touching what little of his skin was left, listening to the way his eyes closed and gears kicked into overdrive at the soft physical contact, chuckling to herself. “I love you, Tae.”

“Yeah… yeah. I love you too.”.

 “We’re gonna be OK, I promise.” Her voice was quieter now, only for her entire world, as she opened her eyes to look at him, almost blinded by his as he looked back at her.

“As long as we’re together, I don’t think we’ll ever be OK.” Despite himself, Taejoon laughed, her voice gaining that familiar crackle to it as he moved his hand down from her head to her shoulder. “But I suppose… that’s just fine with me.”

Renee moved herself back a little to go in again, moving in to plant a kiss against his lips, slow and deliberate. He was cold to the touch but warm with the love and care for her he felt with every fiber of his being, both what little of him remained and everything that had been replaced, as he returned the kiss, the bells and whistles all going off in harmony as she chuckled into the kiss they shared, feeling a gentle slap against her arm.

[mamuzzy-creates-stuff]

My little OrdoMaze art collection in one place <333

「Dynamic of Ordo and Maze」[Snippet]

ORDO x MAZE CLONESHIP 18/09/2023| Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | They are awkward af | Start of my brainrot for them | 

「I don’t deserve you」[COMIC]

ORDO x MAZE CLONESHIP |28/11/2023| Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | Ship prompt | Prompt | Hurt & Comfort | Ordo is spiraling but Maze comforts him. In his own way. | 

「When your boyfriend is a bookworm」[ART] 

ORDO x MAZE CLONESHIP 10/01/2024| Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | Fluff | 

「Erotic Dice Game with the Di’kutla couple」[ART]

ORDO x MAZE CLONESHIP 14/01/2024| Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | Maze wants to try an erotic game and Ordo is going psycho again | I swear they are in love, they told me!

「Maze’s fictional crush died :((((((」  [ART]

ORDO X MAZE CLONESHIP 31/01/2024 | Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | Sketchbook | Ordo is a jealous one, jealous even about fictional lovers |

「Fuck you, Maze」 [COMIC]

ORDO x MAZE CLONESHIP 02/02/2024 | Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | Sketchbook | Ordo is a menace |

「You were late, now suffer the consequences」 [COMIC]

18+ ORDO x MAZE CLONESHIP 04/02/2024 | Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | I’m obsessed with juicy alpha-class thighs, your honour | The art goes to an SFW tumblr post so from there you can decide if you want to see Maze’s juicy alpha-class thighs yourself by clicking on the AO3 link |

「He asked for no onions」 [ART]

Ordo x Maze CLONESHIP 19/02/2024 | Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | They are both awkward. Period. | 

「Tactical smooch」 [ART]

19/02/2024 | Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | Kissing | Mentions of homophobia, mentions of clonecest phobia | This is a companion-art to He Asked for No Onions. When I started to being active, I swore that every anti-cloneship hate post/comment I get, I’ll do kissing clones and tag the haters under it. Ok, I won’t do such things because I don’t want my ship art about boys being soft be tainted with fandombullshit all the time. You don’t mess with Mamuzzy, they are going to cry!!! (and becomes a vengeful spirit, lol) |

「It’s safe under the blanket」 [ART]

Ordo x Maze CLONESHIP 20/02/2024 | Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | Wholesome fluffness I think they pretty much sleep like this~ | 

「O Ordo, Ordo wherefore art thou Ordo」[ART]

ORDO x MAZE CLONESHIP 20/02/2024 | Alpha-26 Maze | Maze is daydreaming in the office | Romeo and Juliet parody | 

「They are so stupidly in love I just can’t」 [ART]

ORDO x MAZE CLONESHIP |01/03/2024 | Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | Received a very kind ask <3 | 

「It is not socially acceptable to throw up in the alleys of Coruscant」 [FIC] + [AO3]

ORDO x MAZE CLONESHIP 08/03/2024 | Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | Kissing prompt | They are drunk as fuck | 

「Just let me boil in my water a little longer」 [FIC]

ORDO X MAZE CLONESHIP 14/03/2024 | Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | Kissing prompt | It’s actually just a post with the AO3 link and I think I will keep this format when uploading fics from now on. |

「Maze, Ordo and books」 [HEADCANON]

ORDO x MAZE MAZE x BOOKS :DDD CLONESHIP 17/03/2024 | Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | Headcanon | Maze is a booklover. | 

「Why cat shaped if not a cat?」[COMIC]

29/03/2024 | Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze, Arligan Zey, Commander Fox | Ordo is cat-coded for me. |

「BOOP!!!! Part I」 [COMIC]

CLONESHIP ORDO x MAZE 12/04/2024 | Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | Maze uses vile tactics against the Null to deescalate their usual tense encounter |

「It's not for customers, I promise!」 [COMIC]

14/04/2024 | Alpha-26 Maze, Kal Skirata, Ordo Skirata, Mereel Skirata, Prudii Skirata | Restaurant!AU | Based on this post. | WARNING: Under the cut there is a comic with cartoon violence, blood and dead body depicted in comically goreish situation. |

「Your eyes are shit」 [ART]

CLONESHIP ORDO x MAZE 17/04/2024 | Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | Wanted to draw something wholesome with them, or at least, something cute-couple thing to do <3 | Also I'll never get bored of Maze having glasses |

「BOOP! Part II」 [COMIC]

CLONESHIP ORDO x MAZE 21/04/2024 | Ordo Skirata | Ordo had a few sleepless night after that incident |

「OrdoMaze: Rimming」 [ART]

18+ ORDO x MAZE CLONESHIP 23/04/2024 | Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | The only they don't fight is when they have sex, and Ordo is especially losing any will to bicker when Maze giving him a rimjob |

「He attacc he protecc but most importantly he stalks」 [ART]

CLONESHIP ORDO x MAZE 15/06/2024 | Captain Maze, Ordo Skirata | Ordo being an adorable little creep but Maze doesn't mind |

「An interactive OrdoMaze story」 [Ficlet]

CLONESHIP ORDO x MAZE 15/06/2024 | Captain Maze, Ordo Skirata | I intend to continue this. | CW: stalking |

「Spiteful Kiss」 [ART]

CLONESHIP ORDO x MAZE 14/07/2024 | Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze, Kal Skirata, Mereel Skirata, Jaing Skirata | Prompt: Spiteful kiss | What is more spiteful than kissing your boyfriends who hides you from his dad and brothers? |

「Trust」 [ART]

CLONESHIP ORDO x MAZE 20/07/2024 | Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | Ordo is a jealous person and his intrusive thoughts about killing Maze are not helping | Based on song |

「Lopott könyvek」 [ART]

CLONESHIP ORDO x MAZE 22/07/2024 | Ordo Skirata, Alpha-26 Maze | A song inspired me and had to draw them being softies |

[chibimyumi]

Hold up. Seb cannot lie? At all? But Ciel says "never lie to /me/ " and Seb seals it in the contract. I always thought he could lie and manipulate other people but not Ciel? Don't tell me that part of the manga was badly translated too lol

【Reaction to the post; “That Butler, Punchable”】

Dear Anon,

Please allow me to apologise for the late response first. Now, without further delay…

You are not wrong to think that! It was not a mistranslation. In chapter 138 Sebastian and his master did indeed seal the contract under the term:

契約者に嘘を吐かないこと

Keiyakusha ni uso wo tsukanai koto

Tell no lies to the contractor.

There are no ambiguities here: the demon does not lie to the contractor. Period.

In Japanese, ‘tsuku’ in ‘uso wo tsuku’ (to lie) is not limited to the spoken word, so Sebastian can in effect not speak, write, sing, morse code, etc. lies to O!Ciel.

In this post about why Sebastian is my favourite character, I touched upon how I find this limitation so incredibly interesting, because it compels Sebastian to use his creativity in manipulating everyone around him, including his master. He is not allowed to tell lies, but the power of suggestion is one he frequently abuses.

“Sebastian cannot lie, that much is clear.”

In the post linked above, I wrote: “Sebastian cannot lie, that much is clear.” I wrote this with fair confidence for two reasons.

☝️ One ☝️

Throughout the manga, Sebas has been working very hard to avoid telling lies, even to people other than his master.

In chapter 45 when Sebastian showed up in disguise, Lau asked him who he was. As Lau is not Sebas’ contractor, he could easily have lied ‘Bobby’ or something. But instead, the demon explicitly turned to his master, asking: “what is my name?” It was not until O!Ciel named him ‘Jeremy, that the demon said:

では、ジェレミーと気軽に呼んで下さい

Dewa, Jeremy to kigaru ni yonde kudasai

Well then, please feel free to call me Jeremy.

He did not say “I am Jeremy” or “my name is Jeremy”. No. Here Sebastian spoke a request, which of course is not lying.

Could it be that he did so because O!Ciel is in the vicinity? Not impossible, but I think it is unlikely. In chapter 92 too Sebas did some high level around-the-bush-beating, while he and Sieglinde were alone.

Sebastian explained that his master was kidnapped and used as a sacrifice for a demon.

私と坊ちゃんはその悪魔召喚の儀式の最中出会いました

Watashi to bocchan wa sono akuma shoukan no gishiki no saichuu deaimashita

I and the young master met during that ritual of demon summoning

Here, Sebas gave Sieglinde the factual information that O!Ciel was used as a sacrifice, and presented this as the reason for the pentacle on his eye. Then, he skillfully linked this information to himself, using Sieglinde’s knowledge that he too has a pentacle on his body, suggesting that the reason is because he was put up as a sacrifice as well.

All without uttering a single untrue word, Sebastian presented a fairly rounded story to steer away from exposing his true identity. Bravo, Sebas! (BRAVO, YANA! YOU GENIUS!!)

✌️ Two ✌️

The second reason is the one that ultimately makes me confident enough to say that “Sebastian CAN not lie,” instead of “Sebastian DOES not lie”.

All the way back in chapter 8, Sebastian spoke to his contractor as follows:

何度も言っているでしょう、私は嘘をつきません　と

Nando mo itteiru deshou, watashi wa uso wo tsukimasen to

I have told you many times, that, I do not tell lies.

I have frequently explained that Japanese is a null-subject language, which means that a subject is not necessary to formulate a complete sentence. When the speaker does add a subject, it means they are laying extra emphasis on the subject: “I” (watashi).

In this line it would have been perfectly grammatical AND polite to omit the subject, but Sebas did not. Neither did he specify to whom he does not lie. So there is no leeway in reading this line as: “lies are not told”. No, it really is: “Sebastian Michaelis does not tell lies, at all.”

The moment Sebas spoke these words to his contractor-to-whom-he-cannot-lie, he sealed away ALL possibilities for him to lie to even other people, any cat, any table or chair. He cannot even tell lies to the void.

Of course it is possible that prior to this event O!Ciel simply evoked contract term number 2 and gave Sebastian the absolute order to “never lie in general”. But it would be very funny if this were Sebas’ own oopsie here ( ´艸｀)

Allow me this mirth for a second:

The real question that remains is WHY Yana decided to specify this contract term so narrowly in chapter 138. It must be because she is trying to lampshade a lie she (accidentally) made Sebas say… but that ‘lie’ MUST have happened before chapter 8 then… what lie would that be? Hmm… 🤔🕵️

[collecting-stories]

Tenerife Sea - Connor Murphy

A/N: I’m projecting in this one but honestly I just wanted to write a mildly autistic love interest for Connor cause ya know?

And all of the voices surrounding us here, they just fade out when you take a breath. - Tenerife Sea, Ed Sheeran

\\\

He didn’t care. Or so he told himself. It wasn’t that he cared, it was just that he was curious. He’d been seeing you every day at school since 6th grade when the elementary school’s merged to the middle school and he was stuck sitting behind you in home room. However it worked out in computer systems or principal’s heads you were always in the same home room and you were always sitting in front of him. Like some assigned algorithm and not just a random chance that kept occurring the same way over and over. Did you know you always sat in front of him. Whether he really thought about it enough to analyze the feeling he was sure that he liked you sitting in front of him. So much so that as you slid into the seat in front of him that first morning of senior year he almost felt himself exhale all the negative energy that had been clogging his lungs like smoke.  

You always wore your hair the same way, since sixth grade. And you had some variation of the same plastic, blush pink rimmed glasses. They only changed minutely when the prescription needed to be altered. And you always wore stripes. You must’ve had a million striped shirts in all different colours and sizes. Some skinny stripes, some fat, some were pastel in color and others just plain black. He thought about your striped shirts a lot. But he didn’t care. You could wear what you wanted, it was your body. If you liked stripes who was he to judge. Who would care if he did.  

“Hi Connor, how was your summer?” You always greeted him too.  

He liked the greeting best after breaks or on a Monday, because you always asked what he did while you didn’t see him. As if you were friends and you wanted to genuinely know how he was.  

But it was his secret and he couldn’t let you in on it, “fine.”  

“That’s good,” and sometimes you would let the subject drop and start pulling out the perfectly organized binder and notebook that you always had on hand along with a pencil case crammed with color coded pens and highlighters. Once you lent him a pastel green pen because you only had one black and it was still sitting on his nightstand in his room. Like some cherished gift from a friend.  

After home room most of your classes didn’t line up. And four days out of five you had study hall at the end of the day. The school called it senior privilege and told the kids they could leave early if they maintained good grades and didn’t have an excess of absences. They didn’t dare align Connor’s classes so that he could get off early. By senior year they knew him too well. Even without the okay he rarely stuck around for the entire day. The first week in and he was cutting out early.  

“Hey Connor,” a week in and you were still greeting him everyday, “you weren’t in science so I got the homework for you.” This was the other thing you did, Connor noted. You always gave him homework when he was out. The year he flipped out on the home room teacher and shoved his desk to the ground he got suspended for a week and you had volunteered (though he was sure they assigned you) to pick up his homework everyday.  

“Yeah, thanks.” But he didn’t try to take it so you left it on the desk.  

Two weeks in and you were wearing a plain gray sweater with jeans. He felt jittery that morning, like he couldn’t relax the right way and he spent the thirty minutes of home room shifting uncomfortably in his seat trying to determine why he felt so anxious. When he saw you later the gray sweater was stuffed in your locker and a gray and white striped shirt was on you. He could catch his breath, he felt himself relax.  

Three weeks in, sitting outside the office as the principal finished a meeting with his parents he saw you leaving the nurses office.  

“Hey,” he called for you and when you turned around you had the most shocked expression on your face. To be fair you always talked to Connor but he never talked to you first. When he did speak to you it was just one or two words, nothing monumental.  

“Yeah?”  

“You alright?” He noticed the stripes peeking out from beneath your gray sweater.  

“Oh yeah, just a migraine.” You replied. “Are you in trouble?” When you whispered the last part he wanted to laugh. You sounded like a kindergartener afraid an adult would overhear you.  

He shrugged. He was always in trouble. This time he’d gotten into it with the English teacher. Last week he’d gotten into a fight with another kid. It just depended he supposed.  

“Well it’s not weed but here,” you produced a lollipop, a cotton candy dum-dum to be exact, from your backpack and offered it to him, “makes me feel better when I’m anxious.”  

“I’m not.” He replied. Now he really did feel like he was in elementary school.  

“Yeah, no, I just mean, it might help you calm down.”  

“I don’t need to calm down. I’m perfectly calm.”  

“Okay,” you nodded and he thought for the first time you looked far more upset than he’d ever seen you. “I’ll see you in science?”  

“Probably not.”  

“I’ll get your homework then.”  

“Don’t bother.”  

That Monday you only smiled at him but didn’t say hello and didn’t ask how his weekend was. You went to the nurse’s office right after home room and then when he saw you again at lunch you were reading by yourself at the end of a table. Were you always by yourself? He couldn’t remember if he’d ever noticed before. The rest of the week was the same and he felt like all he could concentrate on was where you were. In class, in the hallway, in the lunch room. By Friday he realized that you might have less friends than he did, at least he had Evan sometimes.  

When the week started over you didn’t sit in front of him in home room and he found himself searching for the striped shirt in the hallway. You were absent Tuesday and Wednesday and when you came back on Thursday you looked tired. Did you always look so tired?  

“Hey,” Connor caught you leaving the school for senior privilege, stopping you in the parking lot.  

“Oh, Connor, hi.” You smiled.  

“Are you alright?” He asked, glancing back at the school building and then you again, “I saw you in the nurses office.”  

“I had a migraine.”  

Connor wanted to kick himself for not being more eloquent, “you get those a lot.”  

You shrugged, “school makes me anxious sometimes. Hey, sorry if I upset you. I didn’t mean to.”  

“You didn’t.” He assured, “I was just having a shitty day.”  

“Do you have senior privilege?”  

He shook his head and almost smiled when he watched your eyes get wide. “You shouldn’t be out here, you could get in trouble. Did you drive to school?”

“Walked.”

“Well you could come to my house? My mom should be home but she won’t mind,” you had already begun to walk in the direction of your house, “she’s always bugging me to bring friends over.”  

“I don’t really think we’re friends.” Connor pointed out.  

“No, yeah, right, of course. I just mean, you know. Well you don’t have to come over obviously, it’s whatever. You know?” Your words tumbled out and he noted the same disappointed expression as when he wouldn’t take the lollipop you offered up.  

He wanted to apologise, to rewind and not tell you that he wasn’t your friend cause you seemed so bothered that he wasn’t. “I don’t have anything else better to do.” A harsher phrase but he wasn’t exactly good at conveying feelings to others.  

Your house was nice, it was clean inside and you offered Connor a water bottle before leading him upstairs to your bedroom. He wondered what the chances were of you letting him smoke in your house. There were three cats and the one you picked up the moment you had your shoes off and carried like a baby all the way up to your bedroom. When you got up to go the bathroom Connor couldn’t help taking a peek in your dresser.  

“What are you doing?” You were standing in the open doorway, frown set as you stared at Connor. He still had his hand on the drawer handle.  

“Sorry,” he shut the drawer and took a step back, “you wear a lot of stripes.”  

“I like stripes.”  

“I could tell.”  

“I didn’t invite you over so you could make fun of me Connor.” You had been trying for much longer than it was worth to get Connor Murphy to be your friend. You’d made every effort to talk to him, to be nice to him, and it always felt like you were just missing the mark. You’d been more excited than you should’ve when he agreed to come over and you were hurt that he was only here to rifle through your stuff.  

“I’m not making fun of you.” Connor assured, hands raised in surrender. “I like stripes.”  

You eyed him sceptically.  

Connor was telling the truth though. He did like stripes and blush pink glasses and the way you cut your hair and coloured pens and lollipops that tasted like cotton candy. He liked your gray sweater and that you never wore any polish on your nails or any make up at all and that you told him funny stories about your weekends. He liked those jeans with the hole in the knee and your Birkenstock’s with wool socks in the winter no matter how many times they told you open footwear wasn’t allowed.  

And for the first time in his life he took Evan’s advice and didn’t try to hide behind a sarcastic comment, “I like when you wear stripes.”  

“Oh,” you felt your face grow warm at the admission, “uh, thank you?”

Connor smiled and moved closer to you, “I wasn’t trying to be an ass to you, I just wasn’t sure how to...what to say.”  

“What?” You bit your lip, skin prickling with goosebumps as he closed the distance between the two of you. “What do you mean?”  

You’d liked Connor Murphy since you first laid eyes on him in sixth grade. Eleven years old and your heart was pounding because he was the cutest boy you’d ever seen. And he wasn’t always nice but he’d always been nice to you. Your attempts at friendship had been null but you liked talking to him and he’d never complained about it until now.  

“I was just trying to...I though pushing you away would be better.”

“Why?”  

Connor’s hands were shaking, this was the most open he’d been in long time without raising his voice or losing his temper. The first time he was purposely telling someone something and still the words wouldn’t come out. “You know why.”  

You looked like you understood, there was that brief flicker of something that suggested you knew what he meant, what he couldn’t say, but it disappeared in an instant. You looked at him with the same sort of surprised expression you had when he had spoken to you in the hallway. As if it was so unreal that he would think about you and somehow it irritated him that you could even entertain the idea that he didn’t spend every waking minute thinking of you. That he hadn’t bought a pair of striped socks, which he was wearing at this very moment, because they made him think of you.  

“I don’t-“ you tried to form a coherent sentence but Connor’s hands were suddenly on either side of your face and he was leaning in and his lips pressed against yours and you could feel his thumb brush your cheek, smearing a nervous tear.  

You kissed him back almost immediately, as if it was an instinct that your body was just waiting to acknowledge. You reached for his shirt, trying to pull him closer to you than he already was, desperate to feel him. It was a good kind of sensory overload where you were both certain that you saw stars when you closed your eyes.  

You were the first to break the kiss, the sound of footsteps on the stairwell had you pushing him away. “My mom!”  

Connor brushed his hair back, neck and face red with warmth from actually kissing you. He couldn’t stop smiling, not even when your mom appeared in the open doorway.  

“Oh hi, you didn’t say you were having anyone over.” She looked pleasant enough and Connor suddenly felt very self-conscious. She’d probably call all the other moms in the neighbourhood and they would rat him out. Warn her against letting her kid be alone with Connor Murphy, the psycho freak.  

“Uh, mom this is Connor.” You waved between them nervously. You’d already unloaded so much about Connor on your mom you could only pray she didn’t embarrass you.  

“The Connor? How nice to meet you,” she grinned, that sort of knowing smile that only mother’s had, “keep the door open.” And then she was gone, headed down the hallway to her own room.  

You turned back to look at him and both spoke at the same time “Sorry,” “I should get going.”  

“No wait,” you held your hands up, as if you could physically keep him in your room, “just, we can hang out, she doesn’t care. She’s just being weird cause I always talk about you.”  

“You always talk about me?” He couldn’t help the grin. You always talked about him? What kinds of things did you notice about him?  

“I mean...like, not in a creepy way or anything, just like. Oh god, I just kissed you I can’t even talk to you.”  

“You sound like Evan.”

“That’s not helping.” You groaned. You fell onto your bed, covering your face with your hands.  

“I don’t exactly talk to my parents but I certainly think about you all the time.” He admitted, if only to see that smile again.  

You slowly uncovered your face, looking up at him through more nervous tears. “Really?”  

“Yeah,” he came over and sat next to you. “You and your five million striped shirts.”  

“Shut up,” your laugh turned into a squeal when he leaned over and pressed his lips against your neck.  

-

I don’t know what to say here. 

[nxnoire]

Code Lyoko Miraculous AU Idea

Not sure if this has been done before but please hear me out.

If you don’t know, or need a refresher, Code Lyoko was an Italian (just been informed it’s French lol) show that aired like 15 years ago. Basically, a really smart guy invented an entire virtual world called Lyoko in a creepy abandoned factory. Apparently he also created this evil, really smart virus-like thing called XANA. It can affect the real world, turning people evil and even going so far as to bring monsters from Lyoko to the real world.

A group of 13-year-olds stumbled upon this computer in an abandoned factory and are like “hey cool let’s step into these sketchy tubes”. The nerd guy is like “lemme do some nerd stuff on my computer” and that’s all he does. The others, consisting of the creator’s daughter, the karate kid, kagami rip-off, and a pretty odd guy, go into Lyoko and fight XANA and his monsters to save the day. Then they basically use Second Chance to repair all of the damage done.

So anyway, the AU:

Marinette, Adrien, Alya, and Nino, would make up the team of heroes.

Marinette would be the main character, of course. Much like Aelita, she would be the only one to deactivate towers (the only way to defeat XANA)

Marinette would have been trapped in Lyoko and also has to pretend to be Nino’s Canadian cousin to get into the school (is this not what she would do though)

She retains her power of Lucky Charm and her yo-yo while in Lyoko. Her ability to deactivate towers replaces her purification. Her Miraculous Ladybug is replaced by the computer’s ability to rewind time

Because they all get vehicles, Ladybug would probably just use her yo-yo like how Aelita uses her wings in the second half. In the flat areas like the Desert she would just catch a ride with someone else

Adrien would be the exact same. Literally nothing changed about him. He is still a rich model with over-protective guardians. Because this is a boarding school we’re talking about, he does, in fact, stay in the dorms, which only happened because of his intense begging. He ends up rooming with Nino and that’s how they became friends.

He retains his Cataclysm, staff, and cat tendencies in Lyoko. His vehicle would definitely be a skateboard. He wants to be a rebel.

Alya would also remain the same. She would work for the school newspaper and also run blogs for anything but Lyoko. Because everyone forgets the XANA attacks nobody would believe her. Besides, she has to keep Lyoko hidden

She rooms with Marinette and helps her learn the world around her

She retains her Mirage and flute in Lyoko. Her vehicle of choice would be whatever Yumi’s vehicle is. I’m not sure what you’d call it.

Nino would be the school’s DJ. He’d play music at all events and be known to recommend music to others.

He would retain his Shelter and shield in Lyoko. His vehicle would be the shield. He could ride it like a skateboard or a sled. The only problem would be the shield getting destroyed, in which case he would have no weapon as well.

The person running the computer would be none other than Max! He wouldn’t want anything to do with going to Lyoko but would happily use the computer. He was the one who stumbled upon it, after all.

He wasn’t going to tell anyone, but Adrien happened to meet him there while exploring the area. Adrien is a confused boy as always, but whatever Max doesn’t care because Adrien is baby

Then somehow Nino finds out through Adrien and is interested. Alya probably stalks the boys as they disappeared to the factory all the time and is added to the team for these reasons

The Heroes keep their Miraculous suits in Lyoko. They don’t have their kwamis, but the kwamis are underclassmen because this AU needs a Tikki and Plagg

Chloe would be Missy, the principal’s daughter. It fits so well. The crush on Adrien, too. This also means André Bougeouis is the principal, not the mayor. Her mother stays the same, being a fashion designer in New York

Sabrina is still Chloe’s follower

Mr. Damocles becomes a teacher somewhere in the school.

Mrs. Bustier and Mrs. Mendeleiev would remain as the teachers, keeping their respective roles.

Kim, Alix, Juleka, Rose, Nathaniel, Ivan, and Mylène (also Marc because we cant forget this baby) are still their classmates and are all friends with each other. Because all of these characters will probably get a Miraculous at some time, they are invited to Lyoko individually when someone is out to help the team out. Because they would remember what happened, they have to swear an oath to never tell anyone.

Kagami is the same, introduced as Adrien’s fencing opponent and a love rival

Luka fulfills the role of William. I won’t spoil what happens to him because it’s a pretty big moment, but please convince me he doesn’t fit the role. Who else could be the love rival between Marinette and Adrien that already goes to the school? (I don’t hate Luka at all, I just feel like he’s perfect for the looks and love rival role)

Jim (the Gym teacher) is still there because my man is the og. That one episode when he helped the Heroes out and accepted their secret, that was some good shit and you can’t replace him. He’s best teacher there convince me the fuck otherwise

Marinette, being very skilled in programming due to her father, often helps Max implement things such as their submarine and rebuilds Lyoko (for very spoilery reasons)

Gabriel is not Hawkmoth, obviously, and is not XANA, that’s for sure. However, I think it would be interesting if he was someone who worked with Marinette’s father and was the cause of XANA’s appearance just to keep his villain role.

Nathalie is still Gabriel’s assistant. She aids him by sneaking into the factory and deleting code programs they’ve created to defeat XANA, trying to stop the process of defeating him

The octopus-looking ass monster still wants to eat Marinette’s brains (what the fuck was it called)

Marinette’s mother was taken by the creepy black-suited dudes as well

Adrien’s mother is still missing. In this AU, she got really sick from testing the early Lyoko mechanics, which is why Gabriel wanted to make XANA

Adrien names all of the monsters, hence their horrible names

Lila also exists and makes Marinette’s life hell. She makes deals with Gabriel to try ruining Marinette’s life because she is the only known piece of Tom left

All of the akumas simply turn into situations that XANA creates. XANA either takes over their body or makes a disaster similar to their power. Stormy Weather would just be intense weather but Chameleon would remain the same. Akumas like Kwami Buster and Miraculer wouldn’t work and hence would not happen

That Null kwami that just sort of exists and we wish it didn’t? Yeah I feel like that should be one of the monsters. Either that or a physical manifestation of XANA instead of that weird black stuff he is

Feel free to add on, this was just me putting down my ideas.

Now I realize I need to rewatch this show. It’s been about 7-10 years and I miss it.

I’m like really sensitive about this show though because it was so unknown when I watched it. Nobody knew it and it had already died out so I was alone. However it seems there were still a few people who saw it so I have hope at least a few people like this idea. Maybe if it’s received well I’ll draw this.

[askiisoft]

FAN ART FRIDAY: Triple Dragons

Imagine dragons. It can be the European winged lizards or the long, windy Asian ones, it doesn’t matter. Now imagine that, like most lizards, it molted its skin every so often. But afterwards, that shedded skin came to life, put on a suit, and started trying to take over the identity of the original, creeping out its friends and war buddies in the process.

That’s the sordid history of Gamma Fifteen, a.k.a “The Dragon of New Mecca”. I think no one behind Katana ZERO imagined he’d become the game’s breakout character, receiving more fan love than the rest of the cast combined. But we’re not here to talk about him...or at least, not just him. Thanks to the raw talent and wild imaginations of fans, there have become at least three different versions of Fifteen in fanon.

So buckle in, because today we’ll be going on an expedition into the urban jungles of the Third District, to get a look at the three species of The Dragon in the wild.

Thanks to @55_yamisan for drawing all the species illustrations below! You can see the original artwork here.

[WARNING: Contains plot spoilers for ‘Katana ZERO’]

Ssshhh. Stay low, and be careful of snapping twigs underfoot. Just through the brush, we can see a juvenile Dragon in its natural habitat. Here, have a look.

Don’t be fooled by his boyish charm—at the tender age of 15, this NULL specimen is already a proficient killing machine. From this juvenile form, a Dragon can eventually grow into one of three different forms depending on its diet, habitat, and artist. 

—

Exhibit A. Here, we have most prolific and successful species of The Dragon. Using his long, spindly legs, he prowls the Earth’s upper atmosphere for small birds, passenger planes, and other prey.

One of the mandates for Katana ZERO’s promotional art was that spoiler characters like Fifteen and Headhunter couldn’t be shown. It was a smart move for hiding the game’s various late-game twists, but as a consequence, fan artists had nothing but his in-game sprites as reference material. 

This led to debates about whether he wore sunglasses or had cat ears, until natural selection produced the perfect assassin; a bishonen-yet-deadly apex predator.

by @IERotAK

I love hatched lines. They’re useful for drawing the eye or adding texture, shadows, and folds without the use of color. Unfortunately, a combination of shitty tablet drivers and my own unsteady hand means I can only draw lines a couple dozen pixels long before they start losing their straightness.

That’s clearly no issue for IEROtAK, who manages to convey the distinct textures of glossy leather gloves, a dark suit, and cold steel using nothing but amazingly neat hatched lines and negative space. The thick webs of intricate lines dazzles the eye from afar before it slowly makes out the clean shapes and low perspective of this masterpiece. Real badasses don’t look at explosions.

by @PsykoShipht

One of the best ways to make dynamic action is by accentuating movement; things like Batman’s cape, Strider Hiryu’s crimson scarf, or Rad Spencer’s dreadlocks billow and sway with their every movement, giving a sense of momentum and a clear line of action. 

PsykoShipht gives Fifteen’s stylish ponytail a life of its own; I can already picture it straightening with each Chronos Rush attack or forming zig-zags and right angles and he navigates platforms. Even Fifteen’s comparatively lanky proportions and clean silhouette scream ‘agility character’ before he even draws his sword.

—

This species is a rare sight in the wild, and thankfully so. His briefcase is lead-lined, so even X-ray scans have been unable to reveal its contents.

It all began in The Concept Art of Katana ZERO and seemingly normal piece of concept art by Kenju, depicting an alternate version of Fifteen bearing a green sheath, green hair, and what looked like mild burn scars on his face. 

by Kenju

Fan artists immediately took the idea and ran with it, inventing a bizarre, disfigured, and delightfully mad doppelgänger—first dubbed “Proto Fifteen″ and later, “The Snake” or “The Serpent”. He carries around that mysterious silver briefcase and a creepy yandere obsession with Fifteen’s old comrade, Zero. 

Is he a failed clone? A bizarro-version from another dimension? And what’s inside that briefcase? We may never know. But the idea of having a stalker with Fifteen’s level of speed and swordsmanship is an utter nightmare...

by @55_yamisan

Why drown a drawing in rainbows when just a few spots of color makes all the difference? 

Adding red eyes to Yami-san’s black-and-white art style immediately leads one’s gaze in a serpentine spiral, from the snake’s glare and up its graceful coils to The Serpent’s cocked head and seductive smirk that distinguish him as the ‘evil twin’. Even without the green in his hair or his signature briefcase, it’s easy to tell this is a totally distinct character from The Dragon. 

Let’s hope Zero can tell the difference, too...

“There’s something important inside.” by @moryu​

When Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction hit in 1994, everyone had their own guesses about what was inside the ‘mysterious briefcase’. Diamonds. Nuclear launch codes. Perhaps even a human soul.

In this case, however, my guesses are a lot more morbid, as anything The Serpent holds dear is likely slick, smelly, and related to Zero in some way. The way fan artists took a discarded detail from concept art and transformed it into The Serpent’s central conceit is beyond impressive.

I shudder to think of the kinds of reference photos @moryu​ used to achieve such realistic-looking burn scars in this picture. It doesn’t stop there, though; the mottled glow of The Serpent’s suit and hair and dull metallic sheen of his briefcase add an extra dimension of warmth to this otherwise creepy portrait.

—

“The Crocodile” is a relative newcomer to this ecosystem, but has carved out a niche of lifting his prey with a single arm, then drowning them in a toilet or other convenient body of water.

Truth be told, this one’s on me. When drawing some Steam Backgrounds for the game’s PC version, enough time had passed that The Dragon was fair game for publicity material. What I drew ended up like a blood-spattered cross between Clint Eastwood and Owen Wilson.

by @godsavant

This sent shockwaves rippling through the Katana ZERO fan community. Where was the sharply-dressed samurai prince everyone thirsted for? Surely this stomach-kicking, mobster-torturing beefcake couldn’t be him, thus earning him the moniker “The Crocodile” or “The Alligator”: muscular, deadly, and singularly obsessed with revenge.

by @sbserpent

Dragons are a consistent theme in art across many Asian cultures; for example, the Chinese once believed their emperor was descended from dragons, and thus bore their wisdom and benevolence. Here, sbserpent demonstrates just how frightening a human embodiment of a dragon really is.

Where The Dragon carries himself with an air of calculated composure, The Crocodile exudes sheer terror. The thick, angular brush strokes evoke Japanese sumi-e artwork, yet blotchy ink spots and harsh shadows are a far cry from the koi fish and bamboo forests of those traditional paintings. 

by @Zebralineku

Chiaroscuro is a technique that uses bold contrast between light and shadow to leave certain parts for the viewer’s mind to fill in. 

Here, Zebra gives us an imposing film-noir bust of The Crocodile as glimpsed through narrow blinds or a slat in a dark alley: the foreboding red mixed with heavy shadows evoke a hitman staring out at crimson neon signs, and his dark suit mixes with the black background to make him almost a shadow. Yet we can envision the other half of his face and ponytail in our mind’s eye from the scantest details; truly the touch of a master.

—

Remember, the specimens we’ve observed must be viewed from a safe distance; should you spot any of them in the wild, do not approach!

If you’d like some artwork featured on a future Fan Art Friday, just use the Submit Button on this blog!

by @Kazzang3

[jay-wells-writes]

Trying something new! Hopefully you like it!

Something I noticed when writing is I will think of an idea for one character and then I cant help wondering what the others would do. So instead of writing all those stories out I figured I would do a little snippet for all of them and if you like an idea maybe then I will actually write out a whole story. 

So the theme of the snippets are how the guys would react if someone was harassing you, and let me tell you figuring out a different reaction for each guy is hard. On that note, I should also mention that this is the first time ever doing anything like this so I hope that I did it justice. I should also note that this is unedited, I figured since they are just small snippets it didn’t need to go through editing.

Even though there is nothing bad in the snippets other then guys being jackasses I do want to put a warning to this. I know that even the smallest things can trigger someone.

Ralph:

Ralph stepped into the dinner and made his way to your section. He had been coming in every Thursday night when he knew you worked the late shift, he just hoped that you didn’t find it creepy. For some reason, you were easy to talk to and never got annoyed with his lousy jokes. Walking up to his table you place his normal coffee down with a small smile. Ralph could see that you were tired, so he kept his jokes to a minimum. After telling you to bring his usual he sat there and watched as people came and went. When he saw a group of guys come in he got a funny feeling that made him sit up straight. Hearing you moan did many things to Ralph, but when he saw you look to the group of guys that had just came in he placed a hand on your arm and asked if you were ok. Nodding your head you told Ralph that one of the guys lived in your building and him and his buddies loved to cat call and ask you to come over whenever they saw you. He watched as you made your way over to the group. Even though you were uncomfortable standing in front of them you had managed to keep a smile on your face while they placed their orders. Ralph and everyone else in the dinner was becoming annoyed with how the group of guys were acting. Every time you had tried to walk away they would call you back. Dropping things so that you would pick it up, but what had Ralph standing and making his way to the group was when one of the guys drink was spilled on the floor. You had been kneeling down to wipe up the mess when you had looked up to your name being called, that is when you saw one of the guys grabbing his dick and saying while your down there. Before you could react though you watched as a set of hands ripped the guys away from himself, pulling him from his seat and slamming him to the ground with his arm twisted up and behind his back and a foot holding him down. Standing quickly you saw that the person who had pulled the man from his seat was Ralph and that he had a gun pulled on the others. Looking at you he asked of you were alright. After nodding your head Ralph asked if you could reach into the inside pocket of his jacket and grab his phone. Sliding your hand into his jacket you brushed a crossed his chest, feeling muscle that was hidden by his clothes. Pulling out his phone he told you the code to unlocking it and had you hit the number of someone named Joe. 15 minutes later there was a couple cop cars there and the group of guys were arrested for possession charges and harassment. After being told you were ok to leave for the night you walked out of the dinner and saw Ralph waiting for you. Knowing there was a chance for the guys to get out that night Ralph said that he didn’t feel comfortable having you stay at your place and that he wanted to set you up in a hotel for the night. As much as you tried to talk him out of it, you couldn't. So you found yourself in his car as he ran you to your place and then to the hotel. Making sure you were settled in for the night Ralph had turned to leave, but before he could you had pulled him in for a kiss. As you tried to pull him back into the room Ralph pulled away from you. Telling you that he wants nothing more than to hear you moan his name, but tonight was not the night for that. He didn’t feel right because it made him feel like you were only doing it as payment for the room. He said that he would be back the following morning with breakfast and they could talk about it then. Giving him the other key, so that he could just come in you kissed him good night and watched as he left. The following morning Ralph had hoped you didn’t regret kissing him the way you had. After knocking to let you know he was there, he let himself into the room. The sight that greeted when he opened the door was you walking out of the bathroom in a towel. Instead of freaking out, you dropped the towel and had asked him if that was proof enough. You watched as Ralph rolled his eyes closed, tilted his head back and let out a moan. When he reopened them you saw nothing but lust as he tackled you to the bed.

Jay:

Everyone had decided that things had been a little to tense and that a night out was what they all needed. It just so happened that Jay was visiting when the idea of going out was brought up. At first he had no plans of going but when you begged him and gave him some puppy eyes he agreed. He sat at the table most of the night with Harry and talked about random things. Because he couldn’t get drunk he made it his job to watch everyone in the group, keeping a closer eye on you than the others. He watched as guy after guy asked you to dance. It drove him crazy but he had no claim over you and in turn had no say on who you danced with. Everyone was having fun and into dancing that no one notice that the current guy you were dancing with became a little to handsy. Jay watched as the guy kept trying to slip his hands down your ass or under your shirt. Finally having enough you tried to walk away, but as you did the guy grabbed your arm causing you to flinch in pain. Next thing you knew Jay was standing in front of you with his arm reaching back to slide you behind himself. After trying to talk calmly to the guy and him not listening, Jay knew that there was no point. So he turned around and started to lead you back to the table. That is when the guy started to throw insults at Jay, all of which he ignored. The final straw was when he started to insult you. Jay wasn’t even using his speed and yet no one saw the punch he threw at the guy. Everyone in the bar stood there looking at the guy who was currently knockout cold and to Jay as he stood over him. Touching Jay’s arm you asked him to take you home. Standing outside of your place Jay started to apologize for hitting the guy. Telling him that he never had to apologize for anything like that, you pulled Jay down for a kiss. Suddenly it was like a dam broke between the both of you and you found yourself slammed into the wall of your building with your legs around Jay. You only pulling apart long enough to get into your place and out of the public street.

Eowells:

As Eobard’s… well Harrison’s assistant you were required to be at any and all gala’s and dinners. Tonight it was a gala held in honor of Dr. Harrison Wells, in hopes that the company throwing it would be able to get Dr. Wells on their board. Eobard hated things like this so for the most part he stepped back and let you work the room. Standing to the side Eobard couldn’t help but feel himself want you when he saw what you were wearing. Tonights dress was form fitting. It was black in color but the way the material was made it sometimes looked silver and when you moved it was like watching water move, it had a slit that went up just past your knee. Although the back was a modest length that went to the middle of your back, the front was a deep cut that stop just a smegging between the top of your breast. Instead of covering your neck with diamonds you wore the same necklace you always wore. It didn’t dip down between your breast but it still caused Eobard and any other man to look. Eobard was thrown from his thoughts when a hand slammed unto his back. Turning to look at who it was he found that standing next to him was a middle aged man. He could see that the man has solid built and wore his suit well and looked to be a smart businessman. All that was nulled though when Eobard followed his eyes to you. He must not had known that you were associated with him cause when he spoke it took everything for Eobard not to reach into the mans chest and kill him right then and there. Instead Eobard stood there as the man went into great detail on the things he would do to you if given the chance. What made it worse was when the man did nothing to hide his excitement at his thoughts. Just then the man made his way towards you and Eobard watched as the man reached out and slid his hand down your arm. Seeing you shiver but not in a good way Eobard made his way to you. Eobard saw red when he watched as the man reached for your necklace and let his finger graze the top of your breast. Placing his arm around you Eobard acted as if he had been looking for you. Feeling you push yourself further into him Eobard placed a light kiss to your shoulder, telling you he was ready to go home. Without another word to the man Eobard lead you out of the party and into his car. Reaching your place you asked if he would like to come up. Once the door closed Eobard found himself with you in his arms. Removing clothes as you both fought for dominance. Stepping back you looked at Eobard asking him if you read him wrong. Pulling you back into his arms Eobard kissed you with more passion than aggression giving you your anwer. After making sure that you were truly worn out Eobard slipped out of your apartment, knowing he had some business to take care of. The next morning you were shocked to see that the man from the gala was found dead in his home from what looked like an overdose of prescription meds.

Harry:

Cisco knew that Harry had a thing for you and he didn’t need to vibe anything, thank you very much, to see it. He could tell by how Harry kept his eyes on you anytime you were in the room, how he got a little pink in the face when you would bend over or touch his arm lightly. He had tried to get Harry to do something about it, but Harry refused to listen. So, it was time for Cisco to do something about it. The following day Cisco made it a point to make comments to you and touch you whenever you guys were near one another and whenever Harry was around. It didn’t take you long to figure out what he was doing so you decided to play along. Telling Cisco that there was no way Harry had feelings for you. Having you now in on the plan Cisco was free to lay it on really thick. With your permission his touches became more intimate in nature. Forging announce you would pull Cisco hands off of you and tell him to stop. Of course, Cisco wouldn’t listen. Through most of the day Harry tried to ignore it, he kinda figured that Cisco was playing a game with him. What he was not expecting was you playing along with it. So after you had told Cisco to stop for the millionth time Harry finally snapped and told Cisco to leave you alone. Placing his arm around you and pulling you towards himself Cisco just smiled. Feeling his anger raise Harry marched over to where you both had been standing, pulling Cisco’s arm off of you violently and pulling you behind him. Knowing that you both had caused Harry to reach his tipping point and not getting the actual reaction you wanted, you placed a hand on his arm and ask Cisco if he could give you a minute. After Cisco walks out you tell Harry that you knew what Cisco was doing and was ok with it because you have had feelings for him for some time now and you wanted to see if Cisco had been right about his feelings for you. Walking you backwards till you were against the counter with nowhere to go, Harry placed his hands on either side of you. Harry then leaned in close and told you that if that was the case then he was gonna have to punish you. Feeling your heart race at his words. Harry grabbed your face in both of his hands and began to kiss you, forcing his tongue into your mouth. His hands ended up sliding down your body. Pulling you up to sit on the counter, he then slid one hand to your waist and the other back into your hair; stepping to stand between your legs. You both had been so lost in the kiss neither of you heard Cisco stepping back into the room till you heard him say it is about time. Breaking apart from the kiss but not from each other Harry got after Cisco for being there. You couldn’t help but laugh when Cisco ran out of the room when Harry threw something at him, because Cisco had said you had only asked for a minute

Alfred:

Alfred looked good in anything he wore and he always dressed immaculate, but today you did not want immaculate. As he was in the bathroom shaving you took the tie, vest, and shirt and placed them back into the closet. Pulling out a black shirt that was made of a light material you turned to see him standing in the doorway. Walking up to you he wrapped his arms around you and asked what you were doing. Leaning into his embrace you explained that although your family loved him and your cousin. Your cousin’s mother and other family members had not so quietly said that you were with Alfred cause he was your “sugar daddy”. So with the permission of your cousin, it was her wedding, you decided that you wanted to play the part. Laughing into your shoulder Alfred placed a kiss on your bare shoulder before reaching for the shirt. The wedding had went off without any issues and next to the bride you and Alfred were in the spotlight. Of course it made a lot of eyes widen when your family greeted Alfred with warm smiles and hugs. Heck your cousin practically threw herself into his arms in way of a greeting. At the reception you and Alfred found a spot off to the side that allowed you to see the dance floor, but kept you hidden slightly. Your table guest were great company and you found yourself laughing with them and Alfred. Having to take a call Alfred had stepped out into the hall. Sitting at the table watching as everyone danced you felt a hand run down your back. You knew that it wasn’t Alfred cause the hand was cold instead of warm and the smell of the cheap body spray let you know that it was were ex boyfriend. You knew that he was going to be here but so far had managed not to run into him. Turning slightly you shivered when his eyes traveled down your body and back up. You wanted nothing more then to dump your drink on him, but thought better of it. So instead you sat there with his arm around your chair and tried to make small talk. All the while wishing for Alfred to get back. As the conversation went on your ex started to move closer to you and you let out a small gasp when he placed his other hand on your leg and pulled you and your chair flushed against him. You tried to move away without drawing attention to yourself, but every time you tried his hand would tighten on your leg. Before you could make a scene though, Alfred was back and standing behind your ex. Saying his name your ex turned to Alfred standing there. Looking at Alfred your ex chuckled and told him to go find a new baby, that he was back and he wasn’t going to let you go again. Smiling and chuckling Alfred placed a hand on your ex’s shoulder and squeezed. As much as your ex tried to hide his pain you knew that he was hurting with how he started to cave in on himself. Leaning down as if he was telling your ex a joke Alfred whispered for him to let go of his babygirl or he would break said hand and not cause a scene doing it. Standing back up and removing his hand from his shoulder Alfred then reached a hand out, pulling you to the dance floor. Holding your hand against his chest Alfred slipped his other to the small of your back. Pulling you into his body he placed his mouth next to your ear and began to hum the song that had been playing. Between the heat from his body, his thumb that rubbed up and down your back, and his voice in your ear you found yourself free of all the tension you were feeling just moments before. Looking up slightly you locked eyes on your aunt, noticing that you were looking at her she turned and whispered I am sorry as she raised a glass to the both of you.

Harvey:

working in a bar you saw all types of things and dealt with all types of things. Tonight was the worst though. A big game had been on and since the bar you worked at aired the game for free everyone and their brother were there. You had been working behind the bar for the night when one of your regulars came in. Smiling at Harvey you handed him his drink and turned to take an order from one of the waitresses. Half an hour later you were ready to kill someone. It seemed like every time one of the waitresses came up with an order they were either fuming or on the verge of tears because some guy had done something. You had your back turned when you heard Harvey speaking to one of the waitresses. Turning you saw that it was the new girl, she had tears in her eyes and was holding her wrist. Walking over you heard her tell Harvey that a customer had tried to get her to sit on his lap and when she tried to walk he had grabbed her wrist and twisted. She had managed to get away because his friend had hit him in the arm and told him to let her go. Grabbing a bucket and filling it with ice and water you ignored Harvey asking you what you were doing. Walking up to the table that she had pointed out you knew what guy it had been by how loud he has and all the cat calling he did. When he turned to look at you he smiled as he leaned back patting his leg telling you he had a seat just for you. Smiling back at him you told him that he looked a little hot and that you had just the thing to help him out. Lifting the bucket, he had not seen till then, you poured the contents of it over his head. Before you knew it you were on the ground holding your cheek from him hitting you. Before he could do anything more though Harvey was standing over you. The guy had started to laugh asking Harvey what he was going to do. Just then Harvey pulled a gun on the guy and you couldn’t help but laugh. If the look on his face wasn't good enough the wet spot forming on his pants was. What really surprised you and everyone else was when Harvey then pulled a badge from his belt. Looking to the guys friend Harvey told him to get him the hell out of the bar. After the friend pulled the guy out the door Harvey reached his hand out to help you up. Standing next to him Harvey turned your face gently to look at the mark that was on your cheek. Telling him you were fine you both made your way back to the bar. After closing you walked out to find Harvey standing there. Tipping his hat to you he told you that even though he didn’t expect the guy to come back he wanted to stick around and make sure. He made sure that all the other staff had gotten into cabs and were on their way home. Smiling you threaded your arm through his and began to walk down the street. Pointing to the dinner down the street you offered to buy Harvey some food for his help. Giving you a wink he said that you could only if he could buy you dinner the following night.

Christopher Pike:

The worst thing about being on a Federation Starship was the new crew that would come aboard. With them came the disbelief that you were dating the captain of the ship. It normally happened when a male crew member would asked if you would like to get together. When you would politely decline, saying that you were seeing someone they would inquire who it was. Telling them that it was the captain they would laugh, saying that if you didn’t want to hang out you should have just said no. Sometimes though, you would get some that wouldn’t believe you till they saw you two together. This time around it was a new member of the science team. Everyday he would come in and ask you out, you lost count on how many times you told him no. Even others had tried to him that he should lay off but he just didn’t listen. He swore up and down that everyone had been pulling his leg because he never saw the captain and you together. You tried to tell him that was because Christopher was all about professionalism but he would laugh and say sure. You had been sitting at a table waiting for Christopher to show up for dinner when someone sat in the chair next to you. Instantly you rolled your eyes and groaned, because there was the guy from the science department. Placing his arm around the back of your chair he started talking about how now was the perfect time to get to know one another. You tried to tell him that you were waiting for Christopher when suddenly the guy placed his hand on your shoulder and squeezed. Folding in on yourself from the pain the guy bent down to whisper in your ear. He started to tell you that he was tired of you playing games and that it wasn’t fun anymore and that if you kept up with the illusion of being with the captain he would go one of the therapist onboard and tell them that you had an obsession with the captain. Before you could say anything a third voice joined the conversation. The both of you looked up to see Christopher standing there. Although he looked pissed, he kept his face calm as he told the guy that he hoped you had an obsession with him because he sure had one with you. Standing quickly the guy tried to make up something when Christopher held up his hand to stop him. The dining hall had not been that full, so when the guy stood suddenly all eyes had turned to the table. Turning to look at everyone there his eyes landed back on the guy before he started to speak. Keeping eye contact he explained that he had no time or want for anyone that doesn’t take no for an answer. That even if the other person was making up a lie about being with someone else, that still means no. Walking to stand next to the guy the last part Christopher said loud enough for just the three of you. He told the guy that if he could have his way, he would be kicking him off his ship at the next stop, but he couldn’t because he hadn’t done nothing to extreme. What he was going to do was have the head of the science team note this altercation in his personal file. He was also going to have someone from security follow him around since he couldn’t be trusted at the moment and he was to set himself up with one of the therapist for counseling. Nodding to someone off to the side you watched as the guy was lead away from the table and out the door. Pulling your shirt to the side Christopher looked to see if there was any bruising to your shoulder. Placing your hand over his you smiled at him and told him that you were ok, but that he owed you a massage for two reason: 1) because he was late and 2) you just wanted one. Laughing Christopher did something he had never done before. He leant down and kissed you deeply, making sure that everyone around knew that you were together.    

Leland:

Walking into the gym on the star base you instantly knew that there must have been a couple vessel docked because it was filled with more bodies than it normally was, but even through all the bodies you were able to find Leland standing at a punch bag. Sensing someone was staring Leland turned and saw you walking to the treadmill. You couldn’t help but smile and blush when he gave you a quick wink before going back to punching the bag. Even though you kept your head slightly down you could see that you had caught the eye of a couple of the guys and they watched as your sports bra did a poor job of keeping you supported. Just then the timer on the treadmill went off and you went through your cool down. Moving to a weights for your arm routine you saw that a couple of the guys had followed you over. Getting the feeling that the guys were waiting for you to go to a weight bench, you made your way to one of the strengthening bands. As you began your work out you scanned the gym for Leland, he had still been by the punching bags but instead of being the one punching he was now holding a bag for someone else. You could feel eyes staring at you and when you turned slightly you saw that instead of two sets of eyes you now just had one. When you made eye contact with the guy he gave you a wink. Rolling your eyes you turned back to your work out and ignored him. After you were finished you started to head back to the locker rooms. You about jumped out of your skin when someone bumped into you. Looking to your side you saw that the someone was Leland. Pushing him back for scaring you Leland laughed, he then had you turning red when he commented on you being able to run after the night before. Just then a hand pulled Leland away and you found yourself standing behind a guy. Without even asking if everything was ok the guy started going on about how Leland was standing to close and he needed to take a step back. That he saw the way Leland was looking at you in the gym. You could see that Leland was beyond pissed, but before he could do anything you pushed the guy away from you and into the nearest wall. Not giving him time to even speak you began to yell at the guy. You told him that he had no right to assume anything about you and that the only unwelcome looks had in fact came from him and not Leland. As for Leland standing to close, he was your husband and had ever right to stand close. What really made the man lose all the color in his face was when someone had been walking by and looked to Leland and called him Captain. It was only then you stepped back and let Leland walk up to him. You had been unsure what was said because Leland had whispered it into his ear, but whatever it was there was nothing but fear on the guys face as he turned and ran away. Turning to look at you Leland saw you had been resting against the wall watching. Walking into your personal space Leland rested a hand by your head, his other on your waist. Knowing Leland loved to show off your relationship you pulled him into a kiss and it wasn’t until another captain walked by and told you both to take it to your room did you pull apart. Grabbing your hand Leland gave the captain a wink and pulled you away.